The title quote is a friend’s recent text to me, after learning of the latest good news resulting from a PET scan a few days ago.

Yes. The test results reveal the Hijacking Hitchhiker, one of my names for the “stage 3 incurable cancer”, is now in stasis, neither growing nor receding from the previous labs three months back. This absence of growth is indeed cause for celebration here.

It was but seven months ago that a left hip x-ray, for growing pain in the area, presumed to be arising from a herniated lumbar disk, revealed this threat to my life. And it feels my body has aged ten years in the subsequent months. An extreme loss of physical strength and endurance, debilitating fatigue, tiredness, mental fog and social disconnection are some of the treatment related challenges faced as I step into this ‘first day of the rest of my life.

And for a guy who has enjoyed a blessed vigorous physical and mental engagement with the world, these challengers are not small. Clearly, 76 and with rapidly diminished psychical capacities, I will likely now never again do many of the things that have given joy, purpose and meaning to my life; like rowing the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon multiple times, for sure.

Another thing is for sure too, however. And that is my desire to show up with presence and courage and intention and purpose for this day and all the subsequent first days of the rest of my living. Surely life is too easy a thing to take for granted in the daily grinds of ‘making a living’ and paying the bills and doing the chores, especially in a culture that needs and feeds on our busyness to sustain its own cancerous voracious consumption of this one planet—in service of profit and power and comfort for a few.

But how will I continue to show up with gratitude and passion for living a life of my own authorship in these give-a-way years of my life? Being vs Doing?

How shall I meet the inevitable letting go of the activities and abilities Death will progressively require my release of, like supporting folks through nature-based retreats. Such deep play is nurturance for my spirit and soul, even as it is for participants. Do we not all hunger to re-member our true nature is not separate from the wonder and awe and beauty we find in an old growth tree or the wild waters of a mountain creek? Or a glorious desert vista or sunset?

How shall I meet the inevitable letting go of the activities and abilities Death will progressively require my release of, like supporting folks through nature-based retreats. Such deep play is nurturance for my spirit and soul, even as it is for participants. Do we not all hunger to re-member our true nature is not separate from the wonder and awe and beauty we find in an old growth tree or the wild waters of a mountain creek? Or a glorious desert vista or sunset?

The best vision I can muster, at 3am as I write this, of how to meet these Life invitations and challenges, as I emotionally prepare to encounter another round of IV chemo in the morrow is this. It is to meet them one breath, one inhalation and one exhalation, one oar stroke in the river, one handhold on a cliff face and one foot placement on the trail, filled with gratitude and blessings upon the mother, one at a time.

Mother Earth graced me into an odd intimacy with my dying when I first considered how I might take my life in the 3^rd grade. Yes. So many years ago, now. It is, however, one thing to intellectually know the inevitability of one’s death. It is another altogether for the visceral and somatic knowledge of such to inform one’s living.

Such bodily intimacy is a gift, this walking through the first day of the rest of my life with Death holding one hand and Life the other, for today might also be the last day of my life. “Together, we are one,” they each in-form me.

Oh but that I might continue to open this gift of deep inner intimacy!

And so it is that with this post, for now at least, I will close these caring bridge updates. I invite you to follow my ongoing blog reflections at www.larryglover.com, where you can also stay updated as to ‘the book release,’ anticipated in the first quarter of 2025 sometime.

And please know that although there is no way for me to adequately express the gratitude I feel, for all the love and support of friends and family as I travel this journey, and no way for me to keep up with all the notes of care and love that have come my way during this time, each and all are treasured by me. As are you, dear ones.

Let us live truly and fully now, for this oneness is all we have from which to be re-born into a more beautiful Now!

Thank you for walking by my side. I love you.

Note: The two photos are from Fall retreats I was able to cohost along with Cheryl Slover-Linett (leadfeather.org) and the support of a bevy of friends.

The post “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life!” appeared first on Wild Resiliency Awakening.

It’s been a big and rough week for Dotty and I. Last Sunday we traveled to MD Anderson Cancer Clinic for a PET scan and to meet with the oncologist there for the first assessment of how the treatments to date are faring. There’s some good news, and some ambiguous news.

