Meniere’s and Prayer
What does it take to make an unbeliever pray?
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
September 10 2019
For around 2 and a half years, I have suffered from a condition called Meniere’s Disease. For those who haven’t heard of or are familiar with it, well, it’s pretty f’in brutal. Sufferers (and I don’t use that term lightly) typically experience a combination of dizziness, acute (and random) vertigo and nausea, tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and hearing loss. Symptoms can come and go throughout a person’s life, seemingly randomly, although in general: tinnitus and hearing loss are likely to gradually increase in severity throughout life whilst dizziness and vertigo decreases.
While the condition is related to the functioning of the inner ear, there is still a fair bit of mystery about what specifically causes its onset, and hence how to prevent it. Cutting out different specific triggers (most commonly salt, caffeine, alcohol and sugar — yep, basically the fun stuff) helps for some people; others (but not everyone) have benefited from surgery. It is also, as highly likely with all disease, intimately linked to lifestyle circumstances, particularly stress.
As someone with Meniere’s, I am fortunate in several ways. Firstly, my symptoms are on the lower end; I have for the most part experienced only periodic acute attacks rather than persistent and ongoing suffering. Secondly, I have found myself in a position to write about it: allowing me both to raise awareness of the condition, as well as (more selfishly) to discover meaning and understanding in the disease through the writing process. Thirdly, and perhaps as a direct results of this blessing, I don’t (at least yet) experience the debilitating mental health issues that many sufferers face.
The first time I wrote about Meniere’s (which you can read here if you so wish) it was from the perspective of how the disease and other ‘fringe’ illnesses (I think of Lyme Disease for example, which both my mum and sister suffered from) are treated by the medical establishment. More and more, I found Meniere’s tangled up in my spiritual journey towards and within the Bahá’í Faith, most notably in my relationship with prayer.
A quick word on Bahá’í prayers.
Firstly, there are lots of them: not just from anyone, but directly revealed by the key figures of the Faith themselves. There are a Bahá’í prayers for various moods (joy, thankfulness, anguish, hopelessness) requests (assistance, protection, healing, forgiveness) people (children and youth, mothers, families, the departed) and occasions (weddings, funerals, formal meetings and informal gatherings). I assumed for a long time that this was the case with all religions — that prayer was an exercise is careful selection and recitation rather than spontaneity — until I started to sit in on Christians freestylin’ their prayers, and I realised how different the experience of prayer is for Bahá’ís.
There are other notable differences. Christians were given direct guidance to keep their prayers short and simple: “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7 ESV… did I quote that right?). In (seeming) contrast, many Bahá’í prayers are verbose (perhaps partly due to the difficulties in translating from Arabic and Persian), deliberately repetitive (see the Long Healing Prayer, for example), and often incredible opaque and ambiguous in their intent — requiring multiple recitations and meditations before the meaning starts to unravel.
A better comparison is Islam, for several reasons, not just the similarity in the language of origin. Firstly the idea of specific obligatory prayers, which must be performed at specified times. There are 3 obligatory Bahá’í prayers, each with accompanying instructions on how and when they are to be performed on that day. There are also other commonalities: for example, having to wash one’s face and hands prior, face in the direction of the holy land, and performing the prayer with accompanying reverent actions.
The prescriptions for Bahá’ís are generally a bit less onerous however. Only one obligatory prayer must be said a day (i.e. you choose which one you feel like saying that day), and two of these three (the short and long) only have to said once on that day (the medium is said three times). Outside of these obligatory prayers, there are few restrictions on how Bahá’ís can recite the numerous other revealed prayers, and informal household and communal ‘devotionals’ are common — often incorporating writings from other religious and spiritual traditions.
Bahá’ís also love putting their prayers to diverse types of music, and you can find numerous spiritual jams and bangers online at sites such as Bahá’í Blog (this is my favourite). In this sense, based on attending a Lutheran church service recently and also talking to a Christadelphian friend, it is probably quite similar to more progressive forms of Christianity.
So in short, a mixed bag.
Those born and raised praying, whether Bahá’í or otherwise, perhaps take its logic for granted. But when I first started to pray, I found it an incredibly unnatural and awkward (not to mention humbling) experience — I felt ridiculous speaking out loud to a force I barely believed in, using words and phrases many of which I barely understood.
