Spiritual Health Learning Community Center
Exploring Life's Horizons
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Which is it, of the favors of your Lord, that you and you deny? - [The Qur'an 55:13]
|
Blessings
Never has so much been given to so many with less gratitude
and appreciation. Never has so much been owed by so many
to just One.
The former statement is not about modern pro athletes. The
latter statement is not about the bank of one's choice. Both
declarations are about the status of our collective
relationships with God.
Like some Dickensonian character, we stand before God
with bowls in hand pleading: "Please, Sir, we want more."
No sooner do we receive, then we forget from Whence and
from Whom it came.
We may even return to our respective groups with whatever
has been placed in our bowl and boast about how through
our: intelligence, cleverness, artistry, strength of character
and, we might add, at some risk to our person, we have
succeeded where others have failed. The tendency to try to
take credit for that which is not our doing is part of the
nature of being human.
Even without our asking, the blessings which God is
constantly bestowing on us are so numerous that they cannot
be counted. Sometimes, however, we become confused and
limit what is, to what we experience sensorially or to what we
permit into our awareness. As a result, we impose limitations
on God's generosity and kindness concerning us due to the
insensitivity of our instruments of apperception.
Medical practitioners have said one of the puzzles in need of
explanation is not how we become ill but, rather, how we stay
healthy. Within us, and on us, at any given moment, are an
armada of viruses and bacteria constantly probing our
immune systems for weaknesses.
How many times a day, or how many times in an hour or
minute, are these probes and attacks repelled by our
biological defenses? No one in medicine knows. No one in
science has even a remotely informed guess.
Some say the difference between health and illness under
such conditions is a function of: a balanced diet; a sufficient
amount of the right kind of exercise; limiting, if not
discontinuing, our intake of alcohol and tobacco; a stable
emotional life; proper periods of sleep, and regular medical
check-ups. Indeed, studies have been done which show a
strong correlation between all of the foregoing factors and
health maintenance.
However, with all due respect to the health industry, if the
above recommendations were the entire story, most of us
would be dead or in chronic care units. This is so because
most of us don't run our life styles in accordance with what
health care providers are advocating.
Our failure to heed the warnings is neither here nor there.
We pays our money, and we takes our chances.
The issue being addressed here is that in most cases neither
medicine nor science has been able to show a causal
relationship between the absence of good health care
practices and either illness in general or particular kinds of
illness. The links are all correlational and statistical in
nature.
Discussions are couched in terms of risk factors, statistical
trends, epidemiological patterns, morbidity tables, prognosis
and so on. No one can say what will happen to any specific
individual, but what does happen to any given individual
often, although not always, can be made sense of in terms of
medical research and clinical experience.
The reason health care findings are largely correlational in
nature is because the confluence of factors which lead to
illness are too complex in their permutations and
combinations for us to be able to reduce them to some nice,
simple causal equation or principle. Our knowledge of how
everything fits together is, despite all the advances which
have been made in the last several hundred years, too
meager.
God works both through what we know, as well as through
what we don't know. Moreover, sometimes what we know-or
think we know - blinds us to what we don't know, and since
what we don't know is far more than what we do know, there
is a potential for considerable blindness on our parts.
Without wishing to discount anything the health sciences
have discovered, Sufi masters understand, in a very direct
manner, that both health and illness come from God. God
can keep people healthy, despite the presence of
contra-indications in that person's life style.
Similarly, God can bring about illness, despite the fact the
individual may be abiding by all the appropriate health care
rules. Go figure.
Every second of health is, ultimately, a blessing of God.
Every time our hearts beat, every moment we breathe in
oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, every second blood flows
through our arteries and veins, every instance in which the
billions of cells in our bodies perform their assigned functions
in a problem-free manner, we receive uncountable blessings
from God.
On the other hand, from the perspective of the Sufi masters,
illness can be as big a blessing, if not greater, than the
blessing of good health. When we experience the pain and
enervation of illness, we feel vulnerable and fragile.
Consequently, we may be more open to humility than might
be the case when we are healthy and have convinced
ourselves we are beyond the grasp of God's will.
When our health fails, we sometimes understand, more
clearly than in health, how little control we actually have
over the affairs of life. As a result, when we are ill, there may
be more of a sense of ourselves as dependent beings rather
than independent creatures.
When our bodies are subdued by disease, we sometimes
become more cognizant of the emotional and spiritual
illnesses which have been ravaging our lives even when our
bodies were healthy. Whatever problems are created by the
disease process, opportunities for reflection are generated as
well through the down-time created by the debilitating
character of the illness.
Sufi masters have indicated that the spiritual, emotional,
psychological and physical condition of the ill is conducive to
drawing closer to God. Furthermore, the practitioners of the
Sufi path have affirmed that God listens even more closely to
the plaintive cries of the ill than to the entreaties of the
healthy.
Illness is not necessarily a punishment. However, the rigors
of illness may be necessary for the spiritual development of
the individual. To contend with the infirmities, weaknesses,
sufferings and humiliations of illness, is a struggle because
these are all affronts to the ego which has a very high opinion
of itself.
Yet, every struggle is also an opportunity to overcome our
arrogance, pride and hardness of heart. Illness is an
opportunity to repent. This is so simply because we are too
weak to continue feeding energy to the parasitic ego which,
during health, has been resisting the idea we have anything
for which to repent.
The Sufi masters have noted how, sometimes, illness is the
modality God has chosen to confer grace and blessings on
the individual. In exchange for the individual's pain,
suffering, and discomfort, the person is given gifts, of one
sort of another, which may come to fruition later in this life,
or in the life to come, or in both. God can give wages of
grace for many types of work, effort, struggle and sacrifice.
Illness can be the means of bringing people together. Illness
can be a way of taking one out of action temporarily so that
some even greater trial or difficulty may be avoided.
Illness may serve to push one in new, better directions with
respect to family, friends or the community. Illness may be
the catalytic agent which helps bring about constructive
transformations in attitude, intention or behavior.
In view of the foregoing, one might mention something to the
effect that illness can be a blessing in disguise. In point of
fact, however, our whole life is a multifaceted blessing in
disguise to which, unfortunately, we have become inured.
As a result, we have a tendency to be a thankless, graceless
lot who are always seeking to renegotiate our contract with
God no matter how poorly we have performed previously.
Furthermore, somehow we frequently operate under the
misapprehension that because we may have been associated,
in some way, with one, or more, positive deeds at some point
in our past, therefore, God ought to be indebted to us.
In reality, the opposite is the case. Eternally, we ought to be
indebted to God for permitting us to be associated, in even a
minor way, with deeds which are the future source of, as well
as give present expression to, blessings from God.
| Return to Streams Menu |
|
|
|
Copyright © 2004 Interrogative Imperative Institute. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
