Of the two, I suppose arrogance is the most dangerous. Take tonight, for instance.

Before going to bed, I spent half an hour grappling with a seemingly insane comment to my blog, where the reader has read something I could not possibly intend to write.  I got irritated, which is good in the sense that it shows me that there is something in myself that needs to be pulled out into the Light. But it is bad in the sense that it triggered an asthma attack.  Albeit a small one so far.  Still, the “good” old tightness in the chest and the characteristic wheezing toward the end of the out breath  were there, so it was definitely an attack.

As late as in the 1950es, asthma was seen as a psychosomatic illness. That is to say, it was thought to be caused by factors in the mind only, or predominantly. The pendulum has swung far to the opposite side now:  It is seen as a mechanical reaction from the body to allergens.  Since the wheezing was not getting better, I got out of bed again and went downstairs to check on the Internet.  I should probably not have done that, since all the asthma sites were filled with pure scaremongering:  If you get an asthma attack, you must immediately inhale drugs or you will die, pretty much that was the impression I got. I know that for some people this is literally true, but we did not have inhalators when I had childhood asthma.  I took some tablets (which tasted so bad that I had to take them with jam even though my life presumably depended on it), but mostly I breathed over steaming water for a long time until the attacks were over.

Anyway, it was a great opportunity for self-reflection.  My first impulse during the doctor visit had been to reject drugs completely, since I could simply avoid triggering an attack and continue living my comfortable life.  So in response to this, God or my subconscious or some such arranged for this attack to teach me that no, I cannot necessarily control all things that happen to me.  Behind my seemingly noble wish to live a naturally healthy life lay an arrogance in the form of conviction that I could simply decide and it would be so.

When I lay in my bed listening to my wheezing breath, I thought that perhaps I should have gone to the drugstore today after all with my prescription.  Oh well. I did not do that. In fact I had planned to not do that until I had talked to my regular doctor and got a second opinion. I know that he is a big fan of exercise as the solution to all health problems except perhaps appendicitis and such.

Now, barring divine intervention of the more direct kind, I think it is pretty clear that there is a mental component to some asthmas after all, including mine.  But then again there is to pretty much everything:  For instance, men are far more likely to break their legs during the first months after a divorce.  I assume they become careless.

Ryuho Okawa believes that a great majority of health problems come from “negative spiritual influences”, basically possession or lighter forms of the same by the dead people in hell.  That is a somewhat extremely religious way of looking at it, but that the complexes in our minds can influence our health is beyond doubt.   I don’t think these complexes actually are the souls of the damned, but I believe they are of the same nature.  The kind of thoughts that dwell in these dark cellars of the mind – arrogance and irritation to take the flavor of the day – are such that leads a human to a state of spiritual suffering unless we admit them and judge them.  Whether that suffering continues after death is a matter of faith, but I don’t intend to test that out. Rather, I will clean out these thoughts and feelings now while I see them.

So I am glad this came along, but I would have been even happier if it had not been necessary.