The Long Road From Diagnosis to Remission

My capacity for growth is wondrous for me to behold, given the path I've trodden since 2001. Diagnosed with a chronic illness at the age of 5, my life became a rollercoaster of ups and downs. There were periods where it felt like my disease had won; the mantra "I am sick, I am sick, I am sick" seemed to echo in the chambers of my mind.

The turning point came in March 2021. I had spent a pandemic winter alone in Saint-Anne-Des-Monts, northern Gespe'gewa'gi. The isolation, the cold, and the river that became my confidant offered a new perspective. I told a friend, "Nothing is more important to me than healing." It was a revelation that bloomed slowly within me.

I had turned 25 and I was alone with my symptoms. It was an emergency. I decided then the drug I'd been taking since 2015 would still be of use. A new doctor took the place of the old. This specialist whom I've never met, and whose voice I only ever heard in 10 minute increments, mobilized the machine of pharmacy. The wait for renewal was too long. Blood tests indicated a need for intravenous treatments so under the needle I went. I engaged once more in the logistical ritual of medicine, undergoing a round of intravenous immunoglobulin. I was looking for answers, having not yet learned that at best I can only refine my questions. In the midst of the pandemic, I had already shed many assumptions about my own reality.

I was reliant on Revolade—a medication that acted as a coach to my bone marrow, urging it to produce more platelets. But medication is a double-edged sword. While it offered a solution, it also masked the physiological and spiritual root issues.

Over time, the limitations of pharmaceutical intervention became clear to me. My body seemed to be sending signals that it was time for a change, time to explore other pathways to healing. So, after much contemplation and against medical advice, I took my last dose on November 11th, 2020.

From there, I felt a pull towards a more holistic approach. I delved into human nutrition and discovered Healing With Whole Foods. Switching to a vegan diet and preparing my meals from scratch marked the first steps in this new direction. It was during this period that I encountered the concept of the 'Ground State' as described in Pharmakopoeia, which offered a kind of counterpoint to my previous reliance on medication.

The Ground State

Ground state training is not only about physical calibration but also spiritual and mental grounding. It's about achieving a state of equilibrium that encompasses your physical, mental, and spiritual selves—a foundational 'zero point' from which true healing and transformation can occur.

This state is not a "neutral" or "default" setting but rather a dynamic equilibrium that you constantly calibrate. Think of it as a fertile ground of endless potentiality, where all the elements—physical, mental, spiritual—are in a state of balanced readiness, integrated and harmonized.

In this state, you are more attuned to your body's innate intelligence, better able to listen to its subtle cues and respond more effectively to its needs. It's a state of heightened awareness, where you can recognize imbalances before they manifest as physical or emotional distress, thus preempting disease or dysfunction.

In the context of holistic well-being, achieving your "Ground State" is akin to tuning an instrument before a performance. The strings neither too tight nor too slack, each note resonating with clarity and depth. In this finely-tuned state, not only are you more resilient to external stressors, but you're also more receptive to healing and transformation, making it easier to align with practices, foods, and experiences that nourish you.

This "Ground State" also serves as a spiritual anchor, providing a stable point from which you can explore different states of consciousness or emotional landscapes without losing your center. It's like the eye of the storm—calm and still—even when chaos swirls around you.

Asceticism as Artistic and Spiritual Discipline

In my pursuit of the Ground State, I find myself asking fundamental questions: What do I need? Enough food, a safe shelter, people with whom to share my life. In a world overwhelmed with excess, the power to refuse becomes an act of freedom. Asceticism isn't a moral stance but an artistic response to a globally toxic environment. It's a way to reclaim personal well-being, autonomy, and to carve out space for something more aligned with the essence of life.

The term "asceticism" traces its roots to the Ancient Greek word 'askesis,' meaning training, discipline, and ongoing effort. It has evolved over time, from the Medieval Latin asceticus to its Ancient Greek antecedent ἀσκητικός (askētikós), originating from ἀσκητής (askētḗs, “monk, hermit”), and ἀσκέω (askéō, “I exercise”). In this light, asceticism becomes a form of spiritual athleticism—a rigorous training for the soul aimed at achieving personal spaciousness and well-being.

