How To Heal Yourself

The Truth About Your Body

(Bear with me, some of what I'm going to say here is going to contradict what your mind and your senses are telling you is real and true.)

CwG (Conversations with God) tells us that "we're not our bodies." For some, that statement is a verifiable truth. For others, pure fantasy.

Let me began by telling you something shocking. We're not only not our bodies, but our bodies aren't even alive!

Our bodies are being kept alive.

Let me give you an analogy. I've seen hospital patients kept alive by being connected to a variety of medical instruments (a life-support system): instruments to breathe for them, instruments to feed them, and instruments to monitor what the instruments are doing.

Science knows so little about how the body is kept alive that it posits that it is alive. I tell you from personal knowledge that that is just not so.

Further, the body that you call your own is not even sentient. That, too, is an illusion. If you rub your hands together or touch any other part of your body, I'll tell you, categorically, that that wasn't your physical body that you touched. You did touch a body, however, but it wasn't physical.

Your body is being kept alive by another body. Some mystics call it the "astral" body. If you were to see it, it would look a lot like the body that you now inhabit. Even "inhabit" is not an accurate description.

Your astral body surrounds the physical body rather than resides within it. Because of a magnetic attraction, the astral body stays in alignment with the physical one. Without this attraction, we'd drift off into our native, non-physical environment, which is where we reside in the always. I suspect that at night in our dream state we become unmoored from the physical body, drift away from it, and embark on many journeys that we have little awareness of when we're awake again.

Although it seems that we're interacting with a physical world, it is, in actuality, a non-physical one, material appearances, notwithstanding. What we have, then, is a great deception, one that our physical senses are in collusion with.

The umbilical cord that connected you to your mother is replicated at the
astral level. We see remnants of it in the coccyx, also know as the tailbone. The tailbone represents a function of the astral body showing up in the physical, but occurring at the astral level. A cord, not unlike the umbilical cord (silver in color, about the size of an average man's wrist), connects the astral body to the physical.

There's only one Biblical reference to the cord, and that is in Ecclesiastes:

Book Ecclesiastes, Chapter 12, Verse 6

5 Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
6 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Death only occurs when the cord is loosed, and that is when the vital body is no longer able to sustain the physical body, usually because the physical has suffered irreparable damage, or has been abandoned by the soul.

The "golden bowl" is the soul that encompasses the physical (It's seen as an aura, and breaks away from the physical once a decision is made to move on to the non-physical realm); the "pitcher" at the fountain represents the flow of intelligence from the bowl to the physical; the "wheel" represents the process that carries the flow of life-giving energy from the source (cistern) to the body.

The italicized statement above further corroborates the existence of man in both a physical (dust) and a spiritual state, suggesting that only the spiritual is man's primary and ultimate state, and that the "dust" returns to a state that existed before the advent of the spiritual.

Jesus states it this way:

62 What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?
63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

All things proceed from the spiritual (our native state). Two of those things are intelligence and life, both of which allow thought (words, spoken and unspoken, as well as mental images) to exist.

What I'm going to tell you now, neither science nor mystics know. In all my readings not one has revealed what I'm going to tell you here.

The silver cord extends from the back of the astral body. From the shoulder and neck, large and small cords of varying sizes (some the size of your pinkie, and others the size of the thumb and other digits) fan out like fingers and bundles at the base of the astral back as a cable does when it consists of many strands or cords. These cords hold fast to the astral body with a steel-like grip. They can't be moved even with the greatest of effort.

This bundled cord attaches to the physical body at various, but vital areas. It's been seen attached to the heart, the back of the head, and at the third eye located between the eyes.

Now, here is what you need to know. Along this cord, the vital or astral body sends the energy and intelligence that keep the physical body alive, keep it functioning properly, regulating it, and setting in motion all the chemical actions and reactions that are necessary to make the body run smoothly, and operate effectively within the physical realm. It serves the same function as the medical instruments hospitals use to keep the physical body alive, but it does so in a more sophisticated, and extraordinary manner.

