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Attitudinal Healing The Essence of Our Being Is Love
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Gerald ("JERRY") JAMPOLSKY, M.D.,
AND DIANE CIRINCIONE, PH.D.
Husband and wife team Gerald Jampolsky and Diane Cirincione are transformational speakers, and the coauthors of Change Your Mind, Change Your Life. Jerry is founding director of the first Center for Attitudinal Healing (there are over 100 affiliated centers worldwide) and author of the bestseller Love Is Letting Go of Fear Diane is a clinical psychologist. This chapter is excerpted from a film interview that took place in Ulm, Hawaii.
"Health and healing ultimately has nothing to do
with the body. Real health is inner peace."
Dr. Diane Cirincione
"Love is letting go of fear"
Dr. Gerald Jampolsky
Jerry: When I was a consulting physician at the University of California Hospital, I happened to be present when a little eight year old child asked her doctor, "What's it like to die?" The doctor didn't answer her question and just changed the subject. This event made a deep impression on me. I began to wonder how kids with life threatening illnesses get these types of questions answered. The next day, inner guidance came through to create a free of charge center that would help young children who were facing death. Since the opening of our first center in 1975, over 100 Centers for Attitudinal Healing have been created worldwide.
Diane: Throughout the years, we've been inspired by many people young and old who, despite the disease and pain in their bodies, are filled with love, a sense of joy, a resiliency, a simplicity, that has nothing to do with the body. We'd like to share some stories of these real people whom we've had the honor of meeting.
Jerry: One of the principles we honor is that anyone, regardless of age, can teach us about life. A 3 year old can teach as much as a 93 year old. Children are wise souls that happen to live in little bodies. They come to us to teach us another way of looking at life, death, and the spirit. The first child who died at our Center was a year old named Greg Harri son. lie was so close to death that his medications were discontinued. One of the little kids in our support group said, "Hey, Greg, what's it like to know that you're probably gonna be dead in two weeks?" Greg responded very calmly, "Well, I think when you die, you discard your body, which was never really you in the first place, and then you are in heaven with other souls, and sometimes you come back and act as a guardian angel." There's no question that in my meditations, Greg continues to be a guardian angel.
I remember Carney, a ten year old child with sickle cell anemia. I asked him one day, "What's it like to be your age and to come so close to death so many times?" He said, "I think God has a library. In this library there are these books, but the books are really children. Some have very short due dates and some have longer due dates. And God lends these books out to parents. I am not afraid of dying, because I know that I'm always in God's heart all the time. I never really left."
Carney concluded this remarkable reply by saying that even though he knew he was sick, he inwardly felt he still had more work to do down here. Carney wanted to become a pediatrician. The last we heard, Carney is now a premed student.
So, people whose lives are threatened by illness whether they are small children, teenagers, adults, or our elders provide us with the incredible gift of looking at life and death differently. When we first opened the Center, we only offered individual and group support to young children who were very ill. But we soon felt the need to work with a wider range of people. We found that the healthy brothers and sisters of their sick siblings also had a lot of problems dealing with illness and death. Later, we included adolescents who had life threatening illnesses. Then we expanded our work to include parents. And when AIDS came on the scene, we began the work with AIDS patients. We also began to offer to serve people with non catastrophic illnesses who wanted to incorporate the principles of attitudinal healing in their lives,
Diane: In working with all these different groups of individuals, we've found that health and healing ultimately has nothing to do with the body. Real health is inner peace. Real healing is the letting go of fear. The essence of giving and receiving are the same. As we learn to help others, we begin to help ourselves. Many of these principles are found in the book A Course in Miracles. We found that the goal is not to "fix people up" or get people to just live longer. An individual can be in the last hours and days of their life, their body can be completely racked and helpless, and yet, he or she can be in a place of complete inner peace. If we've been able to embrace ourselves, and those around us, through forgiveness, we see that as being completely healed and whole.
Jerry: Most of my life I was an atheist. I thought our only identity was a body when you died, that was the end of life. So death was very scary for me. But then I came to understand the first principle of attitudinal healing that the essence of our being is love. What we really are is an everlasting spirit. When we really know in our hearts we're really not these bodies, that they're just temporary vehicles, then the finality of death begins to shift, You really see that death is just a transition to a formless state.
Diane: I remember when I was about three years old, looking down at my hand and rubbing my three fingers together. I said to myself, "This is a trick. Somebody stuffed me inside this skin." I knew I was more than this body. Throughout the years, this memory has given me great solace. There truly is no death. These bodies come and go. Life is a transformation of form, energy, and consciousness. So death has always been a comfortable place for me to be with.
Jerry: When someone leaves this earth through death's door, we often feel that a person is "lost" or we've "lost them." I'll never forget a mother who shared a story with us about her daughter. She said, "People always say to me that they're so sorry that my daughter is lost, but my daughter is not lost. When something is lost, you don't know where it is, but my daughter continuously lives within my heart, within my existence. I feel her presence in my life. So even though she's physically gone, she's not lost; she's not in some abyss somewhere."
Diane and I still feel the presence of many people who we knew who are no longer still here in physical form. Minds can communicate with each other you don't need bodies to do this. It can be a very joyful and learning experience to experience that there isn't really any separation. The separation that we feel is that we miss the physical form. The reality is that spirit and love are interconnected and never go away. It's a timeless love, an eternal love. What is really true, what never changes, is the essence of God's love that we're all part of.
