Health

I hadn’t been ill for a long time — not once in the past year, not even briefly. But now I’ve caught a cold, and I remembered what it is like to feel the chills, the aching, the weakness. To walk around with a blocked nose and a sore throat. I remembered how strongly this affects your state: you simply want to take cover in comfort and safety, so that you recover sooner and nothing hurts. And I also remembered how pressing a problem this can be in ordinary life, and how often and how suddenly it can happen. And I felt inspired to describe my understanding of health, and of everything that health is not.

What is health?

When we ask a question about health, we immediately think of the health of our body. In some cases we also think of mental health. But even more rarely do we look at health subjectively, because we have always been taught that there are objective methods to measure a person and classify them as sick or healthy. That is how official medicine works. We come to a doctor; they make a diagnosis and prescribe medicine. In this approach we are regarded as an object. An object of treatment. And if we agree with that perspective, then in the matter of health we lose our subjecthood, handing power over our own health to external circumstances and to other people.

At the same time, there is nothing wrong with turning to doctors for help. There is nothing wrong with taking medicine and following advice. But do not hope to gain power over your health while regarding your illnesses as objects separate from yourself. And the freedom to be healthy is further still from those who regard themselves as an object. See this: I am not an object. I am a subject.

Illnesses, like any other state, are inseparable from us and are therefore subjective. When we see them in this light, we gain the possibility of influencing them from within, exactly as we can influence any of our states. From this vantage point we recognize illness not as an external manifestation, but as our own inner process. A process taking place in our own consciousness. And this is how I propose to regard it from now on, and to work with it from the position of a subject.

Why do I get sick?

So why does a subject get sick? And why do I experience anything at all? Why do I feel anger, joy, peace, anxiety? If I am aware of myself as a subject, then I am aware that everything is lived through in my consciousness. Which means that the experiences we define as illnesses of the mind, or even of the body, are lived through in consciousness. And when I say “lived through,” I mean that they literally take on life, issuing from our I — the center of our subjecthood and the source of all subjectivity. Which means that the root cause lies within our I as well; it is out of the I that the experience of life we call illness is created.

The I in itself has neither form nor characteristics. How, then, can it be the source of our suffering? Suffering arises where, out of our pure essence, we create form. We create it by means of thoughts. We create thought-forms, or images. Such thought-forms — from here on we will call them beliefs — sound in language like this: “I am in danger,” “I might lose …,” “I lack …,” “I have been insulted,” “The world is dangerous [to me].” It can be absolutely any thought, but on close examination it will always concern ME. And the more strongly I believe that thought, the more energy I give it, the greater the effect it has on me as a subject, the more deeply it changes my consciousness. And if this belief is strong and negative, then our experiences will be strong and negative too. Often precisely the ones we call illnesses.

How can you be healthy even when you are sick?

Health does not come in physical form alone. The physical body is only one of the many levels of our existence. So, even when we feel pain on that level, it does not mean that we must suffer.

But how does one not suffer when the body is in pain? By noticing. Noticing what? That life is not limited to the body. That there is something not subject to pain. Something that comes from where suffering can never reach. And joining with That, we move to the level of existence where suffering simply is not, and yet we nonetheless are. From this I Am we can look at our body with its pain in a completely new way: with sensitivity, with acceptance, with tenderness in the heart, and even with love. The moment suffering is blessed, it ceases to be itself, even if the pain remains. The heart opens to joy and gratitude. And then we grow, we transcend the pain, consciousness expands, and we say — I am free. I am healthy.