Diabetes - Silent Killer? Or Awakener?
If the number of lives snapped up by a given medical condition every year is any indication of that condition's power over the all-powerful humanity, then, with its tally of 3.8 million deaths (as counted in 2007), diabetes stands heads and shoulders above several "traditional" diseases. And it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with HIV/AIDS in the table rankings for claiming the number of lives that it does.
_*The June 2008 press release from CDC, focusing on diabetes prevalence in the US, paints a gloomy picture with statistics that shows nearly 8% of the US population already suffering from this condition. Also, that there are at least another 57 million people who have been diagnosed with prediabetes - that is, are at the gates - and who are eager to join the party. It is the in-thing of the season these days, the new fashion, if you please, to declare that one has diabetes and receive sympathetic - envious? - tut-tuts from the others around.
Add to all this the point that half of the entire globe's expenditure on treating this condition is spent in the US, and you realize why Diabetology has suddenly become the latest craze amongst the young and the bright. If health drives the economy, then economy indeed drives careers. You also understand how come the spouse of the chairman of that pharma major has off-late become the cynosure of such extraordinary bitchy envy at social do's, why her sashaying has acquired an extra daintiness, and why her delicate, powdered nose is nowadays permanently up in the air. If health drives the economy, then economy indeed drives dainty vanities.
They call it a "lifestyle" disease. A condition that we bring upon ourselves through our own habits and ways of living, with family DNA playing its own catalytic role to accelerate the onset of the condition. Dig deeper and you see that diabetes is a powerful Manifester that brings to the surface all our core values and basal thinking that we have kept hidden from public view. From the depth of the invisible and intangible subconscious, these values and thoughts come up to merge and become one with the visible and tangible organs and organ systems. This merging-and-becoming-one causes a change in the behavior of the organs and organ systems, which we get to recognize as "diabetes".
_*This genteel friend silently snuffs out all vision from the eyes, and we realize what is happening only when the world around starts taking on hues of blissful blurredness. Who wants the stark of reality? Broken lineaments serve equally well, thank you. Situations-after-situations passed us by as we continued to view them with our blinkers on, with the curtains drawn, with the eyes screwed up so tight that we could see things only partially clearly. Who needs clear eyesight when the mind is closed so? After spending years turning away from what is staring at us in our face, demanding that we leave aside all our preoccupations, asking us to pay attention, we now literally manifest blindness in our life. Isn't that what the Law of Attraction is all about?
This very aggressive friend takes away the two limbs of our body that we apparently had outgrown the need for --- for it rightly discerned that the two legs have become a nuisance now... Gone are the days when we used our legs to chase some vehicle because it would take us to the school or college or place of work. Gone are the days when we used our legs to carry our body as fast as possible for that all-important meeting with the sweetheart who was finally going to say Yes or No. Gone are the days when we used our limbs to jog or run and generally kept ourselves fit and lean and slim and healthy. After settling down with a job and the house and the car and the credit card and possibly a life-mate and also possibly a kid or two, our existence had become a rhythmic cycle that began with getting up, taking breakfast, commuting to work, spending the productive hours sitting at a desk, returning from work, slouching on the sofa watching TV, eating food... and ended with going to bed --- so that we can get up the next morning. The usefulness of the two legs has now become minimal! Tell me, where was the need left for them in our life? So chop them off, we can do without these vestigial appendages!
* Whoops! I don't need the legs no more, this swimmer appears to be saying. Neglected organs and organ systems tend to wither away. Or get amputated. And this again is a Law of Nature.
This Great Manifester reprograms the scavenging functions of our two kidneys to align them with our inner definition of what is waste and what is valuable. We have had this propensity to give away at a discount that which was extremely valuable to us; while we embraced tightly that which we should have let go in the first place. Look back in your life and see when and how this happened. You will find you have frittered away so many things of value, while you have continued to cling to that which is downright bad or that which outlived its purpose so long ago that only a white-ant-eaten carcass remains. Why do you then complain that your kidneys have been damaged? Your kidneys which were supposed to have flushed away the waste products and retained all the cell-nourishing proteins and energy-generating glucose --- are now doing exactly the opposite! Your kidneys are merely following the dictates of the new logic coming from the center of your existence.
