It takes courage to admit our imperfections and our need for healing.

- S.E.Hodes

According to the way I was taught to practice medicine, treating and curing the patient was considered the ultimate goal.  The sick individual was viewed as a machine in need of repair.  Making a diagnosis using advanced technology, then prescribing the appropriate pharmaceuticals or invasive procedures were commonplace practices.  Healing was a concept considered quaint if not poetic. And certainly, the notion of courage was never even considered.  And why would it?  Only when the patient is understood to be a multi-dimensional, complex amalgam of mind, body and spirit could such a concept of courage make any sense.

In the real lives of patients, it requires that physicians acknowledge that healing is always a mutual experience.  A true healing encounter requires an act of mutual courage: each must be willing to dissolve the barriers that exist between individuals.  Fear must be allowed to dissipate if true healing is to occur.

As a physician, a gastroenterologist with over 25 years of clinical experience of caring for patients, I have pondered the difference between how I was trained to practice my profession and my present understanding of healing.  As a product of the traditional approach to medicine, I viewed the patient as a machine who was suffering from some undisclosed mechanical failure.  Why else would they be sitting before me in my office?  Certainly I was aware that anxiety or depression could exacerbate the symptoms of disease, but the extent to which the mind, body and spirit were united was unappreciated.

Gradually, as my own understanding evolved, it became crystal clear that all three elements co-existed, interacted and inter-related in a dynamic flow.  Since the term ‘healing’ referred to ‘making whole’, all aspects of the patient needed to be understood and addressed if true healing was to be accomplished.


Awareness of self is the first step

I also came to appreciate, to a far greater degree than I could have imagined, that my role as physician was to facilitate the body’s intrinsic and phenomenal ability to heal itself. But before I could educate my patients I needed a dose of awareness myself.  I began to ponder the nature of the human body: an amalgam of cells, organs and systems which flow and interact in a dynamic dance of unimaginable complexity and beauty. This realization arrived in my consciousness as an epiphany.  I recalled the molecular pathways that I studied in medical school which described how the body recognized injury or invasion and then addressed these occurrences with remarkable success. Although these mechanisms were not infallible, the truth that no one alive today could possibly reach adulthood without them was a powerful affirmation of their miraculous nature.  My previous mechanical knowledge gave way to a deep gratitude for the miraculous nature of the body to heal itself and a deep appreciation for the metaphysical aspects of this phenomenon.

Gradually, I began educating my patients to this truth.  As products of our culture’s mechanistic paradigm of disease, they would enter my examining room as if they were bringing their car to a mechanic.  Whether expressed explicitly or not, the attitude was, ”Fix me, you’re the doctor.”  I had to help transform that attitude and challenge them to participate in their own healing. 

For some it became a rather frightening concept to ponder.  It meant taking charge of their own mental/emotional/ spiritual state of being.  It meant facing their own demons.  It required the courage to see that their symptoms might be the tip of a deeper iceberg of discontent and disequilibrium; that their symptoms might very well reflect a deeper dis-ease of mind and spirit; that they would have to listen to what their body was telling them and come to terms with feelings and thoughts that had been previously denied or even repressed below conscious awareness.


Understanding the nature of healing

Before one can understand the nature of healing one must become aware of the spiritual nature of human beings.  While for some patients this means faith, religion and a belief in God, for others it may simply be a sense of connection to the ‘Universe’ or to ‘Spirit.’

The nature of the universal human attraction to religion and spirituality cannot be analyzed here.  Suffice it to note that it cannot be ignored in any discussion of healing.  There are great insights to be found in all the world’s traditions as well as many schools of metaphysics. Oftentimes, it is the search for relief from illness or imbalance that leads people to find their true spiritual path.

Protestant theologian Paul Tillich wrote about the courage all of us need in the face of life’s enormous existential challenges.  Fear is the primal human state of being.  We experience it as children as we confront the cold reality that we are unique, vulnerable and sensitive beings.  Thereafter, our lives seem to require a constant struggle against the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.’  We become defensive and over-reactive to] real and perceived threats from others. We fear intimacy and the expression of love for this exposes our inner vulnerability. For many this becomes an attitude that ranges from sadness and depression to hostility and outrage.

