A path to healing
In the six short months since I said I’d opened myself to healing, many remarkable things have happened. Cancer has vanished. I have more vitality, more joy de vivre. Happy, healthy choices are easier and more desirable, and a flood of heart-opening, life affirming people and experiences have come my way.
‘There are no accidents’ goes the saying, and whether one believes this dictum or not, the fact is our choices have consequences, and, so, making different choices leads to different consequences. More of which, later.
What does it mean to open oneself to healing? For me, it means (in part) changing what I give attention to, who I spend time with, what I say and do, what I eat and drink — all practical, observable, learnable choices that are easy to describe and teach, if it comes to that.
But let’s unpack the the headlines.
Cancer has vanished
I’m in a clinical trial (DREAMM 7) that is evaluating two forms of immunotherapy to treat multiple myeloma. The decision to join the trial five months ago of an experimental therapy was guided by a larger call to healing more than a singular desire for a cancer cure. I had no expectations of a positive impact and elsewhere I have described why participating in a clinical trial is really a gift to future generations, not something one should do in the expectation of a cure or reprieve from a serious health condition.
By mid January 2021 the results had been positive and spectacular. By early February and after 6 doses of Belantamab combined with Bortezomib and Dexamethasone, blood tests had plummeted 99 per cent to the point that these results suggested I might be cancer-free. For myeloma, the gold standard evidence of being in remission (meaning that cancer is indetectable) is confirmed by a bone marrow biopsy.
I had a biopsy in early February and got the results on 22 February. The biopsy confirmed the blood tests: I’m in remission for the first time in six plus years. Cancer is now indetectable in my body. I feel like I’ve conquered Everest but as anyone knows conquering a peak only happens with the aid of many, many people. I’m now sharing the good news and calling the dozens and dozens and dozens of people who have supported my recovery.
More vitality, more joy de vivre
As the cancer load has continued to drop it feels like a 500-pound gorilla has climbed off my back. Before now I had felt like I was wading through treacle and loaded down with lead weights. Now I feel like I’m walking on the moon. This physical release has come with more joy, more lightness, a more buoyant spirit. I can’t properly describe this newfound freedom but slowly I’m regaining my strength, my delight, and the feeling of being flooded with gratitude. I can breathe more deeply. I can feel blood coursing warmly through my blood vessels. The incessant pain that accompanied cancer in my bone marrow has vanished.
Happy, healthy choices easier, more desirable
In his remarkable documentary On Yoga: The Architecture of Peace, film-maker Heitor Dhalia explores the depths of yoga through photography, stream-of-consciousness video footage and extensive interviews with yoga masters from India, Tibet and New York.
Perhaps the central message of the film is this pearl, spoken by one devotee of yoga: “Nothing can bring you lasting happiness, but you have it already. The real thesis of yoga is not that you get your health, your well-being, your inner peace comes from outside yourself, which is what our culture often teaches us, but rather, we have it already. And then the question becomes, ‘what am I doing that’s disturbing that, as opposed to how can I get something that I don’t already have?’”.
This is the core of healing: nothing can give you lasting happiness, but you have it already. So I’ve stopped disturbing the bliss that’s present by simply residing in being. Any thought or action aimed at chasing another state (like feeling happy or high) disturbs our native state by manipulating external events in the hope of changing our internal state.
A better word than happiness might be ‘peace’. Meaning that when we abide in being still, in letting go of distracting thoughts and pent-up feelings, resting in this moment instead of indulging mental schemes about the future (or replaying the past), we find we already reside in the bliss we’ve been seeking to create.
As the cliché goes, “less is more”. The fact that peace is here now obliterates the desire for anything that disturbs this natural state of being. Our bodies and minds are wired for pleasure and yet abiding in the truth that peace is our native state makes pleasure-seeking a secondary concern because all efforts aimed at gaining pleasure (or peace or happiness) beg the question, “what am I doing or seeking that’s disturbing inner peace?”
The yamas and niyamas were first described by Patañjali in The Yoga Sūtras, which is a set of books containing 196 aphorisms describing the lessons and virtues of yoga. [i]
The second yama is Satya, meaning truthfulness. In The Yoga Sūtras (2:36), the Sanskrit text says: Satya pratiṣṭhāyām kriyāphalāśrayatvam, which translates as, “to one established in truthfulness, actions and their results become subservient.” [ii]
This is the truth at the heart of opening ourselves to healing. Manipulating external events to engineer happiness is not only misguided but ignores the truth of being: that peace is here if we let ourselves notice and experience it.
This is in contrast to a prevailing attitude that says contentment lies outside ourselves rather than within. “When we expect the world to meet our needs, we turn outside ourselves to find sustenance and completion,” writes Deborah Adele. “We expect our partners to fulfill us, our jobs to meet our needs, and success to solve all our problems. As long as we think satisfaction comes from an external source, we can never be content.
“True freedom and contentment begin to find their way to us when we can see things as they are, (rather than) spend(ing) so much energy manipulating things according to our preferences.” [iv]
As a consequence, I’m spending more time doing yoga, taking long walks in nature, cultivating and eating organic, nutrient-dense foods, reading and watching educative books and films, and hanging out with people who are living lives similarly inspired by a desire to cultivate and allow their native peace and happiness.
