Doorways of Support and Inspiration:
Healing Your Mind/Body/Spirit

Everybody's Expecting Me To Get Sick & Die . . .BUT ME  Jerry Terranova
 
"I'm hiv positive... (pregnant pause-) ...but asymptomatic!" How many times have I said that over the last few years and not realized what I was saying? Lately I've become concerned as to what goes in between those parentheses--what the pause is pregnant with! I finally figured it out. Expectation! Mine, others'--and my fear of others'. So, I always hasten to add "asymptomatic" in explanation, in defense of my health. On the surface, this may not seem like much, but lurking in the shadows of that expectation is the unspoken consensus that, of course, one day "it" will happen; and in the meantime, my good health is a fool's paradise.
 
I no longer wish to participate in that consensus.
 
I'm writing this piece because I'm afraid we're all helping each other to get sick. I fear that many amongst us may be getting ill and dying simply because it's expected of them.
 
SILENT BUT DEADLY
 
Expectations are the silent carriers of our beliefs; they mirror our deepest convictions about ourselves, others, life--and health. Expectation is a filter for perception. What we expect is what we see. In the context of aids, expectation is a malevolent undercurrent that carries with it all our mass fears and projections--the dark waters upon which the whole of aids floats. Here, in the context of a life-and- death struggle, each expectation becomes a silent carrier of either health or illness.
 
Expectation is a force that people with hiv and aids face every day. We carry the weight of the world: the collective fear, the anxious expectation of our loved ones, plus our own inner anticipation--the secret fear that maybe everybody is right after all and no matter what we do, we're doomed. But this burden is not ours to bear. We've got to give it back if we're to be well.
 
We feel the living presence--and Pressure--of this expectation continuously; always the same insidious subliminal message: wait and die. That's about all we can do. And (allegedly) buy a few extra years with drugs. It's a constant reinforcement of the consensus assumption--whether the message is being flashed to us through the media or through the anxious eyes of a loved one (who in their excessive worry, fears for your safety--and their own--but is participating in the consensus reality nonetheless). For people living with hiv and aids, this force has seeped down into the very cells of our body, into the heart of the intelligence of each unit of life we carry.
 
The horror of all that we've witnessed--every death, every face of illness and despair, all those sights, sounds, smells, images and sensations --has lodged itself in our systems. How could it not? All that "death material" in us is like raw fuel waiting for a spark. When this backlog of impressions is ignited by the force of expectation, we've then unleashed a potent force with a mind of its own.
 
BREAKING THE CHAIN
 
To prevent that from happening, we need to sever ourselves from each and every expectation--in thought and feeling, both containing energy because each one is like a living, connecting tissue that weds us in mind and body to hiv and aids. It's up to us to disassociate from what inside us keeps us wrapped up in each others' expectations, tied to another's energy field rather than our own. That includes our interaction between ourselves as people with hiv and aids; we've got to stop reinforcing the consensus reality. Breaking this chain is hard work--mental work--because it must be done every day consistently until all expectation of illness within us is banished.
 
In my life, these expectation issues come up in daily interaction. Like a recent first visit to an acupuncturist in which I told her of my hiv status (not because I needed to tell her but because I felt she should know for herself if she was going to treat me). She then proceeded to give me a pep talk assuming that I needed a daily infusion of hope to get me through the day, to ward off illness.
 
Why is it that when you tell people of your hiv status, seldom does anyone listen to your relationship to it; instead, they hasten to lay their relationship to it (expectation) on you. (And since most people's relationship to hiv is about their fear and their unquestioning belief that it causes aids, they're actually helping you to get sick.)
 
In another recent conversation I had - this time with a friend that "knows" of my hiv status - she was going on and on about her plans for the future, and suddenly became self- conscious. She said, "I'm sorry; you probably don't think much about the future." I said, "No, I don't." She said, "Because you don't think you'll be around that long?" I said, "No. Because I 'm too busy living now."
 
It was hard for her to believe this but I don't spend my days contemplating my imminent demise. (Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated!) We face the mortality issues and then get on with life! (Besides, an hiv test result doesn't mean you're going to live forever.)
 
I also had a conversation with an aids worker recently, who gives workshops to help "empower" people with hiv and aids. In a heated debate about hiv, he had the audacity to suggest that my very questioning of hiv was "coming from denial" (the dreaded "D" word). His belief in hiv made my disbelief denial! This expectation/belief business was given a royal test for me about a year ago. I had a regular visit with my primary health practitioner who I had been seeing for over a year and whose "antiviral herbs" I was taking every day.
 
One day, inexplicably, my mind/body suddenly told me I didn't need to be taking these herbs anymore--that I could stop fighting the virus. Every check-up with him up to that time (using his highly subjective diagnostic technique) had been increasingly better. It seemed my health was on a continual upswing. I had stopped taking the herbs for some time before this particular visit, but I was going to tell him after the check up. However, as he started his routine examination--and everything was better than last time! I blurted out that I had stopped taking his herbs.
 
His whole manner changed. As did the progress of the check up. He then began finding things wrong with me-as I sat there confused and afraid. Then he uttered the words that sent a chill through my system: "The virus is replicating." (How he was so sure about this without being able to look into my body is beyond me). Had I gotten it all wrong, not heard my body correctly? And what was really going on in this interaction with him? Who's in charge? Is it his belief--in the virus, in his work, in the effectiveness of his treatments--versus my own belief--in my body, in my self, in my emerging capacity to know what I need? This is a completely competent health care practitioner in whom I had placed a great deal of trust. But did I trust him more than myself? Was I making him the authority on my health?
 
This proved to be a radical test of all that had come before, all that I was learning about myself and well being. It took me a while to sort it all out. I came to the decision that I don't need a practitioner who has a stronger belief in hiv than he does in me. But once again, the battle was not with hiv; it was with fear and with the power of others' beliefs and expectations. I'm happy to say, I've reached some new levels of self-trust and acceptance of good health since that incident.
 
A CRUEL IRONY
 
As hiv falls, I think we'll see the hypnotic effect of expectation more clearly. How fear--propelled by the power of the mind--can actually create disease. How quickly assumption hardens into fact. How much unnecessary suffering and illness has taken place as a direct result of this expectation is anybody's guess.
 
How many are being helped down the road to illness through the mass belief that their illness is inevitable? How many have we already lost on that road? This machinery of belief is grinding us up on a daily basis, sapping us of the very life force that carries with it the cures we seek. Breaking this chain of expectation is literally part of the cure for aids.

 
Jerry Terranova is a long-term aids survivor, writer and teacher, who died in June 1998. We remember and honor you, Jerry, for your love, wisdom, courage, generosity, and deep, passionate caring.
 
From Praxis, a curenow publication, created and published by Jerry Terranova. Volume 2, Fall 1992 (c) Jerry Terranova 1992. Reprinted by permission of Jerry Terranova.

Copyright © 1999 Life Challenges