Old Blue

An Excerpt from Working on Yourself Doesn’t Work
The Three Simple Ideas that will Instantaneously Transform Your Life
By Ariel & Shya Kane

In 1982, when the two of us were on our third date, there was a dramatic incident in which we had a firsthand experience that demonstrated the Principles of Instantaneous Transformation in action. The following story is told from Ariel’s point of view.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning in late August, and New York City seemed to be resting up for the week ahead. It was the kind of morning when you could see all the way up and down the avenues. What a glorious day for a ride to Jones Beach on the back of Shya’s blue motorcycle, a Yamaha 650 Special, “Old Blue.” We had bundled our towels and sunscreen behind the seat and, thus prepared, headed out of town.

It felt like flying. We both were dressed in shorts and T-shirts, our heads protected by helmets and visors, and the morning sun felt good on my skin. What an excellent day to be alive! Even the traffic lights seemed to be going our way.

Shortly after we breezed through the tunnel into Queens, we took an exit and made our way to an open gas station. Pulling up to the pump, Shya stood Old Blue on the kickstand and opened the tank to fill it up.

Deciding to stretch my legs, I began to step off the bike when I felt a sharp, searing pain. Jumping with a yelp, I looked down at my left calf. What I saw was a raw patch
with a piece of melted skin hanging off. Unwittingly, I had placed my leg squarely against the hot muffler. I was dumbfounded.

Staring at my injury, I slowly stated the obvious. “I guess I burned my leg.”

Just one glance told Shya the whole story and sent him into action.

“Ice!”

The station didn’t have any, so Shya sprinted off in an attempt to locate some. But there wasn’t even a corner store or local coffee shop open for business. Stuffing a five
into the attendant’s hand, we rushed to make our way to Jones Beach, which seemed the closest place to go for ice. The wind on the burn was wicked. The air, which had only moments before seemed to spell freedom, now brought fire with its touch. The shock of the initial injury having worn off, I was now crying freely as I held Shya tightly around the middle and we sped to the beach.

By the time we pulled into the parking lot, I was beside myself with pain. Shya pulled up to the curb, hopped off, and grabbed our things. He gave me a hand as I limped over to a nearby concession stand where surely they had ice and some cooling relief.

I stood shakily nearby, almost mute with pain, and Shya ran up to the nearest person behind the counter.

“Quick, I need some ice. My girlfriend has been badly burned!”

I turned to show her my leg, which by now looked white and red and raw, thoroughly seared, and nauseating to look at. Sometimes when I see a person with a particularly nasty looking abrasion, I get a sensation that shoots into my stomach or groin as I can imagine the pain. Had I been a casual observer, I am sure the sight of my leg would have brought a similar rush.

In one fluid movement the manager scooped a large cup of ice and said, “Sorry about your leg. Be sure to come back if you need more.”

Wrapping the cubes in a napkin, I hesitantly pressed the cold to my injury. The touch of the paper was agonizing, and I realized I was shaking. As the ice began to melt, dripping down my leg, I finally found some numbing relief.

Eventually, Shya and I shared a plate of greasy french fries and ketchup, and I realized that I wasn’t going to get to lie on my towel and sun myself that day. The idea of sand on my calf made me cringe. So we sat at the table, people watching and sipping a giant Coke and looking at the tantalizing ocean in the distance as we waited for the chill to take over and quiet the fiery spot on my left calf.

Finally, with the pain mostly under control, we decided to cut our losses and head for home. I refilled my napkin with bits of ice for the ride back to the city, and we began to make our way to the parking lot and our trusty steed, Old Blue, who was stoically awaiting our return.

There was only one problem with this plan. By the time we got to the bike, the pain in my leg had reflared tenfold. Each stride had become agonizing as the calf muscle flexed and bunched under the wound. It felt as if the skin was drying and cracking, and the throbbing that had mostly been held at bay by the icy compresses began to pound in earnest. I sat down on the curb by the bike, pressed the compress to my leg, laid my head on my knees, and began to cry. I could tell my shoulders were lurching up and down with my sobs, but I couldn’t control them any more than the meager bit of ice I had left in the napkin could control the intense throbbing. Just the idea of wind rushing across the open sore on the way home was enough to cause my sobs to deepen.

