The Six Honest Serving Men: The Benefit and Utility of asking Ourselves Questions on the Healing Journey
In his Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) writes a nice little poem with some very remarkable little lines:
Portrait of Rudyard Kipling at his Desk, 1899 - Sir Philip Burne-Jones
I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
Scholars believe the inspiration for this poem originally derived from a Latin Epigram by Daniel Rough, a Clerk of Romney (Present day Kent) from the 14th Century:
If you wish to be wise, I commend to you six servants,
Ask what, where, about what, why, how, when.
(Si sapiens fore vis sex servus qui tibi mondo/Quid dicas et ubi, de quo, cur, quomodo, quando).
I believe, and I would persistently argue, asking questions and not just those limited to what, why, when, how, where and who, especially during a time of illness is the best and most legitimate way to arrive at healing, even if the healing may take time.
First (superficial) set of serving Questions
For me, when I first got desperately sick with the ulcerative colitis, I was only filled with questions. Dealing with a socially inept specialist, one who favoured a feeble grunt when I queried him about the nature of the illness, I felt abandoned by the medical community and decided to conduct my own preliminary investigation into its nature. Like a detective gathering clues in a murder mystery, I approached the colitis with a keen eye for cause and effect.
To begin with, I looked back at the previous year. How was I feeling? What was I eating?
In all honesty, there were no distinct changes in my diet between 2000 and 2002. In fact, after visiting several naturopaths and learning about potential allergens, I was eating healthier than I had in years. In 2001, I happened to cut down on my red meat consumption, replacing it with a diet higher in fibre. I was consuming far more greens, taking more health food supplements.
The only thing that was amiss would be the matter of contracting a bacterial infection, c. difficile in April 2002. This was the first (inflammatory) red flag. I could pinpoint the bacterial infection to having eaten a seafood salad at a lakeside restaurant in St. Catharines. If the ulcerative colitis, I posited, is a result of the infection, maybe it would be better to clean out potential residue from the infection.
I did some further research and after a month out of the hospital, while visiting my mother in British Columbia, I purchased more supplements, all anti-microbial, all antibacterial. Some were anti-inflammatory and using these alternatives, I replaced the maintenance medicine, namely, Salofalk, which I had been taking for a few months.
Second (insightful, but ignored) set of serving Questions
“It would be better, I think, for the man who really seeks the truth not to ask what the poets say; rather, he should first learn the method of finding the scientific premises that I discussed in the second book; then he should train and exercise himself in this method; and when his training is sufficiently advanced, then, as he approaches each particular problem, he should enquire into the premise needed for proving it, which premise he should take from simple sense-perception, which from experience, whether drawn from life or from the arts, which from the truths clearly apprehended by the mind, in order to draw out from them the desired conclusion”
The colitis, despite all my dietary efforts to heal myself, returned. Still, I was determined to use supplements, to spend my money on herbs, tablets and other remedies to heal me.
Even while visiting the naturopath, a Dr. Brindisi, I was less than mindful of the possibility that the illness could have emotional and psychological underpinnings.
During our second session together, Dr. Brindisi discussed the notion of the Circadian Rhythm, that our bodies follow a daily pattern to cope with the changing moods of the day. I mentioned that I typically woke up at 3am to relieve myself. Brindisi nodded, pointed at me. “Your body is telling you something.”
“What is it telling me?”
“Well, normally the liver is awake at this hour. Perhaps there is something to do with your liver? For the Ancient Greeks, the liver is the seat of emotions. For Galen, the Roman physician, it is the seat of passions. What passions are you ignoring? What is bothering you?”
A depiction of physicians with Galen top center; image from the Vienna Dioscurides
I shrugged dismisively, determined to focus more on the herbs. Pen and journal in hand, I had noted my grocery list of supplements to purchase. One of them, I figured, once procured, would be my secret silver bullet. Brindisi waved that off, just for a moment. “Take your supplements but please… that aside, Christijan, you need to consider the emotional factor here. Colitis. The suffix, ‘itis’ in Greek and Roman refers to ‘inflammation’. Inflame. To be on fire. I ask you this, Christijan, what is your fire?”
With a furrowed chin, I wrote this question down to be polite but also as a curiosity. For now, this obtuse question would be sidelined. He persisted when I didn’t answer. I shrugged, answering that I might not be happy with school. My degree was more a soulless choice. A passionless choice. A means to an end. I didn’t feel quite encouraged to pursue it. Moreover, I was forcing myself. Or rather feeling forced by the pressure of my father.
