Finding Grace: The Importance of Spirituality While Struggling With A Cancer Diagnosis

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

Nathan. It’s great to, I always talk with you. You always do such good work. So I’m pleased to be on your show with you. 

Nathan Crane

Thank you so much. I mean, I love this perspective that we’re gonna be diving into today, which is more of a spiritual perspective around having a cancer diagnosis. And this is, I think one of the most important pieces of dealing with any chronic disease is having a deeper understanding and

awareness and connection to our spiritual wellbeing. And we’re talking about grace and the importance of spirituality while struggling with a cancer diagnosis. So, I’d love to open there. How would you define grace? 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

So the beauty of grace is it’s not something we can do by ourselves. It involves being open to the divine, I’m gonna say divine intervention to have a deeper view, a understanding of what’s going on. So when I’m working with people with cancer, if you don’t get that this is a bigger picture of your life, this is an opportunity to really wake up spiritually. Grace hasn’t happened. So grace is when you’re allowed a higher level of insight, spiritual insight into the bigger picture and that grace from the spiritual insight, which is what’s so important here, allows you to be considerably more at peace with what’s going on, whether you’re going to heal or not with cancer, but just to be at peace with the enfolding ‘Cause you have a deeper spiritual understanding And that’s kind of that the meaning of grace. It’s beyond doership of us. It’s, we can do a good diet, we can different things, but grace is we’re open to a much greater mystical understanding that the door opens and we could have that. So that’s grace is, the door opening to a higher understanding of what’s going on. 

Nathan Crane

It kind of makes, it reminds me of conversations I’ve had with cancer survivors or cancer conquers or cancer thrivers over the years. And a number of whom I’ve spoken with that I’m talking to eight, 10, 12, 15 years after their cancer diagnosis. And they’re now cancer-free and they’re telling me that cancer was the greatest thing that ever happened to them. And at the time it was the worst thing that ever happened to them, right? But somehow over that period, they had grace come into their lives and it eventually, I think, woke them up to realizing this was an important thing they needed in their life to help them transform and change and transcend into a better version of themselves. Is that kind of how you might see grace appearing in people’s lives who have cancer? 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

At one level, but there’s another level is grace it kind of opens the spiritual window to see the bigger role of God’s play and to take. And this is what I write about in my book Into The Nothing. All life’s experiences are an opportunity to grow spiritually. Grace is when you’re able to see your experience from a spiritual point of view and are able to grow spiritually, which as far as I’m concerned is the main purpose that we’re going to put on the planet is to grow spiritually, not to accumulate money or power or honor or anything like that, but really to grow spiritually, to merge back into the one. And so that’s when I, I’m really talking about is that you see the bigger spiritual picture of why you get cancer, and you are then able to make a choices that help you evolve, whether you live or die, you get to evolve spiritually from the experience. That’s what grace is about. It opens up a door or a vision or understanding beyond the every day living is, it’s not about, okay, I’ve got to do a rife with dire, okay, I’m gonna. It’s a bigger, the door opens to a bigger vision of what’s going on. It allows you to grow spiritually. 

Nathan Crane

So how does that tie into somebody’s spiritual practice and also like why then is a spiritual practice or even a deepened or broadened or elevated level of spiritual practice important for somebody who’s been diagnosed with cancer? 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

Well, once the door opens with grace, okay? You then start to look at what is this about? Why do I have cancer? Well, okay, I may have been eating junk food. So there’s one level like that, and I may been eating meat, which is gonna increase your rate of cancer of different cancers according to whether it’s breast cancer, three times more prostate cancer, 3.6 times more. Okay, I’ll stop eating meat, but that’s not really what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about is what’s the door, the veil lifts. 

You began to understand how important spirituality is in your life in terms of dealing with this. So in some traditions, it’s said your last thought, this is more of the yoga tradition. Your last thought before you die is where you start your next lifetime, okay? So there’s a huge emphasis, focusing God as what it’s all about. And leaving your body with the name of God in your consciousness. There’s big focus. Some yogis, literally they live in cemeteries. So they are constantly aware of the temporariness of the physical body, okay? And then we get to what I teach in my book Into The Nothing the personality is a case of mistaken identity. 

