The Illness Seeks the Medicine
Charles Eisenstein 2003From looking at your neighbor and realizing his true significance, and that he will die, pity and compassion will arise in you for him and finally you will love him.
-- G.I. Gurdjieff
Where lowland is, that's where water goes. All medicine wants is pain to cure.
-- Jelaluddin Rumi
Can true humility and compassion exist in our words and eyes unless we know we too are capable of any act?
-- St. Francis of Assisi
As individuals and as a society we seem drawn to behaviors that contribute to our own destruction, behaviors that keep us in a low, unhealthy, depressed state of existence. Seeing the destruction wrought by diets, habits, and lifestyles, we decide to make a change. A kind of self-disgust motivates this effort: disgust at our moral failings, our weak willpower, our selfish indulgence.
One person might be disgusted at his frequent outbursts of rage, in which he shouts at his loved ones and speaks venomous words causing permanent harm in his relationships. "What's wrong with me?" he thinks. Another person might feel disgust at her smoking addiction, which makes her feel filthy and weak-willed. Another woman is disgusted at her inability to stand up for herself in economic and personal relationships. "Something is wrong with me," she says, "Why do I let people take advantage of me?"
And of course, disgust for ourselves implies disgust for other people, for who's perfect? Self-judgment implies a high standard for everyone, not just oneself. Sometimes judgmentality is covert, part of a disingenuous ploy of false modesty. Other times it is quite overt. We denounce reckless drivers, speeding through quiet residential neighborhoods, as if they were some kind of monster, their behavior incomprehensible. We look with contemptuous self-satisfaction at the obese woman loading her supermarket cart with potato chips. We cluck at the wanton self-disrespect of so-and-so's promiscuous sister, and shake our heads in censorious disapproval at the latest statistics for marital infidelity.
In judging others there is a sense of self-affirmation, a self-image built from "I would never do that." In that statement is coded a profound lack of unconditional self-acceptance, and the secret dread that, Yes, I would in fact do that, or even the shameful knowledge: I have done that before.
Please do not read into these words a contempt for judgmental people. That would be hypocritical! Yet the reason not to judge, measure, despise, and envy others is not to avoid being hypocritical; it is not because you "shouldn't," it is not because it's "wrong" -- all of these reasons, too, are freighted with self-judgment and judgment of others.
Let me restate: Do not tell yourself that you shouldn't be judgmental. You'll tie yourself up in knots, because when you really dig down into what "shouldn't" means you will very likely discover an implicit judgment of judgmental people.
Moreover, in the end it is not only futile, but also unnecessary to enforce a policy of non-judgmentality upon yourself. That's because judgmentality withers away of its own accord when compassion arises, and compassion arises, naturally and effortlessly, from the sober, unsentimental understanding of the origin of a person's behavior.
Such understanding may be encapsulated into two aphorisms, which I beg you not to dismiss lightly, as they are subtle and many-layered:
(1) You would do as others do, if you were they.
(2) The illness seeks the medicine.
Most people object to the first statement immediately. "No," they protest, "if I were Andrea Yates I would have sought professional help, I wouldn't have drowned my five children in the bathtub."(1) In making this statement, we import our own experience of being human into the role of Andrea Yates. What it means is, "If Andrea Yates were I, she would not have done that." But Andrea Yates was Andrea Yates, and how can you possibly know what it was like to be her? It is almost beyond imagining, but I have tried very very hard to imagine it. I have tried to imagine the depths of a despair so utterly relentless, a cosmic hopelessness so all-consuming, a despondency so abject, complete, and merciless, that I could drown, one by one, the very children whom I'd comforted and loved, fed and changed, taught and protected day after day, year after year, watching their personalities unfold; those familiar faces, dependent on me, their imperfect caretaker. And I imagine the act itself: averting my eyes from their puzzlement, giving way to fear, then terror, and then blank death; closing my ears to the others crying as they wait their turn, not understanding, knowing only that something is very, very wrong, yet still clinging, perhaps, to a piteous trust. And then, after the crime, an agony of remorse too enormous to face and too acute to avoid, a hell without hope. I have tried very hard to imagine this, because that is my yoga. What would a person have to feel, how would a person have to be, to commit such an act? Who can say what history of her soul brought her to such a state? How can you possibly know that you -- not as you but as Andrea Yates, complete in the entire context of her existence -- would not have done as she did? As for myself, I do not know.
