Successful Living Through Self-Awareness
By Frank and Martha Giudici
Lesson Seven
Healing
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49 Health requires release and externalization
In this section, we’re going to be talking about health, wholeness. And we’re going to have to, first of all, kind of establish an awareness of what health really is. Most of us are not aware of what really being well is. We always have some little minor ailment going on, or some little feeling the body temple that is distracting us. We are not aware of the fact that we should be expressing wholeness of mind and body right now. That we should be experiencing a free-flow of energy.
There is this energy of the universe, which is spiritual essence. Mind essence, spiritual substance, spirit, out of which everything that is has come forth. Now, there is this this free-flow of energy available to each and every one of us, to use, to form through our thoughts as we will. And we are doing this right now. We are meant to be radiant living beings, functioning fully and freely, physically, mentally, and emotionally. We are not meant to be held in bondage. We were meant to do what might be called, in life, giving and receiving.
There is a law of the universe called the law of mind action, thoughts held in mind produce after their kind, which is also interpreted as a law of cause and effect. It also can be looked at from the viewpoint of effort and release, effort and release. You do something, and then you release, and it becomes the outer effect.
So in all action in life, we find this same rhythm, the giving and the receiving, the outpour and the inflow, everything moves in what might be called a rhythmic balanced interchange. Now, when this rhythmic balance interchange is perfectly balanced, we have what is called a state of health. If you really wanted to get fancy about it, there’s a state of the body called metabolism, and it’s anabolism and catabolism makes metabolism, and that’s a really fancy way of saying it. The building up and the breaking down of cells, if it’s perfectly balanced, it’s like a juggler who has everything just going perfectly, and all things are working together rightly. But if they’re not all going together in a balanced state, then we have what we call disease, discomfort, inharmony, in our mental, emotional, and physical states.
Now, in order to restore health, we have to find out what has created these. And it is through what we call this effort-release state that we are involved in, that we have created what are called emotional, physical, and mental disease. We have forgotten how to make an effort, and then release it, to think something, and then release it and let it go about and do what it’s supposed. Instead, because we are thinking beings, we have tended to internalize, or to hold onto states of consciousness which we shouldn’t. They should have been experienced at the time they were expressed, and then released. That was the way it was intended, that we were intended to make an effort and then released.
It used to be called what we call a flight or fight. You’ll also find it described as this, that we were either to fly away from something, get away from it, or we were to fight it, and then we would go back and release, we would be comfortable again. There’s an instinct within us that tells us there are two responses. We respond to something, and then we relax. We should be responding and relaxing.
All of this interchange should be balanced. In the good old days, we did this. But as we begin to build up mental states, we would find ourselves involved in a situation where we could not seem to let go, or release the activity. For instance, perhaps you had something that you needed to talk to somebody about. And right at that moment, you said, “Well I’m feeling this, and I should really express this to them right now, but I can’t do it.” So you have to hold onto it until the right time arrives. Or perhaps, there is this other condition where someone said something that you didn’t exactly agree with, and it may have upset you or disturbed your equilibrium at that moment. But you did a thinking process, and all of a sudden, you look up and this is my husband.
But if I say that to him, he won’t like it. So you hold onto it. Or maybe it was your boss. Or maybe it was somebody out there in the world, or some condition where we keep internalizing what we call conditions of stress. We have stressful conditions. So we have begun to place stressful pressures on our thinking. We have collected these as thoughts. And because each one of these has to be externalized at some time or another, because the universe is always balanced. Then, we externalize them as disease and disharmony in our mental, physical, and emotional states.
So we then have what we call disease. We have what we call disease. So whether we externalize through an effort release action, or whether it is externalized as a bodily discomfort or disease, this is what is taking place. It’s always going to be balanced. The externalization is going to be done, whether you do it consciously, or whether you do it unconsciously. Unconsciously is not so good, because then, most of the time, the body has to take over and get rid of it, some way or another, and we go through what is called a period of illness.
But that’s good, because that’s the body doing it’s very best, the soul and the subconscious, all restoring us to physical wholeness or health. So we do need to get in touch with this area of releasing anxieties, negative emotions, right when they are being experienced. Otherwise, they will be externalized later as bodily conditions.
50 What our freedom of choice means for health
Following through with this idea of releasing that Martha has just been talking about, I want to talk for just a moment about one concept and truth that many people, who when they first come into truth, have some difficulty with. And this is the idea of our freedom of choice. As children of God, we believe that we have the power of choice. This means that we can choose the life that we want to live. And we make this choice, of course, through mental processes.
