The nature of healing
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
Lately I have been coming across a few things on the mind-body-emotions connection. Our bodily state feeds into our mind and emotions, for example extremely tired people also tend to be less emotionally stable, but also our mind state feeds into our body, for example when your mind perceives a threat you’ll receive a jolt of adrenaline and afterwards you will get ‘the shakes’.
So I found this story about this 36-year old man, who started to feel ill, went to a doctor and sure enough, it turns out he has cancer. He gets told he has three months to live without treatment, maybe a year with treatment. Facing certain death, he gets depressed. But he doesn’t like the oncologist. So a naturopathic doctor friend takes him to see a friend of hers, also an oncologist. This doctor tells him, you have a fifty-fifty shot of surviving. So he says, fifty-fifty, that’s not so bad, I’ll take the fifty percent chance of living and run with it. He starts doing diet, regular exercise, avoiding cancer-causing substances and all that. Nine months later the cancer goes into complete remission. When he goes to see his oncologist, the doctor says, I must apologise to you, when I told you you had a fifty-fifty chance I was lying. You had at most a five-to-ten percent chance. No, says the patient, you told me exactly what I needed to hear.
It seems these things are very much about how you feel and how you react. I was thinking about maybe sending this story to my uncle, but I’m a little hesitant about giving him false hope. After all he is not 36 anymore, he is 69.
Comments
@Kerome
I have no idea what you should really do but in the meantime I would ask myself....
Knowing your uncle as you do, what do you think he would value more?...
More lifespan possibly lived if it required a denial of what is
or
less lifespan possibly lived within an acceptance of what ever it is.
Well, I know what he is struggling with. The last time I saw him he had an almost wild look in his eye, and he asked questions instead of handing out anecdotes like he usually does. He has stopped talking to his wife. The reality of his situation and what it does to his relationships is proving to be a tough nut to crack. Today he was with his grandkids and I hear it was very emotional.
So to hear a story about someone who beat cancer, got it into remission and is still alive 25 years later, might not prove to be very beneficial.