Healing chronic symptoms - part 4

Please refer to three previous posts to get the most out of this one.

In Ursula Le Guin’s classic 1968 novel A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged, a powerful young sorcerer inadvertently lets loose a spirit from the dark realm into the world. This spirit then relentlessly pursues him throughout the story in order to possess his body and act through him. He can never truly rest and he is always on the move trying to stay one step ahead of this dark force. One day, his old teacher advises him to stop running and start hunting the thing instead. And so he pursues this shadow, who sensing the tables have turned, now flees frrom Ged. In Earthsea, if you know a being’s true name, you have power over them. Eventually Ged catches up with the dark spirit and as it turns to face him, both shadow and sorcerer name each other: Ged. And in that moment, they become one and have no more fear of each other.

This novel describes perfectly what happens when we have chronic symptoms that we cannot find the source of. We may know German New Medicine enough to have identified all potential conflicts and put them to bed, and all tracks and triggers as well. Yet still the symptoms persist. This is when we may need help, unless we are very self aware. We will have some kind of habit of being, which is very much like the shadow chasing Ged. This habit we have prevents us from being truly at peace. We cannot be still in case it comes into our consciousness. Our version of running away may be social media, alcohol, working out, being overly busy - anything that stops us from being still and letting this shadow catch up to us.

But like Ged, in order to be free of it, we must first catch it and name it. It could be ‘feeling guilty for everything’ or ‘feeling responsible for everything’ or ‘fear of letting people down’ or ‘fear of failing’. Once we see it and name it, then we have power over it. We can start to change it. This way of being could be the one thing that is keeping our symptoms alive. Even if we have always been like this, even before our symptoms started. Why? Because of the power of the psyche. Let’s say one of our tracks was gluten. When we eat gluten, the original conflict is retriggered and once again our psyche is wide open looking out for other potential tracks. If we have a habit of being which is ‘I am responsible for everyone’ and we happen to be thinking this thought when we eat the gluten, then this thought becomes a new track.

We may well have resolved our original conflict and we can now eat gluten without any problem, but we still have the track of thinking ‘I am responsible for everyone’. And because this thought is like a lens through which we experience the world, then we can begin to understand how, if it has become a track, it will be very difficult to identify. But only in the ‘naming’ of it, can we have power over it.