The
Paul Solomon
Lecture Series

The X-Factor in Healing

From the Tape Set, "If You Would Be Healers" By Paul Solomon
(Note: Visit The Paul Solomon Source Reading excerpt,
LESSON OF THE TOMATO PLANTS, that is referenced in this lecture.)

I spent the first 33 years of my life being orthodox, conforming to the rules of others, including those of the church. That lifestyle worked for me until I became fed up with a God who ruled through fear and havoc. At that point, I decided to get even. I spent the next five years showing him who was the boss. I lost the battle, but you might say I won the war because at the end of that period, an extraordinary thing occurred.

I discovered a new world that had not existed for me previously. To this point, I had lived as a classic victim. My experience was not unusual since everyone around me lived life the same way. I was unhappy most of the time, meaning I usually wished that things were different. When I was happy, I often felt guilty about it. After all, I was living in a terrible world that was getting worse all the time. This was confirmed by the media, the daily news, the preachers, my neighbors, my colleagues. Additionally, almost everything that was fun was illegal, immoral, fattening, or all three. Apparently, the purpose of life was not to enjoy it. I was supposed to be serious, responsible, concerned, rational, logical, and mature. Things were important. I was supposed to apply myself diligently to making money, so I could buy things, so I could be successful, so I could be adult. Of course, I had all the attendant diseases. I got sick every winter as soon as the advertisers announced, “I’'s the cold season.” I got headaches and backaches due to stress. I developed high blood pressure due to lifestyle. I was right on track with the rest of the collective race.

Then, unexpectedly one day, I made an extraordinary discovery. I realized that there is more to my mind than I had ever suspected, or had ever used. I had been taught that my mind comprises the five external senses of my body, collecting and storing information, calculating and computing responses. We make an observation, we make a comparison, and we draw a conclusion - rational, logical, deductive, conclusive reasoning. Most of us have been taught, or have assumed, that this is all our mind can do.

There came a time for me when the answers that I needed would not come through this function of the mind. I had questions for which I could not find the answers. Eventually, I became desperate, so desperate that another function of the mind revealed itself to me.

I discovered that if I would shut up and listen, if I would stop my mind and thoughts, I could get answers another way. I call it intuitive reasoning instead of conclusive reasoning. Instead of logically figuring things out, I simply listened, and received answers. I discovered that there is a consciousness that is the source of our planet, that knows how the planet was made, knows how things operate on this planet, knows what the universal laws of this planet are. That intelligence that made the planet also made your mind. Your mind had an origin. It came from somewhere. The source of your mind must be a greater mind. The source of your mind must know how your mind works. It is logical to assume that the source of your mind is capable of communicating with your mind.

As children, we are taught to use our mind in a specific way. Every classroom teacher has a similar curriculum that calls on a particular function of the mind. We are taught that anything beyond that is “just your imagination,” is unreliable, superstitious, unacceptable. In that way, specific limits are set on our ability to gain information. We grow to adulthood having dismissed the other, unexplored powers of the mind.

Fortunately, science is beginning to address functions and powers of the mind that we previously did not even dream possible. This may be the most exciting generation of this planet’s history because of discoveries concerning our minds and bodies.

Personally, I discovered an ability to communicate with the rest of my mind, the source of my mind. I like to call this greater mind the “cause mind” or the “source mind.” The reasoning is this: the mind that I have ordinarily identified with, the mind that I have believed was the limit of my mind, is a result of brain activity. That is what scientists have told us. But the originator or creator of the mind, the source mind, must be the cause of the brain activity, the cause of the result.

So, there is a result mind, and there is a cause mind. If these two enter into a conversation with one another, extraordinary things can happen to the individual. That is what meditation is all about-teaching the result mind to be still long enough to listen, from time to time, to the cause mind, to its source. If we refer to that source in religious terms, we can call it God. If we prefer to avoid religious terms, God will not be offended since She has no ego.

As I began to talk with this source mind, I could get answers that were previously unavailable to me. I received answers that were meaningful and applicable to my life, and that worked for me. One question I asked was about healing. I believed that there were people who could heal others. I wondered if this ability was something that an individual was born with, a gift that some people have and others do not. I wondered why there was the differentiation. Perhaps God liked some people better than others. Or was it something that could be learned and developed? If it could be developed, then how? I asked the question of my source mind.

