One of the most important things a person can have during any illness is dedicated, loving support. Just the sense of care alone that is aroused when people gather together in a unified show of love makes a powerful statement. Besides offering practical help in numerous forms, support networks also serve to remind the patient, through their concern and presence, that the patient is not alone.
A strong support network also benefits other members of the patient’s team by sharing the demands an illness inevitably creates, as well as seeing to the emotional needs of one another. It is not only the sick who suffer. All of the patient’s friends, family, and acquaintances also experience stress, and for those who are closest to the patient, the situation may well become a major life stressor without adequate help.
Disease Can Create a Rift of Emotional Distress That Spreads to Others
Disease often creates a rift of distress that spreads outward in an arc from the patient, like an earthquake expanding from its epicenter. The form this distress may take is apt to vary from person to person. Certainly emotional turmoil is felt to some degree by everyone involved, but physical suffering may occur as well.
These symptoms may or may not appear to be linked to the patient’s illness. When a specific disease physically “spreads” from one person to another — such as the flu — the direct passage of the illness is easy to identify. But if a patient has cancer, let’s say, which is not communicable, and a relative experiences a heart attack, the common bond between the two conditions is less clear, even though they may well be indirectly linked, if nothing else, due to the stress of the situation.
Of course, this is an extreme example. A patient’s support team usually experiences physical symptoms that are far less severe, and possibly no more than a depression of the immune system, leading to an increase in various infections and generalized complaints.
Support Teams Need Support From Each Other
Besides physical symptoms and emotional distress, other stressors may come into play. For example, the patient’s family may suffer financial difficulties as the result of their loved one’s illness. According to the journal Health Affairs, at least half of all bankruptcy cases list disease and the associated bills as a major contributing factor. Even when medical treatments are covered by insurance companies, this does not account for deductibles, time missed from work, as well as travel, food, and hotel expenses when visiting distant treatment centers, which is a common scenario during a serious illness.
For all these reasons and more, support teams often find that they need one another as much as the patient needs them. It is critical that those involved in caring for the patient, in any way, understand these stressors and prepare themselves to process and deal with them in a positive way.
As with all our lessons, this one begins with awareness. Physical disease, unstable emotions, anxiety, and depression are all common symptoms caused by the stress of watching someone you care about suffer.
This is inevitable and to some degree perhaps unavoidable. Members of the support team, therefore, must resolve not to project their own stress, fear, and uncertainty onto others who are also trying to help. This may require a conscious, determined effort to be doubly patient with the feelings of others as well as more aware of your own emotional state.
One helpful approach is to use the situation, however negative it seems, as an opportunity to fortify your connections with those around you; others will be experiencing the same fears and challenges you are dealing with. As you learn to communicate in positive ways about difficult things, you may take your relationships in a new, healthier direction, leading to unexpected heights of learning, compassion, and wisdom. All situations, no matter how challenging, can be used for healing.
Healthy Relationships
Without a doubt, no component of healing is more important than healthy relationships. Our relationships are the single most important factor to living a happy, healthy life in general. Without rich, satisfying relationships, your life will always feel incomplete and impoverished, no matter how rich your worldly circumstances.
In my view, relationships are more important to our happiness than money, success, education, and physical health combined. As long as we have strong relationships, we can do without any one of these things and still feel loved and, by extension, happy. However, if our relationships are lacking, no amount of money, success, or health will matter.
You can have all the money in the world, attain the height of success in your career, and be the most physically fit and healthiest person on the planet, but if your relationships are a wreck, you will be too — at least on the inside, where it counts. There is no escaping what you hold within; the content of your heart and head accompanies you wherever you go.
In the end, all we really have are our connections with other people. As the old saying goes, you cannot take your money, or any possession, with you when you die. The one thing you can take with you is the love you have shared with others because, as many mystics have noted, love is what we are; it is literally what our souls are made of. All the love you give and receive while in Earth School is added to your being.
Striving To Cultivate Loving, Healed Relationships
This is why healthy relationships are so important. Of all the topics and methods for healing discussed in this book, striving to cultivate loving, healed relationships is without a doubt the most important. If you are able to perfect your relationships to the point where you offer only love to all the people in your life — whether they represent keystone relationships, acquaintances, or are merely strangers you happen to meet briefly only once — you will be well on your way to living a healthy life, both emotionally and physically. Developing healthy relationships may represent the ultimate human goal and, without a doubt, is one of the most challenging accomplishments we can achieve.
The problem is very few of us attain such perfection when it comes to our personal relationships. If you are like most people, perhaps you have noticed that virtually all the major stressors in your life come from dealing with other human beings — and stress and conflict feed disease like no other earthly toxin.
Researchers talk a lot about the many carcinogens we are exposed to in the modern world, but none that I know of have identified the ultimate carcinogen, which is our toxic relationships with one another.
