WELLNESS and the DISEASE PROCESS

It has been a common observation throughout the ages that certain diseases are associated with certain emotions and attitudes. The medieval concept of “melancholy,” for instance, connected depression with impairment of the liver. In contemporary times, many physical disorders have been clearly linked with the emotions of stress.

That emotions do have physiologic consequences is well documented. In the early days of psychoanalysis, research to identify specific diseases with specific psychological conflicts gave rise to the whole field of psychosomatic medicine. We have all heard about the connection between heart disease and “type A” personalities versus “type B” personalities, and of how suppressed anger results in hypertension and strokes. The presumption has been that emotions affect hormonal change through neurotransmitter variations in different areas of the brain associated with controlling different organs by way of the sympathetic or autonomic nervous system.

In more recent years, concern over the spread of AIDS has given great impetus to research on the body’s immune system. Generally, it appears that what is experienced as stress results in suppression of the thymus gland; with this, the body’s defences are impaired.

An idea or constellation of thoughts presents itself in consciousness as an attitude that tends to persist over time; this attitude is associated with an attractor energy field of corresponding power or weakness. The result is a perception of the world creating events appropriate to trigger the specific emotion. All attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs are also connected with various pathways, called “meridians” of energy, to all of the body’s organs.

When the mind is dominated by a negative world-view, the direct result is a repetition of minute changes in energy flows to the various body organs. The subtle field of overall physiology is affected in all of its complex functions, mediated by electron transfer, neural hormonal balance, nutritional status, etc. Eventually, an accumulation of infinitesimal changes becomes discernible through measurement techniques, such as electron microscopy, magnetic imaging, x-ray, or biochemical analysis. But by the time these changes are detectable, the disease process is already well advanced in its own self-perpetuating resonances.

We could say that the invisible universe of thought and attitude becomes visible as a consequence of the body’s habitual response. If we consider the millions of thoughts that go through the mind continuously, it is not surprising that the body’s condition could radically change to reflect prevailing thought patterns, as modified by genetic and environmental factors. It is the persistence and repetition of the stimulus that, through the law of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, results in the observable disease process. The stimulus that sets off the process may be so minute that it escapes detection itself.

If this scheme of disease formation is correct, then all disease should be reversible by changing thought patterns and habitual responses. In fact, spontaneous recoveries from every disease known to mankind have been recorded throughout history. (This phenomenon was the subject of the TV news show 20/20 on April 8, 1994.) Traditional medicine has documented spontaneous “cures,” but has never had the conceptual tools with which to investigate the phenomenon. But even thoroughly modern surgeons are very reluctant to operate on anyone who is convinced that he will die during the surgery, because not infrequently such patients do just that.

The importance of love as a healing factor and modality. We have been told by numerous books on the best-seller list that to love is to live healthily. But the mind resists change as a matter of pride. Love of our fellow man can ensue only when we stop condemning, fearing, and hating others. Such radical change can be disorienting; the courage to endure the temporary discomfort of growth is also required. Recovery from any disease process is dependent on willingness to explore new ways of looking at one’s self and life. This includes the capacity to endure inner fears when belief systems are shaken. People cherish and cling to their hates and grievances; to heal humanity, it may be necessary to pry whole populations away from lifestyles of spite, attack, and revenge.

On the other hand, like love, laughter heals because it arises through viewing a small context from a larger and more inclusive one, which removes the observer from the victim posture. Every joke reminds us that our reality is transcendent, beyond the specifics of events. Gallows humour, for instance, is based on the juxtaposition of the opposites of a paradox; the relief of basic anxiety then results in a laugh.

Peace is the natural state of affairs when that which prevents it is removed. Relatively few people are genuinely committed to peace as a realistic goal. In their private lives, people prefer being “right” at whatever cost to their relationships or themselves. A self-justified positionality is the real enemy of peace. When solutions are sought on the level of coercion, no peaceful resolution is possible.

A disease process is evidence that something is amiss in the workings of the mind, and that is where the power to effect a change resides. Treating an illness as a physical process only, within the A→B→C illusionary world of effects, does not correct the origin of the dysfunction, and is palliative rather than curative.

This information is from the book "Power Vs Force". Author David R Hawkins -