He Had It Coming

Friday February 16, 2007

Categories: Food and Health

I'm sure glad my friend Eileen isn't asked to give many eulogies, because they'd all sound like this: "It's a bummer he's gone, but he had it coming to him."

An avid disciple of medical intuitive Caroline Myss, Eileen believes all illness results from blocked energy in chakras one through seven.

I don't discuss my health with her anymore because, according to my New Age friend, everything is my fault: from the irregular periods to the brain growth to my bipolar disorder. Suffering is punishment for my not being a stronger person, a woman who can master her thoughts, control her emotions, and direct every cell in her being toward health.

I once asked Eileen how she could explain the five year old boy who died of Leukemia.

"He may have made a contract with God before he was born," she replied. "Or maybe he drank bad water."

Jesus says I have to love Eileen, so I haven't deleted her number from my cell phone. But I can and do have a major problem with her philosophy. Because, to my ears, it sounds incredibly judgmental and lacking in compassion.

Like Eileen I believe in the mind-body connection, which is why I expected yoga, prayer, and meditation to heal me of my depression. I figured that if relaxation exercises and mindfulness can combat and prevent heart disease and diabetes, as studies indicate, that breath work and meditation should surely correct the distortions in my brain electrochemistry. Self-loathing and suicidal idealizations would disappear under my yoga mat if I said "Om" often enough.

When that didn't happen I was forced to hand over my stuck-up and unfair assumptions on matters of health: if you took care of yourself, you stayed well. I was thrown off my pedestal, onto a ground of rubble, where I began to empathize with others who, from no fault of their own, contracted diseases and sickness.

I'd give a much better eulogy today than I would have in the years before my breakdown. Suffering and illness have humbled me. When I hear people like Eileen throw out black-and-white explanations and solutions to a myriad of problems surrounding different types of illness, I realize that you can afford to be arrogant when you've got your health. But that doesn't mean you should be.

Comments (12)

posted by Beyond Blue @11:15am Permalink email icon

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Waterborn

February 18, 2007 2:17 PM

HASH(0xd12b20c)

Eileen has, from my perspective anyway, a very simplistic and not terribly useful view of "New Age" thinking.
I certainly believe wholeheartedly in a mind-body-spirit connection (note that's three things, not just two), and that people do indeed attract everything in their lives. However, that's no reason to not have compassion; rather, it's a reason to be even MORE compassionate. God bless that five year-old who brought such powerful lessons and opportunities for deep love into the hearts and lives of his family and friends, and the awesome and terrifying experience it must have been for him/her.
On you depression, perhaps you're thinking of it a bit too simplistically, too. I have also experienced very lengthy and incredibly deep clinical depression, and no single thing like doing some yoga could possibly have pulled me out of it. Healing required a whole combination of things, physical, mental, and spiritual. Mind-body work was great, but it also too body-spirit work and spirit-mind work to finally find the light again

chuck

February 18, 2007 6:42 PM

HASH(0xd12b8e4)

That New Agers are nitwits is not news.

bird

February 18, 2007 7:30 PM

HASH(0xd12c80c)

My mother is a Christian Scientist, and I was raised in that church. She has tremendous guilt when she takes medicine or sees a doctor--because she feels she should be relying only on God. Also because we were taught that our own beliefs in matter incur the penalty of illness. As C.S. doctrine goes, God never made illness, so we can't experience it. If we seem to, it's because of our erroneous beliefs, or (in the case of a child) the false beliefs of a parent or "world belief" (the general human belief in illness). While some of this is helpful, when you get sick and can't cure it by prayer and good thoughts, you shouldn't be made to feel guilty about using modern medicine!

Premika

February 20, 2007 7:41 PM

HASH(0xd12e21c)

I've been more or less into New Age philosophy for about twenty years now, and it has been a great influence on my spirituality. So I know its strengths--and its weaknesses. One of which is it gets too "airy-fairy," with not enough down-to-earth practicality. If your beliefs aren't part of your daily life, what good are they? Another is that it's gotten way too "yuppified" and metrospiritual in the past few years, all about seminars and retreats that only the rich can afford, shutting out the middle- and working classes altogether, even if they do have an interest in New Age thinking. Another is that there seems to be a lack of fair critiques on its philosophy, which should be levelled towards it as much as towards any organized religion.
Seen the Oprah shows on "The Secret"? What "secret"? I knew that stuff long ago! I saw the "Response to the Secret" show, and was intrigued by one woman who knew about The Secret years ago, had been using the methods and had attracted the life she wanted--and then lost it all in the 9/11 attack. They then talked about how she had gotten her life back together with the Secret's methods, but no one thought to ask why, if this woman had been doing all the "right" things, would she attract losing them all in 9/11? Wonder what would have happened if someone had asked that? But then, the authors would have to say that they really don't have all the answers.
Okay, so that was off-topic. Thanks for letting me post.

HASH(0xd12e450)

May 14, 2007 10:22 AM

HASH(0xd12e4f8)

all that new age mumbo jumbo is hollow and shallow, self-centered- and really, unkind. we all suffer, no one wants to- no one creates it- it's already there- compassion,understanding and the difficult one-patience are the ways to respond to a suffering person- not blaming them - that is pointless and adds to the pain. give them hope-which is real.

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