cess of trying to cover
up our true self in or der to become who we believed would
be an acceptable version of a self that would belong. W ith
each r ejection, we cr eated mor e and mor e inter nal
separation, building thick er and thick er invisible walls to
protect our tender and sensitive heart. Day by day,
experience af ter experience, we unknowingly constructed
an invisible fortr ess that became our false self. This fortr ess
of limited e xpression obscur ed our essence, hiding our
vulnerabilities, our sensitivities, and of ten our ability to
know and see the truth of who we ar e. Befor e our malleable self har dened into a mor e rigid ego
ideal, we had the fr eedom to e xpress every aspect of our
humanity. We had multiple emotional r esponses to any
event in our life. Unbur dened by shame or judgment, we
had access to all parts of ourselves. This fr eedom meant
that we could be anything we wanted to be at any given
moment. Ther e wer e no inter nal restraints to pr event us
from stepping into the r ole of the sought-af ter object of
attention or the jealous, wick ed stepsister. Befor e we
learned to judge one quality as better than another, we had
unrestricted access to the full range of e xpression that
resides within us. W e could tap into elegance, grace,
courage, cr eativity, honesty, integrity, assertiveness,
sexiness, power, brilliance, gr eed, frugalness, laziness,
arrogance, and incompetence as easily as we could change
our clothes. Life was a play when we granted all parts of ourselves the
permission to e xist. Each day was an opportunity for
complete self -expression. And best of all, if we didn’t lik e the
way our story was tur ning out, all we had to do is go into our
room, wrap a cape ar ound our shoulders, bring forth a
diﬀer ent character, and—voilà—we could r ewrite the script
and cr eate a gr eat new ending or even an entir ely diﬀer ent
story. We could tur n a drama into a comedy or a boring epicinto a fabulous adventur e. Ther e wer e countless
possibilities, and we wer e curious to e xplor e them all. Once the shadow was bor n, however, our self -expression
became stiﬂed and mor e serious. W e lear ned fr om our
parents, teachers, friends, and society that to win love and
acceptance we had to adher e to certain pr ewritten scripts. As we went to school, wer e exposed to media, and
interacted with a wider cir cle of people, we observed that
certain behavioral traits wer e demonized, criticized, or
denied love and acceptance while others wer e idolized and
shower ed with attention. F rom this time on, we distanced
ourselves fr om any part of ourselves that did not ﬁt into
society’s standar ds or our own ego ideals. W e rejected mor e
and mor e aspects of ourselves for all kinds of r easons—
some because they seemed too bold, others because they
were too silly or foolish. We tried to ﬁgur e out ways to get rid of these unwanted
aspects of our persona until one day we got so distracted
that we for got they e xisted at all. W ith everyone giving us
diﬀer ent messages about which of our many faces we
should show the world, it became safer to listen to the
voices of authority rather than trust in our authentic natur e. Soon we found ourselves with only a limited range of
emotions. Our self -expression was stiﬂed; the endless
possibilities that wer e once in fr ont of us nar rowed to just
the few. We lear ned how to shut oﬀ life and actually became
comfortable doing it. Eventually we identiﬁed with the
internal character we believed to be most acceptable to
those ar ound us—and chances ar e we ar e still playing some
version of that r ole to this day. We may mak e little changes
here and ther e, but when we tak e an honest look, we may
see that we’ve never r eally r einvented ourselves completely. Chances ar e we’r e like most people—we ﬁx ourselves up a
bit, put a patch over the parts of our lives that ar en’t
working, and cr eate a slightly new version of who we’ve
been. By the time we move thr ough our thirties, most of ourchoices ar e already pr edeter mined in one or mor e areas of
our life. Even the clothes we wear, the foods we eat, the
types of entertainment we seek. The things we fantasize
about ar e even r epetitive and monotonous. As we become mor e present and awar e, we begin to see
how r obotic and trapped we r eally ar e inside the personas
we’ve cr eated. And we can choose to tak e proactive
measur es to deal with the shadows that ar e keeping us
bound and try to br eak fr ee. If we don’t deal with these
shadows, mak e no mistak e—they will deal with us. They will
show up in our r elationships and separate us fr om those we
love, k eep us tied to a job or lifestyle that we outgr ew years
ago, or lead us to an addiction or habits that under mine our
success and happiness. They will blind us fr om seeing the
warning signs of an abusive r elationship or a bad business
deal. They will k eep us in a state of perpetual denial, and in
that state we fail to help those we love when they most
need us, when they ar e faced with their own demons. Every one of us has constructed an ego -based identity in
which we have assigned ourselves an acceptable r ole that
eventually smothers our full self -expression. R ather than
being who we r eally ar e, we become a characterization of
the person we think we “should” be. Over time, our stiﬂed
self-perception becomes the perfect br eeding gr ound for our
shadows to tak e root. Whether this r ole was cr eated to
compensate for some inadequacy that we believed e xisted
within ourselves or as a strategy to meet the e xpectations
of our par ents, car egivers, or friends—if we strive to fulﬁll
our ego’s r ole to the e xclusion of all other r oles that we
could potentially enjoy, we end up cr eating a life devoid of
depth, adventur e, meaning, and ﬂavor. As we begin taking
our assigned r oles too seriously, they get sealed into our
ego structur e. Rarely do we deviate fr om the identity we’ve
created, because we fall into the illusional state of denial
and start to believe we are that identity. Looking ar ound ourown lives, most of us can r ecognize the limitations and
repetitiveness of the r oles we play. Of course, it’s much easier to spot the r oles that our
friends and family members ar e playing than it is to spot our
own. W e can identif y the martyr who will volunteer at the
PTA and tak e on mor e than her fair shar e of the workload
(and then complain about it later), or the neighbor hood
charmer who is pr etending to be super -dad while secr etly
cheating on his wife. W e know who lik es to play the part of
the gossip whor e, who knows the dirt about everyone and
everything (and looks for every opportunity to shar e it). W e
are familiar with the local drama queen, who is always being
victimized in one way or another (whether it’s by getting in
a fender bender or because her husband didn’t bring home
enough money last month). It’s easy to spot the eter nal
optimist who is always the life of the party or the wallﬂower
who always sits passively on the sidelines. What’s incr edible
is that even if the r ole we’ve assigned ourselves is boring,
miserable, r epetitive, or joyless, we cling to it for dear life,
all the while rationalizing why we can’t be mor e than we
already ar e or have mor e than we cur rently do. Unknowingly
we ar e the ones who have typecast ourselves to play some
version of the same character year af ter year and rar ely—if
ever—do we allow ourselves to ventur e into a r ole that we
aren’t familiar with or a level of self -expression we don’t yet
know. If we operate inside the myth that we must squelch, kill
oﬀ, lock up, and hide all of the qualities that mak e us
interesting and unique, we forsak e our right to e xperience
passion and peace. The quest for the perfect life, the perfect
role, and the perfect persona will always leave us unfulﬁlled


