Image by J Lloa
Narrated by Marie T. Russell.
Editor's Note: While this article focuses on healing from Lyme disease, its precepts could be applied to any and all diseases, including viruses, cancers, etc. As you read, you could replace the word Lyme with the word disease or any other specific illness you would like to address.
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When we least expect it, life sends us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change. At such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.
-- PAULO COELHO
If we stay focused on the growth potential offered through the “initiation” of Lyme disease, it can transform from enemy to teacher. It reminds us to do what we love, it teaches us how to heal and how to embody, and it calls us to explore the places where we may be out of balance in ourselves. Lyme teaches those who are sensitive how to toughen up. It may also address those who are walled off from their feelings to feel them.
Consciously working with Lyme as a teacher is both a calling and a challenge. Lyme can be painful and debilitating, leaving you feeling hopeless, depressed, frustrated, and isolated. But it also can call forward the parts of you that are strong and determined. Lyme can call you to live in your truth, be in your power, and bring more love into your life.
Choosing to say yes to the teacher of Lyme, rather than allowing ourselves to become the victim of Lyme, is ultimately choosing love over fear. When we make a conscious choice of trusting love, regardless of what is happening, we become a reflection of a love that is much greater than our sense of self.
It calls us first to recognize and then surrender to that greater love or divinity as it moves through us. Sometimes, it can happen in unexpected or undesirable ways. Therein lies the journey: healing the suffering of the body and mind with the love of our spirit, which I believe is the truth of who we are. It is the spark of love that lights the fire of our healing, starting from inside and radiating out.
Why Lyme or Any Other Disease?
Many believe that diseases such as Lyme are connected to Earth’s immune system being under stress from pollution, fossil fuels, pesticides, heavy metals, urban sprawl, greenhouse gases, and other problems. From this idea, we can consider the possibility that if Earth’s immune system is stressed or compromised, our immune systems may be compromised. Without this planet, we do not survive.
I have met many people with Lyme who don’t want to be here: they feel disconnected, dissatisfied, and disaffected. Having felt that way before myself, I believe that it is precisely this disembodiment or nonpresence that can make us more susceptible to sickness. I tended to leave my body or check out because I had buried feelings of old emotional pain that I did not want to deal with. This tendency to avoid deep stuck emotions is also called spiritual bypassing and manifests as a sort of spiritual disconnect or out-of-body experiences.
If you don’t want to be here, something else will gladly take your place, like Lyme. I genuinely believe that this is part of why I got sick: I wasn’t grounded enough in my body to have clear boundaries and had to learn them through the initiation of this illness.
I want to be clear that I am not trying to create any additional feelings of guilt or blame for anyone who is already struggling with this illness. Sometimes we get sick, and it is not our fault. However, taking responsibility for what is not working in our life is the first step to healing. We have to check that box before we can move on to the medicines. The more I was willing to feel my buried feelings and love myself, the better I was able to burn out the disease.
Healing Our Wounds
You need courage to be here, to heal your wounds, even if you don’t want to. Sometimes the way out is through the pain. However, I do understand that sometimes the pain is just too much, and the suffering is too great to bear, and we may choose to leave. Consider the image of a tree: its branches cannot grow to the sky unless its roots are anchored deep in the earth.
Lyme offers an opportunity to connect to that divine self within the physical self. You can meditate and pray to access both your wisdom and divine guidance on how to proceed with your healing on the physical plane. Use your intuition to help guide you to heal.
You are not alone, and realizing that in and of itself helps calm emotions. There are allies, doctors, and healers supporting you on this path of healing, which becomes a path of awakening. Lyme disease can catalyze the process of reclaiming our bodies and acknowledging our power and can help us too in learning to embody our spirit more deeply.
Seeing Lyme and Other Diseases as Teachers
If we can see Lyme and other diseases as teachers, we may transform our perspective on what disease is. Doing so opens an exploration into our impermanence, the truth that someday we will have to let go of these bodies.
What is this impermanence teaching us? The answer is for us to discover through realizations of the mysteries.
This perspective shift on Lyme as a teacher has taught me a tremendous amount about love, fear, forgiveness, grounding, strength, power, deeper embodiment, and gratitude. Beneath all the fear, stories, wounds, pain, and suffering, I’ve come to see that it comes down to recognizing and feeling the divine love and infinite power inside myself— to the point where I was OK if I died (and I came close).
Among all these lessons, Lyme has taught me the most about love, boundaries, surrender, and staying in the present moment. What is this initiation teaching you? How can you support yourself to open more fully to Lyme as a teacher?
We have an endless box of tools that we can continue coming back to, to support us in this journey of diving down even deeper into the next layer of healing when the time is ripe. We can meditate, pray, and call on the aid of a therapist or guide to help us continue to ask the hard questions, but to be capable of accepting love and forgiveness is critical.
Bringing Unconscious Beliefs To The Surface
Bringing these unconscious beliefs to the surface helps us see the mental story and access the connected energies in our bodies that need to move. When we feel the old emotions that we stuffed inside long ago, we open the gateway for movement and healing. When we do the deep work of feeling all the feelings that never got felt, we arrive at a place where love is given and received from the self, from God, and from others.