Nathan Crane

Say that again. 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

A personality, which is your physical body, your ego body, your emotions, your thoughts are a case of mistaken identity. We are the spark of God. We are the truth of God. And it’s up to us to really, really get that. So cancer is a very focused time to be able to wake up to that truth. And that way, the grace is you see it as a gift, whether you live or die, you see it as a gift. 

Nathan Crane

So how does somebody come to that doorway and be able to then pass through it? How does somebody invite that moment of grace into their lives so they can see and experience and feel that higher spiritual potential and reason for the cancer diagnosis? 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

So again, it depends on what level you were at. At a certain level just pray to God to give insight and understanding and healing is where as the starting point, okay? So, but the healing is not necessarily that you’re gonna survive. The healing is to wake up spiritually, the grace part. So you simply pray to God with that. Now, if you’re already doing spiritual practices, like I talk about the six foundations you wanna, what are we turned to at least a hundred percent. We get in for cancer, a hundred percent life, or generally 80% live for outside of that for most people. And you wanna do breathing exercises to expand your consciousness and yoga Sanaz, which expands your body. because with age, we can drag out service and charity. One of the great ways to draw grace is service and charity. 

So even if you have cancer, it doesn’t stop you from doing service and charity. And that can really elevate you. Working with a spiritual teacher. Play a big role in helping you wake up because the spiritual teachings that allow you to more or less wake up in a better way. And then as much meditation. To me meditation, I’ll put it this way. All I ever learned from life was meditation, sacred relationships and playing football, where you get to playing football. We’re joking, but I’m not joking because that’s where I as I wouldn’t be on my limitations. The grace of having a divine experience while playing football begin to happen. Sacred relationships is a spiritual path that can awaken you actually a path to liberation. 

It can be, okay? That’s where the grace comes in. And meditation is where you touch in the fact that there is really a light of God within every person. And the more we reconnect to that light of God, which we’re could all say our soul, the more we’re connected to the divine and the more we’re able to receive grace. So all that’s going on. So, one level you’re praying to God for kinda kind of what can I do? How can I wake up here? Second level, you’re already somewhat awake and you’re opening up to grace and so it’s a time to intensify your spiritual practice so that when you leave your body in the yoga tradition, it really so much in the Torah tradition, you leave with the name of God on your lips. 

Then that’s kind of the very subtle, but very important teaching. So you leave and then in the next lifetime, you begin with that. So it’s a way of re-beginning your life. Now, obviously the spiritual awareness, not everybody’s thinking that we reincarnate, but I can tell you absolutely the Torah teachings reincarnation was part of it. Abraham and Sarah were incarnations of Adam and Eve and it goes, Jesus talks about incarnation at least 46 times in the New Testament. Obviously you have that in the Buddhist tradition, in the yoga tradition. These things are not an accident. So if you understand there’s a continuum and you link into the continuum with your spiritual practices, then you’re able to leave the body. Would you understand that body personally, I was a case of mistaken a day. You’re able to leave that and go to the next part of the journey focused on the divine. 

Nathan Crane

That’s beautiful I mean that’s, it’s a beautiful place to imagine ourselves in being, and I want to take a, just a brief step back. So you mentioned a little bit about diet and I want to first preface here for everybody tuning in relationship to the best anticancer fighting diet, we’ve done three interviews with world-leading experts on this subject. And I know you have so much information there as well, but I wanna encourage people to go listen back to these interviews on the science of diet and nutrition, which is everything that you just spoke about. A plant-based diet, living foods, high nutrition, etc And Dr. Joel Fuhrman is the first one I encourage people to go listen to as part of the series. Then Dr. Thomas Loti and then Dr. Nathan Goodyear, you will really start to build your information vault around the diet that’s going to really support your body from a scientific standpoint in healing. But I, and I know you can talk about this for hours 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

