Cougar Brenneman's Post

Being Congruent About My Multiple Sclerosis

Cougar Brenneman | 12.30.06 | 09:30 AM |

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I can’t really say that I feel blessed that I have multiple sclerosis. But even though I saw my mother quickly progress from diagnosis to wheelchair and eventually die from MS-related complications, my illness causes me far less anxiety than you might expect.

On occasion, I have been able to say to others—and mean it—that my illness has been a truly great teacher. I’ve never been able to stay in that grateful place for a very long time, but I have been there. When I’ve been there, I was close to praising the illness for its existence. I just wish that I could congruently stay in this grateful state for longer periods of time.

Will I ever be able to develop a congruent position in which I truly cherish my disease completely? Perhaps—if I can accomplish everything that I describe in this blog. Or perhaps I can truly cherish the path itself for what it is, no matter what I’m personally able to accomplish in my own heart.

We’ll see.

Background: My History with MS

My Terror

After my diagnosis, the demons from seeing my mother dwindle and die from MS were screaming at me—constantly screaming. My mother, Helen Good Brenneman, was one of the top Mennonite inspirational writers of the 1960s. Her book, Meditations for the New Mother, was translated into half a dozen languages and sold half a million copies, a best seller in the Mennonite market—so much so that it is still being reprinted today (as the two links above show). And I watched my mother go from being a prolific, empowered professional to a stunted, wounded, disempowered woman who couldn’t sell anecdotes to small magazines for a couple of bucks.

I have not yet fully grieved her, nor have I fully come to terms with my own guilt for my alienation from her. That growth is still part of my path.

When I was diagnosed with MS, I knew that I was nowhere near finished writing the Global Wisdom System Handbook. (See also my Professional Offerings page.) And I knew that I was even further away from developing the Global Wisdom System organization. So, when I was diagnosed with MS, I saw the entire value and meaning of my life potentially slip away.

Because, as far as I could tell, I was going to become like my mother—only for me, it was going to come way too soon, before I had any chance of finishing my life’s work in any way whatsoever. My mother at least had completed some major projects. Her light has brightened the way for millions of people, and it continues to do so. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have only helped a few people, so far.

It’s just that my vision is bigger than my current accomplishments. Furthermore, my project is almost impossibly huge—like writing an entire encyclopedia of wisdom training methods in my spare time. It is currently 1288 pages long in MS Word, and growing. I’m writing it during my lunch periods, and on mass transit going to and from work, and because of my wife Tana’s disabilities and my own health challenges, I have less time in the evenings and on weekends than most people would.

Soon after I was diagnosed, I could feel my body start to slip away from me, and I was terrified.

On one day, my vision would become worse than it had been the day before, and I’d remember my mother, and how she became legally blind.
On another day, I suddenly found myself experiencing more numbness than had ever bothered me before when going to sleep, and then, yes, yes, yes, I can remember my mother complaining about numbness interfering with her sleep.
I found I couldn’t keep awake in the afternoons at work, and my lack of concentration began to interfere to a degree with my job of being the Senior Technical Writer at Fujitsu Software (and later at Brodia Software). Then I remembered my mother’s noble and pitiful attempts to remain a writer while blind and incoherent in a nursing home.

The Beginning of Hope

Then, one day, my doctor, Daniel Pelletier, one of the top research neurologists in the field, told me, “Cougar, you’re going to lick this.”

For some unknown reason, I believed him. Before this tiny little bit of encouragement from Dr. Pelletier, I was like a deer in the headlights, immobilized by terror. But that one little statement of hope changed my way of thinking. Those six words were more powerful than any medicine that he has ever given me. (And they didn’t even need FDA approval.)

I began reading, and I found the Swank MS Diet. I followed it religiously. I scoured the Internet for help, and I bought books about nutrition and MS, and I began supplementing my diet.

Then, one day, I went out for lunch with Karen McCrystal, who was the head of marketing at Brodia, since we were both the heads of our departments and we needed to coordinate what we wrote about the product. I don’t know how it came up, but somehow, Karen disclosed to me that she was a medical intuitive. When I asked her for help with my MS, she checked with her guidance and said to me that yes, she could help me.

