THE NATURAL THERAPEUTIC EXPERIENCE

Living from your heart

Written by Ronald Peters, MD, MPH

“Through love, all pain will turn to medicine.”

              Rumi

About 25 years ago, a Master teacher of mine said “the body is a condensation of thought and emotion”. And, he continued, not only do we create our bodies from consciousness, but also every detail of our life experience. Over the years, this intriguing thought echoed in the background of my mind gradually gaining support as I read the speculations of Einstein and other quantum physicists that consciousness orchestrates the quantum field to create our tailor-made 3rd dimensional “reality”. And, for millennia Spiritual Masters have said the same thing in much simpler terms.  Now after listening to thousands of patients tell me about their pre-illness experiences and child hood traumas, I no longer consider the idea that the body and our life experience is governed by consciousness as a curious concept but as an empowering eternal truth.

So, if we create our reality, why do we create dis-ease, pain and suffering? The answer is simple – the purpose of disease is healing.  Pain, anger, fear sadness are strong experiences that get our attention in order to change, learn and grow.  However, this process is fully dependent on the natural therapeutic experience.  If we shoot the messenger with a symptomatic drug, the disease can, of and often does, become chronic.  Combine the lack of understanding of the natural therapeutic experience with the misfit between our bodies natural intelligence and the modern lifestyle and mindstyle and it is easy to see why 60% of Americans have chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, cancer and much more, becoming a bonanza for Big Pharma and the so called “health care industry”.

So, how does consciousness create your reality?  The answer is based on the physics of consciousness and goes like this:

BELIEFS: DURABLE ENERGETIC STRUCTURES WHICH CREATE YOUR “REALITY”

  • Our conscious and unconscious beliefs shape the quantum field of potential into a solid 3rd dimensional reality in which we live our lives.
  • You create your life experience in co-creation with those around you, including the collective beliefs of society.
  • Most of these beliefs are set in the unconscious mind early in childhood by parents and society.
  • About 80% of our beliefs are unconscious and yet still operating to shape your life experience

ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES

  • All children suppress painful emotions which are stored in the unconscious mind as emotional wounds and each is wrapped up in a rudimentary belief. such as “I am not safe”, “I am not good enough”, “I cannot trust”, and many more.
  • Some researchers belief that the majority of the ego structure is set in the first few years of life when the infant child is mostly in a type of hypnotic trance state, mostly feeling with little thinking.
  • Deeply fearful and painful emotions store in the unconscious mind following common experiences of childhood, such as violence, physical or emotional abuse.

EMOTIONAL WOUNDS ALSO NEED HEALING

  • Unconscious beliefs are wounds that must heal and they do so by creating life experiences that will bring up the suppressed emotion so it can be expressed and owned consciously. This is the reason that children of alcoholics often marry alcoholics, abused children find themselves in abusive relationships later in life, and so forth.
  • Conscious and unconscious beliefs create every joy in your life and every painful experience, whether it be family problems, work challenges, financial limitation, or physical disease.
  • Society teaches us to play victim, blame others and avoid taking responsibility for our life experiences thereby we miss the lesson of dis-ease and suffer as the issues are often expressed again and again.
  • All dis-ease is a personal invitation arising from within our own consciousness to lead us to self-knowledge, by making the unconscious mind conscious.
  • The “blessing” of the dis-ease experiences whether physical or not is that they offer us a window into the stored pain in the unconscious mind and they can be discharged only by feeling the emotion and finding the unconscious belief that birthed it.
  • This process leads eventually to enlightenment, or Christ-consciousness and is the purpose of living life.

FOLLOWING YOUR EXCITEMENT IN LIFE ACTIVATES POSITIVE BELIEFS TO CREATE THE HAPPINESS, FULFILLMENT AND JOY IN YOUR LIFE

  • Your ego is not designed to tell you what to do in the future; it is designed to keep you alive in the now. Asking your ego for guidance in life often leads to complaining, frustration and victim consciousness.
  • Your excitement is your connection to your higher mind, higher self, Jesus, or, whatever terms you prefer.

RESOURCES FOR EMOTIONAL HEALING AND CREATING SKILL IN THE NATURAL THERAPEUTIC EXPERIENCE

Edgework: Exploring the Psychology of Disease, by Ronald Peters, MD, MPH

Chapters 1 – 13 present the science while Chapter 14 presents Edgework Exercises which will get you started and develop mastery in this important healing tool.

EDGEWORK EXERCISES, Chapter 14

Exercise 1: What is your level of commitment to yourself?

Exercise 2: Becoming friendly with fear

Exercise 3: Feeling emotions

Exercise 4: Taking responsibility for the experiences in your life

Exercise 5: Taking a close look at your thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes

Exercise 6: Healing emotional wounds

Exercise 7: Exploring the emotional wounds behind an illness

Exercise 8: Mirroring – discharging your shadow everyday

Exercise 9: Loving yourself and finding your passion

Exercise 10: Releasing resentment

Exercise 11: Transforming anger and hostility

Exercise 12: The healing power of forgiveness

Exercise 13: How to transform your stress into personal signals for self-knowledge                 Exercise 14: Visualizing the healing power of your bodymind

Opening Up, The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, by James W. Pennebaker, PhD

Dr. Pennebaker is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas who has published hundreds of articles and seven books on the benefits of emotional expression.

The following is a brief summary of the powerful benefits of emotional expression:

Inhibiting emotional expression requires psychological work and has negative effects in the mind and the body.

Reduced physician visits lasting up to 1.4 years

Improved immune function with increased natural killer cells, increased antibody titers to vaccination

Improved heart rate variability

Improved school performance

Improved function in work environment

Faster re-employment after job lay off

 

QUOTES – HEART, EMOTION AND HEALING

“We do not cure the body with the body, we cure the body with the mind.”

Plato

An open heart is an open mind.

Dalai Lama

“The body is never ill or healthy, for it does no more than express messages from our consciousness.”

The Healing Power of Illness: The Meaning of Symptoms and How to Interpret Them, by  Thorwald Dethlefsen and Rudiger Dahlke

The true ground of medicine is love.

Paracelsus

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint Exupery

Some patients find no way to solve their problems except through illness.

Carl Simonton MD

To face health a crisis fully is really an affair of the heart and an invitation to our highest potential.  We can shift to a higher energy wherein the very sense of existence is more connected to others and there is a greater capacity to love.

Richard Moss, MD

The more I look, (at the immune system) the more I’m convinced that emotions are running the show.

Candace Pert, PhD, National Institute of Health, Department of Immunology

Emotion has taught mankind to reason.

Marquis de Vauvenargues

We should not pretend to understand the world only by intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling.

Carl Jung

Being in touch with your feelings is the only way you can become your highest self.

David Viscott, MD

The heart has reasons that reason knows not of.

Pascal

Processes that help people release resentment, express negative feelings, and forgive past wrongs (whether real or imagined) may well be a major part of the preventive medicine of the future.

Carl Simonton, MD