Fear, cancer and making a difficult choice.

My biggest dilemma to date was when I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer and it didn't feel right to go to hospital.

A growing number of people are leaning towards natural therapies when it comes to health and well being. It makes sense to think holistically and nurturing towards our bodies. Western medicine can at times feel removed from natures own wisdom, that it is the body that heals and our job is to support that. Cut, poison, burn may be necessary in certain circumstances, but it is also traumatic in its essence and a budding question to me was ‘What can and can’t be healed from within?’

I had long been an advocate for natural and alternative therapies as they in general at their core, aim to work with the body. Many are of Oriental origin and carry deep and meaningful philosophies that seek harmony of body, mind and spirit. So it was quite an existential dilemma I was up against, when my Norwegian oncologist relayed that I would be dead within a year, if I didn’t perform surgery immediately. Taking supplements and doing yoga is one thing, but was my alternative streak emboldened enough to face cancer?

After some weeks of delaying the recommended procedures, I was, amidst my alternative cancer research, frequently visited by fear. It was a fear I had felt only when I was in immediate physical danger. As if my nervous system was overloading on the edge of a cliff.

I knew the idea of ‘radical remission’ and ‘supporting the immune system’ was out of the question if I kept flooding my system with toxic fear chemicals. I needed to make a choice to either go against my inner truth and get help from western medicine, or I needed to take a leap of faith and heed the calling of the mysterious alternative world that seemed to be asking me:

Are you ready to walk the talk...

I chose the latter and took a plunge into the world of holistic and integrative healing modalities. I also decided one evening, amidst a flurry of emotions, to go head to head with fear itself…

I had been a reasonably committed meditator and seeker of truth for a decade and I had come across some valuable insights along the way.

One was the paradoxical idea of relinquishing the egoic structure of self to find something deeper beneath the facade of life. For so many, including myself, this generally starts out with attempts to improve and add to oneself. Eventually however, the peak of spiritual egotism exposes itself and reveals its inborn futility. Now the true dismantling can begin :-)

This is a humbling exercise in letting go, and it reveals that all the things we think we are and strive to be, are simply thoughts of the mind. This deconstruction of a self made prison is painful to the ego, but very fruitful to the conscious being unfurling into new freedom of expression. Having at least started this process before getting sick, I felt pretty sure that beyond my scheming and controlling to get my way, there was a field of infinite wisdom ready to catch a soul let loose.

But dear I trust this notion that the universe has my back.

Is dismantling.. growth. Is letting go.. becoming more...

Another insight I had picked up along the way was the questionable statement ‘everything when experienced fully, turns into bliss’. Like most, I was pretty keen to prove this one wrong, because if true, all my suffering so far in life had been in vain… But I was also interested to see if it was for real... So I tried it on emotional and physical pain.

My 'qualitative' research proved that every time I experienced pain and suffering and took it into my embracing arms fully, the result was always the same… Peace, expansion, freedom, bliss.

So one night I sat down with the unnerving fear of dying. I focused in on the sensations of fear in my body and met a shivering, cold discomfort pressing on my chest. I am here. Just sitting, just being, just feeling. After some time the sensations in my chest seemed to move around a bit and all of a sudden I was thrown into a crystal clear vision.

I was in a bed at the end of a hospital corridor, emaciated and dying from cancer. My wife and son were just leaving, visiting hours were up and they turned their sad yet compassionate faces away from me and walked towards the glass doors in the distance. Summer sun was streaming in and they were swallowed up by living daylight. I was overcome by a deep grief, and a total sense of loss and failure. I would not see my son grow up. I would not spend my life with my wife. I was dying of cancer, like this.

I did not resist these thoughts and feelings, I simply felt them. It felt like dying.

All of a sudden I heard a voice in my mind ‘but you are still here!’ It kept repeating and after a while I realised that even though I died, I was still here. It doesn’t make much logical sense but I was flooded with an expansive feeling of love and joy and I knew that it came from the truth about death. That when we die, we are still here. Death may be the end of some things, but it is not the end of who you are.

Back on the living room floor my heart was full of gratitude. I had faced my deepest fear and tears of joy was streaming down my face. I knew that my healing journey from here on would come from a deep trust that life is eternal and we can’t make mistakes. It marked a shift in me where I was no longer fighting to survive, or desperately looking for a cure, I was simply letting life guide me.

When fear was no longer running the show, quite naturally, my core values became the driver towards action. Gentleness, care, time, rest, joy, connection, adventure guided me to people and places. I was on a beautiful mission to heal!