The Healing Journey
One of Lao Tzu’s famous
sayings is “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” The TAO journey
of healing myasthenia gravis, or any autoimmune disease, is a
great undertaking: every step is as important as the first; and each step is as
firm as the previous one. The Chinese often like to say “feet stepping on solid
and steady ground.” Your healing journey is the sum of all the steps you are
going to take.
Before you take your first step, ponder on this reality: in life,
all humans have two desires or pursuits—happiness
and healthiness, which not only often come with many delusions and illusions but also
always are unattainable and unsustainable. But the TAO may give you
self-intuition and self-enlightenment to help you along your own journey of healing
myasthenia gravis.
The Step of No Desire
and No Intent
It is your healing journey, and
only you can take your first step. So, you must choose to take your first step to go on
that healing journey.
To
continue on your journey, paradoxically, you must show
no desire to heal and no intent to reach your destination.
But why?
The
desire for good health may be difficult to sustain for someone who is currently
confronted with the many health issues related to myasthenia gravis. It may seem not only difficult but almost
impossible for that individual to restore natural health and get well again.
Worse, ill health may even make that individual feel depressed and forget to
take care of the body, and thus allowing the body's malfunctions to continue
and deteriorate further.
A wise traveler on a long journey has no fixed
plans, and is not intent upon arriving the destination within a certain time
frame. But that traveler is ready to use all the situations and all the people
encountered to help him along the long journey.
Likewise, healing is a long, on-going process, and not a
destination. With innate and inexplicable power, it may appear that everyone
and everything along your journey are also playing a part in facilitating in
your favor all your endeavors in healing your myasthenia gravis.
The
bottom line: take your first step of no desire and no intent for healing so as to
change and to overcome any attitude of confusion and even despair related to
the trauma of your myasthenia gravis diagnosis.
On your healing journey, with no intent upon arriving
at the destination any time soon, you will continue to keep yourself moving
forward, and you will then go the long distance on your long healing journey.
The TAO
According to the TAO, being free of desires is your path to
detachment, and thus giving you clarity of thinking to start your own healing
journey.
Paradoxically, if you have no desire to desire
for change or healing, there is stillness,
in which you may see yourself gradually changing for the better in order to
slowly heal yourself:
“To live a
life of harmony, we need letting life live by itself. . .
So, follow
the Way.
Stop
striving to change ourselves: we are naturally changing.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao
Te Ching, Chapter 57)
“Accordingly,
we do not rush into things.
We neither
strain nor stress.
We let go
of success and failure.
We
patiently take the next necessary step, a small step and one step at a time.
We
relinquish our conditioned thinking. Being our true nature, we help all beings
return to
their own nature too.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao
Te Ching, Chapter 64)
According
to the TAO, a good traveler neither has fixed plans, nor shows any effort to
arrive at the destination:
“The
softest thing in the world
overcomes what seems to be the
hardest.
That which has no form
penetrates what seems to be
impenetrable.
That is why we exert effortless
effort.
We act without over-doing.
We teach without arguing.
This is the Way to true wisdom.
This is not a popular way
because people prefer over-doing.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao
Te Ching, Chapter 43)
Begin
your healing journey, and take your first step with effortless effort and
humble simplicity:
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by
Stephen Lau
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