Most diseases do not “just happen,” but rather result from small things added up over a long period of time. Daily habits, negative emotions, unconscious fixed muscle tensions of various parts of the body that feel “normal,” over years and decades eventually cause distressing physical symptoms. Deeply rooted ideas and beliefs, a “second nature,” affect the physical state of the body, often in a non-obvious way.
The zeitgeist of this era manifests in rapid, continuous change and impacts from many different cultures. On an individual level, this leads to confusion about identity: endemic in modern times.
Many people now swim in a sea of uncertainty about their own identity and their relationship to other people. Before these times of great technological change, most people spent most of their lives in one place and contacted mostly only other members of their own culture, so they knew who they were and how they fit into their local culture, with clear ideas of their identity and relationships.
Since the body with all its systems responds to the basic ideas patterned in the nervous system, confusion about identity in the social matrix reflects in confusion about identity in the micro physical scale of the immune system. Thus we see a huge increase, almost an epidemic, of diseases related to immune system function: the delicate balance swings one way or the other: allowing invaders to multiply or attacking parts of the body itself. The extremely complex immune system, which could be called a fragmented brain, performs the difficult task of distinguishing between “me” and “not-me:” identity at the most basic level. Diseases such as allergies, diabetes, AIDS, and cancer involve difficulties in making the distinction. What is this body and what is an invader?
Cancer camouflages itself as an organ of the body, deceiving the immune system, and even steals part of the blood supply. With allergies and diabetes the immune system over-reacts, starts attacking what is part of the body. AIDS attacks the immune system directly.
To avoid such diseases most people try to strengthen the sense of identity. To overcome the uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty about who they are, people often effectively freeze parts of the body to create the illusion of permanence or security of identity. Similarly, they repeatedly synthesize the chemicals of certain emotions – anxiety, resentment, frustration, rage, hate, spite, self-pity… chemicals which, if not fully flushed out, leave residues which interfere with the functioning of other systems and especially the immune system. Social pressure reinforces these behaviors.
In desperation, states require ever more and more stringent proofs of identity – where you live, where and when you were born, what you do. The United States instituted “Real ID,” in a frenzied attempt to establish permanent and unchanging identity, hoping this will solve the problem. Some propose to implant an id chip under the skin of every baby, to stay with them all their lives. Your “permanent record:” a fixed and unchanging identity. Though the USA was built by people from various cultures who agreed to adopt a new identity as “Americans,” now those want to keep others out. The French Academy wants to freeze the French language and not allow new words in – attempts to freeze the culture in a given form.
The identity of a river does not depend on the particular water in it at any given time. Similarly, a culture lives on despite its continuously changing population, and a person’s appearance and behaviors change over time. A body is not a thing, but a process: a set of operations using continually changing materials and energies.
Attempts to fix a permanent identity, whether by muscular “armor,” blocking emotions, dogma, or external restraints, lead to dis-ease over time.
Chinese traditional medicine concerns itself in part with the balance and flow of energy in the body. If a particular area maintains habitual tension, energy will not flow through. Residues of substances not eliminated or recycled collect in such stagnant swamps where physical “armor” blocks freedom of movement. Cancer and other diseases thrive in such conditions.
The solution requires non-linear thinking. Instead of striving to maintain one’s self-image in the face of constant change, embrace change. For the best health, one would have to give up the quest for certainty and identity and simply accept that “I don’t know who I am.” Remain flexible and adaptable and be whoever you need to be in the given situation. “I am that I am,” whatever that might be right now. Who am I? Whoever I need to be in the present moment.