© El Collie 2000
Chapter 15
THE EXILE OF SICKNESS
... when we're reduced to that place of brokenness, that's where our vulnerability comes in. That's where the
breaking of the heart takes place. In the breaking, the heart opens and it allows in and allows out all the love
that's to be shared.
-- Gregg Cassin
The greater the light, the darker the shadow applies to the spiritual journey on every level. The more light moving
through us, the more shadow material is unearthed. The more we strive to lead a pure, sacred, authentic life,
the more we become aware of our myriad shortcomings. The more luminous our mystical experiences, the more dreary
the banality of the secular world will seem. But eventually we discover that the greatest light emanates from
the blackest emptiness. It turns out that light and darkness are not really adversaries; they are wedded yin/yang
lovers who support each other. The traditional symbol of healing, the caduceus (with two serpents intertwined around
a staff) is a symbol of the complimentary energies of dark and light, matter and spirit, and all opposing forces.
These polarities must be balanced for genuine health.
That said, I've come to regard just about any theory, philosophy or psychology on the nature of illness (or about anything else, for that matter) as a shot in the dark. Ideas on healing that seem plausible in the abstract can swiftly turn to vinegar in our wounds. When we're struggling through a long health crisis with the misery of physical symptoms, diabolical medical tests, ineffective treatments and the countless losses large and small that eat away at our resilience, every fibre of our being is consumed in simply trying to survive another day. Life is reduced to just this: endurance. Everything else is the privilege of the healthy.
No one who has been spared this travail has an inkling of the demands severe sickness makes or the heroics one must summon to accomplish the most elemental things: managing to get food, to sleep, to get to the bathroom... When bodily affliction strikes hard, we grow desperate for relief in any shape or form, but it pays to be careful. Hypocrates' oath is still the gold standard for healing: First, do no harm.
Mainstream medicine's approach to pain and illness reflects modern culture's impatience in the face of any obstacle, be it social, political, environmental or personal. The first recourse is to heavy weaponry. If we can't outright destroy the thing, we overpower and subdue it. We declare war on illness, killing microbes, beating cancer, wiping out cystic fibrosis, conquering heart disease. We take medication to control our blood pressure levels; we fight cholesterol. If our clinical tests come up negative, we are told there is nothing the matter with us, which is a way of psychologically killing a problem. (Invalidation is a form of murder; it denies something its very existence.) Even preventative medicine with its emphasis on risk factors and early detection has military overtones, regarding disease as a lurking enemy.
Holistic and alternative medicine present a less invasive and more nurturant attitude toward sickness, with emphasis on restoring harmony and supporting the body's innate healing mechanisms. Yet even here, the idea of warfare creeps in. We are advised to strengthen our immune systems so we can resist hostile takeovers by viruses, bacteria, or our own mutant cells turned traitors in the form of malignancies. Pain and serious illness are among the nastier facts of life, no question about it. What is debatable is our global strategy of reaching for our guns when confronted with anything that scares, hurts or simply annoys us. In our rush to shore up our defenses and man the battle lines, we overlook the chance of a truce. There is a possiblity that the enemy may be a potential ally.
The Buddhists speak of wrathful dieties -- divine entities which appear to be demonic but which more often prove to be guardians at the gate to spiritual treasure. Only those able to pass the tests of the wrathful ones are allowed passage.
Pain and illness may function as wrathful dieties. They test not only our courage and endurance, but also our
ability to see through the facade of our symptoms. They challenge our assumption that the body is "dumb"
and nothing but a chunk of organic machinery which periodically breaks down. They invite us to glimpse beneath
the surface to an underlying universe resplendent with purpose and intelligence.
The Wisdom of the Body
As Joan Borysenko has astutely observed, "A wound with meaning is much easier to heal than a wound that is
meaningless or that, worse, is interpreted as divine punishment or other evidence of personal unworthiness."
Finding meaning in our illnesses is more than a matter of consoling ourselves; it is a way of letting ourselves
be taught by life.
With my lifelong avid interest in healing, I have been drawn to learn all I can about the mind/body connection. One thing that became apparent from all this study was that physical illnesses, specific symptoms, and pain itself were messengers -- sharp or nagging, urgent or insistent voices from unknown parts of ourselves (or from other selves), demanding our attention. The messages are more than alarms that the body is in trouble; they are also an S.O.S. from the psyche, alterting us that something is amiss in our very way of being in the world.
