Last Friday, as I was getting ready to go get some coffee with my friend Mike, I had that sobering moment when you sneeze several times and your nose starts to run like a hose and you know for sure that, allergies and air quality irritations aside, NOW you have a cold.
Of course I sent him a text letting him know that I had a cold and asking whether he still wanted to meet. He did, so we did.
While we were chatting about everything from Akashic readings to how awesome the stuff you can get from Trader Joes is, the subject of my cold came up. As often happens when I’m chatting with him I suddenly gained a whole new perspective on the situation.
You see, I’m a bit new to the whole “spiritual development” thing. I grew up in a religion and culture that led me to believe that all of the answers were in a thick book written a long time ago and translated several times since. I tend to feel safe when things are black or white, true or false, and thus it was easy for me to be rigid in my thinking. I believe that my siblings and parents were a lot more flexible in their attitudes than I was growing up. Back then I believed that if you broke a commandment you were a sinner, that if you smoked you were dirty, that if you did something that hurt someone else, you were a bad person. Yeah… I was a judgmental, self righteous ass.
Obviously something had to give, and initially that was me developing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder at the ripe old age of thirteen. Perhaps I’ll talk a bit more about that some other time. The real death of judgmental, self-righteous-ass-me was when I figured out that I was gay.
Yeah, you can see the problem here, right? I so wanted everyone to think that I was perfect, but I knew that as far as everything I had believed was concerned, I was the opposite of perfect. I was a pervert.
Thank God for it!
Seriously! I think about the person that I was – and sure I wanted to love everyone, wanted to consider all the world my brothers and sisters, but I judged everyone and no-one was really good enough because no-one was perfect. I hate to imagine the man I would be today if this burr hadn’t been stuck under my saddle! I had to open my eyes and see in order to live with myself. I had to learn to accept, love, and forgive others because I had to learn to accept, love, and forgive myself.
So back to “spiritual development,” this past year I’ve had my eyes opened to a whole bunch of ideas that are new to me, but to which my holy spirit bears witness. The central of these is the idea that we choose our lives. So there I was sipping coffee and talking about my cold when it dawned on me that the implication of choosing my life combined with my having a cold was that I had chosen to have a cold.
All of the sudden I was wondering why I had chosen it.
At this point our conversation over coffee switched tracks and we started talking about spiritual awakenings and why I might have chosen to have a cold.
Here are some thoughts:
1 – Have you ever noticed how completely you are aware of being sick when you are sick? In a way, it is one of the most aware that we ever are that we are alive – imperfectly, disgustingly, gloriously alive!
2 – The law of polarity indicates that if you have one thing, the opposite is equally available. What does this mean in the misery of illness? Well, sure, there is the relief when we stop being ill. What about all of the care we get to shower on ourselves when we are sick? I know that I use being sick as a chance to really indulge in sleep!
3 – As a spirit who is incarnated to have the experience of this life, being sick is just another experience and so my spirit says, “Sure! Why not?” to pretty much any choice that the incarnate “me” makes regarding that experience.
4 – And then there is the fact that when I’m sick I let myself off the hook. Goals? Plans? Intentions? All fall before the mighty wrecking ball of illness. Unsure about what the next step is in my business? No one can blame me for not moving forward if I get sick, right?
There is the rub, isn’t it? I was the only one who was going to judge me, but I know what a harsh judge I have been! Any perception that I have that someone else will disapprove is merely a projection of my own disapproval into their eyes.
When I am sick, the pressure is off. I don’t feel the pressure to be productive with every minute of the day and guilty when I indulge in an hour of Glee. My subconscious loves to play! I love to daydream and imagine! When I’m sick there is no shame in being in bed at noon, getting up long enough to eat, and going back to bed.
With the total tallied, it appears to me that getting sick is a choice that I make when I want life to slow down for awhile, when I want it to be okay for me to be confused and not have the answers. Am I refuting the existence of cold and flu viruses? Nope. Am I blaming them for my getting sick? Nope. Like Bart Simpson wanting a day away from school, ordering his blood cells to surrender, I chose to get sick – although I don’t yet have his near miraculous ability to make this a conscious choice.
Have I learned everything I can about being sick? Will I get sick again?
I don’t presume to know everything that I will experience in this life.
Oh, but I am excited to be living!
(even though I’m sick)