The Power of the Mind to Heal

Once upon a time there was a woman named Sheila who'd tried everything she could to overcome her fear and selfishness. She had been to therapy, attended dozens of workshops, and read countless books. As Sheila learned to pay closer attention to her thinking, she noticed that she was stuck in judgment a lot of the time. She judged her husband as lazy when he needed to rest. She judged her children for not trying harder in school. She relentlessly judged anyone who messed up the house, ate too much fat, or watched too many hours of television.

Sheila perceived her family as an extension of herself, and since she wanted to appear perfect, she needed them to seem perfect. Underneath the need for perfection, of course, was the fear of rejection. The fear of being judged by others, found unworthy, and abandoned is the basic terror that haunts the unconscious mind of all people. Sheila was aware of all of this and was at the stage of personal growth that Miron and I call being an “insightful neurotic.”

Sick and tired of feeling stuck, Sheila decided to consult a wise woman who lived up on top of a mountain. The wise woman said, “Sheila, first thing when you get up in the morning, say to yourself, ‘Ί am grateful for everything that happens, and I have no complaints at all.’ During the day when you find yourself judging something, once again remind yourself, ‘I am grateful for this, and I have no complaints at all.’”

Sheila went home and followed the wise woman's advice meticulously for an entire year. But at the end of the year, she still felt filled with self-criticism, fear, and judgment. Dejected after all of her efforts, Sheila returned to the wise woman and complained that the technique hadn't worked. Sheila still felt as self-centered as before. The wise woman looked into her eyes with a smile and said, “And I am grateful for this, and I have no complaints at all.”

Needless to say, Sheila “got it” in that moment. We adapted Sheila's story from a Zen teaching tale of the poet and writer, Stephen Mitchell. The punchline of such stories always involves a paradigm shift, an “aha” when an intellectual insight becomes an essential knowing, and the person's world view is forever changed. Sheila's shift was out of the ego's fears of abandonment into the deep security of the Higher Self.

Did you ever see the movie Defending Your Life? It's about two people who have just died and who are reviewing their lives in a wild and wonderful place called Judgment City. In this place, you realized that the measure of your life was in whether or not you had learned to overcome fear. If you had succeeded, you progressed to the next step of evolution; otherwise, you had to reincarnate so you could try all over again.

We liked the film for two reasons. First, you got to eat whatever you wanted in Judgment City without gaining weight. Second, we do believe that the purpose of this life is in learning to transform fear into love.

In order to overcome fear, we need to acquaint ourselves with the wiles of the ego. The late Wolfgang Luther, a physician who founded an excellent body/mind healing practice called Autogenic Training, referred to the ego as “the dirty tricks department of the mind.”

One of the ways in which the dirty tricks department works is through rumination. Everything might be okay now, but “what if?” What if are the two most loaded words in the English language. They can turn any situation into a catastrophe. I once had a lump in my breast that was suspicious enough that it needed to be removed. Not once did I ruminate on the thought, “What if it turns out to be nothing?” Instead, my mind ran around in circles “what iffing” about the possibility of it being cancer. What if it has spread? What if I die?

The “what ifs” led to questions about the meaning of the hypothetical cancer—which did, thankfully, turn out to be nothing at all, although I wore myself out with worry. Was this fantasized cancer an awakening experience? Was I about to undergo a spiritual transformation like so many people who grow as the result of their illness, or was it a meaningless event in a random universe? Have you ever run yourself ragged with a good case of the “what ifs”?

Back in those days, I was deeply engaged in reconsidering my most basic beliefs. It would have been wonderful if someone had presented me with a broader, less fearful, perspective on the “what ifs.” That's just what I tried to do for the reader in Fire in the Soul, and we have adapted a what if exercise from that book for you. The best way to approach these “what ifs,” which are basic reframes to heal the dirty tricks department of your mind—is to act as if they are a meditation. If you relax and focus on what is being said, the new images that arise in your body/mind can help cancel out some of the old fearful ones.

