Over the past 20 or so years, I’ve read a lot of books on natural therapy for cancer. I’ve also talked with herbalists and natural practitioners who work with cancer patients, and I’ve met many people who cured themselves of cancer the natural way. I’ve even consulted with a few clients with cancer.

There’s no way around it. Cancer is a difficult illness to treat. There are people who go the medical route and live and there are people who take that route and die. There are also people who take the natural route and live, and others, following similar protocols, who die. Many opt for a hybrid approach, using some natural remedies and some orthodox treatment.

I honestly don’t know what the best approach to cancer is—I think it varies from person to person. If someone is going to go the natural route, I think they need to be extremely diligent and look at the problem very holistically, relying on diet, exercise, emotional healing, stress reduction and other tools besides supplements. If they aren’t willing to take responsibility for themselves and make some serious changes, then they may be better off putting themselves into the hands of the medical profession, although I personally think they should at least look at a hybrid approach, since the medical approach only focuses on killing the cancer cells and doesn’t do anything to address the reasons why you got cancer in the first place.

But, it’s not my intention to discuss cancer therapy in this article. Kimberly Balas did an outstanding job laying out holistic protocols for cancer in our Herbal Hour Video on Cancer: Unlocking the Mystery. It’s one of the very best presentations on natural therapy for cancer I’ve ever heard, and I highly suggest you get the program and listen to it if you’re interested in approaching cancer from a natural/holistic viewpoint. We also did a cancer package.  Both are available in my new webstore. 

Since Kim has already done such a good job on this, I saw no reason to “rehash” her presentation. What I want to do is tell you about my thoughts on the energetic and emotional issues that make cancer a problem in our society.

“Civilization” and Cancer

For starters, I’m convinced that cancer is primarily a disease of “civilization” and in more ways than one. First, it appears to be a very rare and unusual disorder among “primitive” people, and historically, it has not always been a leading cause of death.

Secondly, I’m also convinced that the primary physical cause of cancer is environmental pollution (aggravated by nutritional deficiencies and emotional factors). Both chemical and electromagnetic pollution appear to trigger cancer, with electromagnetic pollution being the more subtle and less recognized trigger. However, I’ve seen several cases of cancer that I knew involved electromagnetic pollution, but I’ll have to write about that another time.

But, third, and finally, I think cancer isn’t just a disease of “civilization” in the physical sense, it’s also a disease of “civilization” in the energetic sense. In fact, I believe that there are underlying emotional issues which cause both environmental pollution and cancer. So, we won’t solve either problem until we deal with these emotional issues. That’s what I mean when I say “energetic.” It’s a pattern of emotional energy at the root of both problems.

You’ll notice that I put the words “civilization” and “primitive” in quotes. I’m doing this because while we are very technically advanced, that doesn’t make us civilized. (I loved a story in the book Awakening: Conversations with the Masters by Anthony De Mello, because it reflects my attitude on the subject. The book is short pieces about a fictitious spiritual master and in one piece the Master is asked what he thinks of Western civilization. The Master replies, “It would be a very good idea.”)

Now, let’s compare cancer to Western society. First of all, while native peoples generally saw themselves as part of a whole, connected to the land and each other, most people in modern society are highly disconnected. People in the modern world are frequently so self-absorbed that they do not see how their actions are affecting the environment in which they live. It’s a pretty obvious problem when you look at the way most people live in modern civilization. How can a person in a major metropolitan area connect with the idea that all his food, air and water must come from the natural environment, when everything in the world he lives in is completely artificial and man-made?

These are not new thoughts for me. I’ve had them since I was a teenager. In fact, in 1975, at age 21, I wrote the poem on called Boxes and Gods, which laments the disconnection modern society has with nature and the earth and tells of my longing for reconnection. You can read this poem in my Circles of Light poetry book, which can be downloaded on this site for free.

But, we are not just disconnected from the earth, we are also disconnected from each other. There is little sense of community in modern society, unless some crisis temporarily pulls us together.