Such feelings form the substrate for disease itself. There is ample scientific evidence that peptide receptors reside on the vast majority of our body’s cell membranes.  These ‘molecules of emotion,’ as psychoneuroimmunologist Candace Pert (1997) reveals, explain how our feelings impact upon all aspects of cellular and immunologic function.  Healing often requires the courage to face that perception and the courage to choose to transform that feeling/attitude/belief into a mechanism for growth and equanimity.  How we cope with these ever-present challenges helps determine the quality of our lives.

There are powerful strategies which can unquestionably help us in our own internal struggles.  We need to learn, and really ‘get,’ that our minds do create our own realities and that courage is needed to face the challenge, to own up to that truth.  It is not easy, but ultimately it is the only path to internal peace and, yes, healing.


History

I began my metaphysical quest during my undergraduate years as a religious studies major.  How I managed to abruptly shift gears and plunge into the pre-medical track is still a bit of a mystery even to me. When asked why an avowed agnostic/atheist would devote such time and effort in metaphysical study, my response was: because the religious impulse and its ramifications on human history and behavior are ubiquitous and, therefore, fascinating.

My ninety-degree turn into the womb of science should have put to rest any consideration of a spiritual exploration. Yet as I approached and passed my fiftieth birthday, something interrupted my straight-line atheism — my exploration of Kabbalah.

It was not the study of this material itself which began to chip away at my shell of disbelief.  But coincident with this undertaking I began to meet individuals of a sober and indisputably honest nature who began to reveal to me highly personal experiences of a paranormal and spiritual nature. There was something so compelling and convincing in these personal anecdotes that I could not help but leap into examining them.

One quite dramatic example occurred after 9/11.  I was discussing my interest in spiritual and paranormal experiences with several nurses. Afterwards, one of them, Marie pulled me aside.  She revealed a fantastically realistic dream she had had of her Uncle Johnny, a Port Authority worker who had died during the 9/11 attack.  They had been particularly close throughout her life.  In the dream, Johnny is present at one of their family’s typical Sunday Italian dinners.  He appeared happy and looked healthy.  He expressed his love for her.  What was particularly strange was his attire.  In life, Johnny, had worn Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren type shirts exclusively.  In her dream he was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, black with yellow, orange and pink flowers.  The next morning she discussed the dream with her father, Johnny’s brother.  He started to choke up.  He explained that the day before, they had found Johnny’s car.  Only her father knew that he was planning a trip to Hawaii.  That exact shirt was in the trunk.

Another of my long-standing patients, Pat, had lost her husband Mike a few years before.  I would ask her whether she ever felt his presence, and she several times acknowledged that she had.  On one visit, however, she revealed something much more interesting.  ”I’ve been waiting to tell you this one,” she said. ”My daughter and I were driving in the car and we were speaking about Mike.  I started to feel my crucifix get warm and said out loud, ’Mike, cut it out!.’  You remember how he liked to kid me.  When I got out of the car my daughter noted that there was a red mark on my chest, under the cross.  It slowly faded.

This diversion from my orthodox practice of gastroenterology seemed, at first, to offer me some amusing, curious pieces of unexplained and unexplainable reality.  It stimulated me, however, to explore vast quantities of metaphysical, mystical and spiritual literature.  I recognized in the mystical traditions of all religions, also known as the ‘perennial philosophies,’ a common thread.  I also found kindred spirits in the rational explorations of William James MD, Lawrence LeShan PhD, Ian Stevenson MD, , Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, MD, Raymond Moody PhD, MD, Brian Weiss MDand many others.  (See some of my favorite references, below.) It was not their ‘doctorates’ that so impressed me as their rational attempts at elucidating metaphysical reality from their own scientific skepticism.

