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A month? I didn’t have a month! I had less than three weeks left.
I felt as if someone had stuck a pin in my balloon. How could it be that he couldn’t see me? I was just so sure he was part of my journey—one of my signposts. So far everything had flowed so perfectly, so gracefully—as if I was somehow in “the zone” that so many athletes speak of. This couldn’t be right. I asked her if she was absolutely certain.
“Yes, I’m sorry—he’s completely booked.”
Deflated, I put the phone down, still somehow unconvinced. Two minutes later I redialed—“Could I at least speak to him?”
“He’s with a client.”
“Well, could you pass on my message?”
“I’ll let him know you called.”
That night at 10:45 I received a phone call beginning with a flurry of apologies for calling so late. “My name is Benjamin—I’m the cranial-visceral massage therapist you phoned.”
We talked until 11:00 P.M., and he said, “Listen, if you don’t mind coming at 7:00 A.M. I’ll fit you in for as many sessions as I can between now and your time to go back for tests. Can you make it that early?”
“I can’t afford not to. I’ll be there at 6:45.”
Though early mornings have never been my best times, I was thrilled to be actively working toward physically healing myself, and glad that things once more seemed back “in the flow” and on track.
At the end of the first session, Benjamin turned to me as I reached for my coat, and said, “You know, I don’t get the feeling that this is really going to be a problem for you; I almost get the feeling it’s already healing itself. I know it sounds crazy, because your examination is less than three weeks away, but I get the feeling you are going to get this thing handled!”
I practically repeated it out loud with him! What was this, a mantra? I shook my head, smiled, and waved goodbye—“See you tomorrow.”
Benjamin had given me the name of a very good colon therapist. I promptly followed this up, and got an immediate appointment. During our colonic session she felt around my belly and said, “You know, I get the feeling this is going to move out very quickly, but there’s some old emotional stuff stored in there that you need to let go of.”
“I know,” I mumbled quietly. I was already all too aware that although I was actively taking care of my physical body in preparation for the healing, I still had not yet addressed the emotional side—I had not got to the core of what created the tumor in the first place. I checked inside to see if I was avoiding facing the issue, and I honestly didn’t feel I was. I was just staying open and trusting I would be guided, and I hadn’t yet felt “called” or pulled to dive into the emotional cause of the tumor.
It took a lot of courage, and more patience than I was normally accustomed to, to keep trusting, as I was fully aware that time was marching on! That night I got a phone call from my dear spiritual friend, Kabir, in San Francisco. He happens to be an oncologist, a doctor who specializes in cancer, and I listened as he gave an hour’s earful of technical medical detail, most of which I didn’t fully understand. I kept feeling, “There’s got to be a reason I’m listening to all this.” Finally, toward the end of the conversation, he got out of doctor mode and back into friendship mode, and I was able to get a word in edgewise. I let him know that it was not my intention to go the orthodox medical route. I intended to try healing on my own before giving the surgeons a chance to cut me open, and I really wanted to get at the emotional issues that I knew were at the core of it all, and get the learning that this pelvic mass had to give me.
“Brandon, I just got an idea! You should come visit me for a couple of days; I’ve got this great bodyworker who helps people let go of the emotional issues stored inside while working on your body—it’s fabulous work. I go there myself about once a week. She’s magic! I really have got a lot out of her sessions.”
For a doctor, sometimes he sounded so dramatic, but something in what he said called to me, and besides, even if she wasn’t that brilliant, I could always go over to the local meditation center there, meditate, and attend some programs—plus I’d get a chance to hang out with Kabir and have some of our spiritual chats.
“I’ll see if I can get good flights. If not, then we’ll assume it’s not meant to be.”
As grace would have it, I got one of those super-duper special discount deals on two tickets to San Francisco only forty-eight hours later. It was only two and a half weeks before I had to reappear at the doctor’s office and here I was once again—TRUSTING, TRUSTING, TRUSTING!
I was delighted to find Kabir had already organized a couple of appointments for me. Being a doctor, he himself had next to no time to see me, which suited me fine as I had a feeling when I stepped off the plane that something important was going to happen in San Francisco.