Over his clipboard, Dr. Brindisi pointed at me again. “Something to examine, perhaps?”
At that time, I was not connected to my body or my sense of self to truly reckon with the words I’d just spoken. This would come soon enough.
Third (more meaningful) set of serving Questions
During February 2003, the supplements were not especially helpful. In fact, they had the unremarkable ability to drain my bank account based on their price tag. And wasn’t I just exchanging one remedy for another, without getting at the heart of the matter?
The question, what’s your fire? lingered with me. It felt like this persistent, pernicious thorn in my side. The question, though relevant, I thought it would be best to leave this for a later date in time. The trouble was, despite my disdain for those practicing medicine, I returned to the belly of the beast by early March when I entered McMaster Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Even hooked up to an I.V., dwelling in this stifling theatre of science and medicine, even with all the questions, I found no answers could console me or provide hope. The doctors harangued me, threw their drugs at me, and when they figured this was failing, offered to remove my large intestine. With all this pressure, the despair that was seething and weeping inside me rising to the surface, I was a mess. In an emotional phone call with my mother, I wept and burst out with anger. I suggested, maybe I should give up and let the gastroenterologists extract my colon. To just turn over and die. Why bother with life?
My mother was equally emotional, though far more grounded, and asked me if I wasn’t just pleasing my father and brother. What can you do now to change your attitude? She asked me. What makes you feel so hopeless?
School. The word blared out in my psyche, then out of my mouth. I absolutely hated being in university. Well, more my major. The dryness of academic research hurt my soul. Everything about the experience was a disastrous disappointment. Other than meeting one great professor and two friends, I felt disconnected from the learning environment and from myself.
How can you change your life? She also asked.
Leaving school, moving out west, finding healing there. Those were my first answers, the answers I gave myself. I had other plans, to get into photography or something artistic like film or writing. At least I had hope back in my life.
This momentum to change my circumstances persisted. I would also leave McMaster despite doctors recommending I remain there. They wanted to force more medication on me. I shook my head. The questions were piling up. Once out of the hospital, I consulted with a channeler about the nature of the illness. Could it be related to a past life? I had read books about people suffering from trauma experienced in a previous incarnation. The channeler said there were fragments of pain to be relieved from another existence, but I was cautioned that I couldn’t and shouldn’t ignore the sorrows of my current life. I mustn’t forget self-love, self-compassion.
Even with the regression therapy in May 2003, while making progress, I was still on the hunt for that magic bullet, that one cure-all. It was all elusive for a reason.
Living the questions to find my way into the answer
So many people I have spoken with about my healing want to know about diet and herbs and remedies. As a culture, we have been taught to distrust the food we eat and certainly, there are valid concerns about food production. Though, I put forth the idea to others that the mind crafts and creates the body, influences it far more greatly than a morsel of ingested food. During my healing crisis of 2003, I was invested in research, reading the books of Dr. Andrew Weil. An anecdote of his proved quite impressionable, where he discussed how a woman with two personalities had diverging needs. One personality had an allergy to strawberries, whereas the other didn’t.
I was sick because my mind was hurting, so too my heart. This wasn’t just about healing the suffering body, but rather the suffering self.
Empress Hotel, Victoria B.C. - Wet spring 2006
Spring 2004, while living in Victoria, B.C., I met a man named Glen, a fellow bowel sufferer who asked me a poignant question: how is the experience serving you? The question felt especially cryptic at the time. The ‘experience’… that being the ulcerative colitis? Serving me? I tilted my head. This was a trick question, right?
He frowned. Glen asked me to consider this aspect of the illness: What benefits are you receiving?
Benefits? How could suffering be beneficial?
Glen recommended meditation to inquire further into my pain. Where did it originally stem from? With notes taken and more questions, he advised me to cover my left eye with a patch and meditate on a candle and let go, allowing the old pain to re-surface. I did so, later that day, learning that I’d experienced sexual abuse during a YMCA visit in my earliest childhood. The shame and torment had become part of my life. Through hypnotherapy, I returned to the incident to overcome it.
Of course, the road to healing is filled with hesitation, and Glen’s question about the benefits of illness bothered me. I tried to focus on diet and herbs again. I would eventually come around to answering Glen’s question: I was using the illness to block connection to others. In the book, Zuleika Dobson, a character remarks that ‘death cancels all engagements.’ For me, illness was an excuse not to participate in life. It canceled my engagement with life itself. Due to my time in high school, I didn’t want to be close to people for fear of rejection and bullying. By taking on this fear, recognizing it and how the illness served me I could avoid the overcoming of my anxiety ‘by being sick’, I was able to alleviate more symptoms by simply being with others, connected.
