The healing power of disease
May 2009
By Visvas Acharya
When we begin to feel and accept all our emotions, even the ones that hurt, we begin to heal
Seeker: “How does one experience one’s painful experiences without being embittered by them?” Emmanuel: “By seeing them as lessons, not as retribution. Trust life, my friends. However far afield life seems to take you, the trip is necessary. You have come here to traverse a wide terrain of experiences in order to verify where your truth lies, and where your distortion is in that terrain. You will then be able to return to your home centre, your soul self, fully refreshed and wiser.”
-(The Book of Emmanuel)
Painful experiences are a part of our life. But they have a special purpose. They are here to teach us where we are moving away from our truths, they are here to lay open the inauthenticity that has crept into our transaction with life, they are here to bring us closer to our soul, and to let go of fears that hold us back and scare us into leading miserable lives.
When carefully examined they are actually blessings, because we are being edged on to release self-negating patterns and belief systems. Often they are answers to our deepest prayers. After all these years of being a part of the transformation process of some amazing human beings, I am actually blessed with the insight that we are alive in a loving compassionate universe, which is constantly interacting and responding to us.
All we need to do to access this compassion and grace is to drop our resistance to life, because its inherent nature is to heal. Even the most gruesome diseases that occur to us are actually life’s attempt to heal us into loving and celebrating ourselves completely.
The human body has its own intelligence. Our DNA contains all the information since the beginning of life on this planet. Embedded in our genetic code are the mysteries of the deep sea and vast deserts, of the high mountains and plunging rivers. By virtue of our DNA, we are connected to millions of years of evolution. We are programmed to evolve, to survive, and to overcome limitations of our own mindsets.
The intelligence of our body wants us to become aware of the inherent power we are born with, and develop the wisdom to use it. This intelligence communes with us constantly so that our living becomes more aware, more mindful. It communes with us through our feelings and emotions, authentically felt, without contamination from perceptions and mindsets. But when we lose touch with some of our feelings, we lose touch with this intelligence. This happens when we, and the people whom we relate with, react negatively to some of our feelings. Because we would never like to be associated with something that is condemned.
Yet, that which is being condemned is an essential part of us, it is the voice of the inner being seeking to be heard. This is the beginning of suppression, which in turn is the beginning of a long story of pain and breakdown of the innate harmony within. It is the beginning of the disease process, which then takes over our lives and thinking, until we become hopelessly trapped, victim to the diseased mindset.
In actuality, there is no such thing as a negative emotion. It is the labelling of emotions, which is negative. It is the denial of their naturalness, which is harmful. Every emotion is a pure communication from something within. It could emerge from a space which is happy, or a space which is hurting. It is simply the body energy in motion. It is just that we are programmed to react to feelings in a certain way, especially feelings that appear from a space which is hurting. We are living in a society, which has become emotionally dishonest. Anger is natural, it is for your protection. Tears are beautiful, they heal and cleanse. As Robert Burney says in his book, Dance of The Wounded Souls, We cannot learn to love without honouring our rage, We cannot allow ourselves to be truly intimate with someone or something, without owning our grief, We cannot reconnect with the light unless we are willing to own and honour our experience of the darkness, We cannot fully feel the joy, unless we are willing to fully feel the sadness.
When we begin to feel and accept all our emotions, even the ones that hurt, we begin to heal. That is when we begin to open up and let go of our resistance to life. We slowly begin to connect to an inner channel of guidance, and come to the realisation that we are not shameful, mortal beings come into life as a punishment, or to pay off our karmic debts. We are in fact a part of the force that runs the universe, simply here on earth to experience – the magic of being human.
This is the therapeutic process that heals disease. When we begin to connect to the high of our joy as well as the depth of our grief, when we begin to honour our pleasure, as well as our pain, when we can see the beauty of our anger as well as the strength of our tears, we can allow the entire range of our feelings to guide us into making empowered choices.
A young woman in her early 30s, entered into therapy seeking treatment. She was someone who strongly believed that there was only one way of doing things.
When things did not go her way, she would get extremely angry. This resulted in a great deal of disharmony in her family. At this point, she joined a religious and personal growth organisation. In that organisation, she learnt that anger was an extremely negative emotion and one should not allow oneself to get angry.
Therefore, she started holding back on her anger. Within six months, she started getting bouts of paroxysmal cough, which soon disintegrated into a full-fledged chronic bronchitis. She went onto the full range of mainstream medical treatment without significant relief. Her lung functions had become very poor. This is the point where she opted for hypnotherapy.
Her healing journey was a very intricate one, in which every aspect of her current personality went through massive changes. When we communicated with the intelligence of her body, the first layer that opened up was the suppressed anger.
Tremendous anger was stored in her body cells. Especially, cells of her throat and lungs. All that anger was released in the subsequent sessions. She started getting better. But after some time, further progress stopped.
Once again we communicated with her body intelligence and it guided us to the source of the constant anger she felt. It took us back into childhood traumatic memories. Her perfectionist pattern was linked to the anger. She had been the product of very critical parenting. As a child she learnt that the only way to get love was to do things as perfectly as possible in the eyes of her father. Her inner child was hurting with the rejection of her natural carefree self.
Following this revelation, she was taken through the Inner Child Healing process. She slowly began to love the child she was, and once again her physical body started healing.
She finally healed when her love for herself became complete. She would still feel anger when it was required for her to feel it, but it would be accompanied by tremendous love for herself, and the object of her anger. She could let go of it with the same ease that she felt while in it.
Every disease comes with a message. Once the message is taken, it simply goes away. It is indeed true that we are alive in a universe whose compassion for us is infinite.
Vishvas Acharya is a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist at California Hypnosis Institute.
Contact: mailto:Vishvasacharya@yahoo.com
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