One of the most successful healing organizations on the planet realizes the role of the body (it's temporal nature, allowing us to operate in a physical realm), and subscribes to the following statement as the indispensable plank in it's healing method (which elevates the spiritual over the material, and substantiates my own experiences). It is called the "scientific statement of being," and represents, in brief, the organization's position on the science of healing:

9 There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor sub-
stance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite
manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal
12 Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and
eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is
God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore
15 man is not material; he is spiritual. [1]

I will say more about this organization later, but not for the purpose of proselytizing. I have no interest in convincing you to take up any belief system, religious or otherwise, as I am, myself, non-religious, with no vested interest in any religion, although I recognize the right of religions to exist. The several religions exist because each of us exists at certain belief levels, and gravitates towards those beliefs with which we agree, or that support our present understanding. They represent our efforts to understand God and our relationship to Him.

I'm including this religion because of its unparalleled success at healing the physical body, and the physical mind, and one whose writings you might like to study if healing is a goal that you'd like to pursue.

What does all of this have to do with health and healing?

I wanted to first establish that mind is not in body and neither is life. Even if you disagree with my premise, this thought construct will now be a part your mental environ and, hopefully, on an unconscious level, will strengthen your resolve to heal and accept healing as an ever-present possibility.

This collaboration of our senses with our mind humanizes it (that is, physicalizes mind and thoughts rather than spiritualizes them), thereby setting up a construct that we have come to know as the Devil, also known as Satan, also known as the serpent, also known as the red dragon. In Revelations we're told:

7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. Book Revelation, Chapter 12, Verse 3 [color and italics mine]

We're told that this personification of evil is the great deceiver. Jesus called him a liar, and a murderer. What is the nature of the lie: one -- that we're not the sons and daughters of God (spiritual and perfect); two -- re: eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

By eating the fruit of the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" we do die to the knowledge and the awareness that we're divine beings created in the image and likeness of God (that we're one, single, solitary, and the Same). Once we eat, we do not become gods (as self-sufficient beings), but, on the contrary, we become mortals with physical bodies (created of flesh and bone), now fully aware of the world of relativity and duality (a world, I might add, that is not real).

Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one...

Isn't it interesting that the Devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness with almost one single purpose in mind--to compel Him to renounce his understanding that he was, indeed, the Son of God.

And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
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If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down...
Further, it's also interesting how many times in the Bible forty days, and forty days and nights are used.

At the point of death, you will experience no separation from the body. Since you were never a part of it in the first place, not only will you not miss it, you will think that you're still within your physical body, but for a difference in surroundings and the sudden appearance of new powers and abilities.

HOW TO HEAL YOURSELF

The best healing is to prevent yourself from getting sick in the first place. This is what this section will dwell on.

Conversations with God has several things to say about health and staying well.

Illness and disease are opposites of health and wellness, and are made manifest in your reality at your behest. You cannot be ill without at some level causing yourself to be, and you can be well again in a moment by simply deciding to be. (CwG I p. 32)

It is very difficult to reverse the effects of negative thinking once they have taken physical form. Not impossible--but very difficult. It takes an act of extreme faith. It requires an extraordinary belief in the positive force of the universe--whether you call that God, Goddess, the Unmoved Mover, Prime Force, First Cause, or whatever.

Healers have just such faith. It is a faith that crosses over into Absolute Knowing. They know that you are meant to be whole, complete, and perfect in this moment. This knowing is also a thought--and a very powerful one. It has the power to move mountains--to say nothing of molecules in your body. That is why healers can heal, often even at a distance. (CwG I p.189) The italic is mine.

All illness is created first in the mind. (CwG I p.188)

It would be instructive to read how negative thinking, including worry, hatred, fear and negative thoughts, conspire to militate against good health. For those that may be interested, the discussion begins on page 187 of CwG.

Just the elimination of these negatives would work wonders to keep you well.

Spiritual understanding trumps faith and aids "Absolute Knowing." Once spiritual understanding crystallizes into absolute knowing, which is a by-product of this deep, unshakable understanding, then you're a healer.

Standing Firm:

At the first sign of a cold, the flu, a headache, or pain in any part of the body, or any other physical irregularity, bring all your mental forces to bear against these intruders. As you know, these ailments can be exceedingly aggressive in overtaking your good health. Yet, you should fight back, if you choose not to be ill, as aggressively as these interlopers fight to invade your mind and your body.

