The Gods of Mystery Disease

the dangers of diagnosis (and an interview)

A woman walks into a doctor’s office hoping to find some answer for the mysterious pain in her body, the buzzing fuzz in her head and the emotions that seem to come roaring out of some deeply tucked away, unidentified organ in her body. The doctor runs a basic blood work panel, checks her vitals, and within 5 mins and some, at best fallible tests, tells her that there is nothing he can see.

He suggests that she is likely depressed and that there is this great little pill that can fix her and if she has any problems then there are other little pills for the side effects.

There is a brief moment of relief because the psyche believes it has found an answer and that lasts a meager few weeks. So they up the dose and the symptoms are now a silenced wild fire in her body. She finds another doctor and another, months and years later, who looks at her history and sends her away with a shaming look on his face and says that what she is feeling must be a mistake.

~One danger of a diagnosis is that it eludes to a solution. There is always a solution, a complete healing. But this mindset lives within the cosmology of a distant yesterday when diagnosis took the shape of the whole being and included death as a viable option. This is no longer the case, but the holistic ways of healing still live in our memory banks and so we easily slip into believing a cure lives in the hands of mechanized medicine.~

In desperation for some validation she goes door to door- preaches her pain, seeking help and instead gets doors slammed in her face. She does this to prove she is not crazy to herself and her family. She does it to save herself which begins to bleed into an alienation of herself and others and further digs a hole for the wound to grow. And because the will to live, the life force itself, is like a newborn volcano.

She weaves herself a malicious mantra. She slowly becomes the thing she is trying to escape as an identity forms with each repeated crying out to save her life. It’s a bewildering, heart breaking, soul rendering fuck muddle or what Baba Ram Dass would call a fierce grace. Answers, if some do come, typically come on the teeter of too late, which means that there is still a squeak of space for another voice if she lets herself hear it.

There is a reason for the symptoms, of course, that need a much wider lens. And often there can be a host of rare viruses, imbalances and weird bacteria that science has curated names for that lodge themselves in the mix. Identification of pathology at this level is helpful to understand how to rebalance those parts of the system. But what happens is there can be an “ah, ok I have this, I am sick with this”, and a total turning towards that named thing, a constant attack of the thing, often creating more of an environment for it to thrive and we further drive a wedge between ourselves and the medicine.

When there are stubborn pathologies, the reason they often stick inside one person over another is largely determined by their feeding ground, which is largely the nervous system and the pathways made in our mind/body due to trauma. And one clear sign that the now named thing isn’t actually the whole thing is that the symptoms get worse, or change and show up somewhere else.

Stubborn autoimmune diseases love the adrenaline and cortisol that stems from the endless fight and identity loops of oppressed emotions and suffering. When we fight against our body our body learns to fight against itself as a way to save itself- mimicking the systemic patterns of resistance we adopted through time to do the same. (this is also the crux of addiction)

The body will always find a way to say what her mind and heart has silenced- often for protection at a point in her life. The stickiest bits of this is that the voice desperate to be heard is trapped in loops of codependency seeking a validation, a protection and an inclusion from a source that is not able to provide it. This is the birth of the inner parenting that she (we all) must face, and especially in facing mystery disease, if she is to avoid chronic illness identity, or many identities, that can form as a way to be seen, needed, loved.

She must become both the voice breaking its silence and the one who hears it with the ears of her own heart. She must relearn how to feel without fixing, which is why the crux of these diseases lie within the mind even though the body keeps the score. She must encounter the grip on the controls put in place to keep her safe and understand what she confronts is equal to convincing a mama bear to let go of her new born cub into the arms of the river. Ie, she needs a radical turning towards a new way of being in self love.

What is trying to escape the body is also trying to protect the wounded parts. A psyche sandwiched between two worlds competing against each other, yet seeking the same thing. We are forced to navigate deep, often inherited, grooves in the psyche with the thinnest tight rope. But that one thread of awareness can weave itself back into right relationship with the truth of our being if our gaze can be trained to focus on this spindle of a new pathway- or what I like to call the original pathway- home. It’s a repatterining of mind/body that requires an old sturdy faith to navigate what has been moored by the storms of our lives.

