The Soul’s Journey – Reading the Body’s Signs and Symptoms

I am standing at the top of my stairs when my throat began to close up. I am puzzled. Is this an allergic reaction, a virus or something more metaphysical? I stood for a moment and the words “it’s hard to swallow” popped into my head. I laughed. I knew exactly the meaning of this symptom. Within minutes my throat had eased.

 Mind/Body/Soul?

My interest in the mind/body/soul relationship was developed by medical intuitive Mona Lisa Schultz’s remarkable book Awakening Intuition.This was expanded by metaphysical teacher and author Louise Hay’s work particularly Heal Your Body which has become a superlative reference book when I sense my body is trying to tell me something. More recently there is the Jungian perspective that suffering is a device the Soul may use to get our attention. Eminent author and Jungian Analyst James Hollis suggests we lose life force if our lives are not consistent with our deeper Soul desires. I am by no means an absolutist in terms of the body/Soul connection and certainly do not suggest that all our ailments are connected to a Soul issue. However I do believe we owe it to ourselves to at least consider the possibility when we get symptoms

Too Hard to Swallow?

I have had too much personal evidence that my body is part of my intuitive system to ignore it. The message from my throat closing up was that an interview I had completed earlier for a story I was planning to write for the Centre for Integrated Healing was just too hard to swallow and I should not write it. On another occasion I had a persistent chest cold but before heading to the doctor, I asked myself what inner work this may represent. The response came loud and clear “you have something to get off your chest”. I connected the dots to recall an encounter with a friend that remained unresolved and was getting in the way of our friendship. I got it off my chest and both the cold and the friendship were healed.

Following the Clues

However it is even more affirming when I encounter this principle when working with a client. Recently one arrived who was clearly feeling very good. In response to my enquiry he said that so much had turned around since our last session. He was on top of his job, his financial state was finally reflecting all the work he had been doing and best of all his painful back was better. I asked if he saw any connection with his back healing and his improved state. I recalled that last session we had looked up L5 pain in my Heal Your Body book. The first suggested cause was security. “It’s interesting” I observed, “that your back improved at the same time your security concerns diminished – are you interested in exploring the connection?” A couple of months ago when he was feeling financially insecure, I had suggested prebilling and was curious if he had followed through. He shook his head and said that he really enjoyed the lump sums flowing in when the project was completed. “Any other reason?’ I queried. There was a pause then he exclaimed, “that isn’t exactly true, I don’t pre-bill because it causes me to feel an obligation to the project. “But aren’t you already committed once you accept the project?” I enquired.  At this point I reflected on the sequence of events: “you felt financially insecure, you chose not to improve things, you got an L5 problem that Louise Hay suggests is about insecurity. This healed once the cash flow improved.” It seemed quite convincing and I wondered out loud whether he thought he could have avoided the back problem if he had taken steps to address the insecurity earlier. Then it was like the roulette ball falling into the desired slot. The voice dissuading him from the appropriate measure to increase cash flow was the reaction of an old child complex around avoiding responsibility. Perhaps the Soul gift was to remember if this happened again to renegotiate from the perspective of the adult who knew the commitment came from accepting the project not by asking for a pre-payment.

Another amazing example that the Soul knows the way even when the ego doesn’t and that sometimes we need to pay attention to the body to get the message.

The Soul Journey – Reflections on Fate

Conventional and Unconventional

In April this year my friend Cameron Stewart unexpectedly died. We had been extremely close in the late sixties when as twenty-three years olds we shared an apartment in Toronto. Now he was gone. As one ages we have to get used to losses and the vagaries of fate and the imponderable question of why him and not me and the realization that this is one aspect of the mystery we can never know.

How Different Could Two Friends Be?

As I reflected on these days long gone, I remembered what a vibrant, charismatic, unconventional young man Cameron had been. He was always the life and soul of the party; he could play the guitar; he wrote songs: he was gregarious; he was amusing and quick witted, and he was a chick-magnet. Everyone wanted to be his friend and I think I was always a little bemused that he chose me.

I was his opposite – conventional, square, responsible, organized, disciplined and had a solid job. I was also shy, likely depressed; I still blushed when embarrassed which was frequently, had low self-esteem and zero self-confidence with women. We were complete opposites. He was everything I wanted to be.

He did help me come out of myself after I broke my square dependable horn rimmed glasses in a car accident, he encouraged the acquisition of a pair of blue tinted circular frames similar to those worn by John Lennon. Little did I realize how much my life would change.

“That Which We do not Bring to Consciousness Appears in Our Lives as Fate”

It had never occurred to me that Cameron represented something that was disowned in my own consciousness. Jungian analyst Robert Johnson referred to this as the projection of our inner gold on another person. However my shift in image from the new glasses and growing my hair gradually helped me reclaim some of that gold.  In addition it did seem my fate was to live a very unconventional life changing countries (living in England, Canada and Australia), changing jobs, changing relationships, a dramatic mid-life crisis resulting in me leaving wife, job and country to travel around the world with my girl friend for eighteen months at the age of 48. Devoting myself to spiritual enquiry at the age of 50 and never working full time again.

That Which You Resist Persists

Tucked away in my unconscious was the desire to be as unconventional as him. However my conditioning, as a child and young adult, both at home and at the boarding school that I was sent to, (where such behavior would not have been acceptable) had resulted in the unconventional self to be unacceptable. So fate stepped in. As I reflect I can see now that I was never really felt in control of my life. It had been my fate to be unconventional without really intending to be. Cameron although never losing his spark of unconventionality stayed married to the same woman for 48 years, brought up three children, and was mostly consistently employed in a secure job.

Time To Change?

Perhaps it is time to become deliberately unconventional and reduce the power of fate – perhaps the gold earing and the tattoo I have sometimes admired in others. On the other hand fate seems to have dealt kindly with me so perhaps I shall just leave things alone.

Thank you for journeying together dear friend, may your sweet soul rest joyfully in the mystery.