Illness as a Message

The Body Speaking

Illness holds a unique and profound meaning for each person. It is designed to guide us through places we might not otherwise explore. It is a request from the body to look there, to go within, and to understand. On the other hand, it is something shaped by our own patterns that have led the body down a particular path. However, these two concepts are not separate; they are fully interconnected.

Let’s start with the second concept: illness is something shaped by our own (learned) patterns that have directed the body down a certain course. The body is alive. Although this statement seems obvious, it’s as if we overlook it. We haven’t fully embraced the idea that our body learns. To be more specific, our organs learn, and our cells do too. This is an adaptive function. It might be easier to accept this at a biological level: if a bacterium enters and the immune system fights it, the cells retain a memory of that bacterium, which will help them confront it with more tools in the future. However, we don’t often consider that the body’s learning doesn’t only operate at this “basic” biological level; there is also learning of behaviors, preferences, patterns, vices, character, etc.

This type of learning, which is more emotional-mental, doesn’t only happen at the macro level—in ourselves as a complete organism—but also at the micro level, where organs learn and replicate repetitive behaviors from us as an organism. The micro always learns from the macro. In fact, rather than learning, it’s almost as if it receives an order. When we repeatedly behave a certain way, such as with fear, our organs learn to replicate that fear pattern, constricting, protecting, hyperactivating, or deactivating in response. If fear becomes a pattern in our personality, that pattern will also become a pattern in the body. Everything mental has repercussions in the emotional realm, and both impact the physical.

So, one could say that our personality defines our illness patterns. It’s what the body learns from how we behave daily. This brings us to the first concept: illness has a unique and profound meaning for each person. Continuing with the example of fear, although the entire body is affected by this pattern, some specific organ(s) will be most impacted. This is where the deep and “personalized” meaning for each of us begins.

When we start experiencing symptoms that reveal an illness, our first reaction is usually to wonder, “Why is this happening to me?” We probably first check our diet or what external factors might have been the “contaminants” that led us to become ill. It’s easier to place responsibility on an external factor as the cause of illness than to examine which internal pattern led us to illness.

While it’s easier, it becomes a trap because we start thinking that, since it originated from external causes, the only way to heal it is the same way—with external things. This prevents us from understanding the valid, profound reason for our illness, taking us further from ourselves. Moreover, this can result in another illness arising with the same message if we don’t learn what we need to from it, just in a different way. The body is wise; it knows how to make itself heard.

However, if we turn our gaze inward and begin a journey of self-inquiry, we realize that everything makes sense. The illness that comes to us is expressed in this way so we can understand the message it carries for us. It speaks to us about the mistaken ways in which we live our lives, our lack of understanding, our patterns of avoidance, emotional wounds, and behaviors that harm us. It speaks so clearly that it’s impossible not to believe it.

So, illness asks that we address what we don’t want to see in ourselves and take responsibility for it. That we heal our wounds and become aware. Illness beco

mes the vehicle to work on what we’ve been avoiding until now, but with this physical alert, it becomes urgent, as the entire organism is now involved.

Expanding our perspective, illness is not the “bad luck” we’ve been handed. Perhaps many years ago, it originated within and started merely as a negative thought or a blocked or repetitive emotion. By not becoming aware of it, it grew like a snowball, turning into a behavioral pattern. When we continuously use it without awareness, it reinforces the belief/emotion that generated it all.

This perspective shouldn’t bring guilt but rather liberation. It allows us to understand that if everything originates within, we can take responsibility for what happens to us—accepting the timing and intensity of the illness we are experiencing, accepting that we couldn’t have done things any differently, and with this, calmly receiving the message meant for our learning and evolution.