soundwavesfromreachingyoureardrum. Earwaxservesabeneficialfunctionasbothalubricanttothe
earcanalandanaturalantibiotic. However,topreventexcessiveear-
waxbuildup,youcanhelpyourhealingsystembygentlyflushing
yourearcanalwithwarmwaterandhydrogenperoxideina6:1ratio,usingabulbsyringereadilyavailablefromyournearestphar
macy. Thisflushingshouldtakeamaximumof30minutes. Earcandlingisalsobecomingpopularforthispurpose. Mostofushave
beentoldnevertostickanythinginourearssmallerthanourelbows,butImustconfessthat,afterahotshower,iftheneedpres
ConqueringCommonHealthConditions 295
entsitself,Iwilloccasionallyuseacotton-tippedswabtogentlyandcarefullyremoveanyexcesswaxthatmayhaveformedinmyearcanal. Meniere’sDisease
Alsoknownaslabyrinthitis,thisconditionismarkedbyinflamma
tionofthedelicateinner-earstructures. Meniere’sdisease,whichaffectsbalanceandhearing,isthoughttobecausedbyavirus,whichmayfollowontheheelsofarespiratoryinfection. Meniere’sdiseaseoftenoccursonlyonce,butitmayrecurfromtimetotime. Naturalapproachestoinner-earproblemsthatsupporttheworkof
yourhealingsystemincludeacupuncture,nutritionalsupport,the
useofspecificherbssuchasgingkobiloba,cranial-sacraltherapy,
yoga,acupuncture,chiropracticcare,andphysicaltherapy. Middle-EarInfectionsMiddle-earinfectionsarequitecommonininfancyandearlychildhood,andtheycanbeserious. Theyoftencausefeverandpain,and
theycanbeaccompaniedbylossofhearing,lossofbalance,vertigo,nausea,andvomiting. Inchildren,underextremeconditions, amiddle-earinfectionrunstheriskofspreadingtothebrainandcausingmeningitis. Becausethepassagethatleadstothemiddleear,
theeustachiantube,isdirectlyconnectedtothebackofthenose,middle-earinfectionsoccurasextensionsofrespiratoryinfections
thatmaystartasacold,runnynose,sorethroat,sinusinfection,orchestcongestion. Thekeytotreatmentofmiddle-earinfectionsinvolvesunderstandingtherelationshipbetweenthemiddleearandtherespiratorysystem. Youmustcooperatewithyourhealingsystembyfocusing
onprevention,andbytreatingrespiratoryinfectionsintheirearly
stagestoprecludethepossibilitythattheymayspreadtothemiddle
ear. Dietalsocanplayaroleinpreventingmiddle-earinfections. Forexample,byreducingintakeoffatsandoilsanddrinkingplentyoffluids,youcanhelpthinoutthemucous,phlegm,andcongestion
intherespiratorysystem,whichhelpsthebodytoeliminatetoxins
morereadily. Goodposture,gentlechiropracticadjustments,and
deepbreathingalsoappeartoimprovelymphaticdrainageofthemiddleearandcanhelppreventearinfections. Herbalremedies,
296ActivatingYourHealingSystemWhenYou’reSick
suchasechinacea,astragalus,andwasabe(Japanesehorseradish)mayalsobehelpful. ‘Whenmiddle-earinfectionsareintheirfull-blown
stages,antibioticsareusuallyrequired,especiallytopreventthepossibilityofmeningitis. Butavoidthecontinuoususeofantibioticsto
treatthiscommonproblem. Noise-InducedHearingLoss
Hearinglosscausedbynoisedamagesthesensitivehaircellsinthe
innerearthatconductsoundtothebrain. Suchlossiscommoninpeoplewhohaveworkedaroundheavyequipmentandloudmachinery,anditisnowshowingupinex-rockmusicians,who
haveblastedtheirearsforyearswithscreechingguitarsandloudamplifiedmusic. Noise-inducedhearinglossisparticularlycommon
inpeoplewhoworkaroundairplanesandmantheflightlinesatair
ports. Thesepeoplearenowrequiredbylawtowearearprotection
topreventthisunnecessarycondition. Hearingaidsarecommonintheelderlyandcanbeeffectiveto
helppeoplecompensateforinner-earhearingloss. Delicatesurgicaltechniquesinvolvingtheimplantationofelectronicsound-amplificationdevicesareusuallyreservedforseverecases. Naturalapproachestoinner-earproblemsthatsupporttheworkofyourhealingsystemincludeacupuncture,nutritionalsupport,theuseofspecificherbssuchasgingkobiloba,cranial-sacraltherapy,yoga,acupuncture,chiropracticcare,andphysicaltherapy. Othermeth
odsmayalsoprovehelpfulincertaincasesofinner-earproblems,particularlyiftheyareinitiatedintheearlystagesofthesedisorders. Becauseyourabilitytohearisapreciousgift,andtheseconditions
areoftendifficulttotreat,preventionofnoise-inducedhearingloss
iscritical. Outer-EarInfections
Oftenknownasswimmer’searinfections,outer-earinfectionscanbeextremelypainfulandarecommonwherepeoplespendalotoftime
inthewaterorwherehumidityishigh. Ifyoudevelopanouter-earinfection,antibioticdropsandkeepingyoureardrytodiscouragebacterialgrowthallowyourhealingsystemtorestorehealthtoyour
ear,usuallyinlessthansevendays. Severalnaturaleardrops,suchasgentianvioletandmulleinau,arealsoavailableandcanbeeffective
ConqueringCommonHealthConditions 297
treatments. Youcanpreventorhealouter-earinfectionsbykeeping
yourearscleananddry. Ifyouspendalotoftimeinthewater,you
canhelpyourhealingsystempreventouter-earinfectionsbyapply
ingalcoholandvinegareardrops,orusingablowdryerafterswimming. Thesecanhelpkeepyourearsdry,whichinhibitsbacte
rialgrowthandminimizesthepossibilityofanouter-earinfection. PerforatedEarDrum
Thisconditionoccursasaresultofincreasedpressureinthemiddle
ear,whichcausestheeardrumtorupture. Perforatedeardrumis
commonindivers,peoplewhoflywhentheyhaverespiratoryinfec
tions,andpeoplewhoarehitonthesideoftheheadandtheearistraumatized. Symptomsmayincludepain,hearingloss,abloodyearcanal,andvertigo. Thankstoyourbody’shealingsystem,ifthetear
isnottoolarge,arupturedeardrumwillusuallyhealonitsownin
onemonth’stime. Duringthishealingperiod,itisimportanttosup
porttheworkofyourhealingsystembynotgettingwaterintoyour
ears,whichmightcauseaseriousinfection. Iftheruptureisverylarge,surgicalgraftingofaneweardrummayberequired;but,thankstoyourhealingsystem,doingthisisnotcommonbecause
yourearusuallycanhealonitsown. Surfer’sEar
Knownasexostosis,surfer’searoccurswhenthebonesintheearcanalgrowtogether,obstructingtheearcanalandcausingwaterto
betrapped. Thisconditioncanleadtochronicouter-earinfections. Surfer’seariscommonnotonlyinsurferswhofrequentcoldwaters,
butalsoinskiers,hunters,farmers,andotheroutdoor-orientedpeoplewholiveincoldclimates. Anoperationtoscrapeawaytheextrabonegrowthisconventionallyoffered;however,ifyoureturntothecoldenvironmentafter
surgerywithoutsufficientearprotection,thebonegrowthwillalso
return. Therecurringbonegrowthisactuallyacompensatoryprotectivemechanismofyourhealingsysteminitsattempttokeepthesensitiveanddelicateeardrumwarmenoughtoefficientlyconductsoundwavessothathearingisnotimpaired. Earplugsorotherearprotectionkeepstheearswarmandhelpsyourhealingsystemtopreventthisconditionfromdeveloping. 298ActivatingYourHealingSystemWhenYou’reSick
Tinnitus
Alsoknownasringingintheears,tinnitusisaproblemoftheinnerear,
andmayormaynotaccompanyhearingloss. Tinnitusisatroublingconditionnotoftenresponsivetoconventionalmedicaltreatment. Naturalapproachestoinner-earproblemssuchastinnitusthat
supporttheworkofyourhealingsystemincludeacupuncture,nutritionalsupport,theuseofspecificherbssuchasgingkobiloba,cranial-sacraltherapy,yoga,acupuncture,chiropracticcare,andphysicaltherapy. Othermethodsmayalsoprovehelpfulincertain
casesofinner-earproblems,particularlyiftheyareinitiatedinthe
earlystagesofthesedisorders. Becauseyourabilitytohearisapreciousgift,andtheseconditionsareoft


production	in	the	liver	and	thereby	destroy	this
precious	organ. Elevated	LDL	cholesterol	is	not	a
cause
	of	heart	disease;	rather,	it	is	a
consequence
	of	an	unbalanced	liver,	of	a	congested,	dehydrated	circulatory	system,	and	of
a	poor	diet	and	lifestyle. If	your	doctor	has	told	you	that	lowering	your	cholesterol	with	statins	will	protect	you
against	heart	attacks,	you	have	been	grossly	misled. The	number-one	prescribed
cholesterol-lowering	medicine	is	Lipitor. I	suggest	that	you	read	the	following	warning
statement,	issued	on	the	official	Lipitor	website:

“LIPITOR
®
	(atorvastatin	calcium)	is	a	prescription	drug	used	with	diet	to	lower
cholesterol. LIPITOR
®
	is	not	for	everyone,	including	those	with	liver	disease	or	possible
liver	problems,	and	women	who	are	nursing,	pregnant,	or	may	become	pregnant. LIPITOR®	has	not	been	shown	to	prevent	heart	disease	or	heart	attack. If	you	takeLIPITOR
®
,	tell	your	doctor	about	any	unusual	muscle	pain	or	weakness. This	could	be	a
sign	of	serious	side	effects. It	is	important	to	tell	your	doctor	about	any	medications	you
are	currently	taking	to	avoid	possible	serious	drug	interactions…”

According	to	a	study	published	in	the
Journal	of	the	American	Medical	Association,
entitled	“Cholesterol	and	Mortality,”	after	age	50	there	is	no	increased	overall	death	rate
associated	with	high	cholesterol. The	same	study	showed	that	for	every	1	mg/dl	drop	in
cholesterol	in	your	body,	your	risk	of	death	soared	by	a	whopping	14	percent. In	other
words,	taking	statins	can	easily	kill	you. My	question	is	this:	Why	risk	a	patient’s	health	or	life	by	giving	him	or	her	a	drug	that
has	no	effect	whatsoever	in	preventing	the	problem	for	which	it	is	being	prescribed? The
reason	why	the	lowering	of	cholesterol	levels	cannot
prevent
	heart	disease	is	that
cholesterol	does	not
cause
	heart	disease. In	a	recent	heart	disease	study,
7
	lowering
cholesterol	levels	was	no	longer	part	of	the	recommendations—but	try	to	tell	that	to	statin-
prescribing	doctors	or	drug	makers! The	most	important	issue	with	regard	to	cholesterol	is	how	efficiently	a	person’s	body
uses	cholesterol	and	other	fats. The	body’s	ability	to	digest,	process,	and	utilize	fats
depends	on	how	clear	and	unobstructed	the	bile	ducts	of	the	liver	are. When	bile	flow	is
unrestricted	and	balanced,	both	the	LDL	level	and	the	HDL	level	are	balanced	as	well. Therefore,	keeping	the	bile	ducts	open	is	one	of	the	best	things	you	can	do	to	prevent
coronary	heart	disease. Poor	Circulation,	Enlargement	of	the	Heart	and	Spleen,	Varicose	Veins,	Lymph
Congestion,	Hormonal	Imbalances

Gallstones	in	the	liver	may	lead	to	poor	circulation,	enlargement	of	the	heart	and	spleen,
varicose	veins,	congested	lymph	vessels,	and	hormone	imbalances. When	gallstones	have
grown	large	enough	to	seriously	distort	the	structural	framework	of	the	lobules	(units)	of
the	liver,	blood	flow	through	the	liver	becomes	increasingly	difficult. This	not	only	raises
the	venous	blood	pressure	in	the	liver,	but	also	raises	it	in	all	the	organs	and	areas	of	the
body	that	drain	used	blood	through	their	respective	veins	into	the	liver’s	portal	vein. Restricted	blood	flow	in	that	portal	vein	causes	congestion,	particularly	in	the	spleen,
stomach,	esophagus,	pancreas,	gallbladder,	and	small	and	large	intestines. This	can	lead	to
an	enlargement	of	these	organs,	to	a	reduction	of	their	ability	to	remove	cellular	waste
products,	and	to	a	clogging	of	their	respective	veins. A
varicose	vein
	is	one	that	is	so	dilated	that	the	valves	do	not	sufficiently	close	to
prevent	blood	from	flowing	backward. Sustained	pressure	on	the	veins	at	the	junction	of
the	rectum	and	anus	in	the	large	intestine	leads	to	the	development	of
hemorrhoids,
	a	type
of	varicose	vein. Other	common	sites	of	varicose	veins	are	the	legs,	the	esophagus,	and	the
scrotum. Dilation	of	veins	and
venules
	(small	veins)	can	occur	anywhere	in	the	body. It
always	indicates	an	obstruction	of	blood	flow. 8

Poor	blood	flow	through	the	liver	always	affects	the	heart. When	the	organs	of	the
digestive	system	become	weakened	by	an	increase	in	venous	pressure,	they	become
congested	and	begin	to	accumulate	harmful	waste,	including	debris	from	cells	that	have
been	broken	down. The	spleen	becomes	enlarged	while	it	is	dealing	with	the	extra
workload	associated	with	removing	damaged	or	worn-out	blood	cells. This	further	slows
blood	circulation	to	and	from	the	organs	of	the	digestive	system,	which
stresses	the	heart,
raises	blood	pressure,
	and
injures	blood	vessels. The	right	half	of	the	heart,	which
receives	venous	blood	via	the
inferior	vena	cava
	from	the	liver	and	all	other	parts	below
the	lungs,	becomes	overloaded	with	toxic,	sometimes	infectious,	material. This	eventually
causes	enlargement,	and	possibly	infection,	of	the	right	side	of	the	heart. Almost	all	types	of	heart	disease	have	one	thing	in	common:	blood	flow	is	being
obstructed. But	blood	circulation	does	not	become	disrupted	easily. It	must	be	preceded	by
a	major	congestion	of	the	bile	ducts	in	the	liver. Gallstones	obstructing	the	bile	ducts
dramatically	reduce	or	cut	off	the	blood	supply	to	the	liver	cells. Reduced	blood	flow
through	the	liver	affects	the	blood	flow	in	the	entire	body,	which,	in	turn,	has	a	detrimental
effect	on	the	lymphatic	system. The	lymphatic	system,	which	is	closely	linked	with	the	immune	system,	helps	to	clear
the	body	of	harmful	metabolic	waste	products,	foreign	material,	and	cell	debris. All	cellsrelease	metabolic	waste	products	into,	and	take	up	nutrients	from,	a	surrounding	solution,
called
extracellular	fluid
	or
connective	tissue
. The	degree	of	nourishment	and	efficiency	of
the	cells	depends	on	how	swiftly	and	completely	waste	material	is	removed	from	the
extracellular	fluid. Since	most	waste	products	cannot	pass	directly	into	the	blood	for
excretion,	they	accumulate	in	the	extracellular	fluid	until	they	are	removed	and	detoxified
by	the	lymphatic	system. The	potentially	harmful	material	is	filtered	and	neutralized	by
lymph	nodes
	that	are	strategically	located	throughout	the	body. One	of	the	key	functions	of
the	lymphatic	system	is	to	keep	the	extracellular	fluid	clear	of	toxic	substances,	which
makes	this	a	system	of	utmost	importance. Poor	circulation	of	blood	in	the	body	causes	an	overload	of	foreign,	harmful	waste
matter	in	the	extracellular	tissues	and,	consequently,	in	the	lymph	vessels	and	lymph	nodes
as	well. When	lymph	d


