Hear the Ringing and What the Inner Voice is Trying to Say

I went to the Museum of Modern Art yesterday in NYC and saw this stunning Diego Rivera painting and it spoke so loudly to me that I photographed it on my cell phone and emailed it to my sister Holly and she wrote back and said

"To me, it looks like a nun, praying."

And so, maybe that is why it spoke to me. So loudly.

Lately my left ear has been ringing. Some days it's been hissing. Not every day. But it's annoying. Some days it's really annoying. And scary.

I have seen the ear doctor. My hearing in both ears is "aging," he explained, and that may be the reason. "But it's just on the left side that I hear the ringing," I said. And he replied, "oh, well, you'll probably hear it in the right ear eventually too."

Oh thank you doctor. That's really encouraging news.

This is what I hate about doctors. They are so locked into physical decay. They really don't think in terms of health. They think in terms of disease. It's the way they are trained to think.

He had not the least interest in how I might possibly improve the left ear. His only thought was that the left ear was a loss and the right ear was probably going to follow and get worse too.

I've had way way too much of this kind of doctoring in my life. Certainly when I was sick with the cancer in 2002 and 2003. But also, with my mom's illness growing up. Maybe that's why this ear ringing thing has me in such a tinnitus tizzy.

I sat beside my mother's bed as a small child feeling entirely frightened and helpless. Watching her struggle to breathe and not knowing what to do was a hellish emotional burden for a four-year old child. I heard the thin whistling of her labored breathing and memorized it deep in my consciousness. To this day, when I hear someone who breathes like, I say, "do you have asthma?" Inevitably they do.

I grew up with doctors saying that my mother was locked into her asthma, and my mother believing it completely. She was a victim of this debilitating illness all her life. She never had a moment when she thought, "I wonder if there is something I can do, something in my life I can change, something I can fix, some food, some exercise, some positive change in attitude" that might possibly help reduce or eliminate the asthma.

She never dealt with her anxiety or depression either, and they were factors in her illness.

I don't blame my mom. Not completely. But then sometimes I do blame her and I'm trying to change that. That's what the medical intuitive, in an amazing reading after my illness, told me to do in 2003 (the intuitive was in Vermont, I was in California, we had never met, she knew nothing about me, we spoke by phone and she only knew my first name!) Anyway, she told me that I had to lose the resentment I had toward my mother and her lung illness. I had to forgive my mother for living the fearful way she did with her disease, always living as a victim.

Last month this whole victim/illness scenario reared its terrifying head once again when my mom fell and broke her arm and it swelled up like an elephant's trunk. Her arm and all her sausage-like fingers turned a terrifying blue and her mood turned an even scarier blue. Christmas Day mom was in an awful funk and it was really really hard. And scary. I was immersed once again in all those fears I have about physical illness: fears of the illness and debilitation, fear of the depression, fear of being imprisoned by that same scenario that trapped me growing up.

While I can't be sure, it feels like my ear really started ringing just about the time my mother fell and broke her arm.

Is that a coincidence? Perhaps.

Louise Hay in her book, You Can Heal Your Life, says that ear ringing is associated with not listening to an inner voice.

OK, so maybe this is the inner voice speaking now: THE VOICE IS SAYING THIS: YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE MISERABLE LIKE YOUR MOTHER. YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE DEPRESSED BY PHYSICAL DISABILITY. YOU WANT TO FIND A NEW WAY OF BEING. YOU WANT TO LET GO OF THE STORY YOU HEARD AS A CHILD.

This morning I went to see my physical therapist Cindy who practices energy medicine.

She is fabulous. Her hands are magic. She told me that my ear ringing and my eye twitching and my tooth pain (other symptoms I've had) are part of the blocked energy in my sixth chakra. There are memories and fears and anger and resentment and stories locked up there in the tissues and teeth.

Cindy reminded me that I don't have to see life the way my mother does. I know that logically and rationally but it scares me too because on some level I am terrified, in the same way my poor mother was probably terrified when she was gasping for breath.

When I think about the situation this way, I feel deep compassion for my mom. I can feel the fear she must have felt. She had a serious lung ailment and small children to care for. She was overwhelmed and she couldn't breathe and she panicked. She did what anyone would do: go to the doctor and try to get medicine to fix it. The medicines for asthma weren't great in those days. And there certainly wasn't much consciousness about self-healing.

Writing this makes me feel better. It makes me feel like I am trying to do what the intuitive told me to do: forgive my mother her way of being. Forgive her everything that happened, and just try to BE DIFFERENT. Is this what the inner voice is trying to say through the ringing?

And so now, I am the nun praying to the divine feminine. In this case, Mary.

Please Mary may I be free of the ringing. Please Mary may I find peace. Please Mary may my mother and all my loved ones find peace.

One more thing: Louise Hay also says ear infections have to do with children not wanting to hear parents arguing.

I am told that I had my first ear infection, one that was quite serious, when I was only five months old. Is it crazy to think that I had an ear infection when I was five months old because my parents were arguing?

That's really a bizarre idea -- that somehow the turmoil in the household caused me to develop an ear infection. What the heck?

At this point, the only question that really matters is how to heal. How can I turn the ear ringing down down down down to a slight whisper? How can I

write

hear

NEW WORDS

HEAR

to replace fear

with power?

I am ready for more instruction. I am ready and willing to hear what the inner voice has to say.