I made an uncharacteristic decision not to go to Kabir’s home, but to book Don and me into a great little bed-and-breakfast inn just down the street from the therapist. Figuring I had only a few short days there, I thought I might like to rest between sessions and keep quiet and let myself heal. Plus, the bed-and-breakfast was virtually down the street from the meditation center, where I could go to meditate and sit in silence.
Some part of me instinctively knew that the time had come to face the music—to turn inward and keep to myself. I didn’t know how important that decision would turn out to be.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_3134e194-dcb3-5508-adbc-6354deed4768)
As I went up the steps to meet Surja, the massage therapist, something inside began to feel wobbly and a little scared. I wondered what that was all about, and dismissed it as I rang the bell.
A lady with a kind face answered. With very reassuring tones, she took me to her treatment room, which was warm and clean and somehow nurturing in a simple, homey way. I asked her what the teddy bears on the chair were for. “Oh, for kids when they come here. It makes them feel secure. Some adults like them too.” I smiled, and got the feeling that they were really there for the adults. It seemed a little quaint, but sweet, just the same.
She was burning some fragrant incense, and had pictures of a couple of spiritual masters she had studied with. Though massage was her speciality, I could see she had a great love of Spirit, and probably had the same thirst for learning that I do.
We got to chatting before we started, and I told her the whole story from beginning to end—that it was my firm belief that emotional memories are stored in the cells of the body and get passed on from one cell generation to the next, and that real healing begins when you let go of these cellular memories. I prayed, with all my heart, to finally face whatever was stored inside that tumor. I hoped she could help.
I admitted to her that, being in the mind-body field myself, I’d probably tried and done everything over the past twenty years. I felt I’d experienced every healing technique available, and figured I’d already handled all my emotional issues. So, when my belly kept growing and growing, it never occurred to me that there could actually be something seriously wrong. I had to admit that perhaps I’d grown arrogant—thinking it couldn’t happen to me.
I let her know something that I hadn’t shared with anyone else—how humbling it had been, and how ashamed I’d felt not only to find out how large the tumor had grown, but also to realize how long I’d stayed in denial. I just hadn’t wanted to believe that anything could be wrong with me, as I was supposedly doing everything right.
She stopped me to say, “You know, it sounds like you were doing everything right—it just seems to me like this must be some old stuff you need to get rid of.”
“But I feel like I’ve done every healing process on the planet!”
“Well, clearly your body doesn’t think so! The fact that your emotional stuff has manifested at the physical level must mean that you’re finally ready to face it and let it go.”
I knew she was right, and nodded in quiet agreement. It seemed apparent that we shared the same beliefs about health, and I felt very comfortable.
We continued swapping stories of various therapeutic practices, and laughed at some of the more ridiculous things we’d tried when we were younger. Then we began sharing our different spiritual realizations. About forty-five minutes slipped away before we both realized we were taking up precious therapy time.
Before we started I made a silent prayer that I would have the courage to face whatever was stored inside that tumor. I then opened and surrendered inwardly, and allowed myself to expand into the stillness that had been my constant companion throughout my journey. I knew instinctively it was definitely from the stillness that all the answers would come—not from my personality, and certainly not from my chattering mind. If my thinking mind was to have come up with the answers, it surely would have done so by now. As it hadn’t, my only route was trust: trust in a deeper wisdom, the wisdom responsible for making my heart beat, my eyes shine, my hair grow; trust in the infinite intelligence responsible for making my cells replicate; trust in the part of me that is awake when I’m asleep at night. I knew I would have to trust and surrender into my very essence—into the real me—into what felt like “home” to me.
As she began massaging me, I closed my eyes and felt myself relaxing ever more deeply into peace, and once again I had the experience of time standing still—my senses fully alive, and yet my mind completely at rest, with a presence of peace that seemed vast, without boundaries. I felt myself connected with everything.
While massaging, Surja suggested, “Why don’t you, in your mind’s eye, take some steps right down into your tumor and see what it looks like down there?” Her suggestion seemed so obvious, but somehow it felt right. So I decided to do just that.