That’s right 

Nathan Crane

And I’ve taught on this for decades, but what I’d love for it to by you, Dr. Cousens is share with us why this diet you spoke of no animal products, living foods, plant-based, nutrient diverse, nutrient rich. How does that open us up to a deeper and more fulfilling spiritual experience? 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

So, perfect question. So I don’t have to go, all I can say about life food, is it gives you the most life force. That’s all I wanna go there. So what we’re talking about from a spiritual point of view, which is my basic work Spiritual Nutrition, is how to eat in a way to become a super conductor of the divine. Now just think about that. What are we talking about? You’re leaving your body. Don’t you wanna be a super conductor of the divine? So life food diet best helps you move in that direction, because it opens you up to levels of perception that you can’t get when you’re eating meat. So I’m gonna talk about the mediating part of it now, okay? Just ’cause, so when you eat meat, fish, chicken, and dairy, you are taking in the energy of death. 

I mean, my other spiritual teachers sort of said, “when animals killed, the fear and misery and pain goes into its teaching into its tissues and when you eat that, you’re taking that fear of misery and pain into your tissues, into your consciousness. And therefore it undermined your spiritual development because you’re filling your, not just your shocker systems, but what we call koshas, which are layers of the mind with misery pain and fear and the energy of death. None of that is exactly uplifting, right? That’s pretty obvious. So when you go to plant base, you are avoiding that paid misery and so for the death, which you would take with you into your next cycle. 

So at another level then what I’m saying is that by going to a plant-based or vegan diet, I’m not talking about live food right now, you are creating a situation where you’re not fill yourself with the energy of death, misery and pain. Well, clearly that’s not what you wanna have when you’re living in the body, you wanna be elevated. You wanna be at the highest spiritual active, okay? And that takes us to the third level is you’re actually taking in the animal energy. I mean, there souls, animals have souls, but it’s at the same level of soul as human soul. So you don’t want to go backwards into an animal soul while living you’re body. You wanna go to the highest frequency of human soul. So that’s another piece to the story, okay? Now, let me sum it up a little bit. 

A live food vegan diet helps you become a superconductor with the divine. It supports the flow of the spiritual energy, which in the West we call Ruach Hakodesh in the East we call Kundalini. It opens those falls. It unblocks the channels, which we call noughties, 42,000 noughties, 72000 noughties. And the main three noughties Ida, Pingala, Sushumna that’s all good. And so you have a huge increase in the cosmic flow when you’re eating a plant-based diet versus the energy of death, misery and pain. That’s level one, okay? We don’t want that while we’re leaving our body. And then level two, is it expands your consciousness so you can more focus on God. And you’re not in the animal soul, but at the highest level of human soul. So those are kind of the subtleties here. Now, we also know that our life would diet, and I’m sure the other speakers talked about is really life food vegan diet is really the best diet for healing for cancer, okay? So, that’s already been proven in a variety of ways, all the way back to the 1920s, where people first begin to wake up to the importance of life or diet. 

So it’s on all those levels that the diet plays a role, okay? You can heal from the life of diet. You’re not taking the energy of death, but more important you’re not taking, again, this is more sophisticated, more from a yoga point of view. You’re not taking the animal’s soul into you and downgrading your soul expression. You’re by doing plant-based, you’re upgrading your soul expression, which of course is pretty important if you’re gonna leave your body. So that’s kinda like a multiple level talk about from a spiritual point of view of why a vegan diet is so important. 

Nathan Crane

I love that you shared that perspective of deeper understanding. I originally got into, a live food vegan diet 10, 11, 12 years ago, primarily for health reasons. And then as I was eating healthier and not eating animal products anymore and cleaning out my digestive system and practicing more and more meditation and spiritual practices and sitting with the Buddhists and the monks and chanting with the Hare Krishnas and so on and so forth, I started having a genuine, inner, deeper compassion for every living being for all the animals, for myself, for people. And there’s something to be said about that is this deeper spiritual connection starting to unfold even more fully by removing that dead animal flesh, as you said, animals have souls. Absolutely, how can you not see animals and not see that they have souls? They have personalities. They have energy and life force and all of that. And you remove that out of your body and it’s amazing what can happen mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and we already know all the physical healing benefits of it as well. So I wanna encourage people to read your books, Spiritual Nutrition, where they can go much deeper into that subject as well. 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

