‘Where there is great love, there are always miracles.’
WILLA CATHER
There’s one other thing that I want to mention in regard to healing, and I think it deserves a chapter of its own, such is its power to heal body and mind. It’s love. Love nurtures the soul.
Aaron was so terribly stressed. He was struggling financially. He wasn’t getting on so well with his boss at work. The recent pay rise he’d expected hadn’t come through. Every day was like a nightmare for him. He just couldn’t shake the constant feeling of anxiety, fear and dread. Then, completely unexpectedly, the woman he’d secretly been in love with declared her love for him. In an instant, all of Aaron’s problems disappeared.
Of course, the situations still existed. But Aaron’s experience of them drastically changed. The anxiety, fear and dread dissolved overnight.
Love shifts our perception of things. That’s where the miracle occurs – inside us. Love reaches inside us and stirs something, the soul perhaps. It makes life seem different, lighter, brighter.
My research into the mind–body connection has convinced me that emotional pain can play a role in many illnesses and may even be at the root of some of them. Where it does, love can play a role in our healing.
The most obvious place to experience love is in relationships. Relationships are food for the soul. They’re the foundation for our experience of life. Without them, life would have less meaning. But, of course, although we tend to think this refers only to romantic relationships, we can love in all sorts of relationships. Parents love their children, friends love each other, family members love each other, people love the animals in their lives. All that’s different is the style of love and the way it’s expressed.
In Aikido and the Harmony of Nature, Mitsugi Saotome, founder of the Aikido Schools of Ueshiba, writes,
If you were alone in the Universe with no one to
talk to, no one with whom to share the beauty of the
stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your
purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives
your life meaning… We must discover the joy of
each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.
I believe that our main purpose in life, if there’s such a thing, is to deepen our experience of love. Many people, in their final days, reflect on what was most important in their lives. Most say that it was the quality of their relationships – the time they spent with their loved ones. Everything else was just detail.
And as we experience love, we also experience healing of mind, emotions and body. I’m not suggesting that all we need is relationships to cure ourselves of serious illnesses. But love – real love – will change our experience of them. And then many of the things that mattered before won’t seem to matter as much. We’ll discover for ourselves what is really important.
Stress, which accelerates disease of mind and body, fades and is replaced with gratitude and a deep reverence for all forms of life. And from that space, if there’s anything practical that we need to do to facilitate any physical healing, we’re perfectly placed to do it. We have more energy, vibrancy and motivation at our fingertips than ever before.
Love enhances us. It makes us so much more. It stretches us. We become more. We become the person we were always meant to be.
Sometimes, it’s our loved ones who see this ‘more’ in us and they help us to become it and we, in turn, help them.
In his poem ‘Love’, Roy Croft writes,
I love you
Not only for what you are
But for what I am
When I am with you.
Of course, relationships, like all things, need continual attention. They need work. How would growth occur if we were not occasionally challenged to work at things? In the popular advice column ‘Sweet Reason’, Molleen Matsumura wrote,
Love is like a campfire: it may be sparked quickly,
and at first the kindling throws out a lot of heat,
but it burns out quickly. For long-lasting, steady
warmth (with delightful bursts of intense heat from
time to time), you must carefully tend the fire.
The US novelist Ursula K. Le Guin puts it another way: ‘Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.’
And there’s a skill to remaking it, which we learn through experience. We learn that we have to occasionally put our own needs aside for the needs of another. All parents know this. The welfare of the children must always come first. In romantic relationships, as our love deepens, we put our own needs aside so that we may contribute to the fulfilment of our loved one’s needs. The desire to listen replaces the need to be right. And we discover great joy and experience deep healing in this.
I’ve learned that love is both the most complex thing imaginable and also the simplest: learning what we should and shouldn’t do, what is best and how to deal with the emotions of our loved ones, learning to open up and express ourselves. These things can be tricky. But when we do make the choice that love, if it were intelligent, would make, it is, and always was, so simple on reflection.
Only we make it complex.
We don’t need to wait to be in a romantic relationship to experience love. It’s all around us. In fact, it’s inside us. It’s how we choose to experience the moments of life, whichever form they come in, that allows us to experience love.
You can experience love in many ways. You can show kindness to a stranger. You can smile at someone in the street. You can spend time with an animal. Gaze deeply into the eyes of an animal, for example, and you’ll know exactly what I mean.
‘Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn
or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of
living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.’
DENIS WAITLEY
A friend once told me that gratitude changed his life in 30 days. He was depressed at the time and had been for a while. One day he decided to try a simple exercise. Every day he would write down 50 things that he was grateful for. He would try to go the full month doing this – 30 days.
It was hard at first, but he always managed to find 50 things. Sometimes it took him all day. He’d do a bit in the morning and add to it throughout the day, and he’d always have his list completed by the time he went to bed. As the days passed, it got easier. After two weeks, he was feeling so much better that he was writing 75 things a day in his gratitude list. By the end of the month he was a different person.
