I was recently initiated into that exclusive club: “By Far The Worst Pain I’ve Ever Experienced Or Ever Hope To.”  A few kidney stones had decided it was time leave the mother ship.  I’m told some women say it’s the equivalent of childbirth.  Perhaps the biggest gift of this assault (after the sweet kiss of lightning drugs) is its impact on my struggle with violence.  Awakened is a new depth of reality: I would never want to inflict on another the pain of my recent trips to the ER.  And that’s not always been the case.

I’m not a murderer in this life, nor is physical force my default tool for navigating the world, but its propensity, its vibration, is an intimate, familiar presence in my being from incarnations past.  Going by my father and his father, as well as my mother, I chose in this life a genetic lineage that included its fair share of rigidity, rage, control, and unpredictable violence.  That imprint is one of my sacred teachers, something I’ve needed to embrace and free.  My wife, my dearest friend for more than 40 years, who has never come close to threatening me physically, and who regularly touches me lovingly––even she finds there are still occasions when, reaching her hand to my cheek, I flinch.

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