How our thought patterns and feelings have profound affects
on our health – and how we can ‘think ourselves
healthy’ and avoid sickness in the future.
Ow! That hurts…!
Some years ago, I was working for a big telecoms company.
Just when I was starting a new project that a rather tyrannical
boss had inflicted on me – I didn’t really know
what the project was, couldn’t relate to it - I was
innocently poodling home from our offices in Covent Garden,
London, when my foot slipped off the rain-dampened kerb, twisted
sickeningly and…whoops!
A really bad sprain instantly transformed me from happy,
dreamy homegoing pedestrian into a hopping, one-legged person!
What to do? A bystander kindly hoofed me into the nearest
taxi and I drove round London for a bit trying to decide where
to go – home, hospital, a friends house…? Eventually
I went home and stayed there a week, leg up, working on my
project. Drew it on a board, cut it out of paper, made models
of it out of clay and finally got my mind around it!
Going home was exactly where I needed to be, and that’s
just where my ankle problem took me!
Why we get sick
Far from being something that just ‘happens to us’
or is inflicted on us willy nilly ‘from outside’,
sickness comes from within – it is a message from our
body and soul, telling us that something is in imbalance in
our lives. This is the main tenet of Louise L. Hay’s
excellent book ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ (Eden
Grove Editions). This is my very favourite book, and the one
thing that I knew I wanted to trawl from the ten boxes of
my possessions that I recently had to sort out in London!
I definitely want this book with me on my desert island!
It describes very clearly the root cause of disease, and
how to nip problems in the bud and avoid diseases before they
get serious (or how to approach healing them once they have
occurred). There is a wonderful index of channelled wisdom
(culled from the ‘spirit world’ by a sensitive
person) on what hundreds of different illnesses in the body
represent. Each part of the body corresponds to a different
feeling or situation. It is an incredibly practical book –
if you are sick and you want to know what caused your particular
disease, you can just look it up!
Then you can heal the root cause or situation, not just the
symptoms and the disease.
How everything happens
To understand fully how disease happens, you need to understand
the ‘manifestation cycle’ – the cycle of
how all things manifest in the real world. Before anything
is created here on earth, it first exists in ‘spirit’
or the ‘dream world’ (what the Balinese call the
‘niskala’ or ‘unseen’). This may sound
‘far out’, but please stay with me - consider
any project you have ever brought to fruition (however big
or small) – say, painting your front door blue. First,
you dream up the concept of a ‘blue door’ –
this creates an image of ‘blue door’ in your imagination
– and an image of it on the ‘astral plane’
(another name for the ‘dream world’ or ‘spirit
world’). Then, as you take steps to realise your plans
for a blue door (buy the paint, etc.) the blue door eventually
manifests (is created) in the real world (physical plane).
Imagine a ‘figure of eight’ lying on it’s
side. The left side is the dream world where things are initiated,
the right side is the real world where they manifest. The
cycle just goes round and round endlessly between the two.
What you create in reality affects what is set up for you
next in the ‘dream world’ and what is in the ‘dream
world’ sets up what is coming next to you in the real
world, and so on ad infinitum.
Everything works like this (the car you want to buy, the
forms your relationships take, the work you choose, the kind
of meal you want to eat tonight) – everything you create
or choose must exist as a concept in your mind first, and
hence, in the astral plane, before it can come into reality.
You can’t get yourself to the fish and chip shop without
first deciding to go there, can you? You must first create
that image in your mind. (Just think of us all here in humanity
– millions of minds, dreaming up everything that makes
up the world we end up living in!)
How disease happens
The manifestation of disease works in precisely the same way.
We first create the predisposition and the ‘image’
(even, the desire or request!) for disease in the ‘dream
world’ through our thought forms and our behaviour and
our emotional responses to the situations that we create in
our lives. Then when ripe, the disease manifests in the physical
world as a response to this. Disease is really nothing more
than ‘feedback’ from Spirit to what you are choosing
to create in your everyday life.
Here are a few examples of disease meanings from Louise Hay’s
book to get you going on how the idea works in practicality.
Her ‘Healing affirmations’ are given in quotes
-these are positive ‘replacement thoughts’ as
an antidote to the negative ones that created the illness
(to use, you just repeat them to yourself as often as possible):
Blood problems. Lack of joy, lack of circulation of ideas.
“Joyous new ideas are circulating freely within me”.
Boils. Anger, boiling over, seething. “I express love
and joy and I am at peace.”
Back, Upper. Lack of emotional support. “I love and
approve of myself. Life supports and loves me”.
Back, Lower. Fear of money. Lack of financial support. “I
trust the process of life. All I need is always taken care
of. I am safe.”
Heart Problems. Longstanding emotional problems. Lack of joy.