To carry it further, it means, really then, that in one way or another, we have chosen all of the conditions that we’re now experiencing in life. Granted, that this choice generally, not generally, but very often takes place on an unconscious level, rather than a conscious level. Nevertheless, as students of truth, we believe that we make the choice. In the first chapter of Genesis, it speaks about the dominion that we have been given. And he gave them dominion over all things. God made us in our image, and after his likeness, and gave us dominion. This dominion idea is carried through in Genesis 1.
And we can apply this to every area of our life. In other words, when we know that we have dominion over our consciousness, which means really dominion over our world, then what a tremendous feeling that is. What a tremendous sense of security that can give us, because it is the truth of our being. But now, we want to relate this to the specific area of health. What it means, then, is this. And this sometimes is a subject that must be approached with some delicacy I feel. It means that we have chosen our physical condition. Granted, that this choice takes place very often on an unconscious level. Nevertheless, if we have dominion over our world, it means that for one reason or another, we have chosen our state of physical health.
Now sometimes, this is not very hard to come to terms with. We all know the familiar story of someone who doesn’t want to go to a certain social function, and suddenly develops the convenient headache. Well, sometimes it’s not so hard to see that I chose to have that headache. But with other conditions, other physical ailments and so forth, it’s a bit difficult for people to come to terms with this.
In his book The Will to Live, Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker talks about this. And he backs this up with many of his own actual case histories that he experienced as a doctor. And what he says in his book, just to give a short synopsis of a particular chapter, is that not only do we choose our illness, but that we choose the organ that’s going to be attacked, we choose the length of time that we’re going to have the illness, we’re choosing all the way. And this is a medical doctor who’s speaking, and doesn’t it tie in directly to what we believe in truth?
We have freedom of choice all the way. But once again, that choice is very often made on an unconscious level. And no one, none of us, is to be criticized, nor condemned for those unconscious choices that we make, that will result in certain negative experiences, whether they be in the area of health, human relationship, prosperity or whatever. It’s simply the best that we can do at any given time, and we have to love ourselves for that.
But further, the point that Dr. Hutschnecker makes, is that while we have exercised our power of choice to bring about this condition, we can also reverse the process. If I’ve chosen to be ill, I can choose to be well. And this is what we’re talking about here today. Making that conscious choice, through the changing of our consciousness, to be healthy, to experience full and complete health. Sometimes the thoughts are very deeply embedded in us, the thoughts that are bringing about physical illness. And it seems that we have to work for quite a time to bring about health. Nevertheless, the potential to do it is still there.
Charles Fillmore, one of the co-founders of Unity, at a very early age went through an experience that resulted in a withered leg. And he lived to be almost 94 years of age. And that leg was never completely restored to perfect health. But people who knew him say, if you would have known him when he was a youngster, and could have seen him in his later years, through the application of truth principles in his life, he experienced such a greater degree of health. He was choosing health all the way, so he was at least able to come that far, which means he was able to express greater health in that leg condition.
So, we have the choice. If we find that in any way we have chosen illness, then through the presence and the power, and the activity of God within us, let’s choose health, and we can do it.
51 Identifying health blocks
Now to help us do that, let’s go to our handout once again. And rather briefly, let’s run through this section here on healing. The top section, the three columns have a P, M, and E. We’re going to tell it like it is right now.
Under those three lines there, or on those three lines under the letter P, let’s keep it pretty simple. And let’s put down that one physical condition. There might be two, but maybe just one physical condition that we are experiencing now, that we would like to see changed. What is it? Just label it and identify it. You’re not giving power to it in this way, you’re simply acknowledging it, telling it that this is the way it is with me right now. Not the way it is in truth and in spirit, but it’s what I’m experiencing in the physical.
And secondly, under the M, this has to do with mental concepts. What false mental concepts am I holding about health? Do I believe that I am subject to something because it ran in the family? Remember that the other co-founder of Unity, Myrtle Fillmore, really got this whole Unity movement off to it’s start when she came away from a metaphysical lecture in Kansas City in 1886, with one thought burning in her mind. I am a child of God, and therefore I cannot inherit sickness. The well-known story states that for years, she believed that she was subject to tuberculosis because it ran in the family. But she was able to break that chain of thinking, she did away with that false mental concept, and was healed of her tubercular condition.
So what false mental concepts am I holding about physical health? Do I believe that I have to catch it because it’s in the air? In some way, we have some false mental concepts, pet concepts, that we’ve been holding onto concerning health. Let’s deal with those right now by listing those one or two concepts.
