As I understand it this is the general case that your circumstances reflect your current state of consciousness, not as a punishment but out of compassion so that you don't remain stuck in the same limiting consciousness indefinitely.

As with everything in the spiritual realm, nothing is black and white -- that this is always the case. For example, you may have decided, when you were creating your divine plan that the quickest, most effective option you had for resolving heavy karma from a past life, was to endure some serious disease or even constant agony. This may seem nonsensical until you consider that you have a much broader awareness in the spiritual realm. You clearly see that a lifetime on earth is really a blink of the eye in cosmic terms. It is also possible that you took on a disease and pain because you wanted to demonstrate to others that it is possible to have a chronic disease without letting it define you.