Many years of chronic, complex  “mystery” illness have a habit of predisposing a person to developing a “spiritual”  perspective, setting them off on a journey of consciousness expansion and tireless philosophical exploration. I’ve come to appreciate how this has such a lot to do with all the disbelief thrown at us for experiences that are, to us, far more real, insistent and unrelenting than anything we have ever known before and yet others will doubt us, over and over again, due to a lack of conventional diagnosis criteria and an inability to frame our circumstances as easily or neatly as with some other health conditions. There is simply no explaining away much of what we experience, using such a typical framework, so here lies the growth-potential since we become the leading point of a whole new way of having to think about things. We often find ourselves setting off on a fast-track evolutionary trajectory when we this happens.

As with the circumstance I wrote about recently, where a family member suggested to me that I seek psychological help for the state of my mind when I listed some of the very real physical challenges I face on a daily basis, it can be quite standard to receive this degree of disbelief about your symptoms, even from those you would most expect to take you seriously. Such people bolster their obnoxious opinions with the so-called weight of scientific “fact” since doctors are often near the top of the list of those who will doubt you or try to fob you off with a prescription for antidepressants. Incredulity is so rife in the world of medical conditions that science has as yet failed to understand that it is one of the prime causes of depression and lost morale amongst those who suffer from them, the kick in the head being when family members or friends seem to join in with all the naysaying.

There’s no denying, the pain associated with this circumstance can be acute and lasting, ringing out like a shrill bell of hurt, since our inner child can recoil into feelings of deep despair and abandonment on receiving such a smarting blow at close quarters. Yet, why not turn this around and discover for yourself all the benefits of this hardline training in how to stand up for yourself and the new paradigm that is already yours. If you now see things differently, more broadly, even more holistically as a result of your experiences, then there is the gift.

Not only that but you now have the gift of having learned, albeit the hard way, how to stand up for yourself and be your most stalwart supporter, through thick and thin, which will have unlocked for you more powerful life skills than you have yet to fully realise. To put this into context, some people, including those who are your biggest doubters, may never learn the art of self-love in this lifetime, which is why they are so quick to lash out at others!

Whether you regard your new perspective on life as “spiritual”, “evolutionary” or just plain “thinking outside of the box”, this is a life skill bar none. Ask yourself, if it had been all plain sailing and you had met none of this derision, would you have developed so much, come so very far, and in so little time?  When we stop to appreciate, there are so many positive reasons we can list for having developed this super-skill and here are some quick-fire bullet points I can mention, straight off the cuff:

• We glean mysteries beyond the “normal” range of experience because, quite simply, we have to since this is where our symptoms lie; at least those of us who dare to seek answers to our health-issues beyond the limited range of mainstream bewilderment.
• Meeting naysayers is our “normal” experience, so we develop resilience in their presence and see beyond their rigid and blinkered viewpoints.
• “Thinking outside the box” is the only option left when we have exhausted all other possibilities or are faced with so-called solutions which every instinct tells us are misguided and will only make our situation worse (in other words, self-preservation kicks in).
• We become expert “fringe” researchers, with our own experiences and a desire for our own wellbeing positioned squarely at the very heart of our studies (nothing else gives more impetus than this). This full-immersion “laboratory” of exploration predisposes us, more than anything else, towards spiritual enquiry.
• Our research efforts have the edge over any other motivation, even financial ones (compared to how much conventional research is “funded” by dubious incentives at some point in its process; for example, a pharmaceutical company investing in studies yet wanting a particular outcome in order to sell drugs). You could say we are funded by love, and a desire for truth, all along the line.
• Pack approval or consensus is so far out of our reach anyway (our lives being far from “normal” or relatable due to our bizarre health challenges) that we no longer covet it, preferring “answers” to inclusion or normalcy.
• By necessity, we are forced to become fiercely independent thinkers, reliant on our own procedures and checks, which is a powerful skill in its own right. Yet, in gleaning there are others like us who are also struggling along similiar routes, we tend to reach out to wherever they may be and become the most widely-spread network of collaborators and communicators imaginable. This models a way forwards for all of our collective futures since it is quite different to the rigid, self-interest motivated, corporate collaborations and their narrow communication channels that dominate the old paradigm.
• The open-endedness of our enquiries (along with the fact they are never “done” since there is no neat conclusion to our story) puts us on the same wavelength as the infinite and eternal. You could say, we are now on a hot-line to these sources of information and, with our communication wavelength established, consciousness growth is the next inevitable step.