Healing the Preemptive Strike

A few years ago there was a lot of talk on the news about "preemptive strikes". These referred to war, and more specifically, striking the enemy before they strike you. I used to get sick a lot more than I do these days. From the food I eat, to the exercise I get, to the healthy mentality I cultivate, my health requires my undying attention and intrigue.

I remember, a few years ago now, getting the flu right around Christmas. I remember eating soup for weeks and weeks but I was still sick. A lot later I realized that I had not been feeding my body anything good to help heal itself. The soup I had been eating had a few good veggies in it and even meat but it was mostly broth, otherwise I wasn't really giving my body much to work with. At the same time my mental state was one of self-conscious depression. Not only for having to be sick, but also for having been layed off recently and attempting to start my freelance career. Its times like these that ignorance becomes clear. My limitations at that point made me ill and I did not have the wisdom to heal myself well, nor prevent the illness from taking over my body completely.

This can be a touchy subject because I find most people don't feel responsible for their sickness. They blame the flu or whatever is ailing them as the culprit. As if the virus itself is going around making people sick without their having anything to do with it. If this were the case then everyone would be sick and the human race would most likely have died off a very long time ago. Our bodies always contain virus's but they must wait until the immune system lets them in. I think this is a system we don't fully understand. Doctors have a great understanding of it but even some of them suffer the same delusions of responsibility as everyone else. The energy we put in our body (food), the energy our body participates in (internal and external environment, thoughts and relationships), and the energy we express (exercise, creativity, love), all help to serve our balance and well being as bodies of energy. This is not a spiritual thought mind you, though it does serve that also, I mean this all quite literally and scientifically. We are intimately responsible for our bodies but its something we need to learn about. Going to the doctor can be helpful but people don't typically attempt to understand it themselves. They would rather "leave it to the professionals". Which is like saying “I don't want to deal with what I do with my money, Ill go to a banker to tell me what I do with it”. Its a broken way of living.

A year later the onset of sickness was here again. I remember the stress of the time and yet I did not stop to rest. I kept pushing myself until I became sick. I realized I had done this so I switched my mentality from one of ambition to one of nurturing. I decided to nurture my body because I love my body. This switch in mentality vastly improved my situation. I did not look at the sickness as something to loath or hate, but as a sign of being out of balance. Its a very clear signal that people tend to treat like a neuscense. You can look at the stop light as if it is telling you that you need to slow down and come to a stop because you are in danger, or you can look at it as if its slowing you down and getting in your way. I fed my body great food; fruit, veggies, water, garlic, onions, etc. All sorts of good healing foods so my body had a healthy supply of nutrients and water to move them around with. My mentality was nurturing which felt like I was mothering myself. It felt like love and it felt right. I was happy and I rested. I slept, and made peace. And I was over my sickness before it really started.

It is true that doctors call cancer the "martyrs disease". A martyr, by definition, is someone who suffers. They take in the pain and they hold it which causes internal suffering. This is the first clear sign of a dis-ease. Having had a step father who past away when I was 12 from cancer, I had many years to ponder the truth of this idea. And true it is. Roy was a great man but he lived with much internal stress and pain. He slaved away for a boss who always paid him late, he made due with what little we had, he had a divorced wife and a daughter he could only see on rare occasions, a father he never really got to know, and friends who's lives were full of negativity, struggle and sickness. Roy had leukemia for 3 or 4 years but, in the end, died of a heart attack. He simply could not keep up the fight with his own dis-ease, no matter how large a heart he had. Like an mental pain, dis-ease starts as a seed and takes over the whole system. In the end the host believes without a shadow of doubt that they are the dis-ease, and there is no way to beat it. They believe this so much in fact that they believe the only way to overcome this painful position is to fight.

This is like fighting fire with fire. Its like fear handing you a sword to fight with, and you fight, never realizing you fight because you are afraid. Fear completely tricked you because you had no idea who YOU really were.

We live in a society that is disconnected. Our spirit does not feel connected to reality. I would blame scientific thinking for this completely but I think its too simple to do that, however true it may be, there are far too many other things to help this also. I think we live in a society that caters to distracting ones self from their connection to reality. We are raised ignorantly and continue to nurture our own ignorance of who and what we are. We let others convince us of false ideas and migrate to unhealthy ways of thinking of ourselves and the world. Instead of seeing ourselves as reality, connected completely as energy to all energy we relate with and trying to see that we in fact are not bound to skin and bone but are in fact infinite. Instead we reinforce the idea that we are separate, that we do not believe in "god", that we are machine like. We forget truths that were discovered by our ancestors and passed down through the generations simply because we feel we are smarter than them. We discount their ideas because we are told they are simpletons who believe in mythology and magic.

I read recently that multitasking makes people stupider. They cannot focus on one thing at a time anymore yet somehow we convince ourselves that we are very good at doing more than one thing at a time. When in fact we cannot do either thing particularly well. So maybe this is the challenge of the future. We are destined to face sickness, death, pain, suffering, and all the other negative aspects of a detached self until we learn our lesson. This does not just apply to us as a whole, but individually as well. Though this is true it does not have to be true in a larger sense. If we begin to learn from the small pains, and sickness's, and suffering, then they do not need to grow into a full blow organism. If we do not do the work however, then we will, through ignorance, end up nurturing one dis-ease or another, until it grows big and strong.

Nowadays I practice preemptive strikes however I don't fight the pain. I accept it as my own. I realize "yes, i feel stress in my chest and I can see that i feel it when I think about money that I owe, or the person who bothers me, or the thing I need to do next week. I can see now that I am out of balance and I remember that I am one with god, right now, in this moment. Although money, people, and possibilities exist, are real, and are in my life, they does not govern my well being if I don't let them. Debt is temporary, money is temporary, people and life are temporary, I will die, so fearing any of it is silly and only serves to hurt my body and life. I am safe and free." These are the types of revelations I attempt to make. When I feel pain, sickness, and depression, I try to wake up to the truth and let go, rather than hold on. I don't throw on the TV and go to sleep more. I accept these conditions as signs. Remember who I really am, and move through the suffering.

Balance is key to a healthy life. Its an eastern idea that seems to be penetrating the western mindset slowly. I like to remember a simple easter pearl of wisdom: "When I am hungry, I eat. When I am thirsty, I drink. When I am tired, I sleep. When I feel like dancing, I dance."

As far as I know, all of our bodies die of something or another. A long life has much to give and teach, I hope all the best to you and yours.