While the ascetic is traditionally a lone practitioner, more akin to a hermit than a communal monastic (cénobite in French), there is no mandate to preach or convert. The practice involves discerning between needs and wants, sensing when desires are externally imposed, and refusing what does not serve Life. This form of asceticism is neither moralistic nor evangelistic; it is artistic. It is a pure negation, a response to global poisoning, and a reclaiming of personal autonomy.

My nascent asceticism acknowledges the harsh realities: that "the world" will not be saved, that no savior exists outside of myself, that supply chain collapse is ongoing, and that consumption undermines personal autonomy. It is in this context that Mircea Eliade's notion of the sacred gains relevance. If we define the sacred spatially, coming into being through delimitation and existing as an exceptional place, then asceticism serves as a standpoint, a place from which to survey the wasteland and a habit of sheer refusal.

In this refusal lies the rejection of a culture that wreaks havoc, of commodities that cause harm. Living a sacred life, then, means acknowledging divinity not as a god-almighty-on-high, but as that-which-is. For now, let it suffice to say that divinity exists as an experience, with many metaphors to describe its facets.

In the French word acèse, asceticism also implies abstention. Yet, my practice remains joyful, making room for physical pleasure, sensuousness, and salaciousness. It’s an act of refusal—refusing the pornographer's easy meals, the ready-to-think narratives, and the prefab desires. I abstain from cherry-picked realms of possibility, choosing instead a path that aligns with the essence of life.

Finding A Root Cause

Where I then had only fear and longing, I now have words to describe my particular crisis of healing. Poor nutrition catalyzed toxemia and the emergence of dysbiosis, leading to the sheer destruction of the microbiome that protects and regulates my organism. I was vulnerable, my gut homeostasis was fragile from 20 years of regular subjection to antibiotics and other poisons. My years of binge drinking taught me the value of abstention, but not how to care for a body burdened by modern life's pharmacopeia: immunosuppressive steroids, eltrombopag, daily penicillin (for ten years), alcohol, refined sugar, caffeine, theobromine, industrial flours, cannabis abuse, among others.

I've learned compassion from the blood of strangers. The gift relationship's twenty-first century corruption of a mercantile bent has joined us , mixed our waters. Birth circumstances on this fractured continent place us on either side of a free trade agreement. My doctor's signature on the prescription reaches across time and binds me to the donors whose act expedites my temporary cure. The thousands become my bio-spiritual ancestors and theirs are lessons to heed in the blood. How am I to understand transfusion? It's a slow remembering, a reconstruction. Drop by crystal drop I absorb the infusion. The memory is wholly mine, but the blood is legion.

The 25th year of my life marked a conscious initiation into mystery. As all rites of passage, I had to shed any notions of knowing who, where, when, and why I was. As all thresholds, the other side was invisible from the entryway, unknown and unknowable to me. I had ceased all medical supervision, believing then, as i do now, that I am better equipped to heal myself than any doctor. Hubris was my downfall, as were a series of mistakes stemming from hurried action and chasmic gaps in my own knowledge. The refusal to take my pills had the effect of revealing symptoms that had lain dormant for a decade. I precipitated this, stepping through a thick fog on the frozen banks of the river sainte-anne, praying, hoping that health would occur.

I was (and am) giving serious consideration to the aspects of my experience that I could not fit into a materialist framework. I dove, alone, ever deeper into myself, away from as much of the noise as I could, and found faith in the existence of divinity of earth. I found that even as I examine the claims of charlatans and continue to reject their postural pretences, their false certainties, their easy assurances, there is an intangible, indefinite, inner resonance to the notion that this human body is a direct conduit for my experience of god.

Akeso: The Healing Muse, the Alchemist, and the Linguistic Mirror to Asceticism

Far more than a mere Greek goddess in the backdrop of my journey, Akeso has been a muse, an alchemist, and a guide toward healing and convalescence. In the tapestry of ancient myths, more prominent deities overshadow Akeso's role, yet her specific focus on the process of healing makes her an exceptionally relevant figure for me.

Unlike gods and goddesses who wield miraculous cures, Akeso's divine domain is about guiding the sick towards their own innate capacity for recuperation and renewal—as I have guided myself through this intricate maze towards remission.

