Illness as Vital Response

As a new twist to this week’s article, I’ve made an audio recording of myself reading the article. If you’d like to have a listen, here you go. Let me know in the comments if you appreciate this! A Shifting ParadigmI feel we are at a primary juncture of revisiting what we have been taught to believe about medicine, illness/disease, symptoms, healing, healthcare, etc. So much has been presumed, at the very least, and an entire paradigm of thought has been believed to be absolutely true as a consequence of these presumptions. Well, what if things actually did happen differently than what we’ve imagined, or more importantly, what we have been told?I’m using the term “illness” here to communicate an expression of detoxification, or relieving the body of waste. Let alone the conventional concept of “disease”, I recognize there is debate as to what constitutes disease, whether symptoms are an expression of vitality, or even whether such a thing as a disease exists at all.These ideas may seem preposterous or utterly ridiculous to some (ie, the medical establishment). I get it. I understand. We have been indoctrinated into a certain way of seeing the world and in order to see something differently we must be willing to take on a different perspective, to open our minds to a greater flexibility than what we’ve been accustomed to. It is often simply a matter of a slight shift in perspective, and the entire world changes before our eyes.Undoubtedly, we have a general consensus that when one is not feeling well that one is ill. If that illness persists over time (weeks, months, years) and significantly interferes in one’s life then we may consider it a disease and that person often receives a diagnosis, if they are “lucky”. I say lucky because many patients will cycle through the medical establishment for years, or decades, bounced around between specialists, being experimented on with toxic pharmaceuticals and invasive procedures, while receiving a multitude of diagnoses, often conflicting.I recognize that it is a rather unconventional viewpoint today to consider one’s illness as a sign of health, or vitality, but this has been the perspective of many a health practitioner in the past. Not too long ago (mid-19th century) this would have been one of the presiding philosophies of medicine. A fever, for example, was seen as the body’s vital response to an illness, or to an accumulation of toxins, perhaps even a stage of growth and development, particularly in a child’s life.Since the mid- to late 19th century, in the Western world (first, then the entire world), we have been indoctrinated with the idea that our bodies are subject to microscopic invading pathogens, to which we can mount an immune response (when capable) in order to thwart this incursion and once again regain sovereignty over our domain. There is something plausible to it. I get that. However, the truth is that these ideas have not been proven. Instead, impressive narratives, with the aid of technology and medical jargon, have been crafted to impress upon us the veracity of these claims - to the point that we have come to accept these “universal truths” wholeheartedly (eg. has anyone ever seen a ribosome, let alone a virus?? Dr. Cowan’s video on What does make you sick)We know that our bodies have a capacity (to varying degrees) to take on toxicity - up to a point - at which point we shift into detoxification mode and specific bodily systems are engaged bringing on fever, cough, diarrhea, vomiting, rash or pustulant excretions from the skin. See Dr. Bailey’s recent video on The Truth about Fevers.What seems to be especially in question these days is what is making us sick. Well, let me re-state that. There’s a schism wherein (very roughly speaking) two parties see things very differently from each other. One party - let’s call it Germ Theory - proclaims that infectious microorganisms are largely responsible for disease (add in another layer for the genetic component as well; but that stays on this side of the argument, largely), and another party - let’s call it Terrain Theory - that proclaims the vital force within the individual is paramount. When sufficiently supported and nourished, this vital force is capable of thwarting off toxic onslaught, to a great degree, and is intimately connected to our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well being. So I’d like to focus on the vital force paradigm as that’s where my heart has led me - yet it has taken some wandering through the darkness of self-doubt and inadequacy (as a recovering and unofficially educated, re: “uneducated”, member of the Germ Theory crowd) to get there over many years. To see illness as an expression of vital force one needs to appreciate the flow and rhythm of Nature. In our hi-tech world we are often disconnected from the rhythms of Nature. We can name these as the diurnal cycle (sunrise, sunset, sunrise, etc.), or the