r eady clear about that. A Course in
Miracles  teaches us that a desir e is a prayer. The most
enlightened prayer isn’t “ Dear God, send me someone
wonderful,” but, “ Dear God, help me r ealize that I am
someone wonderful. ” Y ears ago I would pray for a wonderfulman to come and tak e my desperation away. Ultimately I
said to myself, “Why don’t you try to deal with that befor e
he gets her e. ” I can’t imagine any man saying to a friend,
“Gee, I met a fabulous desperate woman last night. ”
Looking for Mr. Right leads to desperation because ther e is
no Mr.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>
Q: According to Marianne Williamson, what is the purpose of a holy relationship?,
A: A holy relationship is not about changing or fixing the other person, but about healing and growing together through mutual forgiveness and self-love.
Q: What is the ego's approach to relationships?,
A: The ego seeks to use relationships to fill our needs and hide our own weaknesses, rather than to heal and grow together.
Q: What is the key to a successful relationship, according to A Course in Miracles?,
A: The key is not to focus on changing or fixing the other person, but to take responsibility for our own growth and healing.
Q: What is the role of the Holy Spirit in relationships?,
A: The Holy Spirit helps us to see things differently and heal our own wounds, rather than trying to change or fix the other person.
Q: What is the main difference between a special relationship and a holy relationship?,
A: A special relationship is based on fear, guilt, and control, while a holy relationship is based on love, acceptance, and self-love.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>If I swallow a piece of aluminum foil, my body will
regurgitate until the oﬀending object is e xpelled. If I’m being
asked to swallow an idea that doesn’t “agr ee” with me, then
my psychological system will go thr ough the same pr ocess
of regurgitation in or der to e xpel the oﬀending material.If I’m convinced that I’m not good enough, I will have a
diﬃcult time accepting someone into my life who thinks I
am. It’s the Gr oucho Mar x syndr ome of not wanting to lik e
anyone who would want me in their club. The only way that
I can accept someone’s ﬁnding me wonderful, is if I ﬁnd
myself wonderful. But to the ego, self -acceptance is death. This is why we’r e attracted to people who don’t want us. We know they’r e not into it fr om the gate. W e pretend to be
surprised later when we ﬁnd ourselves betrayed and they
leave af ter an intense but fairly short stay. They ﬁt perfectly
into our ego’s plan: I will not be loved. The r eason that nice,
available people seem boring to us is because they bust us. The ego equates emotional danger with e xcitement, and
claims that the nice, available person isn’t danger ous
enough. The ir ony is that the opposite is true: available
people ar e the ones who are danger ous, because they
confr ont us with the possibility of r eal intimacy. They might
actually hang ar ound long enough to get to know us. They
could melt our defenses, not thr ough violence but thr ough
love. This is what the ego doesn’t want us to see. A vailable
people ar e frightening. They thr eaten the ego’s citadel. The
reason we’r e not attracted to them is because we’r e not
available ourselves. 12. HEALING OUR WOUNDS
“Healing is the way in which separation is
overcome.”
Our bar riers to love ar e rarely consciously chosen. They ar e
our eﬀorts to pr otect the places wher e the heart is bruised. Somewher e, sometime, we felt as though an open heart
caused us pain or humiliation. W e loved with the openness
of a child, and someone didn’t car e, or laughed, or evenpunished us for the eﬀort. In a quick moment, per haps a
fraction of a second, we made a decision to pr otect
ourselves fr om ever feeling that pain again. W e would never
again allow ourselves to be so vulnerable. W e built
emotional defenses. W e tried to build a fortr ess acr oss our
heart, to pr otect us fr om any cold assault. The only pr oblem
is, accor ding to the Course, that we cr eate what we defend
against. There was a time in my life when I felt I should stop
opening up so much to people who didn’t honor my heart as
I wished it to be honor ed. I was angry at people who I felt
had hurt me, but I denied the anger instead of getting in
touch with it and r eleasing it to God. This is a common trap
for Course students. If anger isn’t br ought up into conscious
awar eness, it has no place to go. It either tur ns into an
attack on self or an inappr opriate unconscious attack on
others. So not r ecognizing the full e xtent of my anger, and
thinking that the lesson to be lear ned was mer ely that I
shouldn’t r eveal so much of my honest feelings, I then went
into r elationships with two strik es against me: I was closed—
read that as cold—and ar med with hidden emotional knives
coming fr om my unconscious anger. Contrary to whatever
front I might have been able to lead with, that’s not e xactly
a delightful pack age. Between the coldness and the anger, I
could tur n oﬀ the saintliest men. This, of course, only
increased my anger and distrust. I was once talking to a very wise therapist. I made some
comment lik e, “W ell, a lot of women my age ar e ﬁnding it
very har d to ﬁnd r eally loving, committable, available men.”
Her answer rang thr ough my head lik e chur ch bells. “When
a woman says that to me,” she said, “ what we usually ﬁnd
when we look closely enough is a contempt for men.”Contempt for men. Contempt for men. The wor ds
resounded thr ough my sk ull. I don’t know if that was the
issue for every woman she spok e to, but I knew she had hit
the nail on the head in my case. I had of ten thought about
the idea in the Course that we think we ar e angry at what
our br other did to us, but that r eally we ar e angry because
of what we’ve done to him. I had vaguely known that that
was true, but it took a lot of uncovering to see what it was I
was doing  to these guys who I just knew  were doing all
these hor rible things to me! The Course speaks of “shadow
ﬁgures” we bring with us fr om our past. It tells us that we
tend to see no one as they ar e now. We keep blaming
someone in the pr esent for something someone else did in
the past. Some poor man would tell me, “ Darling, I’m not
able to come back Sunday night lik e I’d planned. I’ve got to
keep working on this pr oject. I might not be back until
Tuesday.” Well, he might as well have just told me that my
cat was dead and the dog was dying. The pr oblem wasn’t
that the man wasn’t coming home for a few days mor e. The
problem was how it made me feel inside to hear him say
that. Such a dark despair would run acr oss my heart, I can’t
begin to tell you. I wasn’t r elating to that man, or this
circumstance. I was r emembering all the times I had ever
felt as though I didn’t matter, I wasn’t attractive, Daddy
didn’t want to hold me, or someone else didn’t want to have
sex anymor e.
From a Course perspective, this situation was coming up
now in or der for me to feel that feeling, and know that it had
nothing to do with the pr esent. I ask ed for a miracle: ‘I am
willing to see this diﬀer ently. I am willing to r emember who I
am.’ God’s answer to my pain was not going to be—contrary
to what my ego k ept insisting was the only way out of this
grief—a man who was going to tell me sixty times a day,
“You’re fabulous, you’r e wonderful, I love you, I want you,”
and then show me just how desirable I r eally was, maybetwice, pr eferably thr ee times a day. The healing, in fact, was
bound to come ultimately fr om men who would not—
because no one can, r eally—tolerate my neediness, or the
guilt I would try to pr oject onto


