California Here I Come
September 2024
Do You Know the Way to San Jose?
I know the way.
Drive along with me.
September found me in an airplane to San Jose and a rental car drive on Highway 17 through the Santa Cruz mountains to the coast. The airplane was kind to my ears – and definitely a much shorter means of travel than driving! At the end of my second treatment, minutes before getting into my rental car to return to the San Jose airport and catch my flight to Phoenix, an astounding event happened.
My world turned upside down and inside out.
September 15, 2024
I was lying on the treatment table as my orofacial osteopath had finished my second treatment – I thought.
Reaching onto her desk, she said “Wonder what would happen if you put this under that upper left canine tooth?
Open your mouth and bite.”
A piece of dental articulation paper was inserted into my mouth and I bit down.
Her hands were immediately palpating my head as I held this articulation paper between my teeth.
“Oh my goodness. Your entire head just opened up!” she exclaimed in shock.
“What a surprise! Do we need a dentist?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
In the world of the cranial osteopath, this palpatory perception
was not only an unexpected but also a welcome response
…to a thin piece of dental articulation tape?
During 1978, I quickly became a
“Basket Case” within my local dental community.
Craniofacial pain was triggered in a routine dental appointment:
my dentist ground my upper left
canine tooth (equilibration).
This procedure unintentionally and instantaneously precipitated a “lightning bolt’ of sharp pain flashing through my face.
Little did I know that this was the initiation of years of orofacial pain.
More wondering on the afternoon
of September 15, 2024.
My mind was spinning
backwards in time as I began
my journey to the airport
‘On the way to San Jose’
…..back to 1978 and 1996.
– two other dental ‘misadventures’
with this same ‘canine’ tooth that ended up in chain reactions with years of chaos and pain.
At 10:30 am on June 4, 1996, a California orthodontist opened the door into the Beyond of the Unknown.
Within 30 minutes of equilibrating (grinding) the very same upper
left canine tooth, bizarre
symptoms appeared.
More than twenty-five years
of puzzling symptoms……
complexity beyond the scope of specialization in dentistry, neurology, orthopedics and otolaryngology… were triggered that continue
into the present.
I left her office at 3:30 in Santa Cruz to drive to the San Jose airport en-route to Phoenix. She told me to keep this tape hanging from my mouth on the trip home. The icepick, splinter pain in my jaw/face dissipated as I drove to San Jose. At 4:04 on the outskirts of San Jose, my jaw and bite shifted and my teeth occluded on the right side.
With a piece of dark blue tape hanging out of my mouth, I returned a rental car, spent four hours in the San Jose airport, landed in Phoenix and found a taxi, arriving home at 10:30 pm. The ‘block’ lasted through the next day – far longer than the 30-minute anesthetic sphenopalatine ganglion block previously performed in my ENT’s office two weeks ago.
What just happened in my osteopath’s office?
Reverberations, Rebound, and Reactions
Listening and Hearing
AWARENESS
“Would she have done this had I told not my story of how and when the orofacial pain began
and was exacerbated by ‘dental canine insults?”
Her hearing continues to wrap me in a warm blanket of being heard.
Within 8 days of inserting dental articulation paper at this
‘canine’ location when the sharp sensation in the left side of my throat
and face overpowered me, an upper right molar (tooth #3) fractured.
“Was this ‘coincidence’?
Or, is my body screaming at all of us, showing us the way toward resolution?”
Unanswered questions. This ‘remedy’ works some of the time. The pain continues to assault me every other day.
My Phoenix osteopath has palpated this phenomenon that she experienced as well.
The both agree about the instability of my system that responds readily to treatment and refuses to ‘hold’,
manifesting constant change. There are no answers… yet.
Both are wondering and amazed at this latest discovery, along with me.
Thus, unannounced, my ‘door ajar’ was flung wide open by this unexpected response to a piece of dental articulation paper placed between two teeth…
the same two teeth that previous dental equilibration
in 1978 and 1996 had precipitated unfathomable repercussions and years of pain.
I was powerless as my door ajar swiftly transformed into a limitless, infinite boundless space, catapulting me
into simultaneous overwhelming sensations,
emotions and memories.
I was on the crest of a wave, travelling at the speed of light.
‘To let go is to lose your foothold temporarily.
Not to let go is to lose your foothold forever.
Soren Kierkegaard
I had an ongoing argument with the word ‘hope’ and invented other words to avoid the balancing act of hope with expectation. This potential ‘collision’ arose from on-going family estrangement experiences.
Emily Dickinson, however, helped me ‘see’ differently with her images of ‘a door ajar’ and ‘the little thing with feathers.’
My door ajar replaced hope and I was able to witness the little thing with feathers flying in at most unexpected times, bringing gratitude that would cover me and seep within. My door ajar enabled me to Trust. For me, Cynthia Bourgeault’s reframing of hope as ‘mystical hope’ was simply another word for Trust.
And, I always had trouble with the word surrender. A vivid childhood image of the cowboy on a horse pointing a gun at someone and saying, “Surrender” was an immediate reflexive reaction to the word. I had to create many different words to circumvent this image and finally settled on “Let it Be” – which was always accompanied by the melody of the infamous Beatles song drifting in and out of my inner hearing!
Spiritual Awakening
Michele McLaughlin
By combining the words of hope and fear, Pema Chodron transports me to an expanded
realm of understanding which gives birth to COURAGE.
“REDOK: A feeling with two sides…as long as there’s one there’s the other.”
(When Things Fall Apart, p. 39)
If hope and fear are two sides of one coin, so are Hopelessness and Confidence.
If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated,
then we can have the Courage to relax with the Groundlessness of our situation.
Hopelessness is the basic ground.’”
(When Things Fall Apart, p. 41)
I juggle her words, preferring the word Groundlessness to Hopelessness (the basic ground).
Is Groundlessness, therefore, the same as Surrender…
Where both Trust and Confidence are born and can reside in the Ground of Being with the Boundless Presence….
Where the vital force, the energy of life vibrates, expanding and contracting as does our Breath?
And how can we touch this ‘vital force’?
I momentarily traveled into the Beyond where I was embraced and engulfed by Groundlessness
….On The Way to San Jose.
It was only later that awareness creeped through my wide-open ‘door ajar’.
Insight arose from deep within. I could see Groundlessness as a doorway into the Ground of Being
with the Boundless Presence embracing ‘Thy will be done’ and Surrender.
This happening, over which there was no control, enfolded me On The Way to San Jose.
….a very special condition of psycho-spiritual transformation.
Transformational language arises from our need to express that which is Beyond Words.
Impermanence is foremost in my spirit as I venture forward
on a return trip to Santa Cruz in October.
