Dear Rosie -

That was wonderful. Along those lines, may I suggest Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn? He's the guy who went back to school with a Ph.D. in Chem.E to get another one in Clinical Psychology, from which point he set up the Mindfulness Based Street Reduction Program in the late Seventies at the University of Massachusetts. Here's a link to the book an Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrop...e=UTF8&s=books

He's written a bunch of other things, but this is his most widely known work. The MBSR program has trained in excess of 6,000 teachers who are no scattered all over the world. It was in fact through the referral of a pain psychologist 5 years ago that I got to one, and have never looked backed. In the words of your friend, not to get all Buddhist on you . . . but, okay to get all Buddhist on you, I am reminded over the words of Ram Das, fka Richard Alpert, PhD., a one-time professor at Harvard and then on the run LSD figure with Timothy Leary, years later after a stroke at left him in a wheelchair, totally dependant on the care of others, he said that each arising is a new life, you aren't what you were then, but "you take the curriculum."

Also check out a little book and CD that my teacher, Shinzen Young, has got out there, entitled BREAK THROUGH PAIN: A Step-by-Step Mindfulness Meditation Program for Transforming Chronic and Acute Pain (2005). Here's a link to the book in the Sounds True catalogue: http://store.soundstrue.com/bk00849d.html I know that Shinzen actively believes that equanimity with chronic pain is on of the most direct paths to enlightenment going.

It's funny, I've been giving some thought to seeing if between here and the CP forum we might have enough of a critical mass for a chronic pain sangha (community). I would be curious as to your thoughts on the matter. (No rush.)

And oh, by the way, Happy Valentine's Day!

love,
Mike

p.s. Here's Shinzen's website, in case you're curious: http://shinzen.org/