I was doing it because I knew I should, not because I wanted to or really believed in it. I had to find a way rationalise to myself why I should keep praying. I needed to be pragmatic about prayer. Such a perspective is described better than I can in this article, but in short, my thinking was along these lines:
That prayer was simply an attempt to shift my frame of reference, my worldview, and my perspective — simply another form of meditation, of mindfulness, of good mental health care.
That there was no harm in praying, as long as I wasn’t expecting anything in return, and was more focused on using the prayer to initiate positive action.
That when praying for the assistance of others in need, to use it as a reminder of how fortunate I am, strengthening my resolve to be a better person, to other people, in tangible ways.
That when praying for my own assistance, to use it simply as a reminder to myself that there are things in my life that can’t be controlled, and that’s ok.
It was this process of pragmatism and rationalisation that helped me to get through the initial challenges of praying — why I kept praying despite no immediate and profound payout, as literal interpretation of the words invites you to believe. The more I practiced it, the more I found it comforting that every time I prayed, I was initiating a positive shift, an elevated frequency, however small. Maybe even engaging a higher consciousness, or briefly conversing a Divine Being.
But that wasn’t enough. Like other aspects of faith, until we see prayer take shape within our own lives, we can never truly believe it. This belief, for me, came as a result of Meniere’s Disease.
My first 6 months with Meniere’s had been brutal, although not without its lessons. I had learnt about suffering: real suffering, where the nature of existence is unavoidably called into question. I had learnt about health: its impermanence, its volatility, its mystery. I had learnt about myself: I was not as independent as I liked to think I was.
Most of all, I had learnt that I was not alone, that I was being protected. My acute vertigo and nausea attacks, despite their brutality and seemingly random nature, had occurred with eery synchronicity to ensure that the impacts on my external life were minimal. I was suddenly seeing confirmations in coincidence.
While not yet decreasing in frequency, the attacks appeared to be decreasing in severity. A haze of nausea, at one stage ever present, felt like it was lifting, slowly. I attributed this improvement largely to the cranio-sacral therapy I had started, and was already looking forward, slightly smugly, to telling people how I had found the cure to a medical anomaly.
Long story short, the worst seemed to be over. I had regained hope. Sure enough, the next attack was just around the corner.
I was obviously feeling cocky, as I had just gone for a jog after work, on the way to my parents for dinner — the first jog since I started the cranio-sacral treatment, when I was advised to avoid running due to the shock it sends up to your skull. And then a massive slice of cheesecake (hello salt and sugar), which my dad had reluctantly shared with me.
And then it was there, again: a mild ringing, then a change in ear pressure, then a creeping disorientation, then the dread. Once it was there, I thought I might be able to fight it off this time, that I could beat it. But it kept coming, and so eventually I submitted, and up came the cheesecake, sorry dad (not sorry).
Suddenly, I was getting worse. Frequency: less than a month since the previous attack, down from 5 weeks (a sharp decrease, and the shortest gap to date). But also severity: I felt the effects of this one for almost a week. I was doing everything I thought was in my power to do. So, with no other option before I truly would lose all hope, I started to pray about it. Regularly, whole heartedly, and in spite of normal excuses (albeit not without a few lapses).
And so it was that I began to pray. But not due to my own choice really, because by that stage it wasn’t even a choice, so I can’t lay claim to any moral credit for it. It was Meniere’s — clearly the only thing that God knew would be brutal enough to overcome my stubbornness.
And so it was, because of Meniere’s, that I began to pray.
Not just to say a prayer, but actually pray, regularly, and in spite of normal excuses.
Why we should intone rather than just say a prayer, to feel the words, deliver them with meaning.
How much better it is to have a prayer memorised, so as to have it available at all times, and not have to interrupt a meditative state to reach for a book or phone.
How uniquely joyous it is to sing a prayer, and hence why it might be worthwhile being able to sing a little better, and maybe even play a few basic chords on guitar.
I realised, finally, belatedly, that the directions given to Bahá’ís to pray everyday, in such a way, might not be the burden I had thought it to be, but instead a blessing.
I still pray, and I still have Meniere’s Disease. In the almost two years that have since passed, its presence has fluctuated (giving me more to write about, if nothing else), but I never experienced the despair and helplessness that drove my to my last spiritual resort. Of course, I can’t say for sure that it was prayer that turned the tide. But then, can the effects of prayer ever really be proven? It is an act of faith, after all.
To horribly misquote MLK: the arc of Meniere’s is long… but since that moment, despite the odds, it seems to have started bending towards health.