The linguistic kinship between 'asceticism' and 'Akeso' adds another layer to her significance. Both terms share Greek roots, but their resonance goes beyond etymology. Just as asceticism is about a disciplined, intentional practice aimed at cultivating inner strength and personal spaciousness, Akeso represents the same principles but in the context of healing. She is the poetic embodiment of my disciplined approach to wellness: a life committed to the art of self-care, the refinement of intuition, and a deep attunement to the needs of the body and soul.

Furthermore, Akeso is multilingual, echoing the various paths to healing that different cultures offer. In Portuguese, Galician, and Italian, her name relates to lighting, igniting, and firing up—apt metaphors for the internal flame that fuels my own healing process. This adds a dynamism to Akeso, illustrating her not as a static figure but as an evolving concept that aligns with my own journey.

So, who is Akeso in the narrative of my life? She is the silent wisdom that empowers me to distinguish need from want, the touchstone against which I test the bombardment of external impositions, and the subtle voice that whispers, "You are healing, keep going." She doesn't heal; she guides. And in that guidance, I've found the courage and the strategy to navigate the labyrinth of chronic illness, pharmaceutical dependencies, and societal pressures towards a state of remission and holistic well-being.

By embracing Akeso, I've not found a way out of the maze—I've found a way into a richer understanding of myself. She is the mirror reflecting my ascetic choices, the echo of my inner voice, and the embodiment of my journey from a state of chronic illness to one of remission and renewed vitality.

I know now that healing is a series of definitely mechanisms harnessing the body's innate capacity for adaptation. My path aligns with the Buddhist Middle Way, the esotericist's way of the heart, and is neither of those things. I am neither shunning my embodied state, nor am I attached to it as a stable, unshifting identity. Creative forgetfulness is a part of the way.

Without striving towards any "spiritual goal", I remain aware of the continual tension between edifice and dissolution. I practice in order not to hold on to my biographical history as the sole source of my identity, nor to relinquish the potential for transformation inherent in the condition of being alive as a human being. I am syncretizing western tradition with internal martial art.

Internal alchemy is the process of rearranging one's inner being. I am not enlightened, nor is it true that I know nothing at all. I am getting to know myself, and I understand what I've learned and experienced. I know some of what I do not know. I am not an empty vessel for divinity, but a collaborator with the universal forces.

Being myself is a worthwhile endeavour in its own right, as is recognizing the patterns that have calcified over the course of my life.

The river thaws, its flows inexorable. I practice lovingkindness for the land itself, the boulders, the moss. May they be at peace, free from suffering. Hollow human words for a stone, yet the resonance from the heart centre is true, is real.

What does the land need? Time, which it has. Love, presence, acknowledgement. The dirt is not alone, I am here. We are here, those of us who are awake to the compassion for the web of life.

**

Hold the bodies close together

and find they resolve into

dissolution, disillusion. One

flesh precludes not another.

One voice does not make

A chorus. Listen to the silence

of the hum-

drum daily affairs, and find

cracks through which to slip

in which to get lost. Only

with loss does the finding

have meaning. Only after

does before have value.

Not a comparison

to draw between discrete

units

but an exponential

resonance

acknowledge the cycle

in its full ongoing dream.

**

My journey has been about integration—of the discipline embodied by asceticism, of the wisdom symbolized by Akeso, and of the self-knowledge that has emerged through this long, winding road. As I sit here in 2023, in a state of remission, I can't help but see the beautiful confluence of these diverse streams.

It's as if Akeso and the principles of asceticism have walked alongside me as two guiding lights, each illuminating different facets of my path. I realize now that my quest for remission hasn't been about reaching a destination; it's been about the richness of the journey itself, and the transformation that has made me not a seeker of Akeso, but a living embodiment of her healing essence.

By weaving these threads together—asceticism, the ground state, and the mythological guidance of Akeso—I've found a holistic way to navigate the complexities of chronic illness and life itself. In embracing these elements, I am not only looking for Akeso; I am embracing her. And in this, I've found myself on a path not to remission, but to a richer, fuller life.