14 February 2012

Peace of Mind Healing 3, The Game of Sickness and Death


An idea has been troubling me for the last few weeks. It's an idea that I am very reluctant to talk about because it causes so much emotional upset upon its victims and their survivors. And because I am going to talk about it in a different way, I fear I am going to be ridiculed.

So, what the heck, that has never stopped me before, always putting my feet in it, and while I think I'm being brave, others think I'm reckless.

The idea is that all the pain and suffering, the chronic disease and death that afflicts us, is caused by our thinking.

And now that I've said it I realise I've said it before but not in the same words.

When I was studying Western Medicine as part of an Acupuncture course I did in the '90's I was often surprised that the causes of disease were unknown and that the emphasis was placed on contributing factors and the relief of symptoms.

And even though the causes are unknown the recommended treatment option was to use something that kills it. This always reminded me of the line in police dramas - "shoot first and ask questions later".

By the time the information gets from the text books and into the public domain it has been "doctored" as this example from Wikipedia shows.

"If a person who uses tobacco heavily, develops lung cancer, then it was probably caused by the tobacco use."

and in the next paragraph

"Tobacco smoking is associated with many forms of cancer and causes 90% of lung cancer."

In the first sentence "probably" is used because the text book says "cause unknown" and that tobacco is a contributing factor. But in the second sentence it's now 100% certain that 90% of lung cancer is caused by tobacco smoking.

In Chinese Medicine, as I learned it, the major cause of all disease is emotional. It's the emotion that causes the disease. This was also the view of Dr. Edward Bach, who developed the Bach Flower Remedies to heal disease based on the emotional state of the patient.

In a A Course in Miracles, Workbook Part 2, Section 4 it states, (slightly edited)

"We play a childish game... that we have become bodies, prey to evil and to guilt, with but a little life that ends in death...How long will we maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? How soon will we be ready to come home? Perhaps today? There is no sin. Creation is unchanged. Would we still hold return to Heaven back?"

The emphasis in A Course in Miracles is that all our suffering and disease is caused by our belief in "sin" and the guilt that follows it. We have so identified with ego-body states that we can't see what we really are.

"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth."

When I was a child I was always getting into trouble. This meant I got a lot of smacks, and when it was serious, some right thrashings. These I did not mind too much, I'd get over the pain and get on with it. I took it as part of the natural order - we do something we are not supposed to do, we get punished. And punishment went corporal punishment.

In first class in primary school I was introduced to the idea of sin and guilt. Now, the behaviours that I had got smacked or trashed for were sins that I should feel guilty about. The game had changed. No longer was it simply misbehave, get caught and get smacked. It had become more sinister. I was guilty, I was a sinner, I was evil.

Many years later I was talking with my father about the state of discipline in the schools. He was advocating the return to corporal punishment. I agreed with him, which shocked both of us, since we seldom agreed on anything. I explained that my worst moment in secondary school was when I had been given a mental and emotional dressing down rather than my usual "six of the best" caning. After the caning I would walk back into the study hall with my head held high and showing off the welts forming on my hand. This time, I wanted to crawl back into the study hall, I felt so ashamed. I had been caught lying.

My father asked me what had I been lying about. I genuinely could not remember, I had buried it deep in my mind. Up until that day I had not known the reason for my humiliation. He probed a bit about what year it had happened and then he remembered.

I had been in boarding school a few weeks and hated it. I wanted to go home. So I made up a story that my grandfather had died. The dean called my home to offer condolences to my parents and to ask about the arrangements. My mother had answered the phone. She went to my father and asked him what were they going to do. My grandfather was mad alive. My father decided that they could not play along. He informed the dean that grandfather was alive and well and maybe the young fella (that's me) was just feeling homesick.

He then explained that they thought about going along with me, but the chances of not getting caught out were slim. Especially since the college owned the farm beside ours on the island and sooner or later they'd be bringing their cattle through our yard and would see grandfather.

We both laughed at how naive I had been. But, the damage had been done. I now believed that they were right. In retrospect, it was probably the end of my innocence. I accepted the game as reality.

It's only a game. A game with very serious consequences for those of us who believe that we are only bodies. We are not bodies. We are minds that have convinced ourselves that we are bodies.

If we can accept the idea that we are minds and that our minds control everything that we perceive, then we can start to change our thinking.

We all suffer from Paranoid Schizophrenia, not in the clinical sense, but in the simple English translation of the original Greek and Latin words - "walled mind, split mind". We all see our boundaries as the boundaries of our bodies. We can only know what we perceive with our bodies senses. We are all separated from each other.

But, no matter how separated or isolated we feel we are, we still have access. Our minds are still part of the oneness of all minds. The part that believes it is split off can change its thinking and recognise its oneness with all of creation. We can recover and reclaim our true identity.

2 comments:

  1. You've definitely mentioned the thoughts as causing illness thing before. It's something I think about a lot, because I think I'm quite negative and then I worry how this is affecting my health. I think I've trapped myself in a vicious circle.

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  2. I would have responded earlier, but I just noticed your comment right now. When I was trying to be a mature adult with a positive mental attitude I would sometimes get angry or afraid. In light of my goal of being positive I seen these states as negative. During the Happy Healing Hearts saga, when I disagreed with some people they told me I was negative. I stopped using the words positive and negative, mainly because they had connotations of good and evil, but also because control freaks used them to make me feel guilty. So now when I'm thinking or when I catch myself getting angry or upset I ask myself "Is this useful?" Obviously to decide that something is useful or not we have to have a goal. So the question in long form is "Is this useful for me in achieving my goal of peace and happiness?" Take denial as an example (not swimming in the Nile). Denial is usually seen as negative. But, it depends, deny the truth and its negative, deny the lies and its positive.

    I still worry a bit but not nearly as much as I did 30 years ago. When I find myself worrying now I stop and close my eyes and say one of the lessons from ACIM. It goes away then. Get some inspirational sayings that you'd like to use for yourself. The one I used a lot before ACIM was "God is everywhere"

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