 woman’ s pain-body, and through
it she will attack her partner — blame, criticize, make wrong, a nd so on. This in turn now becomes his  challenge.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        So place  your attention on feeling the emotion, and check whether your
mind is holding  on to a grievance pattern such as blame, self-pity, or
resentment that is feeding the e motion. If that is the case, it means that
you haven’ t for given. Non-for gi veness is often toward another person or
yourself, but it m ay just as well be toward any situation or con dition —
past, present, or future — that your mind refuses to accept. Y es, there can
be nonfor givene ss even with regard to the future. This is the mind’ s
refusal to accept uncertainty, to accept that the future is u ltimately
beyond its control. For giveness is to relinquish your grievance and so tolet g o of  grief. It happens naturally once you realize that your grievance
serves no purpose except to strengthen a false sense of self. For giveness
is to of fer no resistance to life —  to allow life to live through you. The
alternatives are pain and suf fering, a greatly restricted flow of life
ener gy, and in many cases physical disease. The moment you truly for give, y ou have reclaimed your power from the
mind. Nonfor giveness is the very nature of the mind, just as the mind-
made false self, the ego, cannot survive without strife and conflict. The
mind cannot for give. Only you  can. Y ou become present, you enter your
body, you feel t he vibrant peace and stillness that emanate from  Being. That is why Jesus said: “Before you enter the temple, for give. ”
YOUR LINK WITH THE UNMANIFESTED
What is the r elationship between pr esence and the inner body. Presence is pure consciousness —  consciousness that has been reclaimed
from the  mind, from the world of form. The inner body is your link with
the Unmanifeste d, and in its deepest aspect is  the Unmanifested: the
Source f rom wh ich consciousne ss emanates, as light emanates from the
sun. A wareness of the inner b ody is consciousness remembering its
origin and returning to the Source. Is the Unmanifested the same as Being. Y es. The  word Unmanifested  attempt s, by way of negation, to express
That wh ich cannot be spoken, th ought, or imagined. It points to what it is
by saying what it is not. Being, on the other hand, is a positive term. Please d on’ t get  attached to eit her of these words or start believing in
them. They are no more than signposts. Y ou said  that pr esence is consciousness that has been r eclaimed fr om the
mind. Who does the r eclaiming. Y ou do. But since in your essence you ar e  consciousness, we might as
well say  that it is an awakenin g of consciousness from the d ream of
form. This does not mean that y our own form will instantly van ish in an
explosion of light. Y ou can continue in your present form yet be aware of
the formless and deathless deep within you. I mu st a dmit that this is way beyond my compr ehension, and yet  on some
deeper level I se em to know wh at you ar e talking about. It’ s mor e like a
feeling than anything else. Am I deceiving myself. No, you are not. Feeling will get you closer to the truth of who you are
than thinking. I cannot tell yo u anything that deep within y ou don’ t
already know. When you have reached a certain stage of inner
connectedness, y ou recognize the truth when you hear it. If you  haven’ t
reached that stage yet, the practice of body awareness will bring about
the deepening that is necessary. SLOWING DOWN THE AGING PROCESS
In the meantime, awareness of the inner body has other benefits in the
physical realm. One of them is a significant slowing down of t he aging
of the physical body. Whereas the outer body normal ly appears to grow old and wither fairly
quickly, the inner body does not change with time, except that you may
feel it more deeply and become it more fully. If you are twenty years old
now, the ener gy field of your inn er body will feel just the same when you
are e ighty. It will be just as vibra ntly alive. As soon as your habitual state
changes from being out of the b ody and trapped in your mind to being inthe body and present in the Now, your physical body will feel lighter,
clearer, more alive. As there is more consciousness in the body, its
molecular structure actually be comes less dense. More consciousness
means a lessening of the illusion of materiality. When y ou become identified more with the timeless inner body than
with the outer body, when presence becomes your normal mode of
consciousness a nd past and future no longer dominate your attention,
you do not accu mulate time anymore in your psyche and in the cells of
the b ody. The accumulation of t ime as the psychological burden of past
and futu re great ly impairs the c ells’ capacity for self-renewal. So if you
inhabit the inner body, the outer body will grow old at a much slower
rate, and even when it does, your timeless essence will shine through the
outer form, and you will not give the appearance of an old person. Is ther e any scientific evidence for this. T ry it out and you will be  the evidence. STRENGTHENING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM
Another benefit of this practice in the physical realm is a great
strengthening of the immune system, which occurs when you inhabit the
body. The more consciousness you bring into the body, the stronger the
immune system,  becomes. It is as if every cell awakens and rejo ices. The
body loves your attention. It is also a potent form of self-healing. Most
illnesses creep in when y ou are not prese nt in the body. If the master is
not present in the house, all kinds of shady characters will take up
residence there. When you inhabit your body, it will be hard for
unwanted guests to enter. It is not only yo ur physical immune system that becomes stren gthened;
your psychic immune system is greatly enhanced as well. The latter
protects you from the negative mental-emotional force fields of others,
which are highly contagious. I nhabiting the body protects you not by
putting u p a shield, but by raisi ng the frequency vibration of y our totalener gy field, so that anything that vibrates at a lower frequency, such as
fear, anger, depression, and so on, now exists in what is virtually a
dif ferent order of reality. It do esn’ t enter your field of consc iousness
anymore, or if it  does you don’ t need to of fer any resistance to i t because
it pa sses right through you. Please don’ t just accept or reject w hat I am
saying. Put it to the test. There is a simp le but powerful self-healing meditation that yo u can do
whenever you feel the need to boost your immune system. It is
particularly ef fective if used when you feel the first symptoms of an
illness, b ut it also works with ill nesses that are already entrenched if you
use it at frequ ent intervals and with an intense focus. It will also
counteract any disruption of your ener gy field by some form of
negativity. How ever, it is not a substitute for the moment-to-moment
practice of being in the bod y; otherwise, its ef fect will only be
temporary. Here it is. When yo u are unoccupied for a few minutes, and especially last thing at
night be fore falling asleep and first thing in the morning before getting
up, “floo d” your body with consciousness. Close your eyes. L ie flat on
your back. Choose dif ferent parts of your body to fo cus your attention on
briefly at first: hands, feet, arms, legs, abdomen, chest, head, and so on. Feel the  life ener gy inside those  parts as intensely as you can. S tay with
each par t for fifteen seconds or so. Then let your attention run  through
the body like a wave a few time s, from feet to head and back again. This
need only take a minute or so. After that, feel the inner body in its
totality, as a single field of ener gy. Hold that feeling for a few minutes. Be intensely present during that time, present in every cell of your body. Don’ t be  concerned if the mind  occasionally succeeds in drawing your
attention out of the body and you lose yourself in some thought. As soon
as you notice that this has hap pened, just return your attention to the
inner body. LET THE BREA TH T AKE YOU INT O THE BODY
At t imes, when my mind has been very active, it has acqui r ed such
momentum


, M.D., advised
that such a cancer cannot be completely excised by surgery because the
procedure woul d negatively affect the use of his right arm. Dr. Martinez
conjectured that the new cancer  might be a delayed adverse side effect of
the original radiation therapy that Senor Lechuga had unde rgone some
twenty years before.Three weeks after entering the Oasis Hospital, he left to follow the
Gerson Therapy at home. While the specific diagnosis of disease remained
uncertain, there was no doubt that this eighty-six-year -old man once again
needed to fight for his life—but with a different form of cancer. Then,
during the last week of Novemb er 1999, Senor Jesus Lechuga Valdez died
suddenly of heart failure. (See Illustration 21-2 depicting Senor Lechuga). A F OUR TEEN -YEAR RECOVER Y FROM OVARIAN  CANCER
In Nove mber 1999, while taking maintenance care at the Oasis Hots-
pital, the only official Gerson Therapy facility in Tijuana, Mexico, fifty-
one-year -old Sandra Whitwell, now of Stuart, Virginia, described her
permanent recovery from carcinoma of the ovary. Sandra currently works as
a nanny and nutritionist. Fourteen years ago ovarian cancer had threatened
her life; today she shares her story about using the Gerson Therapy to cure
herself of the most common gynecologic malignancy. As the fourth most frequent cause of cancer death in American women,
ovarian cancer ’s mortality rate exceeds that for all of the other gynecologic
malignancies combined. Every seventieth woman develops it, and 1 in
every 100 dies from the tumorous growth at its primary site or from
metastases. Arising from cells covering the surface of an ovary (epithelial
carcinoma), in 1997 in the United States 26,800 ovarian cancers were
diagnosed, whic h caused 14,200 deaths. Subsequent years have shown even
higher incidence. Despite all of the money invested in research by
American taxpayers, the incidence of ovarian cancer is rising steadily. Cancer of the ovary spreads by a shedding of malignant cells into the
abdominal cavit y and the peritoneum (its covering membrane) and then
implanting on the surface of the liver, the large intestine, the omentum, the
small intestine, the bladder, the diaphragm, or the stomach’ s attached fatty
tissue. Ovarian cancer cells also metastasize to lymph nodes in the pelvis,
aorta, groin, and neck. Talcum powder containing asbestos is suspected as
one of the probable causes.7
Sandra Whitwel l’s ovarian cancer came upon her gradually starting with
the breakdown of her body when she was seventeen years old. Invariably
her menstrual periods were beset with unbearable cramps, and these carried
over to her early twenties when she married Lawrence Whitwell, aNashville, Tennessee, policeman. “My painful menstruation was abnormal
and an indication of ovarian problems to come,” advises Sandra. “By age
twenty-three, cysts had developed on both of my ovaries which were
removed by surgery. Next, endometriosis struck, which required more
surgery to scrape the endometriu m. After each of these two operations I had
been asked by the consulting surgeons as to whether I had ever been
pregnant, and I had not. They never explained why they wanted to know
about pregnancy, but the doctors seemed anxious to perform an
ovariectomy or hysterectomy on me. “I never gave birth to a child. We adopted our son, Aaron, as a baby. But
then, when he was three years old his daddy was killed in the line of police
duty,” she revea ls. “Ovarian cysts formed again, one of them the size of a
baseball, and these were excised. After recuperating from a third operation
for cyst remova l, I had begun running for exercise—at least four miles a
day. I enjoyed the running and thrived on it. This vigorous daily movement
continued for me over an eight-year period. Early in 1985, however,
running stopped  abruptly for me. I awakened one morning in tremendous
pain and with a distended fluid- filled abdomen [ascites],” describes Sandra. “The operation that followed for removal of a grapefruit-sized cyst also
included a hysterectomy, which left me feeling awful pain. Two days later
my gynecologis t together with the gynecological surgeon told me I was the
victim of ovarian cancer. They wanted to go back in and take biopsy tissue
from the ovaries and several other or gans. “Since blood transfusions were required as well, and this was during the
time when AIDS resulted from  such transfusions, I refused the operation
and three pints of blood that went with it. Simultaneously, my health
insurance carrier did not honor our insurance contract. The insurance
company just outright canceled  my coverage,” Sandra states. “Upon my
contacting a lawyer to enforce reimbursement, he informed me that a
loophole in the policy allowed such cancelation under terms stating that this
ovarian cancer was a ‘preexistin g condition.’ I was just out of luck unless I
had lots of money to pay court costs and legal fees for litigation without any
guarantee I would win. “Having no treatment available to me, I left the hospital after resting for
seven days diagnosed with ovarian cancer. At age thirty-six, I was alone, a
widow, the mother of a seven-year -old son showing diabetic tendencies, and
without income. Except that I owned my Nashville house and some smallcompensation from my husband ’s death, I could not afford the sophisticated
chemotherapy or other toxic modalities being offered by orthodox
medicine. But I do have loving parents living in Stuart, V irginia, who would
do anything to save my life, and they were the people who did just that. “My mother, who has nursed cancer patients, did research and helped me
in decid ing to do nothing rathe r than take toxic therapy. With assistance
from mom and dad in caring for Aaron, I moved in with my parents. Then a
friend from Alaska sent me information about the Gerson Therapy,” Sandra
says. “Sitting with them in their living room, I remember watching
videotapes showing lectures by Charlotte Gerson. My mom said, ‘This
program makes  so much sense. Feed the immune system and give it a
chance to fight off the cancer itself.’ So not having hospital insurance was a
benefit, because I couldn’ t even consider taking any conventional therapy. “Accompanied by my mother as companion and caregiver, I traveled to
Tijuana’ s Gerso n Hospital. My intent was to receive the Gers on Therapy
and take instructions in following it at home. The trip occurred in
September 1985, exactly one month after my hysterectomy and cancer
diagnosis. Durin g that short period before learning the Gerson program, I
became what looked like a bag of bones,” describes Sandra. “My weight
loss was excess ive, falling from 120 to 92 pounds. With a height of five
feet, six-and-a-half inches, I looked really skinny. I was weak to the point of
collapse, and I did remain bedridden for four months. Only the love and
devotion of my caregiving parents pulled me through that worst period of
my life. “But first spend ing ten days at La Gloria Hospital to learn the Gerson
Therapy, and then returning to my parents’ home to be nursed by them,
saved me. I had rented my Nashville house to fellow church members. Then
bringing my son, I moved in with my mother and dad,” expla ins Sandra. “At the Gerson hospital, I immediately underwent detoxification reactions
—many of them—including emotional depression, many tears, constant
nausea, vomiting, headaches, burning sensations from taking castor oil both
orally and rectally, loss of appe tite, sleeplessness, whole body pain in the
joints, muscles, and bones. And I smelled like permanent-waving solution. It was my habit  to periodically take hair permanents, perhaps five times a
year, and that poisonous liquid  had permeated my body organs to poison
them. The Gerson Therapy pulle d out those accumulated toxins, and I gave
off the stinky odor of permanent-waving solution. I reeked of perm.”A lesson learned from Sandra Whitwell is that a person becomes what he
or she puts into and onto the body. That is, eat garbagelike foods and you
become garbage. Consume carcinogens and you turn into a walking cancer
factory. Bathe a body part in poison as Sandra did to her head, and you
make the entire  body a recepta cle for cancer. To stay healthy, you must
expose yourself only to good stuf f.
“Out of ignorance, I harmed myself with convenience or so-called
‘beauty’ items. In college, I had my room and the halls of that dormitory
smelling really bad from the permanent-waving liquid. Just think of all the
contaminated air I inhaled. Also, before I knew better, it had been my habit
to drink up to three full, six-cup pots of coffee a day,” admits Sandra. “But
instruction in the Gerson


