Celestial Roots

A person will be well when they are tired of being sick - Lao Tzu

The above quote from Lao Tzu will no doubt annoy many labouring under a long standing condition. “I do want to be well” they might say, “I am tired of being sick”, and this may be true as far as the mind is concerned. The mind, however, is but one of the fields in which we play - what of the somatic (bodily) realm, the emotional realm, or the psychological realm hidden in plain sight within mind?

A universal concept within traditional and natural healing modalities world wide is that illness or disease appears to us as a lesson to be learned. The body/mind is alerting us to something that needs our attention. We have something other than the illness to address, and if we fail to discern this, even if we heal our current complaint, another will just take its place. The reasons we allow illness to touch us may be divided into several categories:

Growth and learning: there is something we need to learn about ourselves, our place in the world, our relationships to others, even our relationship to metaphysical concepts. Often the type of illness, or the location of the illness is our first clue.

Karmic accounting: when we do ill, we know full well that we do ill. We may rationalise or dissemble all we like, but there is no hiding from the self. Best to right these wrongs before they make us sick.

Unfulfilled need: the need to be loved, to be seen, to be acknowledged is strong in us all, but often this need goes unmet. This may apply to the attentions of others, or equally to our own attention to self.

Psychological, emotional or existential trauma: traumatised aspects of self are often shut away inside, where energy accrues yet stagnates. This is a perfect storm for illness, and our actions and decisions are often coloured by our response to trauma in a way that likewise predisposes to illness.

Self-deception: the inability to face an unpleasant truth, either internally, or externally. A subset of this is a lack of self-determination, where one bows to pressures either internal or external that one knows to be wrong.

Inviting Death across the threshold: a form of passive suicide where the will to live is but the lowest of flames. This is most usually unconscious, but may be conscious.

Even when the cause of our illness is an external agent, we are the gatekeepers of our bodies, and of our personal realities. Our body has the ability to rise to any challenge, any assault, if we would but let it do what it wants to do. This means that our entire being needs to be on board - body, mind, spirit, emotion and psychology. There are some groundstate conditions we may want to facilitate to allow this to happen efficiently - a good diet: adequate hydration, neither too much, nor too little; exercise for the body; meditation or some other down time for the mind; healing of psychological and emotional wounds; and, self love.