(yes, I am aware I bounce between she, we, I ;))

When we can be with the incessant noise, witness it, work with it, let it move where it has always wanted to go, there is a wisdom within it that will guide every step- even to a rare doctor, and every healer, who can ally this most sacred self healing portal. We will know which foods and supplements to take. We are the medicine we seek. Letting go of everything but the wild edge of deep listening is not passive, it is not a giving up on Life, it is a giving into Life. The Universe provides and also holds that death is a viable option. So, we cannot heal without also confronting and including that in our medicine basket.

It’s an “I don’t know and here is the next right step” even if that step gives you a temporary left foot in the dance. Sometimes we gotta circle round something awhile. We are allowed to tend a flame of hope as long as it doesn't create denial. And know that the wound always attracts the medicine, moth to flame.

Becoming radically self honest with these loops of codependency and where they stemmed from, my addiction to suffering and why I would create illness when I desperately wanted to heal, freed up a litany of compassionate and wise voices that helped me to tend the unraveling of these loops. I have glimpsed the paradoxical dance between ultimate freedom at the quantum level and interdependent consciousness, where I am everyone and everything, on planet Earth. Can I be free if others are not free? How and, oof, how dare I? Hmmm.

Self honesty is one of the grimiest places to face within ourselves. It’s a wall smeared with shamings, guiltings and garish grief that will for sure drown us in more if we look at it. But the way over that wall is to dissolve it completely with the eyes of compassion that only open by looking at it, which means feeling it. We look at it with our breath, with our whole body laying on the Earth heaving as we feel why, why, why we would build such a wall around our hearts. Walls are heavy. They break the bones, block the flow and we call it something like Fibromyalgia.

~78% of these mystery illnesses affect women. When we live in a society built on the suppression of the feminine voice and the taming of the wild, omnipotent nature of life, women will suffer. It is a naive move on behalf of the system that created this foundation, because if women suffer, everyone suffers- until we all remember how to be a free ingredient in the soup. I fully believe that women are given these immense hurdles for a reason, not as a burden. Women have an innate power center within them that holds the blueprint of Life. We are memory keepers of the forever formless that makes form. The bigger the wound the greater the medicine. And we have a basket to hold it all because deep down we know how to let it all go back into the hands of Life.~

And what about self acceptance. The second dingiest part of the path. Loving free all of those little parts seeking our love. These diseases are often a crucible for a deeper awakening, and awakening often means learning how to live and love free inside the disease. Even if most of the symptoms disappear, the body is still a decaying thing that will always meet its maker through illness and age. So self acceptance leads us to the third and least traveled part of the path, the sharp turn back towards the ever pressing Self acceptance, aka our doorway into a spiritual life.

Or better put~

No one ought ever love their suffering, 

but no one ever loves without its pain; 

and as we die, we come to wondering 

if there was something we could not yet see— 

that winged Thing that merges with Earth’s suffering 

to make us what we otherwise would never be. 

~Rilke

Good Holy Lord it super sucks and we can say it super sucks and get angry, scream at God, wail and pray- which will help dissolve the wall if you really let it rip through those sutures barely holding that old old wound in place. But you can’t hold back and you can’t hold on.

It is only when the seams come apart does a still, small voice come laughing out, dancing out of the space now created by letting go of controlling the noise. The Mystery sweeps through her being enough to leave a trail of lasting light, a tight rope to walk over the landscapes of the dark night. She begins to learn the true art of balance. When the heart grips in hysterical fears of being rejected she breathes and stops trying to be heard in places built upon silencing it, and instead finds true silence.

When there is nowhere left to turn it can be the greatest, fiercest grace to bring her face to face with…

Blessed be, Shira Starfire

PS- An interview with MTRNL on women’s healing, mamas and the necessary mentorships that help us along the path. Come on in!