Sunday, February 14, 2016

Recovering a Sense of the Sacred

Optimism and Health

We generally think of optimism and pessimism as just feelings and emotions. But, they're the simple things that make a huge difference in our health.”
Larry Dossey, M.D.

Internist, Larry Dossey, has written extensively about the power of “tender loving care” to heal, about prayer's ability to affect outcome, and about how words said to a patient positively or negatively influence their experience of treatment. In his book, Reinventing Medicine, he wrote, “I used to believe that we must choose between science and reason, on one hand, and spirituality on the other, in how we lead our lives. Now I consider this a false choice. We can recover the sense of sacredness, not just in science, but in perhaps every area of life.”

An optimistic attitude is critical to healing, but sometimes hard to pull off when you're sick or hurting. Optimism, though, doesn't have to be an aggressive attitude that is constantly pronouncing one's determination to overcome. It can be quietly holding in one's heart the prayer and hope of recovery, and then doing the things that support health—taking responsibility for one's own body/mind the same way one takes care of a child's needs. Optimism can extend life even when a cure is not possible. Best of all, in the absence of disease, optimism fuels a healthy body, and promotes a robust immune system, so that illnesses occur less often and are of shorter duration.

Pessimism does just the opposite. A negative outlook on life, and disbelief in possibilities that life holds is poisonous to both body and soul. A pessimistic attitude is anathema to good health. Our bodies cannot generate negative energy and remain healthy. Pessimism suppresses our immune system, as though we are starving it of nutrients it needs for proper functioning. Further, when we generate negativity, we attract to us the negative life events that we so fear.

There's a lot of free floating pessimism in the world today. We need to recover our attitude of optimism. We can do this by bringing a sense of the sacred to everything we say or do, to everything we involve ourselves in, and to every person we meet. Life is sacred. When we hold it so, we are far more likely to generate positive energy. Our bodies and souls, and the world's body and soul, need that right now.

                                                                     In the Spirit,

                                                                        Jane

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