Before describing his harrowing experience of flying through an unexpected cyclone, Antoine de St. Exupery* wrote “horror or fear is something invented after the fact”. While in the midst of danger or a traumatic experience, we are too absorbed in the possibilities of escape, or too stunned by what we are witnessing and battling to give way to fear. “It is only once we are safe that our nerves can relax enough to feel afraid”.

21 years ago when the doctors diagnosed me with Lupus, a disease considered “incurable”, it felt like a verdict committing me to that heightened degree of danger – disallowing relaxation at all. My already adrenaline filled, stressful state went into overdrive, as if thrown into a crisis as real as Exupery battling the elements in a cyclone. His words describing the catastrophe, beginning with his overwhelming feeling of powerlessness, paralleled my own in overcoming that “incurable” disease. I hope by sharing these life lessons back to safety and health, you too will be able to finally relax - knowing your challenge is indeed curable. Not by the doctors - but by you.

I had always wanted to be a mom. As a teenager, I'd had presumably a normal array of challenges: tonsillitis, bouts with anemia, PMS, ovarian cysts, constipation and a little later in life suffered a miscarriage, forcing me to face the devastation of a depression tempting suicidal thoughts. If I couldn't have children, what was life’s purpose? Unwilling to relinquish hope, when my biological clock started ticking as loud as a freight train passing in the stillness of night, I finally got wise enough to take the first step to achieving any goal = action.

“Master when will my desires come true? … When you want them as much as your next breath of air” – Og Mandino

Determined to become a self-taught expert in health (rarely satisfied with “good enough”), I would head to the bookstore grabbing an armful, or order whatever seemed appropriate by mail. One book with a catchy title and inexpensive enough to include without notice was “Heal Your Body” by Louise Hay.

Louise had also been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease (cancer) only in a bit of a better position with surgery as an option for removal. She believed however, that with a decision to let the doctors put her under the knife - without doing the emotional and mental healing to change - the surgeries would inevitably be ongoing. When I first read her tiny book though, the affirmations she espoused were just too simple. I thought if it was that simple to heal a disease, why were there so many sick people? The book became toilet back decoration for about a year.

One day I picked it up to analyze the affirmations for other peoples’ diseases – people I knew well like my father. He had always had knee trouble for example and lo and behold, the cause described and affirmation was completely accurate! She said knees represented pride and ego with their subsequent problems being caused by “stubbornness and the inability to bend; fear; inflexibility; won’t give in.” WOW – raised from the age of 10 in the Hitler Youth Movement – flexibility was not an integral part of his value system. Can you just imagine Hitler telling his officers to repeat after me, “I am forgiving, understanding and compassionate. I bend and flow with ease, and all is well”?

My mother and brother’s chronic illness (of manic depression) was next: “a refusal to change. Fear of the future. Not feeling safe.” Holy Toledo – had she met my family? As gentle souls, of course they lived in fear with a dictatorial, inflexible head of the house. If my mother said it once, she said it a million times – the only reason she did not leave was that she was more afraid of trying to raise us by herself. With that attitude, repeating, “I am willing to change and to grow. I now create a safe new future” seemed an utterly inconceivable choice. I was becoming a believer.

OK – time to look up some of my own past issues: cysts = “running the old painful movie. Nursing hurts. A false growth” yikes – so true! It is so much easier to see the truth of our circumstances in hind-sight, when there is no threat that we may have to do something about it. Next: Anemia - after having to leave home at 15 and not knowing how I was going to survive: “Yes-but” attitude. Lack of joy. Fear of life. Feeling not good enough”. In a mere 13 little words, my beliefs at that time had been perfectly pegged! From that moment on, my life took a different direction. I no longer felt like a victim to circumstances – no longer out of control of my destiny! Joel Osteen I love you passionately but cannot believe that our lives are already completely scripted by God. If that were true, free will would not even exist.

I do however believe God created us to be healthy and successful with a powerful mind to ensure that. As pointed out in “The Psychology of Self-Esteem”, Fraud’s theory that self-preservation is instinctual can be easily refuted by “the flagrantly self-destructive practices in which so many men engage – and the suicidal course that characterizes so much of human history…” Nathaniel Branden continues by writing, “Value and action imply and necessitate each other; it is in the nature of a value that action is required to achieve and/or maintain it; it is in the nature of a consciously initiated action that its motive and purpose is the achievement and/or maintenance of a value. But values are not innate…

Unsatisfied, unfulfilled needs can set up a state of tension or disquietude or pain in man, thus prompting him to seek biologically appropriate actions, such as protecting himself against the elements. But the necessity of learning what is the appropriate action cannot be bypassed.

