Say What!?

[Brad]

Harry Potter's worst foe is the beast (sort of)!  Who Knew?

http://www.everydayhealth.com/headache-and-migraine/0207/harry-potters-pain-is-medical-not-magical.aspx?xid=tw_everydayhealth_20120207_harrypotter

[spiny]

So, having my head pounded in a previous life did this to me too?

Great. >

P.S. I did read and enjoy all those dang books! Course, I read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy too. 8-) 8-) 8-) 8-)

Restaurant at the End of the Universe, here I come!

[Stump BeefKnob]

I saw that article too, and then proceeded to not care.

[Brad]

It got me for a minute.  I thought they were taking about the actor, not the character.  My oldest daughter is a Huge fan.

[Brad]

It sure would be nice to know which celebrities actually have this debilitating condition.

[CHfather]

It sure would be nice to know which celebrities actually have this debilitating condition. 

The only two I know of are the woman on TV who is the "Millionaire Matchmaker," who has said she has CH, and the former NBA player Kendall Gill.  It's been discussed here that the well-known headache doctor, Dr. Kudrow, is the grandfather (father?) of actress Lisa Kudrow.

[Brad]

Restaurant at the End of the Universe, here I come! Wink

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Awesome movie!

Interesting info CHFather,  I'll have to google Dr. Kudrow later.

And yes spiney, I always wondered if I had pissed somebody off in another life, because why else would somebody all the way to the age of an eight years old do to deserve this torture!

[MoxieGirl]

And yes spiney, I always wondered if I had pissed somebody off in another life, because why else would somebody all the way to the age of an eight years old do to deserve this torture! 

I have a good friend who is very into reincarnation. I'm not 100% sure where I stand on the subject, but many things in my life encourage me to believe in it. Anyway, here's what he says on the subject.

When someone is young (spiritually) and new to this world, they pick easy lives to live - rich people, kings, queens, princesses, people in power, etc. But once you have been around for a few lives, or a few hundred, that gets boring. So you look for a more challenging life. You might choose to be born with a birth defect, or have heartache in your life, etc. Because of this approach, he values people who are living a hard life, because they must have an older, wiser spirit than rich people and the movie stars - who at least in popular eyes have it easy.

He thinks I have a fairly old spirit as I was born into the wrong body, which was very difficult, and now as a result of aligning my body with my gender, I have cluster headaches. There are other things in my life that point to hardship that I won't go into.

But, with this in mind, clusters in this life probably doesn't mean you were a bad person in your last life, but rather that you are mature enough to have chosen a challenging path to walk this time.

Sometimes, thinking about that helps me find a positive spin to it all, and reminds me that we aren't here for all that long to begin with. Next time around, I might try and be a bar maid on a quiet island in the Pacific. A life with no pain, no freaking snow, and no care in the world.

Renée

[les genser]

Isn't it nice to know that now that those nice neurologists have solved the problems of all the real people with terrible pain that they have time to figure out and actually publish (ta da!!) a fictional diagnosis for a fictional character. Its a good thing that Harry's headaches (which I personally diagnosed previously as PDES, or plot device expository syndrome) spontaneously remitted, or we might have been exposed to their fictional treatment protocol, which would of course have worked flawlessly since after all, this is fantasy.

Spare us all.

Hey Renee... your friend is on to something. One would think the opposite would be true, but I have a teacher who says categorically that as a soul (or person within one lifetime) evolves, life becomes more and more difficult as your perception and sensitivity increase. It is a doctrine I have come to unequivocally accept.

[alleyoop]

This thread is getting interesting. 

[spiny]

Renee,

Got space for another traveler?

I'm afraid that when I look back at what I learned and conquered in this life, I will have to take on something more stringent the next time around.

I believe it is all in how you handle adversity, the decisions you make when faced with it, that determines your spiritual growth.

[Purple]

When someone is young (spiritually) and new to this world, they pick easy lives to live - rich people, kings, queens, princesses, people in power, etc. But once you have been around for a few lives, or a few hundred, that gets boring. So you look for a more challenging life. You might choose to be born with a birth defect, or have heartache in your life, etc. Because of this approach, he values people who are living a hard life, because they must have an older, wiser spirit than rich people and the movie stars - who at least in popular eyes have it easy

This is very interesting, Renée.

After years of thinking on the subject myself, I have come to believe that there is a certain number of lessons to be learned on Earth.

Some lives give us one lesson, some two..., and once one approaches.... uhhhm wisdom (wathever the name... the final part of our soul's path), we need to fill in many little lessons missed along the way that wouldn't be enough to fill just one life; also when reaching that stage, one can "take more", so we chose lives that are packed with hardship, ordeal (not sure what the right word is for French "épreuves").

Discovering these past weeks that hypothalamus could be related to CH, and that hypothalamus could be involved (according to many mystic Web sites I seen) with communicating with beyond, hereafter (l'au-delà), mediums... (it's the third eye), well, discovering this, and realizing I could have cured myself easily when I was 18-25 with then very available LSD and shrooms but for some reason was kept away from that finding for 32 years...  finding much, much wisdom in this clusterheads community... psychedelics being associated for ages to “another” perception... and I discovered myself how CH can also do that (I posted a paragraph or two about this here somewhere)... everything seems to be linking  and connecting as one.

I don't know... it's very strange. I'll turn 50 in a few days. I'm living important events in my life too since a few days... Everything, all my life, seems to be heading in a rush into an information and wisdom flow main collector, feeling somewhat like the Beast rising and pounding slowly but surely up my neck... The seeds help controlling, but I feel the beast still there, pounding as I type. But I can ride it... It seems to lead to... I feel things connecting.

I don't know much about Harry Potter, but it seems to me Mrs Rowling had done the right researches: Severe headaches and magic are related.

Or am I too far gone? :-?

hehe, I'll add this just for fun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA0ygNuinG4&feature=related

[les genser]

The hypothalamus is located physically at virtually the exact junction of the 5th and 6th chakras; considered the bridge between the upper chakras (connection to higher self, bridge to divinity) and the lower chakras which express and reflect how we relate to the material world and our place in it. Its physical purposes reflect this duality as well; not only does it control purely physical processes (if any such thing exists) but is instrumental in emotional functioning as well which reflects the wisdom of the heart, truly our 'higher' cognitive center.

What does this mean?  I refuse to refer to cluster as a beast or a demon. We carry it within ourselves; it is not extrinsic to us; and this is nearly impossible to express in language but it cannot be overcome until it is accepted. Do you remember the old French folktale of the beauty and the beast?

I think this also means that cluster cannot be overcome by purely reductionist scientific means. It cannot be piecemealed; the entire global person must be considered...people are not machines.

And, I certainly understand and concur with Purple's intuition; I have felt this way for some time. It has purpose, although what that purpose may be is hidden and wil require a greater wisdom to explain.

[Brad]

I have mildly, studied Hinduism and have even taken yoga classes with my wife.  Amazing stuff!  Even the music group Muse states that nobody would be afraid to die if we  all learned how to open our third eye. I haven't reached any meditative chakra levels yet but fully intend to start studying up on it more, while practicing Tai Chi, as well.  I would like to incorporate them into some mind-body classes with my personal training programs.

[CHfather]

We have a friend who is a Vedic (Hindu) astrologer.  Asked him to do my daughter's chart.  He said, "Boy, her head sure is messed up.  Right side."  (Yep.)  He suggested that I arrange for an ashram to offer up mantras for her.  I called the ashram, and the woman said they'd want to do her chart first, to decide which mantra to do.  When she called me back, she said, "Poor dear, she must be in a lot of pain."  (These shouldn't be taken as two separate confirmations, I suppose, since they both were looking at the same data with the same basis for interpretation.) 

Another friend of ours can see people's auras quite clearly. (Scoff if you will; if you heard more, maybe you wouldn't.)  He told my daughter that she had the second most beautiful aura he'd seen, full of philosophical wisdom.  (He didn't say anything like that about me or any of the roughly twenty other people we know who have seen him.  That was before my daughter's CH got really bad.  I suspect that today he would see the pain, too.)

Just data.  Who knows?  But I don't discount the idea that some cosmic force makes arrangements for when we'll come into the world, what we'll deal with, and what resources we'll have to deal with it all.  This gives me no comfort at all in the face of my daughter's suffering, but maybe it could or should.  (Since this would apply to all of us, it would mean that we loved ones are where we are for a reason, too.) 

(And, yes, I think the ashram's prayers did help, but busting's a whole lot cheaper. Those monks don't come cheap.)

[MoxieGirl]

les genser - I appreciate what you are saying when you don't call it a demon or beast, and I know what you mean about having to accept it, and it is part of us. But even in your French story of Beauty and the Beast, the beast WAS A BEAST, until he learned to love and accept himself, and be loved by Beauty. Perhaps not all of us are far enough along to love and accept the beast, so we still see it as one.

I know clusters are a part of me. I know my brain makes them happen, whether that be a defect, or just the way I am. And for me, that makes me hate them more. If I had a broken leg, I could point to the bone sticking out of my flesh and say 'there, that is why I hurt'. What I hate about clusters is that I can't see it. Can't get a blood test for it. Can't point a finger at the cause OTHER than my own brain generating the pain for some unknown reason. And the way the pain is created, and the shadow that lurks behind the peaceful tree I planted in my mind, to me it is a demon.

CHFather - very interesting stuff. I'd love to have my aura read. I'm not sure where my spirituality lies, if I'm being honest. I was a Bible-bashing Christian once, but no longer have faith in religions or believe in a God. But there is also a lot I've seen and experienced I can't really explain. I do feel there is more. I suppose a part of me believes, and trusts a lot, in Karma.

I don't believe 'everything happens for a reason'. I believe things happen, life happens, and it is up to us to turn it into something good, to find reason in it, or not. But also, I go through times where things just fall into place for me, with little or no effort on my part. In fact, if during these times I try and direct my life down another path, it will be fiercely blocked.

All very interesting.

Renée

[alleyoop]

All very interesting.