You always catch a cold because it’s the cold season or the flu season, or do you go out in the rain without a coat on and say I caught a cold because I didn’t wear a coat? Those are the types of things. Old thoughts.
Old thoughts, and old concepts. Then the next column, of course, has to do with the emotions we made into physical health. And what are we talking about here? Well, in a sense, I feel that all illnesses are psychosomatic, that is, they are emotionally induced. If we hold deep feelings, deep negative feelings, they’re going to be expressed in our body temples, as Martha was bringing up just a little bit earlier here. Deep feelings of hate, of resentment, of inferiority, will be out-pictured in the body.
What are some of those deep feelings that I am holding? You might find, of course, that they are the same feelings that you were holding in relation to prosperity and human relationships. But now, we’re speaking of them in relationship to healing. Am I hanging on to a pet resentment, a resentment that I have had for years and years?
In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, which is really the bible for people in AA, there is a section where it speaks about the fourth step in the program of recovery in AA. There are 12 steps of recovery. And the fourth step is a step of taking a moral inventory of oneself, writing it out. As Martha says, she loves the writing technique. Well Alcoholics Anonymous has that same step. And somewhere in that section, this statement is made. This section on the moral inventory. It says, “Resentment is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.”
Well folks, I think we can apply that more generally. Resentment is the number one offender in the life of every person. It will literally eat away at us, and ultimately destroy the physical body. So what kind of negative emotion am I hanging onto? Deep fear, deep resentment, deep hate, jealousy ... Identify it for yourself. And this takes a degree of self-honesty, doesn’t it? Be honest with yourself, because that’s being true to yourself as to where you are right now.
52 Identifying health desires
Then let's go to the solution. And this is the next layer of columns here. Right underneath that first section on healing, let's go to the second section under P, M, and E. And let's write down here now what we would like to experience, our desire in the way of physical health. Well, on a physical level, what is it that we want to be improved? Do we have some physical impairment that we feel we want to have healed completely? Perfect eyesight, perfect hearing, be able to walk without a limp, whatever it might be. Be bold with this, and make your desire very specific and very clear, because in that way, you are giving your thought substance to it. You are directing all of your creative energy toward the accomplishment of that goal.
So what is it, in the physical, that you really desire, that you want to bring about? It might be that you've been experiencing a condition of pain for a number of years, and what you want is simply to be free of pain. Well write that down. And then, by the same token, under the mental section, what kind of concepts concerning physical health do you want to hold in mind? Do you want to really believe that, as it says in the Book of Exodus, the Lord is your healer? The Lord being the Lord of your own being, God within you? That no matter what physical condition it is that you're experiencing, through the Christ within you, through the Lord of your own being, you can be healed. Because your natural state, your real self, is one of wholeness, completeness. And as you dwell upon that idea, it becomes manifested in your physical body.
What kind of a concept to you want to hold? Do you want to believe that you are not subject to anything through inheritance, or because it runs in the family? There's some type of concept that you really want to become a part of your consciousness, that will help to bring about healing.
In the third section, having to do with emotions, what kind of feelings do you want to hold? Instead of being resentful, you want to be loving I would suppose. Instead of being hateful, you would want to be loving. Instead of being jealous, you might want to be accepting of other people, knowing that no one can keep your good from you, and that type of thing. What kind of feelings do you want to hold, in relationship to health? I want to feel loving, peaceful, free, and things of that nature.
53 Things to do to manifest greater health
Now, Martha's going to talk about some things to do in this area of establishing the greater consciousness of health.
Okay, we've gotten in touch with these areas of our consciousness where we have some things that we are experiencing now, and we have a place where we want to move toward in consciousness. And of course, we can start, very first, with the idea that we do not have to accept verdicts. We do not have to accept the authority figures that we have heard in the past. Just as Myrtle Fillmore, who was the co-founder of the Unity movement and was really responsible for the Unity movement itself, let go of the verdict that she had heard all of her life, and was manifesting at that particular time, because she wasn't expected to live. Because she had a very serious terminal case of tuberculosis.
And she found that she had accepted this verdict that because it was a family condition, that she was going to have to go with it. Don't accept verdicts. Don't accept the verdicts that are given to you. I can tell you of a friend of mine who was coming to class, and he had accepted a verdict about something. He was a dog handler, and he had been bitten. And all of you know the age-old statement that comes from a dog bite. A dog bite is very serious. There are a lot of germs, it does not heal easily, you've got to watch it, because if you don't watch it, it will become infected, and if it becomes infected, thrombosis will set in, and all of these things ...
