Allegory of the helm and helmsman: the self-as-body's journey forward into the storm

I don’t believe in cures. I don’t believe in ‘magic bullets’.

I also don’t believe in fighting an illness, combating disease.

Such approaches to healing and overcoming are counterproductive, counter-intuitive. Any kind of war is destructive. Rifts are healed best by resolving conflicts, not prolonging them.

I have learned that the self is reflected in the body, the body reflected in the self. They are not separate entities: I am not a bystander of my body. My body is not a mere vehicle of my being in that I can be separate from it. I move through life in my body but I cannot exchange my body for another. My emotions help me shape my perceptions of the world and understand my place in relation to others and assist in the preservation of myself.

This is why I liken our emotions and ourselves to the helm and helmsman of a ship upon a sea. In our bodies, we feel the calm and kind winds. We laugh and experience a good joke or story, in the company of friends. We smile in the company of our lovers, in the things we enjoy whether sports or art. We feel jovial in our passions.

Occasionally, the brunt of the world’s chaos roars against us and it is our emotions that react to this confusing power, this storm. We must feel it first, comprehend it second before we steady ourselves and steer confidently.

Yet the helmsman must understand that his being exists in the entirety of the ship and though he steers, he is also every aspect of the vessel from stern to bow, port and starboard, sails and anchor, above and below deck even if he is not entirely aware of what is happening at all time.

For me the ulcerative colitis was like a fire going on underneath deck, a result of some blow from a previous storm. Instead of putting the fire out, I at first contained it with drugs. It burned quietly.

When the flames broke out and rose again, it almost consumed my ship. After a disastrous bout in the hospital, one where I was humiliated and patronized by physicians, I started to turn away from the medical community to learn more about the power of spirituality and emotional healing. Drugs could only go skin deep. I needed to remove the true source of the disease’s fire.

Currently, I move forward in this vessel of mine with the awareness that I am still my body, I am still steering.

Self-deceit — it cannot be cured by medicine. This is pure folly. Instead, to be aware of myself, involves constant watch of my emotions. But I would rather be in touch with my body and self instead of feeding my being drugs, or a host of supplements or treating it with punitive diets.

And this is why I stress that healing and overcoming is a movement forward, not back. When I imagine a cure or a magic bullet taking away an illness, ‘solving it’ completely, I imagine it taking away all memory of an illness, disrupting navigation.

Illness guides as much as it teaches. And though on the surface, it feels like reduction and humiliation, a weakening, a going under, a fault, a mistake, a blot on human development, a dark night of the soul, when you learn from an illness, when you follow its course, you encounter possibilities in yourself, shadows and the bleakest aspect of your being. In other words: you explore in a way having merely good health alone does not offer.

As the helmsman, in this exploration, this voyage, I must feel the comings and goings whether in storm or calmer weather to steer, to pilot my way in life.

The other shore is far off. I have learned to love this vessel of mine but also love myself as the helmsman, to work with the helm and let it guide me.

Otherwise, I risk burning and sinking.