Symbolic Illness
I continued, "I also want to bring you back to something God said about health..."
Nothing occurs in your life — nothing — which is not first a thought. Thoughts are like magnets, drawing effects to you. The thought may not always be obvious, and thus clearly causative, as in, "I'm going to contract a terrible disease." The thought may be (and usually is) far more subtle than that ("I am not worthy to live.") ("My life is always a mess.") ("I am a loser.") ("God is going to punish me.") ("I am sick and tired of my life!")
Neale Donald Walsch
"These words reminded me of something I read in The Holographic Universe…"
Achterberg’s recommendation that we rid ourselves of negative images is well taken, for there is evidence that imagery can cause illness as well as cure it. In Love, Medicine and Miracles, Bernie Siegel says he often encounters instances where the mental pictures patients use to describe themselves or their lives seem to play a role in the creation of their conditions. Examples include a mastectomy patient who told him she “needed to get something off her chest”; a patient with multiple myeloma in his backbone who said he “was always considered spineless”; and a man with carcinoma of the larynx whose father punished him as a child by constantly squeezing his throat and telling him to “shut up!”
Sometimes the relationship between the image and the illness is so striking it is difficult to understand why it is not apparent to the individual involved, as in the case of a psychotherapist who had emergency surgery to remove several feet of dead intestine and then told Siegel, “I’m glad you’re my surgeon. I’ve been undergoing teaching analysis. I couldn’t handle all the shit that was coming up, or digest the crap in my life.” Incidents such as these have convinced Siegel that nearly all diseases originate at least to some degree in the mind, but he does not think this makes them psychosomatic or unreal. He prefers to say they are soma-significant, a term coined by Bohm to sum up better the relationship, and derived from the Greek word “soma” meaning “body.” That all diseases might have their origin in the mind does not disturb Siegel. He sees it rather as a sign of tremendous hope, an indicator that if one has the power to create sickness, one also has the power to create wellness.
The connection between image and illness is so potent, imagery can even be used to predict a patient’s prospects for survival. In another landmark experiment, Simonton, his wife, psychologist Stephanie Matthew-Simonton, Achterberg, and psychologist G. Frank Lawlis performed a battery of blood tests on 126 patients with advanced cancer. Then they subjected the patients to an equally extensive array of psychological tests, including exercises in which the patients were asked to draw images of themselves, their cancers, their treatment, and their immune systems. The blood tests offered some information about the patient’s condition, but provided no major revelations. However, the results from the psychological tests, particularly drawings, were encyclopedias of information about the status of the patient’s health. Indeed, simply by analyzing patients’ drawings, Achterberg later achieved a 95 percent rate of accuracy in predicting who would die within a few months and who would beat their illness and go into remission.
Michael Talbot
"Do you see the connection with something we talked about earlier?" I asked Zac. "About symbols?"
"Ohhhh…" his eyes flashed with recognition. "These illnesses are physical symbols of a person's self-concept!"
"Exactly," I grinned. "Remember — this algorithm is giving you a physical experience of your own consciousness. If your consciousness believes 'I need to get something off my chest,' then a physical symbol of that self-concept might be a mastectomy. If your consciousness believes 'I am spineless,' then a physical symbol of that self-concept might be myeloma in the backbone. Or, to give a more general example, if you believe 'I am weak,' then cancer might be a symbol that physically manifests, so you can experience yourself as weak. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah. But are you saying that an innocent child with cancer created their cancer?" Zac asked. "How can a kid be responsible for their own cancer? That's a pretty evil, twisted conclusion."
"Hey!" I snapped. "I'm just pointing out empirical facts and patterns. I didn't design this game. Don't shoot the messenger just because logic leads to something uncomfortable. Would you rather your child's cancer be completely random?"
"Yeah, I think so," Zac said.
"Why?"
"Because then I can shake my fist at the heavens in despair and be angry. It's not my fault. It's not my kid's fault. It's fucking God's fault, and I'd be furious at him. I just don't believe an innocent child creates their own cancer. I don't believe it."
"I'm not saying they create their own cancer. I'm saying this algorithm creates their cancer, and the algorithm is anything but random."
"Yeah, but if there is a mind-body connection, then you're saying that the kid creates their own cancer because the illness is created first in their mind."
I sighed. "Okay. There is something you're not quite understanding here. Nothing exists independently of anything else, and thus we are co-creating reality together. When a kid gets cancer, that cancer gives every Markov-blanketed 'thing' a physical experience of their own consciousness. The mother experiences the depth of love for her child. The father experiences the lengths he'll go to to save his little girl. The doctors experience themselves as doctors, saving lives, and working with compassion. The sick child experiences what it's like to be weak, and still feel hope. If she survives, she'll carry that strength with her for the rest of her life, inspiring others."