His body provides man only with signals of pain or pleasure; but it does not tell him their causes, it does not tell him how to alleviate one or achieve the other. That must be learned by his mind. Man must discover the actions his life requires… It was not an instinct that enabled man to make fire, to build bridges, to perform surgery, to design a telescope: it was his capacity to think. And if a man chooses not to think – if he chooses to risk his life in senseless dangers, to close his eyes rather than open his mind at the sight of any problem, to seek escape from the responsibility of reason in alcohol or drugs, to act in willfully stubborn defiance of his own objective self-interest – he has no instinct that will force his mind to function, no instinct that will compel him to value his life sufficiently to do the thinking and perform the actions which his life requires.”

Branden’s words feel like a slap in the face don’t they? Unfortunately, sometimes we need that slap to take action or we do indeed relinquish our responsibility to an unknown doctor to use his mind faculties, rather than our own. With as many patients as they see these days, as little time as they have to research natural or alternative avenues, as “under the gun” as they are with the threat of lawsuits, do you think the doctor has a greater interest or more at stake in your health and life than you do?

My father struggled with stomach cancer and trusted the doctors more than himself, or me – thereby relinquishing responsibility to anyone with a medical degree. After four surgeries over a two year period, cutting out half his organs, they gave up. Then, and only then did he finally start taking a natural supplement I had found that kept him cancer free for 3 years (Immunocal - a natural whey protein isolate with clinical proof and patents that help cancer, cancer treatments, diseases, anti-aging etc. - it optimizes the immune system). Abruptly he stopped taking this miracle product. His rational? The doctors refused to make time to read about it despite holding him up as a lauded “miracle patient” and in spite of all their false prognoses, methods or understanding. My dad was tired of fighting…

A couple years after diligent exercise, healthy eating and fervently studying herbs and every other area of natural alternatives I could wrap my mind around, I did become pregnant and had a wonderfully healthy child. The benefits from learning about metaphysics, the foundation of Louise Hay’s book, were already abundant. Being able to recognize my subconscious thoughts allowed me to enjoy an effortless pregnancy - even without morning sickness! When the “father” of my child beat me up in an attempt to cause another miscarriage, I was strong and fully aware of how my own fears helped manifest my circumstances.

No longer a powerless victim, I knew I still had much work to do before being able to trust. Now as a mom, feeding a newborn every hour 1/2, taking care of the house/chores, and being a dad with a job’s responsibilities and paying all the bills, stress was becoming a very real threat to the health I had so adamantly achieved. It seemed dealing with my trust issues would just have to wait until my daughter was about 20. I also gained 75 pounds to protect my in utero baby – just in case the bum returned to have a second shot at keeping his free meal ticket to himself.

I explain all this not with bitterness, nor at all for pity of any kind. I explain it so you might look honestly at your own perhaps less than ideal circumstances and how your past may have contributed to illness. Our present situation starts long before the manifestation of any dis-ease. Even thoughts and beliefs adopted subconsciously as children can play a major role in how we run our lives. I felt guilty for being alive whenever my mother would say how dissatisfied she was but too scared to leave. Deep down, I wanted to offer a child that which I had longed to receive myself – unconditional love without an abusive mate degrading my less than perfect habits. I became a classic over-achiever as a child – striving to accomplish something, anything for recognition and to feel worthy. As an over-achiever, I attracted a guy who felt more comfortable taking advantage than contributing responsibly etc.

I found two terrific metaphors written over a quarter of a century ago by T.D. Willhite. I will post them as images on the side. The first explains why discovering the power of our subconscious mind, and becoming aware of our thoughts are essential. The second how the laws we hear or read about so much lately as “Secret”(s) concerning the law of attraction, or healing our bodies through metaphysics can be directly affected by the degree to which we are open to them and how they can be used to their fullest advantage – if we decide to do so. (See sidebar)

You can also more easily understand how depleted, stressed, and devastated I was within a year of my daughter’s birth. Love and the joy of motherhood pretty much kept me alive.

Exupery: “… there are secret little quiverings that foretell your real storm. No rolling, no pitching. No swing to speak of… But you have felt a warning drum on the wings of your plane, little intermittent rappings scarecly audible and infinitely brief, little cracklings from time to time as if there were traces of gunpowder in the air.” *

I started getting dizzy spells and disregarded them thinking merely that sleep deprivation was beginning to take its toll. I did stop breast feeding - of course her clamping down to lock my boob while teething hurried that decisive action! Fatigue became a constant companion. My solution was to cut back even further on my hours at the gallery, initiating more work from home instead. When my appetite disappeared altogether, I counted it as a blessing to lose the added weight. I put off going to a doctor until by the time I did, the diagnosis was much worse than it should have been.

