Love is a healer!
It repairs, renews, revitalizes, regenerates. It has power to restore even those things which appear to be lost forever. It can, and will, give a second chance, a third chance or as many opportunities as are needed to one who has erred in the past.
Love is powerful to overcome thoughts and feelings that are destroying an individual’s ability to live normally and happily, even when they have been with him for long time.
Love can literally transform the physical body, and it will, when used with right direction and understanding.
Love will heal anything in your affairs that can possibly need to be changed, and this applies to everything from human relationships to difficulties on the job to problems of environment and education or lack of it.
Love is powerful to transform and harmonize. It is stronger than anything that appears to be wrong. It can cure the incurable and restore even the lost years, “the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25 KJV).
Just a little love can transform a threatening mountain into a molehill, and a little more love can dissolve it entirely. Love is the answer, even when all else has failed.
Greater Than Threats
Love will heal even habits that have become deeply ingrained over a long period of time. Love will do it, when nothing else can.
Today, as never before, people are being reminded of habits which can be harmful to life and health. Organizations point to the danger signs of various illnesses. Radio and television commercials warn of the hazards of cigarette smoking. New diet fads are presented daily to help individuals overcome the physical problems that come from being overweight. Many groups warn of the effects of alcoholism. An all-out campaign has been mounted to help teenagers understand the ravaging effects of taking drugs promiscuously.
But still, in spite of warnings blasted by the television and by well-meaning friends and members of the family, people continue to smoke, drink excessively, take drugs, overeat and do many other things that are detrimental to their physical well being.
Warnings haven’t accomplished the job. But love will. And where there is love, there is always hope.
It is like the old story of the battle between the wind and the sun.
According to legend, the wind and the sun conducted a contest to see which one was stronger, which one could make a man remove his coat first.
The wind blew with all of his strength, but instead of removing his coat, the man clutched it tighter around him.
Then the sun went to work and, simply by shining, made him remove his outer clothing very quickly.
So it is with love.
Many times threats and warnings actually make a person clutch his habit tighter. Even ostracism and criticism may bring forth the reaction of real resistance to any change. But love, just simply by being there, by loving, by desiring and expressing good, dissolves the wrong in such a way that the habit is overcome easily.
What threats and cautions fail to accomplish, love can do.
“When Nice Women Didn’t Smoke”
A friend told me the story of the way she stopped smoking, after years of considering the habit a rather pleasant one, in spite of the disapproval of friends and family.
Her husband was an engineer, and when he was working in Mexico, he taught her to smoke. It was not at all unusual for women to smoke in that country at the time, and she found the habit rather pleasant and perfectly acceptable socially. Later, when she returned to the United States, she continued to smoke (“at a time,” as she said, “when nice women didn’t smoke”). She saw no reason to discontinue the pastime.
By the time her daughter was in her last year of grammar school, young people were beginning to smoke, and there was some controversy about it.
Suddenly my friend’s love for her daughter became her most important concern. While she had considered smoking quite all right for herself, she found she didn’t want her daughter to take up the habit. And she reasoned, “How can I forbid her to smoke when I do it myself?”
So she stopped smoking. She didn’t go through any complicated analysis of her thinking on the subject. She didn’t resort to pills or candy or substitute cigarettes. She simply broke the habit by no longer doing it, because her selfless love for her daughter was stronger than her addiction to cigarette smoking.
Anyone can break any habit, by working with the power of love —love for another person, or simply love for the miracle-powered body God gave us to use.
Love for a person will many times provide the impetus needed to break a harmful habit. But a healthy love for yourself can work as well.
Think of yourself as a beautiful, wonderful, intelligent expression of life. Picture in your mind the mystical spark of life that animates nerves, muscles, communications systems and all of the other facets of the complicated physical mechanism which is your body. Realize what a wonderful creation has been given into your care and keeping. And love it enough to use it wisely and treat it well.
When you do, you’ll find it easy to free yourself from any habit, no matter how deeply ingrained, which can mar this precious possession, the body God has given you to use and to enjoy.
Love cannot heal your body while you continue to abuse it. But love can inspire you to free yourself from harmful habits. And when you no longer do the things which have caused physical difficulties, you can also be freed from the wrong conditions built by past mistakes.
This is the principle of freedom:
A strong, pure love not only releases you from bondage to wrong thoughts and conditions, but also frees you from the results of wrong thinking, feeling and acting.
It may not be accomplished in an instant. It may take time to let love dissolve the burden of wrong habits, thoughts and actions that have built up over a period of time. But the law is sure, and it will work for you! It will help you to be free from habits and from the wrong results of indulging in those habits over a period of time. You are truly free when you are set free in love.
Never Lonely Again
Love will cure something as seemingly incurable as cancer cells in the body. It will also heal a difficulty which some may consider imaginary, the habit of self pity and loneliness.
