Things happen in our lives because we believe in our subconscious mind that they should be happening. Yet when something bad happens, like an illness, you may say to yourself, "How can this be? I haven't been sitting here asking to get this disease." But it doesn't work that way. According to Carl Jung, the mind is divided into three parts: the conscious mind, the subconscious, and the superconscious, where the Spirit of God dwells.
For the purpose of inner healing, we will talk only about the conscious and subconscious mind. Your conscious mind is the thinking mind, the part of you that stands in front of the mirror in the morning and says, "I don't want to go to work," or "I'm getting old."
While you're thinking, you're forming pictures in your mind of the mostly negative thoughts and feelings that are coursing through your conscious mind. And if there's enough feeling behind those pictures, they'll be pushed to the subconscious mind and begin to dominate your daily life in a negative way. In time, they may manifest as disease, illness, addiction, and/or mental disorder.
That process can also work in a positive way, however, once you learn that you don't have to accept all the negative things that you've told yourself, or that others have said about you. You can begin to change that process by reprogramming your mind. In this chapter, I will discuss several techniques for this reprogramming, and give you a couple of brief exercises to help you get started.
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The Role of Faith in Healing
However, first I need to say a few words about the role of faith in healing, and I'd like to begin with a series of scriptural quotations taken from the Gospels. To get something out of these quotations, you don't need to be a Christian or to believe that Jesus Christ was the only son of God.
Whatever your religious belief system or mind-set, you can simply look at Jesus as a great healer and enlightened being on a par with the Buddha, Muhammad, Moses, Krishna, Lao-Tzu, or other great masters. I choose Jesus not only because he is my personal teacher and friend, but also because Jesus said several memorable things about the role of faith in healing.
Once again, we're not talking about religious faith, or faith in the Bible or any religious dogma. When Jesus spoke of faith, he meant belief in the Divine within each of us that is synonymous with faith in one's connection with the Divine and confidence in the healing power of God. Here is some of what he said as recorded in the Gospels:
"Your faith has healed you."
"As you believe, it shall be done unto you."
"If you have faith, you could say to this mountain 'depart' and it would obey you."
"Pray believing you have [already] received and it will be done for you."
"Your faith has made you whole."
"Receive your sight; your faith has saved you."
Every one of us is given a portion of faith. But that faith can be in either positive or negative results -- we can believe that we will succeed or that we will fail. The mechanism is the same, but the outcome is different.
Choosing What Goes Into The Computer of the Mind
We have a choice as to what we put into the computer that is the mind. They say that the computer was designed to imitate the way the brain works.
Are you still carrying hurts around with you? You have a choice to keep feeding those hurts into your computer or saying, "Today I'm going to get a healing for that. I'm going to let it go. I'm going to practice forgiveness. Not only am I going to forgive that person and that situation, but I'm also going to forgive myself for harboring these thoughts and feelings." By contemplating the opposite sense of our negative predispositions, we can actively reverse them, even if it means saying these decrees with feeling 20 times a day for weeks or months at a time.
Love Your Body or Hate It! It's A Choice!
You never have to be a victim again. You have a choice as to whether you love your body or hate it. I didn't know that for a long time, and I would say, for instance, if my back hurt, "Oh, that stinking back! That damn back, there it goes again, out of whack." And the pains would get worse.
Then I heard an Episcopalian healer say that whenever you have a disease or pain in part of your body, don't attack it or say anything negative about it or to it. She said that instead, you could picture your hand as Jesus' hand, filled with light, lay it on the area that is in pain, and say, "I love you. I love you."
It may sound strange, she said, but the greatest healing force in the world is love. Apply love as if you were applying an ointment to that diseased area, and then picture in your mind light surrounding that area -- the healing light and love of God. It worked for me, and it will work for you -- if you have faith.
Every Emotion Causes a Physical Reaction
Every emotion that surges or trickles through you causes a physical reaction somewhere in the body. A minor upset may take a couple of days to register as a headache or backache; a more vehement explosion of anger or hatred directed at someone could result in a terrible case of ulcers or colitis, because that emotion is pounding your body.
