Difference Between Healing and Curing
In my thirty years of working with cancer patients, I've seen a profound distinction between curing and healing.
Curing is what a physician seeks to offer you. Healing, however, comes from within us. It's what *we* bring to the table. Healing can be described as a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual process of coming home.
Even if we're losing ground physically, there's extra-ordinary emotional, mental and spiritual healing that can go on. One of the most toxic new-age ideas is that we should "keep a positive attitude." What a crazy, crazy idea that is. It is much healthier, much more healing, to allow yourself to feel whatever is coming up in you, and allow yourself to work with that anxiety, depression, grief. Because, underneath that, if you allow those feelings to come up and express themselves, then you can find the truly positive way of living in relationship to those feelings. That's such an important thing.
Then there's the ideas we have about ourselves, our lives, about what the disease means. Often, people feel like their disease is some kind of judgment on them: "What did I do wrong?" I'm not sure that's an idea that serves people very much. When I had my heart-attack, I felt as though I was reborn. Even though I had been working with cancer patients for 18 years, when it was *my* heart attack, there was this profound rebirth experience. My beloved wife says that after the heart attack, I spent the first three months just rearranging the rocks in our garden. The whole world seemed new to me. I was inventing my life all over again. So there is the opportunity that comes with cancer, to ask ourselves how we want to reinvent our lives. And that can be one of the most powerful healing things we can do.
Healing is the most fundamental aspect of our condition, and it's a continuous rediscovery of what it means to be alive. It spills over into the rest of our life and guides us. It's not only about some "spiritual experience" of being high all the time. Not at all. It is about living with the ongoing stresses and strains and difficulties -- and joys -- of life, but doing so in a way that we feel whole.
Living in relationship with the struggles of life is what makes us human.
How do you reconcile the practice of equanimity with allowing feelings to come up and express themselves? Can you share an experience of feeling rebirth due to an illness? What helps you live with the "ongoing stresses and strains of life" in a way that makes you feel whole?
If you are suffering from cancer or any other diseases just follow this.
Find out big trees which are available milk when we scratch bark. Start to treat these trees such as put water morning and evening. Do it affectionately to the environment. If possible keep touch your both hands to that trees and wish as follows " My all pain and symptoms of diseases be absorb and give me healing power to my diseases " Be sure spend religious life what ever religion you are.
Gamini Wijesinghe
Sri Lanka
I was diagnosed with blood clots on December 9 and placed on drugs and had a screening yesterday that saw it clear and gone and not reforming despite an opening statement that "you cannot heal in 2 months", I lay on my back and said silently "yes I can". The lungs and clots were about resentment, heavy, broken, grieving, burdensome resentment. Spending time in fertile solitude allowed me to feel this and see it and reform the areas that i perceived resentment, where I created the experience of resentment. How beautiful is the body to lead me there and how beautiful was its responsiveness when this was turned off. I live each day embracing my body, mind and soul messages - seeing that all the answers lie within - mindful body knowing and innocent lean into self care.
It seems to me healing is not only about ourselves, but also about "coming home" to the world and relationships we live in. Part of this is using our experience to benefit others. Sometimes I think we can become selfish in our attempts to feel and process through every emotion we encounter. We need to allow others the same freedom to process the pain they share with us as we demand they allow us. Sometimes just the conscious decision to consider others and put ourselves aside can offer healing that no amount of internal processing can.
We need to give ourselves permission to process every feeling we have, but also permission to let those feelings pass by if that seems best.
Having a close group of friends helps me in the practice of equanimity. In the embrace of friends I am allowed to feel and express my emotions so they do not overwhelm me. In my circle of friends is nature which offers tremendous, non-judgmental healing. I find being gentle with myself and honoring what I am feeling allows me to create a safe haven within myself so that I am capable of assisting my own healing. Shalom, Jayne
As in all things, balance. It is helpful to have a positive attitude. At the same time is is healing and helpful to feel all feelings as they come, but not to be overcome by them. The phrase, "this too shall pass" has been most helpful in life. Not sure I would call it rebirth, but I have episodic Depression and what I can share is that when the darkness passes and light again shines, I appreciate the light much more than perhaps I did in the past. The most helpful phrase in living w ongoing stress and strain in life is honestly, "this too shall pass." It is freeing. Hugs from my heart to all of yours. Kristin