And I also talk about it, Into The Nothing where really what I’m saying, it’s a little different than dying, okay? I’ve had near death experiences and you go down a tunnel, but you’re still in an Astral form, okay? You go down the tunnel into the light and you merge into the light, but there’s still a you. And I think that’s important. So when people die, there’s still a you there, you’re in an Astral form, you’re going to reincarnate, but there’s still you. Now into the nothing. This is why it’s important for preparing for death too, is that you merge into the nothing, which is prior to time, space and energy, okay? Prior to the Astral form, prior to existence. It’s the first day of what we call Genesis or Bereishit sheet where it is just a primordial chaos. But within that is no form. So into the nothing is you enter into no form you merge into the woods. 

Now, why is that useful? If you’ve got cancer and it’s clear you’re dying. It’s useful because when you go through the experience of merging into the nothing and dissolve your individual kind of a separation from God, the individual ego, I’m gonna mention it two or three ways here. So when we’re born we go into, I am this, I am a man. I am a woman. I am a dark catcher, whatever. Then the I-ness is different that there’s just a sense of self, okay? And that in a sense, what my in my book, Into The Nothing I talk about my journey of learning about the mystery of death actually. That was the first 33 years of my life because I had TB when I was one years old. 

And then my brother died when I was a teenager, my father died 21 mother at 33. So I got what’s this mystery of death? And what I learned is after I received Shaktipat from the awaking in the spiritual energy, I learned to the soul is a mortal. That’s not an intellectual learning. I knew that before. It was a direct experience that the soul is immortal. That is one of the great benefits of spiritual life, because you’re not in fear that the soul is immortal. This is gonna continue. So let’s just focus on the highest active rather than going into fear, okay? What’d you get the souls immortal. And now into nothing is even going to be on that till you merge and become one, but there’s no you. So the Torah says, you can’t know God and live that is meaning you even let go of your attachment to the I-ness and there’s early God. 

So there are different levels of this understanding, but in terms of death, you understand that the soul is immortal. That’s really how my life started. As a TB, 1943, you got TB. Well, you go to die. You don’t have really no medicines no anything, but my mother to her loving care and also my father really gave me employed and I survived. But my entry was death, you see? So it’s like, okay, what’s this mystery? What is this about? Okay? And it took me 33 years. That was my cancer question until I met my spiritual teacher to really get it and I only got it after I had the, what we call the kundalini awakening and I’ve been empowered to do that. 

I actually helped do it over the internet with people every morning, between nine and 9.30 and the when we’re in person that’s we do with the touch, but we can do it through the eyes. But my point is, once you understand there’s no death for the self you’re out of fear, that’s grace, you see? because you’re at peace with the whole process because you’re immortal. You’re soul’s immortal, where are you going? Well, I’m living in this physical body and then the next physical body. So, okay, it’s far less of an issue. And once you get that grace, would you wake up to that level spiritually and the spiritual energy has been awakened and that for me, 1975, then okay, well, what do you worry about? So all the fear associated with death dissipates, because you know you’re immortal. So I’m kind of tying it all together in there. 

Nathan Crane

It’s so empowering what you just said as well, because it’s often the fear of death that is causing us to react to something like a chronic health condition in a fearful and negative way, which is perpetuating the disease cycle in the body anyway. So coming to that awareness of whether it’s just through the thinking mind and starting to practice to believe that my soul is more of my soul as a mortal, but the deeper level of that is feeling it and knowing it and experiencing it, as you said, then there’s no longer the fear of death, which now if that fear is gone, you can act from a place of consciousness, of awareness, of love, of compassion, and your choices are gonna be so much more supportive of a healing path anyway, right? 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

Exactly, and again, exactly what I was trying to say. And part of the work I do with people we’re doing is help them get in touch with the fact that their soul is immortal, okay? Let’s prepare for that immortality and the of your soul by going out of the highest active. 