 into our subconscious mind
and continue to dictate our thoughts and behavior. When I was growing up, the entrances into many areas of power were
still closed to women that are not closed now. It felt as though we had to
grow claws on our fingernails in order to make our way into rooms that
were much easier for men to enter. What I found—a nd I think this is true of many women around my age—
is that even when the doors had been opened and I no longer needed my
claws, it was as though they’d  become cemented into my fingernails. A
certain harshnes s in my personality had become a mental habit, like an
emotional muscle that seemed permanently cramped. I imagined opponents
who weren’t even there, then suffered the consequences of treating people
as though they were. For where we don’t extend love, we project fear. We
are subconsciou sly setting people up to become who we’ve already decided
they were. The ego doesn’ t deny your suffering. It simply says other peop le are to
blame for it—which then maintains the separation, as people keep
appearing in your life to consta ntly disappoint you. What the ego doesn’ t
want you to see are all the subco nscious and brilliant ways you set them up
to do that. Spiritual rebirth  is not an easy process; like physical birth, it can be
messy and difficult. It takes brutal self-honesty to recognize the parts of us
that need to die. First we come to see that a pattern is ego, that it’s dysfunctio nal and
doesn’ t serve us. But that doesn’ t mean it necessarily goes away, that it
immediately stops. If anything, the pattern sometimes seems to become
more prevalent, more obvious, as though the Holy Spirit puts a magnifying
glass onto that aspect of our personality so we have no choice but to attend
to it. This is why it often feels as though once you get serious about the
spiritual path, things can seem  to get worse before they get better. Your
character defects  were operative before, but you were sort of anesthetized to
them, able to get by with pretending they weren’ t much of an issue. But
once we do admit we have them, the work begins. You still might behave in
a dysfunctional way, but you can no longer pretend to yourself that you’re
not doing so. The fact that we’re admitting our issues is a good thing, but the ego is
very sly here. The ego loves to talk about itself and thoroughly  enjoys this
part of the proce ss. It doesn’ t mind you owning your shadow, so long as you
blame someone else for why you are the way you are. Contrary to the psychotherapeut ic trend, it doesn’ t really matter how our
neurotic patterns  got started. Some say they started with Mommy or Daddy,
or with social or ancestral patterns, and all that might be true. But
metaphysically it all started millions of years ago with the first thought of
separation. All that’s happened since then is that we keep repeating it. What
matters is not where the fear came from, but that it’s lodged in your brain. And analyzing the darkness doesn’ t necessarily turn on the light. At a certain point it doesn’ t really matter where you got your issues. They’re yours now. And no matter who your parents were, you can be
reparented by God. Your parents birthed your mortal self; God Himself
birthed the real you. We don’t heal our lives in the past but in the present. We’re not held
back by the love we didn’ t receive in the past but by the love we’re refusing
to give right now. In this moment, we can make a better choice. But that’s
not alwa ys easy, and sometimes it takes more than simply positive thinking. Sometimes it’s not enough to just tell ourselves to act differently. Sometimes we need God’ s help. And lo and behold, He is always there.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>
Q: What is the primary problem that needs to be addressed in order to find peace?,
A: Fear
Q: What is the purpose of the Holy Spirit?,
A: To guide us towards love and help us correct our thoughts
Q: What is the key to spiritual growth and transformation?,
A: Remembering who we are and choosing to see the innocence in ourselves and others
Q: What is the role of the ego in our lives?,
A: The ego is a false belief that separates us from our true selves and keeps us stuck in negativity and pain
Q: What is the key to healing and forgiveness?,
A: Recognizing that love is the only real power and choosing to see the innocence in ourselves and others, and to forgive and release our attachment to the past<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Too many times  a therapist will say, “Why do you think you always
pick the same man?” when perhaps it would serve the client best if the
therapist asked,  “Why do you think you always act a certain way with
men?” In other words, why do you push love away? You seem to pick the
same man because you keep acting the same way. In many cases, contemporary psychotherapy has become a cult of
blaming someone else. Often it’s the ego’s hotbed of grievances and
victimization, using modern buzzwords like “trauma” and “narcissist” to
pretty much explain everything. While those words are meaningful and
carry significant messages given by important voices in the culture, they
shouldn’ t be cookie-cutter solutions applied  to every singl e issue. They’ve
been cheapened so much at this point that they’re used as a description, an
excuse, an almost jingoistic label slapped onto every problem. And notice
how rarely the problem seems to be you. While your therapist is explaining that the person you dated was
probably a narcissist, consider whether that person might be talking to their
therapist on the other side of town and hearing that you are! The ego just
loves to talk about other people’ s issues, and brilliantly ignores our own. I spent years in and out of thera py, and often with smart and very wise
people. But I think I would have been better served if I’d been coddled
much less and busted much more. Therapy should not be a place where we
are bolstered in our belief that we’re weak, or victimized, or forever
harmed. It should be a place where we are aided in letting go of the barriers
that stand in front of our hearts, that the love that is all around us might
enter in and give us peace. “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the
barriers within yourself that you have built against it”* (T-338). Most of us,
if we’re honest with ourselves, could write down on a piece of paper some
of the things we do that drive other people crazy. And if we don’t know
what those things are, our best friends could probably tell us. It’s our own behavioral patterns  more than anything else that deprive us
of love. We continue to grasp for love, when usually what we most need to
do is identify the ways we push it away. Our souls are swim ming everymoment in an ocean of love, for that is God’ s universe. But the ego is truly
a sly opponent, being, after all, our own mind turned against us. The biggest
mistakes I’ve made in love I actually thought were a good idea at the time. Send love to your friends, to your family, to your customers, to your
clients, to your boss, to your colleagues, to your employees, to the people
you know, to the people you don’t know, to your president, and yes—to that
ex-president too. Send love to Nancy Pelosi and to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Jesus would. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “God said I have to love my
enemies; He didn’ t say I have to like them.”
The world we’re living in today is saturated by a mental poison. It is
more than toxic; it’s hateful. And all of us know it. None of us can afford to
sit out the process of doing what we can to de-escalate the madness. And it has to start with us. With every thought we think we’re either
adding to the solution or adding  to the problem. Either our heart is opened
or our heart is closed. There is a way to disagree, to set boundaries, even to
oppose behavior  that is intolerable, without withholding love. That is the
message of Jesus. It is as radical today as it was two thousand years ago. While I was writing this book, focusing deeply and sincerely on what it
would mean to truly deeply love, my assistant made an administrative
mistake, and I made a snark y comment. Sometimes people have the
extraordinary audacity not to do exactly what we want them to do. Shocking, but it happens. That’ s what makes a relationship the ultimate teaching and learning
opportunity. The point is not that other people have to change, but that we
do. The work is always on ourselves. The ego is certain that a relationship
will be fine as soon as the other person starts acting differently. But the fact
that we can’ t accept them as they are acting now is the actual problem. What a victim I was! Couldn’ t she see


