The other day I met up with an old friend, who was naturally very anxious about his wife having chemotherapy for her cancer. He described the cancer as an ‘alien force’ that was growing in his wife’s body.
Many of us see cancer in that way, and we’re encouraged to do so by doctors who talk about attacking the invader with chemotherapy and radiation.
But is that a good description of what really is going on? Is that the best way of seeing cancer and, from that, achieving true healing? In other words – where do ‘you’ end and the cancer begin?
I think true healing begins when we see there is no division between ‘me’ and my cancer. There is no alien invader separate from me. Instead, there is a process taking place, and this ‘me’ and cancer are inseparable in that.
We do this in so many ways in our life, not just with cancer. If I have a problem, suddenly there is ‘me’ having the problem, and ‘I’ have to work on it, as though there is a highly moral Grand Commander – current abode: human brain – who tut-tuts at all the errors and mistakes that our emotions, thoughts and feelings are making.
It’s strange that in the moment – in the white heat of anger or jealousy – the Grand Commander is nowhere to be seen. He makes his entrance only after the fact, picking up the pieces, as would a disapproving mother in her teenage daughter’s bedroom.
The Grand Commander, the ‘I’, is, of course, an illusion. It is created by the very same process of which it subsequently disapproves. Perhaps it’s a way we cope with problems by distancing ourselves from them.
But while the cycle of I-created-by-the-problem-it-is-trying-to-solve continues, true healing cannot begin. You will not change, you won’t ever be Time-Light.