Enlightenment Through Dengue
Just to fill you in, in case you’re not aware, dengue fever is a deadly virus that’s transmitted by mosquitos in the tropics. Similar to Malaria, even if you survive it, it’s an incredibly difficult experience. About 10x worse than any other virus or disease I’ve ever had.
The one weird thing about dengue fever, or this dengue fever, at least, is that on some level, I feel like I, or some part of me anyway, wanted this to happen. This seems like a part of the plan. The path, or something. Like a rite of passage or a bad trip I had to go through. and fuck, I really wish there was an easier way.
I have a protocol for dengue. To keep my immune system up at all times. It kept me safe for 5 years here in the jungles of South East Thailand. I kept vigilant and stuck to protocol at all times, and everything was fine. But a couple of weeks ago, I strayed. I didn’t keep my immune system up. I started feeling bad and ignored the fever. Instead of resting right away, I popped an Advil and went out and about on what ended up being a much longer and more exhausting day than expected.
By the end of it, completely exhausted, driving the 2-minute-long way home was merely impossible. Luckily, I made it home, just to collapse right away. Not to be back up on my feet for about 5–6 days.
Dengue fever is really nothing like anything else I’ve ever experienced. Funny, because for a while there I was sure I had Covid. But that’s the thing. It’s like I just didn’t have the mental faculties to even question my thoughts anymore. I was in a state of very partial consciousness. With extremely high fever. How high? I don’t even know. I didn’t check even once. I don’t even have a thermometer, which didn’t strike me as a problem even for one second during this entire week.
It was a very high fever though, that’s for sure. And it wouldn’t subside for days.
I have a cooling pad in the fridge, ready to use. Never have used it. Never have I even thought of doing all the obvious things I’d usually do to reduce fever and make sure I don’t get brain damage. For the entire time, my mind just wasn’t there. Only about 6 days in, after the fever completely broke, did any of this cross my mind.
If to compare this to anything else I’ve been through, I’d say it was like getting stuck on Ayahuasca for a whole week. You feel like absolute shit. You puke over and over again. You get diarrhea. You lose control over your vessel, and you go on a journey into the darkest corners of your psyche.
Then you go through that over and over and over again, for a whole week, without any way to call it quits and leave.
So, in the beginning, you’re stuck in bed and you completely lose any sense of control over your own body, and I mean completely! Like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Not only I couldn’t get up, but I couldn’t even move my leg and initiate some kind of movement. I’m pretty sure that at some point I couldn’t even wiggle my toes. Absolutely no control over the body. And you want to move. After a few hours, you so desperately want to move! But, you can’t! You can’t and the more you want the more miserable you become. At this point, it’s no longer just agonizing physical pain, but now there’s also the mental and emotional pain — the misery.
That’s when the spiritual lessons started. You desire → you suffer. Straight up. Loud and clear.
To survive dengue you must let go of all desires, all intentions, all needs and wants. Any aspiration to be somewhere else, get up, or just change position quickly transforms into pure misery. It has never been clearer than it is right now: to want, is to suffer.
So I submit. I let go. I accept whatever is happening without any attempt to change anything.
I shall lay here in bed and wait for the universe to have its way with me. But, at least, as I wither away, I will not suffer. Not mentally anyway. Physically this is still horrible and there’s just nothing I can do about it. The physical things still have to take their course, but I don’t have to be miserable while it happens.
But this is not all!
As you do that, and let go of any desire for change, something weird happens. At some point, after giving up any desire or intention to get out of bed. Suddenly, the body gets up and starts moving around. All on its own, it seems.
The body is now in control. It’s an autonomous entity and I’m not even sure what it’s doing. The mind feels like it’s been disconnected. I can try to decide what to do, but apparently, luckily, it seems I don’t have to.
Things are happening. The body is moving, and it seems like it knows what it’s doing. Thank God!
I think it’s heading to the bathroom. It’s taking a shower. I’m not sure why, but I’m kind of glad it’s being responsible. Is this the most important thing right now? I’m not sure. But hey, nothing I can do about it. At least I’ll be clean.
After that, it went on making food, eating it, and even cleaning up and sorting all that mess that had been slowly creeping its way in, after a week of professional neglect.
It seemed like the body was running tasks, but the weird thing was that I wasn’t initiating these tasks. It was all just happening. Happening pretty much the way it should, but this time, unconsciously, without me.
What’s happening here?!
Am I a servant? An appendix? Am I brain-damaged for life?
