SEEING POSSIBILITY AND COVID 19!

When I was a kid, 10 or so, my mother, May, taught me something that turned out to be of great import. It rang a bell with me at the time – but only faintly. The concept didn’t hold value for me back then. Eighteen years later, another woman, Dorothea Snook, rang that same bell. Despite what became unmistakable evidence of the efficacy of what Mum and now Dorothea was saying, it still didn’t strike a loud-enough note for me to hear it clearly.

Another 39 years on, a Dr Fred Bisci rang that identical bell again. This time it tolled loud and long – I finally got what Mum, Mrs Snook and Fred were saying. I saw Possibility. My view of the interconnection, the relationship between everything – I mean everything – shifted. That interdependence has become increasingly evident to me over the subsequent years.

What am I talking about? Let me tell the story.

When, as a child, I got a cold, Mum would say: ‘Son, you are going through a healing crisis.’

She explained that the body builds up toxins from the often less-than-health-giving food we eat, the less-than-healthy drinks we consume, even the chemicalised water we drink. She pointed out that the polluted air we breathe – and the worry, anxiety and stressful thinking we experience – all impact on our health. Elements of all these inputs and our troublesome states of mind accumulate as toxic waste in the tissue of our body.

Mum claimed that sneezing, coughing, a runny nose, high temperature, diarrhoea, etc. are all the body’s way of cleansing our system of that toxic waste, which she said was a fundamental cause of illness. She maintained that the ‘innate intelligence’ of our body is, through being in a state of dis-ease, trying to return us to our natural state of health – a state of homeostasis.

This sounded a bit ‘out there’, but it was just one of Mum’s wise ideas that didn’t initially register.

As I grew into adulthood, I didn’t take the care I needed to with the quality or quantity of what I ate and drank, or how I lived, to the degree necessary for good health. I suffered the consequences.

At 28, Mum’s message came to mind when addressing a very problematic condition I’d had since my late teens. This recurring malady manifested each time with intense pain and inflammation in my inner ear and throat. Simultaneously and inexplicably, a carbuncle would appear on my left thigh.

Over the years, this debilitating flare-up got progressively worse and more frequent. Despite ongoing visits to a GP and repeated treatment with antibiotics, the post-treatment respite grew shorter between each new outbreak. Each time, antibiotics cleared it up – or did they?

With this most recent onset, in desperation, I gave up on the mainstream medical approach and looked for an alternative. Mrs Dorothea Snook, a naturopath, was recommended. Mrs Snook echoed what my mother had said some 18 years earlier. She instructed me to go on a freshly squeezed juice fast, claiming that would bring the condition to crisis point. And, once recovered, I should maintain a vegetarian diet: lots of fresh vegetables, some fresh fruit and an assortment of raw nuts and seeds.

Mrs Snook warned me I would get very sick, but to stay with the process no matter what, as my body ‘knew’ how to rid itself of this condition. She said I should not call the doctor no matter how bad I felt. He would prescribe antibiotics, which, yet again, would clear up the symptoms and provide temporary respite but would never address the underlying cause – my poor diet and lifestyle. The suppression of the symptoms provided only the appearance of healing. Mrs Snook added that the problem would continue to get worse over time if not cured.

The result: I experienced what Mrs Snook, like Mum, described as a ‘healing crisis’ – a perfect storm of cleansing the cause of the sickness from my body. Over several days I became sick, very sick. I experienced intense pain in my ears, throat and leg, culminating in a period of high temperature, sweats, delirium and excretions. Then the storm cleared, and the condition healed. It has not returned in 50 years.

This was nothing short of a revelation. I had experienced my body’s ‘innate intelligence’ to heal, given the trust and support by its inhabitant – me. Mum was correct. The body can heal itself, given the right help.

You might be thinking: is John off with the fairies? You might also think, with good reason, I would have learnt my lesson. But no, as time passed, old habits re-surfaced: my diet deteriorated, as did my exercise regime – I slipped into an office-bound sedentary existence. I then hit a particularly difficult period in my life and failed to care for my body in the way I knew how to. Once again, I suffered the consequences.

THE WAKE-UP CALL – A LONG TIME COMING

In 2006 at age 64, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. What I’d learnt from Mum, Mrs Snook, and my own experience had remained merely a good idea. My self-neglect jumped up, grabbed me by the nose and shook me violently – and painfully.

I reached out for help once again. Under the influence of several people in the field of alternative medicine, especially Dr Fred Bisci from New York – Dr John Fielder from Queensland as well as others from mainstream medicine, specifically Dr Adam Nuttall in Perth, and two dedicated individuals committed to the life-supporting impact of organic raw food on our body, John Evans from Healthy Valley in Perth and Ronald Bradley from Hippocrates Health in Queensland, I embraced a 100-per cent raw and 99-per cent organic wholefood diet, engaged in lots of exercise and rest, and practised all-round healthy living. This experiment was the acid test as to whether my body could heal from cancer.

Four years after my diagnosis, my body, although relishing this altered lifestyle, was not reducing the cancer markers: they remained unchanged since first biopsied – which was surprising to the urologist. He expected a deterioration.

Because of my excellent health and steady PSA blood-test results, the urologist – a leader in Australia in robotic surgery, Professor Phillip Stricker AO – advised me to ‘watch, wait and see’ in order to avoid having surgery unless there was no alternative. He suggested I keep doing whatever I was doing, as the cancer was not getting any worse.

Into a fifth year, and with a significant change in my six-monthly PSA results, he took a further biopsy. He now strongly suspected the cancer might have breached the prostate gland and be on the move. He advised me to have surgery to remove it. I did, it was successful, and the post-op analysis proved he was correct. I elected, however, not to have the usual post-op treatments.