But just as negative emotions have a negative effect on the body, so too do positive emotions have a positive effect. You may have read in Reader's Digest or other popular magazines about the benefits of giving or receiving a certain number of hugs a day. We now know from scientific research that people who are involved in loving marriages and relationships live longer, on average, than people who live alone, because of the mental and physical support they give each other.
Hugging and touching another person out of love helps the mind and emotions, as well as body chemistry. Joy and peace, which spring from love, help the nervous system function at an optimum level. The same has been found to be true of keeping pets. Even if you have no partner or loved ones living with you, you still have a need to give and share love, and we can do this with animals as well.
That's why whenever I lead a healing service or retreat, I always teach love first and foremost. When I pray with people, I think love, and I advise medical doctors that when they work with a patient, they do the same. When you're working with young children or talking to them before they go to sleep at night, think only love. Put your hand on them and allow your hand to be a vessel of love. When you hold hands with someone, think love -- God's love, pure unconditional love. Not love when, or love but, or love if -- just love.
We Become What We Focus Our Attention On
We each possess not only a conscious and subconscious mind, but also a superconscious mind in which resides the infinite intelligence of God. This level of mind desires to work for and through the other two levels of the mind to produce good in one's life. What Jung and James refer to as superconsciousness, I prefer to call Christ consciousness. The reason I do is that Jesus seems to have known about and developed this miracle level of the mind, as reflected in his ministry, life, and teachings. I believe that all of us can develop this superconscious level of the mind by learning to dwell on attributes of the Christ consciousness.
Psychologists tell us that we become what we focus our attention on. If we can learn to place our attention on our divinity -- the Christ consciousness within us -- we can begin to arouse that consciousness in the same way as the disciples of Jesus did. The early Christians released their superconscious power by meditating constantly on the name of Christ, specifically Christ Jesus.
The Hebrews released the superconscious power within them by meditating on the name of Jehovah, which they considered so sacred and powerful that they would not speak it aloud. They also used variations on the name of God, such as Jehovah Jireh, which means "God our Prosperity"; Jehovah Rapha, or "God our Health"; and Jehovah Shalom, or "God our Peace." The Hindus did much the same by chanting and meditating on the sacred sound OM, the creative element of God, which we might call the Holy Spirit.
Exercise: Arousing Christ Consciousness
The exercise that follows is a simple one to help you focus on a specific attribute of God so as to manifest awareness of that attribute in yourself -- in this case, Christ consciousness as love consciousness. You can repeat the decree below a couple of times a day.
To help you focus more intently, you may want to have someone else read it for you, or else speak it into a tape recorder and play it back while you relax with your eyes closed. Keep in mind, as I have said many times, that Jesus is for everyone. He is not about a particular religion, and it is certainly not necessary to be Christian to gain spiritual power from evoking his presence.
"My consciousness is a consciousness of love. My consciousness has no desire for personal gain or glory. My consciousness is a channel through which God is flowing into the world. I am an instrument through which God's love blesses all people. My consciousness does not condemn others or myself. My consciousness does not seek revenge. My consciousness is a forgiving consciousness. Through my consciousness of love, which is the Christ consciousness, God enters my home, my career, my relationships, all that concerns me, as well as my nation and the whole universe. Because of this, I am blessed."
This article was excerpted with permission from:
Holy Spirit for Healing: Merging Ancient Wisdom with Modern Medicine
by Ron Roth.
In this book, Ron Roth explains how the body and mind cooperate in the healing process. Because mental programming creates results in our life, we need to begin by healing subconscious attitudes. This book is not so much a study of how to heal, but rather how to stop blocking the flow of life.
About The Author
Ron Roth, Ph.D., is an internationally known teacher, spiritual healer, and modern-day mystic. As a leading-edge voice bringing us into the New Millennium, he has appeared on many television and radio programs, including The Oprah Winfrey Show. Ron is the author of Holy Spiritandseveral other books, including the bestseller The Healing Path of Prayerand the audiocassette Healing Prayers. He served in the Roman Catholic priesthood for more than 25 years and is the founder of the Celebrating Life Institute in Peru, Illinois, where he lives. You can contact Ron at: www.ronroth.com.
