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Looking at the causes of illness, not just the symptoms.
The Causes of diseases and physical and mental illness, as best we can figure it out, from Brother Mandus, Louise Hay and Arthur Guirdham.
Brother Mandus was saying that most illness fundamentally resides in the mind.
“A lady was healed of a prolapse of the womb caused by a miscarriage after three months pregnancy. This couple had no children. The mother longed for a child but was fearful about bearing it. This was the third false birth, and the first intensified her fears and frustration to such an extent that she was convinced she could not successfully bring forth a baby in the normal way. In turn the second and third failures resulted.
The intense emotional-fear conflict in the mind exactly expresses its equivalent in the abandonment of the pregnancy and, in the third instance, produced physical distortion in a prolapse.
The healing took place by allowing God to take complete control and accepting His elimination of every false concept.
We all know how prevalent is the painful and crippling condition of arthritis. And of all complaints it is so clearly expressive of the restricting tensions of fear, worry, resentment, grief, bitterness, or escape from the responsibilities of life. It is also one of the easiest of ills to disperse when full cooperation is given in the cultivation of right thinking and prayer. I am thinking of the lady who was suddenly released from the crippling grip of this malady in the Sanctuary. As her mind leapt in eager response to Divine Love, her spine, arms, hands and legs gladly accepted the same health and harmony.
She told me a sad story. A cultured lady well traveled; yet her life was a trail of frustrations. Her childhood had been very unhappy, fearful of her father, haunted down the years by troubles and insecurity even when things were going well. When war came she was in France and the tide of German invasion flowed over her.
She got into trouble with the occupying authorities and spent some time in a concentration camp. Her conflicts and fears became concentrated into an intense bitterness, bitterness, resentment and hatred towards everyone exercising authority in the prison, and very soon the venom in her mind, the fear, perhaps terror, gripped her body in the same bondage. The mental pains, torments and bitterness had to manifest outwardly also.
We can have nothing but compassion for people caught in such traps, especially when largely caused by the inhumanity of others. So many troubles are not the fault of the individual who suffers, and the reaction of the victim to circumstances is often instinctive and without any understanding of the destructive power being liberated into the self. We can only check this wastage by realizing the power of thought and taking preventive action. When we know the truth we cease to think negatively just as surely as we guard against sitting on a fire, drinking poison or breaking the laws of the country in which we reside.
I met another lady who was bound in mind and body by these chains. In this case the mental conflicts, fears, resentments and frustrations were all bubbling and frothing in the conscious mind. Some of the resentments were fierce and strong, and particularly set against a vicious father in years gone past. The astonishing truth that gripped my mind when I met her was that the entire condition, from the widely surging and strongly emotional thought stream to the arthritis-locked joints, was ready to evaporate like snow on a summer’s day. Her conflicts and fears, including a rotted fear of men, a longing to escape from the responsibility of facing up to life, put her out of action physically. Yet, potentially, there was a wonderful strength of character, a spiritual power and capacity, just waiting to be unleashed into positive, constructive living. And as the light of understanding and Divine Love broke through, the mind began to claim its freedom and the crippled joints ‘sang’ the same song.
Whenever we try to run away from life, from our responsibilities, even when done ‘unconsciously, we are heading for trouble.
There is the example of the baby Timothy, gripped with pain, unable to take his milk, refusing to put on weight. The child was perfectly all right in himself, but was locked in the grip of over-anxious, fearful, mother love. When this lady, a really wonderful soul, wrote to me, God showed me exactly what was the trouble. I replied and fortunately she was able to release the baby, and herself, to the Great Father in perfect trust that all was now well. The child’s pains and troubles ceased from the day intercession, or prayer, began.
I have observed with precision, and sorrow, that so many children suffer through parental fears. Asthma, bronchitis, fevers, throat and nasal disorders, stomach troubles, sickness, nerve tension and almost any ill can be so quickly and easily caused by the terrific impact of a parent’s intense love, loaded with fear for the child’s safety. Thoughts are living things and children are so sensitive to the immediate environment and the thoughts of all with whom they come into contact. Guard these precious ones and let your love enfold them under the protection of God. Children quickly respond to the thoughts of those who love them. Eliminate fear; quarrelling between parents, anger [one of the seven capital or deadly sins – there’s no excuse for ‘road rage’ either, it includes the other sins of impatience and intolerance. R.R.] resentments and all conflicts of negative thought, and through the infinitely more powerful God thoughts, these children heal quicker than they become ill.
I should emphasize that we cannot always trace the mental cause of any given ill. There must be a cause in the inner realm of the mind somewhere; it might even be a cause originating in the mind of one of our forebears.
