Everything (Including Illness) is Included in the Spiritual Journey.

I spent nearly 10 years seriously ill, from about 2004 to 2014. I had major chronic autoimmune illness. I won’t share the details but enough to say it was dramatic, not life threatening but totally debilitating, and it completely shattered my ability to live a ‘normal’ life.
I wrote a book about the experience called ‘The Power of Illness to Change Your Life.’

http://a.co/d/3ShFibv

It also invited me into the deepest inner journey of my life.
I see that period of my life as an entirely transformational one.
I cannot begin to tell you how deep it was. It was total. It took me to every part of myself, every unexplored area, every vulnerability, every attachment, every fear.

It demanded I resolve all past grievances and traumas. It urged me to accept the prospect of death, or a life of permanent illness.

It took me to rage and anger at my past, at myself, and at God
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And of course it had a huge impact on my relationship with Amoda. She hadn’t signed up for a relationship with this. To her utter credit she just rolled with it and allowed me to have my inner journey, supporting where and when appropriate and encouraging me to dive in deeper.

I took absolutely no medication despite the frantic advice of the specialists and doctors. To some, to many, that was irresponsible. To us it was necessary. I followed nature, I followed intuition, I followed some instinct that said, ‘This will heal, you will heal.’

It was tough, warrior-like tough. I have been on my knees, on the floor. I have given it all up to god, I have surrendered my body for the peace of love and had that prayer answered.
I have embraced the human journey with all its fragility and its temporariness.

And I am not one of the spiritual ‘nondualists’ who want to deny the existence of the body and cast it aside as unimportant. I am not one of those.

I say love the body. Love the life. Find out for yourself what it means for consciousness, for the soul, for the spirit, to be in the form of a temporary vessel that will inevitably perish.

Explore the link between thought, belief and wellbeing and illness.

Don’t be afraid of the body, and don’t be afraid of attending to it. It’s not the enemy of freedom. It’s not the shackle that ties us down. Thought and belief are the shackles that bind us.

I have learned to be free AND live fully in the body while I am here.

I eat well and healthy. I run, yes I run, a lot. I love the freedom and joy of movement. And when I can’t do it any more, I will see if I can love that. When old age arrives, I will see if I can open to it, I will seek to embrace the fear I have of form dissolving.

But I won’t deny the human experience as not ‘spiritual.’ Everything is included.

Thank you for reading!