Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 33/46

Life Medicine and ‘Spiritual Healing’
– The Man Who Didn’t Want to See

No form of medicine can guarantee a ‘cure’ for any illness – not least one whose basic principle is that ‘the illness is the cure’. The types of truly effective self-healing that Life Doctoring can aid in therefore also require a readiness on the part of the individual patient to alter deep-seated and fundamental beliefs about the nature of medicine, health, illness and healing – and to concentrate primarily on attaining insights into the meaning of their illness rather than seeking to get rid of it through either conventional or alternative forms of medical treatment. This readiness to alter basic beliefs and interest in understanding both themselves and their illness more deeply may not always be present in the patient. If they also lack experience of any form of inter-personal counselling or therapy – or even have a negative view of it – such a readiness and interest may also be difficult to cultivate. Nevertheless, the importance of the type of insight into the meaning of an individual’s illness that Life Medicine offers can even be exemplified by precisely this kind of unready patient, unwilling to see or change their fixed beliefs.

Case Example 4

The patient had, since 2003, been suffering from progressively worsening vision due to a retinal detachment in both eyes. Still being able to read, though only with a magnifier and book rest and more slowly and not as easily as someone with healthy eyes, Life Doctoring was conducted on a correspondence basis.

The Life Doctor was first contacted by the patient by e-mail for three reasons. Firstly, because the patient had exhausted all options offered by conventional medicine, secondly, because out of despair the patient had sought out a spiritual healer and tried alternative methods of healing (one of which promised cellular regeneration of the retina) and, thirdly, because the patient saw in the Life Doctor someone who, as a practitioner of a new form of yoga, could help him as a spiritual teacher and healer on his spiritual ‘quest’. This was a quest not just for ‘enlightenment’ but also to develop superhuman yogic powers or siddhis – including not only powers of levitation but also and above all the power to heal his eyes himself.

Below I cite two of his own descriptions of his sight disorder and its relation to both the ‘spiritual quest’ it triggered and his notion of ‘spiritual healing ’.

“Since 2003 I am on the spiritual path due to severe vision-problems (deterioration and detachment of retinas), which urged me to give up my career. I studied hundreds of spiritual books, I am initiated into Kriya-Yoga in the line of Paramahamsa Yogananda and Roy Eugene Davis; I follow now a Taoist Buddhist path (Cosmic Freedom Qigong) to heal my eyes (trips to a healer in Brazil, John of God, helped me to avoid becoming totally blind. Now in one eye the retina is partially detached, with one eye I can see 30 %.”

“No doctor can help me anymore. I already had 13 surgeries (both eyes, I think 10 in the left, 3 in the right eye). In both eyes the vitreous body has been removed, silicone has been filled into the eyeball (to re-attach the retina) and has then been removed again. In the left eye the procedure has been repeated without any success. In both eyes I have artificial lenses, because the operations had damaged the natural lens. There is no effective treatment with conventional medicine any more, it is over since 2003. I really did everything what was possible; during one of the operations there was a problem with local anaesthetics and I felt every stitch of a needle in my left eye. I got some treatments with eye-laser, the first of which was so painful that my whole body was wet with sweat after treatment. I was in hell. Only my trips to Brazil to “John of God” had helped me a bit – my eye doctor (an internationally well-known expert) was astonished that I had not become totally blind in both eyes. She even told me to go to Brazil again! In 2003 I had already purchased a gun to commit suicide, but after my first trip to Brazil (April 2004) my condition improved and again I hoped for a healing. In Brazil I was very brave: John of God claims to be a medium for high Beings (King Salomon, Ignatius from Loyola …) who accomplishes spiritual operations through his body and I trusted him. I got a knife directly into the edge of my eyeball, hoping that his claims were true and they were. I had nothing to lose. There is no apparent other illness in my physical body, no diabetes, nothing. With healthy eyes I would be in a very, very good condition, apart from now being too fat out of frustration. This was … the reason for the beginning of my spiritual quest. In my case extraordinary spiritual power is necessary for my healing. New retina cells must be produced and the retina in the left eye must be re-attached… Currently I try again ‘cellevelhealing’. They had amazing results. I already got 3 treatments, two more are scheduled, [but] till now no result, let us see.”