Another way in which Western civilization resembles cancer is its greed. Our society, is energy hungry, gobbling up a huge amount of the worlds resources in order to sustain our “lifestyle.” We also leave a vast amount of waste in our wake. Many ecologists and environmentalists are deeply concerned about how our industrial society is poisoning the air, water and soil and destroying nature, but if changing things would hurt the “economy” or inconvenience our personal “lifestyle,” most of us are reluctant to change.

Even the modern herb industry exhibits this greed and lack of respect for the land. While Native Americans carefully harvested a few medicinal plants from an area where they were abundant, leaving others behind to repopulate the species, modern wildcrafters will take every plant in an area, leaving nothing for the next generation. This has resulted in vast populations of wild plants being completely destroyed to fuel our “industry.” Wild echinacea is almost extinct, while goldenseal and many other herbs are endangered. This is just one small aspect of this social greed that permeates our culture.

These are all reasons why I say that modern “civilization” is a cancer on the face of Mother Earth. Like cancer cells, most people in our society are disconnected from the messages of nature and society that would keep up acting harmoniously for the good of the whole.

To further elaborate, the cancer cell develops in a toxic environment in the body, which is created by the toxicity of modern society. Because this cell is not getting the oxygen and nutrients it needs to sustain normal function, it mutates to survive in its toxic environment. These mutations cause it to revert to embryonic functions where the cells multiply wildly. At the same time, more pollution is created and the cancer spreads. Eventually, if unchecked, it will consume and destroy the host environment.

So, energetically, cancer is a disease of disconnection, which causes the cell, deprived of the benefits of the body as a whole, to develop an obsessive, greedy self-interest that causes it to consume more resources than it really needs, multiply out of control and eventually poison and destroy the environment that sustains it. Of course, if the immune system is functioning properly, it will recognize these mutated cells and step in to stop them. But if the immune system isn’t functioning properly this won’t happen.

In the next part of this article, I discuss the emotional and energetic state of the cancer victim and offer suggestions about what can be done about it.

This brings us to our need to understand the emotional aspects of cancer because our emotional state has a huge impact on our immune system. Numerous studies have shown that positive thoughts and feelings enhance immune function, while negative thoughts and feelings suppress immune function.

The ironic thing about cancer is that while it is linked to the greedy, polluting, disconnected mind set of society, the cancer patient is usually the opposite. They are frequently the self-effacing martyr—the “nice” person who seldom gets angry and tries to be of service to everyone. This is not a healthy, self-empowered service, but rather a codependent, neglect of self and overindulgence of others. In this state, the emotional seeds of cancer are sown, because this person will eventually start to resent taking care of everyone else and feel their own needs are neglected. These deep-seated and often unacknowledged resentments start “eating” at them, i.e, cancer.

This is why cancer patients will often put themselves in the hands of assertive practitioners who “take control” and tell them what to do. They can be easily intimidated into complying with regimes that don’t make sense because they often have a hard time deciding what is in their best interest. So, the cancer becomes the culmination of their self-martyrdom.

But I don’t want to talk abstractions; I want to talk about real-life stories. So, let me share some of my experiences with you.

About 15 years ago, my best friend’s wife was diagnosed with gallbladder and liver cancer and given less than a 3% chance of living past a year with conventional medical treatment. Ironically, at the same time, I met two people who had both successfully cured themselves of liver/gallbladder cancer with natural remedies. I offered to hook her up with them.

She refused.

Her reasoning was that she had to go the medical route because otherwise her family would think she had “given up” and cause her all kinds of stress. The medical doctor she saw told her that herbs and diet wouldn’t help her at all and that he wouldn’t treat her if she took any herbs or supplements while she was on cancer therapy. This was most unfortunate, because months later, when her digestive tract was raw and inflamed from chemotherapy, I couldn’t even get her to drink a little aloe vera juice or take some slippery elm gruel to soothe her digestive tract.

The day I learned she had cancer, I could immediately see why the cancer had developed in her liver and gallbladder. I knew this woman very well. She was very nice, but never forgot or forgave an injury or injustice. She would talk about things her brothers did when she was young and her husband did when they were first married as if they had happened yesterday. I had long recognized her as being filled with unacknowledged anger and resentment.

