When you suffer from an illness, suffering affects both your mind and body. You may experience negative emotions that increase your suffering experience. Let’s explore these aspects of suffering and discuss some safe ways to reverse suffering and heal without pills.
Your Body
What is the purpose of your body temple? Consider that you can enjoy the functions and feelings of your body temple in many ways. For example, you’ll feel good by simply taking a slow deep breath and exhaling slowly with a happy thought. Try it now. Can you detect that gentle feeling of wellness swelling in your chest?
You also feel good when you eat foods that are healthy, tasty and filling, especially when you are with friends or in a good mood. You feel good when you witness nature’s splendor, but more so when your thoughts focus on gratitude for what you see. You feel energized when you listen to great music, stimulating new creative thoughts. Finally, you highly enjoy the sensual touch and the smell of the erogenous perfume of your lover. Your body temple is a gift for you to be able to feel good.
Your Thoughts
But what happens when you allow your thoughts to hang on to worry, fear, blame or guilt? Can you enjoy feeling good at those times? Of course not: A great meal becomes almost tasteless, nature seems boring, great music is just annoying and even a lover’s touch and perfume are turn-offs. In other words, when your state of mind is off, it throws off all of your life and causes emotional pain. When your state of mind is off, it increases bodily suffering from any chronic condition.
Indeed, your body is a wonderful gift. I like to refer to it as your body temple, just as Jesus did long ago. He taught the Jews about a temple building made by men, but mainly just to foretell its destruction. More affectionately, He taught about His body temple and He taught the Essenes much more extensively about the body temple and its relationship to the spirit in regard to health and happiness.
For example, it is written in The Essene Gospel of Peace: Book One: “As the son inherits the land of his father, so have we inherited a Holy Land from our Fathers. This land is not a field to be ploughed, but a place within us where we may build our Holy Temple. And even as a temple must be raised, stone by stone, so will I give to you those stones for the building of the Holy Temple; that which we have inherited from our fathers, and their fathers’ fathers. And all the men gathered around Jesus, and their faces shone with desire to hear the words which would come from his lips. And he lifted his face to the rising sun, and the radiance of its rays filled his eyes as he spoke.”
For example, He taught, “And when you eat, never eat unto fullness… always eat less by a third. … And eat slowly, as it were a prayer you make to the Lord… all that you eat in sorrow, or in anger, or without desire, becomes a poison in your body.”
How Do Your Thoughts Feel?
Have you ever tuned in to how your thoughts feel? As you think a thought long enough, it grows into a belief that you hold as truth. For example, what typically happens when you are late to catch a flight? If you allow your worry to turn into a worst-case-scenario story in your head (which you have invented), soon you are convinced you are going to miss your flight. This leads you to consider the additional adverse circumstances that could follow from that missed flight.
Notice the sick feeling you have in your body from this thought. What can you do to change it?
First, recognize that your fear consists of merely false expectations appearing real (FEAR). Take a deep breath and consciously focus on the possibility (probability) that things will work out just fine. You may be late or not (if the plane is delayed). You may be meant to have an important experience on a subsequent flight. There are many possibilities.
Constantly focusing on good possibilities can bring you peaceful feelings regarding your flight and travel plans. Each fearful thought must be replaced with “good news” thoughts. These good news thoughts bring good feelings into your body. Good feelings cause you to heal in your body. There are neurochemicals of healing that are produced in your body, as well as endorphins that reduce physical pain. If you let yourself laugh at your circumstances, you may notice that your pain nearly disappears (albeit temporarily).
Now, what happens when your body suffers a physical injury such as a low-back strain? Notice that in addition to pain in your low back, you also have mental awareness and even ill emotions related to the pain. What you think about most will manifest most. It is not easy to change your thoughts from despair over a physical pain, but it can be done.
Banish Painful Thoughts
Excuse each fearful or painful thought as it comes into your mind. Focus on a thought that is what you want, even if you don’t believe yet that it can come into being. Keep focusing on the good news thought, and give yourself logical reasons concerning how it can actually come about. Trust that even if you don’t know the future, it can come about by some unexpected means. There are endless possibilities of how it can resolve. But know that each one of them will be perfect for your best learning and that they may or may not be uncomfortable at first. But it will resolve; there is no need to fear.
Likewise, if your fearful thoughts (which are the opposite of love and trust) are worries about lack of money, a faltering relationship, anger and resentment or shame and self-blame, perform this same method until you can embrace the thought that enables you to escape your fear. You’ll see that the distress in your body also lifts.
Keep nurturing those thoughts without giving in to the fearful ones again. Notice that your body feels better as your feelings improve. Your feelings are a direct result of what you are allowing into your mind through your five senses. Feelings also result simply from the thoughts you generate and hold onto. Make feel-good thoughts and emotions be your way to heal physical body pain and even enjoy your body temple. It is your great gift.