“Joy. Joy. Joy. I lovingly allow joy to flow through
my mind and body and experience”.
Sprains. Anger and resistance. Not wanting to move in a certain
direction in life. “I trust the process of life to take
me only to my highest good. I am at peace.”
Stiff Neck. Unbending bullheadness. “It is safe to see
other viewpoints.”
Thyroid. Humiliation. I never get to do what I want to do.
When is it going to be my turn? “I move beyond old limitations
and now allow myself to express freely and creatively.”
Varicose Veins. Standing in a situation you hate. Discouragement.
Feeling overworked and overburdened. “I stand in truth
and live and move in joy. I love life, and I circulate freely.”
“
For example, a hurt ankle (as in my story) is a symbol of
‘not knowing how to go forward in life’. Had I
made space for myself to get clear on my project, I would
not have needed to manifest a sprained ankle to help me on
my way!
How long does it take?
So how long does it take for something to move from the ‘dream
world’ to the ‘physical’. Ah, well that
depends! Depends on the strength of your image in the ‘dream
world’. How clear you can make it, how much intent you
can put into it, how much you want it. Karma kicks in too,
sometimes dropping in an experience or situation that we need
(this can sometimes be joyous – not always catastrophe!)
Shamen have the ability to ‘visit’ the dreamworld,
check out what is ‘up there’ for you and give
you feedback on how things are cooking. They can also help
‘fix up’ stuff up there (usually with copious
use of sage ‘smudge’ smoke and drums, which can
be fun).
Ancestral healing
What about hereditary diseases? How can we avoid them? Well,
if there’s a behaviour pattern or repeating situation
in a family that needs to be healed – for example, shaming
the children, not listening, suppressing anger, abusing the
wife, etc. then this has most likely gone on for some time.
The parents do it to the children, and when they become parents,
they recreate the same pattern, and so it goes on. Then the
physical disease (or the predisposition to it) that is the
response to the behaviour or situation gets passed on too.
For example, fat or overweight comes from a feeling of ‘needing
protection’. If you are in a family situation where
you do not feel safe, you may put on weight to ‘protect
yourself’. The family situation of ‘feeling unsafe’
may repeat in later generations, so that later family members
also become fat in order to protect themselves. In this way,
the repeating situation creates the predisposition to the
disease. This explains why not everyone manifests a supposedly
‘hereditary’ disease – even when they may
possess the gene for it.
To heal the above ‘overweight’ example, you would
need to bring out into the open, address, and resolve whatever
it is that makes it feel unsafe in your family. (I never said
that this was going to be easy! It takes courage. Can you
see how choosing to be sick might actually be preferable or
easier for us sometimes than tackling the root cause?).
If you can heal the metaphysical situation – ie that
which creates the condition for the disease to occur (even,
for the disease to be needed – remember, disease is
really a kind of message from the inner self) then you can
bring about a major piece of healing for your whole family
and ancestral line. This is a very good thing to do! It helps
everyone, ultimately even the whole planet as it is healing
for us all.
On a soul level, we are each inwardly kind of ‘spiritually
sad’ at each other’s shortcomings, without perhaps
being conscious of it. Our souls are rather like pastry –
all one thing really, just that some has been used to make
biscuits, some a pie crust, some a tart… We are all
delicious parts of the same whole, really. So when one person
heals, there is a kind of inner ‘Yay!!!’ which
ripples excitedly through all of us like a Mexican wave at
a football match.
(If you are overweight, by the way, the Louise Hay affirmation
is “I am protected by Divine Love. I am always safe
and secure” – try saying this to yourself rather
than beating yourself up for being fat!)
You can look up your ailments (or other peoples’!)
in my copy of the ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ book
in our shop, Ashram, in Ubud (address below) if you like.
Or order it from website: www.amazon.com.
To be continued in the next issue…
NEXT ISSUE: Why We Get Sick – Part II. The ‘shape
of things to come’ – how to nip the formation
of disease ‘in the bud’ on the ‘astral plane’
before it manifests in reality – and how to create an
ongoing cycle of wellbeing in your life.
Jeli Lala created the ‘Ashram of Spiritual Jewellery
and Art’ at no. 1, Sukma St., Tebesaya, Ubud, with her
husband, Putu S. She has studied yoga and many other spiritual
practices for more than ten years. She writes “As a
life-long artist, I’ve been exploring my inner world
since I was a child. In this column, I will share some of
my personal experiences and spiritual methods – hopefully,
you’ll find this interesting, and maybe it will give
some ideas for your own journey”.
Jeli welcomes comments and may be contacted on:
Email: jelila@jelila.com
Website: www.jelila.com or www.imagine-retreats.com
