I turned 72 this weekend and don’t feel a day over 40.  Can’t do what I used to be able to do when I was 40.  But I can now do what I didn’t take time to do then, like read books and take long walks and afternoon naps . . . and write blogs.  I trust you will be moved to do something positive for your health reading this one.   

We’ve been focusing on changing consciousness as an alternative to drugs.  Drugs, of course, do not lead one on a path to health.  They simply mask the symptoms of disease until you remiss or else die.  The alternative to disease is health and vitality —  of body, mind, and spirit.  The word “health” means whole, and the word vitality means alive (vita is Latin for life).  To heal, then, means to make whole and vital —  or, as the English would say,  “hale and hardy.”  

The alternative to drugs is simply to heal the dis-ease that makes the medicine necessary. Make whole that part of yourself that is not at ease.  If it isn’t at ease, you can ask why?  That’s right, go ahead and ask your body why one of its parts is ill at ease. Then be quiet and listen for the answer.  It will come.  Your body knows everything about itself, and it cannot tell a lie.  But you need to be willing and prepared to hear the answer.  

My experience with most is they are not willing to accept an answer that requires them to make changes in their lifestyle, or take steps outside of their comfort zone.  People come to me for a fix — a more natural one than drugs, but nevertheless a fix.  They have been programmed by medicine to believe there is a magic pill for every ill, and they transfer that programming over to alternative health care only to discover that more than one nutrient or herbal pill is needed to reverse the dis-ease process. 

The problem with that kind of programming is that it’s a lie.  There’s not a pill for every ill, as one pill usually leads to another, and another.  There is a pill for every symptom, but not to cure every illness.  The only cure there is comes not from anything outside of ourselves but from within.  Heath begins within, as does dis-ease.  How healthy are YOU inside?  

Oh yes, I know there are external factors, such as air pollution and toxic chemicals in our water and food, that are constantly assaulting our immune system and polluting our blood stream.  And we don’t have organic produce in the grocery stores, and if we do it doesn’t look very fresh and is terribly overpriced.  Unless, of course, you live in a city with a Whole Foods market or have a backyard garden or farmer’s market in your town.  Then you have no excuse.

But health is not only about what you eat, drink and breathe.  Health is more about how your body handles what you eat, drink and breathe.  A healthy body handles it well, or at least okay, with a little support.  An unhealthy body doesn’t do so well and needs a lot of support — or more like propping up so it doesn’t fall over. 

You see, health is homeostasis.  Homeostasis is balance — balance between the chemicals in your body, and balance between you and your environment.  Have you ever walked a tight rope or a brick wall where you had to keep your balance by extending your arms?  It’s work, isn’t it?  It’s the same with health maintenance.  It’s work, especially if you’re starting from illness and working toward a cure and health.  You first have to establish balance right where you are, which is the only starting point. Health starts to kick in the moment you start balancing your lifestyle.  One has to get up out of sickbay, for example, take up one’s bed, and walk for a cure.  

That can be taken literally or metaphorically.  One’s “bed” can be one’s state of consciousness and/or one’s circumstance in life one is laying around in waiting for someone or somethings to come along and make things better, like in the Biblical story of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda who had been waiting some thirty-eight years for someone to lower him down into the pool as soon as the angel troubled the water.  The Master Jesus simply told him to change his consciousness and just get up and walk.  

A comic strip from Mad Magazine my son sent me some years back comes to mind.  It depicts a crowd of cripples waiting to cross a busy street in Lourdes on their way from a dip in the healing waters.  The pedestrian traffic light suddenly flashes “WALK” and everyone throws down their crutches and walks across the street shouting for joy.  But that’s about consciousness, isn’t it?   

So let’s talk about your state of consciousness first.  That’s about perspective and belief, how you view yourself, your world and life in general, along with what you believe to be true and false, good and bad, possible and impossible.  Do you believe more in disease and death than in health and life?  Is death more certain to you than life? They say there are only two things certain in life: death and taxes.  Do you believe that you and everyone else will one day die?  In your view, is disease and death inevitable?  If so, then that will be your experience.  But I tell you that death is not natural and was never intended to be part of life in the beginning when the perfect design for man and woman was made manifest in the flesh.  

What about yourself?  Do you believe you are mortal, imperfect, weak and “only human” and therefore prone to mistakes and failure?  Do you believe in the “germ theory,” or the “gene theory” that say tiny bacteria outside of you and microscopic molecules inside of you pre-determine your life on earth and stand between you and health and vitality?  Do you believe in your doctor and his medicine?  How do you know that your medicine is nothing more than a sugar pill.  

