Something not too related to my hearing: Assuming I am healthy (and I expect to be) Thanksgiving morning I intend to volunteer with Operation Turkey. If anyone would like to join me please feel free to ping me.

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The last two weeks since my last big update have been eventful.

Once in the evening the Monday the week before last I was yawning and heard a 'crackle' which I associate with equilizing.

It happened again Tue and Wed morning while swallowing for about 30m.

Thursday evening (a week ago) after a lymph massage it happened again and then I started noticing I could hear slightly better. This lasted for about two hours.

Last Friday was uneventful. And then we hit Saturday. Ah, blessed Saturday. Sometime a little after noon the etubes opened up and I think I could hear almost as well as before this set in for most of the day. I woke up Sunday hearing and it lasted until Sunday evening. I woke up fairly clear Monday, it returned after I showered [1] and then cleared again a couple of hours later. I've been mostly clear since then although I noticed a little more crackling on Wednesday.

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[1] My boss noted on Monday that a front carrying moisture moved in Sunday evening, since I've been flushing my sinii it's possible there's a 'does better in dry, does worse in damp' component (those familiar with homeopathy understand the reference).

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At this point I think that while I intuit something is still playing out (in a good way, I'll post it when it comes to pass) I think that the 'worst' of it is behind me.

While I will followup with the audiologist and ENT in a couple of weeks to objectively assess my state I think that I am experiencing the 'gentle' outcome which I chose to focus on my attention and not the 'harsh' outcome which I initially feared would occur.

Thank you to all of you who sent me support in whatever form (more on this below).

The rest of this is my inner navel gazing as it were - proceed at your own risk. :-)

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Some random things I noticed:

• I had to be extra careful in parking lots / garages.
• Soundtracks really do add to the experience of watching a movie.
• Chewing food is loud.
• I found driving to be a very mellow activity. Most road / engine sounds were diminished to a soft background noise. Oddly enough the sound of coolant circulating through my A/C system was very noticable. Go figure.

Since I assumed this was temporary I wanted to extract from it all of the 'gifts' that I could (so I wouldn't have to return to pickup the ones I missed, naturally :-) ).

• I demonstrated to myself that I have come a long way towards valuing myself.
• I felt the Love. Yes, that's right - all of you sending me e-mail, thoughts, prayers, light, good vibes - I got it and I am grateful to you. Go on and give yourself a big hug from me. Go on, yes, now. :-)
• While I have been consciously choosing for years to live in trust instead of fear this experience was qualitatively different to other high fear experiences I've had - once I identified the fear and took a step back and recentered myself the fear was gone. To me this was consistent with my intuition that one of the 'meanings' of this experience was a release of some very deep and old fear-based patterns.
• In a sense I found the experience to be liberating [2]. Sure the difficulty in communicating was a challenge and at the same time I suspect the experience was somewhat akin to a very selective sensory-deprivation experience (anyone know where I can do that in Austin? Please e-m me :-) ) At a minimum when faced with the challenges of being significanlty hearing-impaired I really learned to not sweat the small stuff...
• Since I wasn't sweating the small stuff I had more space to go inside and reconfigure my relationship with Big I. This was somewhat surprising to me. I'm still sorting it out so that's all I can say now.
• The onset of this coincided with my finishing The Biology of Belief [3] and that has prompted me to develop a new relationship toward my MindBody.

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[2] Random reader, "Brendan you've said that learning how to be at peace when your (at the time) toddler would meltdown in a public place was liberating so no offence dude, but, you're nuts." :-)

[3] (which BTW contains an Amazon review which I think succintly describes the main tension between those advocating research into and/or use of alternative therapies and those who resist and ridicule those who do (emphasis added):

"Dr. Lipton has clearly challenged what we thought we knew and opened Pandora's box. Scientists have long stated, "If you can't prove it, it doesn't exist." That means that we relegate our belief system to the quality of our measuring devices. Since we couldn't measure things at biological speeds until we got Pentium class computers, we haven't been able to measure biological electronic function for very many years. Lipton has helped refocus us away from the false belief that the body is Newtonian and reductionistic to the reality that the body works at the atomic level where Newton's laws fail and electromagnetic energy rules."

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As someone raised and living within a Western paradigm it is tempting to think about this experience in terms of "What 'was' 'it'?"

IMHO this is rather limiting :-) - as a zetetic I tend to see experiences using multiple paradigms. With that in mind I saw 'it' as:

• one of the strangest colds I've ever experienced. It started in the sinii, worked it's way into my chest and then into the ears.
• a healing crisis (I'd spent the previous months doing some intensive clearing).
• an opportunity for transformation, once I got past the fear, which itself was transformative. There's a lot of my inner experience of myself and relationship to others I haven't written about here (Random Reader #2, "Ya coulda fooled us.").

  Obviously I am pleased that I can hear more normally and it's easy to look back from this vantage point and be grateful for the experience - at the same time there were times during the three weeks, experiencing it as so real and seemingly permanent (since it was difficult to detect response to treatment) that it did feel a lot like when I experienced the hearing loss in the right ear thirteen years ago so I think I did a great job mining this lode for all it was worth.

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For those of you who enjoy re-wiring your brains [4] I do recommend in all seriousness trying this sometime, however rather than having your body do it for you I recommend getting some type of ear plugs or coverings (e.g. perhaps the ear protection devices used in shooting ranges).

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[4] or even those who don't - I think this experience would give pause to anyone who willingly subjects their hearing apparatus to stress whether in the pursuit of pleasure (e.g. bars, concerts) or sustenance (e.g. working around loud machinery w/o protection).

I challenge anyone to try being hearing-challenged for four hours (around people :-) ) - you will have your consciousness altered. And if you are aware you will think about all that is involved in hearing differently. You'll probably then make the logical jump to what is involved in seeing, smelling, tasting and simply being alive and perhaps will start to see your MindBody in a new light, as I did. A pretty darn good ROI IMHO...

Namaste.