Your body is your thoughts

Lately I have been pondering the connection between health and the mind. I have always believed, to some extent, that the human mind is very powerful and that thoughts or beliefs can affect one's health. I have seen examples with my own eyes of individuals with positive attitudes being able to overcome terrible traumas or diseases, beating the odds. And vice versa, I have seen individuals with negative attitudes die sooner than one would have expected, or suffer much more in both body and mind. The hard part for me is wondering how far one can consider the power of the mind. Could it be true that really ALL physical and mental illnesses are caused by one's thoughts? I offer a few quotations:

According to the Course [A Course in Miracles], the mind is so powerful that it is the cause of everything it feels. Our feelings are produced by our internal beliefs, not by external circumstances. Now imagine that our primary belief about ourselves is guilt, which says, "I deserve to suffer; I deserve to be unhappy." If we really do believe that (however buried that belief may be), and if our beliefs really do produce our emotional states, then what else could that belief do but produce a condition of misery? In the Course's view, all suffering is self-imposed punishment for presumed sin.

Robert Perry, Path of Light

According to the Course, sin and guilt are illusions created by our egos to reinforce our belief in separateness from God. The feeling of guilt is already deeply ingrained into our minds when we come into this world. To overcome sin and guilt we must practice forgiveness and come to the realization that our separate identities and the universe itself are illusory. This realization, a "change in perception," is what is referred to as the "miracle" in the book's title.

A few quotes from Chapter 10, "The Idols of Sickness," in A Course in Miracles:

To believe that a Son of God can be sick is to believe that part of God can suffer. Love cannot suffer, because it cannot attack.

When a brother is sick it is because he is not asking for peace, and therefore does not know he has it. The acceptance of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness is an illusion.

The Sonship [the Course's term to describe the oneness of everything. Everything that we perceive in the universe, including every person, animal, thing, etc., is referred to as a "Son of God"] cannot be perceived as partly sick, because to perceive it that way is not to perceive it at all. If the Sonship is one, it is one in all respects. Oneness cannot be divided. If you perceive other gods ["other gods" refers to "idols" - believing that you are sick is the equivalent of worshiping an idol, something false] your mind is split, because it is the sign that you have removed part of your mind from God's Will. This means it is out of control. To be out of control is to be out of reason, and then the mind does become unreasonable. By defining the mind wrongly, you perceive it as functioning wrongly.

You are not sick and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do. Remember, though, that to do this is blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on God and His creation, from which He cannot be separated. Only the eternal can be loved, for love does not die. What is of God is His forever, and you are of God. Would He allow Himself to suffer?

So what does this all mean? I can understand this logically, but the hard part is actually living this reality at the deepest level of one's being. It is easy to say, "Yeah, everything is one and there is no separation and no separate self apart from God." But how do we get to the point where one really, really believes it and lives it?

Do we really realize and comprehend how powerful our thoughts really are? And not just our conscious thoughts, but the buried thoughts, fears, and memories in the unconscious? I think it is the unconscious, our "shadow" self, where we really need to explore and find the true source of all our sufferings. I have been trying to look at my own life experiences, especially with my health problems of this year, to see if there are some deeper issues hiding in my unconscious that might be causing my physical ailments. I don't have a clear answer (since I don't yet know how to dig into my unconscious and resolve my issues - yet) but I do have some theories (which I may share in a future post).

The hardest part, however, is looking at one's self and saying, "I made myself sick with my own thoughts!" On the surface, this would seem to only pile on more guilt and blame. After all, if I am having health problems, I must have been thinking some bad thoughts to cause them! I am responsible. Yet, I think we have to realize that the primary source of the illness-inducing thoughts must be in the unconscious. At the conscious level we may not even have any clue what the issues are in the unconscious (thus, obviously, that's why it's called "the unconscious"). The mind has some powerful tricks, like denial, for making us conveniently "forget" traumas that are too much for our conscious mind to handle. If you knew what your issues were you would find a way to resolve them (usually). Instead, the issues can remain buried for years, cropping up in insidious ways, in the form of health problems, depression, projection of anger onto others, etc. You are fighting inwardly against yourself, but against a force that has no face and is basically invisible.

So this is where I'm at: where do I go from here? If I suspect I have unresolved issues causing my health problems, how do I deal with them? I have plumbed the depths of my personal history, memories, and waking consciousness through journal writing, reflection, and meditation (and continue to do so, as there is no end). But how does one tap into one's unconscious? And how can it be done carefully and cautiously so as not to cause further damage? I will keep exploring. I recently ordered Ken Wilber's Integral Life Practice kit, which does include work on the shadow. I'm hoping that could be a start. I will blog about my experiences with the kit in the future.

Finally, I would like to add a few more quotes about the mind-health connection. I read an amazing article this week. You can read it online here. Try, if you can, to suspend your judgment before reading it. Of course, on the rational-mind level, there is a lot that can be hard to swallow. Yet, my intuition is telling me that there is some real truth being expressed. I am coming to the conclusion, more and more in my life, as I get older, that one has to keep questioning everything. Don't just believe what the masses tell you, or do what people have been doing for years merely because "tradition" says you should. Question everything and come to your own conclusions.

A few quotes from Peter Ragnar:

Because I feel that we have ultimate control to the degree that we're conscious. If we are conscious enough, we can make anything happen in our body. We can preserve this body or we can kill this body.

It's very simple to see how people kill their bodies with their thoughts—it's a product of their unconsciousness of causes and effects. If we're conscious of our thoughts—I mean luminously conscious of our thoughts—those thoughts then impregnate the cellular structure of our body in a way that is very, very difficult to explain. When you have an abundance of life force inside you, it pours out of your eyes. It comes out of the palms of your hands as heat, as healing heat. It radiates as if you swallowed the sun, and you are different. Now, with that type of dynamic and powerful energy inside of you, how can you die?

I'm probably out there by myself on this one, but I feel that we do have ultimate control of our body, because our body is a thought. It's filled with frozen memories—memories that are formed by our experiences that we have already reached conclusions about, and we've emotionalized those conclusions and frozen them into our flesh. Therefore, only when we thaw it out and release, and stop holding on for dear life, can we have dear life.