Loneliness may seem an overwhelming misery to those who suffer from it. But you’ll never be lonely when you learn to love. And if you are lonely, the most effective prescription for your difficulty is this: Learn to love!
Refer again to the principle of oneness given in the first chapter:
There is no separation in God’s universe. What hurts one, hurts all. What helps one, helps all.
Loneliness has nothing to do with other people or the lack of them. It does not concern itself with crowded conditions or empty spaces. You can be lonely in the midst of a multitude or at peace with yourself and your world miles from the nearest habitation.
Loneliness is an attitude of mind which refuses to recognize the law of oneness. There is no separation in God’s universe. You are inseparably a part of all the beauty, grandeur, inspirational literature, high ideals and deep-down essential goodness in the universe. Only in your mind can you ever be apart, alone and lonely.
Perhaps you have felt yourself alone because you were waiting for others to make the first advance, to somehow see your need and come in to fill the void. Strangely enough, the sorrier you felt for yourself, the less it appeared that anybody cared.
Now know that there is a cure for loneliness. It is the power of love.
If you wait for others to love you first, chances are you’ll keep on waiting. But if you become busy expressing God’s love through kind and thoughtful words and deeds, you’ll never be lonely.
Start by sending thoughts of good will to others. Pass on a silent blessing to someone you pass in the street. Stop thinking of yourself and start noticing others. Instead of being offended at something someone says or does, recognize that he may have problems that are not apparent to you. Give him the blessing of your love and go on your way, strengthened and freed by the love power active in you.
Love. Be one with the good in all other persons. Identify with beauty and joy. Love, even though you never say a word, and you will be happy. Almost without realizing it, you will be freed from that feeling of loneliness, which is, itself, a habit, and can be broken by the new and greater habit of loving the good.
Make a game of it. If you have been waiting for others to greet you first, stop waiting and start smiling. (You’ll be surprised at how many strangers give you a greeting in passing, thinking you are someone they know.) Love and bless the customer, the competitor, the neighbor next door, or even the neighbor’s dog, who may have annoyed you in some way.
Make it your business to love first, with a great sense of good will for all, a kindly feeling of benevolence that knows you are one with your universe and at home in it. You’ll find there’s something magical in the way God’s love works. The more you give away, freely, without personal demands, the more you will have in the long run.
You’ll never be lonely when you break the habit of loneliness by learning to love—first.
Cure the Cause
The principle of love also works in healing the physical body. There is no greater medication or treatment than a great big dose of love.
More than once, a mother has been the channel of healing for a baby or a child, simply by loving.
But in order to be healed, you do not have to look around for someone to love you. Rather, start by applying love’s law of freedom to yourself. You will get results!
More and more, the medical profession is recognizing the mental and emotional state of the patient in prescribing treatment. Doctors say that they would much rather operate on individuals who have a healthy, optimistic outlook than ones who are expecting the worst. Some doctors have related the mental outlook of the patient to his susceptibility to infection or resistance to disease, pointing out that the susceptibility varies as the person becomes depressed by fear and apprehension or buoyed up by confidence and faith.
In other words, the happier you are, the more confident and joyous you feel at a particular time, the more likely you are to resist the possibilities of infection.
Physicians sometimes comment, “I would rather work with a patient who prays!”
All in all, the mental and emotional outlook of the patient is now widely recognized as important to his physical well being. It is now being recognized by scientists who are working with disease and physical difficulties on the physical plane.
The power of love is less widely recognized, but it is beginning to be known. As more people apply the laws of love to healing the body and to maintaining health in mind, body and affairs, love power will become increasingly significant in the overall treatment of physical disease.
A loving, joyous, confident attitude can be cultivated. And it will be cultivated if you want to enjoy health.
For every physical problem, there is a cause, and for every cause there is a cure. Even patients who have been considered incurable have been healed through the power of love. When you are freed from the cause, you are freed from the condition. And love frees you from the cause, whatever it is.
Love will free you from all confinement in wrong thinking of the past, and when it does, it will also free you from the results of wrong thinking, feeling and acting. That is the law of freedom.
Learning to love, freely, joyously, with good will toward all and a healthy respect for your own higher self, will make you well. It has to express as health, because that is the nature of love.
“What’s Eating on You?”
Negative thoughts and emotions, held very stongly over a period of time, will express in the body.
You may discover the cause of some particular problem by considering these questions.
What’s eating on you? Who is the matter with you? Where is your faith?
Fear and worry can literally eat on a person, through tension and anxiety, until they express in his body.
Resentment and anger can so fill one’s mind that they literally eat away the good in his life, affecting eveything from his physical condition to his ability to think clearly, even his relationships with other people who have nothing to do with the cause of his anger or concern.
Preoccupation with a certain person as a source of irritation or frustration is bound to have unpleasant consequences — in mind, body and affairs.
