President Nixon declared war on cancer 40 years ago by signing the National Cancer Act of 1971. The goal is to “eradicate cancer by 2015”. We are far from achieving this goal. Research in and approach to cancer is limited to cut, burn, and poison. Two major aspects are missing: integrating CAM (detoxification, addressing the internal environment with nutrition, lifestyle changes, etc) and spirituality.
Life with cancer is a battle. Either you fight a battle as a hero and attack without a plan, and come out victorious or die, or you carefully prepare yourself for battle by finding out everything you can about your enemy and amass the best army there is.
The first thing is to know your enemy, cancer: he is dark and cold, powerful, defiant, relentless, unpredictable, sneaky, cruel, greedy, merciless, untrustworthy. There is no other disease that one can personify as easily as cancer. Cancer is our shadow. This is what makes cancer a karmic, spiritual illness.
Second, in order to defeat this enemy we need very powerful allies. The cancer industry offers tremendous help: oncologists, surgeons, and radiation oncologists. These are valuable allies to fight cancer physically. We can compare these to foot soldiers. But without orders from their officers these soldiers are too unorganized to win the war. They may win a battle or two. We must seek the help of officers and the commander in chief to win the war.
Spiritually speaking we need to invoke the spiritual hierarchy for help. For Christians Jesus is the ideal antagonist: He has all the opposite attributes of the being of cancer: He is the son of God, He is the redeemer, He forgives, He bestows grace. In esoteric Christianity, He is the Lord of karma. Of course, we want the archangel Raphael, the heavenly physician, on our side as well, and Mary, the archetypal mother, nurturer.
For Jews the Shekhinah, the feminine image of God, who (among other attributes) is thought to hover over a patient’s sickbed, can be invoked for help. This feminine side of God represents God’s compassion (rachamim), a quality people look for when ill, recalling TLC from a maternal source. Rechem, the root of rachamim, means womb and represents God’s loving kindness, which like a mother’s love, is unconditional.
Each week the Sabbath imparts additional healing energy to each person awake to this influx of spiritual energy, for total restoration and gaining peace in their lives. Calling on God’s healing power allows each person to find faith that God creates the cure before the illness, and that all illness is the great teacher and bestower of goodness, sometimes through our suffering.
Chassidic tradition sees suffering as the holy teacher of goodness -illness is called concealed good, whereas health is revealed good.
These powerful imaginations restore hope, faith, trust, compassion, joy, and courage. Surrendering our life to the spiritual powers can bring healing in its truest sense.
Special thanks to Israela Meyerstein, LCSW-C, and Zohara M. Hieronimus, D.H.L. (www.ZoharaOnline.com) for their help and insights
Peter Hinderberger, M.D., Ph.D., DIHom practices at Ruscombe. The mission of his practice is to promote optimal wellbeing by providing health care through an integrated approach, combining conventional and complementary therapies, which include Anthroposophic medicine, homeopathy, and salutogenesis.