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When bad things
happen to good people, they emulate Job. In their patience they wrestle a higher
consciousness, if not an epiphany, from their plight. They learn and grow so much from the
struggle that they count their misfortune as a blessing.
Consider some people who faced terminal illness and wrestled such profound
healing from their ordeal that death lost its sting. In The Healing Path: A Soul Approach
to Illness (Tarcher/Putnam), Marc Barasch makes a compelling case for the ancient
homeopathic secret that illness itself can be a cure.
Barasch was once the confirmed workaholic editor of New Age Journal. His
magazine had printed much about alternative therapies, but when he encountered with cancer
himself, he had to forge his own healing quest. On that journey he interviewed a hundred
companion travelers. Their stories add realism to the philosophy, the psychosomatic
medical theory, and the research studies that Barasch integrates into his fascinating map
of the path of healing.
Illness is a shamanic ritual initiation, stripping us of the comfortable and
familiar, and requiring that we take a journey into the unknown to meet with a larger
sense of self. Those who are familiar with the story of Edgar Cayce, for example, will
recall that it was an illness that led him to undergo hynosis treatments that resulted in
the discovery of his gift of medical clairvoyance and a spiritual philosophy transcending
his inherited religion.
The healing journey finds inspiration in the mythology of the Holy Grail.
Parsifal's question to the ill Fisher King, "What ails you?" prompts the
examination of soul and initiates healing. Once healed, the old ruling principle passes
away, allowing the restoration of soul.
It is the restoration of soul that makes the patients Barasch interviews so
grateful for their illnesses. It is the book's thesis that illness is a necessary evil
because it's a channel the soul uses for greater expression in our lives. The homeopathic
secret is that the soul is making a comeback in what ails you.
Accepting the soul in illness means that rather than fighting it, we must see
the illness as part of ourselves, even a divine part, asking for attention. Many of Edgar
Cayce's physical readings included soulful statements about the meaning of the illness as
a mirror of unrecognized self. Barasch introduces us to people who find redemption in the
mirror of their symptoms. Some rediscover lost selves in the debilitation of the illness.
Most are called to live more fully their own genuine truth as part of the recovery.
Basically, illness is a challenge to change. A change of heart is usually
required. Scrooge is a good example. Such deep-seated change doesn't come easy. We may
have to get scared to death. The redeemed patients are happy enough for the resulting
change to treat their illness as a godlike benefactor. The change, rather than the cure,
seems to be the miracle.
There are many seeming miracles of spontaneous healing reported in this book.
Barasch explains the potential healing mechanisms and shows how much we have to learn
about healing. He doesn't suggest, however, that we can bypass the problem of illness with
simple solutions. We have to accept that illness helps us live out parts of soul that we
might otherwise choose to ignore.
One woman, for example, used imagery techniques to fight her cancer, but was
losing the battle with death. She enlisted the aid of a psychotherapist to help her die.
In dialogues with sub-personalities, she confronted her deepest fears, hatreds and angers.
One of her vilest subpersonalities, upon being accepted, guided her on a susrprising path
of total remission from her cancer.
No pat formula applies to all. There would be no soul in it, just conventional
wisdom. Rather, each patient has to pursue self-examination to evolve a personal healing
story that's on the mark. The restoration of soul may then appear in a symbolic act, in a
healing image, or in a dream.
The Healing Path contains, in fact, the largest collection of medical and
healing dreams of any book I've read. The mythology of Asklepios, the Greek healer who
operated in dreams, is a major milestone in the homeopathy of soul medicine. Ancient
records of dream incubation show it's possible to have a compensatory, healing experience
within a dream. From my own experiments with dream incubation, I remember one woman in
terrible pain with a kidney infection who dreamed of a medicine woman who took away the
pain. She awakened pain free. Barasch has other stories to suggest that dream incubation
may be a therapy of the future.
The paradox of Asklepios is that he often heals by wounding. Many of the
original healing dreams involved the bite of a snake! If you, like me, have had a
snakebite dream, you may have wondered if the snake was poisonous. We may wonder if we
will survive the operation. If there's to be healing, then certainly we shall not survive
intact. We must change, perhaps beyond recognition. If we're not up to the Job, hopefully
we can Scrooge up our courage and find in what ails us our prodigal soul.
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