Please stop and try this exercise before reading on. Either tape the script below and play it back for yourself, or have someone read it to you slowly and thoughtfully. Pause at the dots so that the words have ample opportunity to reach deeply into your every cell. Be sure to do the exercise in a safe, comfortable place where you will not be disturbed. If possible, play some soft, inspiring music in the background, such as Pachelbel's Kanon in D or the music of Bach.

Take a deep breath…a big letting-go breath…and when you're ready, allow your eyes to close. Take a little stretch…and get as comfortable as you can. You might want to do a few head rolls or shoulder stretches, whatever would help you relax….

Now focus on your breathing. Take another big breath, and let it go completely… Now imagine that your belly is rising on the inbreath, letting go on the outbreath….Or you might feel like your whole body rises and falls with the tide of your breath….

You can deepen your concentration by counting back from ten to one, one number on each outbreath. Imagine each number as vividly as you can. Perhaps you can practically feel the number in your body. Ten, then nine…all the way back to one….

Every outbreath is an opportunity to relax and let go, to move into your Higher Self….Each outbreath is an opportunity to let go to a deeper and deeper state of wisdom, peace, and love….Now, listen to these new “what ifs” with the ears of your heart….Listen with every single cell of your body…

What if you weren't alone after all? What if you were a fragment of a great and glorious mind, like an individual wave is part of the magnificent ocean. Like an individual cell is part of the body. In your body, each cell has its own unique gift, its own special function that adds to the whole—and yet it also has the potential to become the whole. Any cell of your body could theoretically be cloned into a whole new you. Read this affirmation…

I am a child of the One Light, the One Mind.
The wisdom of the entire Universe is present within me.

What if your life is uniquely precious to the evolution of this universe? What if the Creator actually grows itself and knows itself through you, because you are love made visible. The life force is present in the dewy grass and the stars of the night sky. It is present in your mind and expresses through your creativity. You are the great and glorious dance of the One Great Dancer. You are the great and glorious dream of the One Great Dreamer. Listen to these affirmations, and if you wish, repeat them yourself

God is present in all things, all experiences.
God is present within me.
The Universe knows itself and grows itself through me.

What if you didn't have to search for meaning in your life? What if you knew, with every fiber of your being, that the purpose of your life is to love? Through love you would find peace. And through peace you would see God in yourself, in your loved ones, in strangers, and in nature. If you believe that your purpose is to love, then you will stop judging yourself and others. This is forgiveness, and through forgiveness you will be free. Let these affirmations take root in your heart, repeating them if you wish.

The purpose of my life is to love.
I love by letting go of judgments.
Through forgiveness I find peace of mind.

What if the situations in your life that seem to bring up the most fear, frustration, and grief come in love's service? What if they are opportunities to wake up from the trance of your fears and your belief in separation? How could we find the light if not by struggling with the darkness? How could we become wise without making mistakes? How could we become compassionate toward others without suffering ourselves? Let these affirmations float in your mnd.

Darkness and fear are the Great Awakeners.
In facing my demons, I will find my freedom.

What if all your fears about death were based on a lie—the lie that you are a body? What if you had a body, but were not a body? Imagine that the coat of flesh you are sitting in is a space-suit you have put on for an adventure in a strange, new world. Once you have returned from this adventure at the time of death, it will all rerun so that you can answer the question: Did I overcome fear and learn how to love? You don't have to wait until you take off your spacesuit to review your life. You can choose to wake up now. Listen to these affirmations, and repeat them if you wish.

What if all the paradoxes and difficulties of life turn out to make sense after all? When we leave the confines of our space-suits and return to a state where we can see forever, we will understand that every drama needed for the growth of our soul was provided for us. The circumstances of our lives reflected neither reward nor punishment, for we are neither good nor bad—we are just love growing itself. Listen to these affirmations, repeating them if you wish.

I am given the circumstances I require for my awakening.
Every situation, seen rightly, contains the seeds of my freedom.