Four of my friends joined me in asking my source mind this question concerning healing. We waited for the answer. “If you want to be healers, let each of you go out and buy two young tomato plants,” instructed my source mind. “Love one, and hate the other. The one that you love will grow, and thrive, and produce fruit. The one that you hate will begin to wither and die. And when it starts to wither and die, then, learn to love it as well. If you can cause the dying tomato plant, then, to revive and produce fruit, you can heal a human being in the same way.”

Excitedly, we all rushed out and bought tomato plants. Ten of them. We brought them home, set them out on the back porch, watered them, fed them, gave them plenty of sunlight. And as instructed, we loved one and hated the other - until they all died.

Undaunted, we assumed that we had over-watered them. Back to the store we went. We bought ten more tomato plants. This time, we asked the man at the plant store lots of questions. Back home, we gave the plants nitrogen. We carefully controlled the water. We gave them just the right amount of sunlight. We loved one and hated the other. And they all died again. By now, we had killed twenty tomato plants!

At this point, three of the participants decided they did not want to be healers after all and dropped out of the experiment. The other two of us went back to the store, bought four more tomato plants, and brought them home. This time, I decided to love both my plants, thinking that perhaps the hate was rubbing off onto the second one. In fact, I decided to love all four plants, just in case. It did not help that my father raised tomato plants successfully every summer-hundreds of them. He did not love them. He did not hate them. He did not read about soil content. He just set them out, and they grew like crazy. And he went on vacation every year with the money they made.

I wondered what was wrong with me. Was God warning me not to try healing a human? Would I have the same luck as with my tomato plants? Feeling paranoid, I set the four plants out, and we watched them lovingly. This time, they actually grew a little taller before they died. That was enough! The experiment was over! I decided to ask my cause mind different kinds of questions. From that point on, I would ask questions about meditation and spiritual growth. At least I could not kill anything that way.

Important issues have a way of reappearing, though. One day, I was in a plant store with a friend of mine. He and his wife had an apartment full of plants, thriving and beautiful. Their home resembled a garden and was a wonderful place to visit. I wished that I could nurture plants to grow in that way, but I knew it was impossible. I was certain I would kill them. So, my house was without a single plant. On this day, here we were at the plant store. My friend was picking out plants to purchase. I looked about too, wishing that one of these plants would be safe with me.

Then, I spied a display of cactus, and I thought, “Who could kill a cactus? Well, if anyone could, I probably could. I decided to buy two, just in case.” Then, I thought, “Oh, no. If they both die, I’ll never forgive myself.” So, I bought two dozen. They could not possibly all die. I took them home and created a miniature desert in a beautiful dish with many fascinating variations of cactuses. It was wonderful. “To be safe,” I decided, “I’m not going to love it, and I’m not going to hate it. I’m going to stay away from it. I’m not even going to come near it because I don’t want to kill them. I’ll just leave them alone.”

I attempted to stay away from my wonderful, miniature desert, but was continuously drawn back to enjoy its beauty. After a few days, I realized that I could not avoid those plants. I cared about them, and I wanted to look after them, to enjoy them. I also realized that I was drawn to some more than others. As I cared for them, I realized that certain ones meant more to me and that I would not be terribly upset if certain ones died. There was one that was my favorite.

Suddenly, a little bell went off. I realized that I had never loved nor hated any of the tomato plants. I was doing an experiment, and love is not an experimental thing. You cannot turn love on and off. You cannot use love for experimental purposes. I believed that I felt real love for some of my cactus plants, but I never loved any of the tomato plants. Never hated any either. I was simply indifferent to the tomato plants. They probably had died from over-watering. The principle of loving, which my cause mind had discussed, was seemingly more complex than I had realized. What did I really know about loving something, or someone, in such a way?

As I watched healers at work over the next few weeks and months, in conferences and workshops, it seemed sometimes that they were most interested in being known as healers. At times, their consciousness seemed to be more on themselves than on the patient. I wondered who was giving whom energy. Was the healer taking the attention of all the observers and participants by drawing attention to his skills? Was he taking valuable energy from the patient, energy that the patient needed to get well? By claiming, “I am a healer,” was he not focusing attention on himself, perhaps at the expense of others? Every human being needs love, attention, and positive energy, including the healer. But in these instances where the healer was receiving acclaim and attention, what was happening for the patient?