Heart-opening, life affirming people and experiences
It’s axiomatic that changing our choices leads to different experiences, both internally and externally. And as I said above, the recognition that one already resides in peace means the desire to make choices aimed at manufacturing ‘happiness’ or ‘bliss’ have dropped away. This choice means new, life affirming people and experiences have come my way. Without trying to explain this phenomenon, I can only say these people and experiences have brought more opportunities for healing — meaning that they reinforce my opening to the truth that “nothing can bring you lasting happiness, but you have it already.”
Healing sickness, healing wounds
I’m told that multiple myeloma is an incurable cancer. The best that can be expected, even from a “deep, positive response” to treatment is less severe symptoms, less complications, a higher quality of life and a longer life expectancy. These are profound and welcome treatment outcomes. But healing is a different kettle of fish and while it may not encompass a cure for cancer, it is both a noble and necessary way to live. Why? Healing is necessary for cauterizing and sealing the wounds inflicted by countless others, including the accumulated wounds bestowed by the untold, unhealed, generations who came before us. God love our ancestors!
Healing our wounds bestows peace in our hearts by ending the war we wage on ourselves and others and thereby ends intergenerational wounding. In Buddhist terms, healing frees us from the karmic wheel of samsara so that we become self-authoring peacemakers. [v] In other words, we realise our Buddhahood, our inherent nobility, our innate divinity.
The Call of the Reed Warbler
Then consider the healing that has unfolded in the Australian landscape (and others) over the past 30–40 years through the practice of biodynamic farming. In his seminal book, The Call of the Reed Warbler, Charles Massy explains how “less is more” — that working with nature instead of against it, allows the dynamic interplay of the five elements of ‘landscape function’ to restore dead, diseased, unproductive farms and landscapes to their natural ecological health. [vi]
His book reveals in detail how farming methods beginning in the eighteenth century took a mechanistic view of nature that views landscape and its elements as inert substrates that farmers had to manipulate in order to reap a decent harvest. Over the following 250 years this view and its practices have persisted and produced untold damage to the land and its productivity, to its plants and animals, and to the humans who have perpetrated this misguided approach to farming.
Some of the tenets of this approach include the massive use of pesticides and herbicides, monocultural (single species) farming, wholescale removal of trees and ‘non-farmable’ perennial grasses and plants, long term set-stocking of animals such as sheep and cattle, and the almost exclusive sewing and cultivation of shallow-rooted annual cereal crops.
The consequences include loss of biodiversity, mass erosion and soil loss, rising soil salinity, falling water tables, the devastation of monoculture crops by pests (insects, birds, funguses and viruses), the declining ability of farms to naturally support the growing of crops and the feeding of animals, and the widespread financial ruin of farming families and businesses — to name a few.
In Australia and across the globe, these devastating effects have been exacerbated by the effects of global warming, especially through increasing exposure to droughts, bushfires and floods. Globally, more and more land has become ‘marginal’ and unviable for farming at all scale levels — from small scale farmers feeding families, to mid-sized farmers supporting local and regional markets and communities, through to massive agribusinesses and factory-farming behemoths.
However, over the past 40 years or so, both necessity and a deeper consideration of landscape ecology, which originated from biodynamic movements in Europe during the 1930s, have led to experimentation and innovations that have seen farmers who employ this thinking enjoy massive bounties: landscapes and farmlands have been restored to health; crop yields have climbed without need of pesticides or the use of superphosphate, farmed animals are happier, heavier and healthier; soils have deepened and their ability to hold and store water have increased, and farms are more resilient to pests and the scourges of drought and the other incursions of climate change.
Not least, the increasing supply and consumption of healthy organic produce means less people are being exposed to the toxic plant and meat products that are baked into modern food supplies. Said another way, the increasing adoption of biodynamic farming methods means the land, its harvest, and those who consume its produce are healing. Massy and others steeped in these practices explain that these benefits are a function of ‘farming without farming” — working with nature and not against her.
Here it’s worth re-citing Deborah Adelle, who I quoted earlier: “True freedom and contentment begin to find their way to us when we can see things as they are, (rather than) spend(ing) so much energy manipulating things according to our preferences.” Adelle is talking about the path to healing. Like the farmers who are adopting the tenets of biodynamic “do less” farming, our ability to observe and notice the deeper currents of reality — meaning the nurturing underpinnings of life — and to live in accord with them, means we too can enjoy the bounties of health, healing, vitality and peace.
Dan Gaffney is a teacher and author. His book and podcast series, ‘Journey Home — Essays on Living and Dying’ was published in 2019
[i] Over the past century or so, dozens of commentaries on The Yoga Sutras have been written by teachers and academics seeking to clarify variations and interpretations of the Sutras, which were first written in Sanskrit. These interpretations and translation are a matter longstanding discussion and debate.
[ii] Jack Utermoehl, The Eight Limbs of Yoga For The American Yogi, Bhakti House, Kindle, 2nd edition, 2019, pp161–163
[iii] Jack Utermoehl, 2009, ibid, pp 418–419
[iv] Deborah Adele, The Yamas and Niyamas: Exploring Yoga’s Ethical Practice, On Word Bound Books, LLC, Minnesota, 2009, p121
[v] Samsara refers to the cycles of birth and death; the cycling of all things in the universe. For more information see A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield, 2002 by Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
[vi] The five key landscape functions described by Massy are water, soil, sunshine, biodiversity and humans. For more, see Charles Massy, The Call of the Reed Warbler: a new agriculture, a new earth, 2018, White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.