The last sentence of this letter, underlined, already points to the Life-Medical ‘diagnosis’ that was arrived over seven months of correspondence with the patient. For though it begins with a claim that the healing method referred to by the patient had “amazing results”, it concludes with a totally contradictory admission that “till now no result”. The patient then adds “let us see” – but seems oddly blind to the contradiction, as if unwilling to face up to the fact or see that the method had not had the “amazing results” he wanted for himself.

I have italicised the word ‘see’ both because of its relation to the patient’s sight (which has since deteriorated by a further 10% in one eye) and also because of countless similar examples of statements made by the patient in the course of his correspondence with the Life Doctor – in all of which he appeared not to have understood or ‘seen’ what the Life Doctor had written to him – giving rise to the conclusion that he did not actually want to see. I should stress that the patient did not initially know about Life Doctoring or write to the Life Doctor as a therapist but rather as a spiritual teacher and yogin – someone who the patient believed could either heal him instantly or help him to develop extraordinary yogic powers with which to miraculously heal himself.

As a result, most of the patient’s initial correspondence was very narrowly focussed on questions relating to detailed terminological and ‘technical’ aspects of yogic practice. Here again I emphasise the term narrowly focused – with its optical and visual connotations. Indeed, on many occasions the Life Doctor deliberately opted for visual metaphors in his correspondence with the patient in order to emphasise their significance for his sight problems and even pointing out to him that he had done so – by referring for example to blindspots in his thinking. Over the course of the correspondence however, what became ever more clear was the patient’s fundamental unwillingness to see yoga and meditation as a method of attaining profound insight into himself and into his own medical condition – rather than as offering a mere method or set of theories and techniques for attaining miraculous powers of self-healing.

Below are just a few examples of language used by the patient in his emails which show instead how fixated his spiritual ‘vision’ was on transcending his body and on using spiritual powers and his ‘third eye’ to instantaneously and miraculously “burn away” his condition rather than gain any insight into it – let alone that of any other human beings:

“It must be possible to bring divine perfection to the physical plane.”

“It must be possible to heal instantaneously by yogic powers.”

“I clearly refer to what is called ‘a miracle’ by ordinary human beings.”

“I want to be physically strong and healthy like a ferocious tiger, a mental genius and a spiritual giant with remarkable powers.”

On the other hand, he admits that “it was always a struggle for me to meditate” and that “to identify with another human being is for me quite terrifying … my own weaknesses are enough.”

Though right from the start of correspondence with the patient, it was recommended that he read materials on Life Doctoring, and ask himself the sorts of question a Life Doctor would do, he did not initially do so. And even when the basic principles of Life Medicine were shared with him through correspondence, the patient – like many in search of spiritual ‘healing’ – had great difficulty in truly ‘seeing’, let alone heeding the basic idea that a specific illness might hold a specific meaning for the individual, that this meaning might itself be something worthy of meditating upon – and that in this way his illness might itself have a spiritual message for him and come to serve as his principal spiritual teacher and healer.

Indeed it seemed at times that this particular patient’s ‘reading’ of the Life Doctor’s letters was highly selective – as if he often did not even optically register those parts of them dealing with the nature and meaning of illness – let alone take any interest in the suggestion that a particular illness is always chosen by the individual for a well-intentioned reason and that its history must be viewed in the larger context of the patient’s life story, life world and relationships.

On the contrary, it became ever more clear that this patient’s vision of attaining healing powers over his illness and the very sight problems he sought to heal were both in fact symptoms – symptoms made particularly visible through his written correspondence – in which he continued to show little understanding or interest in any form of ‘enlightenment’ based on illuminating and meditative in-sight. And even without any experience of it he adopted a stereotypical negative viewpoint that any form of insight-based counselling was merely ‘dredging the mud’.

Given that this was a patient, who, despite his serious sight problems simply ‘did not want to see’ the point of Life Doctoring, the Life Doctor felt that all he could do was to share with the patient precisely this Life-Medical insight – which itself had all to do with the patient’s lacking interest in and capacity for deep ‘in-sight’ into himself and others.

