Credit: WebMD
The spiritual benefits of dis-ease (3)
Janneke Jussen
[Continued from part 2]
As mentioned in my previous article, one of the benefits of having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is that, because of a total lack of energy, you aren’t able to do anything, at least not without paying a high price.
Don’t get me wrong, it took me a couple of years to discover that trying to be productive, physically or mentally, actually set me back in my healing process, but after almost two years of getting worse instead of better, I caved and ordered myself to go on bedrest for the largest part of the day.
The bizarre thing though, was that no matter how exhausted I was, I would still find myself struggling to actually fall asleep. A very wise doctor once told me that a body needs energy, (or in her words “ATP”, which is the energy currency of the body) for every single process and that includes the process of falling asleep. So in essence, I didn’t have enough energy to fall asleep. How is that for a paradox!
The result of it all was that I spent most of the day in bed, being unable to sleep and at the same time being unable to do anything. So suddenly I had a lot of free time on my hands to think, contemplate and feel.
At first my mind was primarily occupied with wondering what had caused me to become this ill. Not in medical terms, I already knew by then that doctors weren’t able to determine the exact causes of CFS, let alone cure it, but I had and always have been convinced that any disease could ultimately be traced back to a negative state of mind, core issue, vasana or undigested emotion on the one hand, or an important life lesson on the other hand.
So I began to ask myself questions like “Why have I created this life situation?” “Why have I created this specific illness?“, “What is this illness trying to tell me?”. I was much like a spiritual detective, looking for clues in my mind, body and life as to why I had drained myself of every shred of energy, and boy, did that open up a can of worms!! I mean, I could write a book!
It took me over eight years of digging, observing, clearing, feeling, healing and loving myself and I’m still up to my eyeballs in vasana’s, core issues, negative beliefs and self-doubts. But I digress.
The positive aspect of it all was that, not only did I now have the time and space to deal with all of the issues mentioned above, but I considered it imperative to deal with them, because that was the only way I could ever see myself curing this illness.
Hallelujah! Thank you Life! Thank you CFS for leaving me no other alternative than to hold my horses and spend every waking minute on healing myself!!!!
Now returning to my can of worms….
After thoroughly and retroactively observing my thought processes the first thing that struck me was how often I said to myself: “Oh God, I’m so sick and tired of this.”
Whether I was watching the news, or dealing with office politics, or with the bullies at my stepchildren’s primary school, or with the egoic drama some of my family members were engaging in, it mattered not. My initial reacting was always the same: “(Deep sigh….. ) God, I’m so tired of it all….”
“Well”, the universe and my body cells in their infinite wisdom responded, “and so it is”. So I literally became sick and tired of being sick and tired of it all.
I took a long and hard (or even better; a long and soft) look at myself and realized that I had allowed myself to get dragged into the drama of the world. I knew if I had any chance of curing myself I had to find a way “to be in the world but not of it”. Now if that isn’t an valuable life lesson, I don’t know what is!!
Whoever sad that ‘Idle hands are the devil’s playground’ couldn’t have been further from the truth!
Idle hands are God’s playground, no doubt about it! And I suspect CFS is God’s playground too…….