Well, he was succumb to all of the verdicts, the age old tales which were running at him at this particular time. He came to class, and here was this hand, had all been stitched up by the doctor, where he had received this bite, and it was swollen and puffy, and there were red lines all over the place, and it was really an ugly looking thing. And he said, "Martha, why do I have to have this? I'm a good truth student." He says, "I've been praying about it, and praying about it, and nothing is happening."
And I looked at his hand and I said to him, "What type of verdicts have you held regarding this hand? What have the authority figures been telling you about this?" And I said, "Have they been telling you it's hard to heal?" And went through the whole series of things that we hear, that this is going to work out this way, and he says, "Yes." I said,
"Well you have accepted those as being true for you, and they are manifesting. So now, what you have to do is recognize that they are not true about you, that there is a life activity within you, which is God, which is greater than any condition in the world. That the spirit of God within you is capable of healing you just as you are, right where you are right now."
And he says, "Yes it is. And I let go of it, I have nothing to do with that anymore, and I am healed." And we went on to the class, and about an hour later, he was over in the coffee shop, and he was talking away, and someone said to him, "Bill, have you looked at your hand?" And Bill looked down at his hand, expecting to see these big, red lines probably crawling up his arm or something like that. He was startled for the moment, and he looked down, and the swelling was gone, the redness was gone, the healing was taking place.
Two days later, the doctor took the stitches out, and he said, "You did that a few weeks ago?" He says, "No, just a couple of days ago." And the doctor could not believe it. Because he did not accept the verdict. So first thing you have to realize, don't accept verdicts. Don't accept verdicts, go to your own private self.
Myrtle Fillmore didn’t accept the verdict, when she heard at this meeting that she was a child of God, she went back, and what she did is she began to, through a process of mental imagery and talking to her body, what I call dialoguing with your body, and you can read this story and The Story of Unity (previously The Household of Faith) of Myrtle Fillmore, and also in her book which has just come out. Myrtle Fillmore, Mother of Unity, by Tom Witherspoon. Both of these are available from Unity.
But this is the idea that Myrtle Fillmore went back, and she began to talk to the cells of our body. And what was the first thing that she did? She asked the forgiveness of the cells of her body, for being so mistrusting, and thoughtless about them, of saying things about them which were not true. She began to ask their forgiveness for all of the things that she had been saying about them, which were not true. That they were diseased.
She began to speak to them, and then she began to praise the life activity. She began to praise the intelligence, which is in every cell of the body. And as she began to praise it, the body cells began to respond to their true picture, to the truth about them. And the healing began to take place. She began to see herself as whole, and well, and free. She began to see herself as she truly was, a radiant child of God, filled with life, expressing radiant life.
And she became it. For many years thereafter, she helped other persons who were in need of healing in the same way. Many times in my own experience, I have gotten in touch with my body. How long has it been since you dialogued with your body? How long has it been since you’ve gotten in touch with it, and found out what kind of words you were saying about your body that you don’t really want to say? Have you been telling your body you’re getting old, that you’re feeling weak, that I’m kind of puny today? What kind of thoughts are you holding when talking to your body about on a constant basis? Get in touch with it, and then begin to talk to your body, and praise it into wholeness. I’m letting go of this, and I’m putting on radiant life. I am letting go of my “negative states of consciousness,” and I am putting on radiant health and beauty.
Begin to do this, because you body knows the truth, and will respond to those areas. If you like to write, you can sit down with pencil in hand, and you can begin to write out, once again, all of the statements that you have been making about your body. You can say, “How have I really been feeling about myself physically?” And you write down all of the things that you see manifesting in your life. How have I been feeling about myself mentally? Have I been seeing myself as not as bright as other people, uneducated? And that’s a part of healing, this part of being uneducated, that I don’t have a college degree or something like that, so therefore I can’t do something. You’re one with infinite intelligence. You have access to the mind of God, which is the all-knowingness of the universe. Things don’t come to you from the without, they happen to you from the within.
Begin to find out what kind of thoughts you’re holding about yourself, emotionally. Do you see yourself as a nervous individual? Do you see yourself as susceptible to things? Do you see yourself as having anxiety attacks when certain things happen? Do you see yourself as an emotional mess on occasion when certain things happen? We hold these thoughts about ourselves. Get in touch with them, and then begin to say,
“Who am I? I am a child of God, created in God’s image and likeness, and God cannot be sick. God cannot express less than wholeness. And if I am an individualized expression of God, then I can express that which God is, wholeness, life. The fullness of everything. I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. I am equal to every task. I have access to infinite intelligence. I have the mind in me which was in Christ Jesus. I have that same mind in me.”
