My INNER Journey with Cancer

by Ted Russon Knodel – 8/25/2007

One day it dawned on me that cancer may be curative in some ways. My original title for this essay was Cancer is the Cure, but I realized that this title would inevitably initially upset some people. Some might claim ‘heresy’ on my part, as if I am advocating cancer as some form of cure, or minimizing the gravity of it, or somehow sacrilegiously poking fun at cancer and all its seriousness. That is not my intent. My intent is to share my experience with cancer and how profound a teacher it has been for me. how it has returned me to my heart and soul and all the things that are really important in life. I began to write about the nature of disease and the degree to which it, like all life experiences, can be a profound teacher, a gift, and a wake-up call.

For me, and for all who have experienced, or will experience cancer, I share these thoughts as a possible guide through your own cancer experience, or as preparation for whatever manner in which death will approach you.

Cancer can be a terrible thing to fear, loathe, or fight. Cancer can also be a profound teacher, a way to practice peace before we cross. Having the opportunity to ponder things before we die is a blessing. Dying unexpectedly does not allow such contemplation. For that alone I am very grateful.

As Eckhart Tolle, best selling author of The Power of Now says; “When forms die or death approaches, spirit is released to varying degrees, and the ego begins to fall away.” The imperative of death is a potent motivator forced me to deeply consider such things. All other distractions fell away, including my habituated focus on the external world..getting somewhere, then retiring to finally do what I really wanted to all along, my souls work.

I began to assess how many minutes of the day I was in the present moment versus planning for the future or regretting the past. I was floored by the realization that throughout my whole day I was present in the NOW less than 5% of the time. I saw how machine-like I had become, multitasking at all times, including while driving. I also began to see this behavior in others around me. So I practiced simply driving my car, and experiencing only the activity of driving, and a deep peace gradually floated over me, peace I had not felt since travelling and studying in India and Asia in 1985-1986. began to see my own lack of ease (disease) and I started attributing meanin[g] to ‘why’ I got ill.

I have rarely felt like a victim or that I was being punished. Rather, my deepest knowing was that I had for too long ignored my heart, and slowly lost the ability to cultivate the deep luminosity of limitless being and joy that I found in India and through my meditation practice. While there, I carried myself in a deep state of peace, but within a year of returning to the contrivances in this culture I felt my heart breaking. I yearned for people who were contemplative, interdependent, gentle, and spiritual. I have concluded that getting cancer was either a completely random event, or life’s wake up call to me. I have tried to use this experience to learn all I can. I often think that ignoring what my soul knew 20 years ago by not doing my heart’s work every day was the ‘reason’ I got this call. Either way it has been profoundly helpful in returning me to my place of peace.

Cancer has been my ultimate personal growth workshop. The tuition is high, the motivation is even higher, and the context for inquiry is rich with insights and new possibilities. I often joked with my friends that God used a 2×4 to whack me into awareness. Could the onset of cancer be a collaboration between my soul and God, because being in denial of my truth (of how I live and love and BE) is far less advantageous in terms of my progression, growth, or natural flow in the stream of lifetimes?

Sogyal Rinpoche in his book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, talks of how profound a teacher disease is and how for many of us, it is a way to move more quickly through lessons and karma. Illness has become a useful meditation for me, in that I have rediscovered the Natural Great Peace that is the essence of all of us.

In May of 2006, at age 48 and in good health, I was told by my doctor that I had a rare and highly aggressive form of cancer called Mantle Cell Lymphoma, with the prospect of 4-6 months to live. After the first days of shock, I started to formulate my relationship with this thing we have labeled as ‘cancer’. My first response was lucid and pensive curiosity rather than panic or fear. This surprised me.

What struck me initially was that rather than feeling victimized or angry, I was intensely curious about this disease. In began to understand the roots of the word “disease”, understanding how disease is really a lack of ease.

So if I am not at ease, perhaps this contributes to the onset of things like cancer. I noticed that many others relate to cancer as victimizing, seeing their own cells as something to wage war against. This did not make sense to me. Why would I fight against my own body, even just a part of it?

I honestly feel that eighty percent of my waking moments have been spent in a relatively continual state of peace and bliss. The peace I and other cancer patients experience does not make sense. We ask ourselves; “In the face of this, how could I feel such peace?” The only time I give in to true sadness is when I think about my dear son Torin. My relationship with my son throughout this lesson has been the hardest part of the entire experience.

Treating cancer as a teacher, and experiencing the reawakening of my inner peace has been one of the most profound experiences of my life – a good life, full of friends and love and giving. My hope is that I can share a small portion of what I have learned through this hardest of lessons.