The Journey: A Practical Guide to Healing Your life and Setting Yourself Free

A month? I didn’t have a month! I had less than three weeks left.

I felt as if someone had stuck a pin in my balloon. How could it be that he couldn’t see me? I was just so sure he was part of my journey—one of my signposts. So far everything had flowed so perfectly, so gracefully—as if I was somehow in “the zone” that so many athletes speak of. This couldn’t be right. I asked her if she was absolutely certain.

“Yes, I’m sorry—he’s completely booked.”

Deflated, I put the phone down, still somehow unconvinced. Two minutes later I redialed—“Could I at least speak to him?”

“He’s with a client.”

“Well, could you pass on my message?”

“I’ll let him know you called.”

That night at 10:45 I received a phone call beginning with a flurry of apologies for calling so late. “My name is Benjamin—I’m the cranial-visceral massage therapist you phoned.”

We talked until 11:00 P.M., and he said, “Listen, if you don’t mind coming at 7:00 A.M. I’ll fit you in for as many sessions as I can between now and your time to go back for tests. Can you make it that early?”

“I can’t afford not to. I’ll be there at 6:45.”

Though early mornings have never been my best times, I was thrilled to be actively working toward physically healing myself, and glad that things once more seemed back “in the flow” and on track.

At the end of the first session, Benjamin turned to me as I reached for my coat, and said, “You know, I don’t get the feeling that this is really going to be a problem for you; I almost get the feeling it’s already healing itself. I know it sounds crazy, because your examination is less than three weeks away, but I get the feeling you are going to get this thing handled!”

I practically repeated it out loud with him! What was this, a mantra? I shook my head, smiled, and waved goodbye—“See you tomorrow.”

Benjamin had given me the name of a very good colon therapist. I promptly followed this up, and got an immediate appointment. During our colonic session she felt around my belly and said, “You know, I get the feeling this is going to move out very quickly, but there’s some old emotional stuff stored in there that you need to let go of.”

“I know,” I mumbled quietly. I was already all too aware that although I was actively taking care of my physical body in preparation for the healing, I still had not yet addressed the emotional side—I had not got to the core of what created the tumor in the first place. I checked inside to see if I was avoiding facing the issue, and I honestly didn’t feel I was. I was just staying open and trusting I would be guided, and I hadn’t yet felt “called” or pulled to dive into the emotional cause of the tumor.

It took a lot of courage, and more patience than I was normally accustomed to, to keep trusting, as I was fully aware that time was marching on! That night I got a phone call from my dear spiritual friend, Kabir, in San Francisco. He happens to be an oncologist, a doctor who specializes in cancer, and I listened as he gave an hour’s earful of technical medical detail, most of which I ­didn’t fully understand. I kept feeling, “There’s got to be a reason I’m listening to all this.” Finally, toward the end of the conversation, he got out of doctor mode and back into friendship mode, and I was able to get a word in edgewise. I let him know that it was not my intention to go the orthodox medical route. I intended to try healing on my own before giving the surgeons a chance to cut me open, and I really wanted to get at the emotional issues that I knew were at the core of it all, and get the learning that this pelvic mass had to give me.

“Brandon, I just got an idea! You should come visit me for a couple of days; I’ve got this great bodyworker who helps people let go of the emotional issues stored inside while working on your body—it’s fabulous work. I go there myself about once a week. She’s magic! I really have got a lot out of her sessions.”

For a doctor, sometimes he sounded so dramatic, but something in what he said called to me, and besides, even if she wasn’t that brilliant, I could always go over to the local meditation center there, meditate, and attend some programs—plus I’d get a chance to hang out with Kabir and have some of our spiritual chats.

“I’ll see if I can get good flights. If not, then we’ll assume it’s not meant to be.”

As grace would have it, I got one of those super-duper special discount deals on two tickets to San Francisco only forty-eight hours later. It was only two and a half weeks before I had to reappear at the doctor’s office and here I was once again—TRUSTING, TRUSTING, TRUSTING!

I was delighted to find Kabir had already organized a couple of appointments for me. Being a doctor, he himself had next to no time to see me, which suited me fine as I had a feeling when I stepped off the plane that something important was going to happen in San Francisco.

I made an uncharacteristic decision not to go to Kabir’s home, but to book Don and me into a great little bed-and-breakfast inn just down the street from the therapist. Figuring I had only a few short days there, I thought I might like to rest between sessions and keep quiet and let myself heal. Plus, the bed-and-breakfast was virtually down the street from the meditation center, where I could go to meditate and sit in silence.

Some part of me instinctively knew that the time had come to face the music—to turn inward and keep to myself. I didn’t know how important that decision would turn out to be.

Chapter 7 (#ulink_3134e194-dcb3-5508-adbc-6354deed4768)

As I went up the steps to meet Surja, the massage therapist, something inside began to feel wobbly and a little scared. I wondered what that was all about, and dismissed it as I rang the bell.

A lady with a kind face answered. With very reassuring tones, she took me to her treatment room, which was warm and clean and somehow nurturing in a simple, homey way. I asked her what the teddy bears on the chair were for. “Oh, for kids when they come here. It makes them feel secure. Some adults like them too.” I smiled, and got the feeling that they were really there for the adults. It seemed a little quaint, but sweet, just the same.

She was burning some fragrant incense, and had pictures of a couple of spiritual masters she had studied with. Though massage was her speciality, I could see she had a great love of Spirit, and probably had the same thirst for learning that I do.

We got to chatting before we started, and I told her the whole story from beginning to end—that it was my firm belief that emotional memories are stored in the cells of the body and get passed on from one cell generation to the next, and that real healing begins when you let go of these cellular memories. I prayed, with all my heart, to finally face whatever was stored inside that tumor. I hoped she could help.

I admitted to her that, being in the mind-body field myself, I’d probably tried and done everything over the past twenty years. I felt I’d experienced every healing technique available, and figured I’d already handled all my emotional issues. So, when my belly kept growing and growing, it never occurred to me that there could actually be something seriously wrong. I had to admit that perhaps I’d grown arrogant—thinking it couldn’t happen to me.

I let her know something that I hadn’t shared with anyone else—how humbling it had been, and how ashamed I’d felt not only to find out how large the tumor had grown, but also to realize how long I’d stayed in denial. I just hadn’t wanted to believe that anything could be wrong with me, as I was supposedly doing everything right.

She stopped me to say, “You know, it sounds like you were doing everything right—it just seems to me like this must be some old stuff you need to get rid of.”

“But I feel like I’ve done every healing process on the planet!”

“Well, clearly your body doesn’t think so! The fact that your emotional stuff has manifested at the physical level must mean that you’re finally ready to face it and let it go.”

I knew she was right, and nodded in quiet agreement. It seemed apparent that we shared the same beliefs about health, and I felt very comfortable.

We continued swapping stories of various therapeutic practices, and laughed at some of the more ridiculous things we’d tried when we were younger. Then we began sharing our different spiritual realizations. About forty-five minutes slipped away before we both realized we were taking up precious therapy time.

Before we started I made a silent prayer that I would have the courage to face whatever was stored inside that tumor. I then opened and surrendered inwardly, and allowed myself to expand into the stillness that had been my constant companion throughout my journey. I knew instinctively it was definitely from the stillness that all the answers would come—not from my personality, and certainly not from my chattering mind. If my thinking mind was to have come up with the answers, it surely would have done so by now. As it hadn’t, my only route was trust: trust in a deeper wisdom, the wisdom responsible for making my heart beat, my eyes shine, my hair grow; trust in the infinite intelligence responsible for making my cells replicate; trust in the part of me that is awake when I’m asleep at night. I knew I would have to trust and surrender into my very essence—into the real me—into what felt like “home” to me.

As she began massaging me, I closed my eyes and felt myself relaxing ever more deeply into peace, and once again I had the experience of time standing still—my senses fully alive, and yet my mind completely at rest, with a presence of peace that seemed vast, without boundaries. I felt myself connected with everything.

While massaging, Surja suggested, “Why don’t you, in your mind’s eye, take some steps right down into your tumor and see what it looks like down there?” Her suggestion seemed so obvious, but somehow it felt right. So I decided to do just that.

When I got inside my uterus I didn’t like what I saw. It was pretty scary-looking, and more than once I thought, “I’m getting out of here. I don’t want to see all this.” But my inner wisdom kept reminding me that I was here for a reason, and so once again I prayed for the courage to face whatever it was I needed to face. I was certain I was going to find something I just couldn’t bear to see.

As I was “walking about” inside the tumor, I came to an area that seemed particularly dark. As I approached the area, I could sense an intense feeling of fear emanating from the walls. Spontaneously, an old memory of an intense childhood trauma flashed before me. Instantly, my doubting, thinking mind checked in and said, “It can’t be that—I know all about that memory—I’ve long since dealt with that issue and put it to bed! It wasn’t that big a deal—it can’t be the cause of what’s going on in here . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah . . .”

As Surja continued to massage, I shyly relayed the judgments my thinking mind was making. She said reassuringly, “Well, your body wisdom is probably coming up with that particular memory for a reason. For now, why don’t you just go with what’s coming up for you? Even if your thinking mind is doubting it, what have you got to lose?”

And so I continued watching the memory. In my mind, I found myself going through the scene as if in living color, and in slow motion. Surprisingly, unexpected emotions that I had buried and long since forgotten seemed to be arising, and the true expression of how I felt at the time seemed to be surfacing. I hadn’t realized how intensely I had felt at the time. I’d been too successful, even then, at masking my true emotions by putting on a brave face.

Tears quietly streamed down my cheeks.

I felt very private, and I didn’t want to say much to Surja about it. And yet, there was a great relief in finally just being real with myself—taking the mask off and letting myself experience the incredible vulnerability and helplessness that I felt as a young child in that memory. I was finally letting myself feel the natural emotions that I hadn’t let myself experience at the time of the trauma. Somehow, even as a small child I’d learned that I wasn’t allowed to show my true feelings. And, more important, I hadn’t been able to admit them to myself.

So, in a very simple, pure way I was finally allowing myself to experience what had been there all along. I had never really forgotten this old memory, and the “discovery” of it was no real revelation. What came as a surprise was the intensity of my true feelings—I’d been so successful in putting a lid on them that I managed to convince myself that it wasn’t that important!

I shared a little of what I was going through with Surja, and gently she asked me, “Do you feel complete?” I checked inside with the inner wisdom. “No.”

“Well, why don’t you imagine a little campfire, and put all the people in your memory there with you; and why don’t you have a fireside chat and find out why the other people were behaving as they did, and let them know your true feelings—let the younger you talk to them as if they were here right now.”

Once again, what she said seemed like a good idea, so I thought I’d give it a go—I had nothing to lose. Meanwhile, I was still getting a lovely relaxing massage. Surja seemed to instinctively know in which area I was carrying tension, and she would ease it as I carried on with my internal processing.

Inside my mind’s eye, I pictured myself at a crackling campfire. Both my parents were there—they looked so much younger, and dressed in the corny style of the 1950s—and the four-year-old me who’d gone through the emotional memory was standing there in her little dress, looking very unprotected and unsure of herself. The present me was also there, so I decided to go over to the younger me and invite her to sit in my lap, so that she could feel safe and comforted.

I was very surprised at what was said at the campfire. I hadn’t realized how intensely the younger me had felt about this old memory. It seemed the little me had a lot of unexpressed pain to share.