With this awareness, I have tried to "listen" to my physical sensations and discomforts with a receptive and curious inner ear, trying to learn more about myself. Sometimes the message is absurdly obvious. Years ago, after my boyfriend Neil pulled some ugly stunts which I had decided to let slide, I woke up one morning with a raging bladder infection and urinated blood. I realized instantly that this was my body's way of declaring that I was "bloody pissed off." (The body doesn't beat around the bush; don't expect it to put things politely. It talks in poetry, puns and explicit metaphoric language that would make Miss Manners blush.) I am not saying that my anger caused my bladder infection, and that it was therefore my own fault that I was sick. I have seen people pass terrible judgements on themselves (and on others) when they take this punitive self-created-reality stance. I believe that the soul uses our symptoms and illnesses to try to communicate something of importance to us, and we are not to blame for, or wrongly causing or creating these conditions. In the case of my bladder infection, I had been minimizing how deeply Neil's actions were harming me until my body "spoke" and made me realize how unhealthy our relationship had become.
Many of the Kundalini symptoms, particularly the mudras and kriyas, speak to me as voices of the Spirit proclaiming "I am with you," or sometimes, "I'm still here working on you." I understand the cathartic digestive symptoms -- particularly frequent elimination -- as blunt pronouncements that I have taken too much "shit" in my life and now I'm throwing tons of it out. (Of course, simply throwing it out is not enough; I also need to learn to refuse to let anybody give it to me in the first place.) Other messages are frustratingly impossible to decipher, no matter how fervently I play mental charades. Remarking on this dilemma, Kate Duff said: "The sacred transmutations that occur in the nether regions of illness, in the mute matter of our bodies, are often too primordial and otherwordly to articulate, communicate, or even to remember, but they still hold effect."
Since our symptoms generally express something about us below the threshold of consciousness, it is often harder to interpret our own messages than someone else's. One of the most blatant mind/body correlations I've witnessed was in a man I met through a pen pal network. In his first letter to me, he explained that since he'd lost his hearing, letters were an especially valuable way for him to communicate with others. I sent him a warm reply, answering the questions he asked me about myself and commenting on some of the topics he'd brought up. When I next heard from him, he thanked me for writing, then asked me exactly the same questions as he'd done in his previous letter. Nothing he said was responsive to anything I had written to him. I realized this man's deafness went a lot further than physical disability. For whatever reason, he was incapable of hearing anyone but himself.
Another time, I was with a friend when he got a phone call informing him that someone he trusted and admired had done something underhanded against him. White-faced, he hung up the phone. He briefly told me what happened, then bolted across the room, ostensibly to get something to show me. I saw with an awful slow motion precision that he was going to collide into a cabinet, but before I could utter a yelp of warning, he smashed into it with such force, he dislocated his knee. For weeks afterward, he was on crutches.
When one receives bad news, there is an expression: My knees buckled. This story also serves to illustrate another point about body-symptom messages. They cannot be understood in a cookbook fashion, where a headache always means repressed anger, kidney problems express fear, etc. For years, I have been plagued with arthritis in my knees. I have learned that one of the messages from this is that it is damaging for me to kneel down to others -- to regard myself as inferior to anyone else. When my daughter was pressuring me to admit that Kundalini does not exist and that all the symptoms I've experienced are due to what she regards as my inability to cope with reality, huge bruises suddenly appeared as if I had fallen (or been slammed down) on my knees. It was as if someone was trying to force me to repent. Same injured body part, three different meanings. Understanding our bodily messages is not requistite for the healing of specific ailments. As the neuroscientist Candace Pert has remarked, "Sometimes transformations occur through the emotional catharsis common to the many bodymind therapies that focus on freeing up emotions that have gotten lodged in the psychosomatic network, but not always." She reminds us of the exceptions even in alternative medicine: "In fact, the unconscious mind of the body seems all-knowing and all-powerful and in some therapies can be harnessed for healing or change without the conscious mind ever figuring out what happened. Hypnosis, yogic breathing, and many of the manipulative and energy-based therapies (ranging from bioenergetics and other psychotherapies centered on body work to chiropractic, massage, and therapeutic touch) are all examples of techniques that can be used to effect change at a level beneath consciousness."
These changes may bring welcome relief of our suffering. Yet cures which do not address the underlying purpose of the illness are generally short-lived. The problem eventually returns, or else the body renews its protest through some new pain or disease. Our symptoms are far more than bio-mechanical failure. Decoding the messages of our illnesses may alleviate our suffering, and integrating what our symptoms are telling us may liberate our hearts and souls.
Unfortunately, those with a superficial grasp of human nature have misconstrued the idea that illness has an underlying purpose. The "secondary gain" theory thrown up by doctors and others who dabble in pop psychology is often nothing but a revamp of the old "malingerer" stigma, in which the patient purportedly produces psychosomatic symptoms as a means of receiving attention or as an excuse to renege on his responsibilities. The coldest implication is that this is done consciously and manipulatively by a patient faking illness.
Bernie Siegel, a physician bridging mainstream and New Age medicine, casts the secondary gain theory in a somewhat kinder perspective:
"[I ask people] 'Why do you need an illness? How are you benefitting from it?' For me it wasn't a guilt
issue or a reflection of what kind of person they are... If you get permission to quit a job you don't like, move,
take your tie off or get your spouse to stop abusing you, then it becomes a wake-up call and a blessing. It's
an enlightening thing."
While his is a more charitable approach, it's still a slap in the face to people whose illness has robbed them
of everything they have held dear. On the whole, the issues behind serious illness are more deep-seated and guileless
than generally imagined.
I grew up surrounded by illness. My brother was crippled by polio at the age of two, and I've had close friends
from childhood onwards who were disabled or sick. One of these was a playmate who died of heart disease when she
was twelve years old. Another was my five year old pal Joey, who lived next door. One day he asked me, "When
we grow up, will you marry me?" Not wanting to hurt his feelings, I said yes.
Head injuries from his father's vicious beatings changed Joey overnight from a bright little boy to a marginalized
offcast of society. He was left permanently mentally retarded. What kind of stone-hearted zombie would ask little
Joey why he "needed" his brain damaged? Some illnesses and injuries are as much -- or more -- a message
to the community than to the afflicted individual. They are the Spirit's way of telling the rest of us: "Wake
up! Life is short; don't let it slip away. Don't miss the beauty in anyone or anything; it will only pass this
way once."
Forced to Listen
Privation and suffering alone can open the mind of a man to all that is hidden to others.
-- Igjugarjuk Caribou Eskimo shaman
Before Kundalini started working me over in '91, I had enjoyed mostly good health. Since the rise of the shakti-serpent,
I've been through hell. Continuous sickness, pain and disability turned my life into rubble. I felt like I was
caught between worlds: I couldn't get well, and I couldn't die. Either would have been preferrable to where I
was. (Fortunately, most people don't get battered this badly by Kundalini. Some have mild physical problems;
the lucky ones have none. But most people undergo some episodes of pain or illness.)
When my spine was injured in what at the time seemed a minor mishap in '93, I was changed in an instant from an able-bodied, active, independent agent to a pain-wracked, housebound invalid. In the earliest days, the excruciating pain and the simple logistics of getting in and out of bed were my greatest concerns.
I was as immobilized as one can be short of outright paralysis. I couldn't sit or stand for more than a few minutes at a time. I couldn't bend over and for seven months I could only lay flat on my back. I couldn't lift anything heavier than a few ounces. Charles bought me a book on yoga for back pain; ironically, it was too heavy for me to hold, even while flat in bed. I couldn't bear any pressure around my waist, which is where my tortured L-1 vertebra burned like a white-hot poker. I was in such pain I barely slept or ate, and my weight plummeted again. As the weeks dragged into months and the months into years, my life as I had known it was demolished. My carpentry, art and sundry other projects all had to be abandoned. Our immaculate, well-organized household became a debacle of clutter and grime, which bothered me even more than having to forsake my creative ventures. While my interior decor has always been along the lines of Martha Stuart meets Fellini, even when I lived in the dregs of poverty, I knocked myself out to make our home a sanctum. Having my nest fouled made the degeneration of my body seem all the more oppressive. Inside and out, all was in ruins.
I related to the gypsies who, though their possessions were few in number, so treasured their belongings they polished every surface to a sheen and embellished everything they owned with ornately painted and embroidered art. Like monks in a zen monastary, to the gypsies, caretaking was a sacred art.
It was thus to me also. I suspect some of my neat-freak trait was psychological as well, not so much a lust for control as an overcompensation for poverty. My meticulousness combined with my artistic flair was so effective, people seeing my home did not know what they were looking at. Two critical individuals had made disparaging remarks about my taste in furnishings, not realizing I'd never been able to buy the things that appealed to my taste. For most of my life, I could not afford furnishings at all; everything I owned, from the beds to the tables to the curtains to the dinnerware, was salvaged from other people's castoffs or handmade from sticks, planks, rags and sale-priced paint. Keeping my things as nicely as I could in lieu of having truly nice things was a legacy of my grandmother, who was born into a family of servants and who spent most of her childhood as a maid to the wealthy. She married the chauffeur when she was sixteen and lived the remainder of what she felt to be a materially deprived existence with a fanatic dedication to housecleaning. Late into her seventies, she would not hear of the family hiring a housekeeper to help her because she knew no one else would be able to maintain the place to her standards. Writing this, I see that keeping our homes sparkling was for both of us a means of upholding our dignity in a world that heaps humiliation on the poor.
Now that dignity was lost. In body, mind and spirit, I was crushed. Until the day my back snapped, I had not appreciated how much work I did in the course of an ordinary day, or how many other lives depended upon me. The people who had been leaning on me complained the loudest, but the ones most severely impacted were Charles, our pets and my lavish oasis of plants. In the California Bay Area, our growing season is uncommonly long, and for years I had spent the better part of the day outdoors (often exceeding six hours daily for eight to nine months at a stretch), performing my green thumb magic. Front and back, our yard was a lush extravaganza of vegetables, fruit trees, and every imaginable hue and form of flowers.
Heaving, hauling, shoveling, howing, raking, shredding, pruning, mulching, composting, I had transformed a lot full of rampant weeds and rocky, viscous clay soil into thick, fertile loam from which grew a spectacular oasis. It was an ultra-high maintenance production -- blistering, sweat drenching, muscle wrenching, bone aching work. But I was healthy and hardy and a woman possessed of a vision of beauty, a love of nature, and a lifelong history of driving my body like a mule.
In every sphere of my life, I threw myself into whatever I did with a ruthless passion, working myself to exhaustion without regard for my physical limitations. Until my back broke, I'd been able to get away with it. A true to form Scorpio, I'd operated at an all-or-nothing intensity in whatever I'd set out to accomplish. With a flip of a switch, the option to go for "all" was rescinded, leaving me able to do nothing.
When my back went down, the garden went too. In the first year, we hired squads of professional gardeners we could scarcely afford. Not one of them had my tender touch; they damaged as many plants as they saved, and after the second year, only a smattering of the hardiest species survived. Not being able to do the gardening myself was bad enough; I sorely missed it. The slowly disappearing scenery was even worse. Only someone with an inordinant love for plant life could comprehend the grief I felt, helplessly watching from the windows while what had been a living symphony succumbed to legions of snails, weeds and general neglect.
Of all that pain and sickness stole from me, the worst loss was of beauty. Beauty! That was the real point of everything: the garden, the artwork, the fastidious housekeeping. I had spent my life in Sisyphean labor, coaxing every possible level of beauty from places of desolation. Now sickness and pain had struck like vandals, throwing sewage on the shrine, spray-painting obscenities on the cathedral walls, desecrating every hard-won foothold of outer beauty in my small corner of the world. I was disconsolate.
Something was happening that I did not yet understand. For awhile, Nature let me impose my sense of beauty and order upon Her, then She rebelled. Inside and out, She threw off the reins and went Her own raucous way. I fell to pieces and the house fell to pieces. The garden went to seed and I went to seed. It reverted to its primal disray of weeds and rock-hard soil. Sickness did the same to me; it turned me stiff and wild. Pain pulls us into our own wilderness, a place of shrieking birds and rumbling beasts. We sink into the ancient waters of sleep and delirium; we are sucked down, down below the surface of things. We learn to walk on the bottom of the ocean. When it goes on for months and years on end, we become half ghosts, half swamp-creatures, mythological beings that slide between worlds yet have no homes of our own. We are outcasts yet strangely free -- the manmade realm of bluster and boxes and frantic activity no longer lays claim to us. All this I had yet to comprehend. I only knew that my self-identity was crumbling. My existence no longer revolved around taking care of everyone and everything in sight. I went through a period of seriously questioning if my life had any value in my non-caretaking role. Buoyed by Charles' unwavering love, I discovered that it did. In retrospect, I realized that being knocked down and near-paralyzed would not have been enough to stop me from going right on with my caretaking -- if only by listening and talking to people about their problems. Only the added factor of excruciating pain was enough to make me give up any attempt to avail myself to others.
At first, Charles worried that the message of my "broken" back might have been that I had worked myself into the ground, but I knew that it was more than that. (It has turned out to be much, much more.) Any life threatening or severe illness or injury is generally a whole encyclopedia of messages to the self. The intensity and duration of any physical condition is usually in direct proportion to the importance and quantity of the messages involved.