On the other hand, the ultimate healthy relationship is called a spiritual relationship, and these have a powerful, positive effect on our health. Spiritual relationships go beyond merely being “healthy.” Spiritual relationships are based on awakening to the unity that connects two souls, joining them together as one.
Spiritual Relationships
It could be argued that all relationships are inherently spiritual because the underlying truth is that human beings are spiritual in nature. Therefore your real relationships with others do not exist between egos but between souls. Yet the spiritual relationship is one that places this awareness at the center of its identity. This relationship holds the realization of unity as its highest aim.
All this does not necessarily mean that such relationships will be conflict free. The idea that spiritual relationships are “perfect” is a common misnomer. The spiritual relationship is really an unfolding process of purification through which forgiveness is practiced over and over. It may never be fully mastered during the course of the relationship, but every successful effort provides sweeping learning gains.
This is how unity is eventually realized — through forgiveness, which is really only a process that removes elements of division between people. Yet no relationship can be considered perfect because neither participant is perfect, at least not on an earthly level. This much is a given. If they were, they would not be students of Earth School.
The primary difference between the spiritual relationship and ego-bound relationships is that the spiritual relationship emphasizes releasing the past and forgiving mistakes, whereas destructive ego relationships are heavily engaged in maintaining grievances and reinforcing guilt; egos clash, divide, and assault, whereas spirits unite, seek to make happy, and heal.
Any Relationship Can Become A Spiritual Relationship
The unification of two wills into one focus — with forgiveness and unconditional love as their compass — brings both into close contact with Source energy. This is precisely where spiritual relationships derive their healing power from, and why they can even be used to heal others outside of the primary relationship.
Any relationship can become a spiritual relationship because all relationships contain a spiritual core. Just as you have a core Self, so too do all your worldly relationships contain a Divine, purified reflection, which is your core Self’s relationship with another’s core Self.
You may believe that you cannot salvage some of your relationships because they are too damaged, but all you really need to decide is what you want. Do you want distrust, grievances, and pain? Or would you prefer joy, healing, and the peace that comes from a unified partnership? This is really all you are choosing between. Once you decide for peace, the means to bring your relationship in line with your goal will happen naturally with very little effort required on your part.
When Key Relationships Are Damaged
You cannot force someone else to change or accept that they are wrong. You must be the one to challenge your own need to be defensive, to justify your own attacks, and by doing so reinforce your ego. This brings us to the primary, guiding rule for healing any relationship:
Seek only to heal yourself.
This determination represents the leading shift toward authentic healing. Next must come the natural step of turning inward in order to examine your personal motivations in the conflict, with the central goal of healing your own head and heart.
Forget about what you believe the other person needs to do, how they should act, and what type of attitudinal shifts you think they must undergo in order for the relationship to be improved. The belief that others must change in order for you to be happy is an endless ego device for ensuring that no real change will occur.
As long as you maintain such a backward belief, you will never find happiness and peace because you will never be happy and at peace with yourself. There will always seem to be something wrong, something that needs changing, some lack of fulfillment that will follow you through life from one disappointing circumstance to the next.
The Way to End Any Conflict
In order to end any conflict you must first become willing to relinquish your own vendetta and claim on guilt against the other. For this, true forgiveness must play a central role, which simply means that you become willing to release the past and focus only on the love that can be felt in the now.
This focus will also clear your mind of any unsettled personal guilt, for by no longer seeking to reinforce guilt in your partner, you will automatically extend this same courtesy to yourself. This liberates you from the misperception that your own mistakes — whether they are hidden in unconsciousness or glaring at the forefront of your awareness — are unforgivable. This is the real beauty that sets forgiveness apart from all other worldly gifts. True forgiveness benefits both parties.
The spiritual relationship is simple, not complex, resting only on learning to give and receive love freely — and nothing more. This arrangement necessarily involves a great many lessons on forgiveness because forgiveness is what you are here to learn. It is the great lesson of Earth School.
Sharing Love and Affection
In regards to health and healing specifically, just remember that your interactions with other people provide you with much more than mere companionship. We share love and affection with one another every day, and each exchange either provides a healing elixir for our trials and our pains or it delivers a poison that will eventually lead to our own destruction.
Each bond you share with another human being represents a link that connects you to Source energy, the ultimate creative, and curative, force. If you want to heal, you need look no further than your relationships. By remembering your connection with others, you are remembering your connection with God; and by loving others, you are loving God. Could anything be more healing than that?
About the Author
Tobin Blake, the author of The Power of Stillness and Everyday Meditation, is a longtime student of meditation, healing, and the mind-body connection. He received training in meditation and Kriya Yoga through Self-Realization Fellowship, but has studied many forms of dharma. He is also long-time disciple of A Course in Miracles. Tobin has appeared on numerous radio shows and television, and he holds workshops on meditation and spiritual awakening throughout the Pacific Northwest. For more, visit www.TobinBlake.com
