Post #15: Disability as a Path to Forgiveness 🕊️

Pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a Sunday afternoon deep dive on the nature of spirit, disability, and forgiveness with me!

I couldn’t find a picture to go with this essay, but baby pictures are always fun!

Hello, Friends!

I hope this email finds you well! This newsletter is a bit of a long-read, so you may wanna print it out and read it in the sun, whilst relaxing on a park bench.

Recently I had an epiphany about disability and spirituality that I have been wanting to share with you. I started wondering if perhaps disability has a spiritual purpose. And I think it could be seen as this: to remind the world of our universal nature. 

OUR TRUE NATURE

For the purpose of this essay, you should know that I believe that our bodyminds are much more than simply interconnected... I believe that we're all one, all made of the same material (atoms, energy). In short, I believe we are Spirit, having a physical experience. Perhaps this isn't your worldview, and that's fine! I'm curious if this essay will still resonate with you.

Anyway, I believe in God / Creation / Energy. I believe that we are all infinite beings. But for whatever reason (karma, a mission, an accident) we ended up incarnated here, in a body, on earth. I think before we were born, we lived in pure, conscious, blissful awareness of Spirit. We were one with God / Creator / Love.

THE MORTALITY “PROBLEM”

This Spirit is completely limitless, but humans get sick and die. Humans are restricted by their beliefs, and the cruelty of others.

I think this is hard for our Souls to take. Our unconscious minds know what it's like to be completely free, fully loved and totally powerful. I think this part of us remembers and misses our true wholeness and perfection, and it's the root of all human striving. 

Disability can be a guiding light for humanity precisely for this reason. Not because disabled people are inherently "different" from others, but because our earthly situation makes the human condition even more obvious. It can help us to foster awareness. 

DISABILITY AS A PORTAL TO UNIVERSAL INSIGHT

Every time disability has taught me something about the nature of life, it has actually been a universal concept, something that anyone could apply to their own lives... But without my disability, I might not have learned these lessons until much later in life. Or perhaps without disability, I would not have learned them at all.

In this case, it was the apparent pain of disability that helped me to realize that the real frustration is spiritual, not physical. Sometimes the pain of disability has originated in my bodymind, other times it has been caused by people's prejudice, and still other times it's a lack of basic access. Disabled people, in so many ways, are told that they are lesser than, abnormal, or defective.

But part of me has always rejected this idea. I do not feel lesser than. In fact, I feel expansive –  like I have more potential than meets the eye. I feel like a spirit trapped in a human body.

Feeling "not of this world" – or, more accurately, like so much more on the inside than the world is prepared to acknowledge on the outside – has helped me realize that my true, deepest nature is universal, unlimited spirit. And if this is true for me, then I must conclude that everyone is made of the same stuff.

If my disability has shown me anything, it's that everyone has the same, expansive, universal potential. Every human being has intrinsic, equal value and worth – despite what society tells us.

THIS WORLD IS NOT MY HOME

The path to peace, I am starting to realize, is accepting that I am simultaneously a mortal human and unlimited spirit. Thus I will always feel restless in this body, like I'm wearing a pair of shoes that fit poorly – not because my body is disabled, but because I'm living in a body at all. If I can accept and forgive this truth, I can understand the origin of my chronic discontent.

Disabled people can demonstrate how to forgive our bodyminds for their limits, while still enjoying life for what it is. We can also choose not to judge ourselves or others by the world's faulty standards. We can treat each person as equally valuable. We can free ourselves and others from the unrealistic goals of perfection and immortality.

THE SIX BASIC “DESIRES”

I read a lot of books and sometimes I apply what I read in weird ways. This list below comes from Dr. John Sarno's book, The Mindbody Prescription, but I am not applying it the way he did.

But if you think about it, our eternal Spirit is inherently all six of these things:

1) Perfect
2) Fully Loved
3) Fully Cared For
4) Totally Content and Awake - No Need to Search or Soothe
5) Totally Invincible / Strong / Unrestricted / Beautiful
6) Immortal

So in human form, we have unconsciously adopted these six traits as our six most pressing desires. We all do it, disabled people included (even if we say we don't). That's because, even though we think we desire physical or moral perfection, we all just subconsciously yearn to return to the innate perfection of spirit.

Now obviously we can admit that overall, most of us do not achieve any of these six desires in our lifetimes. We might set goals and strive and think we're getting there, but at the end of the day we are all still going to get sick and die. Striving to achieve our spiritual reality whilst in a human body is totally impossible.

WE ARE FRUSTRATED WITH OUR LIMITS

I think on some level, that fact is really upsetting to us. It's why we spend our waking lives looking for gurus, life hacks, mentors, cures, endless entertainment, drugs and alcohol. All we want is to return to that blissful, powerful, unlimited state of Spirit. But it would seem we're all doomed to never fulfill our basic desires.