A strong faith in wrong ideas, wrong conditions and so on will find its way into every phase of a person’s life. It will express as difficulties, deformities and disease.
But all of these conditions, and many more, can be healed by the power of love. And when the thoughts and emotions are healed, the body and affairs are healed by the normal processes of nature.
Love does not fear the future, because it puts its trust in good — not in the wishy-washy way of hope, but in the firm strength of faith. Where there is love and a sense of oneness with all good in the universe, a feeling of good will toward all people, there is nothing to fear.
Worry and anxiety never accomplished any good, anyway. Fear never did anything but attract more of the thing feared. So don’t let these old bugaboos haunt you and gnaw away the good life, or even the cells of your body. Release worry, fear and anxiety. Replace them with love, and let the intelligent mechanism of your body complete the healing work.
As for resentment and anger, you can’t afford them. Forgive —for your own sake. You may feel that what another has done to you is wrong and should be punished. But who is punished most when you hold on to feelings of unforgiveness? You, of course.
Holding on to old resentments can cause everything from nervous tension headaches to cancer. Releasing these resentments, dissolving them in love, can bring healing of even the most serious condition. This is the way of love.
Even those memories which you feel you can never forgive, you can, and you will, when you learn to love. It is a matter of deciding which is more important, to indulge that old human anger or to be free to express health and joy in a new atmosphere of love and peace. It’s up to you. No one else can heal you. The doctor can only help the healing process when you work with him.
Even if one particular complaint is cured, if you continue to hold on to resentment, there will be another difficulty, and another, and another, as long as you refuse to dissolve past differences in love.
In many cases the healing takes place in you, where no one can see the gradual restoration of your equilibrium in thinking and your faith in the good in the universe. No one may ever know the difficulty you have experienced, and the healing that has taken place. But you will know. And when you do, you will truly realize the impact of the power of love, because it happened to you!
Love believes in goodness— in all persons, even in yourself. It has faith in the outworking of good in every situation, no matter how challenging. It holds fast to harmony and peace, regardless of appearances. And it heals. The things that are impossible to the resources of the human being, expressing in his limited human way, are possible to love, which is above and beyond the highest intellectual understanding of one’s mind but within him, as close to him as the God-given process of breathing.
The “Little Voice” Speaks
When you learn to love in the highest, deepest sense, you will learn something else from this inner teacher.
You will learn that your body is a gift, but it is actually more of a precious charge than an outright gift. You cannot abuse it and expect it to continue to serve you well. Neither can you expect healing, under the laws of love, if you continue to overeat, overdo and generally disregard your body’s needs.
Love teaches you to use your body wisely, and to respect its requirements, so that it can serve you well.
A part of accepting your God-given ability to be healthy, strong and vital is cooperating with God’s laws of health — in other words, respecting your body, making use of its strength and power, while caring for it under God-direction.
Many times you are given, from within, directions in the use of your physical vehicle of expression. Maybe the voice of love within says it is time to rest. You then choose whether you will stop and follow the instruction, or ignore it and work past the point of physical exhaustion.
Love works through guidance from within, and even this tremendous power cannot overcome the strain you cause when you go against the guidance.
You cannot expect your body to serve you well unless you are willing to respect its needs. And respect is one of the expressions of love. It isn’t necessary to pamper and coddle yourself, but you must be willing to take reasonable care of your body for the best results. Instructions for this reasonable care will come to you from within, if you will listen.
A man was mowing a large lawn on a hot day. He had been working on the steep slopes for some time when he came into the house and told his wife, “This little voice inside told me to come in and have a glass of milk.”
When the little voice spoke, he listened and obeyed. In a short time he went back out and Finished the job he had started, given a new momentum by the renewal that he knew he needed at that particular time.
How many people could avoid heart attacks and other difficulties by doing the same!
There is a little voice in you, whether or not you have ever listened to it. It is a voice that is constantly instructing you, reminding you, urging and directing you in the right use of your God-given facility, your wonderful body. This is the voice of love, a voice that must be heeded if you are to express perfect health.
Maybe you have heard it on occasion, but ignored it so often that it became dimmer and dimmer until you are no longer aware of its warnings and directions.
If you are willing to love the whole idea of your wonderful body, you can learn to listen to the directions from within, and as you do, they will become stronger again, more easily heard even in the clamor of human demands.
You can begin to heed the inner knowing that tells you it is time to stop and renew your strength. You can pay attention when something in you suddenly says you have eaten enough or that you are eating the wrong foods. If you ignore these instructions, you may be doing your body great harm, while mentally wishing for greater strength, health and vitality.
The little voice speaks for you alone. It is well to learn to heed it, because the little voice is the voice of love, and love is a healer!
© 1986, Winifred Wilkinson Hausmann
All rights reserved by the author.
Reprinted with permission.