Below I cite from two emails that constituted part of the climax of the Life Doctor’s attempt to get the patient to ‘see’ the meaning of Life Medicine and the potential benefits of Life Doctoring, albeit taking care to do so in a way that respected the patient’s relationship to him as ‘spiritual teacher’:

“All that you write confirms to me there may indeed be an important role that Life Doctoring can play in your life – though in a way very different from seeking a spiritual or biological ‘miracle’ cure of any sort. For I see your spiritual search for a miracle cure as more of a hindrance than a help.

The reason is that every healer you have been too, and every form of healing you have tried in order to find a cure for your eye condition is essentially a denial that it has any meaning. It seems that for you, as well as for the doctors and healers you have gone to, the only ‘meaning’ of your illness and what it can teach you seems to lie in finding a way to get rid of it.

But think of it this way: if your illness wants to be your most intimate and important spiritual teacher but all you want to learn from it is how to annihilate that illness – then you are looking for ways to annihilate your own teacher – in fact trying to kill it!

If and when you are ready to accept that this might be the most basic and important in-sight I can give you, then we can begin to consider ways and means in which, with my help – and through the reading and writing you are still (miraculously!) able to do – Life Medicine and Life Doctoring might bring you to a different and to a healing understanding of what your illness might be seeking to teach you.

From the point of view of Life Medicine ‘the illness is the cure’. Life Doctoring is about finding out what the illness is attempting to cure in the patient!!!”

A short response to this message was then received from the patient in which he stated:

“… I really do not know what it is that I do not want to see. I will meditate that.”

Since the Life Doctor’s own email had already indicated to the patient what it was he did not want to see, a second e-mail was sent under the subject header ‘What I see you as not seeing…’ – once again making this as explicit as possible in the hope that this time the patient would ‘see it’.

Your questions and vision have always been very narrowly focussed on ‘techniques’ of meditation. Throughout our correspondence however, I have tried to encourage an insight-based approach to your questions rather than a purely detached and technique-based one. I believe cultivating such an insight-based approach to life is also of central importance in relation to your eye problems.

You write that you “do not know what it is that I do not want to see”.

So how about looking inside??!! And also listening inside and feeling inside.

That way you can come to your own answers – your own in-sights.

That is why I believe it terribly important that you learn to understand ‘meditation’ in a new way – not just as a set of techniques but as taking time to look inside yourself – for insights that can arise from feeling awareness.

Unless you learn to value deep personal and philosophical in-sights much more than you value yogic techniques and powers, and unless you learn to look inside yourself to feel for and find such insights, then I fear your eyes will just force you to do so.

For through increasing loss of ‘out-sight’ or even blindness you may eventually be unable to do anything but ‘look inside’ and also listen more deeply to yourself and others.

Put simply, through the decrease in your vision I believe your eyes themselves are telling you what you don’t see – namely that despite all your knowledge and will power, without valuing and cultivating feeling in-sight, but instead continuing to narrow your thinking and spiritual vision either to detached intellectual and theoretical knowledge or to mastering yogic powers and techniques to exercise in a detached way over your body, then your inner self or Atman will continue to narrow the vision of one or both of your bodily eyes through retinal detachment and eventually cut off your ‘out-sight’ completely. In other words, your illness – as your spiritual teacher – is saying that if you refuse to see inside you will lose your outer sight. It is therefore also urging you to put all your efforts into seeing the difference – perhaps for the first time in your life – between knowledge and wisdom, between your detached intellect and theoretical knowledge and deep feeling insight into yourself – and between manipulative techniques on the one hand and basic inner truths on the other. Using theoretical knowledge to attain power over your body from a detached ego or I are no substitute for your body’s own inner knowing and powers of healing – and certainly no remedy for a detached retina in your eye – a clear symbol of your own detachment from yourself and others.

The only substantive response to the message of these letters – and to an accompanying request for them to be incorporated into a case example in this book – was puzzlement that the author should wish to present a case study in which the patient had not been healed. This of course, simply re-affirmed the patient’s misunderstanding of Life Medicine and Life Doctoring as an approach to medicine whose validity could only be proven by its effectiveness in healing the patient’s illness – rather than offering potentially life-transforming and healing understandings of and insights into that illness. As for the idea that an illness might be there to heal and transform the patient – it was, again, simply not seen or registered on the mental retina of this patient – ‘the man who did not want to see’.


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