At the same time, I began to revisit contemporary science:  quantum theory, molecular biology, origin of life, mind and consciousness studies.  To my amazement, I began to see correspondences between all my studies.  Science was not capable of debunking what I had ‘heard on the street.’  Rather, science was deeply mired in its own metaphysical conundrum.  It was unable to put back the pieces of the mechanical universe it had so vigorously dissected, nor to consider modifying, much less relinquishing the mechanistic theories it had developed over the past four hundred years.  Yet I could clearly sense that the presence of spirit was hovering over the waters of humanity’s exploration of the unknown.

My metaphysical quest began to turn, as if by its own will, back to my practice of medicine.  Healing became the ultimate reason for my own journey and I began to see myself as a healer and not as a physician.  For the first time I came to understand what [w]holism meant.


Putting it into practice

I began to see each patient who sat in my examining room as a complex being with unique physical, psychological and spiritual needs.  This epiphany was almost overwhelming at first.  How could I possibly address all aspects of this individual?  How could I justify my claim to be a healer?

I found, however, that I did not need to be a perfect seer.  My efforts to engage their mind and spirit seemed to open up more opportunities for their own healing.  I soon realized that it was not what I was doing that was helping them, it was my being there, willing to share my own knowledge, participating in a process of healing rather than dictating to them from a position of absolute authority or wisdom.

Healing became a mutually beneficial encounter.  Although physicians are trained to remain objective and dispassionate in their patient encounters, I came to realize that the opposite was more effective. The more I allowed myself to become empathic, the more quickly the patient responded to my treatment. The more I opened myself to the healing encounter, the more I learned -- and the more I healed as well.

There was a long period of time in which the profound changes in the practice of medicine (HMO and government cutbacks, malpractice premium rises, red-tape issues) were slowly but inexorably affecting my attitude towards the profession and unwittingly also influencing my approach to my patients.  I found that my sessions with them were exhausting me physically and emotionally.  I found it difficult to listen to their complaints and was unaware of how my unrecognized anger at the system might be impacting my openness to their problems. But as my metaphysical awareness slowly transformed me, I began to understand that my role in the healing process was a spiritual gift to me.  I began to see my patients as honored participants in this process.  Without their appearing in my office, I could not realize my own spiritual growth.  As my heart softened to their suffering, I became aware that my own energy levels increased. The more I approached their problems from the perspective of mind and spirit as well as body, the more I was able to dissociate my frustration with the system from my role as facilitator for their healing process.  As I slowly began to open myself to the power of my role in the healing process, my own joy and satisfaction increased immeasurably.

In my practice, I realized that mind/body/spirit could no longer be separated.  Each needed to be addressed in order to accomplish the role that humans were here to do — help each other overcome fear through the connecting power of love — to heal one another.

What had been my profession alone now became much more.  Healing was not only for those designated by society to do so — it became each soul’s desire.  How did I validate this for myself?  Simply put, when I would attempt to truly reach out to another being I felt a joy that cannot be put in words.  It made terms like compassion, ecology, kindness, tolerance, and love seem almost trivial.

Healing became more than an occupation.  It became my attitude, a perspective, myunderlying paradigm for living.


References

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience, New York: Modern Library 1999.

LeShan, Lawrence. The Medium, The Mystic and the Physicist, New York: Helio Press 2003.

Stevenson, Ian. Children Who Remember Previous Lives, Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia 1987.

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Life After Death, Berkeley, CA: Berkley Press 1991.

Moody, Raymond. Life After Life, New York: Bantam 1975.

Pert, Candace B. Molecules Of Emotion, New York: Schribner1997.

Weiss, Brian. Many Lives, Many Masters New York: Fireside 1988.

© Steven E. Hodes, MD., 2006


Steven E. Hodes, MD is a board certified gastroenterologist with over 25 years private practice based in Edison and Old Bridge New Jersey. He also has a degree in Religious Studies and teaches Contemporary Metaphysics at Brookdale College as well as lecturing and writing on Kabbalah and Healing,  the Jewish View of Afterlife and on Near-Death Experience. Visit him at his daily Blog, Physician to Meta-Physician at http://www.meta-md.com/