I Like This – Healthy Cells Grow All By Themselves

[Editor’s note: Peter Cutler, a dharma brother, fellow Order of Interbeing (OI) member, and cancer survivor responded to my poem (see Walking Meditation For Healing) with this statement: ‘Thank you, Jerome. I like this: ‘Healthy Cells Grow All By Themselves.'” This was on two threads of the OI community Yahoo group called, “Practicing with ALS” and “Working with Health“. Peter continued with the following post (reproduced here with permission).

Be sure to continue to watch The Quest for the Cures Continues… going on all this week.]

Working with Health

Thank you, Jerome. I like this: ‘Healthy Cells Grow All By Themselves.’

This is more of an important reminder than an affirmation. Healthy cells do grow all by themselves, with no effort on our part at all. All we need to do is stop interfering with this natural order. And that may be easier said than done given our conditioning and western society. We have come a very long way from a natural way. We have come a very long way from “first do no harm.”

This is what my experience with cancer taught me. It was a very great lesson. I learned to stop listening to doctors and a myriad of other advice and “knowledge” givers, including alternative advice and begin to listen very closely to my body. I found that miraculously and quite surprisingly that it had all the wisdom necessary. And it always had but I had never learned to really listen to it. I learned that before cancer had manifested it had given me dozens of other less severe and more subtle signals that I didn’t understand at the time or know what to do with. Instead I simply went to doctors to relieve these symptoms which turned out to be important messages from my body telling me to change my diet and my lifestyle in important and natural ways. It finally took cancer for me to begin to pay attention. And seven years later I still do. If it weren’t for cancer I probably would not be alive today let alone healthier at 66 than I have ever been before in my life.

Much of what this body teaches me is contrary to popular knowledge and western medicine. It was probably common knowledge a few hundred years ago, but much has changed since then. As a society we have gotten very far off track. Much has changed but the basic make-up of the body has not changed. It still needs fresh clean air, lots of sun light, lots of exercise, and healthy chemical-free food and water. Most of this is free and I suppose that points to the problem – there is really no profit in health because it is our natural state. The body understands what we think of as symptoms and attempt to repress or remove as the body’s own healing modalities and a necessary part of healing. I don’t recommend or not recommend this to others, but as a result of what I have learned and what my body requires I have had to avoid all connection to western medicine for the past seven years. I believe this is certainly a contributor to the outstanding health I experience today.

I don’t know if this would work for others. I have known a number of people who have healed from stage 4 cancer through the Hippocrates Health Institute Program in West Palm Beach, Florida, which is a very natural, first do no harm, approach. In each case western doctors had given up on any chance of a cure and were only offering to prolong life for a few additional months with intensive chemo treatments. Given our belief in western medicine it almost doesn’t make sense how a change, although a radical change, in food and lifestyle could cure something that western medicine could not. But it has worked for many people. Because of certain rules and laws promoted by the AMA, Hippocrates is not allowed to publicly announce these cures or make any mention of them. But I imagine if you contacted Brian Clemmens directly or anyone working there, they could verify what I have just written. I think it’s good for people to know about this. And this is not the only place that has had such success treating cancer. I would think the Tree of Life in Patagonia, Arizona and several other places, some forced to move to Mexico, have very similar stories. Their routines are quite similar. And really what they do is first detoxify the body from massive and overwhelming amounts of chemicals, many of them from western medicine. And then rebuild with very healthy foods, juices and exercise. It’s quite common sense. It just restores the body to its natural way and allows it to do the healing it naturally does when not interfered with. Unfortunately this is no longer common knowledge. So it feels important to mention it.

Common knowledge in our society says that to heal in a natural way, to listen to the body and our intuition, and to promote the body’s natural healing abilities is irresponsible and even crazy. This is what I was told when I had cancer. That advice turned out to be very wrong, but I survived it and it  was a powerful learning experience. We often learn by making mistakes. My own healing came from an intuitively self-taught program that turned out to be very much like Hippocrates and the Tree of Life offer, which is really just common sense. My own body taught me to fast, detoxify, change my diet, increase exercise and move to a healthier environment. Later I found Hippocrates and other programs were advising similar things so I learned from them too. I’m still learning from my body. It took seven years before I cut all sugar out of my diet. But little by little the body is purifying itself. It doesn’t live forever. But while it is living it has extraordinary wisdom, self-maintenance and self-healing properties. Like most of us I had been taught all my life to listen to the mind, to my conditioned thoughts, and continuously gather more “knowledge and wisdom” from outside. When I felt unwell, I would seek the advice of experts. But no expert ever told me that something as basic as love is a powerful healing modality. Our state of mind is an important healing component which is why meditation is so important. I heard from dermatologists that the sun is dangerous instead of a powerful source of healing. Most of what I heard turned out to be the opposite of true. Without listening to my intuition and my body’s own natural wisdom I would not have known any of this.

I don’t know if this helps. It is just my experience. But somehow it felt important to say. There is an enormous amount of information and advice that runs contrary to true healing. Entire industries are built on this misinformation. I would even go so far as to say that much of the ill health that is experienced today is due to industries that claim to promote health. These industries promote toxic chemicals foreign to the body as a necessary component of health. We call these pharmaceutical drugs. They promote cutting the body or poisoning it with chemicals as necessary for healing it. This is not common sense. This is not natural. Somehow as a society we have moved away from simple, natural common sense. We have moved very far from “first do no harm”. And the consequences of this are not difficult to see.

Our minds have been conditioned to believe what is unhealthy is healthy and what is destructive is healing. From a mind free of conditioned beliefs it appears quite insane. People working in these industries have the best of intentions but they have been conditioned to believe this as well. It is now a societal problem. And the great profits that come from poor health are a strong incentive to keep on this unfortunate path. We can see the consequence of this way of thinking all around us. And we look for myriad reasons why this unfortunate increase in ill health is occurring. But we don’t dare to question our societal reality and look to the obvious. It has become too much of our way of life. It has become our conditioned reality.

One other important thing that the body has taught me and this is probably the most important of all. I am not the body. The body can feel pain. The body can suffer. The body will die. But I am not affected by this in any way. The body is limited. I am not. I am free. And when the body experiences pain or illness, there is no clearer demonstration of this than to simply place the attention on what is not affected by pain or illness, to place the attention on what is beyond all identity. And this is the greatest gift the body has helped teach me. This contrast between the experience of limitation and constriction of body identity and the unlimited, spacious freedom of the True Self is a wonderful teaching tool. The body may feel pain, but I don’t have to. As soon as I let go of that identity, I am free. I am always free, even when I believe I am not. The body has taught me to let go of that belief in separation. In any time of body discomfort the contrast between these two experiences is a wonderful gift. I know people who effortlessly deal with the most debilitating illness simply because their sense of identity is no longer placed in the body or in thoughts or in the past. They are free of all that. And in some cases it was the debilitating illness itself that brought forth this realization. These types of experiences cancel out all thoughts of good and bad. Can illness be bad if it results in awakening and freedom? Experiencing this our mind returns to the natural state of not knowing, freedom and causeless happiness. And this depends not at all on the condition of the body or anything else.

We’ve all experienced the consequences of western lifestyles and beliefs in one way or another. It is always our choice if we want to continue.

Much Love and Gratitude,

Peter
True Sangha Virtue