As I considered all these things, I understood that the caring and the concern of the healer for the patient must be genuine. My caring must be real. And it must be greater than my concern for my success as a healer. I can never lose sight of the primary goal, which is the well-being of the one I am caring for, the patient.

At this point, I discovered that the X-factor in healing is love. As I genuinely love someone, so effectively that my caring moves as an energy, from me to them, it carries a force that is a healing mechanism.

Right now, as you are reading these words, some interesting things are occurring. Cells are dying in your body. You are dying as you read. But there is no need for alarm because, simultaneously, new cells are being born. There is a factor present in you right now that is creating new life out of death.

You have a source, an intelligence, that knows how to make a body, knows how to make a brain and a mind. You have a source that knows how the body functions. It was there at the beginning. It designed your body and made it. Furthermore, that intelligence is still with you now and is active. As you read this, that intelligence is remaking your body, cell by cell, producing new life out of old. Your source is within you and has always been there, since the beginning of your time.

This source of life, the source that makes new cells out of dying cells, is the healing source. It is the power that produces all healing, of whatever nature, whatever kind. It is the source of all healing. If you should scratch your finger in these moments, you would probably feel pain, and the pain would attract your attention to your finger. Because you care, and because the pain focuses your caring, your caring is likely to go to the point that needs that energy. That source energy is carried to that point and is focused there, concentrated there, and causes healing to begin.

It is an observable fact that if you do not care about life, that healing process will be considerably slower. If you are tired of living, if you are disgusted, if you are depressed, that healing process will be considerably slowed and less effective. Caring, caring for yourself and for life, is a primary factor in self-healing. Love. Love for self. Love for your body. Love for life. Where that is present, healing is accelerated. Then, love, that caring for life, is the X-factor, the carrier that delivers that source energy, the energy of life, to a focal point to cause healing.

What if I can care more for you than for me? Then, that same energy that would repair the cells of my finger can leave me and go to you and participate in the process of healing in your body. Caring for someone else more than ourselves is a valid process of communicating a healing response. Can you move your caring from yourself to another? Can you move the process that builds your own body and lend that to someone else to increase their ability to respond?

There are those, of course, who will say that the process is simply psychological, that the patient knows that the nurse cares, thus stimulating a healing response. If I can communicate to you that I love you, perhaps that does cause the healing process. And perhaps there is not a mysterious energy that moves from my body to yours. It does not matter.

If genuine caring has the power to accelerate the healing process, then it is that that we must develop as healers. I personally believe that anyone who can learn to love on that level can learn to heal. If genuine caring has the power to accelerate the healing process, then it is that that we must develop as healers. Anyone who can learn to love on that level can learn to heal. The most important factor in doing that is security with self. Unless I am secure in my own love, it will be difficult for me to forget about myself, to love you more than me. The ability to love you at that level begins with self-appreciation. If I am afraid that I am unacceptable, I will be busy trying to prove something to you, and I will draw energy from you. That will oppose the healing process. If I want to share healing, with myself or with another, I must begin by accepting who and what I am.

It is likely that disease exists before it is ever discovered in the physical body. For example, if you have a problem in your marriage, or any other relationship, you already have a dis-ease. This is the point at which disease needs to be diagnosed and treated. If not, you will embody it. You will find a way to put the stress of that difficult relationship into your body. You may put it into the muscular system first, which is going to distort the skeletal system, which is going to distort the circulatory system and the nervous system. You do not know how it will eventually reveal itself. Perhaps in the kidney. Then, you have a symptom that is observable. The next step is to take your body to a body mechanic and tell him, “Fix it.”

What will he do? He will look at your kidney. He will not ask you, “Are you having a problem with a relationship?” He will fix your kidney if he can. Then, he will give you back your body, so that you can go back to your argument with your partner - and develop another symptom in another part of your body. This is how we keep the body mechanics employed. That is not healing. That is the treatment of the result of illness, but it is not the correction of illness.

Each of us has been given a wonderful instrument - intricate, delicate, complex, and highly responsive. It is responsive to our thought process, to our communication process. It is especially responsive to the food we put in it, and to stress. It is most responsive to caring. You were given an instrument and told, “Love it.” Your body needs love. It needs attention. It needs caring. Chemical changes take place within the body when it receives attention. It gets excited. Depending on the quality of that attention, the result in the body may be of a healing nature, or it may be destructive. If it is destructive attention - if it is hurt, or hate, or fear - the chemical response is going to be destructive in the physical body.

