By Dr. Marta Adelsman
Life Coach in Communication and Consciousness
www.DrMartaCoach.com
(April 26, 2013)
I had a lot of extra tasks to accomplish last week when I became sick. Instead of spending time getting done what I considered important work, I spent it lying in bed nursing my bronchial passages back to health.
As I healed, I went through a process. At first, I inwardly resisted my situation. Fighting it did no good; it had obviously won, so I began to move myself toward a state of acceptance.
I noticed that I have certain notions about what best serves me. The belief, “It’s never good to get sick,” has been with me since early childhood. Our medical system seems to agree. Rather than addressing the root cause of disease, so many drugs seem to mask symptoms instead. They may keep us appearing healthy on the outside, while inside we continue to manifest various stages of disease.
In my state of non-acceptance, I thought about one of my favorite authors. In her book, Loving What Is, Byron Katie suggests four questions to apply to any thought that causes dissatisfaction.
I applied the first question (“Is it true?”) to my belief that it’s never good to get sick. “Is it absolutely true,” I asked myself, “that this current situation of physical illness shouldn’t be happening to me?”
That thought brought another question: what if it actually served me get sick? Three or four friends, people who know a lot about natural health through detoxifying the body, mentioned that my illness may have been related to detoxification. For the previous month I had been on a diet designed to do just that. If my symptoms represented a sloughing off of toxins, then it did serve me to become sick!
What if the situation or circumstance in your life – you know, the one you want to get rid of – what if that were actually perfect for you right now? What if it contributes to some element of your physical, emotional, spiritual or psychological well-being?
Although it may look like the opposite is true, everything that occurs in your life serves you. That thought, fully believed, can free up a lot of energy, previously wasted in angst and worry. You can use the freed-up energy either to handle the situation or to wait out the storm in a state of gratitude.
Would I have chosen to get sick? No. I did, however, realize two additional benefits from my illness: an opportunity to practice living in a state of acceptance and gratitude…and a topic for this article!