Saturday, June 07, 2008

"You Can Heal Your Life" or "It's All Your Fault, China."

The first time I got sick I read Louise Hay. Louise writes about how we can heal our life by recognizing how our own thought patterns affect the health of our body. Our emotions, you see are the underlying cause of illness and understanding this can rid the body of the disease. Made sense to me.

A friend brought me Louise’s analysis of ALS around the time of my diagnosis. Apparently it is caused by fear of success. This makes sense since who's ever heard of a successful ALS patient. (New rule - you can't bring up Shostakovich, Lou Gehrig, Stephen Hawking, David Niven, Charles Mingus, Jacob Javitz and Mao Tse Tung). Now I knew I had a LACK of success but no idea that I feared it. I even thought I was actually attempting to be successful. Who knew? Even more sobering – one in 100,000 people are apparently fearing success and bringing about this unfortunate illness. Luckily, Louise has affirmations you can utter to address the root cause of your illness. The idea is to replace your “stinkin’ thinkin’” ( "I shun fame and in so doing dare the gods to rain down their motor neuron disease") with positive affirmations ("I embrace my success and welcome it to my life.") thus reprogramming the subconscious to think differently and to automatically react in a more positive way when trigger situations occur in your life.

Now it may surprise you to find out that I have a bone to pick with Louise Hay. There are only about 30,000 people in the US with ALS and we are included in her book. Fair enough. But who is addressing the underlying emotional patterns that causes 28,000 people a year in this country to allow themselves to succumb to a gunshot wound from a random homicide? Arguably there is a far greater risk of dying from the bullet of a mad gunman or irate spouse that to contract ALS and I think people should know what kind of thought patterns are allowing a bullet, - let’s say from an M-16 rifle,- to turn the point of impact ( or in layman’s terms, say “the head”) into hamburger. So it’s only fair to ask: What kind of affirmation will prevent the hydrostatic shock to the body, which occurs when a high-velocity projectile burrows at break neck speed through the body, causing widespread organ damage and disruption of nervous functions?

What kind of affirmation indeed.

In light of Louise Hay’s rather glaring omission, I have a few suggestions. I suggest you employ all of these because you can’t be too careful:

Affirmation 1: I am kind to troubled teens in trenchcoats.

Affirmation 2: I seek help when my husband (who recently lost his job and thinks that Maury Povich is a prophet ) receives secret transmissions through the massage chair’s remote control telling him that he is not the kids’real father

Affirmation 3 :After dark I take a cab.

Affirmation 4: That military recruiter is full of shit.

Affirmation : When you live in the projects, agoraphobia is not such a bad thing.

But what are the underlying fears that cause some people to die from gunshot wounds and others to live? It’s not fear of success – that one is taken. Thanks Louise! It’s not fear of lead - unless we have some proof that gunshot fatality victims had a history before their deaths of insisting on being x-rayed without the heavy protective apron. Is it hubris? A certain superman syndrome? Do we all need to reach a level of emotional evolution equal only to Keanu Reeves’ Neo in The Matrix? Now that dude understood that bullets are all in our mind and unlike Jesus and Ghandi (who could have benefited from Louise Hay, particularly Jesus who clearly had a Christ complex) he didn’t die.

SO what if you do everything that Louse Hay suggests and do her ( and of course my) affirmations daily to safeguard yourself against all diseases, earthquakes, random mortar fire and multiple stab wounds and you still get sick? Well then remember what Morpheus said to Neo in The Matrix: “Fate, it seems, it not without a sense of irony.”

Final thought: do you think Sharon Stone and Louise Hay are in the same support group?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very very wise and funny and scary, Carla. It all seems and probably is random.

Anonymous said...

Oh, the dreaded "fear of success" theory! When I first got peripheral neuropathy, a friend of mine who was a Louise Hay believer told me the condition was manifesting in my feet because I was "afraid to take a step forward in my career."
Not long after, she got a nose job which did not heal correctly and she wound up with a huge lump. Imagine my delight in being able to ask her why she did not feel she deserved to be pretty enough to pursue HER career. Affirmations be damned; she went back and had the doctor do it over.

CT said...

If Sharon Stone is so big on karma, I'd be worried for her. Basic Instinct 2 was rough, man.

I think the area of new-agey philosophy I'm least comfortable with is people trying to pitch me solutions when I'm sick. Just as I can appreciate the good intentions, it gets tiresome when people offer me meditation plans to help with my food-poisoning induced vomiting. I think my discomfort with that sort of thing increases the more serious the ailment is, which is one reason I'd always feel empathetically chaffed the few times during my time at the college when somebody would try to brainstorm a remedy when talking with you... that said, I really think a few gallon drums of ketchup a day would be beneficial.

I'm tryin' to make the benefit, and your show as well, provided I get a little assist from lady luck.

Unknown said...

Well put, Carla...it makes me crazy in more ways than your blog addresses how people make money off others' illness and reinforce the modern-day equivalent of savior and devil causation to make themselves feel safe, and did I mention make money from this as well? I especially love your affirmation about agoraphobia not being such a bad characteristic in the projects. I feel so angry about Hay's words that I'm not leaving my words re: it on your blog. You got the absurdity without the expletives. Well done once more!