Imagine a world where the practice of healing is elevated to a level where we heal our responses, our communications, our relationships with self and each other, before disease ever shows up in the physical body. I believe that such a world is not only possible, but that it is our natural state. We can begin right now by communicating with one another, and loving one another, and relating to one another in such a way that we do not put the stress of our relationships into our jaws. Do you know that you can exert forty pounds of pressure with your jaws when you are tense? And do you know what that pressure does? It sends stress all the way down your spine and into the rest of your body.

Then, of course, you take your body to a body mechanic, and he works on your lower back. He may even successfully ease some of the tension. But does he ask, “Where did that tension come from? Why were you grinding your teeth? What made you so anxious that you did this to your body?” Why do our body mechanics not treat disease at its level of origin?

You have a body that is amazingly capable of adapting to the things that attack it. There are enough carcinogens in this room to kill us all. But we are not getting cancer, are we? There are enough disease-producing organisms in the mouth of any one of us to kill us all. If it is germs and bacteria and microbes that cause disease, why are we not all sick right now? Perhaps because we are not under the right condition at the moment to take on that kind of problem. Perhaps we have not produced the weakness necessary for disease through our relationships, our communications, through the way we live our lives.

Disease starts in the way we live and the way we think. Nutrition plays a role. Sanitation plays a role, the control of bacteria, germs. But even the best nutrition may not be enough when faced with the stress factors that we are capable of creating. We need to begin by giving our body exactly what it needs. It needs love. It needs love as much as it needs food. It needs love as much as it needs air. And it will insist on receiving love. If it does not receive love, it will seek attention in some other form. We all have ways to make people pay attention to us. If your relationships with your husband, wife, children, parents are not loving, it is certain that you have found a love substitute - something to take the place of the love you really want. You have found a way to gain attention, and it may be destroying your relationships.

Do you know that we, as average humans, will accept disapproval, anger, even hate, as a love substitute? We will not be fulfilled, but our craving for attention will be temporarily satisfied. Meanwhile, we will embody the anxiety created in those situations. The result will be symptoms of illness. Then, we will attempt to correct those symptoms without treating what created them.

To correct the cause of the symptoms, you must begin with your most personal and intimate relationship, your relationship with yourself. You have a body that needs love. Has it ever occurred to you that you should love it, in spite of the fact that you have been taught it is not alright? Do you ever look at your body and say, “Wow! Perfect!”? Do you tell your body, “You’re a miracle! You’re beautiful!” if society, or your partner, says you are not? What has true beauty got to do with an elite standard of aesthetics? The human body comes in assorted sizes, shapes, contours, colors, with all sorts of accessories. And every single one of the six billion is fascinating. If I stood here before you naked, and I may be the most distorted of all, would you not be fascinated? Of course, some of you would not admit to being interested. But the fact is that the body is fascinating.

Your body is so fascinating to you that you have probably spent hours studying every inch of it in mirrors. Your body is intricate, delicate, complex and highly responsive, wonderful and fascinating. And you should admit it. You should accept the truth and begin to live accordingly. Begin to feel good about the miracle you are walking around in. Accept your body, own it, make it yours, and stop comparing it to some other, saying, “I wish I looked like that,” while disapproving of yours. Guess who is listening. Do you realize that your cells have consciousness? They will be hurt. Do you think that is not possible? Do you think that is something a child would believe? Well, wake up! You had better believe that it is possible. You can cause chemical changes in your body by disapproving of yourself.

This does not mean that we should just accept what we are without thought to improvement or continued growth. Improvement works best when joined with self-acceptance. Accept your body, love it. Give it your attention, give it your love, give it your affection, give it what it needs. Why in the world would you choose to deprive your body of what it needs most? Make it yours and talk to it sweetly, with endearment. Let it know you care. End the disapproval that will stop you from being effective. If you want to lose weight, be where you are now, first. Know that you are beautiful as you are now, and start there. Drop the disapproval, the hate, the hurt that are love substitutes, like every other addictive substance.

Become interested in your body and its processes. Becoming interested will create a difference in your health. If you have a health problem, get to know it. Get to know what part of your body is affected and how that part functions. What does it look like and how does it relate to other parts of your body? What is it supposed to do? Your doctor does not have time to get to know your body intimately because of the economics of medicine. Doctors may know cadavers intimately, but you are not one yet. Your body differs from every other body slightly. So does your history - what you eat, your level of exercise, your environment and circumstances, and most important, your relationships and communications.