When I got inside my uterus I didn’t like what I saw. It was pretty scary-looking, and more than once I thought, “I’m getting out of here. I don’t want to see all this.” But my inner wisdom kept reminding me that I was here for a reason, and so once again I prayed for the courage to face whatever it was I needed to face. I was certain I was going to find something I just couldn’t bear to see.
As I was “walking about” inside the tumor, I came to an area that seemed particularly dark. As I approached the area, I could sense an intense feeling of fear emanating from the walls. Spontaneously, an old memory of an intense childhood trauma flashed before me. Instantly, my doubting, thinking mind checked in and said, “It can’t be that—I know all about that memory—I’ve long since dealt with that issue and put it to bed! It wasn’t that big a deal—it can’t be the cause of what’s going on in here . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah . . .”
As Surja continued to massage, I shyly relayed the judgments my thinking mind was making. She said reassuringly, “Well, your body wisdom is probably coming up with that particular memory for a reason. For now, why don’t you just go with what’s coming up for you? Even if your thinking mind is doubting it, what have you got to lose?”
And so I continued watching the memory. In my mind, I found myself going through the scene as if in living color, and in slow motion. Surprisingly, unexpected emotions that I had buried and long since forgotten seemed to be arising, and the true expression of how I felt at the time seemed to be surfacing. I hadn’t realized how intensely I had felt at the time. I’d been too successful, even then, at masking my true emotions by putting on a brave face.
Tears quietly streamed down my cheeks.
I felt very private, and I didn’t want to say much to Surja about it. And yet, there was a great relief in finally just being real with myself—taking the mask off and letting myself experience the incredible vulnerability and helplessness that I felt as a young child in that memory. I was finally letting myself feel the natural emotions that I hadn’t let myself experience at the time of the trauma. Somehow, even as a small child I’d learned that I wasn’t allowed to show my true feelings. And, more important, I hadn’t been able to admit them to myself.
So, in a very simple, pure way I was finally allowing myself to experience what had been there all along. I had never really forgotten this old memory, and the “discovery” of it was no real revelation. What came as a surprise was the intensity of my true feelings—I’d been so successful in putting a lid on them that I managed to convince myself that it wasn’t that important!
I shared a little of what I was going through with Surja, and gently she asked me, “Do you feel complete?” I checked inside with the inner wisdom. “No.”
“Well, why don’t you imagine a little campfire, and put all the people in your memory there with you; and why don’t you have a fireside chat and find out why the other people were behaving as they did, and let them know your true feelings—let the younger you talk to them as if they were here right now.”
Once again, what she said seemed like a good idea, so I thought I’d give it a go—I had nothing to lose. Meanwhile, I was still getting a lovely relaxing massage. Surja seemed to instinctively know in which area I was carrying tension, and she would ease it as I carried on with my internal processing.
Inside my mind’s eye, I pictured myself at a crackling campfire. Both my parents were there—they looked so much younger, and dressed in the corny style of the 1950s—and the four-year-old me who’d gone through the emotional memory was standing there in her little dress, looking very unprotected and unsure of herself. The present me was also there, so I decided to go over to the younger me and invite her to sit in my lap, so that she could feel safe and comforted.
I was very surprised at what was said at the campfire. I hadn’t realized how intensely the younger me had felt about this old memory. It seemed the little me had a lot of unexpressed pain to share.
She finally said what she had been unable to say for years. It seemed as if years of pain poured out of her. When she seemed empty of words, I turned to my parents and asked why they had behaved as they did. I was equally surprised to hear what was going on for them at the time, and tears of compassion sprang to my eyes as I finally understood the source of their pain, and how frustrated and helpless they felt. My sister had drowned at the age of four, and unfortunately their inexpressible pain would sometimes spill out and get directed at the rest of us.
The fireside chat continued until we’d all finally emptied ourselves out, having shared from our deepest hearts. And my little childhood self finally, for the very first time, truly understood why and how everything had taken place. I was left in peace—peace, simplicity, and true understanding.
I related a very condensed version of what had taken place to Surja, and she asked me once again if I finally felt complete with this old issue. I checked inside. “No, there’s something still niggling me inside, but I don’t know what it is—it’s just a feeling that something else still needs to take place.”