I have chosen for my example perhaps the most horrifying crime imaginable. It is much easier to imagine circumstances in which I'd speed through a quiet residential neighborhood. I imagine feeling that there's never enough time, and perhaps a sense of invulnerability, and self-importance -- taking charge in a world where I feel stripped of power.
It is easy to imagine being obese and loading up my shopping cart with potato chips and candy. Perhaps needing a comfort food in a world of too little comfort; having a sweet treat to compensate for a lack of sweetness in life, for hopes gone sour and relationships turned bitter. Being good to myself, in the only way I know how (maybe that's how my parents showed love) in a world that is rarely good to me.
It is easy to imagine being promiscuous in a world bereft of intimacy, seeking a union of souls in a society that tears us apart; and, finding only the tiniest hint of such a union in the physical union of uncommitted sex, seeking it again and again; trying to assuage the loneliness; wanting to feel loved, wanting to love another unconditionally as in the first blush of infatuation. There are many scenarios I can imagine in which promiscuity would come naturally.
When you put yourself fully in another's place, imagine what it is like to be them, and feel what they feel, there is no possibility of judgmentality. Others will sense that, and trust you, and be amazed that you know things about them they have never told you. Herein also lies humility, a sincere humility arising simply from an understanding of the fact: "I would surely do as you do, if I were you."
It is accurate enough for the present purpose to say that all of us are damaged souls. To a greater or lesser degree, we have suffered the hurts of the world. The response to this hurting, which we might judge as a flaw, sin, or crime; despicable, contemptible, or disgusting; is, as the above examples illustrate, a natural reaction, perfectly understandable. And not only understandable, but wise even, and touching. Thus we come to the second aphorism, "The illness seeks its medicine."
Let us start with drug abuse. Typically, our society regards alcohol and drug addiction as either a morally deplorable weakness or as a "disease," a term which, in this day and age, strongly implies helpless victimhood. Yet there is another way to view drug use that is neither arrogant nor patronizing, and is, as I shall argue, in the end far more empowering: Drug use is a form of self-medication, and drug addiction is essentially similar to dependency on any medicine that keeps one functioning "normally."
It is curious and highly significant that the same word, "drugs," should apply both to pharmaceutical medicines and to substances of abuse such as alcohol, cocaine, heroin, etc. Even in conventional medicine, the active constituents of such things as opium and cocaine, or their chemical analogs, have important medical applications. Consider the possibility that drugs such as alcohol are indeed powerful medicines with far broader applicability than ordinarily admitted.
In medicine, heroin's chemical brother morphine and its cousin codeine are used a painkillers. Considering pain in a broad sense, is it any wonder that tortured souls are drawn to these drugs?
Very many alcoholics and addicts I have known are extraordinary people, of exceptional intelligence and sensitivity and, very often, exceptional musical or artistic talent. How can we denser folk blame them for seeking to deaden their sensitivity to a very painful world?
Alcohol too deadens pain, but its effects are not limited to just that. Alcohol can also help open us up, relax our boundaries, let down our guard. I know many people whose sole moments of intimacy, outside of sex, occur under the influence of alcohol. Many people are able to speak certain truths (for better or for worse) only when drunk. Moreover, alcohol can open us up another way too, to poetic inspiration. Ancient and tribal cultures universally considered alcohol to be a divine gift, a "spirit" (and this is indeed the origin of the word "spirits" to refer to liquor).
Lest the reader think I am advocating drug use, let me hasten to add that under ordinary circumstances, drugs and alcohol address the symptoms only. Narcotizing pain does nothing to address its source. Many pharmaceutical medicines also just treat the symptoms of disease, and even those that treat a proximate cause, say penicillin for ear infections, may not address the deeper cause. (Why is this person susceptible to ear infections?) Most medicines, especially for chronic conditions (and that is what I'm talking about here), merely alleviate the symptoms; they make the condition more bearable. For a time, they allow people to function "normally."
People with drug dependencies probably have a much better reason for self-medication than most of us imagine. Instinctively, they are drawn to the substance that addresses the symptoms of their damaged souls. When I see an addict, very often I see a child just trying to make it stop hurting.
We may now take a conceptual leap beyond chemical substances, to consider as medicines other kinds of addiction, distraction, indulgence, stimulation, and lifestyle.
