**The Purpose of Suffering, Depression & Disease**
"Everything happens for a reason, especially health challenges of the mind and body. Although this may be difficult to accept, I’ve found that many of us unintentionally allow ourselves to get depressed or physically unwell, because we never learned how to express our emotions or care for ourselves in the ways necessary to remain healthy and happy throughout life. We learn from a young age to please others and to seek our parents’ or our caregivers’ conditional love to survive, but it’s often at the expense of being true to ourselves and it causes us very deep harm. If we never wake up to this unhealthy internal dynamic, it eventually leads to depression, disease, relationship problems and most forms of suffering, all of which are simply cries from our soul calling us back home to ourselves, to the source of peace and strength within, and ultimately to love and value ourselves in each moment – starting now.
Early in life we learn to feel scared, guilty and ashamed to some degree about expressing what we feel, need and want, because this was apparently too selfish or burdensome for the people around us. Although everyone is actually selfish, but most often in denial about this, today many of us have become accustomed to living in fear. So now, after years of pleasing others and not looking after ourselves, we often find ourselves unhappy, unwell, or full of resentment, anger and regret. Confused, we ask ourselves: How did I get here?
No one is a bad person for wanting to live a deeply fulfilling and authentic life. You are not a bad person for wanting to be healthy, happy, understood or fully met within a loving relationship. Yet we still feel shame for having these desires. We’ve unintentionally become entrapped in a web of our own weaving, because we have not realized that we’re waiting for a wholehearted commitment to our own wellbeing and that our suffering is simply asking us to speak and act based on what we truly feel in each situation.
I cannot help but point out the fact that modern conventional medicine has not discovered cures for ailments like cancer, autoimmune disease and clinical depression. Is it because there’s no cure? Or is it really because we’ve been viewing these illnesses and symptoms from a limited perspective and completely missing the purpose of these challenges? Could it be that we’ve been looking for the root causes in the wrong places?
I believe so.
Although it can be hard to swallow, based on my experience working intimately with thousands of real human beings, I’ve found that our mental and emotional health is both the cause of and the solution to most forms of personal suffering. Our ability to express what we feel effectively, overcome negative thinking and act in alignment with our true emotions, needs and desires, directly determines the quality of our overall wellbeing. Just because we cannot see something does not mean it’s not real. Just because we don’t directly watch the destructive process of non-physical toxicity developing into physical toxicity doesn’t mean it’s not accurate or valid. If I said that the genuine love you feel for your partner, spouse, child, parent or pet was not real, how would you respond? I think that makes this point clear.
I’ve discovered that in most cases deep unhappiness and chronic illness are the result of the self-destructive, critical, judgemental and fear-based relationship many of us developed towards ourselves in childhood, which then leads to a weakened immune system, increased susceptibility to viruses, bacteria and environmental toxins, and ultimately to a lack of healthy self-care. Because we tend to be so lost in this harmful way of thinking and acting, since it’s all we’ve ever known, it’s very easy to overlook the apparently naïve possibility that transforming our mental and emotional dis-ease can bring the long-term relief and peace we’re seeking.
Life seems to take away anything or anyone we take for granted. Our life itself and our health fall into this category also. In my work with tens of thousands of people to date, I have witnessed time and again how individuals ignore and disregard their mental and emotional life, simply because they don’t know how to honour it or talk about it effectively. Rather, we’ve all learned to use denial to survive, and the natural progression of this sentiment is a deep feeling of worthlessness, where one perceives that one’s feelings, needs and desires do not matter. We often feel our inner self or soul has no value or is not appreciated by the people around us, and the by-product of this is a body that does not seem to matter or feel worthy of attention either. Basically, a heart not cared for or respected by ourselves becomes a body that does not feel good to inhabit. And this becomes a very vicious cycle that a person can actually get used to and allow to ruin their life.
To be frank: what’s the point of being alive if our soul feels trapped, misunderstood and valueless? What sentient being would ever want to continue to live a mentally tortured, emotionally anxious and overwhelmingly stressful life? Yet we as human beings feel unworthy of creating a lifestyle, career and relationships that make us feel good, alive and well on a daily basis. Although objectively it seems natural to desire a healthy and happy life, we are persistently held back by the guilt, fear, shame and underlying hurt inside us. We live feeling disconnected, while this internal toxicity trickles down inside like acid or parasites slowly eating us alive. Addiction and suicide can be understood in this light, especially when we recall what it’s like to feel we do not matter, silently suffering alone, without any idea of where to find love, understanding or healthy long-term relief.
'The body’s suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers.' -A Course in Miracles
As a culture and as individuals we need to swing the pendulum of attention towards transforming our dysfunctional mental and emotional life if we want our body and outer world to reflect a healthy internal environment. But before we can take these steps we have to find the humility to open our mind, especially if our current approach is not getting us the results we want. We have to admit that we didn’t know better and acknowledge that maybe our views have been limiting or not very healthy for us. This is not about making ourselves wrong, thinking we are flawed or blaming ourselves. Rather it’s about recognizing the fact that we inherited some very self-destructive habits and beliefs from people who were doing their best, with what they knew, at the time. And now, our body, life and world is screaming out for us to finally heal our heart and mind.
