The
other day I was watching a television program with my wife. The program
was about disease and the part we can play in it. At one point, the
presenter stated how several people had received wonderful benefits
from being sick and that they did not experience the disease itself as
a negative which needed to be eliminated. He further stated that the
healing people seek may not necessarily include the complete healing of
their body.
After the program I turned
to her and said, “Yes, I agree that disease can be a teacher, but if
one does not know that they can eliminate their disease then it’s just
another box. A glorious box, perhaps, with great lessons and insights
to be gained. But, it is still a box and something that we 'can’t
change'. And in that box there is no freedom in choice, only degrees of
helplessness.”
When I was sick with what my
doctors said was an incurable infection in my spine, I was sent to a
psychiatrist who wanted me to work with him so that I could learn to
live within what he called “my human limitations.” He said that there
was a good chance I would spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair and
he could help me face that reality with dignity. I told him that I
didn’t want to learn how to live in a wheelchair with dignity, but that
I wanted instead to learn how to get well. He said that I was living in
a dream world.
We argued for almost an hour.
He read from my medical records and I quoted from scripture and
self-help books saying, “All things are possible if only I believe.” It
became a very heated discussion. He told me that I was in denial and I
told him that I thought he was a jerk. He confronted me with all the
evidence that he knew about me being an angry young man who was afraid.
And I threatened him with bodily harm.
Finally, I stood up and told
him, “I won’t believe you! I am not my medical records, I am not my
past, and I won’t use what is going on now as a predictor of my
future!” As I walked out of the office I heard him ask, “Who do you
think you are?” With that question filling my mind I went back to my
hospital room. This hospital stay happened to be for the fourteenth
surgery on my spine.
At first I was just angry and
resented him for confronting me. Then that anger, mixed with the fear I
had within my own beliefs, really plugged me in. But the more I thought
about what he had said, the more I had a sense that he was getting to a
core issue when he asked, “Who do you think you are?” Oh, I had read positive books. I had sayings an
positive affirmations on
my wall. I had started my days with various rituals that were supposed
to be meaningful. Yet, when I stood in front of the mirror after
shaving to declare my reality I would begin with “I am a survivor.” The
entire universe would respond with “Ok, survive this” and I then would
own up to all the rest of what I had been taught: I am the adult child
of an alcoholic parent…I’m terribly co-dependent. My small self and the
saboteur within were always separating me from my good and my ego was
always leading me astray.
I was so busy owning up to my
human frailties and shortcomings I had no clue about my divine
magnificence and authority. And from that limiting perception of self I
began to realize that there was no way I would be able to create the
health I wanted. That’s when I changed my mind. I was no longer going
to validate suffering and disease as the great teacher.
It was nine years and thirteen
surgeries later before I was whole and infection free. It then took
another five or six years for me to create my body so that it was pain
free. I wasn’t always on track or disciplined with what I thought I
should be doing. But I did it. There were days, weeks and even months
when I was angry and depressed, but I kept using the tools of choice as
I knew them and, finally, I created the health that I wanted.
Certainly, I learned some
great lessons while I was sick. And the most important lesson was: I am
not my stuff, I am not my past, I wasn’t even what was going on in my
now. I was and am a magnificent expression of the Divine, and the rest
I get to make up.
Looking back, I know the psychiatrist gave me just what I needed when he asked, “Who do you think you are?"