My spine pain told me volumes about myself, about my life. But it took me quite awhile to understand, believe, assimilate, and act upon what I was being shown. For over a year, I was simply drowning in physical pain. Bodyworkers, chiropractors and doctors were not able to help me. I felt at times as if I were being senselessly punished. I prayed, pleaded, and at times, I gave angry ultimatums to the Universe, demanding healing. At precious intervals, I was given signs and dreams that fueled my faith that somehow, I was being given this ordeal for a purpose.
Of all the parts of the body, the back is a veritable metaphoric bonanza. Back pain is also one of the most commonly experienced Kundalini disturbances and the symbolic issues it raises confront many of us whose lives are being transformed.
To back out is to withdraw from something before completion, which was certainly a position my spine injury forced me into. All my plans and projects had to be shelved.
A backlog is a pile of unfinished work. (I much later realized that because my priorities were askew, the real backlog was my neglected needs.) If something is in back, it is behind the scenes or unconscious. Like background, it also alludes to something in the past.
Going back to something means returning to a former condition; going back over something means checking something out more carefully.
To backtrack is to reverse one's policy or position; it also refers to going back over the course by which one has come and thus, by analogy, relates to reviewing one's life. The Kundalini process compels us to find what we've left behind, to shed light on the unconscious and look into ourselves more deeply.
To go back on is to fail to keep a comittment or a promise; to betray. As I was to discover, the way I had been living my life had been a self-betrayal.
To back up has multiple meanings: to support, encourage, assist; to prove; to move backwards, retreat, reconsider; and to accumulate in a clogged state (the traffic was backed up). Each of these implications gradually took on significance as I discovered what my broken back was trying to tell me.
Having backbone signifies strength of character and determination, not being a pushover. (I had to learn not to let people take advantage of my generosity and kindness.) Becoming aware of our potential and recognizing the obstacles is not enough; we need the backbone to act on what we know.
To hold back is to be more reserved, restrained and less accomodating. To turn one's back on is to reject or abandon. These were tough ones for me. I hated turning my back on anyone, but I learned that sometimes it is necessary.
I try to see how an illness disrupts or changes my usual routines to understand what it wants from me. Clearly, when I was so pain-stricken I could not move or think straight, it was interrupting every pattern in my life and forcing me to let go of everything. As I slowly regained mobility, I found I could bend forward without much problem, but to this day I cannot arch my spine backwards without pain. I associate this with a strong message that I can no longer "bend over backwards" to be accommodating.
Taking something (spoken) back means to change one's mind, to reconsider. Re-evaluating one's basic premises and casting off outmoded beliefs and behavior patterns are quintessential to personal transformation. To back down is to withdraw from a position, opinion or commitment. There were many levels of backing down required of me as I gained deeper insight into the mistaken ideas and self-punishing stance that had led to the breakdown in my health.
Something is backbreaking when it demands great exertion or is too arduous. (As I've mentioned, before my spine injury, I'd been living my life at a backbreaking pace.) If something backfires, it produces an unexpected and unwanted effect. (As I was to eventually discover, a lot of my unchallenged assumptions were creating situations which inadvertantly backfired on me, leaving me disappointed and disillusioned.) Something backstage or backdoor is behind the scenes, secret, clandestine. Backtalk, according to my dictionary, is an insolent, impudent retort. I would add that what is backtalk to an authority figure (or to a dominant aspect of the psyche) is standing up for oneself from the underdog's point of view.
To have backing is to receive approval and endorsement, while backlash is a hostile, antagonistic reaction to something. I needed to give myself more of the former; my spine pain was supplying plenty of the latter. Early in my convalescence, I realized that some of the messages encoded in my "broken" back were that I needed backup from myself as well as support from others; and I needed to get people "off my back." I became aware that I had been both physically and psychologically carrying too much weight (not in terms of what I weigh -- I have always been fairly slender -- but in the literal sense of hauling heavy things around with my body, and in the emotional sense of taking on more than I could safely carry of other people's psychological demands on me).
Then there was the ogre on my back most of the time -- the inner critic that was always on my case for not doing things well enough or not being sufficient. It rode me relentlessly, always dissatisfied with me, always pushing me too hard and forcing me to live up to its specifications, no matter what the cost. I was a workaholic who expected perfection of myself in everything. My howling spine forced me to stop compounding the pain of living by asking too much of myself. I had spent my life