Stories of Sickness
Truthful mind, healthy body; deceitful mind, sick
body
Byron Katie
- What kinds of deceitful thinking and feeling make us sick?
What kinds of illusory stories produce our symptoms? What kinds of mis-imaginations control our feelings and behavior?
Poverty thinking, feeling and stories
Lack thinking, feeling and stories
Stuck thinking, feeling and stories
Separative thinking, feeling and stories
Inadequacy thinking, feeling and stories
Illness thinking, feeling and stories
Self-pressure thinking, feeling and stories
Stressful thinking, feeling and stories
Accident-prone thinking, feeling and stories
I-don’t-belong thinking, feeling and stories
I’m-not-good-enough thinking, feeling and stories
Angry thinking, feeling and stories
Power-trip thinking, feeling and stories
Fear thinking, feeling and stories
Addictive thinking, feeling and stories
Compulsive thinking , feeling and stories
Submissive thinking, feeling and stories
Shyness thinking, feeling and stories
Guilty thinking, feeling and stories
Shameful thinking, feeling and stories
Despairing thinking, feeling and stories
Terror thinking, feeling and stories
Control thinking, feeling and stories
Blame thinking, feeling and stories
Distrust thinking, feeling and stories
Greedy thinking, feeling and stories
So it is evident that most human thinking, feeling and behavior
is at least partly motivated by stories and belief systems that produce symptoms and dysfunction in the body, in
relationships, and in the social and financial structures of
the person’s life. These stories must be recognized and investigated as stories rather than as "realities". All of our
thinking is made up of judgments and interpretations of our experience. Our senses are like filters that report information
to our perception processes, which we interpret to be reality. Our entire perceptual system is a feedback or mirror of
our beliefs. Look at the world and you see yourself. To come into reality, we must examine each and every perception and own
it. Every positive and negative judgment that I hold is about me. Everything that I condone or condemn is about me. If I admire
a beautiful star or belittle a child, it is about me. Whatever words I may use about a political party, about a neighbor,
about the weather, are about me. Insofar as any words or thoughts are self-or-other-disesteeming, they are sickening to my
body. Whatever I love, loves me. Whatever I resist, persists. Whatever I judge, judges me. Finite judgments lead to finite
symptoms. Infinite awareness leads to health and peace. Every experience arises in and returns to the Infinite.
Infinity Medicine
A man consulted me the other day and talked about self-medicating.
Every time he gets stressed, he self-medicates with various
quick fixes, such as alcohol, drugs, stimulating foods, and all kinds of control activities. Like him, we go to the doctor
with the results of stress on our immune system. We project our stressful thinking onto the body and tell ourselves that the
body needs treatment. The poor body is not basically what needs treatment. It is our thinking that needs treatment, but since
we are into self-medicating we think that a different substance will correct our thinking. If alcohlol and food do not correct
our thinking, perhaps some other finite chemical will.
Infinity Medicine operates at the level of cause, at the level
of thinking, at the level of perception. Finite Medicine starts way down the effect chain, hoping that it will back up and
reverse the cause. We try to self-medicate the symptom and it cannot be successfully done. It is like the oil guage on the
car telling you that you are out of oil and you go and buy a new oil guage. It is like when the messenger brings bad news
and is beheaded, whereas if he king listened, he might be able to find a solution. Our thinking can be directly affected through
Infinity Awareness. Infinity Medicine goes to the source of our problem, which is our story itself, and all of the associated
identity assumptions. We do not need to treat the symptom as though it is the cause. We need to treat what produces the symptom,
which is our state of mind. A Course in Miracles states that all illness is mental illness and all therapy is the healing
of the mind. The body always follows the mind, without exception.
A man called me who has been on numerous anti-depressants and
anti-anxiety medications for 16 years. He wants to know if I can prescribe something stronger. He "needs" medications until
he doesn’t, its that simple. We do til we don’t. If all things are god, then we can love all things, even self-medication
and drugs of all kinds, legal and illegal. How can we love all things as god? Because they exist. Resisiting what exists only
makes it persist. Even self-delusion has its purposes and is lovable. If you fight reality, you lose every time. Accept what
is, and that includes change. We all self-medicate. Self-medication works and it doesn’t work. We believe in it until
we don’t. We have symptoms until we realize that they mean. We war with our symptoms until peace comes. Peace is self-realization.
