Illness. Oh illness, how I know you.
Every illness is a kind of rebirth, a dismantling of the old, a rebuilding of the new. At the most practical of levels, watch this in your immune system, complex, extraordinary. It is never the same again.
“See, I am doing a new thing...”
Even the humblest cold is here to teach you about yourself. Does my life meet my body's needs? What kind of boundaries do I set for myself? How easily do I draw in on myself, slow down, let it all be?
What needs to change?
Serious illness smacks us between the eyes, slows everything down to earth’s drumbeat, strips life to the barest of bones. Terribly, terribly big questions wait for us here, of the who-am-I, what's-it-all-for variety.
How do I meet my life, as everything is crumbling?
As we surf through the valleys of our pain, losing ourselves from time to time in dark fragments of shade, the learning that’s available here is as unique to us as the myriad rings of our fingerprints.
And while others may help to light the path, no other creature can guide me to the answers I seek, for they rest cradled in the swelling folds of this pulsing heart. They are mine.
When illness lingers on, like mine has for these past nine years, I'm starting to believe it is because the transformation offered to us is so big and so deep, it must lead us slowly by the hand, take us step-by-step into and through the darkness.
For as long as it takes, I must bear witness to the dismantling of the old, watch the fragmentations of former life, former self. I must trust in a wisdom that can only come through long dwelling in the eons of darkness. Grow courage very deep. Get very, very still. Still enough to ask questions that have haunted me, year after year, and be prepared to hear a different answer.
Can I slow down the fear long enough to sit with the question, “what is it that’s being asked of me, here in this place, in this body, at this time?”
What comes to the surface, what's hiding in shadows, what’s calling my name?
Because illness is life’s transformation game. Am I playing? Is my head in the sand, am I resisting the change? Or am I open and willing to witness myself and my life and to see with new eyes what's unfolding inside of me?
And because transformation is always rolling, always moving, these are questions worth asking, over and over and over again.
Transformation is alive in the moment. This one.
And this one.
And the next.
Never stagnant. Never done. It becomes a way of being alive.
And so the same questions to you, wherever life finds you. Is your head in the sand? Are you resisting a change?
Are you willing to slow yourself down, until you soften, open into the transformation life is working within you?
In this breath. This heartbeat. This moment.
Because perhaps our transformations are leading us towards the deepest lesson of all. Life in its barest essence. Heart beating. Lungs breathing.
Life, valuable beyond how we appear to others, beyond what we do or don’t do. Valuable in the bone.
My life. Your life.
Worthy of being lived. Exactly as it is.
A lesson worth all the pain of its learning.
And so I’ll ask once again, are you willing to be changed? Is it time to say yes instead of no, into the chaos, the unknown? Your life, unfolding.
Valuable in the bone.
If you’re going through a particularly big and painful transformation right now, my guided meditations are ready to support you. Most are available for free, here on the Insight Timer app. These are practices I created to support me through my own period of darkness. I offer them to you too, with my love.