Once driving through New York on a major six-lane highway at midnight, I witnessed one motorcycle after another zoom by at close to a hundred miles an hour through the heavy traffic, weaving among the cars plodding at a mere 65 mph. -- a form of recreation few people would approve of, I'm sure. To me, though, there was something beautiful and poignant about these young thrill-seekers risking life and limb for fun. Get past the judgmental attitude of "There's just something wrong with them," and "I would never do that." Think instead, How would life have to be, for me to do that? Think, What kind of spiritual malady would that address the symptoms of? Imagine a life hopelessly bland and unpromising, a dull and pointless education, dead-end job prospects; a spirit broken, almost, by controlling institutions, and exploding out to reclaim itself. When we condemn youthful rebelliousness, or dismiss it with a knowing, patronizing wink, we deny that rebellion can be right and just. Perhaps their rebellion, destructive as it is, shows that against all odds there is life in them yet; perhaps we can see in these motorcycle daredevils the heroism and indomitability of the human spirit, contorted almost beyond recognition. Why does this behavior attract them and not me? Is it just that I'm more blessed with some elemental virtue called responsibility? Or does it address a particular lacking or wrongness in their experience of the world? Perhaps they are medicating themselves, as best they know how.
So ready we are to condemn human weakness! Elsewhere I have written about the pernicious narcotizing and soul-stealing effects of television. Yet we can understand television too as a medicine: a palliative to a bleak and barren social landscape, an imitation hearth to assuage the piercing loneliness of life in modern society.
In The Yoga of Eating I discuss the allure of that dietary poison, excessive refined sugar. A pale imitation, is sugar, of the sublime sweetness of intimacy and spiritual connection; but when relationships are sour and life is spiritually bland (as it is so often in materialistic culture), the yearning for even imitation sweetness is overpowering.
Consider now the minor vice of constantly looking at yourself in the mirror. Think about it -- what illness would that ease? How would you have to be, to check yourself out in every reflective surface that goes by? A reflection provides reassurance: Yes, I am here. Yes, I am okay. I look fine. I can like myself. True, it is a paltry reassurance in the face of the yawning pit of self-alienation that afflicts us all, to some extent, but for a moment at least it eases the anxiety.
To say that these medicines are palliatives, and engender deepening dependency without true healing, is only a partial truth. Partial, but illuminating nonetheless. Obviously, riding a motorcycle through traffic at a hundred miles an hour does not resolve the underlying discontent and ennui, which themselves result from complex, deep-seated social, karmic, and biographical factors. Eating candy does nothing to bring spiritual sweetness into life, nor does eating "treats" alleviate an underlying feeling of undeservingness. Television, while momentarily making you feel less lonely, will not enrich your social life -- on the contrary, it separates you even more from other people, at the very least in the sense that watching TV is usually a solo activity. Fantasy role-playing games and escapist novels cannot take you away from a dull or painful reality forever. In the same way that narcotic drugs deaden pain without affecting its source, all of these activities alleviate the symptoms of the illness (at least temporarily), thus making the illness itself easier to bear.
None of these medicines work forever. Eventually, a given medicine or class of medicine becomes either toxic, or ineffectual due to buildup of resistance, or unusable due to a change of circumstances. For example, sweets become toxic with the onset of type II diabetes. Build-up of resistance to television (and other diversions) manifests as boredom. Mirrors become unusable (for the purpose described above) if someone suddenly notices he has aged, or suffers a disfiguring accident that renders him ugly (in his own eyes). In one way or another, the medicine fails. Then the underlying issues rise to the surface.
Sooner or later a crisis will strike. It is inevitable. That is why the medicines I speak of are not quite mere palliatives, but steps on the path of genuine healing. Each represents a necessary stage for a given individual. And the crisis they eventually lead to is a true medicine, one that brings the deep wounds to the surface for healing. Very often a clue to the deep wounds is present in the earlier, palliative medicine; its failure illuminates just what was missing, just how a person was not whole. Before the medicine fails, even the symptoms of our soul wounds are obscure to us, not to mention the wounds themselves. In the failure of the medicine, the quality of the pain finally emerges. Ahh, one thinks, all along I was just lonely. All along I was angry. All along I was afraid. The behaviors that society sees as flaws and that I see as palliative medicine all of a sudden make sense.