Neither can we say that all cancers, for instance, originate through hatred, resentment and bitterness only, for the mind reflects an equivalent according to the individual thought pattern. Mental causes are often a complicated pattern of fears, frustrations, emotions, resentments and irritations. It is enough to recognize clearly that negative thought of any kind will inevitably thrust forth trouble in some form or other into the body and jar the life experience as expressed in work, business or play. Quite apart from the inevitable physical distortions resulting from every kind of negative thought, the real suffering is in the mind. People in the grip of worry, resentments, bitterness, selfishness, grief and conflicts are unhappy and often become overwhelmed by constantly recurring difficulties, which appear to be greater than their capacity to overcome. Such mental states naturally reflect in personality and character. And as we can only know and express ourselves through our minds, the quality of our thoughts determines the degree of happiness, satisfaction and success in life.
It would be bad enough if these power-laden distorted thoughts were confined to our own being. But they blaze out, like living devils, into our environment and distort that also. They grip the minds of our loved ones, make our friends turn away from us, create negative reactions to us in the minds of our employers, business associates and others with whom we must share experiences in work or play. And we become forced into further difficulties and failures, all self-created, usually unconsciously by our own power of thought negatively expressed.”
Reviewed from the book “Healing in His Light” by Brother Mandus, one of ten books of his published by www.world-healing-crusade.org.uk
Louise L. Hay has the same story to tell (“Heal Your Body,” 1982 and “You Can Heal Your Life” 1984, Hay House. Santa Monica, C.A.) She says: “If we are willing to do the mental work, almost anything can be healed” and “mental patterns create diseases in the body.” Her journey to ill health and back again to fitness started after her parents divorced when she was 18 months old. Then came the terror of her being boarded out whiled her mother worked, then living through the depression years of the 1930s, experience of rape and other physical abuse, running away from home, teenage pregnancy, low self esteem, traveling the world as a fashion model, marriage and divorce and finally being diagnosed as having “incurable,” terminal cancer.
She decided not to have surgery, but went to a therapist to clear the howling rage inside her, and took responsibility for her own healing, and six months after her fatal diagnosis she was tested again and found to be absolutely cancer free.
Her books helped publicize the mental aspect of the causes of disease, and although each person has his or her own disposition, attitude and history, so that it is impossible to generalize about the diagnosis of specific causes, it is possible to show the quality and tendency of thought that can create the symptom of a specific disease. For example, arthritis has a probable cause in feeling unloved and criticized, hence causing resentment. The antidote is love of self and others. The antidote for cancer is joy, love of self and others and forgiveness. The thought behind cancer is deep hurt, longstanding resentment, deep secrets and grief eating away at the self, and the carrying of hatreds or just giving up on life (“what’s the use?”) - a form of suicide. Ingesting toxic substances, exposure to too much sunlight or radiation, and smoking, chewing or sniffing tobacco (as snuff) are physical hazards which can cause cancer, but there may be hidden reasons for a person to take these risks. Nobody, I am sure, WANTED to die at Bhopal, or after the Chernobyl disaster, but little by little the human race is learning not to “play with fire,” and these tragedies, and events in Rwanda or Darfur, for example, are meant to wake us up to the realities around the world, awaken our conscience and make us focus more widely than just on our daily living, work, sports and entertainment. We are aware now that soldiers are raping and murdering women and children in Africa, destroying their villages, and many people knew that half a million machetes were purchased by politicians from a foreign source, before the Rwanda massacre. That was planned. The manufacturers and traders were “in on it”, just as were the builders of the concentration camps and gas chambers in Germany and elsewhere seventy years ago. What we see and know from our TV screens and the Internet is not just entertainment. It is life, and we need to awaken our ethical and spiritual values and act responsibly if we are not to become sick as a species. God will help us if we ask for help, but we must also take personal responsibility the best we can.
There are prophesies from spirit guides that an epidemic many times worse than AIDS will soon be upon us, since we have been mistreating and abusing the animal kingdom for so long. Knowledge, compassion and understanding come to us from spirit through our minds. If we open our minds and hearts, and change our attitudes, we will find a cure.
Arthur Guirdham the psychiatrist brings three other factors into this perspective of the mental causes of disease, and of mental illness itself. They help explain why bad things happen to good people, and to innocent children. These factors are tendencies and influences from other lives, the influence of obsessive or possessive spirits, and the influence of evil in a person or place which can cause an instantaneous and sometimes long-lasting depression, for which there is no ‘apparent’ cause. I will quote from his article on this topic and generally from his books in a future post in this series, since these factors are not often recognized or discussed, but need to be.
I have seen all the influences discussed in this article in the lives of many of those I have taught and worked with, and I will mention a few of these cases in the next article, together with more from Brother Mandus and some spirit guides. Richard R.
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