It felt completely psychedelic. Like I got stuck on Acid for a whole week. A really bad trip, but bad trips are when we really get to know ourselves, and this was definitely bad, weird, and self-educational.
The body has its own mind. That’s what it felt like anyway. It’s own innate intelligence that knows what to do and does it when it needs to, or when it thinks it’s the right time to do so. I’m not sure how it makes these decisions, and it refuses to tell me. I think…
However, this opened up a very different way of living. That thing we’d usually call ‘impulsive’, might actually be wise. On some domains, and in some ways, at least.
Surrendering to the body’s intelligence and living without a mind is a practice I’d definitely want to maintain in my life. Not firmly controlling and initiating action, but instead, merely making suggestions and observing to see where it leads. And if it doesn’t lead to where I want it to, just observe and see where it goes. With trust, or at least, curiosity.
After all, if there is another intelligence, or more intelligence, somewhere inside this body, it would be wise to try and make use of it. I find it hard to believe it would make me dumber, but it’s too soon to tell. Let’s explore this for a while longer.
One more thing that becomes very apparent when finding yourself stuck in such a helpless condition for such a long time is the people around you — your social backbone.
It’s when you really need someone that you find out where you’ve been investing your social energy correctly, and where you’ve just been throwing it away.
I’m personally one of those people who never needed anyone. What’s called an avoidant attachment, if you’re familiar with Bowlby’s attachment theory.
Of course, it doesn’t mean I actually don’t need anyone, it just means that from a very young age, I’ve been conditioned to never ask for help, or rely on anyone, no matter what happens. Absolute and total self-reliance. Not because it’s wise, beneficial, or good for me, but simply because my parents just didn’t really have any time for me. Or, at least, I wasn’t a priority for them.
Growing up, my parents were never there for me. Not after I finished growing up either. The rest of the family followed suit, including the family I’ve come to choose for myself later on in life — various types and levels of partners. None of them were ever there to offer any support. That was completely fine though, because as far as I could tell, since my perception of reality is heavily tinted with CPTSD and maladaptive patterns, this is exactly how things should be.
… I do wonder sometimes if it all goes back to some kind of a sense of low self-worth or something. Perhaps somewhere inside there’s a hidden belief that that I’m not good enough or not worthy of anyone’s time, maybe… But I’m not feeling it — not resonating with any of that stuff. I think it’s just a pattern. Not something that evolved as a deep emotional Freudian issue, but just a simple behavioral pattern. Like Skinner’s conditioned dogs and pidgins. I was simply conditioned to not use that ‘ask for help’ function, and so it withered away.
It’s just simple neuroscience: use it or lose it. If you’re not practicing that ability, it just goes away. The neural pathways atrophy and that option is just no longer there.
I have to find it though, practice it, and slowly build that “muscle” back up. And what a perfect opportunity is this?!
I usually don’t get sick for long. As a self-reliant person, obviously, I meticulously keep my immune system up to speed at all times. I take my supplements regularly, do my workouts, and practice yoga daily. When struck by the occasional virus, I usually get back on my feet within 24 hours, 48 max, ever! And I’m also usually in a relationship, and living with someone, tightly, so I never got to be all that alone either.
This whole situation is pretty rare. I’m on my own, single again, living on my own in a foreign country, so no family anywhere around either. Friends though. Lots of friends. And some of them appeared to be surprisingly good and helpful.
When it really came to it, after about three days of tripping out on super-high fever, I reached out. No, actually I didn’t, my brain was in a vegetative mush state, but at some point people contacted me. I got some messages, I said I was sick, and then reactions varied widely!
Even with only 20% brain capacity, or perhaps because it it, it was suddenly very noticeable that people can be divided into two categories. It wasn’t even a spectrum, but two very distinct reactions came through. Some are supportive and want to do something to help, and then, some just want to tell you to do things on your own.
So, with each person I’d talk to, either they’d be compassionate, caring, and helpful, and bring me some food over or something. Or, they would add tasks to my to-do list. Which is absolutely ridiculous at this state, because one, I can’t really do anything, and two, as I mentioned before, I have zero control over my actions at this time.
Then I realized, there are a lot of people out there, and in my close environment specifically, that have no ability to support each other.
This is a little piece of information I’ve been completely blind to for the first 39 years of my life, but now, as I think about it, it seems hella important!