And funnily enough, as is often the case when we change from the inside, life seems to change on the outside. It wasn’t long before he met the woman of his dreams and got the job he’d always hoped for.
Why not try this exercise for 30 days and see just how much of an impact it has on your life? It might be difficult at first, if you’re struggling with your life, but it will get easier. As the power of gratitude causes a crack to appear in the veil of difficulties in your life, light seems to shine through the crack and illuminates things. As this happens, your experience of your life changes. And then your life changes.
My partner, Elizabeth, and I were once driving on the motorway between Scotland and England. We stopped at one of the motorway service restaurants to have breakfast. We were both a little tired because we’d left really early in the morning and, due to being very busy in the few days leading up to our trip, we’d not had very much sleep.
But the tiredness left us when we encountered the woman who served us our breakfast. She was working behind a long counter and served us our order before we moved further along the counter to pay. She greeted us with a warm smile and some friendly comments. Her genuinely kind and positive attitude was like a refreshing shower.
I think she could tell that we were feeling tired because she gave us an extra large portion of breakfast to accompany the big portion of joy, which was just what we needed. Within a few seconds, Elizabeth and I were feeling refreshed, and we hadn’t even eaten yet. It was the woman’s personality and kindness that refreshed us.
While we were eating, I noticed a feedback form on the table. Highlighted was a new initiative being run by the restaurant: it was called ‘Go that Extra Mile’. The form gave the opportunity for customers to comment if a staff member had gone that extra mile in providing good service. We had just experienced great service, so we filled out the form.
We had to include the staff member’s name and the time and date, but we hadn’t noticed the woman’s name, so on our way out we went back to the counter and tried to read her name from her badge. The problem was that the restaurant was filling up and she was quite busy. She frequently had her back to us so we couldn’t catch her name. Now I have to admit we thought of just leaving because it felt a little out of our comfort zones to be standing alongside a queue of hungry people.
We were aware that some customers thought we were trying to jump the queue. But, in life, love often stretches us and presents us with opportunities to burst out of our comfort zone. We either act on these opportunities and grow a bit more, or we walk away and wait for another opportunity.
So, seizing the opportunity, I shouted across to the woman and asked her name. I told her that I was filling out the feedback form and that we were really grateful for the way she’d helped us feel when we’d arrived earlier. Right then, her face just glowed. Her smile stretched almost the full width of her face. I suddenly felt inspired to point out the form to some of the customers in the queue too. I said, ‘Doesn’t she have a lovely smile? What a great way to be served… with a smile!’ They were now all smiling.
Then, as fortune would have it, the woman’s manager appeared. I was on a roll now and had no intention of stopping. I related what I’d written on the form to the manager, right in front of the woman and the customers. The manager’s smile suddenly broke through too. And none of the customers seemed to care that I was holding up the queue. This was a little moment of magic and everyone was participating in it.
The manager said it was a great pleasure to receive some positive feedback. Apparently, we’d been the first (I don’t know when the initiative had started). She said that all they had ever received was complaints. It was really special to receive positive feedback, she said, and especially in such a personal way.
I’m sure that many customers had been pleased with their service in the past but had not commented. Isn’t it funny how most people reserve their feedback until they have something negative to say? How many people do you know who send a card to a restaurant when they’ve had a nice meal, just to say thanks? But how many people complain when a meal didn’t meet their expectations?
In the absence of some form of positive feedback, people don’t realize what a great job they’re doing or what a gift their job is to others. We deprive them of knowing this. I think it’s up to us to tell them.
Too often, things are changed to suit the minority because those who complain make a big fuss. I think it’s about time we started to show more gratitude in the world. Let’s make a fuss about the good things. Let kindness have the loudest voice so that things change for the better. I feel that we could make a huge difference to others’ lives, and our own, by going that extra mile to say or do something really nice for others. Don’t wait until something bothers you before you offer feedback.
And have you ever noticed how good it makes you feel when you do something nice for another person? That’s because kindness has side effects. I like that there can be positive side effects and not just the negative ones we associate with drugs. I wrote about these positive ones in my book The Five Side Effects of Kindness. For info, the side effects are that kindness makes you happier, is good for your heart, slows ageing, improves relationships and it’s contagious.
On that contagious note, every nice thing you say or do makes a difference. Just like a lily pad on a pond rises because of a wave, so each act of kindness makes a wave in society, however seemingly small, and it spreads out and affects many more people than the person (or people) you just helped.
‘Love cures people – both the ones who
give it and the ones who receive it.’
KARL MENNINGER
I love to ‘ping’ kindness. I might be walking down a busy street and when I see someone who looks sad I imagine pinging a little ball of kindness towards them. I visualize it flying through the air and landing on them. For effect, I usually flick my finger as if I’m flicking the ball of kindness towards them.