Several months after she started therapy, she was visiting me one day and told me of a dream she had. In the dream, she was standing in front of a forest that had been devastated by a forest fire.

She told me that she could hear the sound of birds behind her and that she knew that behind her was a green forest, filled with life. She said that she knew that all she needed to do was turn around and she could walk into the beautiful, green forest, but she was so horrified by the burned out forest that she could not take her eyes off of it.

She asked me if I knew what the dream meant. I told her that I felt she concentrated too much on the cancer (on trying to “fight” the cancer) instead of focusing on life. I told her that none of us know how long we have to live, but as long as we are alive we need to focus on living. I also told her that perhaps she looked too much at the “negative” things in her life and needed to “turn around” and look at all the “positive” and good things in her life.

She wasn’t able to do this, and, in fulfillment of the doctor’s voodoo hex on her, she died almost exactly one year after she had been diagnosed.

I have never forgotten the lesson of her dream, and I believe that anyone who has cancer or any other serious illness in their life needs to ask themselves some important questions. (In fact, I often ask these questions of people with cancer or other serious, life-threatening illnesses.)

Question Number One is: “If God were to miraculously heal you today, what would you do differently in your life?”
Or, to put it in another way, “Why should God heal you if you’re just going to continue down the same path you were on before you got sick?”

I ask this because I firmly believe that we all have a life purpose and that as long as we are moving in harmony with our life purpose we can’t die until our life purpose is fulfilled. However, if we are out of harmony with our life purpose, then one of the ways that gets communicated to us is that we get seriously ill. This gives us the opportunity to reevaluate our life and hopefully turn it around.

I remember hearing a talk by Dr. Bernie Siegal, author of Love, Medicine and Miracles: Lessons Learned about Self-Healing from a Surgeon's Experience with Exceptional Patients. He spoke of another doctor who had wanted to be a concert violinist, but whose family had persuaded him to be a doctor instead. He didn’t like being a doctor. One day, he was diagnosed with cancer and told he had six months to live. He thought, if I’ve only got six months to live, I might as well spend my last six months doing what I really want to do, play the violin.

Dr. Siegal said, “That was six years ago, and he’s still playing the violin.”

The cancer person needs to have the courage to do what they want with their life. None of us know how much or how little time we have left, but to engage in life, we must find a sense of purpose for ourselves—something we can do that inspires our soul.

Question Number Two leads naturally from the first question: “What have you always dreamed of doing that you have never done?”
 
This question is important because it has been demonstrated many times that cancer patients will survive longer if they have something important to live for. For example, if a son or daughter is graduating or getting married, they will live just long enough to witness this event, and will pass away a few weeks later.

So, part of affirming life for the cancer patient is starting to plan to do things they really want to do. The more they do this, the better their immune response will be. In fact, cancer patients should deliberately seek out pleasant and enjoyable experiences as much as they possibly can. These pleasant experiences will do more for their immune system than any herbs or supplements they might take.

Years ago, an NSP Manager with cancer asked me if I would do an emotional healing session with her. In the session, she recognized that every time she got away from her family and work situation, she would recover, but every time she went back to that situation, she would have a relapse. It was not hard for me to understand why as she was a very sweet lady and I had heard her husband publicly humiliate and belittle her on many occasions and she had just graciously “taken it.”

I asked her this question and she told me what was in her heart to do. She told me what she longed to do with her life but couldn’t because of her family situation and the demands of her NSP and “health” business. I asked her if there was a place where she could get away from all of this and pursue what she really wanted to do. She said, “Yes.” They had a vacation home she could go live in and take care of herself and work on the things she’d always wanted to do.

She could clearly see she was at a crossroad in her life. Either she had to have the courage to leave her situation and take care of herself and move forward on what she perceived was her “life mission,” or to remain in her current situation and martyr herself and die. All I said was, “I guess you have a choice to make, don’t you?”

She replied, “Yes, I do.”

One month later, when I heard she had passed away, I remember thinking, “She made her choice.”

Question Number Three takes us down a little different line: “Is there anyone or anything I resent in my life?”
Or, “Has anyone ‘wronged me’ in my life?”

