Today I texted a dear friend some dramatic test results: antibody levels should be under 60, mine is over 13,000. Pretty conclusive!
My friend has always laughed at me for being a hypochondriac, enjoying the drama of possible disease, so I knew he’d understand my glee at the high figures. I had been hoping to see such proof that my body was out of whack.
For a long time, I had been unhappy about my laziness, lack of productivity and preference for supine poses, both in my asana practice and in my everyday life. So although some people would see proof of physical disease as bad news, I was delighted. I wasn’t just lazy and self-absorbed.
At the very least, I now had an excuse for laziness, maybe even a reason.
It is a fairly common reason, and one I’ve laughed at in the past; slow moving overweight women blaming their glands. (The moral is be careful what you laugh at, it may come back to bite you.)
Apparently 3% of the population, usually older women, have this autoimmune condition in which the immune system interprets parts of your body as “dangerous invaders” and starts attacking them.
In the case of Hashimoto’s the immune system sends out antibodies which destroy the thyroid, and therefore production of thyroid hormones begins dropping.
The thyroid hormones regulate metabolism, affecting nearly every cell in the body. Low levels cause lethargy and lack of energy, and can be misdiagnosed as depression.
Other symptoms can be hair falling out, especially thinning eyebrows, susceptibility to cold, and dry skin.
Knowing there is a physical issue impacting on my energy levels gives me a great sense of relief, and some hope that there is a solution.
I know there are actual laziness and self-absorption in the mix, but maybe not as much as I feared.
One thing I am finding interesting about this reaction of high spirits overdiagnosis of a progressive and incurable, though usually non-fatal condition, is how familiar this feels.
I haven’t been diagnosed with any ongoing illness before so one might wonder, why the familiarity?
Well, many years ago I suffered from depression, not just a passing blue period, but an apparently terminal, what is the point of life malaise. I could see that life, as I knew it, guaranteed pain and death.
Yes, there are can be some highs in-between’ many varied situations come and go in life, we are amazed on how to sustain those, but life goes on, the pain and the intermittent struggles and the ultimate i.e. death are non-negotiable. Personally I didn’t think it was worth it.
I laugh to read that those with depression have a more realistic world view than the non-depressed individuals. Even though I am no longer depressed, I think this is usually true. This world is a place of danger, anxiety, fear and guaranteed pain.
Most of the fear is generated from wrong idea what we are material body and we are subject to death. In reality, we should understand, the person or the self is eternal it never ceases to exist. Only the material body gets old and eventually dies ‘ this is commonly termed as death’
But then I came across a seer who changed everything. One of the things that I heard from this “doctor”, this great yogi, was an analysis of the material condition, and the prognosis of inevitable suffering and death. He shared the bonafide learnings that would help us in achieving our mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing. I could immediately see the truth in his words.
So why would this change things for me? I had already realized that!
But the difference was that this great seer or teacher aka doctor was describing a diseased condition and had in his kit both medicine and a lifestyle change to support that medicine. The disease, with its concomitant pain and death, could be cured!
My friend, who understands my glee at this diagnosis of Hashimoto’s, has never really understood how the same dynamics play out in hearing and understanding a diagnosis of spiritual disease. He has often commented on what he considers to be a negative view of the world and itemizing of the symptoms of the disease so that the sufferers can realize they have it.
After all, if you don’t realize you have diabetes you don’t take the medication and make the lifestyle changes that can alleviate and even cure the condition.
And even if you realize you have a treatable disease, a lifestyle disease, but you don’t take it seriously enough you can still die of it. My sister did. Similarly, in order to understand we have this metaphysical disease, and to take it seriously we study the symptoms and see them in our own life.
This spiritual disease is materialism, the idea that I am my body, and this world is my home and that I will be happy fulfilling the desires of my body and mind. The symptoms are lust, anger, greed, unhappiness, loneliness, and emptiness.
The results are suffering and death. We need to be familiar with the actual purpose of life’ and to know this purpose, we need to understand the science of yoga or yoga wisdom from saintly persons.
We should take advantage of the inspiration, tools, resources provided by these great personalities or spiritual teachers. We ought to take on a serious journey to understand the deeper meaning of life and our existence.
Thinking I am this temporary body, I become attached to the relationships of the body, and the possessions of the body, but these relationships and possessions are temporary so they do not endure. I suffer when they are destroyed or pulled from me, whether one at a time or all at once, at death.
It is a pretty grim diagnosis. But knowing the disease is the first step in a cure.
On receiving this diagnosis of materialism, and being informed that in a healthy state happiness was both natural and eternal, my sense of relief was enormous.
I had thought that lasting happiness was impossible; and that I was lacking somehow overreacting, unable to pull on the blinkers and just cruise through. So knowing there was a cure made me feel immediately better, despite the fact that the cure was not yet effected.
And since then it has been a gradual process of improvement, based on how much I put the lifestyle changes and the medicine of meditation into practice.
Getting a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s, and knowing there is easy treatment, if not a cure, has been a similar relief, although insignificant compared to the relief of understanding that my spiritual unhappiness was due to being, so to speak, spiritually diseased.
Sometimes this metaphysically diseased condition is described as being like a fish out of water, trying to be happy in a medium that is not my natural home, trying to breathe air when I was designed to breathe water.
So while my dear friend, who is reading this, has found my awareness of the difficulties in this world almost morbid, my response to being reminded of such problems, the problems associated with breathing air when water is my natural environment, is to more intensely experience the relief from my fear and anxiety, anger and depression.
Knowing that I was drowning showed me that I was not crazy for thinking I was! This calls for an inquiry to find the valid reason for being uncomfortable, even suffering, in such an unnatural environment.
It is not me that is the problem, it is just where and how I am living. There is a solution. And being aware of the symptoms keeps me on my toes, taking the medicine.
