Spiritual illness

I have spent the last several days sick. Just a cold, but enough to throw perceptions of reality into whack.

In fact, during the past year and a half since my spiritual awakening, I have been sick much more than average. I have experienced a two-month flu bordering on pneumonia; sciatic nerve problems which caused immobility for 3 days and ongoing pain and discomfort for 3 months; an intense stomach flu, my first in many years; a week-long migrane; and at least a half-dozen "regular" colds and flus on top of that.

Now that my mind is more open, being ill feels very different from the way it used to. There is an anger energy that swirls through my body, and a disconnection from mind and perception. I have spent many hours meditating on the state of illness, sitting with pain and bringing attention fully into it, to taste and attempt to come to grips with it. By doing so, I have increased my tolerance for pain immesurably.

I have also discovered that pain and illness are more fluid than we usually think. By focusing into the discomfort, rather than running away from it, I have learned to dissipate and move it around the body. A headache can become a sore throat, and then an itch, and then an emotional sadness. I take this as further evidence that everything is just energy, manifesting and interacting with mind in different ways. To be on top of that energy! To understand its dance! That is the ultimate spiritual goal.

It is tempting to think of my illnesses of the last 18 months as a ritual of purification. As we gradually abandon ego and the neuroses of our past, layers of karma start peeling off, sometimes painfully so. It is like a large ship trying to quickly turn 180 degrees. No matter how clearly you can see the folly of your old course, it takes time to turn around. This creates a lot of drag and causes whiplash. Luckily, the path is about acceptance and openness - even of the whiplash that happens when you step on it.