Good news is the Hitchhiker (cancer) tumors in the left lung and hip and femur have shrunk significantly; enough so that it was suggested for the 4^th IV Chemo, for which I’m now sitting in the chair receiving, be the last for receiving the two-drug cocktail of Pemetrexed and Carboplatin. The latter is the harsher of the two so letting it go is a relief.

The news however that I could expect to be on an IV Chemo regimen of once every three weeks, plus my daily oral chemo of Tagrisso, until they are no longer effective did catch me by surprise. The average efficacy for this is 20/24 months, but then I have more energetic healing resources at disposal than most folks so… it will remain an unknown until it manifests.

Meanwhile I will continue to count you, dear friends and family, my community of love, as one of these primary resources of support. I feel so deeply held in this sacred circle of care. It leaves me humbled and grateful beyond measure. Please know there is simply no way for me to respond personally to all the messages of support and care, and that I energetically receive each one into my heart with gratitude.

Of course, I count the energetic medicines of nature as a primary resource of support also. As teacher, healer, and as lover, her inspirations are as close as my breath, heart and mind, and the soles of my feet. So valuable are the unbounded examples of the entwined cycles of birth, death, and rebirth

Speaking of which, more of the good news is that I’ve now doctor’s permission to begin ‘light hiking’ again, given the progressive healing in the bones of the left hip and femur. My heart leaped with joy upon hearing this news.

The ambiguous news however is harder to write about, being more subtle in character for one thing, and more intimate. It is simply this: I decided yesterday to drop the Carboplatin drug for this 4th chemo rather than waiting for the 5^th to do so. The travels to Houston to see the oncologist there left me exhausted, but regardless of cause, my whole system just rebelled at the thought of today’s chemo. My body and instincts rebelled—I do not feel resourced enough to receive the Carboplatin.

This means that the tumors will not receive this last blast of the heavy-duty poison to further reduce their vitality, and that my body, soul and spirit will not take that hit either. I still expect the post-chemo Death Lodge journeys to continue and will continue to write more of this on my blog, apart from posts here: larryglover.com/wildresiliency.com

This new regimen means that I am officially transitioning from an active western medical exorcism—to ‘living and thriving with’ the Hitchhiker as ally and informer of how to live my life intimately informed by Death. Making this decision earlier than medically recommended however, while the tumors are still active, leaves me mussing about what it is to trust the inherent wisdoms of my body when they conflict with conventional authority. The resulting inquiries and sensing find roots all the way back to early childhood for me, and I expect they might for you as well.

Oh, and more Of the joyful news is that this decision leaves me more resourced for completing remaining edits of ‘the book.’ The writing takes a definitive hit post chemo, however the new protocol will hopefully reduce the induced exhaustion and lack of focus of earlier treatments.

I will also be more resourced for the upcoming program with my business partner, Cheryl Slover-Linett. Interestingly, this program is titled, Nature as Sacred Healer: Healing,the Oneness Wound. Co-creating such programs with participants is one of the deep sacred honors of my life. They are nourishment and medicine for my own soul and spirit as well as that of participants. We still have a few spaces left for this mid September adventure and inquiry Into this vitalizing territory: https://leadfeather.org/portfolio/nature-as-sacred-healer/

On this note, I leave you with this poem:

What Spirit Knows
 
In three-day’s-time
I enter the Death Lodge
For a third cycle of spirals
Of learning to alchemicalize the poisons
Injected into my veins
To prolong my life they say
 
Once fully inside the Lodge
I anticipate another seven days
Where darkness reigns
But for light of the fires
Within my spirit and soul
That feed on the forces of life itself
 
Oh yes it is the mindful tending of these fires
With the raw intimacies of my life
That provide a kind of North Star
By which to navigate the darkness
Wherein I surrender my life
Yet again to the mystery that animates me
 
Again and again and again I am called
To let go of all that stands between
Me and a life of integrity and passion
A life of living ever truer
To who I most deeply know
Myself to be in nakedness of body soul and spirit
 
For this is what nourishes
The fires of renewal and rebirth
The shedding of identities bound
In service to fear and shame
To any unworthiness and insufficiency
That keeps me playing smaller
 
Than the stars of my ancestry
And so I nurse this one fire
With what it also hungers for
I drink straight from the Waters of Life
Mindful inhalations of living air and
Conscious exhalations of the same
 
As gratitude becomes the elixir
Of my days and nights of fetal living
While love itself begins the reweaving
Of the re-memberance
That is most valuable
Spirit’s intimacy and kinship with all life

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There is so much I wish to share with you yet brevity is sought for this post. So first, I desire to acknowledge my gratitude for all the loving support and care that is flowing into my life, dear friends. As noted in my previous post, learning to allow, fully allow love in, is a primary theme in my life.