There’s a favorite affirmation of mine, and some people looked at me kind of strangely, and I say,
“I am a spiritual genius. Everything I need to know is revealed to me, through me by the spirit within me.”
And you are a spiritual genius. Everything you do need to know is revealed to you, through you, by the spirit within you. When you believe it, when you take your thinking off of that which is in the outer, and through prayer and meditation, find that secret place of the most high within you, which is greater than what you are.
By the way, I always like to remind people, that the Christ that we’re talking about is not some little bitty point of light somewhere down inside of you which is so hidden that you may never find it. No. The Christ is greater than you are. It is within you, because the within of you is vaster, and larger, than this physical body. The Christ of you is not contained. The divine image of God is not contained by this physical body. It is a radiant body of energy and light, which is so fine, that we do not see it with the physical eyes. But it is greater than we are, and it has it’s roots in the Cosmos. It has it’s roots in God, in the eternity.
And we are part of that. All this is, this body of ours, is a focalization in time and space of our thoughts about that Christ self of us. And if we are not letting the fullness of that light express through us, then we are expressing less than wholeness. We have forgotten to let go and let the light of God shine through us as us. As Browning puts it, we have failed to release that “inner splendor.” We have tried to find it in the without, but we need to release the hidden inner splendor, the divinity, within us, that which we truly are.
This is the way we become healthful, full of health. We are all on the path to the life that we call regeneration. We are in the process of spiritualizing our bodies. We do it, thought by thought, word by word, deed by deed. And just as Jesus Christ put on the body of light in the ascension, so too will we also vitalize and energize our bodies until we too become the body of light. That’s what it’s all about. Not living eternally in this body, as it is manifesting now, but spiritualizing this body into the true body, which is the body of spirit. This is the path we are all on, this is the way we are going.
54 Health Meditation
And now, Frank will take you a little farther on that journey in a time of meditation.
We’re going to take just a few moments, once again, to conclude this section on health with a time of meditation. So once again, as we have done before, just set aside everything that you have had in your lap or in your hand. And for just a moment, allow yourself to become relaxed. Relaxed in mind and in body. And we will use the same process that we have used in the other times of meditation, and that is to allow a mental image to form in our mind of the way it is now with us in relation to physical health.
Whatever it was that you indicated on your handout sheet, in regard to your state of health—physical, mental, and emotional—see that pictured now in the mirror of your mind. See that part of your body as it is now. And along with it, allow to come to mind those false mental concepts, or that one false mental concept, that you have been holding for so long about health.
And then, underneath all of that, allow yourself, for just a moment, to feel whatever negative feeling it is that you have been allowing to have control over you. To really have control over the state of your body and your physical health. So see that portion of the body in your mind’s eye. Regardless of what part of the body it has to do with, picture it as it is now. Without condemnation, without criticism, but objectively see it as it is. And then, call to mind that false concept about health. It might be the old idea that I’m stuck with it, because everybody else has it. Or it ran in the family, whatever the case might be.
And then, what is that deep-seeded feeling that you have been hanging onto, that has been controlling you and your life, your whole life, as well as the state of your body. It is a resentment? Is it an old jealousy? Is it a feeling, a fear, or guilt? That’s the way it is. And now, say to that total picture, to that false mental concept, to that underlying feeling, I no longer need you. I now release you and let you go. Release the picture that you have formed. Release the false concept. Release the emotion.
And right now, begin to form within your consciousness, a picture of the way you want it to be with you, as far as health is concerned. A perfect body. A perfect mind, full of perfect concepts concerning health. A perfect emotional state, evenly balanced at all times. If doubts would seem to creep into your mind as to whether or not this ideal condition can come about, then don’t fight those doubts, but simply release them and let them go. They came into your mind, and they can go right on out again, unless you hold on to them. You have the power of choice.
So in forming this picture of your self, as far as the way you want it to be is concerned, know that you have the power to bring it about, to manifest it within your world. For as you establish a consciousness of any good thing, so it must become manifest in your world, according to the law of mind action. The thoughts that we hold in mind do produce in the outer after their kind. And we can help to establish that consciousness right now by affirming for ourselves, “I accept perfect health. I accept perfect health.” Together,
“I accept perfect health.”
Feel it, know it to be true for you.
And the final step in bringing about the manifestation of this consciousness of health, is always an act of gratitude. So in closing, let’s say together, “Thank you Father for perfect health.” Together,
“Thank you Father for perfect health.”
Amen.
