Many human beings have experienced enlightenment or revelations of the Divine. However, the wisest ones will tell you that it’s a life’s work (or more likely many lives!) to explore and learn how to manifest the wisdom thus received, and allow it to express itself throughout one’s whole being and life.
One of the big questions that often comes up on such a spiritual journey is: now that I know myself to be so utterly embraced by divine love, ought I still to use material means to achieve the things I desire, or should I seek to rely entirely on the power of thoughts and beliefs, since these are what determine my experiences? In some situations that question is easier to answer than in others. None of us would think twice, for instance, about using a car or bike to go to work – nobody’s expecting us at our current stage of evolution to teleport there, even if we could! Nor would we hesitate to eat a meal when our body needs nourishment – there are people who have learned to nourish themselves without food*, but for most of us it’s easier just to eat, isn’t it?
Conventional or alternative?
When it comes to our health, however, we can sometimes be a bit more undecided. Do we use conventional medicines which may be very far from natural and wholesome for our bodies? Do we stick to alternative remedies which are at least easier biologically for our bodies to identify and use? Or do we, as some people do, work purely on our beliefs and psychology, in the hope that, if we align ourselves more perfectly with the divine, our physical symptoms will disappear?
On my own healing journey, I’ve tried all three approaches both singly and in combination, and have found that a combination of all three works best for me. So whereas I started out with all kinds of prejudices and reservations against conventional medicines, nowadays I do not discriminate at all between conventional and alternative. My only questions are 1) Is this remedy likely to work in my body, and 2) is it likely to damage my immune system or vital organs? I did try using mental/spiritual methods alone, particularly during the second year of my journey when for all kinds of reasons I found it strangely impossible to get the physical treatments I would have liked, but this brought me up against a crucial realisation: that whatever problems I had lurking in my subconscious ‘cellar’, that may have been contributing to the cancer, they were probably going to be too big for me to deal with on my own, and also would require more consciousness to be brought to their resolution than was possible for me with quick methods like Psych-K and EFT. And in addition they would require time for their healing, time which, given the extent of my cancer, I was not at all convinced I would have unless I ‘bought it’ with physical remedies.
I think this is quite likely to be the case with a lot of cancer patients, cancer being something of a ‘final warning message’ from our bodies. But just because you have a final warning, that doesn’t mean you are supposed to get sent off the playing field altogether. Far better that we do our best to turn the illness into an evolutionary force, by learning whatever we can from the situation, facing our fears, letting go of our attachments, past conditionings, beliefs and dogmas – whatever they are – and doing whatever it takes to serve the life-force in our bodies. Because even if we don’t ultimately succeed in getting well from our disease, we can be certain that we are part of a beautiful story that the whole of humanity is composing together – the story in which disease and suffering are overcome, and humanity moves towards less painful ways of learning its lessons – and I for one find that a very comforting thought. Nothing is ever wasted.
A continuum of varying levels
So, although many people – myself included – sometimes find that psycho-spiritual approaches on their own are not sufficient to banish diseases, I believe that we will always notice, if we look closely enough, that physical remedies and improvements come to us in a way that keeps pace with the changes we are making inwardly. In this way, matter and spirit work hand in hand. And actually, why shouldn’t they? Matter is, after all, spirit as well. It’s just that it exists at a lower density. Only in our minds is it separate. By seeing ourselves not as living in a ‘material’ world that is somehow different and separate from spirit, but as part of a continuum of varying levels of density, all of which – however unlikely it may seem – are expressions of God’s love, we are released from the matter-spirit dilemma and placed right in the current of divine compassion, where all remedies, be they material or spiritual, psychological or physical, allopathic or homeopathic, can come to us at the right time, as the divine gifts they truly are.
© 2012 by Ann Napier
*See Life from Light by Michael Werner & Thomas Stockli, 170707, £6.99