Since then, my healthy regime has supported my body’s immune system in keeping me cancer-free – so far. Although my lifestyle revolution didn’t cure my cancer, there were some startling improvements in many other areas of my health. These are worth noting to demonstrate what a ‘healing crisis’ can achieve in the individual.

When first diagnosed with cancer (a chronic condition), I had a long list of other, self-induced lifestyle conditions (acute conditions) – like so many of us. Because of my dramatically changed diet and a series of ‘healing crises’, of varying intensities, during those years between the cancer diagnosis and surgery, I experienced significant shifts and some complete cures in all of my pre-existing acute health conditions. An extract from my healing journal back then (i.e. the following list) outlines these conditions and how my body returned to a state of homeostasis with the support of my new diet and lifestyle:

• Overweight: From 83.7kg (184.1lbs) to 60.7kg (133.5lbs) – a drop of 23kg (50.6lbs).

• High blood pressure: From 135/85 to 110/60, the blood pressure of a healthy 21-year-old.
• Poor thyroid function: TSH down from 27.90 to 3.12 (the healthy range is from 0.40-4.00).
• Long-term diarrhoea: about six months into the raw-food program, after initially getting worse, the diarrhoea stopped. Regular bowel movements returned and remained the norm.
• Perennial skin ailments: after a nasty eczema attack on my shins, coinciding with my dramatic change in diet, all skin ailments, including tinea between my toes and a summer groin rash I’d had since youth, disappeared and didn’t return.
• Cholesterol: reduced from 5.3 to 3.8 (healthy range <5.5).
• LDL cholesterol (the bad stuff): down from 3.8 to 2.6 (healthy range <3.5).
• Coronary risk ratio: From 5.3 to 3.8 (healthy range <5.0).
• Hay fever and itchy eyes: this annual, debilitating condition, suffered since childhood, cleared up.
• Exhaustion: three times a week, I engaged in strenuous outdoor group training – sprinting, endurance running and weights – as well as weekly sessions of Iyengar Yoga. On my ‘days off’, I pursued other gentle and not-so-gentle physical activities: walking, gardening, solo running (6–10 km) and working out in my home gym with yoga exercises and weights.

For me, these improvements were due as much to my transformed mind as to the practical changes I made. In short, I began to see Possibility more clearly. This allowed me to make a quantum shift in how I saw my health and wellbeing, and in what I was willing to do to support that – such as letting go of conventional thinking and giving alternative, natural cures a full-on go in regaining my health.

I feel very grateful because it was that life-threatening wake-up call, and seeing Possibility, that galvanised me into action. Without that, I may have continued my sedentary and less-than-healthy way of living, and may not have been able to enjoy the vigorous life I lead today, approaching 79 years of age.

There is nothing whatsoever special about me. What happened to me can happen to all of us.

THE INDIVIDUAL CAN HEAL. CAN HUMANITY AND THE PLANET HEAL?

Underpinning this essay are three key ideas:

• ‘Thought’ creates, via our brain, our thinking, and is the energetic source of our life.
• The quality of our thinking (our state of mind) creates the quality of how we see life (influenced by Possibility) or see life (influenced by impossibility) and consequently how we experience and live our life.
• Each person’s state of mind contributes their 100% toward creating the world – a world of Possibility or a world of impossibility.

(My book Possibility … a State of Mind explores ‘Thought’ and thinking and how we create our life and our world – i.e. the world.)

Right now, all is far from well with our world. The world is in a state of dis-ease.

The question that keeps rising in my mind is: can there be a collective healing to this global health crisis, as there was in my own? Is the state of the world’s dis-ease acute or chronic? Are some aspects acute and some chronic? Can some be healed, and must some be cut out?

These questions can be re-framed in several ways:

1. Does the same potential that exists within the individual to heal from dis-ease also exist within humanity as a collective to heal from our collective state of dis-ease?
2. When humanity becomes ill – ill, for example, as it is now, with the coronavirus and multiple other physical and psychological illnesses – can we, as a collective, heal?
3. Can we reasonably extrapolate from the individual to the collective? Are we inseparably connected?

Modern medicine and some governments are doing their best to deal with COVID-19 and its impacts on the world. Can we (you and I) avail ourselves of this wake-up call and heal the problems referred to in Part 1 of this essay, representing the dis-ease that exists within the body and psyche of much of humanity? Is it too far-fetched to view this current pandemic as a ‘global healing crisis’ and, as such, an opportunity for the widespread healing of our collective body, psyche and as a consequence, our distressed planet?

Is this the chance to create a new world – a world that expresses kindness, understanding, wisdom and common sense? In such a world, two questions recur:

• Will what I’m doing right now serve the common good?
• Will I let that question guide me in how I live my life going forward?

This pandemic is a human affair – a human crisis and an opportunity for you and me to forge a new way forward. For us, you and I, to become what we truly are: kind, understanding, wise creatures imbued with common sense. Creatures that collectively wake up and stop destroying our home – planet Earth.

We, all of us, contain the innate power to heal our minds, hearts and bodies and, as a direct consequence, our behaviour.

We may well be confronted here and now with a compelling opportunity to do so. It’s merely a matter of answering this question: are we – you and I – willing to see beyond the known and see Possibility, or will we merely continue in our certainty that we know and are right in our beliefs, opinions and judgements and continue on in seeing only impossibility?

The thing about opportunity is: when it knocks, it’s a good idea to let it in.

Warmly… John

The Realm of Possibility Foundation

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