I felt at a loss. I knew there was no sense in turning to my thinking mind. It would only give me some obvious logical-seeming answer that had already been unsuccessful in helping me to heal, or it would judge me and tell me how stupid this all was.
So, once again I felt myself opening and trusting and surrendering into the silence—I knew the answers would come from there. As the silence became very vast, very pervasive, my thinking mind was arrested and, once again, I felt awed by the beauty of the peace that seemed to be emanating from my soul. My thoughts came to rest, as silence seemed to fill the room.
From the depths of the silence, I heard the words (or rather somehow experienced them)—“You need to forgive your parents.”
It hit me like a stone. I knew it was the truth. It was so obvious, but it had never occurred to me before. So, in my mind’s eye, I reconstructed the campfire and put my parents by the fire. Then, inwardly, the younger me forgave both of them—in the innocent way that children forgive. I felt as if my heart was breaking as the words of forgiveness came from my lips. The forgiveness was absolutely authentic, and came from the very depths of my soul.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. Peace washed through my body, the peace of completion. A simple knowing arose from within, a knowing that THE STORY WAS OVER!
As I lay there on the massage table, I began to feel a subtle but palpable energy coursing through my arms and legs, then throughout my whole body. Somewhere deep within I knew the tumor’s healing had begun.
After a short while, Surja gently let me know that it was time for the session to end. Two hours had gone by. It had seemed so much quicker than that! Gently, I sat up, feeling a little light-headed, and she handed me a glass of water.
She suggested that I might like to go back to the bed-and-breakfast, maybe have some soup, take a rest, and just allow things to continue to process inside. I nodded silently—I didn’t feel much like talking—and quietly prepared to get down off the massage table.
Inwardly, my doubting, thinking mind had slowly crept back, and was now in full force saying things like, “This wasn’t that big a deal—so you found an old memory—so what? . . . You’ve done this kind of thing before. . . . Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. . . . All this was just in your mind, in your imagination. . . .” and on, and on.
I slipped off the table, my mind chattering away, and reached for my clothes. As I put my arm out to grab my slacks, I felt wildly off balance, woozy and wobbly all over. I had to grab for a chair to sit down.
In that instant my mind stopped all criticism, and quietly turned all of its focus to what was going on in my body. I thought, “Shit!—something is happening here—something big!” and I reached down to touch my taut-as-a-drum belly to find it had actually gone just a tiny bit soft! I thought, “I must be dreaming—things can’t happen this quickly.” My mind began to race—it couldn’t comprehend what was taking place. I felt sick all over. All I wanted to do was lie down.
Don was already out in the living room, waiting for me, and I didn’t want him to see how sick I was feeling. I felt extremely disoriented—I could feel that things inside were shifting rapidly, but if I had to explain what I meant by that, I knew I couldn’t.
Gently, I made my way into the car. When I got to my room at the bed-and-breakfast, I was unbelievably grateful to slip into the clean white sheets and just snuggle down and rest, while whatever it was that was taking place, took place.
I continued “processing” through the day, and during the night I slept fitfully. I woke up the next morning feeling weak and vulnerable, uncomprehending. Everything was happening so quickly. It felt as if the molecules in my body were buzzing and shifting, and when I touched what had been my hard, pregnant-feeling tummy, it felt like jelly.
For three days I was weak and disoriented. I felt somehow raw and exposed, as my body seemed to go about the process of doing what it knew how to do. I was absolutely certain of one thing. “I” wasn’t in charge—my body wisdom had powerfully taken over and was transforming my cells naturally and perfectly, of its own accord, without me having to think about a thing.
Strangely, my mind finally shut up—it had no more judging comments to make. The fact that things were working perfectly well without its interference was so powerfully evident, it had nothing more to say about it. I rested in a peace that was all enveloping. I felt very childlike, innocent, completely content not to understand any part of what was taking place internally. I just rested easily in the sweet, all-embracing acceptance that was present. The intelligence of the body wisdom was working its own miracle inside, and all I could do was rest in gratitude and surrender.
