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Finding Guidance in Crisis

cmt12

Senior Member
Messages
166
Hi everyone, I hope I haven't completely exhausted the forum's attention yet because I wanted to share something else. Like a lot of the other stuff I've posted related to spirituality, you will only agree with this post if you already know it to some degree and can recognize it. This isn't something you can analyze and agree with me on.

There is a phenomenon that happens in life in which when we experience a deep loss or painful event, other aspects of our lives, often completely unrelated, become uprooted and questioned. Here are a couple of articles I quickly googled that describe what I mean:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...e/201010/why-certain-life-events-lead-divorce

http://divorcesupport.about.com/od/isdivorcethesolution/qt/losstriggersmidlifecrisis.htm

My intention for posting the articles is only to show how common and universal this is; I disagree with the analysis of why this happens. I want to propose that this doubt and upheaval that we feel in other areas of our life after experiencing pain and loss has no logical or rational basis. For instance, we rationally know that the loss of a loved one is a possibility and should have no impact on how we feel about our job or marriage, but it sometimes does.

I also want to propose that this doubt isn't motivated by emotion either. This one is trickier, but my point is that our universal emotional reaction to pain is to protect ourselves, avoid change, and be risk averse. The doubt and potential upheaval is the opposite of that.

Rather than being based in logic and/or emotion, I have come to realize that this event is intuitive. By intuitive, I simply mean it doesn't come from us and is always true. The message we are being sent during our times of deepest pain is that our coping strategies, our habits of pain relief are unsatisfactory.

You see we all have various ways that we relieve pain. When we are in crisis situations, those ways get surfaced and exposed as ultimately unsatisfactory. When someone loses a close relative and then soon after questions their marriage, it's not based on logic or emotion; it's that person's intuition saying you were using your marriage to cover your pain, to fulfill you in some way, and it can't do that. It's the same message to the person who begins to doubt their religion after, for instance, a near death experience.

That message the pain is communicating to us is meant to help and guide. However, there is another voice that we hear after our intuitive message. This voice IS emotional and based in fear, deceit, and over-protection. This voice is risk averse and rationalizes our past decisions to avoid change and uncertainty.

So, you have someone who gets fired, begins to doubt their religion, but then decides that if they just pray more and keep the faith, then everything will be okay. Can you see how this works? Or you have someone who thinks that money will make them happy, and then when they experience a loss and doubt their path, they rationalize and then double down on making even more money.

Now, let's relate this to dealing with chronic illness. We all have our hopes in something, our ways of coping. We also constantly experience rough periods where we face upheaval and feel like giving up. We can choose to be drawn into our pain, where the guidance of our intuition is, or we can get caught up in the emotional reaction, clinging to our preferred coping methods.

If you can see some potential truth in what I've laid out, then here is my advice. When dealing with the day-to-day pains of chronic illness, use those moments as opportunities to build resilience. Choose to transcend the pain and emotional reaction by practicing mindfulness. Train yourself in this way and then prime yourself to be prepared when facing the eventual crisis time. Constantly remind yourself that when you face that doubt and upheaval that you are going to take advantage of it by facing the pain and connecting to your intuition. Build resilience, be prepared, and then execute in the moment. This entire thing is a struggle. Chronic illness allows us to take risks and be courageous since opportunity cost is low and we have motivation for change.
 
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15,786
Or we can alter our lifestyle to avoid activities which cause exacerbation of pain, and get a doctor who can help us manage the rest of it. Seems a lot more practical and effective to me.

Being affected and disabled by pain is not "giving up".
 

GhostGum

Senior Member
Messages
316
Location
Vic, AU
Problem is for CFS/ME its seems such a fine line, if full recovery is ever a possibility re-conditioning and resilience needs to take place but for many it is near impossible, it was for me for a decade. Then on the other hand my experience is these past few years, using hypnosis (tapping into the intuitive/sub-conscious parts), using cold adaptation, deep breathing techniques and physical therapies I have had to retrain and tap back into parts of myself and physiology which had become completely lost and in stasis. I stopped thinking about it a fair while ago and just do whatever I can and keep rolling with it.

Your right about trauma and stress not being logical or conscious and being sort of intuitive, but I think it certainly is emotional (biologically responsive) though and simply becomes buried deeply into the sub-conscious. I think many people misinterpret what sub-conscious may mean as well, because we are not talking about the 'mind', we are talking about real layers of responses in the neural network and physiology. Everything we experience in life is processed through the brain and we do what we can to manage whatever those experiences are, and honestly ME is so horrendous, my experience of it has been, that I have no doubt at all there is incredible coping mechanisms that are put in place to deal with it; as no doubt there would be for any serious condition or illness.

