I am not going to get into an esoteric discussion of religion or spirituality here.  No, that seems to have been going on since the invention of humanity itself.  There is this camp and that camp and there is a growing movement that believes it is all poppy cock.  I am not part of that movement but I am watching it with curiosity and amusement.  What I am going to do is provide you with a sliver of a perspective regarding type 1 diabetes.

I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 14 in 1976.  I had not been brought up with any real model of how the world works except that it revolved around me and my immediate family.  I soon came to realize that this model was not very workable and started to explore other possible ways of understanding “how it works.”  

In college I studied the great philosophers and the great religions and have continued to study, explore and experiment throughout my life.  I have never been able to buy into any particular way of looking at our existence (like a religion or a cult) and have managed to stay in a low grade fever of existential crisis pretty much all of my life.  

The acquisition of Type 1 Diabetes was a shock and it focused my attention on my mortality perhaps quicker than most get to think about it.  However, all of my study and exploration has not been for not.  I have come to a foundational understanding of the human condition that I believe is true and accurate and is supported by the latest science and current ways of thinking that are expressed in books like “The Secret” and the movie “What the Bleep do we Know.”  

I believe that the foundation of spirituality is found in the interplay between Fulfillment and Desire.  Two apparent polar opposites.  Our world is full of polar opposites.  And Fulfillment vs. Desire is the Grand Daddy of them all.  

Continue reading Type 1 Diabetes; A Spiritual Perspective →

As you know, if you have read some of these blogs, I have had Type 1 diabetes since age 14.  I am now 45.  I believe I am in the process of healing from the disease.  Notice I did not say I am curing myself.  A cure is coming and people are working on a cure.  I have realized that it is my role, my responsibility to heal not to cure.  This perspective has sent me down a few roads I would like to share in this post.  Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune deficiency disease.  The immune system is designed to attack invaders.  The deficiency is that it somehow decided that the cells that produce insulin are bad and therefore killed them off and continues to kill them off.  As I understand it this is one of the problems with stem cell implants.  The immune system still sees the insulin producing cells as foreign invaders and proceeds to attack and rid them from the body.  The result is catastrophic;  complete system failure.  Thanks to medical science the path of curing disease has been established and continues to progress. Injectable insulin allows the body to survive and blood glucose testing allows us to gain good control.   But why?  Why has the immune system wrongly identified these cells for termination?  I know that there are some medical explanations and genetic faults that perhaps allow it but why?  The answer to why is what has driven my healing process and I have a few clues.1.  I have concluded that there is part of me that does not want to survive in this form, at this time.  2.  I have concluded that there is an issue of addiction.  Think about it.  We need to inject, get our “fix” or be “hooked” to a pump.  3.  There is an issue of balance.  The result of the disease is an imbalance of a critical system in the body and the means to survive involves an ongoing balancing act.The cure will come only when the healing has begun.