Ultimately, you are responsible for your body. Do not leave your healthcare in the hands of a doctor, thinking, “He will take care of everything. I don’t have to worry about it.” Medical doctors, chiropractors, naturopaths, osteopaths, dieticians, healers, whoever you choose, can only supplement your relationship with your body. If your relationship is not right with your body, no matter how good your healer is, you will counter his or her efforts. Your body will continue to express what is out of balance in your life.

If you do not have a right relationship with your life, your family, your body, your work, your food, your existence on this planet, you will embody those imbalances. And you will build disease. You have a responsive instrument. It responds to your thinking and your action. It cannot do otherwise. Even if the response that is disease is corrected, healed, your body will find another way to express the problem in your relationships. Ultimate healing is a correct relationship with yourself, with your source, and with others. A right relationship with life will be reflected in your physical body, in the joy of living.

It is alright to enjoy being on this planet. We have all been taught that, as adults, it is proper to be concerned, responsible, serious. It is appropriate to wear a serious look, with furrowed brow. If you walk down the street laughing and smiling to yourself, or worse, talking and giggling to yourself, thoroughly enjoying your own company, society will worry about you. Unfortunately, being responsible, concerned, serious, mature adults really means being worried. If you are not worried, or at least pensive, you are not serious enough about life. You are not a responsible, mature adult.

Consider this. If God had not meant for us to have a party, if God had not meant for us to really enjoy ourselves on this planet, surely He would not have expressed His sense of humor in so many of us. Perhaps the place to begin is to stop holding God responsible for our dis-ease. We take everything seriously, and become worried and concerned. We embody this distress, and then, expect our doctors to search our inner recesses for a result of what is happening on the outside. Why not externalize the process? Why not develop a group of doctors who treat the way we interact with each other and the way we interact with life, saving us from disease before it develops inside us, before they have to cut us open to find it?

Why not begin with a healthy relationship with self? Your body may not be in its optimum condition right now. It may not be where you want it to be. However, it is absolutely true that your body is functioning perfectly, even if it is diseased. Perfect health is the ability of the soul to experience exactly the symptoms it most needs at any given moment, to respond to those symptoms, to release them, and to move on to new experiences. You do not have to be symptom-free to have perfect health. You only have to respond appropriately to the message of the symptoms. Your body uses symptoms to send you a message. It is up to you to learn the language and decode the messages. Let me give you a hint. Look for clues to decoding the messages in your relationships, your communications, your emotional responses to life, your ability to feel gratitude for life.

Begin by appreciating what you are and what you have, right now. Look at your body, accept it as it is, whatever its condition, and be grateful. However terrible your experience of the conditions and symptoms, it is still responsive, still fascinating, still exceptionally wonderful. Begin to believe in that, knowing that your body is responsive. Your body will begin to respond to your new beliefs about it, and you will witness a difference. Begin there.

Of course, there are always other options. I spent 33 years living a soap opera - a very sad tale about a terrible world, getting worse all the time. Viewed through a conservative, dogmatic Southern Baptist lens, the world appeared evil. At last, I decided to change the script. I decided to enjoy myself. I began to look at the world in a different way. My world that had been evil, fearful, destructive, and doomed changed to a world that was exciting, adventurous, full of new information, and getting better all the time. That change in perspective had physical effects as well. I literally began to feel differently. I experienced life differently. I developed a new responsibility for my body. I used to take it to body mechanics to get it fixed when things went wrong. Now, I take responsibility for the way it works.

It is possible to make a decision, in this moment, that will alter the course of the rest of your life. When every moment that follows is a confirmation of that decision, life changes dramatically. Accept your life, in this moment, and build a healthy attitude toward your circumstances, including the people around you.

The people in your life need love - your family, your boss, your coworkers, especially those people who pretend that they do not. People who lash out with hurt and hate and gossip are hurting. People who are unloving are displaying symptoms. And you can be a healer. How valid is it for a healer to look at a patient and say, “I don’t want to be around you. You’ve got symptoms.” That is what we tend to do with the people who are expressing the most symptoms, the ones who lash out in anger, but who are really saying, “I need love desperately.”