As I rested in quiet contemplation, it occurred to me that all along I had thought this tumor was clinging to me, when in fact I had been clinging to it—protecting myself from the memory and painful feelings stored there. And when I finally discovered the emotional patterns and memory connected to it, and finished the story, that’s when the need for the tumor finally finished. Once the issues were completed, healed and forgiven, the tumor was able to leave. It had fulfilled its purpose and given me its teaching.
It seemed as if I had literally put the painful memory into a package, and put a lid on it. Then the cells had grown and grown to keep the old memory encapsulated, protecting me from having to face it over the years. Or so it seemed, looking back on it.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_43753c1e-570f-5b83-8c6f-ba73fcd890b8)
It was now only ten days until I was due back at the doctor’s office. Daily, my stomach was growing flatter, although as I got close to the due date I could see it was not yet completely flat.
By this time I was already back in Malibu, and I decided to see if I could accelerate my healing. I asked a few of my closest friends to help me go through the memory processing two more times, although this time, instead of massaging my body, they held acupressure points relating to my internal organs.
Once again, I surrendered deeply into the silence, and spontaneously the inner knowing brought up a few more memories—different ones from the first, but all centered on the same theme. I found I was forgiving myself, as well as the other people involved, but I could see I was just learning different aspects of the same lesson.
It was as if there was one core issue and I had spent a lifetime repeating the same pattern, making the same painful mistakes, but with different people. It was as if I had a string of memories that was like a pearl necklace—even though each memory or each pearl had a slightly different shape, size and hue, they were all essentially the same. And it felt to me that on that day with Surja, we had broken the string, and now all the pearls were just sliding off—all the memories were just finishing themselves and leaving. When we were done with each process I felt profound shifts and movement that continued for several hours.
Two days before my doctor’s appointment, I kept feeling my tummy. It had gone down in size dramatically, but it still didn’t feel completely flat. So, when I sat in the doctor’s office, waiting for my examination, my heart began to pound. I felt a mixture of excitement, anticipation, and fear washing through me; my knees felt weak and my hands sticky. Once again I sat there fearing the worst, waiting for the doctor to lower the boom.
Once again, we went through a thorough examination, only this time the doctor talked to me as it was progressing. She mentioned that she had sent the previous test samples in to discover whether the mass was malignant or benign, but they had been contaminated with all the blood, so she was going to have to redo the tests. I kept thinking, “I don’t want to hear about the previous tests. Just tell me what’s going on now.”
As she was speaking, I suddenly remembered that a year earlier I had Pap smear results that had come up as precancerous. On a scale of one to five, with five being cancerous, I was a three. At the time I didn’t really give it any thought, as my alternative healthcare practitioner had dismissed the result, saying that many things could contribute to a precancerous smear result—even a vaginal infection. So, I had just let it go. I realized now that I ought to have investigated it further.
Finally, the doctor said, “Well, there’s been a big improvement. The pelvic mass seems to have gone down significantly—from the size of a basketball to the size of a six-inch cantaloupe melon.”
The words fell on my ears with a dull thud.
“A six-inch cantaloupe—are you sure it’s still that big?” I said. Disappointment filled me.
“That’s a dramatic change, Brandon—it’s gone all the way down from pushing against your diaphragm, three inches above your waistline, to right here, two inches below your waistline. I can cup my hand right around the top of it. Here, touch it with your own hand—can you feel it?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to fight back tears.
“Think of a basketball.” (She showed me with her hands.) “Now think of a six-inch cantaloupe melon. (She showed me again.) That’s a significant change.” Long pause. “But it’s not significant enough, Brandon. You still need to have it surgically removed.”
I turned my face away so she couldn’t see me as I wiped my eyes, and quietly asked if we could talk about it in her consultation room. I thought it had gone down a lot more than that. As I sat with her, her words seemed to come through a haze. She clearly could see I was upset and was trying to assuage me while remaining firm in outlining the direction I should take.
