Physician Healer

Issue 19 The Journey

The Journey

Every person’s journey is different from the other. Propelled by purpose and identity, the danger is that most of us don’t truly know who we really are, why we are here and what our true purpose of existence is. How does one go about to begin to define these entities? Most people are goal-oriented so at first glance, it seems like an easy task; but if goals are to be made only for the sake of determining direction of your life’s path, then they are to be released; but then, does our purpose disappear and our journey becomes a victim of chance?

Or, maybe life is a string of events based on chances. But we know there is no such thing as chance or luck or randomness. Everything happens by design. Some believe that the universe controls the design and that we navigate through that. They say that perhaps as many as 20 percent of the global population believe this premise of how life works while the rest of us are either unaware, non-believers, or both of such things.

There is no manual of life that we can refer to for guidance. Our journey involves an inner calling whether we know it or not. Mine is no different, but I wasn’t aware of this calling or an urgency that there is always something else out there to fulfill one’s soul. Many of us constantly search outside of ourselves for peace, for pleasure, or some other means of instant gratification only to incessantly ask,

“What’s next?”

when we have gotten what we wanted for the time-being and is no longer new and shiny.

I try to remember that goals are made to be broken. They establish the GPS to help us to know which direction to take the next step and then the experience takes over and you no longer control any part of your journey except to be grateful for anything and everything. As Srikumar Rao says,

”Life is not about the destination but rather about the journey itself.”

It’s about the process. When you look too far ahead, you may trip over what’s right in front of you. When I look around me I frequently find that many people get sucked into the boring, mundane, stress-filled life of routines, sameness, and stuck in the infamous comfort zone.

“Nothing good ever came out of the comfort zone.”

This famous quote is supported by every spiritual leader and personal growth master. Simply stated, a life that embraces routine devoid of any change or attempt at adding newness finds the spirit eroded and destroyed over time.

As for me, my journey has always consisted of an endless search for meaning. I’m constantly asking,

“Who am I? Why am I even here? What is this place? What is my purpose? What am I supposed to accomplish?”

I find it hard to believe that my life was meant to be that of a drone. So, you’re telling me that I am to believe that I am born to simply grow up, trust and take orders from family we didn’t choose, attend school that does not foster our creativity and imagination, only to end up in a cookie-cutter job, career or business that involves hating Monday’s, looking forward to Friday’s so that we have an excuse to get together with “friends” and drink ourselves to oblivion in order to numb our general dissatisfaction of how life turned out. And, then, we start over. No wonder many of us live with so much angst and fear and we don’t even realize that’s what we are doing and how deep we are in the hole.

Ever since I was old enough to realize there was more to my life than what meets the eye, I still found myself inadvertently trapped in the quagmire of ordinary-ness. I constantly struggled to come up for air as those fueled by their insignificant unimportant little self-created dramas kept trying to pull me down into their level of darkness.

”Thank God I believed in my guardian angels.”

And, I still do. Did I mention that when I was 5 years old, I saw what appeared to be 4 images resembling be kids with round heads, 2 arms and 2 legs, disappearing into the foot of my bed one night when I woke up in the wee hours of the night? The next morning I told Mom about my “sighting” and she promptly informed me,

”Those are your guardian angels. They played with you when you were somewhere out there, before you arrived here to be with us.”

Hearing her say that somehow comforted me. I felt I was always watched over, protected, guided, by something greater, even to this day.

Flash forward to my life when I moved to the California desert in 1999 straight out of residency from Philadelphia. I had applied for a position with Kaiser in Panorama City as at the time, that was the closest location to where my parents lived in Pasadena. But, a group in the Palm Springs area reached out instead and I accepted their offer.

About a year later, the group discussed bankruptcy and disbanded. My husband and I made the decision to stay on while my associate decided to leave the area and gave me her patients. We started and groomed our own private practice from scratch without any prior experience. One can say we just “winged it.”

Shortly after, we were able to build our new office from the ground up. Never in our wildest dreams did we believe that we would spend the next 20 some years in the same location. It was basically our second home as we spent so much time there. As the years passed, we continued to modify and cultivate a personalized practice to address individualized needs, to minimize wait time between patients and to allow ample opportunity to work-in emergency cases.

As time went on, it became apparent that most of the patients were not at the level of health they wanted to be and that the traditional medicine practice paradigm wasn’t producing the curative results that I had hoped for, so the search for innovative methods began. The wellness outcomes dramatically improved after I incorporated healing techniques and merged that with the standard medical education I received. At this point, when I realized I had access to an exceptional tool, I became excited to share this knowledge.

