Spirituality in illness

Given no diagnosis, I set out to pursue spirituality in illness.

18 months later I had the diagnosis of Myalgic Encephalomyeltis which had no treatment (other than rest) and no cure.
Again, I was motivated to look for answers in spirituality.

My intention was two-fold–

• to find peace, life and purpose in my current circumstances
• to increase my chances of healing.

In this article, I talk about the benefits of spirituality for peace and purpose. Whilst these benefits may lead to physical healing, this is not the primary intention.

Move here for links to healing articles on spirituality and physical healing. 

Contents for this article

• Loneliness and illness
• Manage and overcome fear in a time of illness
• Spirituality in illness leads to self love
• To pursue spiritual practice in illness allows goal achievement
• Share your own experiences with spirituality and illness. Also read about others’ experience of how the spiritual journey became important to them in a time of illness, as well as the miracle healings received.

How can Spirituality help in a time of illness?

Loneliness and illness

Loneliness is common in a time of illness.

You may feel lonely because you are not able to socialise in the way you once could.

Even if you can socialise, loneliness and illness tend to go together.

The symptoms you experience are unlikely to be shared by someone you are with. And, whilst you may be glad of this for their sake, you may also feel the loneliness of knowing that they don't know how you feel.

Spiritual practice in a time of illness can be a great support to ease loneliness.

The spiritual experience is one that is accessible to everyone. It is therefore an experience which joins you with others instead of separating you from others.

Prayer given and received also increases your sense of connection with others.

Manage fear in a time of illness

You are likely to experience fear in a time of ill-health.

This can be fear of the symptoms:

• You might wonder what the symptoms mean?
• You might fear getting worse,
• You might fear death?

Or you may fear the losses that come along with an increase in symptoms.

Both the Bible and A Course In Miracles state:

"perfect love casts out fear".

Using quotes and spiritual practice, spirituality in illness raises your faith to allow you to turn up the light of God's love, so that the fear is pushed out.

It may feel at times that the spiritual journey is taking you into fear rather than out of it, and there is some truth to this.

Spiritual commitment in many ways serves as an invitation to look at the places in your life in which you feel fear so that you can offer this fear to God to be healed.

You practice trust that there is a bigger picture.

You practice trust that you are loved.

You surrender into the reality of your identity as a spiritual being.

Spirituality in illness helps with self love

When living with illness and lack I found it difficult at times to like or love myself.

I set out to learn self love.

But how do you love yourself? Isn't love extended from one person to another?

Isn't self love simply a by-product of experiencing the love of another person?

Didn't I need someone to love me before I could know how to love myself?

At the time I was largely confined to one room. I was kept alive by council carers with inadequate time to care for even basic needs. Love seemed in short supply.

I also reasoned that even if I had been able to wander out in the world, I would have been attracted to those with the ability to love me only as much as I knew how to love myself.

I resolved not to look to the world to love me, I resolved to learn to receive God’s love.

God is love. On some level I knew this.

If I felt unloved, the fault did not lie with a God who did not know how to love me. It must be my own beliefs that were blocking out my awareness of that love. I set out to identify and replace these beliefs.

Over time I developed a number of practices. These included the release and much self talk and self-dialogue work.

The love poems in my book Be Loved Beloved (the link opens a window to your nearest kindle store) are amongst those which became a source of God’s guidance on this journey.

Spiritual practice takes you into the experience of being profoundly loved and part of the abundance of All That Is.

When you experience God unconditional love and acceptance, an increasing level of self love is a natural consequence.

There is a Love that waits for us whenever we are willing to receive it.

Spirituality in illness allows goal achievement

We identify ourselves as being a body.

We define our life by becoming the mother, the doctor, the husband, the artist we want to be and we often determine our ability to play these roles by the things that we ‘do’.

In a time of illness, you may lose you can 'do' with your body, which, in turn, can lead to feelings of failure.

One of the most forceful reasons to pursue spirituality in illness is that spirituality does not place its emphasis on the body or on our physical experience but on the spiritual experience.

Both the Bible and A Course In Miracles say the body is of little significance and our identification with it will be lost along the way.

If you want to feel a success in a time of illness, set yourself a goal of engaging in a spiritual practice.

You may just find, like I did, that the goal of knowing yourself as one with God and everyone is the most important goal you can ever reach.

And by inviting the light into the darkness, you are contributing.

You are bringing heaven to earth.

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Relevant articles

• Move to learn about how using spirituality in recovery works for a physical illness such as CFS/ME and why I feel sympathy with those who hold out for a physical cure.
• Move from Spirituality In Illness to the home page on practical spirituality- prayer, forgiveness, love.
  
• Click on the link below to read about CFS and spirituality  - the spiritual practice I pursued that sustained me through years of chronic illness