“It’s a huge improvement, Brandon. There’s nothing to be disappointed about. Clearly you’ve been doing something to heal yourself. But I feel I must let you know tumors are known to be volatile, and it is possible for them to vacillate radically in size—that’s why your tummy blew up in size in the six weeks before your first visit. There’s nothing to say it won’t blow up in size again. You need to get real about this, Brandon. You need to get the tests done to determine its nature, and once they are complete, have it surgically removed. That’s my strong advice to you. This is not something to take lightly—a cantaloupe-sized mass means it’s already quite advanced.”
Everything she said made sense from a logical point of view. But everything inside me was still saying NO! I sat there quietly as she spoke, not offering any outward resistance—just trying to take on board her words, and truly weigh their validity. There was no doubt she made sense. But that inner knowing of “you’ll get it handled” was still strongly in the background.
At one point, in a mildly disinterested voice, she asked what I had done over the last month for such a dramatic change to take place. I piped up, hoping that she might actually want to hear about the intense emotional healing journey I’d undergone. Innocently, with great enthusiasm I began to launch into my story. She stopped me short.
“No, no! I just want the facts. What have you been doing physically? What foods have you been eating? What herbs, if any, have you been taking? Has your diet changed significantly? What about your physical activity? I just want the facts for my file.”
So I began listing out all the herbs, enzymes, colloidal minerals, colonics and massages, and ended by saying that I was on 100 percent fresh and raw fruits and vegetables, combined with fresh squeezed juices.
She noted it all down, closed the file, and said dryly, “Well, you may have to remain a raw food-ist for the rest of your life, if you think that’s what created the change”—with a wry, sardonic smile that looked unbecoming on her otherwise pretty face.
Inwardly, a door slammed. I stopped feeling like a helpless wimp and got it: this was not a doctor who wanted the whole picture, the real facts, which included the emotional side of things. She wanted her idea of what the facts were! I realized there was no further basis for discussion, and something inside said ENOUGH.
Simply, and somewhat curtly, I thanked her for her time, and said that my belief was not that the tumor would blow up and down and up again, but that I was on a healing journey. I was determined to honor my body, and would give it whatever time it needed to complete the healing process.
She looked dumbfounded. She became very unattractive as she attempted to persuade me that I was in dreamland, and reiterated that my only option was surgery. I looked at her as I left, and felt a strange combination of compassion and disgust—is healing only about the food we eat, and the medicine we take? I realized that that was simply her model of the world, and that it wasn’t her fault—her training was necessarily narrow. Doctors are trained to work on bodies—in the same way that mechanics are trained to work on cars. They go into the healing field ostensibly to help people heal, but somewhere along the way they forget that people aren’t just their bodies. We have bodies, minds, and emotions, but most importantly what we are is soul—something that can’t be touched, tested, or surgically removed.
As I drove home, I was very glad for the wake-up call her lack of understanding had given me. Her arguments had been very seductive, and I had begun to fall into a doctor’s idea of how to heal someone—you fix them by taking out the parts. It took her total lack of interest in the rest of my healing journey to make me realize once again that I must follow my own truth no matter how foolish it appeared from the outside. It was a hard choice, because unlike attacking the tumor from a purely physical level, you couldn’t see, touch, or even “test” the emotional shifts that had taken place inside me; and yet, for me, they were every bit as real as the physical shifts that seemed to follow from them as a direct result.
At that moment I felt very alone. Logically, I knew it wasn’t true, as I had devoted, supportive friends and family, yet somehow I still felt lonely. I realized that there is a way in which everyone must follow their own, unique healing path, and it is an experience that no one else can have for you. Spiritual transformation is an inner journey—it’s the soul’s personal path of learning and letting go, and it’s something that must be experienced on your own.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_ed40be49-879a-5bbc-bfa2-a825014f9045)
When I stepped through the door, there was a message on the answering machine from Don, who was in Hawaii preparing for a Tony Robbins two-week seminar called Mastery. He had remembered my appointment with the doctor and was wondering how it had all gone—he sounded enthusiastic and supportive. I really felt I needed to talk to him, to share what was going on, but felt inwardly ashamed—that somehow I’d failed—it hadn’t completely healed.
At the thought of Don and my friends in Hawaii, I felt even more alone. Some of my closest friends were there. I didn’t want anyone to know—I knew they were rooting for me and would be very disappointed. I knew I needed to give it more time.
