The Wisdom of Suffering and the Blessings of Death

Tribulations, like disease, aren't problems, they're solutions. What compound interest teaches us about disease progression. Death is a new beginning, both for the dead and their survivors.

My father died recently. Even though it was easy to see it coming, it was still a shock. Even though I had imagined what it would be like it was still completely different, because you can’t really imagine something you’ve never experienced. Even after reading the most elaborate and lengthy explanation describing the taste of a starfruit you still can’t know what it tastes like without tasting it. So those who have gone through it will know and those who haven’t may yet learn something of value and take it to heart.

When someone you loved dies what often happens is that all the interpersonal conflict vanishes suddenly and you’re left with a greater appreciation of everything that was good about them (similar to a relationship breakup). There’s also regret over missed opportunities. And of course a sense of loss - the world may seem incomplete without them. Sadness can overwhelm you in the first few days, and the situation can seem unreal. The emotion is often released in intermittent bursts, especially around close relations and friends. Your brain doesn’t really work properly for at least a few days, if not a few weeks, but it’s definitely worse in the first few days when you’re in a bit of a fog, and it's very helpful to have a plan in place, or someone who just comes and takes care of things like funeral arrangements. The problem is the planning is often something you don’t want to do because you don’t want to think about the inevitable.

Grieving

There is healthy grieving and unhealthy grieving. The unhealthy variety fixates on regrets. Why didn’t I spend more time with him? Why wasn’t I a better son?

The key to avoiding unhealthy grief is to realize that everything that happens in life, but especially the most consequential of events, is meant to teach you something about yourself and provide fuel for progress. The past is set in stone, regrets and guilt on their own are worse than useless, they’re pointless self-flagellation. The point of past mistakes is to change the present and thereby the future. That’s how you make up for the past. That’s what repentance actually entails. Use the pain and realizations that dawn on you to fix yourself up.

Mindset

The right spiritual mindset helps a lot when dealing with death. You know that the person still exists, they’ve just left your locale and there’s no technology to reach them. 10,000 years ago it would be as if they set off across the earth in search of a new land to settle. No postal system to stay in touch.

You also know that whatever your failings were, they were only your loved ones' test. You didn’t wrong them so much as you wronged yourself, and while you’re still alive that can be fixed if you want to fix it.

Every Disease Has a Cure?

As a physician I was sure my father’s illness could be cured, and in truth the illness he had, as severe as it was, could have been cured. But not every patient can be cured. It really came down to the will to live, which he had lost. The real job was not what medicine to administer, it was reigniting that will to remain here. That requires purpose, and we couldn’t inspire him with one.

Suffering and Patience

He suffered for many years, one of the countless casualties of a flawed medical paradigm that harms much more than it helps and traps both patients and physicians inside a Stockholm syndrome style nightmare that they mistake for the best possible world.

It doesn’t take much to break free from the nightmare once you wake up to it, but lifelong brainwashing and deliberate obfuscation make it hard for the awakening to happen, and in the best case it can take many years for realization to slowly dawn.

In med school we’re deluged with information, but simple foundational concepts that are crucial for making sense of it all and that should have been taught on day one, instead took about 15 years to really sink in for me:

Since the body self heals, all disease can only be due to 2 categories of causes, lack of nutrients and excess of toxicity. If these are ignored and symptoms are treated with a bandaid-like approach, the underlying causes persist in worsening the situation, basically making the real disease progress under the surface like a festering wound, to eventually break free of the bandaid and cause far bigger problems. Accepting a mainstream medical prescription means passing the buck to your future self with such a hefty side of interest, that it completely overshadows the main course. Repeat the same mistake with a bigger bandaid over and over again and the only way to grasp the eventual outcome is to understand the curse of compounding.

Compounding Disease

Compounding has two faces, a blessed one and a cursed one. Let’s begin with the positive side which will help illustrate the negative one.

In 2020 when Warren Buffet was 90 years old his net worth was $84.5 Billion. Of that, almost all of it, specifically $84.2 Billion was accumulated after his 50th birthday, and $81.5 Billion after the age of 65, when most aim to retire.

What many don’t know about him is that he began his investment career when he was 10 years old and by 30 had a net worth of a million. He was not the best investor on the planet, not by a long shot. He was good, but what really distinguished him was his persistence, like the story of the tortoise and the hare. He compounded wealth at 22% annually, certainly not shabby, but Jim Simons, the original “quant” on Wall Street, was far better, compounding his portfolio at a staggering 66% annually for over 40 years.