Victoria, B.C. Spring 2006 - clearing after the rain
Gradually, over time, it became less about the ulcerative colitis and more about coming to the heart of my own psychological distress. The colitis was a sign of other things.
In spring 2006, figuring the path of past life regression therapy to be mainly exhausted, I returned to my own life for further exploration. During a session, the counselor, a quiet, thoughtful German man named Jürgen, erupted in a bout of frustration. I had been explaining my ordeal with the colitis. In one question, he shouted out: why are you so cruel to yourself?!
This question was far more visceral for me. During the previous two sessions, I hadn’t been aware of how I couched my perspective on myself. I spoke of myself as not enough, not being good for anything, struggling to fit in. With the Jürgen’s outburst, I sat there silent, pensive.
Faced with such a question, so blunt and having been deliberately evasive for so long, I couldn’t directly answer him. Instead, I suggested we meet up at a later date. The processing work had to begin and that evening, alone, when I investigated myself, dug deep into my soul’s library, I discovered an old trauma related to being rejected by my father. A feeling of shame had taken root in my mid-teens. Following my grandfather’s death in the late winter of 1997, I had felt sick at work and needed to return home to recuperate. When my dad came home from his day of labour, the question he first posed me was piercing: why aren’t you at work? Even with explaining that I was sick, he shook his head, said outright: you should have worked.
Sitting back from writing out this moment, my self-cruelty was more apparent than ever. The illness, the colitis, was me trying to make up for the shame of having disappointed my dad. By being ill, I was serving as my own whipping rod against myself. For the first time, in that session of being jolted, I began to shift away from seeing myself as a victim and more as someone responsible for his body, himself, his being. With one question asked, I was able to arrive at the core of my suffering and follow through on overcoming the pain.
As it is above, so it is below
Many people with irritable bowel diseases live lives of quiet desperation. What I remember of that time was a sense of continual urgency. There was the urgency to relieve my bowel when the occasion arose. There was the urgency to find a special herb or find the best specialist. My life was a rush to the next solution because the last solution, a momentary Band-Aid, hadn’t properly panned out. I lived in a flurry of pressing needs. In short, everything I went through, I was so desperate to solve by looking outside myself.
With the right questions, by going inside, by examining the self, the soul, going into the library of the psyche, investigating past traumas, whether in the here and now or another existence, whatever the case, I have found that the impact and utility of a good question can work wonders. It provides a greater service than all the drugs and all the diets in the world.
When I’ve met people suffering from bowel diseases, I have begun with a series of simple questions. What were the warning signs? What was your life like before the first symptoms? Where were you when the first symptoms manifested themselves? How were you doing emotionally before the symptoms first took shape? What potentially caused the eruption of the illness?
The sufferer needs to examine the possibility that all pain is self-chosen, as Kahil Gibran has noted in his wondrous book, The Prophet.
If you are reading this now and are in pain, ask questions. Do I want this pain? How does the illness (the experience of being ill) serve me? Are there benefits to being ill? What am I afraid of by being healthy again?
Rilke in Moscow, 1928 - Leonid Pasternak
Question everything but also ask questions about how to improve your life. How can I heal myself? What am I not seeing? What would my life look like without illness? What would I do differently? Where would I be? How would I be? What keeps me from being healthy?
And yes, like with the naturopath, you will need to arrive at your own fire. What is your fire? For me, it was anger at my father for not being enough. Anger for other matters that I would eventually resolve.
Ask yourself questions, listen to the honest serving men of Kipling’s poem and as the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke remarked, you will live life and in this case, you will come into the answers as much as into the healing.
“Wenn man die Fragen lebt, lebt man vielleicht allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fremden Tages in die Antworten hinein. (When you live the questions, you will gradually find, without quite noticing, that you will have lived yourself into the answers one wondrous day.)”
Related Posts:
Blog - A bowel barbed in self-cruelty - this entry concerns my session with Jürgen
Podcast - Paternal Surrogates for the Prodigal Son - for more about my talk with Glen and the relevations resulting from the discussion
Podcast - The Harrowing (Part II) - Regrets, rebellions and revelations - a discussion about the channeling experience
Blog - Anger, Ira and the early history of my inflamed bowel/body consciousness - a discussion about anger and its impact on digestion