Common stories regarding health and healing

Last Updated on February 8, 2020

In my observation there a number of assumptions many people make with regards to health and healing.
I shall explore these a little in here and now.
I shall list these assumptions in no particular order and take a deeper look at each one:

1. The assumption that health—specifically the absence of dis-ease and the presence of wholeness within the body, mind, and spirit—and healing are the same thing. The healing will result in perfect health.

What I would like to point out is that healing is not necessarily about “the absence of disease or illness”. Healing may result in the elimination of disease and illness but the two are not mutually inclusive. Therefore healing may—and I stress the word “may”—lead to a state of great physical health, yet it also may not. I can not presumeto ever truly know just what a person has going on at the level of soul. Even to really know what they have going on at the level of mind is extremely challenging if not impossible.I will add, that in my experience, in most situations a person that heals themselves will tend to live a life that is free of the many degenerative diseases that plague the world today.

I am bringing attention to this point simply because I detect in many people who are aware of the holistic nature of disease that once they “heal” themselves disease becomes impossible. Yet what if passing through the complex emotional experience of facing a life-threatening disease such as terminal cancer was in fact partof the journey a soul had set itself up for in order to heal various issues at a deeper level. What if the intelligence of the Soul has determined that part of that experience must involve the death of the physical body in order for it to be complete—in order for the deeper “healing” to eclipseand nullify some deep issue that would otherwise continue to plague this Being? It is human arrogance to assume that we know—based on how sense of what is fair and what is actual and what is not—what the infiniteintelligence of Life has in store for us in order to bring about perfection and harmony.

I suspect it is our cultural attachment to the human physical body as the centre of our identity that perhaps sways our many of us to thinking that if my body is manifesting a “disease” then there is something fundamentally wrong and healing is not taking place. The Soul is, after all, using this physical form as a means to have an experience. The totality of a person’s overall human experience may include experiencing a terminal illness.

I am sure this point will leave some people feeling a little at a loss in regards to how to now relate to disease. If I have a disease do I try to get rid of it? If I am dying of cancer do I fight to survive? Yet these questions all relate to disease as enemy.

What I suggest is that disease, like every other experience we have in this apparently tangible world, is a carrier of intelligence. Everything that arises in a person’s experiential reality is a carrier for intelligence. A carrier for Life. A medium through which consciousness is unfolding. A phenomena through which awareness is expanding. Coming from this perspective I am sure most of us would have a wholly (holy) different relationship to disease.

So how then can a person relate to a disease and the notion of curing it when approaching the matter from this perspective?

Well, I feel it can be approached in the same way that all life-experience can be approached.
First and foremost the person in question should remain open to the fact that he does not know what is going on.
That he does not know who and what he is in truth.
That he is out of touch with Reality through attachment to the disillusioned reality of the ego.
Since he “does not see things as they truly are”,
He can drop his assumptions about what things are
And the meaning of that which he is experiencing.
From this place of open receptivity,
He can then approach his apparent disease as a carrier of intelligence.
One way of relating to this intelligence is that it contains a message.
It contains information.
The purpose of that information, from the Soul’s perspective,
Is to bring Light into the darkness maintained by the illusion of the ego-mind.
This is equivalent to “waking up”. It is equivalent to en-light-enment.

Therefore this apparent disease is as much a gift as everything else this person experiences.
However, seen through the eyes of the ego it is an attack upon itself.
This is where openness and receptivity to “I do not see reality as it really is”,
Becomes crucial. Only then is the ego-mind released to some degree.

This apparent disease is happening for the person,
And not to him.
What’s more, it is ultimately created by Him.
For the purpose of drawing his attention to the ways in which
He has forgotten His true nature,
His true inheritance as an extension of God,
And his Real purpose as a Divine Being.

The key then is to remain actively open and aware,
Ready to shed light upon his misperception of what Is,
Ready to see how judgement limits his experience of Self,
Ready to see where and how he habitually makes life-taking choices.
Paramount to all of this,
Is his willingness to discover what it is he is being asked (by his Self)
To forgive within himself and within the world.
For in truth these are one and the same,
And hence each requires the same forgiveness,
And to forgive one is to forgive the other,
Even though they may temporarily appear to happen separately.

2. That disease is a negative and bad thing that must be fixed

This myth has a very close relationship to what we’ve just looked at in the above mentioned myth.
The human ego maintains the illusion that there are many experiences in this world that are undesirable, bad, and wrong. This sets us up to be in opposition to the world. This oppositionis a projection of the separation that the ego is maintaining within the human mind.

What we are faced with here is the illusion of “disease as enemy”. That disease is somehow launching an attack on That which I Am and therefore it is a negative thing.
The truth of the matter is that disease is really no different from the many other challenges a person might face in their life. These challenges are just that. Challenging experiences. A challenge, when faced with open awareness, is a means to extend my perception of who and what I am. When faced with a closed mind and the many collective assumptions that I have inherited from my culture, then a challenge suddenly becomes a problem and even a menace.

If I am perceiving apparent disease or illness as “wrong”, “negative” or “bad” then I am judging it. This judgement is a projection of judgement that I hold toward myself. This self judgement holds me in separationfrom myself and my judgement of a disease or illness holds me in separation from that Infinite Intelligence that is expressing itself through this experience I have labelled “dis-ease” or as “cancer”, “obesity”, “asthma”, or whatever the case may be.

So long as I judge something then I hold it in a place of separation from That which I Am. So long as I am holding something in this illusion of separationthen I can never become aware of it. My awareness and this experience or “thing” will always remain apart. So long as I am not able to penetrate my awareness into the core of something such as an illness then I will not move through it and pluck the fruits of wisdom that it has to offer me. Awareness is like the bright warmth of the sun shining. That warmth and light must come into direct contact with a tree in order for it’s fruit to spring forth, grow and ripen. Only then can I pick these fruit and enjoy their sweetness. If they do not get enough of this light and warmth then they remain sour and hence are an unpleasant experience if I try to eat them. Therefore I remain in separationfrom these “fruit” because I have an aversion to that which I experience as unpleasant.

All disease and illness is a call to greater Awareness. All disease and illness is a vehicle of consciousness unfolding, of awareness expanding. Yet a the experience that we labelas disease or illness, and then further label as a terrible case of cancer, or AIDS, or coronary heart disease, can be nothing but a sour experience if my innate awareness can’t touch and penetrate it. Judgement is like a heavy, thick, black cloud floating in the sky of my mind between the Sun and the earth. The Sun is That which I Am and the Earth is my worldly human experience.

I am not suggesting the people should neurotically start decreeing that “this illness is good, this illness is good, this illness is not bad” when faced with the experienceof a dis-ease. Rather, I suggest that all judgement—as “good” or “bad”—be suspended entirely. Only then will the mind be lucid enough to allow through the awareness that is ready and waiting to touch and enter this experience and ripen the fruits of wisdom it is ready and waiting to bring forth.

3. That the experience of disease or illness is indicative that you have done something wrong or bad

Disease, approached in this way, is certain to set a person up for disappointment and the sense that life is unfair. I have also seen this cause the rejection of the notion that at some level a person is co-creating their state of dis-ease. The very suggestion of this elicits a reaction of horror—“How could you possibly say that Beth is reasonable for the cancer that is killing her? She is such a bright, caring, and lovely person. What a preposterous suggestion”.

Yet here a number of assumptions have been made.
The one that stands out most to me is that assumption that Beth is “caring and lovely” relative to those people that are not so caring and lovely. Yet,of course, if Beth is a dear friend of mine I am hardly going to perceive her as bad and malicious. Why on earth would I hand out with someone who I judge in that way? Yet those people that I do judge as being something less than kind and lovely also havefriends, and I am sure their friends also judge them as being nice people. The lie playing out here—through unchallenged assumptions—is that one person is nice and another person is not, and why would this nice person have anything to do with this cancer that is apparently killing her?

I’d like to suggest we take a step back for a moment, in order to get some clear perspective on this.
Beth, like every other being on this planet, is a Divine Being.
She is neither “good” nor “bad”.
She is neither “nice” nor horrible.
Likewise, everyone else I perceive to be in the world is also a perfect, loving, Divine Being.
Whether I personally judge someone to be a good person or not really has nothing to do with them. It is my judgement — the ego’s judgement of myself and projected out onto the world — and it is arrogant to assume that somehow MY judgement of this person is the determining factor in terms of qualifying what sort of person this is. The fact of the matter is that they are not a “person” at all.

4. That a person must gain a logical explanation for their disease—in terms of “why this has happened to me”—in order to heal

Logic is of the thinking mind. Reason is of the thinking mind.
Being is of the non-thinking mind.
The message that you bring to yourself through dis-ease may or may not be a message that you have ever cognised, and thus you will not re-cognise it either.
You can, however, become aware of its message—at a feeling intuitive level—without getting into re-cognition of “why this has happened to me”.
In my experience, most of the time reason does come. Often I find that the symbology that plays out through my body and its state of health is incredibly descriptive in its message. Yet there are other times when I don’t know why. Not mentally knowing why is not a hindranceto receiving the message and moving into greater health and wholeness.

This is a topic I started writing about some time last year. It’s not yet complete if I compare it to what I first envisioned, but this will do for now.

I wish you all the best of health,

Jonathan