“The Hitchhiker,” as I reference the recent stage 4 lung cancer with left hip and femur metastases diagnosis provides me with the spiritual challenge and gift —to live intimately with this love-theme every day. For by not treating the cancer as an invasion of my system by outside hostile forces, I choose to hold in within the sacred circle of Oneness. I thus explore it as a messenger of Spirit. And this messenger is clearly opening a portal into the deeper realms of my living, exposing unresolved griefs, all of which can frankly be viewed and explored through soulful inquiries into my fear-and-desire relationship with love.

So yes, the path for me here is to treat the Hitchhiker as an ally, an inevitably “terminal disease,” according to my oncologist. I am so grateful that I first encountered the idea of making an ally of Death, back in the mid-1970’s, through encountering the now controversial books of Carlos Castaneda. I took to the concept immediately, however, as a portal into increasing personal power and thus stepping out of the collective hypnosis of walking down an already clear path into mutual self-destruction.

I wanted out of the maddenss! I craved to claim authorship of an authentic and passionately lived life.

The beauty of this hunger is it leads me into an awareness that in consciously walking the spiral of Death, I am paradoxically also walking the the spiral of Life. For learning to come into Nature as teacher, healer and lover teaches me that the two are one: each springs from the womb of the other. These are the yin and yang aspects of life, akin to the two serpents image wherein each is eating the tail of the other. Both images reveal the embeddedness of any polarity already seeded within the other.

I will share as much of this intimate journey as possible with you dear ones, for I desire to integrate and compost and share in these love lessons that come to me as the veils between the world continue to thin. Know that I cannot begin to keep up with all the beautiful personal messages coming to me. I cherish each and all of them… and you, dear loved ones.

Stay tuned for the release of my book, Forbidden Fruit Revelations, (first draft is now with the editor) where I explore all this in detail and vulnerability, and with an old story told anew of what this being human is for me at this crucial time on the planet.

I am a man
blessed with many identities
my skin colors reflect rainbows
my textures gifts of Earth's landscapes

Eagle, Owl and Mouse
use these eyes as needed
and my ears are those of leaves
and deer while fish and birds

teach me to take notice
of the invisibles I swim and fly within
but for hiding I find rocks to be superb
and old tree snags too

So yes, that old fire scared tree stump
the one wearing a hat
yeah that's me too

Here's a link to the CaringBridge site if you'd like to stay more informed of the medical progress and details. Still trying to figure out the ole communications challenge! Be well and stay wild, dear ones, Mother Earth is!

The post Sharing from the spirals of my death walk appeared first on Wild Resiliency Awakening.

It is now just over eight weeks since the original cancer diagnosis; it is stage 4 lung with metastasis to the left hip and femur. These weeks have been filled with more labs and Dr. visits than I can count, and much has been learned. As of a week ago, we have settled on a treatment strategy of oral chemo targeted specifically toward the EGFR genetic expression of this cancer (found almost entirely in women), five radiation treatments, three weeks off from radiation before starting a potential twelve weeks IV Chemo regimen.

It has been impossible to keep friends and family abreast of developments, and so I appreciate the patience of those few who have waited to learn more. And now I choose to share more broadly 1) because we’ve finally learned what we’re dealing with and have a strategy; 2) and I swim in a sea of love from so many who touch my heart and I know would want to know; 3) and I wish to continue exploring together the Forbidden Fruits from the Tree of Life that inspire and transform my living.

However and whenever my death comes, I wish for it to serve life. I’m still figuring out how to navigate sharing these recent developments with folks, but figure to refresh my presence on the Blog with more specific and reflective updates. This, while I also move forward with editing the forthcoming book: Forbidden Fruit Revelations from a Son of Eve: An Eco-erotic and Mythopoetic Homecoming Tale of Two Trees, a Garden—and a Lost Boy.

Morning Delight!

