Eat. Drink. Sleep. Pee.

For the past few days I have been sick. Well, maybe a little longer than that, but not until Friday did I feel the need to spend the day in bed. Then Saturday. Then Sunday, today. Albeit I'm starting to feel better now, but just in fits and starts. Enough to run to the grocery store for juice and soup before feeling run down and needing a nap again.

Anyway, this comes directly on the heels of a conscious decision I made to again "return to the cave." To pull into myself a bit, retreat from the world, to nurture and nourish myself. And apparently, from what I heard about the recent New Moon in Cancer, this is perfect timing, for that's exactly what that moon signifies.

The past months have found me becoming highly distracted and mesmerized by the dramas of the world and the dramas of others, and without belittling or judging what anyone else is going through, my personal boundaries and goals were beginning to blur. I realized I had lost sight of my personal north star as well as my inner compass, and so was just sailing in circles at the mercy of wind and wave, my senses lulled to sleep by the siren's song of the world.

But then there came a couple of instances where, though totally emotional, I literally felt as though I'd been kicked in the gut by a couple people. And though it took me a bit of time to recover from those instances, I am so grateful for them because they were the wake up call I needed to rouse my dazed senses and to reset my bearings.

It seems to be at the point where I was resetting that I began to get sick, starting in my throat, the 5th chakra, which is about expressing oneself. Coincidence? I think not. And as I continue to find my way, and set my course of true expression, I am releasing the foreign matters that I had taken aboard and mistakenly identified as my own -- Clearing myself of excess weight and baggage that I may become airborne and set my sights on the second star to the right.

Does that make the sickness any easier? I don't know about easier. I still feel like crap. But it does place it all in a different context, giving it a purpose and a pearl of wisdom which, by itself may not add up to much, but when placed with the treasure trove of other such pearls of experience I have gained, it becomes harder to deny a higher purpose in all of this.

But that's not actually what I had intended to write about in this entry. It has been a long time, since childhood possibly, that I have been this sick for this long. Especially anymore, I may require a day of sleep to feel good enough to re-emerge into the world, but three? So this time has thrown me for a bit of a loop, and made me wonder if I'm taking care of myself enough to heal. I mean, it is 4:30 in the afternoon and I have yet to eat anything. I haven't been drinking a lot of liquids either, except on my occasional trips to the bathroom. That's not, according to the way I was raised, how one gets well.

So this afternoon, those doubts swirling in my head, along with a general cultural guilt for laying in bed for so long, I checked in with my Upperworld Guide, Fred, to ask if I was alright or if I should be doing more to take care of myself through this.

"Are you thirsty?" he asked. "No." "Then don't worry about drinking. Are you hungry?" "No." "Then don't worry about eating. Are you tired?" "Yes." "Then sleep."

That was so simple, so Taoist. Like another Taoist saying I remember hearing: "When hungry, eat. When thirsty, drink. When tired, sleep. When Nature calls, answer."

Thank you Fred. See you after my nap... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz...