Illness, Responsibility and Re-Framing the Story

In my last post I tried to bring the meaning of 'psychosomatic' back to its original etymology, which would suggest that certain physical illnesses are a malaise of the soul, rather than 'all in the head'. I was saying further that in this sense, ALL illnesses are psychosomatic, in the sense that there is always a spirit component in everything.

I guess we have the image of the traditional healer coming along and extracting something, or putting something back, or righting something in the spirit that has gone wrong. And that is all well and good. But I am also interested in the ill person finding their own way in, and becoming central to the healing.

And one way I am interested is in through the ill person changing their story around their illness. And a starting point for this can be to say: "The medical establishment says this is purely a physical illness for which you are therefore not responsible. But Body and Spirit are one, so let's see if we can find a a new story that includes both. And it may be a long process." So the healer becomes someone who helps the other person find the bigger story; and also may have a sense of that bigger story already. And within that bigger story may be a wounding, and beneath that wounding, a gift that has always been there.

The issue of responsibility is a tricky one. It carries such judgement around it, and it gets topsy-turvy. The medical establishment can say we are responsible when we are not (the way 'psychosomatic' is used, as if we've made a choice to be ill and need to snap out of it); and they can say we are not responsible when are able to be, because the Spirit has its own influence.

And the word 'choice' is also loaded. Our illness may be asking us to make a choice about getting well again, but at a deep level, an existential level, and we may not be used to making that sort of choice. It may be a choice about really wanting to be here on this planet, of wanting to incarnate. And Spirit is pushing us to do this by making us ill. Or our illness is the natural result of being out of balance. So a healer may be able to help us identify choices to be made.

So we need to bring 'choice' in, and its close companion 'responsibility'. But on an existential level, which the ill person may not be used to. And to find a way of re-framing our experience.

When I was 34, I had just spent several years heading up a large Buddhist Centre in London, that had all sorts of problems. And we turned the thing round, and at the end of it I felt like the plug had been pulled on my life-force. I had been very wilful in my work, and did not believe in what we were trying to create. But I was desperate to 'achieve' something. I had been conflicted and driving myself, and found myself unable to do anything apart from keeping myself going. The doctor diagnosed me with 'post-viral fatigue'. But I hadn't had a virus. It was his way of acknowledging the symptoms as real, by giving them a physical cause. I knew his diagnosis wasn't real. But I knew my symptoms were real, and I found myself quite anxious about that, feeling I had to justify myself to others, and not knowing if I would ever recover - as one doctor warned me!

But what I began to notice was that when I paid attention to things that deeply engaged me - in my case, astrology and shamanism - my symptoms went away. And these things were calling to me from a new centre in myself, a new depth. It was a feeling place that I had been over-riding for years. So I had to learn to listen to myself in a new way, and it was like a tightrope at first, that I would easily fall off. And it took about 4 years before I was ready to do anything again, and even then it could be touch and go.

So my own experience has shown me just how low we can be brought when we're out of alignment - and I did feel like I was only just about here, and like I didn't want to carry on if it meant living like I had been. But it also showed me a wonderful way out, if I was prepared to listen. It was an initiation. That was over 20 years ago. I've had another bout of being brought low in the last few years. This time it wasn't physical, it wasn't necessary, because I was more prepared to listen. And it seems to be another level of whatever it was that called me 25 years ago, pulling me on to the next stage. 

So I think key to this re-framing of illness can be listening closely to ourselves, listening like we've never listened before. Because other people, in my experience, do not usually listen deeply to us, so it is not something we learn from others. It is a solitary journey, a quest even, into our own Spirit. We have been brought to the Wasteland, the Underworld, the Lowerworld, and we need to find our way back to the Middleworld, but with the riches to be found in that below-place.

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I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

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