You are a source of love, a generous source with ample supply for a whole world. Begin by loving yourself, and go from there.

Because the healing process is a process of love, it is probably important that you fall in love with every organ of your body. That requires that you get to know the organs of your body very, very intimately. Know what they look like. Know how they function. Know their functions so thoroughly that you can close your eyes and actually see a portion of your body and know precisely what is occurring there. You may visualize it incorrectly. Perhaps you will not know exactly what every cell is like. What is important is that you care what every cell is like. Form an image of how you think the organs, the glands, the cells appear as they go about their work, their function. Get in there. Visit your heart. If you have a heart problem, get to know your heart and try to see how that problem looks, in intimate detail.

You have consciousness that is involved in cell building. The process is unconscious, but the consciousness that fulfills that process lives within you. That unconscious process is influenced by the stresses of life, and it uses them in building cells. That is how disease occurs. If you can change what is occurring in your life, you can change what is used to build your new cells. This may be the most effective technique of healing in existence, the patient’s conscious participation in the function of the organs and glands, and the building of cells, in his or her body.

That is ultimate responsibility, participation in the renewing of your own body. It is common to take care with your nutrition, to manage your activities responsibly, your exercise, etc. Take the next obvious step by considering the way you think. Spend time each day with the body processes, instructing your consciousness in how to build healthy cells, how to build healthy glands, organs, tissue, and systems. Visualize this taking place and know that you are consciously participating in building and repairing the functions of your body. Finding the time may not be the biggest obstacle-loving yourself may be. Visualizing a perfect body will require that you care for yourself, that you love who you are, just as you are.

It is perfectly alright for you to sit for a few minutes each day and tell yourself, “I love me. I love being me.” If you have not yet loved being you, try it. See what it feels like to just enjoy being you instead of wishing you were somebody else. Whatever state you are in, whatever your attractiveness, or talent, or personality, you are still your own best friend. Make a decision to love being you. Say, “I love being me!” And say it often enough to convince yourself.

Do not pretend to love being you. Really love being you. You have every right, and every reason, to love being you, to enjoy being who you are, to have fun with you, and to appreciate how fascinating you are. Spend time with you. Learn to receive love from you. You have to have love in order to live. And since people around you are preoccupied with getting the love that they need, it makes sense that you be responsible for loving you.

We all need approval. We work for approval. We work to succeed in order to get other people to tell us that we are alright. We seem to think that we have to earn the right to be alive. We look to others to give us the approval that tells us we have earned the right to be alive. But there is a problem inherent in that plan. I am trying to get all these people to tell me that I am alright, while all these people are preoccupied with getting me to tell them that they are alright. And somehow, it never quite happens for either one of us. Hardly anyone is told that they are alright.

You struggle to get people to tell you that you are alright, but not too obviously. Often, if you want someone to notice you, you become silent. You become somber, and serious. The other person thinks, “Uh-oh, wonder what’s wrong with her?” Of course, you really want him to say something wonderful. But instead, he is thinking, “Mmmmmm, better not say anything.” So, he becomes silent. You respond by becoming quieter. Until finally he says, “What’s wrong?” And you say, “Nothing.” “Want to talk about it?” “No!”

We cannot communicate our need for acceptance, approval, and love because we have been taught that it is not alright to say to somebody, “I need for you to tell me that you love me. I need your attention, your love, and your acceptance. And I need it now.” We are taught that it is inappropriate to say those things, especially men. What man ever asks somebody, “I need to be loved. Please tell me that you love me”? If a man ever has the courage to come up to you and say those words, please make the effort.

The truth is that no one can establish my alrightness but me. I have to give myself that alrightness. I have to say to myself, “I’m alright. I’ve decided it. I’m the authority on my alrightness, and I’ve decided I’m alright.” If I let you decide for me and you decide that I’m alright, I will not believe you anyway. I am the only one who can establish my alrightness. How do I do that? By accomplishing something? No, that will not work. That will only establish the alrightness of the accomplishment. But I still will not feel alright. Establishing alrightness is actually simpler than that. It only requires a decision, this decision: “I’m alright with me. And I don’t need any better reason for deciding that than the fact that I think I need it. I’m worth that decision.”