 (Now, don’t be suspicious of or mistrusting in your doctor, because sugar pills are proving to be as effective, if not more effective, than the drugs being tested, an unexpected – and unwelcome – outcome that has thrown a monkey wrench into pharmaceutical labs everywhere.  The moral in this story is: BELIEVE in your doctor and his medicine because it’s your belief that will heal your dis-ease and not the drug or the sugar pill . . . and when you wake up to that reality, you will know the truth, and you will no longer need your belief, because you will be free! Free of your limiting belief, for one thing, that a pill has the power to heal your body. You learn to believe in yourself and your body’s healing capacity.  To believe means to be willing.)

Good stuff, isn’t it? The human race is waking up to how things really work.  We are more powerful in determining our health than the most powerful “wonder drugs” when we see how easily they can be out-performed by a harmless sugar pill . . . or by something as elusive as one’s belief.  Does that not give you pause . . . and cause to change your consciousness?

Now, let’s take your circumstance.  Does your circumstance loom large and insurmountable?  Are you afraid of your environment?  By your perception, is the world a dangerous place to live?  Are you afraid your body will fail you in some way and that your health is a gamble?  Are you comfortable in your own skin or do you wish you were in some else’s skin and circumstance?  Do your finances dominate your life?  Does the economy determine your sense of security?  Do you fear that you, or we, will run out of money, or food, or water?  Are you afraid of losing your job or your home?  That’s a tough one to handle.  Fear of losing your health is another.   Fear, period, is a tough feeling to overcome, because it’s so self-defeating.  It can keep one from standing up for fear of falling back down.  Are you afraid of letting go of drugs?  Are you living in a survival mode all the time?  Does your life and well-being depend on your environment?

These are all questions that reveal us to ourselves, speak to our sense of self, make us look at how dependent we are on others and on our circumstances for our very survival. Only the fittest survive this world, and then only for a season.  Who does survive is the one who creates his or her world and takes full responsibility for it.  Are you a creator or a  creature?   Creatures come and go.  Creators are never born and never die.  We spend eternity creating worlds in which to live and enjoy caring for them.  Which are you?

You can see how much our perceptions and beliefs can determine our health and the quality of our lives.  That is, if we allow them to control.  We can change our consciousness and gain new perspectives that will allow us to see beyond our beliefs to possibilities of a life without fear and lack, without beliefs altogether, a life that is free of beliefs because we know the truth.  And the truth is, you are immortal.  No, not your human body and ego.  They are currently mortal . . . but they are not who you ARE.   YOU are an immortal being who will never die and cannot ever be sick.  YOU are rich with abundance.  YOU determine your life experience because YOU create it, moment by moment and day by day.  No, not your human ego, although it has played a manipulative role in fabricating a lifestyle of its own to make it feel secure, comfortable and important, but YOU, nameless and formless YOU, the only One who is capable of rising, taking up your bed, and walking.

How much impact do you think this level and quality of conscious thinking will have on your health and on your life?  Unless we start thinking in our hearts about living immortal lives here on earth we will never find out.  We do know how our past and present thinking impacts our health and our lives now.  Why not think the unthinkable, the “impossible,” and make it believable and possible, if not for ourselves then for our children and our children’s children.  The shift starts in consciousness . . . my consciousness. 

YOU are the cure of your’s body’s and mind’s dis-ease.  And when you heal the gap in your consciousness of separation between immortal YOU and your mortal capacity that allows you to live and function on the material plane of this planet, this universe, you heal your one and only dis-ease, the dis-ease of not knowing who you are and living a life of disconnection from Source, from God, or by whatever name you want to call the Giver of Life.  

That which separates also connects.  The moment you remember who you really and truly are, YOU are healed.  You heal the connection between your inner Self and your outer self. You are now whole.  From then on it’s just a matter of keeping your balance between the two worlds: the invisible world of spirit and the visible world of form.   In that state of balance you gain a new perspective that lets you see they are actually one.  Health is living in the place of oneness of heaven and earth.  From heaven, you see a world of abundance in the earth.  Nothing is impossible.  Or, to put it in a more positive light, all things you set your heart on are possible.  For, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. 

Want to lose weight?  Think it in your heart.  Want to heal your dis-ease?  Think it in your heart.  Want to change your lifestyle? Think it in your heart.  Want these things with all of your heart, so much so as to become them.  Otherwise you can’t have them.  They won’t come to you.  You have to love them to draw them to yourself.  And don’t be afraid of loosing your crutch and falling down.  It was said that perfect love casts out fear. You have to love being healthy in order to cure your dis-ease.  And you have to love doing what it takes to get there.  Otherwise, forget about it.  There’s no magic pill for passivity and lethargy.  You have to rise up in yourself, and as your Self, take up your bed, and walk.  Be still and know that you can do it.  

To your health and healing, 

Dr. Tony Palombo