Getting Sick

I mentioned in the last blog that I got sick. I got dengue fever. Also called bone-break fever.
Ha. What a joke. I spent twenty years traveling throughout Central and South America looking for spots that had dengue fever. I figured wherever there was dengue fever there was remoteness. I never expected it in Varanasi, India. How remote could a city of 7 million be?
Both were trips searching based. Both were highly successful in their own way.
During the 8 weeks preceding the dengue episode I meditated on my own death. And I mean sitting for four-six hours/day. Focused on death of the body, awareness of the moment of death, fear of death, awkwardness of detritus after death. I sweated bullets in the stifling heat of Assi Ghat. I was determined to personally confront this stuff. Then I almost died.
How providential that I had done all of the prep work.
The meditating for such extended times helped in more than emotional/psychological ways. I am a fat American woman of 50 years old. Sitting in the lotus position was excruciating (and for some reason I had to meditate "authentically" and twist my legs in a figure 8 on my lap with my spine as straight as a stack of coins). I had to deal with this pain on a daily basis. Dengue fever feels as though each bone in your body has been broken. Your finger bones, your collarbone, your toe bones, your leg bones, your face bones. Every bone broken. Your eyeballs hurt. And a wicked fever.
How providential that I had done all of the prep work.
As I lay in the bed, prepping for my death, I laughed about the 20 year hunt for dengue in the jungles of South America. I laughed at the prep work happening at the perfect time. I laughed because i was going to die aware.
There was blood coming out of my ear on day 4.
I got seriously focused at this point.
Then, after 7 days, the fever broke, and I was still alive.
I decided that I had attained holy. That feeling only lasted for two days.