I woke this morning.
Didn't have to be this way.

How easy to take such
and walk away without notice.

Like this breath.
And this one too.

Each a gift
     with the power to change
          this moment
               hour
                    day
                         life
                              the world

for one willing to be present
      look into the eyes of Wonder herself
           and swim in gratitude
                for the life offered in this inhalation
                     and the letting go that opens the way

The post Oh, Hello Death! appeared first on Wild Resiliency Awakening.

Trail Musings

I wonder if perhaps
the strength of love
flows from your heart

as blessings upon those
you pass in grocery store isles
and if the soil underfoot
is fertilized by your steps

or if those whose religion or politics
tempt your heart into blinding rage
are held with the respect due the divine

Most of all however I wonder
how deep and profound
is your love of self

I wonder if Nature’s wild eros for itself
is felt within as you gaze
into the mirror of your living

The post Poetic Trail Musings appeared first on Wild Resiliency Awakening.

Don’t let them	
win over your soul
convert you to victim-hood or domination
for then the abuse you suffer
at their hands
and from the hunger
of their wounded hearts
will live on in you as a parasite too
and ever forth propagate into others

Except you find and follow
the wild and spiraling trail of your heart's feral joys
this transformer of perception and identity
that composts, integrates, and heals
the infectious wound of separation
and so brings you home 
to the body and spirit of your birth

REFLECTIONS:
1) We can never heal what we deny the feeling experience of… so ultimately, healing is intimate with our learning to say, “Yes!”, to what is.
2) Evil is the withdrawal of honoring the innate sacred in ourselves or other, i.e. The Jehovah Wound.
3) Reacting to one evil with another…spreads the infection of separation… and so the wounds propagate.
4) The way through the veils, cast by the ‘Guardians at the Gate’, is the restoration (re-story) of our personal and collective innate belonging and worthiness, our kinship, with all of Life.
5. To follow your heart’s feral joys is to choose loyalty to an inner call of your soul… over and above our culture’s entrancement to conformity.

To say anything on the nature of our times, feels here, both somewhat arrogant and inherently naive or simplistic. So let me simply acknowledge that what I write and share here are the intimacies of my heart… speaking to itself. What is your heart saying today?

#NoMoreWar-World’sTooSmall

The post Beyond the Evil of Our Times appeared first on Wild Resiliency Awakening.

As old ways of thinking collapse
and a new birthing emerges
my heart travels with this wisdom

I am you and
you are me and
I love you and

I love me and 
I love we
for we are celebrations of diversity

REFLECTIONS:
On this day of Nov. 4th, in 1948 at 12:34AM, a boy child was born. At 9 years of age, he cursed God and parents and life and considered how to use a rope and ladder and hang himself. "That'll teach them," he thought. This was his idea of revenge for an involuntary birth into an evil and painful world. The suicidal tendencies haunted me for another two decades; the self-destructive propensities for more.

Today, as this boy-man turns 3/4 of a century old, I am blessed to live a life overflowing with love and blessings. The journey has been long, challenging, and from here, oh so rich and rewarding. 

And so it is that with this poem, I wish to celebrate our journey together... into remembering our innate belonging and wholeness, for we are indeed beings of inter-being. And it is with this poem also that I share this prayer for myself, that I may also indeed, become good compost for all that are yet unborn.

I love you, dear friends, family, kindred of bark and fur and feather and fin... Than you for this inter-breathing.

“Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Jesus, Matthew 25:40 KJV

The post On Emerging from Fundamentalism & Turning 75 appeared first on Wild Resiliency Awakening.

I go to the mountains to pray
from within the one rooted
oneness of the Aspen Body
and from the temple where singing waters emerge

Born gurgling out from under a granite bolder
protector of the Mother’s womb of darkness below
while nearby two creeks join as one
amplify the sacred medicine of this holy incarnation

Where the entire world can be touched
felt and held in the One Heart
that honors diversity and differentiation
yet knows no separation

Here I drink from the Waters of Life
lay offerings of gratitude
and beseech of Forest
Teach me

For I yearn to learn
to perceive the thread
of the One Root of Love
weaving the world into Wholeness

Upon uttering this prayer
a gentle breeze kisses my cheek and makes visible 
the play of sun and shadow upon dancing threads
of a spiders delicate web but feet in front of my face

My heart opens — awe and love converge and spill forth
as Spider comes forth to speak

Says
     Be Still
          Listen
               with the innate wholeness
	            of your original body
		
for your life and prayers depend
upon your willingness

to sing your self
and the World anew into being
rooted into the Tree of Life
as One

The post I go to the mountains to pray appeared first on Wild Resiliency Awakening.

The Nightmare

I had a big nightmare last night that seemed to go on and on and on…. I’m in a room with maybe a dozen folks… we expect to be attacked by someone wanting to kill us. We are essentially weaponless… the fear among us is palpable… and growing. I hide behind a curtain at one point, then try the bed sheets…. Say at one point to folks,

“Look, we have to be willing to look him in the eyes!”

I eventually wake… very disturbed…. still feeling the fear and intimately feel all the evil people do to each other in the name of God and good… I feel the political and religious forces converging in our country and around the world… for authoritarianism and fascism… DT even promises to use the presidency for revenge and ‘cleaning up….’

Recovery

Then I feel a wave of remembrance come through me: Oh, a spiritual awakening is our only way through… an evolutionary leap of collective human consciousness…. and I begin to repeat the mantras… I love myself… I love my life… I love the world… I am love… and my system begins to settle

Seeking to Understand Evil

I grew up in the world of Fundamentalist Christianity and so learned to become a student of Evil early in life. After the 9-11 terrorist attacks, I took a large dose of fungal medicine and did a shamanic journey, with this prayer for a mantra: ‘Show me the true face of Evil… help me understand its nature….’

I repeat this mantra for hours as I journey into the underworld… deep into my personal and our collective unconscious… down through the roots of Western Culture and human history. This story is larger than is suitable for this post but what I wish to leave you here with are three realizations.

First Realization

The first is that I came to experience the roots of Evil as the perceptual removal of the divine and sacred from one’s self or others, whether they wear human skin or that of plant or animal, rock or element. (I call this, the Jehovah Wound.) With this realization is the remembrance of Earth herself as alive, conscious and sacred… the cosmos itself as woven of love. It is this re-memberance that allows me to carry such intimate knowledge of Evil, to this day.)

Second Realization

Second, I experience the perpetuation of this Evil force occurring like a virus that runs through various worldviews as the stories of identity we tell ourselves, mostly unconsciously. We see Evil’s face mostly through the symptoms of spiritual trauma, such as our ‘not enough-ness,’ body and sexual shames, addictions to power and busyness and substances, the numbing of our feelings…. But it is our stories that prevent us from seeing the true face of Evil underlying these symptoms, for our nature is to see what we expect to see.

Hence a fascination I’ve developed for self-portraits taken of sunsets in the windows of my home. They remind me to look below the surface and deeper into the hidden natures of self and world. They remind me there is beauty and wholeness everywhere, if I but cultivate the Eyes of Spirit for seeing it.

Third Realization

These window reflections also remind me of a third vital realization: If I wish to reduce the evils of the world, I must first be willing to look inside. I must be willing to confront my own fears and hatreds and experiences of separation from others, my culturally implanted needs for superiority, and domination and specialness.

A New Earth

So it is, if we wish to turn the tides of authoritarianism and fascism that arise inevitably during this era of ‘the in-between story times,’ we must be willing to cultivate the spirits of self-love and self-compassion. In this healing we will find the enemy we wish to defeat… lives within, for they are us… and we are them.

The post Intimate Self-Portrait appeared first on Wild Resiliency Awakening.

Beyond story

there is
no part
of you
that can be
untangled
from me
 
This is reciprocal
So don’t worry
No need to run
 
Just ask
Wind or Tree
Mountain Singing Water, Soil, Air

Ask Moon or Sun
if you wish, or
any one of cosmic Stars galore

Ask Atoms or
subatomic Quarks or buddy particles
yet unnamed

if they are not
also
we
 
For in all
of this entanglement
heart knows
to follow
this belonging’s
wild joys home

I am deep into wrapping up a first draft book manuscript for sending to the editors, and so my social media presence, as my social life these days, is very limited. Today, however, I just need to reach out in someway to touch the world and the hearts of those who resonate. If you are such a one, I bow in love and gratitude for our shared transformative wild belonging. — J. Larry Glover

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