vious? The way to overcome this emotion is to say to yourself,
“Isn’t it wonderful! I rejoice in that man’s prosperity. I  wish for him
greater and greater wealth.”
To entertain envious thoughts is devastating because it places y ou in
a very negative position; therefore, wealth flows from you instead of
to you. If you are ever annoyed or irritated by the prosperity or great
wealth of another, claim immediately that you truly wish for  him
greater wealth in every possible way. This will neutrali ze the negative
thoughts in your mind and cause an ever-greater measure of weal th to
flow to you by the law of your own subconscious mind. • Rubbing out a great mental block to wealth
If you are worried and critical about someone whom you claim is
making money dishonestly, cease worrying about him. You know
such a person is using the law of mind negatively; the law of mi nd
takes care of him. Be careful not to criticize him for the  reasons
previously indicated. 106  Remember: The block or obstacle to wealth is in your own mind. You can now destroy that mental block. This you may do by getting
on mental good terms with everyone. • Sleep and grow rich
As you go to sleep at night, practice the following tech-nique. Repeat the word, “Wealth,” quietly, easily, and feelingly. Do t his over
and over again, just like a lullaby. Lull yourself to sleep wit h the one
word, “Wealth.” You should be amazed at the result. Wealth should
flow to you in avalanches of abundance. This is another example o f
the magic power of your subcon-scious mind. • Serve yourself with the powers of your mind
1. Decide to be wealthy the easy way, with the infallible aid of your
subconscious mind. 2. Trying to accumulate wealth by the sweat of your brow and hard
labor is one way to become the richest man in the graveyar d. You do
not have to strive or slave hard. 3. Wealth is a subconscious conviction. Build into your men-tality
the idea of wealth. 4. The trouble with most people is that they have no invisible means
of support. 5. Repeat the word, “Wealth,” to yourself slowly and quietly for
about five minutes prior to sleep and your subconscious will br ing
wealth to pass in your experience. 6. The feeling of wealth produces wealth. Keep this in mind at all
times. 7. Your conscious and subconscious mind must agree. Your
subconscious accepts what you really feel to be true. The dom inant
idea is always accepted by your subconscious mind. The dominant
idea should be wealth, not poverty. 107  8. You can overcome any mental conflict regarding wealth by
affirming frequently, “By day and by night I am being pros-pe red in
all of my interests.”
9. Increase your sales by repeating this statement over and ov er
again, “My sales are improving every day; I am ad-vancing,
progressing, and getting wealthier every day.”
10. Stop writing blank checks, such as, “There is not enough to go
around,” or “There is a shortage,” etc. Such state-ments magnify  and
multiply your loss. 11. Deposit thoughts of prosperity, wealth, and success in your
subconscious mind, and the latter will give you compound interest. 12. What you consciously affirm, you must not mentally deny a few
moments later. This will neutralize the good you have affirmed. 13. Your true source of wealth consists of the ideas in your mind. You can have an idea worth millions of dollars. Your subconscious
will give you the idea you seek. 14. Envy and jealousy are stumbling blocks to the flow of wealth. Rejoice in the prosperity of others. 15. The block to wealth is in your own mind. Destroy that block
now by getting on good mental terms with everyone. 108  10
Your Right to Be Rich
It is your right to be rich. You are here to lead the abun-dant l ife and
be happy, radiant, and free. You should, therefore, have all the money
you need to lead a full, happy, and pros-perous life. You are here to grow, expand, and unfold spiritually, men-tally, a nd
materially. You have the inalienable right to fully develop and express
yourself along all lines. You should sur-round yourself with beauty
and luxury. Why be satisfied with just enough to go around when you can enjoy
the riches of your subconscious mind? In this chapter you can le arn to
make friends with money, and you should al-ways have a surplus. Your desire to be rich is a desire for a fuller, happier, mor e wonderful
life. It is a cosmic urge. It is not only good, but also very good. • Money is a symbol
Money is a symbol of exchange. It means to you not only freedom
from want, but beauty, luxury, abundance, and refine-ment. It is
merely a symbol of the economic health of the nation. When your
blood is circulating freely in your body, you are healthy. When money
is circulating freely in your life, you are economically heal thy. When
people begin to hoard money, to put it away in tin boxes, and become
charged with fear, there is economic illness. Money has taken many forms as a medium of exchange down
through the centuries, such as, salt, beads, and trinkets of vari ous
kinds. In early times a man’s wealth was determined by the num ber of
sheep and oxen he had. Now we use currency, and other negotiable
instruments, as it is much more convenient to write a check than c arry
some sheep around with you to pay bills. 109  • How to walk the royal road to riches
Knowledge of the powers of your subconscious mind is the means
to  the royal road to riches of all kinds—spiritual, men-tal, o r
financial. The student of the laws of mind believes and knows
definitely that regardless of economic situations, stock marke t
fluctuation, depression, strikes, war, other conditions or
circumstances, he will always be amply supplied, regardles s of what
form money takes. The reason for this is that he has con-veyed the
idea of wealth to his subconscious mind, and it keeps him supplied
wherever he may be. He has convinced himself in his mind that
money is forever flowing freely in his life and that there  is always a
wonderful surplus. Should there be a fi-nancial collapse of
government tomorrow and all the man’s  present holdings become
valueless, as the German marks did after the First World War, he
would still attract wealth and be cared for, regardless of th e form the
new currency took. • Why you do not have more money
As you read this chapter, you are probably saying, “I am worthy of a
higher salary than I am receiving.” I believe most people are
inadequately compensated. One of the causes many people does not
have more money is that they are silently or openly condemning i t.
They refer to money as “filthy lucre” or “the love of money is  the root
of all evil.” Another reason they do not prosper is that they ha ve a
sneaky subconscious feeling there is some virtue in poverty. T his
subconscious pattern may be due to early childhood training,
superstition, or it could be based on a false interpretation of scri ptures. • Money and a balanced life
One time a man said to me, “I am broke. I do not like money. It is
the
root of all evil.” These statements represent a confused ne urotic
mind. Love of money to the exclusion of everything else will c ause
you to become lopsided and unbal-anced. You are here to use your
 110  power or authority wisely. Some men crave power others cra ve
money. If you set your heart on money exclusively and say, “Money is al l I
want; I am going to give all my attention to amassing money; nothi ng
else matters,” you can get money and attain a fortune, but you have
forgotten that you are here to lead a balanced life. You must also
satisfy the hunger for peace of mind, harmony, love, joy, and perfect
health. By making money your sole aim, you simply made a wrong choice. You thought that was all you wanted, but you found after all your
efforts that it was not only the money you needed. You also desired
true expression of your hidden talents, true place in life, beaut y, and
the joy of contributing to the welfare and success of others. B y
learning the laws of your subconscious mind, you could have a million
dollars or many millions, if you wanted them, and still have peac e of
mind, harmony, per-fect health, and perfect expression. • Poverty is a mental disease
There is no virtue in poverty; it is a disease like any ot her mental
disease. If you were physically ill, you would think there was
something wrong with you. You would seek help and do something
about the condition at once. Likewise, if you do not have money
constantly circulating in your life, there is some-thing radic ally wrong
with


 Laboratory?,
A: To help fund their research and potentially find a solution to the mystery of food-related health issues, allowing people to eat a wide variety of foods without suffering negative consequences.
Q: What is the impact that individual contributions can have, according to the text?,
A: Every dollar counts, and individual contributions can help speed up the process of finding a solution, ultimately leading to a better life for the contributor and their loved ones.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Soil and Health Library
This document is a reproduction of the book or other copyrighted material you
requested. It was prepared on for the exclusive use of Oriana, whose email address is
orianaoriana@gmail.com. This reproduction was made by the Soil and Health Library only for the purpose of
research and study. Any further reproduction or distribution of this copy in any form
whatsoever constitutes a violation of copyrights. THE NATIONAL MALNUTRITION*
D. T. QUIGLEY, M. D., F. A. C. S.

Published by The Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Copyright 1943 D. T. Quigley Seventh Printing of Second Edition December, 1952
Printed in U.S.A. by The Olsen Publishing Co., Milwaukee, Wis.

 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: Our Dietary Needs Chapter 2: Why We Must Have Vitamins Chapter 3: Why We Must Have Minerals Chapter 4: Our Dietary Intake (What Do We Get) Chapter 5: What Are The Results Of Our Dietary Errors
Chapter 6: How Widespread Are Deficiencies
Chapter 7: Cancer-Its Treatment And Prevention
Chapter 8: Nutritional Treatment Of Anemia
Chapter 9: What Must Be Done? *The Soil and Health Library wishes to extend its sincere thanks to Kay Morgan of
Irving, Texas, for having donated a copy of this book. INTRODUCTION
   Since the first use of the word "vitamin" the problem of nutrition has been more or
less confused. With the discovery of new vitamins confusion increased. When minerals
were added to the necessary articles required for good nutrition the bungling and
muddling connected with pontifical pronouncements from supposed high places made it
more difficult for anyone, doctor or layman, to get at the truth. The matter would not
have been so hard to untangle had not the whole question been saturated with the poison of commercialism. The selling of bad food had become one of the biggest if not actually
the biggest of business enterprises. The usual scientific discussions which always follow
the introduction of new ideas in medicine were not allowed to proceed as usual in an
unbiased way, but commercial interests began in a most insidious way to combat
scientific fact with ridicule, endowed res earch (endowed in one direction), and other
well tried and tested methods. As the purveyors of good food were practically
unorganized and had smaller investments, erro rs were allowed to go unchallenged, the
general confusion on the subject of nutriti on increased and the sabotage on the health
and well being of the American people proceeded apace. Under the stress of war the
will to better health has been developed. The bad qualities of certain foods were
admitted. It was conceded that white fl our and sugar were producers of the most
dangerous diseases. An unsatisfactory compromise was made and the false statements
foisted on the people to allay general unrest. In effect the bad food purveyors now said: our product was bad but now it is good. As a matter of fact white flour has been
improved very little, sugar not at all and canned goods have the same reduced amounts of vitamin B that they always had, (the B largely killed by heat). The only good flour is whole grain flour and as this must be fresh, (it spoils in a few
weeks) the white flour milling business would be affected in an adverse way if fresh
whole wheat flour were to become universally used. In human nutrition we must aim at the optimum as in the inevitable national conflicts
which test the highest in physical and mental development, only the optimum will
prevail. The profit minded individual who prates about the American diet being
satisfactory as it is, digs his own grave as he opens the way for our enemies. CHAPTER I
OUR DIETARY NEEDS (What do we need?) The requirements for the maintenance of life in every living cell are to be obtained
partly from the air we breathe, partly from the water we drink, and partly from the food we eat. There is the possibility of variations or changes in any of these three which may inhibit the optimum life processes in the living cells. Air may be contaminated with smoke or gas or dust. Water may be contaminated with typhoid fever germs or amebic
dysentery. Food may be contaminated with disease germs, or may fail to contain the necessary elements for providing the highest type of resistance to disease germs. In the life of the ordinary person, the most common disease-producing factors are
from food deficiencies. In the past it has been thought that contaminated air and water
have a good deal to do with the production of disease, and while this does occasionally
occur, it is not to be compared in importance with the amount of disease that is
produced by errors in diet. In the past, before dietary principles we re on a scientific basis, much theorizing was
done as to the cause of some of the common diseases. Philosophical methods of thought
ascribed disease to air, water, weather, evil spirits, changes in the moon, cold, wet, and
witchcraft. Today we know that the average healthy animal will live out his life free
from disease, retaining mental and physical faculties until near the time that death
comes from old age, if the individual is properly nourished. These principles have been worked out on laboratory animals, and are now well established. The application to
human individuals is much more difficult than to laboratory animals, but by accident or
design, much evidence has been accumulated on individual human beings and in
groups, in factories, armies, and pers ons in certain geographical locations. The Japanese Army during the Russian- Japanese war suffered in a very great way
from a deficiency disease. The Japanese Navy during the same war, properly fed,
suffered very little from this disease. Some industrial plants have experimented with
employees in the matter of a tendency to catch cold, and have found that the well-
nourished individuals have a much smaller number of days absent from work on this
account. The people of Labrador every winter suffer severely from scurvy and beriberi
due to the fact that during this period of the year they are located in a somewhat
inaccessible geographical location, and fresh fruits and vegetables are not available. These instances are given to show the methods used to acquire information in
connection with the human animal, and in order to show that in the main the principles that apply to rats and guinea pigs apply in the same way to humans. A few of the sources of information in connection with human diets are studies made
in the Loetschental valley in Switzerland, th e Outer Hebrides Islands and the Indians of
western Canada. These relatively inaccessible geographic locations permit the study of
peoples who live on natural foods. Western Canada, in the region east of the Rocky
Mountains, is hard to reach. The Indians in this part of Canada enjoyed long life and
good health until a fort was established by the British government. The Indians who
lived near the fort found they could trade their furs and fish for "the white man's food." The white man's food consisted mostly of white flour and sugar. The Indians took to
this with as great enthusiasm as they did to alcohol; resulting in many cases of arthritis, tuberculosis, and tooth decay, with a shortened life period, and with lessened ability to
work. The Indians in the back country who did not have access to the white man's food kept their good health; had no tuberculosis or any of the other diseases mentioned. In the Outer Hebrides--a little group of Islands in the north Atlantic west of northern
Scotland--the natives were found to be healthy, strong, and long-lived. Their food was whole grain products, milk, milk products, and meat. There was no need for a doctor or
a dentist. In time the Lewis tweeds from the Is land of Lewis in that group came to be an
important article of commerce. A brisk shipping between Scotland and the capital of the
Islands sprang up. This shipping brought the English and Scotch, who in turn brought
marmalade and other sweets, candies, cookies, and products made with white flour and sugar. Coincident with the introduction of  these foods, the school children showed a
large incidence of tooth decay, adenoids, diseased tonsils, arthritis, tuberculosis, and
other diseases that go with deficiency diets. The people in the back part of the Island of
Lewis and the people of the other islands who were not exposed to the diets of the more
highly civilized English and Scotch suffered no deficiency disease. They continued to live to be near one hundred years of age without tuberculosis, arthritis, heart disease,
diseases of digestion, or tooth decay. The Loetschental valley in Switzerland is high in the Alps and is relatively
inaccessible. The population of the valley is around 2200. The summer is short, but is
long enough to provide for a crop of grass, greens, and vegetables. The people of the
valley live on milk cheese, butter, whole grains, eggs and meat. Neither the Indians of
western Canada, the people of the Outer Hebrides, or the inhabitants of