Keep in mind, we're more used to losing these battles with colds and flu than in winning them. Our mind knows this and will adamantly assert that knowledge .

What I'm recommending is not "mind over matter." Matter, as you now know, is merely a physical construct that allows us to interact in this realm of relativity, not only with each other, but with the physical world in general. Therefore, what we have here is mind over mind. At each step it is our mind that is the agent both at the creation level and the healing level.

Read again this previous passage again from CwG: "You cannot be ill without at some level causing yourself to be, and you can be well again in a moment by simply deciding to be."
What you're doing, then, is getting ahead of the dis-ease. You're stopping it in its tracks before it has a chance to manifest itself fully. If you don't fight at this point, you increase your liability to the disease.

Jesus expressed it this way, as the way to defeat the onset of disease:

25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.
26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. Book Matthew, Chapter 5, Verse 25

In this case, you're the adversary, the judge, and the officer, and you determine your prison stay.

To keep from paying the "uttermost farthing," it's imperative that you build up your mental defense against any symptom of disease that may be expressing itself.

Jesus explained the nature of the "adversary," (all appearances of evil, as well as dis-ease) thusly:

44Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. Book John, Chapter 8, Verse 44

Now, knowing that the adversary, aka the devil, is a liar, and has no truth in him, and has fathered the lie (that is, originated it), it would behoove you (us) to agree with our adversary, rather than disagree.

Agree that the adversary is a liar, and is telling an untruth about you. Note that the lie begins with us, and we're the ones that must defend against it, or let it run its course, or use materia medica (one belief) to cast out another.

If you plan to be the victor, you can't go about this half-heartedly. Each time you're able to defeat the enemy by resisting him (here's the good news), his power diminishes. You won't have to fight so hard next time, or, because of your good health, you won't have to fight at all .

The healing organization that I mentioned before expresses this healing secret this way:

Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously. When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion, or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears. Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors; then the body cannot suffer from them. The issues of pain or pleasure must come through mind, and like a watchman forsaking his post, we admit the intruding belief, forgetting that through divine help we can forbid this entrance.[2]

Decide vigorously that you're not going to be sick. Take a firm stance. Don't even allow the possibility of becoming ill to enter your mind.

There's a book that expresses it perfectly:

You often use the phrase, "I have made up my mind." This has a great deal of meaning, if you pause to consider it, for in that very process you begin to bring into manifestation the desire of the mind. Thus you say "I see a wrong condition in my mind, my mentality, my circumstances; I will make up my mind, this shall not be." You mentally set in motion the forces of the universe, seen and unseen, to accomplish your will." Christ in You (p.178, Italics is mine)

It's been almost two decades since I've had a cold or the flu. It's not that these viruses aren't trying to catch me, it's just that I refuse to be caught.

We hear the saying, "I caught a cold!" No truer words. It's is you (we) that do the catching. With that in mind, we can undo the catching by just deciding (making up our minds) to not be sick.

Try it the next time when the symptoms of these ailments rear their ugly heads. Clobber them with your decision not to be sick.

But act quickly, and often, until the symptoms subside and then disappear. What I've said here puts the "immune system" in a total new light. If you wish immunity, "know that you are meant to be whole, complete, and perfect in this moment," and accept no other possibility.

Realization:

Here's another powerful tool to create health and other favorable conditions and, like the tool of "standing firm", it's meant to be used immediately at the first sign of dis-ease or discord of any sort. Here's where affirmation and visualization can be used together to create the desired condition. Conjoining them is not absolutely necessary, but is done to hasten the desired outcome--improved conditions, or a perfect expression in the place of an imperfect one.

Here's how the healing organization suggests it should be done:

Mentally insist that harmony is the fact, and that sickness is a temporal dream. Realize the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being, until the body corresponds with the normal conditions of health and harmony. [3]

Let me give you an example of how I used these tools (affirmation, realization, and visualization) to stem a rather aggressive attack of a cold or the flu.

Many years ago, I was in a business meeting when the symptoms of a respiratory illness became alarmingly threatening. Immediately, I went to the nearest public restroom to begin a regimen that made use of these three aforementioned tools.

Visualization:

Being on a warm beach, with the sun shining out of a clear blue sky, the sea water lapping against my feet, conjures up my ideal of what health is. It is there (at the beach) where I have felt my most alive, healthy and invigorated.