circadian rhythm within our bodies that accompanies this daily phenomenon, or perhaps the movement of the sun along the horizons at sunrise and sunset marked by solstice points at either end, or the midway point of equinox. The point is that our world is a composition of dynamic interplay between a great variety of natural cycles, all of which, it appears, feed off of each other - that is, their is a dynamic feedback loop which informs, and is informed by, each part of the whole, thus creating a dynamic whole.This, as I see it, is the crux of our entire collective cosmology. We can either be in touch with this or not, to varying degrees. How are we in touch? Through our God-given sensory perceptions, through the heart-field awareness, through somatic intelligence, etc. To be in-tune to the natural phenomenon of which we are a part is to be in touch with ourselves - as we are made of the same elements, albeit comprised in a unique and beautiful way. This is the great mystery and beauty of creation.To limit this article (I do intend to go deeper and expand on these ideas in future articles), I will say here that this is where our illness derives from: the moment at which we perceive ourselves as separate from the whole.That may seem too abstract for most. But it’s much more subtle than that. In traditional Ayurveda there is a saying (I can’t recall the Sanskrit at this time) which describes the origin of disease. It roughly translates as, “the mistake of the intellect”. I have come to interpret this as the moment at which our intellectual mind separated from the heart mind. This may be a collective mistake made by humankind long, long ago (perhaps as we passed from the Satya Yuga, or from the Golden Age into the lesser Ages), or it may have been a foreign and malicious incursion into the human race from elsewhere - some other creation, another motive, with the will to destroy. I conjecture here as I simply don’t know.But the point is that the progression towards “illness” is long and sinuous, marked by repeated occurrences that, taken in full context, always look and feel a little bit different - yet some aspect of them is the same all the time. These are the patterns of disease states, whether they be psychological, emotional, physical, or spiritual. To believe in the sovereignty of the human being is primary in accepting that a vital force dwells therein which propels us through life, inspires us, protects us, and keeps these mysterious and wonderful bodies of ours going. Many human lives have shown us the proof of this, and the vitality exhibited through courage, strength, compassion, love, creative capacity, productivity, joy, and any other beautiful thing you could imagine coming from a human show that this vital force lives within us.An age-old question then is why does someone fall ill when they do? In the absence of any direct influence (and even those need to be taken and understood in a broader context - please, expand your minds here) it could be a great many things. The old phrase, “it was the straw that broke the camel’s back” comes to mind. Was it really that one little straw that brought the camel to its knees and all the cargo crashing to the ground? Or was it an accumulation that didn’t show itself until it suddenly became too much.That, my friends, is all too often how we fall ill. Our vital force - and ability to remain at a functional capacity - becomes over-run by toxins (to put it simply) and we reach a state in which our body (in all its wisdom and intelligence!) must shift priority towards detoxification lest we become completely overloaded by these toxins causing a critical situation for our bodies. I realize that life is dynamic and each person is a unique story and composition of entirely unique circumstances (however related to those of their peers), but it is this phenomenon of critical mass (how, when, and why, exactly, remains the mystery) that leads one into a deeper expression of illness.BUT it is the vital force that is responsible for spawning the so-called illness as its highest priority is the preservation of the vessel for the spirit-based light body that is the human being so that it may continue on with its mission of self-development here on the sacred Earthly plain.Any notion to discredit this is, ultimately, a spiritual sacrilege against our Creator, the Creator that resides within each of us. And it is for this reason alone that it is utterly essential for each person to come to understand the fraud of pathogenic contagion for it ultimately promotes fear and anxiety - a most deadly contagion if there ever was one. In an upcoming post, I will take a look at how some plants act on our bodies in order to resolve toxic build-up, thus enabling us to heal ourselves while promoting deeper self-awareness, and longevity as a consequence. Get full access to Bioregional Herbalism, Vitalism, Ancestral Knowledge at johnjslattery.substack.com/subscribe