Cancer

A friend of mine has cancer.  We are not the grand creators.  If we were there would be no such thing as cancer for instance.  Sometimes when we find ourselves in insolvable situations it's tempting to blame the creator - to turn to the divine with anger, wondering loudly and defiantely "Why?" 

When we are in such a state the whole karma, previous life explanation provides little comfort.   Yes, it's possible that  my actions from a past life (if I even care to buy in to that when I am feeling sick)  could be affecting my experience now.  Yet, even as I reject that my past lives are causing me to be vicitmized now, there is always the dance, the current connections and reconnections with various partners.  The dance of action and reaction results in conflict.

What does it mean that we take our own churning, our own frustratins or failures and lay them on the people we love the most?  When I engage in the blame dance, the thought is that I need to get away from them - and then that pain, that situation, that cancer will go away, but of course that's not how it works.

It matters less about the situation and more about whether we allow ourselves to be hoodwinked by our own smoke screen, our own negative inventions we throw onto the world as a form of pride and habit.  It's a matter of perception.  We may not be able to control the cancer, but we can control our own actions and reactions to it. 

The real question in any disaster isn't "why" but "to what extent can we embody compassion?"   Our actions, our ability to stop panicing and embrace what is actually happening with clarity without laying blame will always lead us away from despair and into truth.