We like to think of the reframes you've just practiced as a kind of chiropractic adjustment of the attitude. As with all adjustments, this one is likely to slip over time. Our habitual ways of thinking are strong and tend to pull us back into old grooves through the force of habit. Eastern philosophies say that mind-habits called samskaras comprise the soul memories that we take with us at death. They are compared to riverbeds, carved through rock by the forceful stream of repetitive thinking. Overcoming the habitual samskara of fear is, as we have said before, a matter of developing a strong intention of practicing thought awareness so that you can make more creative choices.

One of the keys to reprogramming the mind with new choices is breathing. As I discuss at length in Minding the Body, Mending the Mind, breathing is the bridge between the body and the conscious mind. When breathing is slow and rhythmic, coming from the diaphragm, thoughts have true power because they are more deeply received as suggestion—not only by the mind, but also by the body. Yogis, Qi Gong masters, and martial arts experts all know how to use the breathing to stabilize the mind and energize the body.

Please stop for a moment and try this exercise before reading on. As you did before, either tape this exercise and play it back for yourself, or have someone read the script slowly and gently, pausing at the dots so that you have time to feel the words in your body.

Recline back in your chair at about a 45-degree angle. Now put one hand on your belly, and without trying to change your breathing in any way, notice whether your belly inflates as you breathe in and flattens as you breathe out, or whether some other movement predominates….For now, it doesn't matter how you are breathing. All that matters is your attention to the process.

Think of how babies breathe…. Their bellies inflate like little beachballs on the inbreath and flatten on the out-breath. They are breathing diaphrag-matically—efficiently and restfully. How about you? It may seem like your belly is hardly moving at all….Or it may seem like your belly is moving in the opposite direction….Here's how to make an easy shift into diaphragmatic or belly breathing.

Take a big breath in, and now exhale slowly and completely through your mouth…that's right, really push it out….Now, let the next breath come in passively through your nose….Can you feel your belly expand? Now, breathe naturally through your nose, either feeling or imagining the way that your belly expands on the in breath and relaxes on the outbreath…. This will become second nature with a little practice.

Throughout the day, you can learn to take that big sigh of relief—the big out-breath…try it again right now…and then notice the way that your breathing moves into your belly. You can let go of minor anxieties and bring forth the creative power of your mind by just concentrating on your breathing for a minute or two, whatever else you may be doing.

Do you feel more relaxed? While most people do, sometimes if you try too hard you can end up feeling a little tense for the first two or three times you practice the diaphragmatic breathing. But as soon as you catch on to it, you will have learned the single most important mental technique for interrupting fearful mental movies and coming back into the present moment.

Most of the fear in our life is not the result of old trauma or past-life soul impressions, although, as we will discuss in Chapter 18, transforming old wounds into wisdom is a crucial part of the healing process. Most of our fears are of the garden-variety type, created by the ways in which we think about common situations. Have you ever had the experience of dreading having to do something and then when the time came to do it, finding out that it was not so bad after all? In my own experience, I used to resist doing our income taxes for months. I wasted enormous mental energy in thinking about what a big chore the tax preparation would be. But when the day finally came, I could usually accomplish the entire dreaded task in a mere five or six hours. Too bad that I'd spent a few hundred hours ruminating about it!

Many of us can mobilize great fear and resistance to common problems such as traffic jams. There you are, safe in the car, but the dirty tricks department of the mind is producing movies about being late or right. Since none of these imaginings are going to move you one step closer to your destination, you might as well let go and come into the present moment. This is the time to take a big letting-go breath and shift into diaphragmatic or belly breathing. Breathing is the gear-shift between fear and creativity.

THREE KEYS TO CHANGING YOUR MIND

1. Intention. Think about a specific incident in which your fearful, judgmental thinking limited your ability to be creative and loving. This strengthens your intention to change. (Perhaps you yelled at one of your children, something you've done before, and you feel bad about it.)

2. Awareness. Notice when you are stuck in similar negative thoughts and judgments without putting yourself down. “Ah, I'm feeling critical. This is an opportunity to change my mind and open my heart.”

3. Creative Choice. Shift into belly breathing. You are now in the present moment. What would a more creative choice be? “I can practice encouraging my daughter instead of criticizing her.”