I (sometimes) enjoy participating in discussion boards related to health and wellness. I love sharing things I’ve learned to help people recover from their diseases. I don’t always go about it the best way. I have my own hangups. I have the temerity to suggest that people are usually responsible for their illnesses. It’s akin to physically beating them, based on the responses I get. And when I tell them they may be able to reverse their disease, I get excuse after excuse as to why they’re sick. Here are some of the responses I’ve read:
“You don’t know what it’s like to have this disease. How dare you comment on it.”
Why would you want to hear only from people who are just as sick as you? That’s called the blind leading the blind. Wouldn’t you want suggestions from people who have managed to retain good health? Wouldn’t you prefer hearing from people who have had the disease and reversed it? Or from someone who has reversed any other chronic disease?
Most of the time the people subconsciously don’t want to get well. They’ll coo and aah over the sympathetic posts and bristle at the ones suggesting self-responsibility and change. If you take away their disease, you take away their identity. If they are responsible, then they can’t blame mom, dad, brother, sister, husband, wife, daughter, son, church, God.
“I’ve had this since I was a child.”
Just because your particular physical dysfunction occurred when you were young doesn’t mean that a change in life style can’t help you. Your body’s cells are renewed daily. The quality of the cells being created depends on the quality of the nutrients ingested and your body’s ability to assimilate the nutrients. If you eat damaged food, you build damaged cells. Why do you think trans fats are now outlawed? Because they build faulty cells. I’ve read that scientists can examine your fat cells and tell you what you’ve eaten the past six months.
“I’ve tried everything.”
This is usually in response to my suggesting a raw food diet or an extended fast under professional supervision. I guarantee these people have not tried either of these. These methods are only for the most determined of people, and such people don’t build communities with other sick people on discussion boards.
Fasting (which means consuming water only) allows the body to excrete a tremendous amount of toxins and break down damaged and diseased tissues and upon resumption of a healthy diet rebuild healthy, functional tissues. Animals always fast when they become sick. Numerous books and websites extol the virtues of fasting for renewal of health.
Raw food does the same thing but much slower. People have recovered from so many chronic diseases on raw food diets and have become literally young again. Okay, it’s hard. If you don’t want to do it, that’s one thing. I remember telling someone that he could probably reduce his arthritic pain if he quit eating grains. He said, “I’d rather die than stop eating grains.” Now that I can respect. It’s his body, his choice. And I never mentioned it again. But denial doesn’t get anyone anywhere.
“My disease is incurable.”
Here’s the BIG problem. Few chronic diseases are “incurable.” True, there are no cures. There is only derangement of function and correction of function when cause is removed. The body is self-repairing.
Sometimes organs or tissues are permanently damaged and there is no turning back. But that’s no excuse not to change one’s poor habits: insufficient sleep, processed food diet, high sugar consumption, lack of sunshine, no exercise, sour disposition, the list goes on. Are you on the planet just to get by? Or do you want to improve all aspects of life: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual?
“This is God’s will. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
This one’s my all-time favorite and it’s a complete copout. My neighbor, my friend, told me this before she died a needless death from cancer. She was tired and simply gave up. She subconsciously wanted to leave the planet and blaming God absolved her of responsibility.
Your illness has nothing to do with all that candy you eat or the six-pack of cola you drink every day. It has nothing to do with that bitterness over your mother that you carry or the heavy load of all the wrongs people have done to you. Preservatives and additives in the canned and frozen food you microwave to death are irrelevant. And it has nothing to do with your workaholism or the heartburn you get every time you eat pizza, steak and potatoes, pasta with tomato sauce. And it certainly has nothing to do with that horrible relationship you stay in because you’re afraid to be alone.
So God did it to you. God is trying to teach you a lesson. God is punishing you. God is trying to increase your faith in him by inflicting you with a painful malady. Maybe if you buy another Christian book you’ll find the answer there.
To look upon poverty and sickness as sent by God and therefore inevitable, is the way of the weakling. God never sent us anything but good. What is more, He has never yet failed to give to those who would use them the means to overcome any condition not of His making. Sickness and povery are not of His making. They are not evidences of virtue, but of weakness. God gave us everything in abundance, and he expects us to manifest that abundance. If you had a son you loved very much, and you surrounded him with good things which he had only to exert himself in order to reach, you wouldn’t like it if he showed himself to the world half-starved, ill-kempt, and clothed in rags, merely because he was unwilling to exert himself enough to reach for the good things you had provided. No more, in my humble opinion, does God. –Robert Collier, Secret of the Ages.
God gives you exactly what you ask for. If you concentrate on negativity and disease, that’s prayer in action. And God answers. If you dwell on health, happiness, long life, that is what God will give you. God is physics in action.
Jesus, the master mystic, was very clear:
‘Have faith in God,’ Jesus answered. ‘I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, “Go, throw yourself into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.’
When I was a Christian I interpreted this as meaning that if I didn’t forgive people, I was a horrible, unforgiving wretch, and God wasn’t going to forgive me. So how can God give me anything when I’m on his shitlist?
Now I interpret it to mean that if I believe that I will receive what I desire, and do not stray from that course with doubt and disbelief, that I will manifest that desire, whether it be for material things, health, happiness, whatever.
The doorway to freedom, health and happiness is to forgive others, to let the past go, don’t keep score. Live in the present moment. Dragging around wrongs done you will poison you and keep you in perpetual bondage. When you forgive others, then you can then forgive yourself and let drop your burden of guilt.
It’s up to you. You can choose the life you want. But you have to work for it. Excuses are just thoughts you use to convince yourself you are powerless. Stop using excuses. Choose to get well. Don’t believe people who tell you you can’t change, especially not those who benefit monetarily by your illness.
Medicine does not study health. It studies disease. So medicine does not find cause, therefore it cannot remove cause. Look to medicine if you want to “manage” your disease. If you want health, look for people who study health. Ask healthy people how they stay healthy. Let the dead bury the dead.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
So true. The people I’ve known who were fully ready to get well became more open to trying various things, instead of shooting everything down or making half assed, or even quarter assed or less, effort. Sure, some things don’t work, and a person has to figure that out so they don’t continue to do something for longer than necessary to test it, but I’ve known people who quit in a day or week and claim that something didn’t work, as if anything would actually cure them that quickly.
It seems that some people have to be close to death before they open up and start genuinely pursuing health, much like people with chemical addictions, which of course is what diet can be about – addictions rather than nourishment.
I’m dealing with a woman right now who is all about her illnesses. I can hardly bear to hear it. Fortunately, she’s showing some interest in changing and I’ve loaned her a book to read. I gave her two weeks to read it.