People love to give their opinions on just about everything. I think we’re all guilty of it at some point in our lives. Normally, I don’t really like hearing them from other people these days, especially when it comes to the subject of the physical pain I endure. But in rare cases, such as with what happened last week when a woman in a new age store gave me hers about it, I actually saw it as a good thing and grew from it.
I frequent new age stores quite a bit simply because I like crystals, incense, and the like. When I was away last week in the Nashville, Tennessee area visiting my sister, I was searching for a crystal named aquamarine which I learned was hard to come by. Thankfully, I was in luck when I found a store named Cosmic Connections that had some in supply. Rarely do I engage in conversation with any of the employees at new age stores now when I visit them. That’s only because I have at times been provided at many of them, misleading advice and poor direction, which only have complicated my healing path. For whatever reason though, I did the exact opposite of this when I visited this one in Nashville that day. While I did end up in a long conversation with a woman who talked about quite a number of things, there was one thing she said about my pain and the healing I’m going through, that proved to be a blessing in disguise.
“Have you ever considered the idea that the reason you are still in pain is due to some belief system you still hold onto which wants you to remain in pain?”
Whoa! At first I wanted to be angry upon hearing this because I have done so much to change myself and try to heal. It was especially hard to believe that there might actually be some part of me that wanted to remain in pain. But like there are many bad opinions, there really are those too that sometimes end up being quite good, such as this one, because the truth is, a part of me subconsciously did want to stay in pain.
After much meditation and prayer, and then a long discussion with my spiritual teacher about what that woman at the store said to me, I understood my truth behind that statement and it stemmed back to my childhood. There, I had a dysfunctional family where verbal shouting matches, anger, punishments, and control dominated most days and nights. As a child though, I learned early on that when I was sick, all of those undesirable family traits were tossed aside for love and affection to help me heal. In other words, there was great reward for me in being sick as when I was, there was no fighting, no arguing, and no being told to go to my room. My meals were chosen by what I wanted to consume and not what my parents forced in me. There were also loving hugs and tender words when they listened to what was going on within me. As life went on, I got sick more than not. And it wasn’t that I was faking being sick, as I really was sick. It was that my mind and body was on a programmed response forcing me to be that way. It’s really is true that the mind and body are powerful tools. Somewhere along the line, mine learned that when I was sick, I’d get the love I so needed, wanted, and deserved and because of that, it created this negative belief system and programmed it into me.
Throughout most of my life that followed since then, during much of the tumultuous connections I maintained, I got sick and had many physical ailments. In each of those times, those around me offered compassion and had less unreasonable expectations on me which was opposite of how they normally treated me. On top of that, doctors and practitioners would console me like a loving mother would. So throughout most of it, I was doing nothing more than solidifying that negative programming.
All of us, even animals, have different types of programs constantly running within us that begin somewhere. Some are healthy for us, and some aren’t like the one that have kept me being sick. An example of some other type of programming can be shown quite simply with my roommate’s dog who upon hearing the word “Treat?” will begin to salivate and drool, jump up and down, and start doing tricks without even being asked, all for the sake of the reward that her brain knows is about to come. In my case, as I allowed people to treat me terribly and remained in unhealthy relationships, my programming would bring about sickness and ailments just for the reward of getting more love and affection from them. Through my closer connection to God today though, I am loving myself so much more and having a much better relationship with myself. I don’t have any toxic or negative people close to me that do nothing but bring me down. Because of that, this negative rewards based belief system isn’t going to work because I don’t need to be sick to have love come into my life, it’s already there. I generate it now with God’s guidance from within and from surrounding myself with healthy people.
The bottom line is that I don’t want or need to be sick or ailing anymore. And I most definitely don’t have the desire to find love in my life by becoming sick or ailing. That woman really did hit the nail on its head with what she told me. What she didn’t say though, but what I know is also true, is that this old belief system is already dying through all the work I’ve been doing on myself. I just have to be patient. After all, it took years to create this programming, hopefully it won’t take the same to delete it.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson