Cancer as the Pain-Body
Eckhart Tolle first introduced the concept of the pain-body in his book A New Earth. He describes it as the accumulation of old emotional pain. If not managed at the time, this emotional pain lies dormant, being periodically activated to cause a re-experience of the same suffering. This can manifest as a reaction out of proportion to the present experience. It may be unclear now to which past experience the present reaction is attributable.
To build on this concept, as subsequent experiences of unmanaged emotional pain accumulate, the burden builds and becomes overwhelming enough to cause illness, including cancer. The illness serves two purposes. It is an expression of the emotional pain that has yet to be acknowledged and of the lesson this experience was provided to teach. The second purpose the illness serves is a means to resolve this pain and to internalise the lesson.
Christiane Beerlandt describes 1000 diseases and their psychological origins in her book The Key To Self-Liberation. Christiane describes the typical personality type to develop cancer as someone who places their centre outside of themselves. That is, placing more importance, definition and identification with profession, cultural and religious beliefs or relationships. There is a common theme of passive rather than active living, with one’s own divinity and self-awareness being denied and emotional responses and expressions suppressed.
Christiane continues to say that the way to heal is to let go of the past, express emotions, reclaim personal responsibility, faith, and self-love unapologetically without waiting to receive from others. In doing this, there is also a demonstration of power essential for maintaining health.
Cancer as a manifestation of the inherited pain-body
As well as the individual pain-body which can develop through the past of this current life, it is possible to inherit the pain-body of family members and ancestry or to carry on a pain-body from a previous life.
For example, if a woman was unable to grieve the death of her mother in her youth that forced her to leave school prematurely and raise her younger sisters, the trauma of that event has the potential to be carried through her into her offspring both energetically in the metaphysical plane as well as hormonally in the physical plane.
A newer age of science has explored the possibility of the internal environment of our parents influencing our own internal programming. This can occur both through the programming of the individual egg and sperm as well as the in utero programming of the embryo and developing foetus.
Understanding this can provide guidance on the energetic block causing or perpetuating illness and what may be necessary for achieving immediate and sustainable healing.
Cancer as a manifestation of the collective pain-body
The medical world has described patterns of disease (including cancer) in populations of people. These populations have ethnicity, culture or geography in common. For example stomach cancer is endemic in Japan, nasopharyngeal cancer among Southeast Asians and triple negative breast cancer in people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Although these endemics can be explained by specific physical risk factors, for example a high salt and cured food diet in Japan, Epstein-Barr virus in Southeast Asia and genetics in Ashkenazi Jews, it is possible that each of these are physical descriptions of the underlying pain-body in these populations. As well as the physical risk factors which the medical model can measure and describe, an additional risk factor is the burden of the pain-body carried by a population.
When we know the subconscious contributors to dis-ease, we can find a more successful and sustainable solution to achieve healing. By becoming aware of the possibility that we are carrying (and possibly perpetuating) the burden of this pain-body, there is the potential for it to be alleviated. This can often be achieved through awareness alone and disidentification from the collective pain-body and the acceptance that we do not need to suffer the past in our present. Furthermore, through the individual shift a collective shift may occur.
It is just as important to explore what may have been inherited from cultural experience and family ancestry as it is to test the genetic profile. Becoming aware and working to shift these is as essential to achieving sustainable healing as any physical world treatment that may be chosen.
Extrapolating this further, as well as honouring the body through adequate nutrition, avoiding carcinogenic activity such as smoking and alcohol in excess and being aware of one’s genetics and the need for screening, the prevention of cancer occurs through the development of Self-awareness. Nurturing an environment of Self-love, taking control of emotional reactions and experiences and expressing them for what they are worth rather than suppressing them all become important protective behaviours. Emotions have been given to us as an indication of our truth in a situation and if not realised in the moment, will accumulate to re-present in a future experience. Nourish the body but let us not forget to honour the Soul.
References
Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. New York, N.Y.: Dutton/Penguin Group, 2005.
Beerlandt, Christiane - The Key to Self-Liberation: 1000 Diseases and their Psychological Origins. Beerlandt Publications; 8 edition (2003); Language: English; ISBN-10: 9075849354; ISBN-13: 978-9075849356