. Nothing could appear to be more all-encompassing than
the fullblown madness of a chronic schizophre nic, who
suﬀers from hallucinatory visions and inner voices,
distorted thinking, and often complete physical and mental
disorientation. To ask a schizophrenic what day it is can
throw him into bewilderment and shivering terror. However, the structural diﬀerence between this state of
mind and sanity may be traceable to one minute
biochemical called dopamine, which is secreted by the
brain. The dopamine connection, known for two decades,
held that schizophrenics overproduce this chemical, which
plays an important role in processing both emotions andperceptions—a hallucinat ion would thus be a perception of
the outside world that has gotten scrambled in the brain’s
chemical coding. This hypothesis was further simpliﬁed in 1984 when a
psychiatrist at the University of Iowa, Dr. Raﬁq Waziri,
reviewed what was known about the brain chemistry of
schizophrenics and narrowed the defect down to an even
smaller molecule called serine, a common amino acid found
in most protein foods. Serine is thought to be an early link
in the manufacture of dopamine. Unable to metabolize
serine corre ctly, the brains of schizophrenics apparently
overproduce dopamine to oﬀset the lack—the exact process
is still unknown. Could it be that full-blown schizophrenia,
considered the most bizarre and complex of mental
disorders, depends on how well you digest your food? Earlier ﬁndings at M.I.T. have already shown that the
brain’s basic chemistry is so variable that it can be
modiﬁed by a single meal. Dr. Waziri bolstered support for his theory by taking a
group of long-term schizophrenics and feeding them a
dietary supplement of glycine, a chemical that serine is
supposed to build as part of the dopamine mechanism. Perhaps the extra glycine would bypass the serine defect,
Waziri reasoned, and bring dopamine back into balance. In
the trial group, a few schizophrenics responded quite
dramatically—they were  able to stop their medications
without having any psych otic episodes. For the ﬁrst time in
years, their thinking was free from both their disease and
the mind-numbing drugs used to treat it. A dieta ry approach to mental illness would be far more
benign than current therapies. The possibility of ﬁnding
more dietary  links is also tantalizing. At least one best-
selling diet book has jumped the gun by listing “happy
foods” and “sad foods,” on the theory that the amino acids
in these foods go directly to the brain and are made intochemicals that produce either positive or negative moods. Milk, chicken, bananas, and leafy greens are among the
happy foods, because they stimulate dopamine and two
other “positive” brain chemicals. Sugary and fatty foods, on
the other hand, are typically sad foods, because they
stimulate acetylcholine, a “negative” chemical. Critics say,
quite justiﬁably, that brain chemicals are not so simple—
can a schizophrenic’s high dopamine levels be considered
positive? Nor does it seem that changing the intake of
amino acids  leads directly to more of a desir ed brain
chemical, just as the amount of cholesterol in your diet
does not directly correlate with the amount in your blood. If you can eat your way to sanity, or even a better mood,
then the basic issues in mind-body medicine become even
more confused. Can you trust the mind to cure arthritis and
at the same time hold that eating chocolate will make you
depressed? This would imply a self-contradiction, that mind
is dominant over matter except when matter is dominant
over mind. In the current atmosphere of ambiguous
ﬁndings, the two opposite positions—treat the body
through the mind, treat the mind through the body—are
equally up in the air. None of the confusion has been adequately clariﬁed, and
as a result, the subjecti ve world of the mind remains a
treacherous force, capricious in its ability to heal, equally
capricious in its ability to bring illness. Many doctors,
because of their materialistic bias, would be thrilled to
conclude that chemicals must be the answer to all our
mental and physical mysteries. I don’t think they can be. In my specialty of
endocrinology, some of the ﬁrst chemicals that aﬀect the
mind, the endocrine hormones, were discovered. Every day
I see patients who display mental symptoms that are
traceable to defects in their hormonal balance—the
distorted thinking of a diabetic going into a low-blood-sugarreaction, the mood shifts of the menstrual cycle, and even a
characteristic depression that is the earliest warning sign
of certain cancers (a tumor in the pancreas, for example,
may be too small to detect, yet it will release cortisol and
other “stress hormones” into the bloodstream, causing the
patient to feel depressed). Despite this, I see too many ﬂaws in the argumen t that a
deeper knowledge of body chemistry is all we need—the
body has too many chemicals (literally thousands of them),
they are produced in bewilderingly complex patterns, and
they come and go too fast, often in fractions of a second. What controls this consta nt ﬂux? We cannot leave the mind
out of the mind-body connection altogether. To say that the
body heals itself using only chemicals is like saying that a
car shifts gears using only the transmission. Clearly it takes
a driver who knows what he is doing. Although medicine
has spent several centur ies trying to hold on to the idea
that the body runs itself alone, like a self-motivated
machine, there must be a driver here, too. Otherwise, our
body’s chemistry would be a jumble of ﬂoating molecules
instead of the incredibly  ordered and precise machinery
that it so obviously is. In a more naïve age, the driver was thought to be a tiny
man, called the homunculus, who sat in the heart and
performed all the gear shifts needed to run the body. The
homunculus went out in the Renaissance, when anatomists
began for the ﬁrst time to dissect cadavers and verify what
was inside them. The homunculus wasn’t found inside the
heart (neithe r was the soul), but that left a huge, glaring
gap between the mind and the body. Many scientists since
have tried to ﬁll the gap with the brain, saying that the
brain’s funct ion is to order and control all other functions
in the physiology; but this answer begs the question,
because the brain is just another machine. The driver still
needs to be there. I will argue that he is, but he hasbecome something much more abstract than the
homunculus or even the brain—he is built into the
intelligent power that motivates us to live, move, and think. Can that be proved? The next step for us is to work our
way deeper into the body ’s inner intelligence, to try to ﬁnd
out what motivates it. The territory of mind-body medicine
has no givens and no inﬂexible rules, which is all to the
good. For decades,  medicine has known that much disease
has a psychosomatic component, yet dealing with that
component has been like trying to harness the wind. Inside
us there must be a “thin king body” that responds to the
mind’s comm ands, but where could it be and what is it
made of? EXPANDING THE TOPIC
One of the most baﬄing mysteries touched upon in this
chapter—where does a thought come from?—remains just
as baﬄing today. It may surprise you, but there is no
evidence that the brain is thinking. In fact, if you assume
that the mind arises from  the brain, which is the standard
working assumption in neuroscience, consciousne ss is just
an inference. Imagine an old-time player piano, the kind
that performed music by inserting a paper roll into the
mechanism. Punched holes in the paper roll activate the
keys, giving the appearance that an invisible pianist is
playing the “Maple Leaf R ag” or a Mozart sonata. No one would propose that the piano roll manufactured
itself. There must be a musician whose actual intentions lie
behind the “invisible” pianist. We infer his existence
without seeing him. The same is true about the mind when
you observe the brain. As its quadrillion connections
activate, using chemical signals and faint electrical
charges, the vast activ ity of mind—thoughts, feelings,sensations, and images—appears. To claim that this
happens automatically seems strange, but it’s the
materialist position, while in Quantum Healing  I said the
opposite: An invisible intelligence, comple te with
intentions, desires, hope s, dreams, and so on, is at work. The fact that you can’t see this entity, known as the self,
doesn’t prove that he doesn’t exist. It only proves that he
doesn’t exist  if you are a strict materialist, who will accept
nothing except physical phenomena. The bulk of this chapter was devoted to the reality  of the
mind-body connection, which is un


