Daily Divine: What is spiritual illness?

​A while back I was wrestling with some deep emotional loss, and I found myself sick for four days.
 
Now, there was nothing physically wrong with me.
I didn’t need to go to the doctor. I didn’t need medicine. I didn’t have musical aches or an upset stomach or the sniffles. In fact, there was no outside sign of illness.

But in my spirit self, in my inner world… I was wiped out.
 
For whatever reason, the Divine took me down… so much so that I was almost unable to function.

I cleared my schedule I took a nap each day: not a short power nap, but a long, dream-filled, down-for-the-count nap. And after the nap, I went bed early where more dreams awaited.
 
During this time, my experience was almost as if I were pinned to the bed. It was as if the Universe had wrapped me up in sheets and blankets. Swaddled me so tight that I couldn’t move.

I was paralyzed by the need to rest and sleep and rest some more. I could not read, I could not write, I could not focus on computer.
 
I didn’t feel like talking; the best I could do was tell my family “I need to rest” or "I am resting" and then I drift back into dreams.
 
And those dreams! Here was where the Divine was working on me, healing me, opening me, expanding me.  The dreams were huge: intensive, unfathomably detailed downloads; clear visions and messages, everything so rich and full and complete in the moment, even though I cannot remember them now.

At the time, during the dreams, I knew: this is important, this is crucial, I am receiving what I need to know. I am being awakened, I am being expanded. I must rest, so that this work will be accomplished. 
 
Sometimes, in spiritual awakening, the Divine knocks us out so that they can work on us without our getting in the way.
 
We call it illness.
 
But it is often not physical but spiritual illness: awakening disguised as illness, so that we will slow down and rest enough, to receive what we really need. 

Much love, 
SARA