Lying on the bed in the ICU, waiting for the doctors to perform their surgical procedure that will unclog the arteries, we can see the ghost of our Manifester emerging from our body and taking a seat by the side, patting our catheter-punched hands, consoling us, and showing us how we have reached this stage because we followed a principle that directly violated a basic, subtle principle on which this Universe rests. You see, the Organ That Beats - our heart - acts as a receiver-cum-enhancer-cum-transmitter in this very intricate, giant circuitry of the anima mundi. The heart's 'diastole' is nothing but its action of expansion, and that is when it receives human energy waves from the ether around it. The heart's 'systole' is nothing but its action of contraction, and that is when it re-transmits the same energy further beyond, after enhancing it with its own energy coming from its soul. The heart therefore functions as a receiver, enhancer, and transmitter, for the Universe. That is its raison detre. That is your raison detre.
_*This is the principle on which the Universe rests. Isn't that the purpose of our existence? Isn't that the promise we made when our heartbeat was set in motion sometime during the progression of the trimesters? Waves of love and compassion and warmth and all that makes existence possible on this Earth and in this Cosmos --- were to be received, enhanced and transmitted further on by our heart. The promise to act as a receiver-cum-enhancer-cum-transmitter of energy waves that makes Life possible - you had made the promise, and don't tell me you don't remember.
But in somehow deciding to function as an island of isolation in this vast expanse of humanity, we have wrought upon ourselves the blockages that now prevent the blood to reach into and come out of the heart. And why are we crying, then? See, it is now my turn to say tut-tut. The rat-race of this world has to be won at all costs, and damn the consequences, we had decided long ago. And what were the consequences? These rotten values welled up from the subconscious and deposited themselves as plaque on the artery walls! But then, who said it was wrong to be selfish? Who said it was sin to put our own self-interests first? Who said it was inappropriate to pander to our own ego needs, and never mind if that means that we stomp on the feelings and the desires and the just expectations of the others? To just take, take, take, but not to give? Sadly, the way the heart is constructed, the expanding diastole of Take _has_ to be followed by the contracting systole of Give. If we survive from the ICU bed, hopefully we will make effort towards aligning ourselves with the principles of Nature. And if we don't... there is always the next lifetime to continue with the learning.
Were it not for diabetes, or some similar creature from the Manifester community, would we have stopped to do this introspection? We would have continued with our daily lives, continued smiling that plastic smile, continued behaving well with the others, continued paying our taxes whenever they are due, continued abiding by the law, continued keeping up with the Joneses, and after discharging all our obligations, (hopefully) we would make a graceful exit. Wouldn't we have? Thanks to such Manifesters as the diabetes, we get to go inside ourselves to really understand who and what we are, understood what our core values and statutes are that we have lived our life by, and then use our new wisdom to attempt to amend the wordings in their clauses, so that they are more in alignment with Nature.
The Great Manifester helps us resuscitate whatever is left of the balance of our breathing time here on earth, in this incarnation. And this it does through a series of awakenings. We awaken to the importance of bitterness, and appreciate that good things in life don't necessarily have to taste sweet. We awaken to the fact that our body is a temple, and appreciate that there are certain things, such as alcohol and tobacco and saturated-fatty-foods for instance, which it would be sacrilege if they were to be brought into the precincts of this temple. We awaken to the importance of looking after ourselves, and we appreciate that every part and every organ from head to toe have to be exercised and be put to good use, so that the need to render any one - or all of them - vestigial, does not arise.
We awaken to the importance of spending some time everyday in quiet reflection, simply tuning into the Universe, and we appreciate that our soul, as unique an entity as it is, derives its existence from the infinite ocean of our multi-dimensional Universe that it is immersed in and is an inherent part of. We awaken to the importance of not squandering away all our spare time before the TV or the internet and appreciate the immense sense of peace that comes over us when we are in the midst of Nature, watching idly the rhythmic rising and setting of the sun, the changing colors of the foliage with the change of the seasons, and the lives of the animals and the birds who carry on with their lives in the way Nature has taught them.
Now tell me, is Diabetes a killer? Or a Great Awakener?
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1 comments:
There is something divine about your writing, Sanjay. I wish you would write more frequently.
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