Nathan Crane

Beautiful So as we wrap up here, I wanted to ask you. So you mentioned you do, is it you do Shaktipat with people online every morning? 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

I do Monday through Friday usually. 

Nathan Crane

How do people learn about that?

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

So I’m doing it on Facebook, okay? And so pretty much by, let’s say between nine and 9.30, you can do it by look by touch in this case, obviously it’s by look since, we’re not having physical, touching so much, and I give it over the internet. They just to did to me on Facebook. 

Nathan Crane

If people sign up for it? Where do they go? Just go to your Facebook page? 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

No, I understand what you’re saying. I think it’s just open. We do have, I have another website called TreeOfLife.mnmightynetworks.co and they can get it that way too, but basically just go on to Facebook and dial me up. I don’t know, DrCousens.com or know any way you could get into Facebook and get me on Facebook. Just put my name up. It’s somewhere between nine and 9.30 at this point, California time for the next few weeks then I do the by look part and lot of people, maybe 90% of the people I’m working with, have that awaken. I am doing also, I just finished and I do a mostly spiritual meditation retreat on the internet. So once a month, I’m doing the meditation retreat and a few times a year, I’m doing spiritual fasting. 

This is all over the internet. Given the context that we’re living in temporarily a faster, which is also zero-point course, which is the yoga or what we call Yana Yoga, the mind. So I’m doing that a few times a year as well. So that’s kind of that what I’ve been doing as a way of supporting everyone in this obviously strange lockout situation. So that’s, what’s happening now then they get my book, Into The Nothing which they can get at DrCousens.com. They can actually go intothenothingbook.com, which is a funny website, but it’s good. And that way they could kind of get it directly. They could get it on Amazon as well. And also they can go to TreeOfLife.mn.co, and all of those are ways of kind of getting the book. And the book has teachings and people get Shaktipat for the book, it’s really designed to have the spiritual awakening from the book as well. 

Nathan Crane

Beautiful, I just wanna say, thank you so much for all the beautiful work, you’ve been helping so many thousands of people from a nutritional standpoint and a physical standpoint, and a meshed mentally emotional healing standpoint and all of this beautiful work from a spiritual perspective. So what I love about what you do and the work you’ve done for decades is helped the whole human being to not only survive, but to thrive, to be healthy and happy and whole, and have a spiritual deepened, spiritual experience. So I just wanna honor you and thank you for all your great work. 

Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, M.D.

Thank you and I really had her bless you. You continue to do the good work, and I just kind of wanna say what I’ve kind of highlighted with this is I called the holistic way of liberation. In other words, because spiritual teachers tend to focus on just the spiritual part. Your nutritional teachers are talking about your nutrition, but my approach is a holistic way to liberation. So it’s kind of a redefining and optimizing at every level. That’s kind of really what we’re putting out here. And I love great that people get my book, Into The Nothing, because you’ll get all the teachings in a very layered way with the purpose of helping. A lot of people just awaken from reading the book literally has the pictures of the different things that I’ve put in it. So in our context today, we have our internet, we have books, we have a way to kind of awake it. ‘Cause the most important thing we can now is create as much awakening as possible. And that’s where I always start talking about at the beginning, what’s going on today is a huge opportunity to wake up spiritually. If we get the grace to do that. And part of my work right now is activating as much grace as possible on the planet. 

Nathan Crane

Beautiful, thank you so much, Dr. Cousens, and I wanna thank all of you for tuning in here with us at the global cancer symposium. I encourage you to share this with anybody you know, who needs this information and make sure to visit DrCousens.com. That’s D-R C-O-U-S-E-N.com. You can join this tree of life community. You can order as book and you can connect with his great work at a deeper level. Make sure to join his newsletter and stay up to date with all the good work that they send out through there as well. That’s DrCousens.com and also encourage you to take look @healthandhealingclub.com, where you can learn more about the global membership dedicated to helping you get and stay healthy. Again, I’m Nathan Crane. I wish you all ultimate health and happiness, take care.