 up toward the great mountains
around us. Though they hid their heads in the
clouds, they gave oﬀ an aura of grandeur and
peace. As I watched, the clouds lifted all at once. I
was absolutely in awe. What I had taken for
mountains were only foothills. Beyond them, like
ancient gods, rose the true Himalayas,
unbelievably mighty and majestic. We could hardly speak,  so much power and
beauty was concentrate d in that breathtaking
scene. The sense of having a small, isolated self
disappeared, and in its place was the delicious
sensation of ﬂowing out into everything I beheld. I felt a sense of complete  fullness contained in my
own silence. Fittingly, the tallest peak  before us
was Annapurna, whose name means “fullness of
life. ”
Standing there on the lake, I saw directly into
the reality where time really is timeless. The same
power that reared these mountains was ﬂowing
through me. If I wanted to ﬁnd the source of time
and space, I only needed to place my ﬁngers over
my heart. The single adequate word to describe
my sensations at that moment is bliss. *
What stands out unmistakably in this experience is its
sense of revelation. People who have been directly touched
by bliss feel that they are suddenly being exposed to life as
it really is. By comparison, their ordinary view was ﬂat anddistorted; they had been accepting a dingy image for the
real thing. To experience bliss every hour of the day would
be a sign of complete enlightenment, but even  a brief
encounter is signiﬁcant— it permits you to actually feel
waves of consciousness as they well up from the ﬁeld of
silence, cross  the gap, and are infused into every cell. This
is the body’s own awakening. In Ayurveda, bliss is the basis for three extremely
powerful healing techniq ues. The ﬁrst is meditation, which
we have already discussed. Its importance is that it takes
the mind out of its boundaries and exposes it to an
unbounded state of consciousness. The other two
techniques are more speciﬁc. The ﬁrst is the Ayurvedic
psycho-physiological technique—the term psycho-
physiological  simply means “mind-bod y” (we often use an
informal name, the bliss technique). The second healing
technique is called primordial sound. To explain how such healing works, let me take an
example from  hypnosis. One of the most surprising ﬁndings
of hypnosis research is that subjects can make their hands
warm or cold, raise rashes on their skin, and even form
blisters in a matter of a few minutes after the hypnotic
suggestion is introduced. This is not, strictly speaking, a
peculiarity of the hypnotic trance—subjects hook ed up to
biofeedback machines can do similar things in their normal
state of awar eness. What is being demonstra ted here is the
power of attention to alter the body. Ayurveda has made
use of this principle for thousands of years. Indeed, since
the basic premise of Vedic knowledge is that consciousness
creates the body, it is only natural that techn iques for
focusing attention should have been discovered. The bliss technique and primordial sound fall into this
category. Consciousness is nothing but awareness. You can
be aware that your hand is hot, which is passive awareness,
but as the hypnosis research shows, you can also makeyour hand hot, which is active awareness, or attention. When you “pay attention” to something, you shift from
passive to active awareness. Attention exerts far more
control than people ordinarily realize. That is beca use we
are victims of passive awareness. A person in pain is aware
of the pain but not that he can make it increase, diminish,
appear, or disappear. Yet all this is true. (People can walk
on ﬁre, for example, because they can control their level of
pain; more remarkably, they can control whether their feet
actually get burned—that too is under the control of
attention. ) In Ayurveda,  each and every symptom of disease, from a
minor neck pain to a full-blown cancer, is under the control
of attention. However, between us and the symptom lie
barriers—the veils called Maya—that prevent us from
exercising our attention in a therapeutic way. All mind-body
medicine attempts to remove these obstacles so that
healing can take place. Outside Ayurveda, the word Maya is
not used, but any term that amounts to the same  thing is
applicable. I have used other phrases, such as “barriers in
silence,” “the ghost of memory,” and “the mask of matter. ”
In the curren t environment, where mind-body medicine is
just proving itself and has to beware of stepping on the toes
of science, techniques for breaking through Maya are still
rather rudimentary. Fortunately, nature has set up things so
that mind-body approaches of all kinds will work. Laughter
can defeat a fatal disease ; so can drinking a glass of grape
juice every day, if you believe strongly enough in it. It would be much better, however, to have a science of
awareness. Ayurveda supplies just that. It would also be
helpful to have a theory  that supplies this science with a
ﬁrm groundin g in philosophy; the Vedic knowledge  supplies
that. When I teach people Ayurvedic healing techniques, I
am not inducting them into a Vedic world, or into some
mystery. I am trying to let them  realize that their ownawareness creates, controls, and turns into their bodies. This is a fact, not just a V edic view of things. When the body is in pain, a distorted area of awareness is
crying out to the rest of awareness for help. Our natural
instinct is to bring the help. The way we mobilize the
platelets and clotting factors in the blood to heal a cut is
nothing more than awareness bringing in help. A bruise
heals because intelligence goes to work on it. I think that
much has become abundantly clear by now. Some people are fortunate in being such natural
creatures that when they get cancer, they do not block the
innate urge to get well. No doubt there are thousands of
such people in the world who have not come under
scrutiny. Rather than being branded miraculous by religion
or science, they stand as the mute, inglorious Miltons of the
healing process. Ayurveda extends their ability to everyone. The Ayurvedic
approach is to take a process already going on in the body
and assist it naturally and without strain. Any pain or
disease you have is like an island of discomfort surrounded
by an ocean  of comfort, for in comparison to any one
disease, your healthy awareness is as big as an ocean. Assuming that you are normally constituted, there is no
innate reason why you cannot heal any disease with
awareness. (In old age, or in cases of chronic illness, our
inner abilities get depleted; therefore, Ayurveda cannot
guarantee a cure because sometimes it is not there in
nature’s scheme. ) The bliss technique gives the patient the experience of
himself as pure awareness, the ocean of well-being that is
our basic prop and susten ance. With this technique alone it
is possible to “drown” a disease in awareness and cure it. However, like the hypnotic subjects who can focus their
attention to make a bliste r appear, it is also usefu l to focus
attention more precisely to heal. For that, the primordialsound techni que exists. With it, a speciﬁc tumor or arthritic
joint can be attended to; a weak heart or clogged arteries
can be zeroed in on. You are not attacking the disorder with
the primordial sound but paying closer attention to it—so
close that the distortion of awareness lurking at the bottom
of the disorder falls back into line. In earlier chapters I
called this process banishing the ghost of memory. Together, meditation, the bliss technique, and primordial
sound are the practical application of all that I have been
building up to, the tools of quantum healing. Let me
illustrate them with a case study, and afterward I will
explain their connection to bliss. Laura is a young woman from Boston who contracted
breast cance r in her mid-thirties. Confronted with her
diagnosis, she elected for personal reasons not to undergo
any conventional treatment, despite her doctor’s anxious
insistence that without treatment she would be dead in less
than two years. Today, three years later, she is still alive
and on the surface appears perfectly normal. Her X rays
reveal that the tumor has not shrunk, but its growth, if any,
has been slight. This implies that Laura is still in
considerable danger, but in her own mind, her present
state is a great victory. Although her cancer is still present, it has not followed
what doctors call the “expected natural history” of the
disease. Dr. Yujiro Ikemi, one of Japan’s leading experts in
psychosomatic medicine, has surveyed sixty-nine patients
whom he considers to have had spontaneous regressions of


 i magination,
whether it was building sand castles at the beach or playing with your
make-believe fa mily of dolls. T oday, the very fact that you are alive is
evidence of your creativity, for you are co-creating your reality every
moment. Y ou are creating a new body/mind with every impulse of
experience and every breath you take. Learn to reawaken your creative
response and you will recapture the ener gy and enthusiasm of youth. In
addition to helping you grow younger, the creative process can be applied to
healing, relationships, the arts, and business. T AKING A CREA TIVE LEAP
Creativity is the process of takin g the raw ener gy, information, a nd material
of th e universe and transforming it into something that has never been
created before. Whether you are creating an original work of art, a new
piece of music, a unique software program, or a healing response to an
illness, creativity requires a leap in awareness. If you are improving on
something that already exists, that is innovation. Creativity brings
something into existence that has never been here before. There are nine b asic steps to the creative response. Become con scious of
these steps and use the creative response whenever you are facing an issue
or ch allenge in y our life. Y ou h ave unlimited creative potential  that can be
used to solve any problem you are facing. Intended Outcome
The first step of the creative response is to have a clear intended
outcome. Y ou must have a clear vision of  what it is that you want to have
unfold. If you are not certain about what you want, you are  unlikely to
fulfill yo ur needs. State your in tended outcome in clear positive language:
“I h ave a health y body with abundant ener gy. ” “My intimate r elationships
are l oving and nurturing. ” A void defining your intentions in ter ms of what
you don’ t want. Rather than saying “I want to leave this dreadful job,” state
your int ention as “I have a position that enables me to express my full
potential. ”
W rite down your intentions and review them regularly to be certain that
they ref lect your current desires. Although living in a state of flexibility
implies not being attached to a particular outcome, it is still e ssential that
you have unambiguous intentions. Formulate a clear intention and be
detached from the outcome. Information Gathering
The second step is information gathering. In this stage, learn everything
that is available about the issue you are facing. Become an expert on the
challenge that confronts you, recognizing that your particular variation is
unique. Read books, do research, use the Internet, explore spiritual
literature, go to lectures, participate in workshops, speak with friends and
family. G ather i nformation from  every possible source without judging or
filtering. Pay attention to the sensations in your body as you learn what
others have to say about your issue, noting which approaches feel
comfortable for you and which feel uncomfortable. Information Reshuffling and Information Analysis
As y ou gather in formation, your mind will digest what you are  learning,
formatting the information in ways that are useful to you. This process of
information r eshuffling takes place on both conscious  and subconscious
levels. The data is analyzed looking for patterns that can provide clues to a
new understanding of the issue. Incubation
The fourth step is incubation. In incubation, you allow your awareness to
settle in to a more expanded state of consciousness through meditation. Incubation is the stage of surren der. Having formed your intention, gathered
and resh uf fled t he information you obtained, the next step is to go beyond
the r ational mind and access a deeper domain of awareness to  orchestrate
the fulfillment of your intentio n. Use the So Hum meditatio n technique
described in Chapter 3 to quiet and expand your mind. Review your
intention for a few moments before you begin meditation and then let go. Letting go allows for something entirely new to arise in your awareness—
something that you had not conceived of before. Insight
When th e condit ions are right, y ou will experience the fifth step, which is
insight. Insight results from the rearranging of the previous relationships
and meanings into an entirely  new context, which then allows for an
entirely new interpretation. Insight is the creative leap— your perception
and interpretation of the issue c ompletely shifts. This new inner vision is
the esse nce of the creative re sponse. It precipitates from a domain of
awareness that is nonlocal. The  process of meditation allows y ou to enter
into this nonlocal domain that exists for eternity in the gaps between your
thoughts. When  you are able to go beyond your ideas about how things
should be, gaining access to thi s deeper domain, something unprecedented
emer ges. This is insight. Inspiration
When th e insight occurs, it spontaneously generates inspiration. The
level of enthusia sm that wells u p when insight dawns is a good barometer
that the insight is a real creative leap. When you really see things in a new
light, yo ur entire mind/body becomes ener gized. Y ou know in your mind
that your insight is true and you  feel in your body that the insi ght is right. Passion, exhilaration, excitement, joy, and enthusiasm are all si gns that the
insight that arose while you were incubating will solve your problem and
fulfill your intention. Implementation, Integration, Incarnation
It is now  your task to translate th e insight into action. Now that you know
what is necessar y to fulfill your intention, do it. Make the change, take the
step, and implement the a ction to actualize the creat ive response. Integrate
the c hange into your life. As yo u integrate and implement the insight into
your thin king and behavior, you incarnate it in your body. It becomes a par t
of you, and as a result you are a new person. Y ou have taken a creative leap
and have become a new body/mind. Ar chimedes, the Ar chetypal Cr eative Response
Archimedes was the greatest mathematician of his time. A third-century
B. C. native of S yracuse, Sicily, he was asked by King Hiero to determine if
the crow n that was made for him was of pure gold (Intention). Archimedes
knew th at if he c ould calculate the density of the crown he would be able to
determine if any other metals had been added (Information gathering). He
knew that density was weight ( mass) divided by volume. He could weigh
the crown on a scale, but due to its irregular shape, he did not know how to
find its precise volume. After considering this problem conti nuously for
days (Information r eshuffling), he was convinced by his servant to let the
puzzle g o for a little while and take a warm bath (Incubation). As he was
lowering himsel f into the tub, he noticed that his body displaced an amount
of water  equal to his volume. This led to the idea (Insight) that he could
calculate the density of the cr own by determining how much water it
displaced. He was so exuberant about his discovery (Inspiration) that
legend has it he ran through the streets of Syracuse shouting  “Eureka.,”
which in Greek means “I’ve fou nd it. ” As it turned out, the metalsmith had
diluted the gold with silver. As a n e xample of how this might work on a personal level, consider a
woman who is in constant turmoil because her spouse is not meeting her
expectations. In  her mind, he spends too much time alone or on the phone
with friends and colleagues. As a result of her distress and anxiety she has
been eating more, gaining weight, and losing her self-esteem. She dec ides to apply this nine-s tep creative process by first formulating
her i ntention, which is to feel se cure, appreciated, and loved. She makes the
commitment to read several pop ular books on relationships and is exposed
to a num ber of new perspectives. She learns meditation, which  she begins
practicing regularly. During a particularly deep sitting, she has the insight
that she has really been m issing her friends, and her resentment stems fr om
her husband’ s experiencing som ething that she would like for herself. She
becomes inspire d by the idea and makes plans to visit an old college
roommate in another town. Sh e so enjoys the few days that her entireattitude about her life complete ly shifts. She begins exercising and eating
better and all her relationships, including her marriage, improve. By s etting up the conditions th at allowed her to experience a  creative
quantum leap, she was able to access life ener gy that was  previously
unavailable to her. This ability to experience new creative solu tions to old
problems is the essence of flexibility and a key component of re versing the
aging process. OPPOR TUNITIES FOR CREA TIVITY
Use the nine-step process every  time you perceive a problem or challenge
in yo ur l ife. See  every challenge as an opportunity for creativity. When you
see ever y problem as an opportunity to practice the creative responses, you