6 Months (Don’t Believe It!)

Do YOU believe I only have 6 months left? 

This blog's original intention was to refute this medical prognosis, given to me 13 months ago, but two weeks ago, after six treatments of chemo, I found myself in the hospital with “A-Fib”, a heart condition (likely brought on by chemo) where your heart is running a marathon even while you are stationary. Yikes. 

In my hospital room, during the 4th of July weekend, while hearing incredible cries of pain and sounds of patients in profound physical distress, I thought about this prognosis. Am I going downhill?

Today, the condition is under control, and I feel better than I have since I first started chemotherapy. After so long being incapacitated, normal feels like Superman. Who knows anything, right?

OK, I want to share about a New Miracle, but can I take a sweet little detour first?

In my position as enrollment coach for The Healing Oasis, I learn a lot from my calls. I have spoken to mom’s in their 20’s who had part of their leg removed, families trying to get their dying dads in before it’s too late, and cancer warriors desperate to find that perfect formula of treatments and integrative and naturopathic interventions that will create a remission. 

One woman, I’ll call her Sonya, I felt especially connected with. We spoke of her options, and, as frequently happens on my calls, the role of the ten healing factors of Radical Remissions in cancer remission and treatment. 

We were commiserating on the state of healthcare, and the conversation turned to creating an advantageous healing mindset in the face of challenges such as these. 

Two of the Radical Remission healing factors are "increasing positive emotions” and “releasing negative emotions”. With situations like a broken healthcare system (for me, the big one that gets me a lot is a national political trend that is anathemic to my values), it is easy to just start complaining and making things wrong. 

Now, this is not increasing positive emotions. Is it releasing negative emotions? Perhaps, but the way complaining works with most people is it’s habitual and pervasive in their thoughts as well as their words and deeds. Often it’s referred to as “victim consciousness”. 

Coaching my clients, I suggest tools like “free-form writing”, a tool I learned at the University of Santa Monica, or even breaking cheap dishes, screaming, exercising etc. to release negative emotions and energy, rather than habitual complaining. 

To enjoy the health benefits of increasing positive emotions, you want your every thought to support joy and positivity. This is not a passive state, being a doormat, etc; Gandhi worked tirelessly towards change while keeping a spiritual equilibrium of love and harmony. It is a learned behavior accomplished systematically. 

Sonya was intrigued, and asked me, how do you do this? How do you relieve anxiety, negative future projecting and worry? 

I paused. How to respond? This question is foundationally important. 

I do not regularly worry about cancer. My mind does occasionally detour to concerns about the logistics of my material existence, but I don’t extensively worry about them. My thoughts are largely not only mostly positive, but positively joyous. And: yes, they get sucked into the “this is wrong” zone on occasion, but now I always notice this, and reframe. 

Wrong and right only apply to the dualistic nature of the material world. The ultimate reality, beyond this veil of delusion, is Unconditional Love, and extraordinary dimensions of Love & Light beyond ordinary perception and consideration.

In other words, life is happening FOR us, not TO us. So, the most advantageous and truthful frame of mind is positive, and full of joy and love for others, while tirelessly working towards creating changes in ourselves and in the world we want to see. 

Back to the question: how?

In a word: training. 

The state of mind I enjoy (and which is far from perfect) has been cultivated through working with and learning from the most extraordinary and talented teachers and spiritual masters I have had the stunningly good fortune to have encountered. 

In turn, I coach my clients to achieve this as well. Being mindful of your thoughts and reframing them can be compared with going to a gym when you are a “90 pound weakling” (remember Charles Atlas, those over 50?). You need to keep training, keep practicing, and to put into place a system for tracking your progress before you can become a “Real He-Man” of positive thinking (Charles Atlas was a bit sexist)! 

Having a coach speeds the process exponentially. A spiritual practice is even better, as long as it includes practical methods for doing this (many don’t). The support of a community, associating with people who also do this, are powerful tools towards transformation as well. 

But, it all begins with an understanding of the Divine nature of reality. Seeing disasters, injustice, terrorism, etc - these are designed to throw you into being a victim of circumstances, or seeing others as victims. 

These are the daily tests, the rungs on the ladder of spiritual development.

Look at it this way: if you are in training, you need the weights, right? 

Poet Jalaluddin Rumi says:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

There is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

The world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

Doesn't make any sense.

I say: Will you meet me there?

Oh, yes! My “New Miracle!”

I have been invited to serve as a volunteer for six weeks in Canada at The Healing Oasis, the cancer clinic I have been professionally supporting - and I will be able to receive treatments at the same time! I went there last year, and thrived all of this year! I will be off the grid, surrounded by lakes and woods, away from anything distracting me from communion with God and my intrinsic nature, which is Divine and Inherent Perfect Health and Healing!

What works? What doesn’t work? Will this “cure my cancer”? 

Questions like this dissolve in Rumi’s field. There, I am already Healed, and I will stay or leave this world in perfect harmony with Divine Grace, as an immortal Soul having a perfect and wonderful human adventure - in perfect timing with God’s plan.