Two types of people. Those who’d support you and those who won’t. It doesn’t mean they’re bad, malicious, or anything like that. Usually, they simply don’t know how to support and haven’t taken the time to figure it out yet. But the hard facts are that some people just don’t seem to have that ability.
Those who know how to support are good friends that are important to invest in. You support them, and when you need someone, they are there for you too. This is kind of the point of being human, I think. Even the most basic animals can be self-sufficient. Doing things on your own is not some kind of great achievement or anything to be proud of. Working together, and caring for each other, is a high-level ability. Acting together, for each other, is part of what makes humans so cool. It’s the foundation of everything that’s been achieved through collaboration, and that’s almost everything.
Those who don’t know how to support, or maybe just aren’t available for it, are a bad social investment. It’s like a bank account that you can deposit money into, but you can’t withdraw. Everything you put in just disappears into the abyss, and when you need some back, there’s just no one there. And sometimes, even worse, there’s a task or a strip of random advice waiting to bite you the second you reach in to check.
Clarity, at last.
So much time wasted on the wrong people.
Maybe this near-death experience gonna be worth it after all…
This entire week of super-high fever was definitely physically intense, but what really blew my mind was the loss of consciousness.
For the whole week, I was so far gone that I wasn’t even quite able to notice it, but there was a strong sense that a part of me, a part of my mind, that used to be there, is just not there anymore. A part of me, or perhaps something I’d describe as a certain set of mental functions, was completely unavailable to me. Certain thoughts I could no longer think, self-reflection that could no longer happen. Even basic things, like asking for a thermometer to find out how high my fever got (because my last one recently broke), or getting the cooling pad out of the fridge and placing it on my forehead to prevent brain damage. For the first 4 days or so, even such simple thoughts were beyond my ability to process.
Mind, thoughts, consciousness… Suddenly these things I take for granted were no longer there. Suddenly I was brutally reminded these were special.
I meditate daily since I was about 16 years old or so. Not because I’m a great super-yogi, but I just happen to have pretty severe ADHD and I couldn’t really go through the day without practicing meditation regularly — hours a day, just to stay somewhat “normal” and not float away. Though, on the other hand, when practicing meditation regularly it becomes surprisingly difficult to maintain a “normal” life.
I can completely understand why people wouldn’t want to do that. I mean, when you just sit there and let your mind do its thing, it goes on thinking about life and getting all these insights… Pretty quickly your life becomes a mess and you’re spending half your day trying to consolidate your world-view conflicts in an attempt to somehow integrate all of these new realizations you got from that “higher level of consciousness” into your day-to-day madness. Not to mention dealing with existential anxiety and the inherited meaningless of life. Let’s face it, it’s a pain in the ass! As well as extremely time-consuming!
If I had a choice I definitely wouldn’t choose to spend so much time in my head. I’d opt out for a normal chill life and play some kind of a simple instrument for a living. Like a djembe or something. And if I feel adventurous I’d play something complicated for a while, like a violin. However, the simple option wasn’t on the table for me, so a thinker I’ve become. I try to think of it as a privilege. One I wouldn’t willingly pick, but I do try to value and appreciate my thinking time, even when it’s going in an unpleasant direction, as it so often does.
I do it, but I absolutely can’t recommend it!
This mind of ours is a complete mess. Everything just wraps around itself and nothing goes anywhere. If you don’t believe me ask Gödel. Everything’s either incomplete or it conflicts with everything else, and there’s no way out of that. That’s the “human experience” and there’s no way around that.
Honestly, nobody’s missing out on anything.
The basics are simple. At some point, out of time, some kind of divine entity, as we call them here, made the decision to create a game that makes you suffer. For some reason, on some level, this made perfect sense. It’s brilliant actually, if you really, really, think about it.
Just look at where high-quality TV and Virtual Reality are going. People want to consume content that makes them feel bad. They keep saying that all they want is to feel good but check their Netflix account and you’ll see drama, death, guns, destruction, horror, and loads of torture. Hardly anyone is watching the fish tank video on repeat, or the peaceful bonfire video. People want to feel! They seek intensity. They want their experience to be immersive. Reality is fucking immersive!
If you’re in it; if it has you; if you believe it’s real, then it’s perfect. Suck on this!
The point is not to escape. The point is not to win. The point is to believe.
To immerse yourself in the experience.
To forget it’s all a simulation.
Once you do that. Once you can immerse yourself willingly and happily, and not only because you’re scared and overwhelmed. Then, we can play.
Come! Jump into the abyss with me.
It will be!