The point here is to access the self-martyring, resentful energy that is often at the heart of the cancer. The person needs to identify people who they feel they have “sacrificed for” or have been “victimized by” and forgive them.

Years ago, I ran into the daughter of my first herb teacher, Edward Milo Millet. I have always honored Ed as my teacher and mentor, and acknowledged him as the creator of the body system’s approach and the ABC+D approach. However, Ed was upset with me when I wrote the ABC Herbal because he felt that I had “stolen” his ideas. I felt very hurt by this, as I had created my own original interpretation and work on these ideas, and had acknowledged him as my teacher, but he didn’t see it that way.

His resentment originated with the fact that he was the ghost writer for The School of Natural Healing by John Christopher. He had thought that he was going to be listed as co-author, but he wasn’t even mentioned in the book. He had sued Dr. Christopher over the issue. I don’t know the whole story, but I knew that Ed was a nice guy, and that he deeply resented what had happened between Dr. Christopher and himself.

Well, his daughter told me that Ed had gotten prostate cancer and had recently passed away. She said that she wanted me to know that her father had died a peaceful man, because about one week before he passed away he came to the realization that his cancer had been caused by the resentment he held towards Dr. Christopher. She said he had forgiven Dr. Christopher and had also acknowledged that I had done him no wrong.

I was happy that Ed had been “healed” before he passed away. If that statement seems strange, I mean it exactly as I said it because I regard emotional and energetic healing to be more important than the healing of the physical body.

I don’t know where I heard it, but I remember someone telling me of a similar story with a different ending. It was about a man who had been diagnosed with cancer and told he had a very short time to live. He had run away from his abusive father when he was 16, had hated him his whole life and refused to see or talk with him.

He decided that before he passed away, he would make peace with his father and traveled a long way to show up on his doorstep. He asked his father for forgiveness for being a rebellious son, and for not communicating with him all those years. His father started to cry and asked the son for forgiveness for being so harsh on him. They fell into each others’ arms and wept. One week later, the man had no cancer in his body.

The bottom line is that if these underlying emotional issues aren't dealt with, it can be very difficult for people to heal from cancer.  In the last part of this article I provide some specific tips for dealing with cancer patients. 

One of the things I’ve observed about people suffering from cancer is that they are often looking for someone to “save” them. As I have already stated, they readily put themselves into the care of people who are assertive and confident and promise them effective therapy or miraculous cures. Again, this is a reflection of the difficulty they often have in deciding what it is that they want or need, and deciding to take care of themselves and trust their own instincts and intuition.

During the past year or two, I’ve had several people with cancer talk to me. I have helped them put together a supplement program and then schedule a follow-up. When they come back, they have been to see three other practitioners who have recommended other supplements and they’ve bought them all. Often these other formulas have similar ingredients to the ones I’ve already recommended.

Of course, this kind of thing happens a lot with people who are seriously ill and scared. The problem is, that fear, worry, depression, etc., all depress your immune system, and if someone with cancer is going to optimize their chances for recovery, they need to work through their emotional issues and find ways to create love, peace, joy and pleasure in their life. I have some resources I often recommend to help people do this.

One of my favorites is a movie called Question of Faith. I checked on Amazon.com and there are two movies by that title. This one is the 1998 VHS version starring Harry Andrews. This movie covers all aspects of natural healing from cancer—diet, exercise, attitude, emotional healing, etc. It’s a very inspiring story and can be very helpful for someone with cancer.

I also recommend The Pleasure Principle by Dr. Paul Pearsall, available from Nightingale Conant. Dr. Pearsall, a psychiatrist, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and beat it. He went the orthodox medical route for treatment, but also used attitude as a big part of his healing process. I think he has a lot of good things to say about how to boost the immune system through deliberately seeking pleasurable experiences.

Both of these resources should give you some real good ideas about how to deal with the emotional aspects of cancer. For more information on the nutritional and supplement aspects of working with cancer, I recommend ordering our Herbal Hour DVD Cancer: Unlocking the Mystery  or better yet, getting our Cancer Education Package.  I'm sure you'll find this information helpful.