For me, traditional Chinese medicine offers one of the most practical and logical insights into how our thoughts and emotions can lead either to health and happiness or to depression and disease. From this worldview the causes of physical and mental illness directly correlate to the flow of energy and blood in the body. In simple terms, when energy and blood are free-flowing daily we experience health, happiness and freedom from pain. But when they stagnate we will eventually encounter tiredness, depression, physical pain, weakened immunity and the toxic build-ups that cause serious disease.
This perspective asserts that blood in the body follows the flow of life-force energy. The best example of this is the energetic beat or pulse of the heart that causes blood to flow within our veins and carries our immune cells, hormones, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients to all corners of the body. What is often overlooked in Western conventional medicine is the link between internalized thoughts and emotions that, coupled with fear and the resulting inaction, lead to a decrease first in the healthy flow of energy and blood, and then logically to the impaired function of the various systems throughout the body such as the nervous, circulatory and digestive systems.
Consider for a moment that a 40-year-old person, who has on average been awake for 16 hours every day and thus slept for 8 hours each night, has been alive and awake for 840,960,000 moments or seconds. That’s 14,016,000 minutes of life experience in which this person has been feeling and thinking something directly connected to their deeper wounds, needs and desires. Objectively, much of this inner process is made up of unresolved emotions and confused thoughts, which constantly circle the mind and body and are rarely expressed or addressed in a way we’re at peace with. This unhealthy internal environment typically leads to unhealthy lifestyle choices or addictions, which only cause more health problems, weakened immunity and life challenges.
Both thought and emotion are subtle forms of atomic energy, which when repressed constantly over time cause internal stress, limited oxygen intake and imbalances in molecular and cellular processes. Such repression also causes the flow of life-force energy and blood to slow down and become severely blocked. Due primarily to the various manifestations of fear, insecurity and people-pleasing habits, most people don’t act based on instinct, intuition, self-care and what their heart truly communicates, which creates further disruptions to the healthy flow of energy and blood in the organs and circulatory system. Symptoms like anxiety, shallow breathing, chronic fatigue, lethargy, digestive disorders, depression, bipolar disorder and insomnia set in, and we, and often our doctors, are not quite sure what the underlying cause is.
Eventually, over days, weeks, months and years of this process guiding both our life and our behaviour, the blood and fluid in our bodies begin to coagulate to such a degree that nodules, masses, growths and tumours start to form. This then leads to toxins building up in the bloodstream, fat tissue, muscles and organs, resulting in chronic pain and disease. In simple terms, our body becomes at war with itself on a cellular level because we are at war with ourselves mentally and emotionally. The miraculous intelligence of the body produces physical symptoms to alert us to the tear between what we really feel, want and need, and the fears that stop us from taking good care of ourselves, speaking honestly and following our heart. Although we’re not aware of it, living a lie and constantly rejecting our true self is exhausting and eventually breaks us down physically and mentally.
From this viewpoint it’s easy to see how living a stressful life compounded by work that is unfulfilling, or staying in relationships where one is not true to their deeper emotions, can create significant internal pressure on our major organs and central nervous system. If we are constantly fighting ourselves in this way, and do not listen to the messages from our body, the inevitable result is our self-destruction. This does not account for excessive consumption of alcohol, food or drugs, whether recreational or prescription, which are habits motivated by a desire to numb deeper mental and emotional pain. Often this is a misguided quest for short- term relief that only makes our health concerns worse in the long run. These crutches for our broken heart mask our feelings of not being worthy of love and the burden of living in perpetual fear.
My view is that both genetic and acquired immune system problems all stem from this dynamic. If we are destructive in our thoughts, emotional life, behaviour and lifestyle habits, over time the decrease in blood and energy flow, as well as the build-up of toxins, lead to a weakened capacity to fight off infections from bacteria, parasites and viruses. Similarly, a toxic or parasitic mental and emotional life leads us to allow toxic and parasitic people to remain in our lives, which directly correlates to an increased susceptibility to all forms of pathogens and environmental toxins that will further eat
away at our health, happiness and peace when we allow it. Most people understand that eating natural whole foods and adopting a healthy lifestyle will support wellbeing and prevent illness. What most don’t know, though, is that complete honesty, vulnerability and love for oneself in every situation is just as vital to our long-term mental and physical health. We are so used to hiding our true feelings in order to survive, keep the peace and protect ourselves from judgement, criticism, aggression and rejection that we remain unaware we’re relating to ourselves in such a harmful way, or allowing others to take advantage of us, until of course we are forced to figure out why we’ve become so depressed or ill.
Deep down we all know there has to be more to life than suffering. But no one can save, heal or free us besides ourselves. This is precisely why the purpose of mental, emotional and physical symptoms is to show us where and how we’re not caring for ourselves well enough to thrive and flourish fully before we die. Once we understand the simple but profound truth that all suffering is the result of a constant rejection of the true self – a self that we never learned how to love, accept, value and care for properly – we can begin transforming whatever struggles we’re faced with and find deeper peace and health immediately.