My Healing Begins

At the time, I also had an incidental medical problem—a cracked lip that I couldn’t fix with any creams that any pharmacy could recommend. Karen told me that the first thing I was to do for my multiple sclerosis was to drink a cup of tea made from the herb thyme every day to cleanse the lymphatic system. I was to do this for twenty-one days. Oh, and by the way, she said, doing so would both begin to help my MS and clear up the cracked lip problem at the same time.

I was skeptical about both claims. But on day 21, and not a minute sooner, my cracked lip cleared up. Suddenly, Karen had a whole lot of credibility with me. Thereafter, I did everything she told me to do, and took every nutritional supplement that her guidance required of me—even though I was uncomfortable with the words that she used in her channeling.

Eventually, Karen trained me to be my own intuitive doctor, and to monitor my own supplements by dowsing with a pendulum. She taught me a couple of meditations to make sure that my pendulum dowsing was accurate; then she told me I had graduated from her training. Then she went on her way, and I went on mine.

Today, seven years later, I’m still using my pendulum to decide what medicines to ask my doctor for, what nutritional and herbal supplements to use, and what my diet should be. I also use psychic breathing, energy healing methods, visualization methods, and chakra energizers, such as Sahaja Yoga.

Amazing Results

How’s it all working? Well, I walk a full hour three or four times per week with a 25 lb pack on my back—which would be quite an achievement for some of my more sedentary peers who are also 56-year-old men like me. Compared to 56-year-olds who are still jocks, my achievements are not particularly great, but for someone who has had MS for seven years, these accomplishments are nothing to sneeze at.

My symptoms are very stable—they have progressed very little since I worked with Karen. My bosses at my current job in the MS Research Center at UCSF are medical doctors who specialize in MS, and they keep forgetting that I’m sick. For them, I trigger cognitive dissonance. I’m not supposed to be able to be so stable by using herbs, vitamins, minerals, diet, visualization, and prana healing methods. My medical stability just doesn’t’ compute.

I have recently learned that the reason that the Swank diet seems to work might be because it eliminates a milk protein called butyrophilin (BTN) which mimics the protein in the brain that my immune system attacks. This is described in a scientific study in the Journal of Immunology, which was written by a team lead by a Chris Linington of Aberdeen University in the UK. Linington is one of the mavericks in the field of MS that think that nutrition and diet may be the key to curing the disease. (Click the link to read the research.)

I’m irritated and frustrated that I haven’t been able to mobilize my chi energy to repair the damage to my left eye and to the nerves to three of the fingers on my left hand. This expectation—that I would be able to repair the damage—may seem strange to you, but you see, I’m also an energy healer, and I also aspire to teach this skill to others. The things that I can’t do bother me because they challenge my sense of congruence.

Why I Question My Congruence

My High Standards

I was discussing my frustration about limitations in my level of noetic awareness with our friend Delta. (She was the cousin of the murdered activist who I described in "Eulogy for Brad Will. ") I turn to her for advice at times: She attended many of the Global Wisdom System classes I was teaching from 1998 through 2001, and for about six months, she and I were co-mentors as part of the process.

I was talking with her about how my standards for writing the Global Wisdom System seem to get higher and higher as I go. I said that for me to feel congruent about including an exercise or meditation in the system, I have to personally be able to use it effectively repeatedly in a variety of situations. It’s no longer good enough for me to learn a method somewhere, try it for a time or two, and then pass it along.

This is one reason why the task of completing the Global Wisdom System Handbook in my spare time is so daunting. It has over 300 methodologies in it, and I feel the need to be congruent about every single one of them. I’ve taken to measuring my progress using a somewhat artificial method. At the moment, I’m 68.2 percent finished, using this artificial measurement system, and I probably have five more years to do it, if I continue to be able to work with as much concentration during all of my lunch breaks and while on mass transit, as well as squeezing it in around the edges of my other responsibilities.

Because of these higher standards, I was questioning my congruence in offering my upcoming Internet Energy Healing Course, given the fact that I haven’t yet been able to repair the damage to my body using psychic means.

Delta's Responses

Delta’s response was that she considered my stability with the disease to be a miracle, because she didn’t know anyone else who had ever had the disease for seven years with as little to show for it as I had. And yet I cannot segment out which portion of my healing has come from allopathic medicine, which part comes from chi meditation, which part comes from visualization, which part comes from nutritional supplementation, which part comes from the Swank diet, and which part comes from eliminating all dairy (and all BTN) from my diet.