Then our immunity can work at full force. Some would say that we are here to love and be loved. Part of this returning to love asks us to forgive. Find the good in people you’re upset with or who have hurt you in some way. Consider praying for and blessing the success and joy of others, even those you are jealous of or dislike. Recall the lines from the poem, The Healing Decree of Immunity: Forgive yourself from the past. Support your immune system to do its task.
It might take some time, maybe even a lifetime, but we can start the practice today. I began my process of forgiving (which I am still very actively engaged in) when I was consumed with Lyme disease and suffering more than I ever had before. What helped me avoid becoming a victim was to remember that others were suffering far worse than me.
Reaching out to alleviate suffering in others can help relieve the pain in yourself. Try it, and you may be surprised by what you find. Allow any wall around the heart to fall; let the heart be a flexible organ or conduit that gives and receives only love.
What About the Children?
What about children who have Lyme disease? Does it mean they have all these issues too? Perhaps there are no underlying issues, and the child is just sick. If this is the case, antibiotics may knock out the Lyme, but if the disease goes on and becomes chronic, then do what it takes to get the immune system at 100 percent to overcome Lyme.
Perhaps there are ancestral or genetic issues that have been passed on to the child. I believe that a repressed feeling of sin (unfelt feelings) can get passed on. These are questions that you may ask as a parent of a sick child. Then the parent becomes the guardian, the healer, the liberator.
I’ve seen children bounce back much quicker than adults with Lyme. Children may heal faster and easier with Lyme because their immune systems are usually less stressed and more at full power, and their circulation is better, bringing antibiotics and medicines through the bloodstream more efficiently than an adult’s.
Consider being more childlike in your physical, mental, and spiritual behavior as part of your healing. See what it feels like to lighten up, to play and flow more.
We Are Already Healed: Spirit is Never Sick
Sometimes we can feel stuck with Lyme like we can’t heal. But I want to propose the idea that we are already healed. Consider that the spirit is not sick, yet the body may be going through an initiation.
The truth is, recovering from Lyme disease can be a considerable undertaking, and sometimes, we need serious help. We can’t do it alone. Occasionally, we need a bone marrow transplant when we have leukemia. Sometimes we need a new liver when we have liver failure—and thank goodness we live in a day and age when this help is available. But sometimes people die, sometimes our bodies don’t heal, and sometimes there’s no way to make sense of it.
What if we try our best to cultivate more love, compassion, and forgiveness before it’s our time to leave this planet? Life is precious, and we don’t know how long we will be here. It is of the utmost importance that we live to our fullest capacity at each moment.
Each moment is a new opportunity to look deep inside. What do you have to let go of? Whose voice are you listening to? Fear or love? It’s important to have a sense of curiosity when you ask these questions. Notice if your inner monologue goes to judgment, and see if you can invite the voice of compassion. Treat yourself like you would treat a small child who is still learning.
It’s only through becoming aware of our issues that we can do the work needed to transform them. It begins with choosing to listen to the voice of love, no matter what. It also takes verifying any intuitive information that you receive with love. Hold fast and trust love as if it were your last day on Earth.
Love like there’s no tomorrow because there might not be.
Is The Real You Really Sick?
Is the real you really sick? Your body may be going through initiation and hell, but no, the real you is not sick and never will be. That is your anchor; that is the way out. Stay focused.
A good mantra that worked for me is, “I am the powerful presence of divine love at all times.” Try your best to feel it. You are that love if you want it: keep feeling it. Associate with it, share it, and bring it in, and that will generate even more of the feeling.
What do you love to do? What would you rather be doing than feeling sick? Go toward that purpose and do it. What you love can be a motivating force in your healing. Coupled with properly channeled anger as the fuel for your fire, you then have the motivation to achieve your deepest heart’s desire. You can do it; you can and will heal. Remember to trust love always, and fight for what you love.
Welcome to the great mystery; we are all in this together.
Thank it, bless it, burn it.
© 2021 by Vir McCoy and Kara Zahl
Healing Arts Press. Reprinted with permission
from the publisher Inner Traditions International.
www.InnerTraditions.com
Article Source
Liberating Yourself from Lyme: An Integrative and Intuitive Guide to Healing Lyme Disease
(Updated Edition of Liberating Lyme)
by Vir McCoy and Kara Zahl
In this medical intuitive approach to Lyme, the authors share their personal Lyme journeys and their integrative healing protocol that bridges the scientific and the spiritual. They explore the peculiarities of Lyme disease, including how Lyme is often misdiagnosed, giving it time to establish itself deep within the body’s organs and nervous system, and examine in detail new and standard remedies, with thorough scientific references.
For more info and/or to order this book, click here.
About the Authors
Vir McCoy is a teacher, healer, author, lecturer, musician, and ecologist who works both as a bodywork healer and as a field biologist and botanist focusing on endangered species.
Kara Zahl is a healing arts practitioner, yoga instructor, and intuitive counselor with a bodywork practice combining massage and energy work modalities.
