The Zen of Cancer II

The curious case of breathwork

Medicine Buddha, artist unknown

Just a few days ago I did my first one-on-one guided breathwork session with Richard Bostock, aka The Breath Guy. It was one of the most healing experiences of my life.

At least some of you know that I have cancer (cf. The Zen of Cancer). Probably most of you (like myself) thought I had cancer. Well, no, sadly, the end wasn’t the end. It rarely is. I walked into the doc’s office for my 12 month check-up in October, blindly and naively confident that, like my 6 month scan, I would be all clear and skip on out blissfully back into my new—very ridiculous—life.

Nope.

“One of your lymph nodes is swollen.”

Oh, the mind-bending, consciousness-twisting, vision-blurring, prediction error.

Ironically, the entropy feels like the walls are closing in.

And in a split second, I’m in a new timeline. Back in the cancer-loop. The dark cloud encroaches my reality. Less heavy than the first time, but far more frustrating. I felt anger, more than anything. I really thought I was done with this.

Indignation was the overall vibe.

Two days later I’m in surgery for a biopsy. And I hated everyone. At the first surgery, I felt so much gratitude. Now, I was convinced everyone was an incompetent hot mess, and they were definitely going to fuck it up.

My plans to fly out to Thailand in a few days to give a talk about AI start to crumble, as does my trip to Barcelona, and Bali. But really, it’s the future itself that starts to unshackle from the chains I’d dreamt up. Once again, my plans are revealed to be nothing but smoke, dispersing back into the fathomless space from whence they came.

My next thought is the horror of telling Laia. Poor thing. Then my family. Ah, the drama. What a burden I am.

Indignation.

I did make it overseas, though. It wasn’t easy giving a talk about enlightening machines just a few days after finding out about the cancer. There’s a funny sort of absurdity in talking about abstract techno-buddhist futures while my body falls apart.

Cancer: “If you say one more thing about AI I swear…”

Me (sipping a cup of coffee and meditating all my problems away):

Any way, the biopsy results were mixed, but not positive. The location was very suspiciously close to where the cancer had been, so the doctors were clear that the odds were not in my favour. But my bloodwork was surprisingly clear, so at least we’re early again.

So I’ll be fine. Probably. At least statistically. But I don’t want to do chemo and that’s what they seem to be planning. I should know tomorrow. So this post is a kind of substack preregistration of my healing protocol. Knowing that I had six weeks before my next set of tests and before they attempt to heal (or poison) me, I was determined to do something about it. I thought: ‘I’m going to kill this thing, whatever it takes.’

First things first - a three day water fast. Then full keto: no sugar, no carbs, no alcohol, no fried foods, nothing! All the vitamins, and all the other weird, speculative, anti-cancer stuff: give it to me. Even the dewormer shit. I’ll take it all. IDC!

Operation metabolically starve the bitch was underway. My high school friend Lyndon decided to do the diet with me in a kind of solidarity. Very cute. Legend. Honestly, giving up sugar (incl. carbs), coffee, and practically every vice is no joke. But, damn, it feels lovely now.

I used to say it’s good to be addicted to at least one thing. It keeps you humble. But now I had to take back my illusion of control. Future me needed to know that I had tried. And thank god I did. Setting out on a hardcore healing journey for the first time in a long-while led to some straight up magic over the last six weeks. The universe seemed to be conspiring in my favour.

Intentions that emerge from the depths are powerful. But ya’ll know that, right?

We’ll see tomorrow whether it was a successful conspiracy or not, but even if the cancer is still there, I’m better for it. Honestly: if the cancer lead me to this single experience (which it did), then it was worth it.

I don’t know how to do justice to this…

Simply through some repetitive breathing, and some wise guiding hands (thank you, Richard!), every block in my body seemed to come undone. Viscerally. Pragmatically. Physically. Psychologically. Energetically. And then all at once; the old broken bones, twisted spines, and heaviness lifted, it was like my soul re-entered all the cracked pieces of my body.

I’m not exaggerating.

I—my whole being, body intact—had a DMT-style smooth-through experience and found myself in that old place. That ancient place. Where all is clear, all is known, and all is good. Ah. The great remembrance. Ah. The gratitude. Ah. The relief. Ah. The harmony. Ah. The truth of it all. Ah. What luck, what immense fortune. What an absolute fucking honour.

But this time… I was coming home with a purpose.

It was time to do the work. My body flung itself into postures, spinning and twisting in some sort of divine exorcism guided by the soul itself. Up, down, round, and round. Truly weird stuff. Not kundalini, though. Something distinctly from above. Something even more familiar.

It was immensely healing.

Usually we associate healing with some sort of concrete ‘thing’ being healed somewhere specific, and then we know it’s healed when we measure it. This wasn’t like that. It was completely holistic, and yet detailed and specific.

I felt my wrist ‘unbuckle’ a muay thai injury from nearly two decades ago. An injury I had not even thought about since I can remember, because it was so well integrated into my habits. Then I felt this delicious energy, which you could say was the real me—caveat: everything is the dream of something even more real—twist my hips back into place, and my legs release. Then I felt my ribcage painfully open, and broken bones (cracked on live television during my 4th Muay Thai fight, mind you) return into a steady place. And I felt energy and sensation rush down the side of my left leg and into my foot, where I had lost feeling more than three years ago.

My body sighed.

And it was all happening simultaneously - all the ‘blockages’ were kind of leaning on each other, or built on top of one another. They were all mutually reinforcing. It was like that first wrist injury had thrown me out of balance, and one injury at a time, it all just got worse and worse. Who knows how far back the seeds of my injuries go. I suspect somewhere near the seeds of ambition.

So, when one blockage started to unlock, they all did, like falling dominoes, and the energy that flowed through my body was ecstatic, pristine, harmonious, and luminous. It was like parts of my body were drinking water from a crystalline pure stream after decades of thirst.

And no drugs, man! Just some repetitive breathing. What a strange world we live in.

And it’s all because I didn’t properly listen to my body. For too long, I treated it as a tool. I just did my thing. Pushed through. Fought through. Meditated through. I’m a warrior, always have been. That is my strength, but also my weakness.

But then at some point in life I discovered that awakening, and all that is good, comes from something more like supreme vulnerability than equanimity. From dispassion more than passion. From energy more than control. And then at a certain point, everything contradicts itself. Because freedom has no limitations. Passion becomes passion once again. Vulnerability and equanimity become one.

Old lessons repeat themselves, over, and over, again. Fortunately, the pursuit of arriving has a better cinematic quality to it than actually arriving does.

But we really must come back to the body - not as a tyrannical leader, but as an innocent child, listening to a wise mother.

And so, I keep breathing, rotating, feeling, being guided, and then, from the height of heights, from heaven itself, after communing with the divine…

I feel the plug pull out of the sink.

My reality starts to spiral down... down, down, down, deeper, down. The pull towards The Great Void is irresistible and soaks up all of reality. Even heaven is happy to go for the ride. Resistance is futility itself. It all gets sucked down the drain of emptiness. Pulled into the wormhole of mystery.

…

Seduced by truth

…

God swallows himself

…

Gate gate paragate parasamgate, bodhi svaha

…

A trembling awe in the face of the unfathomable magnificence of existence

…

Much love ya’ll,

I’m happy,

But pray for me.

Ruben