When you begin to see through a medicine in this way (thanks to a crisis or imminent crisis), then, and only then, is it time to give it up. If you try to remove the medicine before you are ready to face the wound, before you can handle the pain unmedicated, then the inevitable result is an intensification in the suffering, which drives you back to the medicine or to a new, substitute medicine. That is why forceful intervention to keep an alcoholic sober is rarely successful. Next time you start to nag someone to quit her addiction or other vice, ask yourself whether you want to deprive a sick person of her medicine. (Never take away someone's medicine unless you see very clearly that it no longer serves them.)
Rather than take away someone's medicine, instead remove the conditions that make the medicine necessary. In the case of friends, and particularly relatives and intimate partners, you yourself might be contributing to those conditions. For example, by keeping secrets and telling lies, we exacerbate the loneliness and hunger for intimacy of those in our lives. Another way to help someone is to illuminate the wound underneath the behavior, the quality of the pain. When you see a self-medication not working for someone anymore, you do them a favor by pointing that out, making its usefulness more obvious.
As for your personal vices, unless and until you have seen through them to the quality of the pain underneath, do not coerce yourself into quitting them just because you "should," because maybe they are just what the doctor ordered. Consider that the soul is wise, and has sought out the right medicine for its condition. Be kind to yourself, and never practice self-deprivation for its own sake.
On the other hand, when the medicine does fail, do not shy away from what truths the failure reveals. When the medicine stops working, stop using it. When the time comes, do not be afraid to be with the pain. The truth cannot harm you, but the truth can hurt! It is okay to hurt. Ah, the bitter truth! Do you, dear reader, harbor some bitter truth, too terrible to admit right now even to yourself? The devices you use to keep it out of sight and out of mind are your medicine. Someday they won't work anymore. The truth will out.
The failure of a medicine is often dramatic: a serious illness, a close brush with death, the humiliating discovery of an affair, a mental breakdown, a destructive fit of violent rage, financial bankruptcy. Sometimes, as in the case of Andrea Yates, it seems intentional. Other times people subconsciously engineer a disaster: a businessman, long neglectful of his family, blinds himself to the fact that a deal is doomed, inviting his own bankruptcy. Even when the occurrence appears completely arbitrary -- an airplane crash, for instance -- perhaps the soul has sought out that situation too.(2)
If the medicines of thrill-seeking, alcohol, sweets, television, mirrors, and so forth -- habits, peccadilloes, and indulgences -- can be likened to long-term palliative medication, then the dramatic blunders and catastrophes of life are major surgery. Their consequences, such as remorse, physical pain, grief, and imprisonment make it impossible to forget the presence of a wound. Suffering of this sort is a true medicine, not because it heals, but because it leaves us no choice but to heal.
At this point, we might replace the adage "The illness seeks its medicine" with another: "The illness is the medicine." Or rather, the symptoms are the medicine. Separation from God is painful. It is painful not to be whole. This pain, which we can avoid or muffle only temporarily, inexorably compels us to try again and again to heal ourselves. We try as best we know how, learning along the way, discarding measures that we discover to be useless, digging deeper and deeper toward the source of the pain.
Compassion for others and, even more, for oneself, doesn't require overlooking flaws or ignoring the shadow side. Innate divinity does not lie apart from our most shameful sins; it lies within them. Underneath everything you are and everything you do is a sweet, innocent being, doing its best to cope with the confusing world into which it has wandered. You are a pure, earnest child plunged into a maelstrom with only the most exiguous of threads connecting you back to your Mother. Do not judge yourself too harshly, for you have done your best with the knowledge available to you.
When you can understand every action, of yourself and others, as the touchingly naive response of an innocent baby-in-an-adult-body to a world gone incomprehensibly wrong; seeking, as all creatures will, to avoid pain in a very painful world; buffeted, like milkweed in a storm, by environmental forces vastly dwarfing the power of any single individual; concealing a fathomless well of loss and private sadness; taking on a measure of difficulty and suffering at the very edge of one's capacity; and yet, heroically, striving, surviving, and transcending circumstances beyond any reasonable expectation; then you will see glory in every person, a divine and radiant beauty; and you will realize that like all people, you do even as God would do, if God were you.
Notes:
(1) In March 2002, Andrea Yates, a Texas woman, was found guilty of capital murder. In June of 2001 she had methodically drowned each of her five children in the bathtub, then called the police and her husband, who was at work.
(2) I've come very close to restating the new age cliche, "Everything happens for a purpose," a concept easily open to abuse. The purpose might be beyond human understanding, nor is it necessarily fruitful to try to understand what that purpose may be.