Affirmation & Realization:

I took myself to that beach in my mind's eye, while all the time repeating to myself how healthy I felt, all for the purpose of realizing (deeply feeling the health in my body). The goal was the realization of health, the actual feeling of being healthy. I have emphasized the "feeling" part of this because that is the most important thing to achieve, the other things, visualization, affirmations, and realization being merely avenues to take you there.

After a few minutes, all the symptoms had disappeared, and my "body corresponds[ed] with the normal conditions of health and harmony."

I returned to the meeting totally free of the symptoms. They didn't return.

Let me repeat: affirmation, realization, and visualization have their place, but are useless unless they're used to create a feeling. The feeling may be almost anything, from wealth to health, to success, to greater intelligence, to problem solving, you name it.

Get the feeling of being successful, of being healthier, of being wealthier, of being smarter, of being creative, of being enlightened for that matter.

To the degree that you feel it (and abide in that feeling), to that degree will it be your manifested reality. Feeling creates a consciousness of the thing desired. It can also create the thing that you dread. Job is the perfect example of the power of creative feeling run amok:

25 For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. Book Job, Chapter 3:25 (Italics are mine)
It is in this consciousness where the idea/thought incubates and ultimately manifests itself as your reality.

An author/mystic that has written extensively about the power of "feeling" is Neville. Yes, he's simply known as Neville. In his book Resurrection, a collection of his writings, he asserts this about the power of feeling:

You should awaken within you the feeling that you are and have that which heretofore you desired to be and possess.
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The feeling of the wish fulfilled, if assumed and sustained, must objectify the state that would have created it.
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If a physical fact can produce a psychological state, a psychological state can produce a physical fact. If the effect (a) can be produced by the cause (b), then inversely, the effect (b) can be produced by the cause (a). Resurrection p.5-6

There are other tools, but these two (standing firm, and realization) have the power, if used quickly, to restore you to health, once dis-ease has struck.

I would suggest, in addition, that you not wait until disease strikes before using the tool of realization. Use it often--once a day if possible. Concerned about your finances--spend time each day realizing the presence of wealth to achieve the consciousness thereof.

This goes also for any other condition you wish to manifest. First, acquire the consciousness of the thing desired, using the power of feeling. The manifestation will take care of itself.

If you would like to learn the art and the science of healing, I would highly recommend the organization that I have referenced throughout these writings.

The church emphasizes a "practical Christianity." It embodies all that those words imply. If you care to explore what it has to offer go to it's Web site: Spirituality.com, established by the Christian Science Publishing Society.

The church also publishes a world-class newspaper that has a worldwide readership, a solid reputation, and universal acclaim for its journalistic excellence. You may find it here: The Christian Science Monitor CSMonitor.com.

I know of no church that has had the success rate of this church/organization in the healing arts, and the maintenance of health. If you think that practicing the healing art is something that you'd like to do, then their textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and their attendant publications, the Sentinel, and The Christian Science Journal, will give you the requisite grounding for doing so.

I would say that their healing success rate is better than that of the medical establishment. Do they always succeed? No. But I would say that they don't fail as often as medical science does. I would say that their healing system compares favorably, and I would even go so far as to say that it's probably more successful at healing people and doing no harm than medical science.

Thousands of otherwise sick individuals have been healed simply by reading their flagship book alone, Science and Health with Keys to the Scriptures. In a section included in the back of most editions, entitled Fruitage, you may find a number of such cures.

No disease has failed to yield to their method, although, in some individual cases, as in the medical profession, patients have been lost. Diseases such as cancer, and even the AIDS virus, in some instances, have succumbed to their therapeutic method.

Am I suggesting that you consider membership in their church? The answer is, No. As I have stated before, I don't proselytize. I don't insist that anyone do anything. I'm a provider of information, and allow others to make up their own mind about the validity, soundness, and wisdom of what I have to say, or have said.

Quotes--[1,2,3]--are from: Science and Health with Key to the Scripture, by Mary Baker Edddy. The quotes are used without authorization of the copyright owners, but, I feel, fall within the guidelines of Section 107 of the US Copyright Law, and constitute Fair Use, as they are used to advance social, and cultural issues, and understanding.