Writer’s Corner
The spiritual benefits of dis-ease (2)
Janneke Jussen
[Continued from part 1]
First I would like to explain the main characteristics of CFS, just to set the scene so to speak. Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with a long and depressing list of signs and symptoms. It is important however, to understand what kind of effects CFS has in someone’s life, to better understand what can be gained from it.
If you would like to not only know, but actually experience for yourselves what it’s like to live with CFS, I suggest you do the following:
Drink enough alcohol to make sure you have a really nasty hangover; headache, nausea, dizziness, your body aching all over, the works!
Then stay awake for two consecutive nights.
Put on a suit made out of lead.
Now try running a marathon uphill.
Of course I wouldn’t really recommend doing this, but I’m sure you catch my drift……
Having reached step 4, surely you can imagine that the only thing you would want to do in that state is lay in your bed, lights out, total silence, unbothered by anyone and sleep until you feel like an actual human being again, rather than something that the cat dragged in. Except, with CFS ,especially in the first stages, you wake up in exactly the same lousy state you were in when you went to bed the night before. That’s how it’s been for me anyway.
As a consequence, there really isn’t a lot you can (or would want to) do on a daily basis. You need every shred of energy for repair and healing in your body, so you don’t want to spend it on something else. Even if you do, you will quickly notice that trying to be productive actually sets you back in your healing process.
So CFS keeps you on bedrest for most of the day, and stops you from participating in life in any way shape or form. Basically, all your distractions are taken away and you’re lovingly forced to go within. That’s pretty much the only thing I did for the first couple of years: go within.
Contemplate, feel, clear, meditate, eat, sleep, repeat.
And even though I didn’t recognize it as such at first, that turned out to be a major blessing in disguise. Well, more on that in my next article……