If I have decided that I am alright and I am not dependent on your establishing that for me, I can stop living my life for your approval. I can get on with the more important reasons for being alive. I can even devote time to sharing with you that you are alright. If we handle our security issues first, we rid ourselves of a lot of anxiety. We are no longer vulnerable to the many insecure and paranoid people that we encounter every day. We do not react to insults, gossip, or accusations-because we know better. We know that we are alright. If that person thinks otherwise, it is because he does not know me well enough yet.

If I am alright with me, I can function successfully in a world of people who have not established their alrightness. When they strike out with harsh words, when they miscommunicate, when they try to hurt other people, when they gossip, I know that I am not the target. Their actions and words have nothing to do with me. I am only witnessing symptoms in people who are in pain, and I do not need to be vulnerable to their symptoms. I do not need to take those things into myself. Their disease is not contagious. I can, instead, be a source of love, of life, of caring, of reassurance. I can give wholeness in return.

People who are alright with themselves have established a source of love to give to others, and they give freely. They give unselfishly because they do not have to prove that they are better than someone else. They are not on ego trips. They are secure. People who give themselves the time and attention that they need - while giving to others their caring, their concern, their love, while sharing healing with others - discover a different level of healing, a new level of preventive healing. This level of healing requires new kinds of relationships between individuals, a new kind of relationship with self, a new kind of relationship with life, where stress is not embodied.

At this level of healing, I notice difficulties in my relationships and my communications when they arise. I work to repair those difficulties while they still exist at that level, before they become embodied in my physical body and reappear as symptoms. If these difficulties do become embodied, rather than try to mechanically correct the physical symptom, I take the first step of feeling loved. How do I feel loved? Simple. I make a decision.

You are a source of love, a generous source with ample supply for a whole world. You have love to give. You can give it to yourself, and you can give it to others. Do that, and do it freely. Do it because you want to. Decide that it will be so. Decide that right now.

At the same time, decide to enjoy life. Decide to enjoy life because you want to. Realize that if you experience life as a miserable situation, you will make insurmountable problems for any healers attempting to work with you. It is very difficult to heal someone who is determined to be miserable. Of course, it is alright to be miserable. You can keep your disease if you want. If you insist on being miserable because it serves you to feel that way, your healer should simply let you have it. It is a good healer who does. No good healer should take away your disease until you are through with it.

If you have decided that you are ready to drop that and get onto something else, get onto some other form of entertainment, then, begin to look at the exciting aspects of this planet. It is a very interesting place. Get your mind on something else. Give yourself some things to do, to get involved in. Avoid becoming morbidly preoccupied with your symptoms. Get to know your body and how it functions in intimate detail. However, do not focus on knowing your symptoms and how they work. Get to know the correct function of your body, not the incorrect function. Visualize the right function. Encourage the right function. Build it through creative visualization and cause your body to respond by functioning in the right way. Spend only the time necessary for that, and then, focus your interest on other things. Use your time, your life, your energy, your interests constructively. Get interested in life. Enjoy living. If you can become a joyous person who is excited about life, in spite of your present life situation, you present to your healer an interesting, excited, joyous, loving person who is easy to love and easy to work with. Then, your disease ain’t got a chance!

Disease and pain find it uncomfortable to live in a joyous body, in a body that is loved and full of life. Disease tries to escape that kind of place because it is out of place, it is out of harmony with that place. That is a beginning of the healing process, a formula for self-healing. Decide to enjoy life, and look for opportunities to express that joy. Decide to love yourself, and tell yourself at every turn that you love and appreciate yourself. Appreciate the beauty of the years that you have and dwell on that.

If you are going to reminisce, remember beautiful experiences and relive them over and over. Avoid worrying and brooding on negative experiences. Remember that while you concentrate on negative experiences, your body is involved in building cells. And guess what it will use to build those cells? Reliving a negative experience, which you have used to build your symptoms, is not the way to heal. Fill your consciousness with things of beauty, of light, of love, of healing. Dwell on those things.

There was a wise healer who said it very simply and precisely. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” The truth is simple, very simple. A great, great master said it in the simplest way. Today’s teachers have to complicate it sufficiently for you to understand it.

The process of disease is not so simple as to be all in your mind. Those people who are ill are understandably dismayed by that concept. It is true, however, that the way you think will strongly influence your choice of your diet and your activities. When you love yourself, and life, making wise choices that assist the healing process will be considerably easier. You will be better able to cooperate with the healer when you believe, and accept, that you deserve to be well.

