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People
Tell Their Stories: Healing Into Health by Jacqueline Kramer "If
we want to create health, starting this moment, then we have to
start channeling the unconscious mind through habit." There are no mistakes or coincidences. I picked up the book, "Creating Health" as an assignment for a class I was taking to become a Religious Science practitioner, but it turned out to be the perfect book at the perfect time for me. For years I have been struggling with life, surviving, rather than thriving. Health-wise, I have had one flu after another, all seemingly small things but enough to keep me at a low level of living. It has been severe enough to keep my singing career at a minimal level, my income at subsistence level and my social life virtually non-existent. This is something I have been working to understand and heal for years. Now, all of my hard work is paying off in the form of greater health through greater consciousness. At the time of reading Dr. Chopra's book I was ready to shed 10 pounds and all the depression that it symbolizes. I was getting ready to force myself to eat mostly fruits and vegetables and to exercise regularly. When I got to the point in the book where he wrote, "If we want to create health, starting this moment, then we have to start channeling the unconscious mind through habit." With these words it became clear that the key to expressing good health is a consciousness which desires healthy habits. It is living from the inside out. I was getting ready to heal from the outside in until I read these words. Good health is very simple. It is the same qualities that create any healthful situation in nature, that is, nutrition, exercise (or movement), water, sunshine, moderation in all things, fresh air, rest and trust as love. These are the things that create joy and peace, power and abundance. These are the gifts God has lovingly bestowed on creation to sustain and support it. Somehow we humans have used our gift of choice to make choices that cut us off from one or more of these golden gifts. Through some form of complexity we have forgotten how easy it is to be healthy and happy. Letting Go The trick to getting back into the garden of health and vitality is being willing to let go of limiting beliefs that we have been holding dear. We humans tend to hold tight to what is familiar to us, even if it is something that is abusive to our bodies, minds and spirits. It takes courage to let go of the familiar. Life will speak to us more and more loudly until the thunderous voice forces us to let go of what is not true. The good news is that we don't have to wait for the thunder to let go of habits of mind and body which are hurting us. All we need to do is listen to our bodies and our lives. They are telling us all we need to know about what needs healing and how to heal it. It is the open hand of God which never closes. It doesn't work for us to force goodness into our lives. All we need to do is relax and allow the truth of goodness to emerge. The reason for this is described by Dr. Chopra as the laws of creation that intelligence works through. The first law is the law of oneness. There is only one intelligence and so it works through itself, which is us, to change itself. The second law is that this intelligence is all powerful and can find a way to accomplish anything....without exception. The third is that intelligence works in a clear and orderly fashion. It is natural for goodness to work through us. It is natural for our bodies to heal, for our hearts to heal. Everything in the universe conspires for each other aspect to be healed. The entire universe is behind our healing our lives! Talk about support! So the challenge for me was not to deprive myself of food I was tempted to eat but to be more conscious of what it was doing to my body while I was eating it. The bread I was eating: Was it making my body feel more vital or was it dragging it down? Listening to the body The body is always talking to us. In choosing to listen rather than ignore my body, I have heard it tell me when to stop, even if there was more on my plate and I loved eating it. It told me when something I was eating was uncomfortable to it. Sometimes I listen and sometimes I go ahead anyway with what my mind chooses. It is interesting to me that my mind would not always choose the highest path. It is a good place, my own mind, to explore why everyone isn't always living in perfect health and vitality. I am not forcing myself to be perfect. I observe and slowly, habit by habit, increase my well-being. It does not serve to force good habits upon ourselves. When we do that our beings become rebellious and the whole things comes toppling down. "The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven." (Shakespeare). Development of new healthy habits must be done with great compassion for ourselves. Gently, one by one, we include 20 minutes of meditation, then more fruit at breakfast, and on and on until our bodies would not have it any other way. This is the path to healing into health. Health is full, joyous well-being in our lives. The spirit feels it first, then the personality then the body, since the body is the densest form of God. So it is important to keep mindful of the process and keep the faith that what is shifting in our consciousness will show results in our emotional mental lives and then, finally, in our bodies and material lives. The whole process can also be a very quick one. But it has been my experience that although change appears to come quickly it is actually showing up after a great, and sometimes long, courageous effort, an effort sustained by faith in spiritual principle.
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