Do You Want To Be Well?

On my walk this morning, I listened to one of the Oprah and Eckhart webinars.  In response to a question, Eckhart mentioned that the ego (and the pain body) love negativity.  He addresses this in more detail in the Power of Now and A New Earth:

Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change.  It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry, or hard-done-by-person.  You will ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life.  This is a common phenomenon.  It is also insane. (PON 157)

Complaining is one of the ego's favorite strategies for strengthening itself. Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in.

An illness can either strengthen or weaken the ego. If you complain, feel self pity or resent being ill, you ego becomes stronger. It also becomes stronger if you make the illness part of your conceptional identity: “I am a sufferer of such and such a disease.” Ah, so now we know who you are. Some people, on the other hand, who in normal life have a big ego, suddenly become gentle and kind and much nicer people when they are ill. They may gain insights they many never have had in their normal life. They may access their inner knowing and contentment and speak words of wisdom. Then, when they get better, energy returns and so does the ego.

When you are ill, your energy level is quite low, and the intelligence of the organism may take over and use the remaining energy for the healing of the body, and so there is not enough left for the mind, that is to say, egoic thinking and emotion. The ego burns up considerable amounts of energy. In some cases, however, the ego retains the little energy that remains and uses it for its own purposes. Needless to say, those people who experience a strengthening of the ego in illness take much longer to recover. Some never do, and so the illness becomes chronic and a permanent part of their false sense of self.

A very common role is the one of victim, and the form of attention it seeks is sympathy or pity or other’s interest in my problems, “me and my story”. Seeing oneself as a victim is an element in many egoic patterns, such as complaining, being offended, outraged, and so on. Of course, once I am identified with a story in which I assigned myself the role of victim, I don’t want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to it “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate, or God. It gives definition to my self image, makes me into someone and that is all that matters to the ego. (ANE)

 

In John Chapter 5, scripture is a bit more concise in conveying the same truth. 

⁵There was a certain man there who had suffered with a deep-seated and lingering disorder for thirty-eight years.
⁶When Jesus noticed him lying there [helpless], knowing that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, Do you want to become well? [Are you really in earnest about getting well?]
⁷The invalid answered, Sir, I have nobody when the water is moving to put me into the pool; but while I am trying to come [into it] myself, somebody else steps down ahead of me.  AMP

 

The thing is that without the little nudge from Tolle, I might not have understood the mechanics behind the question Jesus asked.  "Of course, he wants to get well," has always been my first thought.  It never occurred to me that perhaps the man by the pool at Bethesda had no identity or self image apart from sick, crippled, victim.  Perhaps never being the first in the pool after the stirring of the waters was no accident. 

I wonder if it was a look in the invalid's eyes...or something that Jesus could see in the man's heart because even though the invalid did not directly answer the question.. Jesus healed him anyway. 

⁸Jesus said to him, Get up! Pick up your bed and walk!
⁹Instantly the man became well and recovered his strength and picked up his bed and walked.

I think it is interesting that, according to the Strong's, one of the meanings for the word translated as "walk" (Peripateo) is:

Hebrew for, to live

Then later when Jesus see the invalid in the temple, he cautions,

See, you are well! Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.

Stop sinning?  What was the invalid's sin?  Among the meanings for the word translated sin:

• to miss the mark
• to err, be mistaken
• to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honour, to do or go wrong

  So what did Jesus mean when he said, "Stop sinning?"  Stop living out of your egoic nature?  Out of the carnal man, the adamic man? Let go of the image of cripple that his ego, for whatever reason, identified so strongly with.  Stop missing the mark....or something worse may happen. 

So what is the message for us?  Simple. We need to ask ourselves the same question Jesus asked the invalid.  Do you want to be well?  Do you want to be whole?  Let go of your identification with negativity, with sickness, with complaining.  Stop thinking out of a victim mentality.  Poor, poor pitiful me.  Pick up your bed and walk.  Pick up your bed and live.....