However Buffet blew way past Simons who had “only” $21 Billion in 2020, 75% less than Warren.

On the other hand if Buffett had begun his career like a “normal” person once he got out of grad school at 30, with savings of say $25,000, and then retired after a successful investing career where he made a healthy return of 22% annually for 40 years, deciding to retire at 70, he would have walked away with a grand total of “only” $71 million.

Time in the market trumped timing the market (at least over the last 50 years). But the most important point is this: the vast majority of the growth happens at the end of the time period. The total grows relatively slowly for a prolonged period and then spikes up in true hockey fashion:

Now imagine that instead of being a great investor Buffet had been a great scoundrel running a 3rd world country and taking on odious debt at exorbitant interest rates and rolling it over repeatedely for 80 years.

He would have dug a financial Mariana trench instead of scaling a financial Mt Everest.

The point of this little financial aside is that disease works the same way. You go deeper and deeper into debt by the horrors of compounding instead of getting richer and richer by its magic. The longer you allow it to continue the more massive the problem becomes. Stage 4 aggressive cancer is one of the “negative billionaire” endings that awaits those traveling down that deadly road.

Silver Lining

Despite all this, what I realized after my father’s passing was that all the suffering he endured was ultimately a mercy on him. Throughout his life he had been so worried about all the ways things could go wrong that he over-planned and over-controlled for the right outcomes. Eventually it made him paranoid about things that others wouldn’t have thought twice about. Then his illness led to the gradual loss of all control over his life. He needed 24/7 help to do anything. It was difficult, but he was extremely patient and eventually he accepted his lot and let go to a great degree and stopped worrying and obsessing because he just had to.

The point is that the reason we’re here on this earth is to embark on a spiritual journey of change and gradual enlightenment. The journey means balancing our own extremes. As Aristotle said, all virtues are the midpoint between two extremes. For example diligence is between laziness on the one hand and overworking on the other.

Everyone has a really important choice to make in life. Either walk the path of progress of your own accord, or be dragged along it against your will.

What is apparent to me now is that many would choose to walk the path willingly if not for the miseducation of their childhood. They don’t actually understand the true nature of their reality.

This leads to suffering, but all roads still lead towards the same place.

For those who wake up, what others experience as suffering is not experienced by them as suffering, because they understand what it all means. The most enlightened of them give thanks for every tribulation because they see it for what it is: a gift of growth and expansion. With each hardship comes an even greater opening and relief. Everyone is tested to their limits, and if they pass, those limits expand.

Suffering is the Solution

All this ties back into health and disease. Everyone thinks disease is a problem, but it’s not. Disease is a solution to a problem. Disease is a blessing in disguise.

The symptoms and signs of disease are due to your own immune system struggling to fight off or at least keep in check the underlying enemy that is out to destroy you, whether that be ever increasing toxins or multiplying pathogens. The signs and symptoms are maneuvers to keep everything working adequately, even if some measures the body takes seem harmful in isolation. The signs and symptoms are a message to you that there is something wrong you need to fix via comprehensive detox and nutritional support at every level of your being - the physical, energetic, emotional, psychological, intellectual, etc. Even if you don’t understand any of this, and completely miss the point as most people in the modern world do, disease still benefits you, as it did my father. It gradually teaches you a lesson that you need to learn because it is a manifestation of your deepest need - the need to perfect your soul.

Everything that happens in your life reflects the state of your own soul and disease is one of the most powerful means by which souls are balanced despite themselves.

Finding Solace

Finally the thing that provided the most solace for me after my father’s death was praying for his soul, for his forgiveness and increase in the next world; doing good works and donating the reward for them to him. Every time I remembered him in the weeks after his death, which was all the time, I prayed for him or endeavored to do something good in his name by which to benefit him in the next world.

His passing also energized me to change, to finally begin a long put off, difficult detox protocol, to recommit to and make progress on my own spiritual journey, to change my remaining relationships for the better.

Never despair because death is not the end and it’s never too late to benefit the ones you love. Disease and death are both blessings and much relief comes from perceiving them as such.

Most importantly, as long as you’re alive it’s never too late to change your course.