Below are the Top 10 causes of death in the United States of America, but for
- accident (“there are no accidents in a universe run by agreement”) and
- suicide (usually the result of an overload of spiritual challenges relative to the person’s ability to handle them).
For each cause, the spiritual reason for it is given. If you have one or more of these conditions, I urge you to look inside and see if – maybe – this applies to you.
1. HEART DISEASE …
Failing to Love and to Learn to Love Yourself (and Others)
The heart “is the first thing in us to have life, and which has dominion over all the body.” So it “should be the first and the last to love and worship God, both when we begin and end our actions, be they spiritual or bodily, and generally in all the affairs of life.” The heart was designed to receive and give love unconditionally.
Love is as vital a nutrient to our heart as anything we eat or drink or do for exercise. Since we all have come to the Earth to grow in our ability to give and receive love, it is not surprising, that when we are unable to do so, we develop problems in our hearts. Usually, this is caused by our inability to love ourselves.
We all are constantly picking up so much “negative programming” from our families, our friends, our schools, and our society, that it is no wonder we fail to love ourselves. For if we are not as successful as Bill Gates or as gorgeous as a Barbie doll, we feel somehow “less”. It is these long standing feelings of internal dis-ease in our minds that invariably manifest as disease in our hearts.
2. CANCER …
Failing to Take Action to Solve Long Standing Life Conflicts
In the inner worlds, cancer is known as the “butterfly disease”. Like a butterfly, the cancer patient has to struggle to break out of the “cocoon” of their disease or die in the attempt. More often than not, the cancer “victim” has a pattern of long standing life problems that have been “eating them up inside”.
Their inability or unwillingness to effectively deal with these problems is what created the cancerous cocoon to begin with. Often, cancer is the manifestation of the person’s conflicting desires to escape the situation and to “keep things as they are” because change would be too painful. Cancer becomes the means of escape that many take by doing nothing to stop it from leading them to a “final solution”.
3. STROKE (CEREBROVASCULAR “ACCIDENT”)…
Failing to Honor One’s Body-Mind
Stroke should be renamed to “strike” for strokes are invariably caused by the body-mind going on strike against the individual’s lifestyle. To those around the individual, strokes are seldom a surprise because they can usually point to the ways in which the person has failed to honor themselves.
Stroke “victims” generally have not consistently honored their bodies by giving them the proper food, drink, exercise, sleep, and other things “which everyone knows” they should do. They do not honor their minds by consistently getting the “time off” they need to play, “re-charge”, and “re-create” themselves.
It is “no accident” that since stroke “victims” do not honor their bodies or minds as the temples of spirit they are, the temples collapse around them. Unfortunately, it is only when the temple of the body and mind are permanently damaged by stroke that they learn this lesson – in this life if they are lucky, in the next if they are not.
4. PNEUMONIA – INFLUENZA …
Failing to Face Overwhelming Fears and Challenges
Just as cancer is the inability to deal with long standing problems, fatal bouts of pneumonia and influenza usually result from an individual’s inability to handle multiple fears and challenges overwhelming them in a shorter, more compressed timeframe. Usually the person is drowned in the flood of emotions (fear, anxiety, panic) that engulf them. The “internal floods” manifest as severe lung congestion which cuts off their connection to breath and ultimately their connection to life.
5. DIABETES (MELLITUS) …
Failing to Connect with Joy and the “Sweetness” of Life
If diabetics had their own theme song, it might be this one from Henry Purcell: “a person of sorrow and acquainted with grief…” Many diabetics will tell you that the restrictions they endure with this disease are cause enough for their sadness. And yet it is the sadness from many lifetimes that has usually caused them to contract this disorder. The bodies of diabetics cannot handle sugar because they cannot connect with life’s sweetness. Aside from love, it is joy and happiness that are the most necessary “spiritual” nutrients that are required to sustain life. So the best advice for diabetics is to “stop worrying and get happy”.
6. AIDS (ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY) – HIV…
Failing to Love and Accept Oneself for Who and What One Is
In the course of many lifetimes, we have been and will be all things – from a mass murderer to a saint (and yes, it is possible for the same individual to have had incarnations as each… one is personally known to me!). It is no accident that AIDS and HIV originated in the gay community as the primary lessons of those in “alternative lifestyles” is self discovery and self acceptance. Those who become “tired” of constantly fighting off the rejection and criticism from others manifest this weariness in their bodies. At the same time, their bodies become unable to fight off threats from the environment and become “self” rejecting. The inevitable result of this self rejection can be nothing but fatal, nothing but death.
7. LIVER DISEASE (CIRRHOSIS) …
Failing to Accept What One Has Made of One’s Life
Cirrhosis of the liver is the ultimate disease of choice. For those who get it have chosen consistently to “drown their sorrows in a bottle” rather than facing them. For those in life situations or places in the world where hopelessness, misery, and despair are the daily diet getting drunk may seem a sensible alternative. And death that lies waiting at the bottom of the glass may seem to be the only true hope.
8. CIRCULATORY FAILURE (ATHEROSCLEROSIS) …
Failing to Be Open and Receptive to Life
More commonly known as “hardening of arteries”, this disease is caused primarily by the “hardening of the attitudes”. The entrenched attitudes which narrow and restrict the mind manifest as hardened and constricted arteries in the body. Cutting off the flow of new ideas and ways of thinking literally reduces the body’s ability to flow and circulate life energy properly which then results in hardened arteries.
9. KIDNEY DISEASE …
Failing to Transmute Negative Emotions (Anger, Hate, etc) Properly
There is a common misconception that the body is a machine and that the organs handle only physical functions. The truth is the organs also process an individual’s emotions and can get easily overloaded when the individual is emotionally “out of control”. This is especially true of the often besieged kidney whose job it is to remove waste from the body. The most toxic emotional waste products are anger and hate which are lost opportunities to move a person toward forgiveness and tolerance. If these toxic emotions are “indulged” in excessively and consistently, they will deluge the kidney and cause it to fail.
10. LUNG DISEASE …
Failing to Fully Take in Life due to Feelings of Unworthiness
Every moment we make a choice of how much life we take in by every breath we take. Air contains the only vital life force that we need constantly (ten minutes without air and most people die). Significantly our breath is also the only physical function that we have complete and conscious control over. That happens because by choosing the quality of our breath we are given the opportunity to choose the quality of our life. When we breathe deeply, we nourish our body profoundly. When we fail to do so, we slowly starve ourselves.
Breathing disorders, like eating disorders, are a reflection of an individual’s beliefs about their worthiness to receive the nourishment that gives life. Those who cannot breath deeply cannot live fully. Those who cannot live fully usually come from a place of mistakenly believing they are not worthy. The truth is everyone is a child of God and it is that and that alone that makes everyone worthy of life.
Credits: adapted from information from the United States National Center for Health Statistics, Louise Hay’s Book “You Can Heal Your Life”, and channeled information
