“It means that the disease went away for now, but it might come back,” she explained.
The explanation made no sense to me then, and it makes even less sense to me now. The idea is that the disease is here and real, a prevalent condition, but it has temporarily gone behind a curtain and may pop out again. The notion was jarring to me because my understanding is that health is our prevalent condition and our natural state. When a disease occurs, our health is temporarily in remission, and will return when the temporary condition of the disease has been alleviated.
Modern medicine, for all its wonders and benefits, subscribes to many beliefs that are upside down and inside out. Disease, for one thing, is not a thing. It does not have a life of its own. Disease, as illuminated by the ancient science of Chinese medicine, represents a blockage of the natural life flow, or chi, that moves through the body and keeps it alive and healthy. If the chi is blocked consistently at the same point, and reinforced with lifedenying thoughts, emotions, attitudes, habits, and lifestyle, the organ will manifest what we call a disease. Yet the disease has no life or power in and of itself; it is simply a sign of where life has momentarily not been allowed to flow. When you invite and allow the life force to flow once again, through methods such as acupuncture, massage, exercise, herbs, diet, attitude upgrade, or cessation of the thoughts, feelings, and habits that created the blockage, healing occurs naturally. There is no disease that has not been cured through restoring life force. Therefore no disease is incurable.
The word “disease” contains a clue as to how to heal it. “Dis-ease” indicates that ease, or well-being, is our natural state, and for the moment we have “dissed” ease with some form of stress or resistance. The answer to disease, then, is to return to our natural state of ease. No dis-ease can live in the presence of ease, so restoring ease is the optimal route to healing.
To heal our lives we need to do a radical figure-ground shift on our understanding of how life works. We need to recognize that health, prosperity, rewarding relationships, and the other conditions we value and seek are our natural state, and everything else is the exception. Just as a cloud passing before the sun does not mean the sun has gone away, a momentary condition of disease does not mean that health has gone away. The health is temporarily in remission. It can return as surely as the sun will return when the cloud has passed.
A seminar participant reported, “I have had a long string of failed relationships over many years. Now I have been dating a guy for six months and everything is going great. This seems too good to be true.”
I told her, “It’s not too good to be true. It’s good enough to be true.” If you have a history of pain or loss, you may come to believe that suffering is your natural state. I assure you it is not. Well-being is far closer to your nature and destiny than the dismal conditions you and I have been taught to accept.
Around the same time I first heard about remission, my mother asked me to go to the supermarket to pick up some applesauce on sale. When I reached the applesauce aisle, I saw a big sign: “Applesauce — 89 cents — natural or regular.” I read the label on the “regular” jar. The contents included sugar, food coloring, and preservatives. The “natural” jar contained only apples and water.
What is regular is not always natural.
We have become so accustomed to things that are regular that we have forgotten what is natural. Health and well-being are at the top of the list of the inherently natural contents of life. To define health as the temporary absence of disease is insane. That would be like defining light as the temporary absence of darkness. The opposite is true: Light has substance; darkness does not. Health has substance; disease is void of substance. Life is made of substance, not its absence.
Tom Stoppard declared, “It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong!” If you are happy and healthy and your life is functioning beautifully, you are proceeding from your natural state. If you are ill, struggling, or unhappy, you have subscribed to or inherited beliefs that are out of alignment with how life actually works. If you want to get to the bottom of “remission,” remember your mission in life – to live happily and authentically, and re-store your mission. Then your life will be in permanent remission, and you will return to the ease in which you were born to live.