Interestingly enough as much as the number of patients I was able to significantly transform from being merely alive to thriving increased rapidly, wide-spread acceptance moved at a snail’s pace. I even alerted the local specialists practices, such as gastroenterologists, hematologist-oncologists, and neurologists who didn’t particularly enjoy working with the chronically symptomatic cases that were riddled with psychological overlay, such as irritable bowel, fatigue, neuropathy, insomnia, anxiety and depression (they kept farming these patients back to me).

The referrals were scarce despite the fact that we were really making a difference in the lives of so many patients who reported that they just felt dismissed by everyone. Then it occurred to me that what is not understood is not believed but most importantly feared. I’ve always harbored an open mind, eager to learn everything, the weirder the better. But, I guess that is still not the case with most people, even though we are entering the second half of 2021. Having an open mind is like being as flexible as a beautiful bloom sitting on top of a tall stem versus a stiff trunk of an unyielding tree which eventually breaks with the gust.

Being the resourceful and tenacious person that I am, I took a different direction to dispense the information I had as a way to serve as many people as possible. I followed through with Palm Springs Life, the Desert Health News, speaker programs with various residential communities, local fundraising organizations, schools, and local radio podcasts. Nothing.

Not long ago, someone brought to my attention an “interesting” question that was posed to her for lack of a better way to describe it. An individual asked if I was still a real doctor and still had knowledge of traditional medicine since I now also practiced meditation. This individual also believed that meditation was only for people who were stressed, anxious and depressed. Well, the last time I checked, my meditative practice cleared my mind so that I can be a better physician. And, incidentally, an individual who believes and worries that meditation induces amnesia from one’s medical education and training has stress, anxiety and likely depression in my book, just saying.

Then, of course, COVID hit and all hell broke loose. Despite the aggressive sanitation, continued mask-wearing and tremendous effort in making different options available to insure the patients were cared for —continued availability of in-office and Telemedicine visits, folks remained either too scared to step into the office or too upset to take advantage of the Telehealth opportunity to connect with me and the staff.

One night a few months ago, I decided to stop fighting. Release the frustration. I stepped back and asked myself if I had done everything within my power to serve my community the best that I could. A voice answered,

”Yes. You need to let go. What will come will come.”

I sat with myself in silence and stillness every night until it came to me that I had been going about this the wrong way. When things are just over-the-top difficult, it is a sign that this is not the way. When things are meant to happen, everything goes smoothly and falls into place—like magic.

And then, the random text came, out of nowhere, an agent asking me if I would be interested in a position with a group specializing in integrative internal medicine. They had a huge new-patient wait list and needed an additional physician. The only hitch was that it would not be near by. In fact, it would be on the Eastern seaboard. Seriously, what??

At this point, I decided to reflect upon this, give it some deep consideration. What did this all mean? I put together all the things I knew to be true. Our practice here has sustained significant loss especially during the past year of COVID. I feel that I’ve been struggling for some time with local acceptance of my new-found abilities. I opened my journal and as I was about to write, I saw my own list of goals.

”Live near the water. Be at a place where I can be of service to a lot of people who need my help and my skills. Continue to write and reach people. Learn something new everyday. Eat nutritious food. Exercise and stretch. Journal my gratitudes and wins. Remember my dreams. Continue to reflect. Continue to learn and grow. Find my purpose. Be authentic. Surrender to what-is. Open my heart space and receive abundance that is all around me. Release and let things flow. A life well- lived is a life of ease. Remember that the universe conspires to put me in the right path. When this is happening, it will feel magical.”

As I conclude this week’s newsletter, there is an inevitable bittersweet sadness I feel in leaving, but also glimmering hope and joy that are trying to emerge from my insides. This is what Kyle Cease refers to as “death to the ego and your old story” as something new is trying to emerge. He reminds us that as we embark on our new journey, there will be fear. It is fear of the unknown. We can see all that we will lose but not all that we will gain. The future never unfolds all at once. It does so ever so slowly, revealing each step at the right time. Trust in the process. Enjoy the journey, not the destination. It is always about the journey. Wherever we are at this moment is exactly where we need to be.

I am ready to continue my journey home.

Thank you for reading. Please share if you found this issue had meaning for you.

www.desertmeridian.com

With much love and gratitude,

Celeste Amaya, MD