Your advice of building resilience is nice in theory but probably useless in practise for most, I use to try this attitude all the time but it rarely gave me relief, although no doubt I have developed incredible mental coping abilities over the years but only after finding real ways to move forward and gain hindsight.

I think much is lost in the community by ignoring the potential of the intuitive/sub-conscious aspects, even if just for managing symptoms but actually taking advantage of this, tapping into it is quite complicated and difficult. I use meditation, inductions, deep breathing and cold exposure pretty much daily now for sometime and I still have not caught the flaming pearl. It is also near impossible to find an insightful and intelligent holistic practitioner who could assist and work with someone with ME effectively, although no doubt that would be case by case.

If you want to develop real resilience and tap into your 'intuition/sub-conscious' this is the most effective way,

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ng-fatigue-in-chronic-fatigue-syndrome.43010/


The more I do these practises the more I realise how incredible and important they are, at least for me personally in helping find total transcendence from what was a complete hell.
 
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cmt12

Senior Member
Messages
166
If we want to attempt to utilize spirituality, or open ourselves up to intuitive guidance, then we have to commit to it fully. That is a requirement for any chance to gain with it. I don't mean we have to dedicate our entire lives to it 24/7; I just mean in the time period that we want to experiment with it, we have to dedicate ourselves to it fully. There are certain assumptions that must be adopted and others that must be dropped.

The standard operating procedure to chronic illness is to locate someone who has the specialized knowledge and ability to "hack" our bodies and solve the problem. This assumes that life is indifferent, right? Since there are those that have access to these hypothetical solutions and those who don't due to being alive in a time period in which this hypothetical knowledge was not yet realized.

Spirituality assumes universal access, assumes a level of fairness. This universal fairness is a requirement. When it is ignored, intentionally or not, we are no longer operating within the parameters of spirituality and we will not be able to gain as a result.

GG, if you are going to talk about accessing intuition for the purposes of guidance, you are delving into spirituality, so you must commit to it fully or you will fail to make progress. You cannot hedge by trying to turn the process of connecting to intuition into a scientific process.

When I talk about connecting to intuition through pain, I am talking about something that is absolutely universal. There are no circumstances in which someone can live life without direct experiences of pain. We cannot say the same about hypnosis, hot/cold therapies, etc.
 

cmt12

Senior Member
Messages
166
To me, the juxtaposition of these words is an oxymoron.
My interest in spirituality is centered around solving a problem. This problem is important to everyone on this forum or they wouldn't be here.

If your spirituality is passive, then it has no impact on solving real world problems and isn't part of my spirituality. If by making your previous post, you are implying that my spirituality isn't valid, I will not agree with you. If you are not implying that, then you'll have to explain to me why you decided to make your post.
 

Sushi

Moderation Resource Albuquerque
Messages
19,935
Location
Albuquerque
This problem is important to everyone on this forum or they wouldn't be here.
Well, not by any means the only reason to be here. For instance, a lot of people are here because they want to follow the latest research on ME.
If by making your previous post, you are implying that my spirituality isn't valid, I will not agree with you.
Where did that come from? I simply said that for me, the words utilize and spirituality don't go together. I didn't comment on the validity of your spirituality.
If you are not implying that, then you'll have to explain to me why you decided to make your post.
I made that comment for the reasons above: in my personal understanding, spirituality is not something that you use, rather it is a quality that is innate in human beings, whether or not they choose to cultivate or express it. In other words, for me, the word spiritual refers to something that one is, not something one uses.
 

cmt12

Senior Member
Messages
166
Well, not by any means the only reason to be here. For instance, a lot of people are here because they want to follow the latest research on ME.
Where did that come from? I simply said that for me, the words utilize and spirituality don't go together. I didn't comment on the validity of your spirituality.
I made that comment for the reasons above: in my personal understanding, spirituality is not something that you use, rather it is a quality that is innate in human beings, whether or not they choose to cultivate or express it. In other words, for me, the word spiritual refers to something that one is, not something one uses.
I just don't think it needs to be set up as an either/or the way you are. Kindness is also a quality that is innate in human beings, but you wouldn't have a problem with someone saying to use kindness, right?

I couldn't figure out why you wanted to take those two words out of a long post and comment, since I'm aware of how important it is to you that threads stay on topic. I assumed you must've been trying to make a larger point about the thread topic that I couldn't decipher..
 

Sushi

Moderation Resource Albuquerque
Messages
19,935
Location
Albuquerque
you wouldn't have a problem with someone saying to use kindness, right?
Not to beat this into the ground, but yes, I'd have the same comment about the phrase "use kindness." If you are kind, you don't "use" kindness, you are simply kind. If you want to discuss this topic further, we can discuss it privately, because we are now going off topic.