When the first doctor said I was so horribly ill I needed to make out a will because the Lupus had attacked my liver, I refused to believe him. I wanted a second and third opinion immediately!

“And then everything round me blew up…”*

In that state of denial, I went to complain to one of my tenants (yes, staying out of ‘victim’ can be challenging and a lifelong process). Instead of a shoulder to cry on, she informed me that she too had Lupus. She had had 14 operations because of it – three on her brain!

“…the plain truth about what was happening to me – I find that I felt weighed down; I felt like a porter carrying a slippery load, grabbing one object in a jerky movement that sent another slithering down, so that, overcome by exasperation, the porter is tempted to let the whole load drop… It seemed hopeless… I had not moved forward…”*

How would I even afford hospitalization as an only parent? In addition, where would my daughter go if I was laid up or worse, died? To my mother who had worsened and was almost permanently committed? To my father who was remarried to a much younger woman who had no desire to have children? To my brother who was already struggling himself in a second marriage with a second child outside of that?

“I did not want to be caught off balance. But it was too late… One has a pair of hands and they obey. How are one’s orders transmitted to one’s hands? I had made a discovery that horrified me: my hands were numb. My hands were dead. They sent me no message. Probably they had been numb a long time and I had not noticed it. The pity was that I had noticed it, had raised the question. That was serious…How can one tell the difference between the sight of a hand opening and the decision to open that hand, when there is no longer an exchange of sensations between the hand and the brain? How can one tell the difference between an image and an act of the will?”*

And still, Exupery's crisis parallels being in a state of "dis-ease". Instead of only our hands seeming unresponsive, our whole body is. How can we reconnect to consciously control the thoughts that are normally simply automatic when the automation messes up? (see auto programs in "You Are Perfect")

These automatic responses are our own, and controlled by the thoughts in our subconscious mind. The way to change them is through repetition and emotional involvement - preferrably both - just as how we adopted them to begin with. Before being able to change them, we must be aware of them...

There comes a point in all our lives when a crash is inevitable - our bottom. Whether it is just before we attempt to overcome addictions, disease or the false beliefs we have held onto so stubbornly that are not working for us. When we crash, we'll be called upon to use the full extent of our rational mind as everything around us blows up. As a pilot, Exupery lived to retell the story of battling a cyclone by learning to pilot in advance and practicing – being able to think rationally if a cyclone came upon him. A scuba diver also learns in advance - how to sensibly deal with the very real “possibility” of her tank running out of air.

Staying out of the “reaction of stress” (95% of all illness is stress related! See STRESS EFFECTS and Immediate Relief! & Quantum Leaps for FREEDOM FROM STRESS AND DISEASE in YOUR DNA! ) and learning anything in the moment of crisis is tough. This was Branden’s warning above concerning valuing life and being compelled to think and act when in a critical mode. Opening your mind now, doing the work to learn and change now will save you as it did me - before allowing your bottom to gel into an inescapable quicksand.

“Minds are like parachutes, they only work when they’re open”

After the third doctor confirmed my life threatening diagnosis, I listened as they apologized for their lack of understanding what Lupus was (as is still the case today over 2 decades later). I listened to their recommendations of three, "maybe" helpful drugs. Of course, there were no guarantees since they knew little about the disease. They were however, quite sure of the proposed drugs’ side effects. Nausea, vomiting, potential blindness – I will not continue this list - you know and we can all hear the long list for every drug advertised today. Each manmade drug has at least 4-14 side effects. When we consider the detrimental effects of any of them, and especially of combinations that haven’t been studied, we begin to logically realize our bodies have a better chance of fighting the disease itself than the disease AND the drugs. I was actually flabbergasted that the doctors expected me to voluntarily ingest these hellacious, unnatural drugs!

IN the middle of this catastrophic cyclone, I decided to attend group meetings organized by Bernie Seagull – another believer in metaphysics. One man I met there had been the first diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. Doctors also knew little about that disease at the time. They recommended surgery for him and proceeded to cut out half of each of his organs (to this day I wonder how that could solve anything but I am not a doctor – thank God. I once had an 8 hour discussion with a very well known, syndicated doctor to find out how such an intelligent man couldn’t understand the logic of metaphysics – around since Aristotle. His profound conclusion after that grueling discourse was, "Most who seek a doctor’s advice do not want to accept responsibility. They want a quick fix with the added benefit of no work on their part, or to have to change anything in their lives." Is that logical if we're so ill at ease - to a point of it threatening our very existence - in our current situation?).

