An Energetic and Emotional Approach to Cancer
by Steven
H. Horne, RH (AHG)
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.
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. 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;
indeed I’ve seen several cases of cancer that I knew involved
electromagnetic pollution.
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.
The ‘Energetic’ of Cancer
I would
like to put forth the hypothesis that our civilization IS a
cancer. To understand why I say this, let’s look very closely
at what is happening in the body when a person has cancer and
how it compares to what is happening in our society.
Many years
ago I had the opportunity of interviewing Dr. Bruce Halstead, a
world-famous medical doctor and medical research scientist, and
one of the most interesting and brilliant people I have ever
met. Dr. Halstead told me that the way we treat cancer does
not make molecular sense. He said that the body is forming
cancer cells all the time, but the immune system recognizes
these cells have gone deviant and destroys them. Dr. Halstead
felt that cancer was a disease involving weakened immunity - the
body had lost the ability to recognize and destroy these deviant
cells.
He then
went on to say that surgery, radiation and chemotherapy all
weakened the immune system, which made the underlying problem
worse. It’s good food for thought, but there’s more to cancer
than just a weakened immune system. One also needs to understand
why cancer cells form and what makes cancer cells different from
normal cells.
Normal
human cells are aerobic. This means that they utilize oxygen to
oxidize (‘burn’) nutrients for energy. Cancer cells are
anaerobic, which means they no longer have an oxygen-based
metabolism. They create energy in another way. Dr. Otto
Warburg was given a Nobel prize for discovering this fact
decades ago.
All human
cells start off with an anaerobic metabolism. When an egg is
fertilized and starts to divide and create new cells, these
cells are all undifferentiated, meaning that these cells are
capable of becoming any tissue in the body. These
undifferentiated cells are known as trophoblast cells and they
are anaerobic, energy hungry and fast growing. Cancer cells are
very much like these embryonic cells.
In his
book, Cancer Simplified, Thomas H. Mansell suggested that there
are trophoblast cells in our bodies left over from this
embryonic state. When the internal environment of the body
deteriorates to a certain point, it creates an environment which
triggers the growth of these cells. That is also an
interesting hypothesis and it makes a lot of sense to me.
However, a
more commonly accepted hypothesis is that since all cells came
from these original trophoblast cells, it is possible for any
cell to revert to this more primitive metabolism. What triggers
normal cells to revert is a topic of debate—it could be free
radical damage to the DNA, deterioration of the internal
environment or nutritional deficiencies - or a combination of
these factors. But laying aside what causes these cells to
mutate, let’s look at what these mutating cells are doing.
Normal
body cells are in constant communication with other cells.
Through this communication, normal cells are harmoniously
co-operating for the good of the body as a whole. Cancer cells
are separated from the rest of the body in that they are no
longer responding to normal cell-to-cell communications.
Therefore, they are acting in a self-serving manner with
no regard for the good of the body as a whole.
As part of
this disconnected dysfunction, cancer cells are greedy. They
are consuming energy at a rate that is 12 to 17 times higher
than normal cells. This energy consumption is also triggering
rampant growth. The combination of this high metabolism and
rampant growth also means cancer cells produce an abundance of
toxic waste, which damages the body and weakens it further.
This results in increased anaerobic terrain for cancer cells,
at the same time, creating decreased aerobic terrain for normal
cells and a shortage of energy and oxygen.
Thus, like
a parasite, cancer cells slowly kill the life that hosts them.
Literally, they are killing themselves at the same time they
are killing the host.
The ‘Cancer’ of Western Society
Now, let’s
compare cancer to Western society. First of all, whilst 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 in which he lives is
completely artificial and man-made? These are not new thoughts
for me. I’ve had them since I was a teenager. 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 world’s 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
re-populate 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, whilst 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.
The 'Emotional' Aspects of Cancer
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, whilst negative
thoughts and feelings suppress immune function. The ironic
thing about cancer is that while it is linked to the greedy,
polluting, disconnected mindset 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 co-dependent,
neglect of self 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, ie. 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. I want to talk about
real-life stories - so, let me share one 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 whilst
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 that she needed to ‘turn around’ and look at all the
‘positive’ and good things in her life. This is in fact a
good message for us all to heed.
Steven H.
Horne is a highly acclaimed international author, iridologist,
teacher, herbalist and natural healer. Steven is a professional
member and past president of the American Herbalists Guild and
president of Tree of Light Publishing.
The above information should not be treated as a substitute for the
medical advice of your own doctor or any other health care
professional.
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