Interesting indeed Rene!

Since there is so much talk about the Beast on this thread and I recently had this discussion with someone else, I guess I'll try to relay my thoughts on the subject.  Here's the short version:

You know how if someone wrongs you and you let it fester in your mind, you are hurting no one but yourself.  You are actually giving power to that person by dwelling on it.

I feel pretty much the same way about CH.  If I give it an identity like the beast, I am actually giving power to it.  I try, although it can be hard, to keep the mentality that it is not CH in control of me, but I am in control of CH.  And like you les, I refuse to think of CH as the beast.

Just my two centavos.

[Ricardo]

My take:

I and the beast are one.  I must control my beast, just as I must control myself.  It does not surprise me that I am part beast, it has always been part of my nature, the part that needs to be tamed.  You look at lion taming, there is two ways to it.  You can try and make the lion be good, mostly by force and violence--but that always leaves a beast that will ruin you as soon as you turn your back.  The other option is to acknowledge the lion, or beast, as a true form worth respect and awe, and to find out why the beast is such a beast.  Find out what it needs, and give it respect and love.  When I talk of my beast, I am in no way just talking clusters.  Maybe that's just me.

[Guest]

I think therefore I am.

the bb :-/

[Purple]

Isn't it nice to know that now that those nice neurologists have solved the problems of all the real people with terrible pain that they have time to figure out and actually publish (ta da!!) a fictional diagnosis for a fictional character.

I studied French literature and have learned there (UdeM) that everything is in literature... literature comprises everything. Not only one can read or write whatever imagination may seed, but fiction is often the best way to get onto any subject or problem.

I find it very significant that this philosophical/mystical and interesting thread started from fiction.

The recent Time article on psilocybin opens on a quote from Aldous Huxley who better than any scientific report and before them explained the action of the product on the brain.

...if we could get a blockbuster movie with a main character suffering CH... imagine the power of that :

if anyone hasn't yet read the article, it's very well written:

http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/24/magic-mushrooms-expand-the-mind-by-dampening-brain-activity/

[Purple]

Another friend of ours can see people's auras quite clearly. (Scoff if you will; if you heard more, maybe you wouldn't.)He told my daughter that she had the second most beautiful aura he'd seen, full of philosophical wisdom.

this is amazing CHfather. The few people claiming to be somewhat medium I met all said they have felt deep energy from me... I'm not sure what else they had said and it matters not, but I'm now linking your daughter's aura... hypothalamus... duality... hehe La Belle et la Bête (literature comes back up)...

As for the Beast, I've been thinking... And I think before landing on these boards, I didn't use the word beast, but rather ''monstre'', and monsters are not as mean as beasts, I find anyways. They're even funny at times

I always lived with my monster, it's part of me now, and think I found allies to ride its energy  8-)

you all

thank you

[MoxieGirl]

I will admit, this thread has given me pause to think about how I view and think about my clusters. There was a time when I very much hated them, and feared them. Which is unusual for me because I don't fear pain. But clusters terrified me.

Until shrooms came into my life, and I experienced a peace. A calming. I no longer fear and hate them as I once did. But, I think I still consider it a demon, if purely in how it hides and attacks and I see it as a shadow demon in my mind. My thought processes are very graphic, and I interpret most things as images. So giving my cluster a shape and personality is very natural for me.

In regards to writing and fiction, I'm getting ready to publish my novel this year. Www.katera-assassin.co.uk. And although none of the characters have CH, I did use my expereinces of them in a scene where and of the minor characters is being punished.

[spiny]

I have referred to it as 'The Dragon'. Mainly because it is mythical and no one has seen a dragon!

$hitstorm in my brain really is more realistic, but you get funny questioning looks from folks who really care about you. If you try to explain, they try to follow and offer to help. All of which leads me back to dragon: A firebreathing mythical creature that we have some tools to protect ourselves from, but not enough to keep it locked up safe and sound. I don't hate it, I accept that I must exercise personal power over it. Hardest, I must control my response to it. Without that, he says terrible things using my mouth. Controlling my outlook is my control. Maintaining that control is the hard part.

Recently, I let the head write down what was going on. No input from me, sort of stream of consciousness writing. Then, it was a jellyfish.

Spiritually, I don't feel that it gives it any power, just a name for others to recognize when I am in pain.

As a spiritual being, I feel that we are given a chance to view a past life, see how we dealt with it, and then decide whether we want to tackle that issue again or another.

Personally, I am sure that I will need a 'do over' on some things.

I fail to see how most of us can feel ready to say our soul is 'done' - has reached its highest potential. Just as I can say that this post does not include or touch on all the points properly. Many pieces are still drifting, not formed into coherent thought that can be shared.

[MoxieGirl]

I love your approach Spiny, and views.

I sometimes describe them as the tsunami of the headache world, being that a 'headache' is the ripple created when a 5 year old jumps in a puddle of water, and a migraine is a standard ocean wave, then a cluster would be a tsunami. They hit with no warning, and wipe out everything in their path.

[jimc5]

edgar allen poe might have had them.........makes ya think what he was dreaming ?