Choices in Healing

Michael Lerner is the author of “Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Approaches to Cancer” (availble to read online). He's one of our leading thinkers when it comes to integrated cancer treatment. Here's what he would do if he faced a cancer diagnosis, in his own words…

• “I would give careful thought to choosing a mainstream oncologist. I wouldn’t need someone with wonderful empathic skills--I’m fortunate to have other people in my life who provide that. But I would want a doctor who was basically kind, and on top of the medical literature regarding my disease. I would look for a doctor who was willing to take the time to answer my questions, and who supported my commitment to be deeply involved in my treatment decisions, and my commitment to complementary therapies. Finally, I would want a doctor who would stick with me medically and emotionally if recovery were not possible and I faced death.
• I would use mainstream therapies that offered a real chance for recovery, but I would probably not use experimental therapies or therapies with a low probability of success that were highly toxic or compromised my capacity to live and, if it came to that, die as I chose.
• I would use complementary therapies. I would look for a good support group and a psychotherapist experienced in working with people with cancer. I’ve been a vegetarian for many years, but I would look for ways to enhance my nutrition. I would meditate and practice yoga more often, and spend more time in Nature, taking walks in the woods, by the ocean, and in the mountains.
• I would definitely use traditional Chinese medicine, both herbs and acupuncture.
• I would strive for life, for recovery, with every possible tool and resource I could find. But if recovery were not possible, I would also work to face death in a way that deepened my growth and led to some resolution of my life and relationships.
• I would pay a great deal of attention to the inner healing process that I hope a cancer diagnosis would trigger in me. I would give careful thought to the meaning of my life, what I had to let go of, and what I wanted to keep.
• I would spend time with the people I value, and with books, writing, music, and my own vision of God. I would do everything I could do that I didn’t want to leave undone. I would not waste time with old obligations, though I would try to extricate myself from them decently.
• I would try to live my own life my own way. I would try to accept the pain and sorrow inherent in my situation, but I would also look searchingly for the beauty, wisdom, and joy."

Well said Michael!!

TTFN... Rob; in Vancouver

"Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food."

Hippocrates

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Michael Lerner on Healing

On Suffering

Life is “dukkha”! Life is suffering! Herein lies the first noble truth in the Buddhist worldview. To live is to experience some manner of suffering.

Most of the world’s great philosophical and religious traditions attempt to deal with the reality of suffering and the many questions it raises. What causes suffering? How can we make sense of it? How do we overcome it, transcend it, or at least live with grace in the face of it?

“What is the noble truth of suffering? Birth is suffering, aging is suffering and sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering.” Buddha

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Suffering has many faces; physical pain, illness, cancer, aging, and death; the individual or collective experience of violence, oppression, social injustice and inequality; stress and conflict in relationships, grief at the loss of a loved one, and anguish in parenting; unfulfilled dreams and expectations. Take your pick. The experience of some form of suffering in our lives is inescapable, try as we might to avoid it.

Franciscan priest and teacher, Richard Rohr, has said that one of the common denominators in all human suffering is the experience that we are powerless; we have been overwhelmed by circumstances and events beyond our power to control. The ancient psalms of lament often expressed this with words like... “I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold. I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me…”

One of the other thoughts that Richard shares about pain and suffering is… “In many ways, spirituality is about what we do with our pain. And the truth is, if we don't transform it, we will transmit it.” What Richard speaks of, and what we’ve all seen on many occasions, is the unresolved grief and pain of an individual, or of a group, transmitted through acts of anger, hatred, and violence towards others. Simone Weil puts it simply this way... “A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.”

We also see many examples of people who have endured horrible suffering and yet who have found ways to transform their pain and affliction into wisdom and grace. Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor…

“I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.”

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"Breathe in suffering...

...Breathe out compassion."

Rob; in Vancouver

“Although the world is full of suffering,

it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

Helen Keller

The Bowels of Compassion

Compassion is that wonderful human capacity to share deeply with others in their pain and suffering. It is a feeling that emerges in the gut, the bowels, the ancient bodily location of love and pity. Today we tend to identify compassion and love more frequently with the heart. It was not always so.

One Greek word that is translated into compassion in the ancient stories of biblical healing is Splagchnizomai.

splangkh-nid'-zom-ahee to be moved as to one's bowels, hence to be moved with compassion, have compassion (for the bowels were thought to be the seat of love and pity). The New Testament Greek Lexicon

 This root of compassion speaks of a deep "visceral" yearning or moving in the very “bowels of our being” when confronted with the suffering of another. Compassion reminds us of the deep interconnection we have with all life. Compassion transcends all of the superficial divisions we set up to keep ourselves separate and isolated. It unites us in the most diverse and dire of situations.

Our capacity to experience compassion develops more deeply as we become aware of our own vulnerability and suffering. In the words of Sogyal Rinpoche… "when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.”

More than just a gut feeling, compassion motivates us to live and act in ways that alleviate the suffering of others. Even if it just means listening to someone’s story or holding someone in our laps in the midst of great trauma and chaos.

With Love… Rob; in Vancouver

“But it’s hard to explain, Mitch. Now that I am suffering, I feel closer to others who are suffering than I ever did before.”

Tuesdays with Morrie

Originally posted in July 2007

Will to Live

Foundations of Healing #1:  

In “The Mapmakers Wife” , Robert Whitaker tells the story of an 18th century Peruvian woman who makes a remarkable journey from the Andes Mountains down the Amazon River to be reunited with her beloved husband Jean. Isabel Godin left her home in 1770 with a large party which included her brothers, a nephew, and a fair complement of slaves, servants, guides, and mules.

Shortly into the journey things go terribly wrong and she finds herself alone and lost in the jungle of the upper Amazon. Isabel endured over 6 weeks of wandering in the jungle. During this time she watched her brothers and nephew die of starvation and was beset by plagues of ants, mosquitoes, botflies, and other nasty insects. Against all odds Isabel was found, survived, recovered, and completed her journey.

In reflecting on Isabel’s ordeal and remarkable survival Whitaker states that what seems to count most in survival is “an inner psychological strength nurtured by purpose, hope, and spiritual beliefs”. He also points out that Isabel was “experienced in a humble act practiced by nearly all survivors… prayer”. For Isabel the commitment to be reunited with Jean formed a compelling "will to live" which sustained her in the end. 

When it comes to living with cancer, a strong "will to live" will influence a person to become proactive in seeking and evaluating treatment options.  A strong "will to live" will empower a person to become more assertive in dealing with the medical system. And a strong "will to live" will help to push a person through treatment regimes that, while potentially life-saving, can be very life-limiting while in the midst of them (chemo, surgery, radiation, etc.). 

There comes a day when we may "relinquish" our "will to live".    I've personally witnessed this in people as they draw near to death and literally "let go" into a peaceful and grace filled acceptence of the end.   Discerning the time for this "letting go" is one of the most important pieces of soul-work we can do as we face the terminal stages of cancer or other life-threatening conditions.

My own will to live continues to be strong.  I have a wonderful family life that is filled with love, I have a meaningful vocation that continues to be fruitful, I am relatively "young", and I love this life and want to get as much out of it as possible.

A strong "will to live", in and of itself, is obviously not going to get us through everything.  Many people die in possession of the strongest possible "will to live".  What it will provide is purpose for the journey and courage for the work along the way.Carpe Diem... Rob
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“I want my will to live to be strong. I want to get as much time out of this as possible. And so I need to work at that with complete focus and dedication and clarity and concentration, and right effort. And yet, at the same time, be unattached to the results either way. Pain is not punishment, death is not failure, life is not reward.”
Treya Killam Wilber

originally posted June 2007