What if we challenged and changed our viewpoint on disease?
Beginning with making apparent the difference between a symptom and an illness; understanding that a symptom such as a fever, cough, mucus, etc. is a cell-mediated response that IS the healing intelligence of the body. When we curb it, we may temporarily get rid off it through pharmaceuticals but we impede the natural healing abilities of the body, disconnect mind and soul from the physical intuition, and only make ourselves weaker and more susceptible to chronic illness in the long-term or possibly even fatal diseases.
I had to fall ill- and hear it is “chronic” and “without a cure”- for me to realize that disease is the parallel to health and often, a requirement to integral wellbeing. It is a call to address the unfelt and unseen; the transgenerational inheritances that go beyond our gene’s, the darker sides of human nature repressed in our shadows, and the emotional traumas and stories we carry and narrate in reaction to life experiences. The fact is no eating strategy, amount of nutrients, or exercise will trump confronting and dealing with how we feel about ourselves, our family, and life, and how we view, show up in, and contribute to Earth.
The disease is the medicine. It is the path and answer; a message calling our listening and tenderness. It’s a gift to surrender to and compassionately love yourself, and one another, through.
Many of us, like myself, not only survive but completely cure and thrive- no matter what we had been ‘diagnosed’ with and/or told. But many others returned to Source and our one eternal home.
We need to remember that disease also comes with a greater fate playing an important part in the evolution of humankind.
Diseases like Malaria and HIV/AIDS, as well as, zoonotic diseases we acquire from from animals such as Ebola, Zika, SARS, and possibly even COVID-19 that we’re enduring today are necessary to call our awareness and make us rethink how we co-exist with our fellow species and environment. Of course, a few of us are already long aware of that and live in alignment with Life but we are all One and pay the price equally. Disease does not discriminate.
Disease brings about changes in humanity, society, and the collective beginning with the shake and dismantling of the individual. It wakes us up to how we use our lands; if we balance the taking with giving, the effects of our demography, population growth, and ‘urbanization’, and the true state of our health- if it encompasses all levels of our intricate Being.
For most, their chance to awaken, adapt, and grow is through experiencing chaos and loss because it is through the disorder and grief does the veil of separation lift and the evidence of self-destruction reflect in each and every Spirit around us.
Image: Love in The Time of Corona © Elinor Carucci
