Sunday, June 23, 2013

illness as symbolic invitation for bigger change

    "Every illness...is an onslaught upon the person as he or she is. Things have become so bad, and he or she is so alienated from the whole of life, that a very extreme invasion is necessary to break so loosened and liquified that, finally, the LIFE spirit can flow into him or her. To be sick is to be shut off, to be isolated. Every disease is like an invading force trying to destroy our rigid forms and make us whole. With every invading illness comes a symbolic content, and it is the task of the soul to expand itself so that is can encompass the invading images and symbols. This may be a struggle, though ultimately it is not a struggle but an expansive, releasing process as one grows beyond his or her former boundaries.
    The disease won't let us live the old ways. It actually comes to destroy the way we are. The blockages in your respiratory tract, the stiffness in your movements-these exist because of the way you have held yourself. They emerge from the guarded, fearful, cautious posture and a carefulness to control tears, and blushing, and anger and free spontaneous movements. The symptoms are the body crying out, telling you it has had enough. The symptoms will tear you apart at the very places where you have held too tightly.
    When you become ill, it is as if you have been chosen or elected, not as one to be limited and crippled, but as one to be healed. The disease always carries its own cure and also the cure for your whole personality."