The doctors had given him little hope of any sort of recovery. Once he decided to do the mental and emotional work, in his case of healing the relationship within him from the one with his father, subsequent x-rays shocked the doctors by revealing he had completely healed – as if he had never even been under the knife to begin with.

If I’d had doubts before then, talking with this man completely blew my doubts out of the water as though my fearful crash landing was instead onto a safe, cushiony cloud. I knew the thoughts that had created the Lupus and I knew how I had to change my life to create different circumstances and heal. Five weeks later, all three doctors said they must have misdiagnosed and had no idea how my liver had healed itself.

I could continue, explaining the metaphysical causations of Lupus and the repetitive affirmations required to heal it. In addition, what my circumstances were that needed changing to make it easy for you to see. However, just as it's very rare to reach that necessary wake up call - our bottom, with an enabler in our lives - without a decision on your part to learn and do the work for your own self-awareness and realizations, you will not benefit by my sharing all this.

To get the most out of our life lessons, we first must decide that's what we want to do - then go to work - change and make them stick.

It is a process, and do not believe the “incurable” bull. Incurable only means that the doctor can do nothing more. If you’re too busy to save your life by making the necessary changes, why expect he/she to want to do so more than you? It would also take a doctor much longer to figure out what you’d heard, how you’ve lived, what your belief system is etc.

Much of what I learned about the misconceptions I adopted as a child were learned through Gestalt Therapy. Later in life, the simpler and effective tools of kineseology through One Brain facilitating were instrumental in actually breaking through emotional blocks. Dr. Harriet Lerner’s books are invaluable to understand relationships and Marianne Williamson for “worthiness”. Most of my hubs are written to help shift paradigms. Unless otherwise noted, the books and/or tools recommended have added tremendous value on my journey.

Whether you've been diagnosed with Lupus or another disease, there are many ways other than drugs that can help. In the 1997 movie with Meryl Streep, "...First Do No Harm", she shows how drugs were killing her son, afflicted with Epilepsy. She made the decision to study and find an alternative which, in their case, was through the Ketogenic diet. 1/3 of all children afflicted and who switched to this healthy alternative have lived normal, productive lives with no seizures thereafter. When it comes right down to it, everything is easily researched these days - and that is the blessing of utilizing our minds.

It would be so wonderful to simply read a book and *poof* have the wisdom incorporated into our lives wouldn’t it? Just as it would be to have one of those epiphanies in life after experiencing a “life lesson” and without doing anything else, our lives would be dramatically improved. Nevertheless, it does not work that way. (see hub on benefit of delayed manifestation: Manifesting: The Secret of My Manifestations, Getting Faster Results)

Change, like love, is a conscious decision. Our goals require learning how to get from where we are, to where we’ve set our compass and destination. We need to design a plan, immerse ourselves in the feelings as if already accomplished (repetitiously affirming our desired state/goal). Then we must trust our subconscious minds to ask for the proper tools, circumstances, people and information - letting the “Superconscious” manifest. Providence will move mountains.(see "Why Not Your Dreams?")

“I am bigger than anything that can happen to me. All these things, sorrow, misfortune, and suffering, are outside my door. I am in the house and I have the key.” – Charles Fletcher Lummis

“There is nothing dramatic in the world, nothing pathetic, except in human relations. The day after I landed I might get emotional, might dress up my adventure by imagining that I who was alive and walking on earth was living through the hell of a cyclone. But that would be cheating, for the man who fought tooth and nail against that cyclone had nothing in common with the fortunate man alive the next day...” *

And that my dear friend beautifully expresses how I feel now: the person who had Lupus, is not the fortunate woman alive today. Although often tempted to keep my mouth shut and stop learning, growing, caring and sharing, I promised myself I would not go down that dead end path ever again. Believe it when I let you in on the fact that despite the work seeming potentially tough, it is freeing beyond anything you can presently imagine! To rid oneself of crippling negative thoughts is to feel the joy and freedom of taking flight for the first time – in a calm, unthreatening, beautiful blue sky…

Relax, don't toss hope and your future away - peace and health await you.

May the blessings be...

* Antoine de St. Exupery "The Elements"