All of these different stories we’ve been telling work into the story of healing because healing is very much a process of stepping out of your own way. This is an easy way for us to misunderstand the idea of spiritual healing because we think you can put your hands on somebody and heal them. It actually does help the other person, but really, healing is the process of stepping out of the way—out of your own way and out of the way, period—so that healing can happen.
You can only do that when you trust.
We’re talking about my story of being diagnosed with this terrible cancer. I had no idea if I was going to survive it or not. The odds were very, very, very low. All I could do, each moment, was what needed to be done next—like the next step, the next step, the next step. Do them with just as much joy and heart as I could in any moment.
You know, suffer the suffering. What do you do about that? Not much. But I didn’t ever once try to heal myself. I just stood back and allowed everything that could happen to happen.
So many wonderful things happened. I have Catholic relatives who lit candles for me in their churches, and Catholics are very cool because you get this little card and I was on the prayer list and stuff like that. That was very cool. Sufi circles had me in their prayer list. Lots of people sent me cards. The doctors, and of course, I was very nice to the nurses. There was a huge team of people, and this is what healing is about.
Just imagine a way, way bigger universe than exists in your own head and imagine a way bigger universe than fits in my head. So, I’m not a separate entity walking around. There’s not a place where my skin ends, even. There’s not a place where my breath ends because something different than me always comes in, and then me goes back out. Something different comes in—breath in, out, food in, out, water in, out, electricity, everything—human beings, all the human beings around me. So, nothing actually healed me, but nothing killed me either. I very likely could have died, and I will at some point get sick again and die. Who knows what it’s going to be, but the healing itself was, or what we could call the healing, was like an unhealing. It was just a not dying.
Yeah, this reminds me of a story of my teacher Osho. So, a disciple comes up to him and says, “Beloved master, I am so afraid of dying. Can you help me?” Osho looked at him and said, “Keep Breathing.”
[Laughter] Right. But I assume that most of the people watching this video are not dying right this moment. What does this have to do with our life? Well, we’re living life right this moment. How much do we hold on to our fears and our sufferings and things like that? How much do we have the capability to just drop these things and trust that life itself actually works, that we’re held within this beautiful existence of creation, and that ultimately, we can be in this as an awake participating person?
So, the story of healing really has a very basically undramatic end. I didn’t really do anything but not die and then slowly, slowly, slowly get better. But maybe that is a good punch line. I don’t know.