So… if I was really spiritual, I would have healed myself of cancer and not taken chemo, right? Come on, I know you’re thinking it! Right? I mean… that’s kind of our spiritual ideal these days—to get cancer and cure yourself.
I disagree. That’s not spiritual.
There are so many nuances in life, where everything is so interconnected, that you can’t take a platitude like that and apply it to all parts of life.
First of all, we’re not separate. So when I got cancer, it wasn’t just about me. I have family—they all jumped in to help, taking me to doctors and things like that. And if I would have tried to cure myself naturally of cancer, I would have had to put my family through this grueling, horrible experience of dealing with me. I’m not separate from them, you know? Their choices and desires for me are as important to me as my own, especially since healing yourself is completely, totally not proven.
Even if I wanted to look at it in the experiences of my own life? I know too many people who have died of cancer trying to cure themselves. So, I wouldn’t put my family through that.
Yes, I also do Covid vaccines, and yes I also wear a mask. To protect myself and to protect others.
But second of all, chemo kills cancer. It’s designed to do that. If you want to heal yourself naturally, then take the chemo, which hurts your body, and then heal yourself from the chemo. At least you’re alive to be able to heal yourself from it, right? The chemo itself is not going to kill you, and we are all certainly robust enough to heal ourselves from the effects of chemo.
Here’s one of the really funny things that went on in my brain. My big fear of chemo is that it’s a chemical and it’s going to give me cancer because I believe that chemicals give people cancer. So, I was stuck in this crazy loop of ‘What if the chemo gives me cancer? Oh, but wait, no. I already have cancer.’
The vicious loop of the critical mind!
Another way to look at it is that we are so intricately interconnected with each other and everything—our ancestors, all the wisdom that has grown throughout humanity—and chemo is a part of that wisdom. We intersect with reality in everything we do.
It’s interesting to read the history of how doctors came up with the idea of giving people chemotherapy for cancer. It came about quite by accident, and they accidentally saved some people. It’s the same thing with radiation, right? Radiation will give us cancer, and yet when you have cancer, they give you radiation. So, is the radiation going to give me cancer, or do I already have cancer?
I don’t know the actual scientific answer. But it’s a valuable lesson in how our critical brains get stuck in these infinite loops of insanity.
Also, we are intricately connected with everything—the past, the future, what’s happening now, all the molecules of the planets, all the animals and the birds in the sky, and all the people that are on the planet. When you’re sick, you need care. So, you need to go to where you’re going to get care. That’s the way I looked at the whole chemotherapy process. Here was this huge mechanism put together to give me care, and one of those cares was chemo, one of those cares was surgery, and one of those cares was radiation. Then there was the follow-up care.
So, rather than fight the intricate nature of the whole thing, I let myself be in a natural state of surrender and did step after step after step that presented itself before me.
When you live life in that way, especially when you’re in some sort of crisis, then everything’s different because everything becomes a curiosity. I think that holding yourself tightly against life has got to be the number one thing that makes cancer grow. It’s better to say yes, ‘Okay, let’s do this thing’ instead.
I discovered some interesting things. One is that if you’re taking chemo and you really pay attention as it happens, it’s a totally different experience.
The thing about chemo that I thought—this is my little belief, my own little fantasy, right?—if you pay attention as it’s happening, it’s like the strongest poison that they can possibly give you and not kill you. It’s the purest, purest, most refined poison that can possibly exist. When I looked at it that way I trusted it. It was kind of a miracle, actually.
Chemo sends your body goes through this process where all the fast-growing cells die. All that’s left is the thing that holds on to life. And so, you can see how it turned into a completely different experience through awareness. It was awful, also—I mean, I was very sick with a low chance of survival. But the process itself also had this thread of beauty through it.
So, ‘Die before you die.’ At least I didn’t have to deal with unfounded fears. Dealing with the real fears was plenty enough. But relaxing into the process—we can do that in our lives all the time anyway.
This is one of the core teachings of Sufism—to embrace the sorrow of life and really feel it and be it. Embrace the joy of life and allow your natural, loving nature to bubble forth from you as often as possible.
And do this with music! Because music is the joy and the harmony of life.
If we fill ourselves as much as possible with these beautiful things, and bring forth this strength that lives within us, then the nafs thin. The the veil over our consciousness thins.
There’s a point where you have to realize, ‘I am me. I am who I am.’ And you then take the full mastery of your life. You become the master who is living within you, who is you. You are the one who is driving your vehicle of life.
Life itself can thin the veil until that point where you firmly take control of inner mastery. Then the veil drops completely because it’s unnecessary. ‘Die before you die.’ The unnecessary falls from you, and life itself is there.