I remember our dear friend, Ted, who battled AIDS for a very long time. We became very close as part of a support group. Ted was one of my great teachers, especially close to the end of his life. He once related to me that he was having an ongoing argument with someone. It seemed that whenever they were together they always clashed. One day Ted said to me, "You know, one of these days I'm going to really give him a piece of my mind." Then he stopped for a moment and said, "Oh my God, I just realized after all these years of battling with him, I have already given him my "peace of mind. " And from that moment on, he realized that this ongoing conflict was costing him the greatest price of all his peace of mind. He was then able to release it all and just let go.
On another occasion, I asked Ted what he felt was the purpose of life. He told us, "We come here to share the experience of learning about letting go of our judgments of each other." Even after his death, Ted is still a very powerful teacher for me and so many others.
Another time, I asked a 14 year old who was dying what he felt was the purpose of life. He said, "Well, as long as you're breathing, your purpose is to give love to people. A lot of people come in the hospital and they're scared. Our job is to give them love. Lots of times the doctors are scared to tell you the truth. Our job is to give them love. God says that doctors need love and forgiveness, too." It can be that simple.
I remember Don, a volunteer at our Center who had AIDS. He shared this story about his friend who had been killed in an automobile crash one week before. Don told us that this friend had never really confronted death, and that this friend, like many of us, thought he was going to live forever. Then Don said to us, "You know, given the choice, I would not have chosen to have AIDS. But if I had the choice of being the person I was years ago without AIDS agitatedhe transformed person I am today with AIDSI have no doubt that I would choose to have AIDS to be who I am today."
There was a young woman named Jennifer, with non functioning kidneys, who spent most of her teenage years on dialysis. Before she died, she told us what she would do if she knew she only had seven more days to live. She said, "Other people around me say that they would spend these last seven days with family and friends. Of course, it would be easy for me to enjoy being with the people I love for those last days. But if I had only seven days left to live my life, I would spend my time thinking of every person that I had an unhealed relationship with. And anyone who had a grievance against me, I'd ask that person for forgiveness, and I would offer forgiveness to them in return. I would do this either by letter or phone call or just in my own mind. Before we leave this life, our purpose is to heal all of our unhealed relationships. This is why the universal spirit gives us each other to find a way to heal among each other and within ourselves. I could just lie here in my bed and accomplish all of this."
This beautiful young woman knew that healing can
take place within our own minds and hearts and doesn't necessitate the
physical presence of another person. It doesn't take having your father or
your mother come to you, finally see it your way and say, "Oh yes, it's
okay, now we can forgive each other." It doesn't take that at all.
Jennifer had spent her whole life helping others in the hospitals she
lived in. She died in her 20th year. Her mother told us that her final
words in this life were, "I would rather have lived my life as a sick person helping others than having lived it as a healthy person living only for myself."
A lot of times we hold on to guilt in our lives without ever realizing how much it affects us. I remember visiting an 82 year old woman who was having uncontrolled angina attacks. Her angina medication wasn't working. I felt intuitively guided to ask her if she was holding on to any self condemnation. She shared with me something that she'd never before told anyone she still felt guilty for stealing a candy bar from a store when she was six years old. As if this was the greatest sin in the world, this 82 year old woman had been holding on to unforgiving, guilty thoughts toward herself for 76 years! As she continued the process of self forgiveness, her medications finally began working.
When it comes to forgiving ourselves, we are so often the "King or Queen of the Procrastinator's Club." So, self condemnation causes us so much difficulty. Forgiving others is really a way of forgiving ourselves. Holding on to grievances through unforgiveness reinforces the illusion that we're separate from each other.
In our own spiritual path, we're recognizing more and more that when we really know we're connected with God and each other, there really isn't any more separation between us. One is truly at peace when one knows that. A lot of our work here on Earth involves letting go of our identification with the body. We learn to be kinder to others and more tender toward ourselves. Even in our last days here on Earth, it's not too late to deepen our love and forgiveness for others and ourselves.
My own 98 year old mother is a good example of "it's never too late." She was probably the most fear filled person I've ever known. In her last years, my mother lived at the Jewish Home for the Aged. Throughout her life, she was very much a guilt ridden person who projected her guilt on others. She was usually very upset with us and everyone else "about something." As but one example, she used to blame all of us for not visiting her long enough. Eventually, no one wanted to visit her anymore.
So she was in a terrible state. And we were also in a terrible state, because we wanted her to be pleasant and happy and a nice little old lady in her last years. We finally realized that if we really wanted to have peace of mind for ourselves, our job was not to change her and want her to be a certain way, but to love her and accept her as she was, even if this included her decision to be miserable if that is what she wanted.
After we did this, we felt a lot more peace, and as time went on, a tremendous shift in her personality took place. She became very gentle and very loving to everyone around her. She began to talk about things that I never thought she'd talk about even reincarnation! This was at 98 years of age, coming from someone who hadn't before believed in any of this stuff all her life! She began having visions and dreams of seeing my father on the other side of a fence, reaching out for her.
I was very blessed to be able to be there when she died peacefully in her sleep at four in the morning. It was a very beautiful time for me. And although I thought I was complete with my mother thought that I'd said all my good byes, I remember about two days later, I was calling my answering service and no one answered. After the phone rang about ten times, all of a sudden I realized that I hadn't called my answering service I'd called my mother's phone which hadn't been disconnected yet. I burst into tears simply because I missed her. So although I thought I had said goodbye, I was reminded once again that attitudinal healing is an ongoing, continuous process that offers us an opportunity for profound spiritual transformation to take place in our lives and the lives of others.
"My cancer has metastasized to the bones. The doctors have said it's
incurable which says 'death to' me. The weird thing about knowing
I am sick is that I know in the heart of me there is willingness And that's
the paradox in the midst of my illness, I am getting well.
And that even death cannot take away."
Rev. Colin Campbell, Episcopal
priest, from the video Experiencing the Soul
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