Really, one beautiful image is like a single bee in a beehive. Where the survival of the colony is not dependent on one bee. It’s dependent on the survival of the whole colony and the bee serves the colony in different roles. Cancer cells forget that it is part of a community. It lost its sense of commitment to and mutual support and it will. Its survival is so intense. The more aggressive it is, the more intense it becomes at any cost. Because eventually, it’s going, if it’s successful, it kills the host and kills itself. And this is really the survival paradox in its utmost extreme. And if you’re interested in this concept, you can read more in my book, The Survival of Paradox. So going back to the cancers in the cancer cell, really from a functioning point of view is no longer a part of the body. It’s no longer a part of the body metabolically, and immunologically. It creates isolation around its growth and does everything it can to bypass the body’s defense system, the immune system, the surveillance system, etc. It doesn’t care about the environment around it. Our challenge from a mind-body point of view, from visualizing cancer dissolving or trying to transform the cancer cell into a normal thing, is to penetrate this isolation, this separation, this boundary, and by using mind-body medicine to connect with the cancer cell with our mind in order to create a change in the cell that’s the challenge but that’s also the dramatic potential. What is the weakness of the cancer cell? We always look for weaknesses. The weakness of the cancer cell is that it used to be a normal cell and it has the capacity to reverse its metabolism into a normal metabolism. If we look at the qualities of mind-body medicine of gratitude, loving-kindness, and of acts of kindness, they all try to weaken our sense of self-focus and enhance the sense of community. The understanding that we are all in this journey together. So a normal cell actually functions, as I mentioned, within the survival paradigm. What do I mean? Each cell has a boundary. It decides what it takes in what it wants, and it decides what it takes out through its membrane, through receptors on the membrane cell. Receptors that are responding to the environment outside. When it’s peaceful, when it’s safe the cell is functioning with a normal metabolism, very efficient, with no byproducts, understanding that it has shared values with the community around it that will support the cell and the cell will support the community. It is also affected by toxins in the area. That’s why detoxification is so important and it is affected by our genetics and even more by our epigenetics, by traumatic and difficult events that happened to us in this life and to our ancestors. And within it, the cell, just like any other cell, will not take what is toxic to the cell and will not keep what is toxic to the center. It will take what it wants as part of nourishment and survival and will push out what it doesn’t want. And that’s universal to every cell and every organ in the body.
And some organs will damage themselves and cause damage to the whole body because they adhere to this principle. There is one organ that is fundamentally different. The emperor of the body according to Chinese medicine. The Queen of our beehive and it is our heart. Just like a beehive serves and depends on its queen. The body serves and depends on our heart. As we know if the heart stops, we are dead within seconds. So why is the heart so different? Because while every cell in the body, every organ in the body wants to take clean blood, the heart thrives and needs to take all the dirty blood from every organ in the body. The heart’s innate quality of acceptance without any judgment. It accepts anything from every organ. It doesn’t say I’m going to take dirty venous blood only from the liver, but not from the brain and not from the kidneys. It takes it from everywhere with open arms. This fundamental shift in the physiology. It’s that each of us have. We are wired like this, but it also has profound psychological and psycho-spiritual connotations and effects on our minds. Because we are being driven by survival, by our ego, and our reaction when we sense danger when something bad is coming our way.
The reactivity creates struggle, creates negative emotions like anger, like fear, it creates the struggle that creates inflammation when we run away and it creates fibrosis in organ dysfunctional but the heart does it differently. It accepts with an open heart. It connects with the universe through our breath because the universe is vast, the universe is infinite. I had to stop because of the bug, so I’m going to start with the lungs again. It will have to be edited. The heart connects with the universe through breathing, through the lungs, and the universe is infinite. It can handle all of our stress, all our traumas, and all our illnesses. And there we have the amazing exchange within the lungs and now clean blood comes to the heart. The heart was able to transform what every organ in every cell didn’t want into nourishment that it now offers to all the body without discrimination. The aorta, the main artery that comes out of the heart, is a rigid artery, and as such, it gives blood everywhere without discrimination. And that’s a basic quality of the heart. And only after the heart gives blood, it relaxes and nourishes itself through the coronary arteries. This is how selfless is the heart. These principles and this understanding holds within them a profound potential for healing. The heart shifts us, as we said, from reactivity, from struggle that is self-focused to responsiveness to an open heart. And when we connect to the healing journey of an open heart to open heart medicine, it will deliver this message, this quality to every cell in the body. So once we have this understanding, the journey is to develop these qualities on a meditative level, on their mind, body level, on a spiritual level, and then to be able to deliver them to the target tissue, to the cancer, to melt the boundaries of the cancer. And the heart does it in three ways physiologically by providing clean blood. So the more we detoxify physically, the cleaner our blood, the better air we breathe, the better water we drink, the more harmonious our environment, the better quality and nourishment. On the second level, the quality of the heart from an energetic point of view from effects, the quality of its electromagnetic field and the electromagnetic field, there’s a lot of research about it actually reaches every cell in the body all the time. And this is why the heart is constantly attempting to heal us, and our journey is to connect with it. And in the deepest and most subtle level, the heart has the ability to point to us that everything is changing all the time. Because the one truth it is independent of a belief system. Everything is changeable, everything is impermanent. Nothing has a solid, unchanging nature in the expression of this quality, in the heart, in our body is infinite love and compassion.
And when we connect with this quality, it is like melting ice with the warmth of love and compassion. Melting ice which is hard, which is solid, which is separate from the other piece of ice into water, which is flowing everywhere and is connected everywhere. And when everything is over, when everything is flowing, and when everything is flowing, when we connect with the changeability of everything, naturally everything is possible. This is why not everyone will be a miracle but anyone can be a miracle. And this is what open heart medicine is about. And that’s the journey, the true, profound journey of Mind-Body Medicine, into which we can add different methods for different people. So I hope this introduction is useful and it helps to have the opportunity in the future to work with you more on in a retreat setting, in a face-to-face setting and guide you this journey.
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