I get quite creative at times. Usually I give the ball of kindness a colour – whichever colour I’m inspired by at the time. I also ping whatever quality I feel the person needs. So, sometimes, instead of kindness, I might ping happiness and at other times I might ping fulfilment, or love, or joy or forgiveness. I look at the person and just ping the first quality that pops into my mind.
Sometimes I ping more than a little ball. Sometimes I have some fun and imagine stretching it out and have it reach several people at once (who says visualization is only to be applied to healing the body?) Sometimes I imagine breaking a large ball of kindness into loads of little fragments and showering people with them. Other times, I send a ball rolling down the street and watch it blow through a whole line of people.
And a funny thing sometimes happens. When I ping something, people sometimes look towards me and smile. I like to think there was an exchange between us at those times and that the person did actually receive something that was helpful to them.
But it’s always helpful to me too. You get back what you give out, as they say. When it comes to love and kindness, the more you give, the more you seem to have to give. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare wrote,
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
I really believe that much spiritual and emotional healing, and often physical too, occurs as we tap into the capabilities we have to love. The more love we can consciously spread in the world, the more we heal ourselves. The word ‘heal’ comes from the Old English word haelen, which means ‘to make whole’. When we give love, we make ourselves more whole.
‘If you think something is missing in
your life, it’s probably you.’
DR ROBERT HOLDEN
I’ve often spoken about the similarity between people and tuning forks. When we strike a tuning fork, other things begin to vibrate. When we’re in a bad mood, just like a tuning fork, we inspire a gloomy mood around us. People start to act as we’re acting. The same, of course, happens when we feel happy. Then we inspire happiness around us. In a sense, we’re contagious, but I’m not speaking here of contagion of viruses or bacteria, but contagion of emotion.
Behaviour is contagious too. In fact, one of the most contagious behaviours is kindness. Kind acts inspire kindness in others. Thus, as we make changes in ourselves that mean we become more loving, compassionate or kind, we frequently inspire similar changes in others, even if it’s just a little sometimes.
We needn’t do big things to change the world. It’s the small things we do in large numbers that matter most.
In relation to peace, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said,
Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our
countries or with those who have been appointed or elected
to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually.
Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we
have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.
And so it is with peace too. As we become more at peace with those around us, we inspire more peace around us.
I’ve noticed that one thing that distances people from peace, happiness or contentment is the word ‘should’. We think that we should do this or that, or that we should have done something different. Or, more painfully, that we should be something different. But I think that we start to feel more happiness and peace, and experience more healing, when we accept ourselves – when we say, ‘It’s OK to be me!’
If you’re suffering right now, that’s OK. Don’t torture yourself by thinking you shouldn’t be. If you’re not happy right now, don’t beat yourself up by convincing yourself that you should be happy. I say this because people who read self-help material often think that they’re not enlightened enough, loving enough, forgiving enough or peaceful enough and, especially if they get sick, they assume they’re doing something wrong. Then they criticize every negative thing they do and, even worse, they beat themselves up for every negative thought. But it’s OK to be how you are, to be who you are. Sometimes, we just need to lighten up, for our own sake.
My dear friend Stephen Mulhearn, a shamanic teacher who owns a retreat centre called Lendrick Lodge in Brig o’ Turk in Scotland, has a great sense of humour. He often makes light of the way we beat ourselves up like this. He had me in stitches of laughter once when he talked of a friend who was working hard on a new nutritious diet. Stephen told me that his friend had shaken his head and said, in a deadly serious and grave voice, as if confessing to a murder, ‘My only vice is milk.’
The way Stephen described all this to me was just so funny. He has that talent. But it got me thinking about how we’re our own worst critic. In fact, other people don’t need to criticize us. We do a good enough job of it ourselves.
But it’s when we start telling ourselves, ‘I am willing to love and accept myself, just as I am. I don’t need to be perfect, or healed, or enlightened right now; I just need to be me today,’ that we start to move towards wholeness. This is what you might call a greater love for ourselves. It’s a space from which inner peace grows.
Hermann Hesse, winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote,
You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a
single magic, a single power, a single salvation… and that is
called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it,
do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.
When we make peace with who we are, we begin to love ourselves. And from this space of not running away from ourselves, healing can be profound.
At the end of the day, love in any form, for ourselves and for others, is powerful medicine. Therefore, I’d like to end this part of the book with an inspiring little exchange. I couldn’t find a source for it, but I’m grateful to the author:
‘A wise physician said to me, “I’ve been practising medicine for 30 years and I’ve prescribed many things. But in the long run I’ve learned that for most of what ails the human creature, the best medicine is love.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” I asked.
“Double the dose,” he replied.’
I think that about says it all!