{"id":107,"date":"2007-02-16T11:15:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-16T11:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html"},"modified":"2007-02-16T11:15:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-16T11:15:00","slug":"he-had-it-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html","title":{"rendered":"He Had It Coming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure glad my friend Eileen isn&#8217;t asked to give many eulogies, because they&#8217;d all sound like this: &#8220;It&#8217;s a bummer he&#8217;s gone, but he had it coming to him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>An avid disciple of medical intuitive <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myss.com\/\">Caroline Myss<\/a>, Eileen believes all illness results from blocked energy in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chakra\">chakras<\/a> one through seven. <\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t discuss my health with her anymore because, according to my New Age friend, everything is my fault: from the irregular periods to the brain growth to my bipolar disorder. Suffering is punishment for my not being a stronger person, a woman who can master her thoughts, control her emotions, and direct every cell in her being toward health.<\/p>\n<p>I once asked Eileen how she could explain the five year old boy who died of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leukemia.org\/hm_lls\">Leukemia<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He may have made a contract with God before he was born,&#8221; she replied. &#8220;Or maybe he drank bad water.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Jesus says I have to love Eileen, so I haven&#8217;t deleted her number from my cell phone. But I can and do have a major problem with her philosophy. Because, to my ears, it sounds incredibly judgmental and lacking in compassion. <\/p>\n<p>Like Eileen I believe in the mind-body connection, which is why I expected yoga, prayer, and meditation to heal me of my depression. I figured that if relaxation exercises and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcg.edu\/news\/2005NewsRel\/Meditation.html\">mindfulness can combat and prevent heart disease<\/a> and diabetes, as studies indicate, that breath work and meditation should surely correct the distortions in my brain electrochemistry. Self-loathing and suicidal idealizations would disappear under my yoga mat if I said &#8220;Om&#8221; often enough.<\/p>\n<p>When that didn&#8217;t happen I was forced to hand over my stuck-up and unfair assumptions on matters of health: if you took care of yourself, you stayed well. I was thrown off my pedestal, onto a ground of rubble, where I began to empathize with others who, from no fault of their own, contracted diseases and sickness. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d give a much better eulogy today than I would have in the years before my breakdown. Suffering and illness have humbled me. When I hear people like Eileen throw out black-and-white explanations and solutions to a myriad of problems surrounding different types of illness, I realize that you can afford to be arrogant when you&#8217;ve got your health. But that doesn&#8217;t mean you should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure glad my friend Eileen isn&#8217;t asked to give many eulogies, because they&#8217;d all sound like this: &#8220;It&#8217;s a bummer he&#8217;s gone, but he had it coming to him.&#8221; An avid disciple of medical intuitive Caroline Myss, Eileen believes all illness results from blocked energy in chakras one through seven. I don&#8217;t discuss my&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-and-health"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>He Had It Coming - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"He Had It Coming - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;m sure glad my friend Eileen isn&#8217;t asked to give many eulogies, because they&#8217;d all sound like this: &#8220;It&#8217;s a bummer he&#8217;s gone, but he had it coming to him.&#8221; An avid disciple of medical intuitive Caroline Myss, Eileen believes all illness results from blocked energy in chakras one through seven. I don&#8217;t discuss my&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-02-16T11:15:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"He Had It Coming - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"He Had It Coming - Beyond Blue","og_description":"I&#8217;m sure glad my friend Eileen isn&#8217;t asked to give many eulogies, because they&#8217;d all sound like this: &#8220;It&#8217;s a bummer he&#8217;s gone, but he had it coming to him.&#8221; An avid disciple of medical intuitive Caroline Myss, Eileen believes all illness results from blocked energy in chakras one through seven. I don&#8217;t discuss my&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2007-02-16T11:15:00+00:00","author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html","name":"He Had It Coming - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-02-16T11:15:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-02-16T11:15:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/9a07cb215ebbbdc185d2b2a55131e7a2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/02\/he-had-it-coming.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"He Had It Coming"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. 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