When I began to teach classes on spiritual
principles, I devoted some time at the end of each class meeting to pray
for students and their loved ones. One woman asked the group to pray
for the continued health of her sister, who had had cancer, but the
disease was now in remission. At that time I had not heard the term “in
remission, so I asked her what it meant.
“It means that the disease went away for now, but it might come back,” she explained.
The
explanation made no sense to me then, and it makes even less sense to
me now. The idea is that the disease is here and real, a prevalent
condition, but it has temporarily gone behind a curtain and may pop out
again. The notion was jarring to me because my understanding is that health
is our prevalent condition and our natural state. When a disease
occurs, our health is temporarily in remission, and will return when the
temporary condition of the disease has been alleviated.
Modern
medicine, for all its wonders and benefits, subscribes to many beliefs
that are upside down and inside out. Disease, for one thing, is not a
thing. It does not have a life of its own. Disease, as illuminated by
the ancient science of Chinese medicine, represents a blockage of the
natural life flow, or chi, that moves through the body and keeps it alive and healthy. If the chi
is blocked consistently at the same point, and reinforced with
life-denying thoughts, emotions, attitudes, habits, and lifestyle, the
organ will manifest what we call a disease. Yet the disease has no life
or power in and of itself; it is simply a sign of where life has
momentarily not been allowed to flow. When you invite and allow the life
force to flow once again, through methods such as acupuncture, massage,
exercise, herbs, diet, attitude upgrade, or cessation of the thoughts,
feelings, and habits that created the blockage, healing occurs
naturally. There is no disease that has not been cured through restoring life force. Therefore no disease is incurable.
The word “disease” contains a clue as to how to heal it. “Dis-ease” indicates that ease,
or well-being, is our natural state, and for the moment we have
“dissed” ease with some form of stress or resistance. The answer to
disease, then, is to return to our natural state of ease. No dis-ease
can live in the presence of ease, so restoring ease is the optimal route
to healing.
To heal our lives we need to do a
radical figure-ground shift on our understanding of how life works. We
need to recognize that health, prosperity, rewarding relationships, and
the other conditions we value and seek are our natural state, and
everything else is the exception. Just as a cloud passing before the sun
does not mean the sun has gone away, a momentary condition of disease
does not mean that health has gone away. The health is temporarily in
remission. It can return as surely as the sun will return when the cloud
has passed.
A seminar participant reported, “I
have had a long string of failed relationships over many years. Now I
have been dating a guy for six months and everything is going great.
This seems too good to be true.”
I told her, “It’s not too good to be true. It’s good enough
to be true.” If you have a history of pain or loss, you may come to
believe that suffering is your natural state. I assure you it is not.
Well-being is far closer to your nature and destiny than the dismal
conditions you and I have been taught to accept.
Around
the same time I first heard about remission, my mother asked me to go
to the supermarket to pick up some applesauce on sale. When I reached
the applesauce aisle, I saw a big sign: “Applesauce — 89 cents — natural or regular.”
I read the label on the “regular” jar. The contents included sugar,
food coloring, and preservatives. The “natural” jar contained only
apples and water.
What is regular is not always
natural. We have become so accustomed to things that are regular that we
have forgotten what is natural. Health and well-being are at the top of
the list of the inherently natural contents of life. To define health
as the temporary absence of disease is insane. That would be like
defining light as the temporary absence of darkness. The opposite is
true: Light has substance; darkness does not. Health has substance;
disease is void of substance. Life is made of substance, not its
absence.
Tom Stoppard declared, “It’s the best
possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew
is wrong!” If you are happy and healthy and your life is functioning
beautifully, you are proceeding from your natural state. If you are ill,
struggling, or unhappy, you have subscribed to or inherited beliefs
that are out of alignment with how life actually works. If you want to
get to the bottom of “remission,” remember your mission in life – to live happily and authentically, and re-store
your mission. Then your life will be in permanent remission, and you
will return to the ease in which you were born to live.