Delta recommended that I stop feeling inadequate because of what I haven’t achieved and start giving myself credit for what I have achieved. Well, yeah. I do know that. But my need for congruence is not about my need for personal acknowledgment for my level of skill in healing. My need for congruence is because of what I am creating.

If my own MS propels me into achieving the following goals, those achievements may become a congruent reason for cherishing my disease as the greatest gift that life has given me.

The Achievements that Would Make Cherishing My MS a Congruent Attitude

Giving Away the Global Wisdom System

As I have said in other blogs, my intention is to give away the Global Wisdom System as soon as I have an organizational container that can take it. Since the document isn’t done, I’ve decided to start giving it away in stages. The first step is to start presenting it. To keep myself intellectually honest, I’m doing this work entirely as a fund raiser for IONS.

I plan to continue offering the Healing Course over and over until I find two or more people who want to take it on. When I find them, I will give them the “Advanced Healing Course” which provides them with access to the rest of the healing methods in the Global Wisdom System. I will also begin to work with them to enroll IONS luminaries who are healers into the project.

Why I Must Create a Container

Somewhere along the line, I have to find a way to create an organizational container which will take over all ownership of the copyright for the training curriculum for healing with energy.

If I own the material, it cannot become a group project. However, when it is a group project, various luminaries in IONS can work with member users of the material to develop it into a more and more powerful set of tools.

And when the healing curriculum becomes a project of many, I can become a student. Maybe then, my body will be fully repaired. Or maybe not. It doesn’t matter, so long as the organization grows and flourishes.

The bottom line is: even though I have written this massive training curriculum, I have to give it away. Otherwise, it cannot grow independently of me. And that’s my life’s work. This is the part that I have to manage to complete before my disease strikes me down and turns me into my mother in the nursing home.

The Next Steps that I've Planned So Far

As soon as I am satisfied that the Energy Healing Training group is operating independently, I will go on to begin offering one of the other courses that are part of the Global Wisdom System to IONS members.

For instance, the next course might be Building Rapport—Including Telepathy. And I will teach this course over and over until an organizational container takes it from me. Other courses will be:

Noetic Time Management
Energizing Your Chakras and Using Them in Daily Life
Achieving Emotional Balance

These are only a few examples. There are literally dozens of courses that are already available as part of the curriculum of the Global Wisdom System. And I'm going to keep teaching them until I have a container to take them from me.

I just have to make the time to give them away, while I continue to write and test methods in my spare time.

The Necessary Attributes of the Organizational Container

The organizational container that I am building to contain all of these courses is the Global Wisdom System organization. My intention is:

That this organization hold the copyright for all of the courses.
That all of the different courses be linked.
That the volunteer teachers who take them over will assist me in enrolling IONS luminaries into helping them grow the curriculum.
That I have a role in the organization, but that the organization is chaortic, empowering to all members, nonhierarchical, and democratic.
That this linking organization be a truly ecumenical spiritual force for evolving the planet.
That this ecumenical force be capable of uniting wisdom teachers from every tradition.
That a certification program be developed so that people can make money with it.
That there be an easy volunteer-oriented entry process into this certification program.
That every technique and meditation offered by any member or luminary be tested and refined through scientific research.
That this training program be available around the world, through Internet small-group courses using Webcam technology, through local courses, through published documents, and through online automated Web training.

The description of my vision for the Global Wisdom System goes on and on and on. I could elaborate it for hours. The summary of this vision is illustrated in a little animated invocation that you can use as a one-minute meditation, any time you like, by visiting the Circles of Light Invocation Web page.

The Source of My Congruence

I’m taking concrete steps to build this future. I have specific plans in place and specific criteria for moving from one step to the next. I need help to make it work, because this vision cannot grow except as a group project. I’m personally doing my part, here and now, and I can be counted on to continue devoting my mind, body, heart, and spirit to launching it into its next phase.

If I can be part of birthing the Global Wisdom Society and the New Age of Wisdom, that will be a congruent reason for cherishing my multiple sclerosis and any irreparable damage to my body that it causes.

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