When one first gets a diagnosis of cancer, they enter a state of shock, for cancer literally means dying for most of us. More people die of heart disease than cancer but cancer has much more fear attached to it, thanks to the plethora of misinformation around. To many, cancer means a death sentence. So if you get shocked by a diagnosis of cancer, it means that you automatically presumed that you were going to die. Now we are all going to die but it is not death that actually scares us so much, it is the premature death that we fear, dying before our time.
So when we are shocked by a cancer diagnosis, we unconsciously feel we are going to die now! For when we are in a state of shock, we are in a hypnotic trance, that is, our conscious mind has temporally been disengaged. An interesting phenomena about trance or time spent in the unconscious, is that there is no concept of time. Time doesn’t exist in the unconscious mind, there is only this present moment now. Whatever is happening, is happening now, so when you heard the doctor say ‘You have cancer’ , you heard yourself say ‘I am going to die’ or something similar to make sense of the doctors words.
‘I am going to die’ triggers the shock and the fight/flight response, for your unconscious mind presumes there is an imminent threat of dying now. The focus is on dying. The conscious mind slowly comes to and you may ask the doctor ‘What did you say’ and he’ll repeat, that you have got cancer, trying to convince you and you will repeat ‘I’ve got cancer’ trying to let it sink in. You will probably ask him/her ‘How long have I got to live?’ Which demonstrates that you are certain, that you have a premature death looming and by now you have convinced yourself that you are going to die.
What comes next? Simply put: you have a problem. The problem is ‘I am going to die (shortly, prematurely). You now attempt to solve the problem. The question is how and here are two options.
· Accept the death sentence and the length of time that you presumably have to live.
· Reject the death sentence.
There is no right or wrong choice, for it is up to you, what you choose. Let’s look at some consequences of the choices.
If you accept the death sentence, then you are accepting the amount of time that presumably you think or have been told that you have left. This means that you are dying and progressing towards death. With this limited time, what do you want to do with it? As time is short, why not make the most of it? Thoroughly enjoy the time that you have left and fully appreciate life and living. Celebrate life, celebrate your time of living. This would be the time to be selfish (this is a loaded word and many people have a problem with being selfish. Selfish means respecting that you are you and when you do this, then you will respect other people too. Selfish does not mean being disrespectful to others or abusing others, it means that only you are you and only you can do things for you.) and realise that you are important and that you matter. It is common for cancer suffers to have low self esteem and feel that they are unimportant and don’t matter but every single person on the planet is vitally important for themself, each person is a totally unique and magnificent human being. I explain in my book ‘Life Patterns the Secret to Emotional Freedom’ how we come to have negative perceptions about our self worth and self esteem. You have a life and an amount of time to spend living it, why waste it?
If you reject the death sentence, this means you are not accepting either the time allotted to you or that you are going to die from cancer (a premature death), to help you here, let’s discuss some finer points.
· To reject the death sentence is great because you are assuming control of your situation. You are stating that you are somebody and therefore an individual who is self determining.
· You are rejecting the death sentence because you want to live, or because you don’t like being told by someone, that you have x amount of time before you die. Either way, you want to live.
· You can reject any notion that you have cancer, completely and totally and you body will respond accordingly, but do you reject the idea completely? You will probably have some difficulty in doing this but it can be done.
· When you are rejecting the death sentence are you fighting the cancer? that is do you see it as a battle to the death, either of the cancer or you. This approach creates resistance and still accepts that you have a deadly disease (your perception). You may look for a cancer cure, which implies the cancer is an enemy. As the cancer cells are your cells and a part of you, you are fighting yourself.
An important point here is, where is you focus, are you trying to avoid death? It is easy and natural to want to avoid death, because you perceive cancer as a death sentence. Avoiding death is our primary instinct, our bodies are well equipped to heal and avoid death but interference can get in the way. And this interference comes from the conscious mind. When we believe, that we have cancer and cancer kills, then we are suppling our bodies with instructions to die. When we fight cancer, then we are proving to ourselves that we have a deadly disease and therefore we are creating resistance and sabotaging our healing. Please read What is Cancer in my book “The 5 Step Cancer Healing Process” the eBook is free.
When our focus is on avoiding death, it is our conscious mind that is focusing and the subject/object of the focus is death, avoiding is not something, so can’t be focused on. Don’t think of an elephant. What did you see? The object in the sentence is ‘elephant’ so that is the only thing you can see, focus or think of. So when we focus or want to avoid death, our conscious mind is sending death signals to the unconscious body, creating stress and making life hard to create.
Realise that your body’s blueprint is always avoiding death and it does this in ways that you can’t fathom, so don’t interfere with this working. You can do your part by celebrating life and living. If you focus on living, then you are sending signals to your body that living is important and that life is important. This increases the health of the body and reduces stress.
So whilst taking the actions on your journey to health always focus on quality of living. The actions you are taking, realise that they are actions to promote health, life and wellness. Banish the idea of fighting an enemy, for you will be continually creating the enemy.
Each and every day begin by celebrating life, acknowledging ‘I am alive and living’ and feel great joy when you do this even if you have to pretend at first. Imagine sending this message to every cell in your body. Yes, every cell!
By Philip Martin
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