The process of self-love is a process of self-forgiving. If you have not forgiven yourself for everything you have blamed yourself for, all the mistakes you have made, those feelings of blame and guilt will continue to reinforce your negative symptoms, even when a healer begins to clear them up. You will grab those symptoms back if you feel you deserve them. Forgive yourself. Let the process of life be one of knowing that it is alright to make mistakes. Let your alrightness include everything you have ever done.

It is perhaps most important that you to develop a healthy relationship with your Source, with God. Sometimes, we do things that are wrong. We all make mistakes. We do things that preachers like to call “sin.” We even enjoy it initially. Then, guilt sets in, and we embody the hurt, the pain, the blame, and the guilt of all that. It is important for us to realize that our relationship with God is a lot like that of a parent and a child.

When a child does something naughty, he is able to really enjoy what he is doing, until he becomes afraid that the parent might have noticed. Then, he becomes convinced that the parent does not love him anymore, that the parent disapproves of what he did, and so, does not love him anymore. We have a tendency to think that God operates the same way. When a child has been naughty, is it true that the parent stops loving him? Is it likely that when we make mistakes, God stops loving us? In forming an attitude of forgiveness, it is important to separate ourselves from our actions, just as a parent must do with a child. We must avoid embodying age-old concepts of a punishing, fearful God that will build symptoms in our body, as well. Forget about God’s disapproval. Concentrate rather on how he adores you. He’s nuts about you! You are the apple of His eye. Let that be your experience of God.

It is important to develop a healthy, loving relationship with yourself, your Source, your family and friends, and with life itself. It is also important to develop certain abilities, the ability of concentration and visualization. These two abilities are important because they are the focus of the power of your creative consciousness. Your mind should be your servant, not your master. If it wanders from one thing to another, without direction, and you cannot focus on a particular point, your mind is not much use to you. You need to tame your mind by making it obedient. This will require that you spend time each day focusing on mental imagery. Learn to visualize by learning to see, clearly and distinctly, a particular thing.

Choose a meadow, a beautiful place. Create it. Build the ability to see it in detail until your mind obeys. In that act, you can develop both concentration and visualization. Having developed that ability to see - if you can see that meadow so well that you can discern a blade of grass casting a shadow on another blade of grass - you can turn that same visualization process toward healing your body. Visualize your body’s processes and travel through its system. Where there are processes not working appropriately, discover what they look like and correct your image. Spend time every day creating, in your mind, the correct image.

If you want to rebuild the health of your body through your consciousness, the opportunity is open to you, and it can be done. It is also true that the same thing can be done for another body, even at a distance. The process of healing, whether for self or for another, begins with self. Begin first with self-love, self-acceptance, right relationship with self, right relationship with your Source, with life. Forming a right relationship with the Source of life means realizing how wonderful you are, how fantastic your body is. If that sounds like a lack of humility, consider this. The Source of your life created a magnificent instrument. For you to deny that is not humility. It is a lack of appreciation.

Begin with appreciation for the magnificent instrument that you are. Admit the truth of it, and be grateful. Allow yourself to feel loved and approved of by your Source. Remember that if you have a wrong relationship with yourself, your relationship with your Source can be no better. If you feel guilty and blamed, if you feel sinful, you will build a relationship with a God that reflects those feelings. Many religious people have settled for that kind of relationship with their God. If, on the other hand, you find yourself beautiful, acceptable, alright, you will build a relationship with a God that finds you beautiful, acceptable, and alright. Your communication with that being will reflect the personal knowledge that you are loved.

Starting from that point, starting from feeling loved and alright, begin to believe that you actually deserve to be whole and healthy. If you have a disease right now, drop any questions you have about whether you deserve to be healthy or not. Just drop it, right now. Make the assumption that you do deserve to be whole, and healthy, and beautifully alright. Accept your personal right to be healthy. Then, love, and expect to be loved. Expect to be cared for. Accept the caring that comes from others, without resistance. Let caring - from yourself, from your Source, and from others - be applied to the systems of your body. Accept it. Enjoy it. Then, allow yourself to give it to others, as well, others who need your caring and love. As you heal yourself, you can give that healing to others. As you give your caring to others, you heal yourself. Make your love available. There is no greater power. The X-factor in healing, for yourself and for others, is love.

Copyright 1994, Paul Solomon Foundation