We can't get what we want, and that makes us angry. But it's unpleasant to be angry about something that can't be fixed. So instead of feeling (and releasing) our rage, we unconsciously suppress the anger we feel towards our (mortal) bodyminds. We buy into the seductive lie that if we just work hard enough or meditate enough, we can attain the ultimate peace we knew in Spirit form. We think that we can force our mortal bodies to behave and comply like our immortal souls. We are confused. 

DISABILITY AS “DEFECT”

I think this is the origin of disdain for disability. For example, I love to read books about personal development, natural medicine and spirituality. However, I usually want to throw these same books at a wall whenever the topic of disability comes up.

Unfortunately, the authors nearly invariably reveal their prejudice, hatred and othering of disabled people through the negative words they choose. I do not believe that disability is a synonym for bad, unfortunate, or unhealthy. But so often in spirituality, personal development and medical books disability is equated with a lack of wellness. Some folks even go so far as to claim that acquiring an illness or a disability is a direct byproduct of "bad" thought patterns. I think we have, as a society (especially in self-help, spirituality and medicine), wrongly identified the enemy. We errantly label disability the problem, again and again.

While I do believe our thoughts help create our physical reality –  and that sometimes this can even extend to the spontaneous "healing" of disease for some –  I can't explain why this happens. However, I do know "healing" is not a sign of greater worthiness or virtue. For even the "healed" are mortal and will someday die.

EVERYONE IS MORTAL IN THE END

No matter how "well" we are or how "healthy" we live, we will always feel the frustrating disconnect of spirit and mortality. Thus, we must take our eyes off the shiny prizes of "health" and "happiness" in their mortal, human forms and instead choose to remember, accept and celebrate that we are universal spirits.

Then we can finally realize and accept that having a disability in this world is not an odd, undesirable shortcoming. Nor is disability (or for that matter, aging) a form of weakness or inferiority or a type of defeat to be avoided at all costs.

The lack or loss we've been trained to associate with disability is actually always with us. It is inherent in our very humanness. It haunts us because we fail to remember that we are really Spirit. Living in a body (no matter how "healthy" it is) will always feel like bondage to our spirits unless we choose to shift our focus.

MAKING PEACE WITH OUR MORTALITY

As long as we think the bodymind holds any key to happiness, health, or self-improvement, we will be disappointed. It's only by connecting with our unlimited identity as Spirit, and by seeing others as this same exact spirit, and by loving and forgiving indiscriminately, that we will begin to feel a shift towards peace.

We must surrender to our mortal condition and make peace with physical and emotional suffering, with decay and death. We must realize that beauty lies only on the other side of this challenge. Then we can begin celebrating the journey before us.

ALL HUMANS ARE EQUALLY DIVINE

In truth, we are all essentially exactly the same, equally divine and equally valuable. We forget this fact all the time. We treat others (and ourselves) as human garbage, judging and hurting each other. We send out negative messages that love and worth must both be earned. Our society ranks people in order of value.

Some of us become hateful bigots and some oppress others. But we forget that we all come from the same, infinite source and that we are all made of the same, universal spirit. Thus, when we oppress or hate anyone, we are actually oppressing and hating ourselves. Others of us identify as victims, to varying degrees. We may valiantly try to "love our enemies", but that still often leads to repressing our rage. It also inadvertently creates a view of self that is separate and distinct from our "enemy". This leads to a holier-than-thou / worthier-than-thou attitude.

FORGIVENESS AS THE ROAD TO PEACE

Neither oppression, victimization, or self-righteousness will lead to peace. The quickest road to peace is forgiveness. And the most effective method is by simultaneously forgiving your neighbor for all injuries, and yourself for any similar thoughts.

Maybe you've never been knowingly prejudiced against another group of people, but you have pre-judged a new colleague at work. Can you not see that both of these "sins" resulted from a failure to love freely, by forgetting the unity we all share? Maybe you've never punched someone, but you've secretly felt happy to see misfortune visit your "enemy"... Do not violent deeds and violent thoughts both have their roots in disunity and hatred?

REMEMBER TO FORGIVE YOURSELF, TOO

The truth is this: if you try to forgive an aggressor from your past without calling to mind and forgiving yourself for the times you have felt aggression towards another, your forgiveness will not be complete. You will still roam this earth feeling lesser than.

Deep down, we must understand that if we are all equal in spirit, then we must also all be equally forgiven for our actions as bodyminds. On some level we know forgiveness is hypocritical if both parties aren't forgiven. Forgive, and you will be forgiven... Maybe we actually need forgiveness from ourselves more than from God.

Without this forgiveness, our spirit can't release the buried rage and frustration it feels because of the limiting, imperfect human condition. Let us therefore forgive. Let us accept that all humans are equally valuable, that we're all the same Spirit. Let us banish all thoughts of rank, and set aside the world's ideas of success, health and happiness. Again, let us remember that we are all universal spirit. Let us forgive both others and ourselves. Then can we live our days without internal discord, loving and free.