Shya sat beside me and took my free hand in his. Gently, his voice came in my ear, “Ariel, let’s look at the pain together.”

“NO! Don’t touch it!” I cried, hunching protectively over the leg.

“Ariel,” he continued quietly, “I don’t want to touch it.

Let’s just examine the pain. OK?”

Hesitantly, I raised my head. I looked into his intense hazel eyes and slowly nodded as the tears streamed down my face.

“Trust me,” he said.

As I gazed into his eyes, I had no doubt that I could trust this man. There was a calm in him—a steadiness that seemed to translate itself to me. It calmed some of the hysteria of my sobs into sniffles and hiccups. Still the tears silently slid down my cheeks because, while I wished I could crawl out of my skin and leave it behind, the pain in my leg was still real and agonizing and no amount of wishing it would be different seemed to change the situation.

“Ready?” he asked. I nodded, and so we began.

I didn’t know at the time that we were going to perform magic. All I knew was that we were going to look at the pain, whatever that meant.

“OK, Ariel. Close your eyes and look at the pain with your mind’s eye. If the pain in your calf had a color, what color would it be?”

That was easy. “Fiery red.”

“Fine. Now, if it could hold water, how much water would it hold?”

I pictured in a flash the swimming pool from my alma mater, Mt. Hood Community College, so I told Shya it would hold as much water as “an Olympic-sized swimming pool.”

“OK,” he said. “How about now? If it had a shape, what shape would it be?”

“Flat, kind of oval with rough and bumpy razor-sharp edges sticking out.”

“Good, Ariel. You are doing just fine. Take a look at the pain now and on a scale of ten, ten being excruciating and zero being no pain, what number does the pain in your leg
have now?”

“Twenty-three!”

I knew the number I gave him was off the scale, but I didn’t care. My leg hurt and it hurt darn bad.

“All right. And if it had a color right now, Ariel, what color would it be?”

As I looked the color had changed. It was now an orangey red with flaring spots of more intense color, so that is what I reported. As the process continued, Shya kept directing me to look at the shape and color and scale and volume of water the spot on my leg held now and now and now. Each moment became a separate jewel in time, not to be gotten away from or ignored—nor to be compared to the moment preceding it—they became individual facets to be investigated and described.

An amazing thing happened. The color changed through yellows to blues and greens, and finally turned white. The volume of water shrank, to a gallon, a quart, a cup, and eventually was to be measured only in teaspoons and then drops. Even as the shape shrank to be the size of the head of a pin, so did the numbers I assigned to the pain’s intensity recede to two and then one.

We had done it! We had looked the pain of the situation squarely in the eye, and it had disappeared, dissolved, transformed. I felt a profound sense of relief. And it wasn’t just a parlor trick either. Gingerly I got up and walked a bit. The pain had somehow been lifted even more than when it had been chilled by two giant soft drink cups’ worth of ice. And the sensation didn’t even flare up on the ride home, even with the wind wrapping itself around my leg.

Looking again at the Principles of Instantaneous Transformation, in this situation what we did was:

1. Not resist what was, i.e., the pain or the fact that Ariel had been burned. The concept most people hold about pain is that it is static and always the same. This is inaccurate.

2. We looked at the pain moment by moment to see the truth of it in each moment and recognized the pain could only be the way it was.

3. By actually letting the pain be the way it was, it completed itself and disappeared. It is important to note here that we did not look at the pain in order to get rid of it. Although
neither of us wished for Ariel to be in pain, if we had used this seeing the pain in her mind’s eye as a method to make it go away, this would have been the First Principle
all over again and what we were resisting would have persisted and grown stronger.

Working on Yourself Doesn’t Work, The 3 Simple Ideas That Will Instantaneously Transform Your Life is available on Amazon