The Cancer Journey - How to Find Love and Heal

by Guru Rattana, Ph.D. - Issue #149, July 14, 2008

The Sun flowed into Cancer June 20th at the time of the Summer Solstice. The Sun moves into Leo July 22nd. The Cancer New Moon was July 2nd. The Capricorn Full Moon is July 18th at 1:00am PDT (8:00am GMT).

The Midnight of Self

It is interesting to watch the issues that appear while the Sun shines through in a particular Zodiac sign. Our life issues are with us during the whole year, but the energetic focus of the Sun brings our attention to the challenges of the current Sun sign. As the first water sign, Cancer is confronted with emotional challenges, and must learn to deal with emotional energy.

Establishing a relationship with our emotions is a tricky business. Emotions do not respond well to mental analysis or to verbal directives. Our emotional body impacts our mind, and our thoughts influence our emotions, though the language of our emotional body is sensory feelings, not mental talk. We can't talk ourselves out of our emotional traumas. We can't make logical sense out of how we feel. If our emotional nature was simply a matter of a problem/solution scenario, we would all be much more emotionally balanced.

Cancer is the midnight point on the Zodiac wheel. The cusp of the house of Cancer is at the very bottom of our birth chart. Our midnight point is the darkest place in our psyche. We receive the least light from outside. When light is not available from outside, we must find it within ourselves. When love is not available from outside, we must give it to ourselves. The search for self-love is a major theme of the Cancer archetype.

The Cancer archetype asks us to examine how we nurture and support ourselves. The delicate shelled Crab must constantly be aware of how it allows itself to give and to receive. Are we creating appropriate boundaries that make us feel safe and contained, or are we erecting barriers that prevent us for giving and receiving attention and affection?

Emotions Run Our Reality Show

The fact is that our emotions direct our personal reality show. We can have great ideas and work hard to implement them, but subconscious fear, anger and sadness can sabotage our most gallant efforts. The water signs remind us that we have to figure out how to deal with our emotional energy. Our emotions run deep. They are hard to access. They are even harder to explain, and may defy explanation and, they are impossible to ignore.

Thoughts and emotions interact. Thoughts generate emotions, and emotions generate thoughts. Part of our journey is to explore the relationship between our thoughts and our feelings. Emotional maturity necessitates training ourselves to be aware of what is going on with our emotional body. Our emotional body is very active while we are preoccupied with our mental intrigues. What is it doing, and how it is creating our reality?

Our inner spiritual journey begins in earnest the day we realize that, when we are lost in our minds and out of our bodies, we miss out on the subtleties of finer vibrations, that can be accessed and known only through the faculty of feeling. The day we get serious about reorienting our mind to pay attention to the wealth of knowledge, pleasure (and pain) that lives in our own body, marks a quantum shift in consciousness.

The Crab's Journey

It is not surprising that the disease cancer has the same name as the Cancer archetype. The disease cancer, and most illnesses, certainly have a strong emotional component. It is recognized that stress is a major cause of many diseases. The root of stress is emotional dysfunction and disorientation. We often ignore and deny the emotional sources of our illness, which is one reason why we don't get better and can't find cures.

Just as our emotional body does not respond to intellectual solutions, our illnesses do not respond to technical solutions. A genetically engineered pill cannot replace authentic human love. Cancer's journey is the quest to find heart-awakened, emotional love.

The sensitive Crab reminds us of the pitfalls of our human journey. We humans fall into many traps, and succumb to many unsatisfying entanglements, in our quest for love. Sentimental, drama-oriented and attached codependent relationships are not the answer, and divert us from the real thing.

One of the most basic human predicaments, is that we are here on Planet Earth to experience love in physical reality, but our efforts are often misdirected. We seem to constantly sabotage ourselves along the way. We look outside ourselves for that which we must find within. Our real quest for love begins when we reorient our journey inside ourselves - when we begin to learn how to generate an experience of love within, that satisfies our mind, body, emotions and soul.

Getting Attention

Our emotional and physical bodies have their own intelligence which, if we pay attention, will always tell us what we need. Their impulses do not necessarily correspond to what we consciously think or believe. Most of us are unaware of how our body and emotions respond to primal needs, environmental demands and stress. We have to train ourselves to listen to their messages.

One of the unconscious tactics of those with Cancer energy (Sun, Moon, Rising or many planets in Cancer) is to get sick to get attention. In addition, our upsetting and unresolved emotional states, contribute to our delicate nature and precipitate our dis-ease. We are generally unaware of how our unattended-to emotions make us sick. Even when we become aware of this pattern, we don't know how to stop it.

Awareness of how our emotional wellbeing impacts our physical health is an essential first step, but observation is not the whole solution. We have to develop a working relationship with our emotional body. This requires serious SELF-DIRECTED, non-verbal, non-analytical attention.

Examples - Why We Get Sick

It is interesting to examine possible reasons why people get sick, from a searching for love perspective. A friend recently told me of a six-year-old boy who had a brain tumor, and was given a 25% chance of making it. The work associates of his single working mother are donating vacation time so she can spend more time with her son. My friend is mobilizing prayer interventions for Max from everyone he talks to. Maybe this little guy needs to feel more physical love from his mama. Maybe his soul is trying to generate more loving feelings in his community.

Another person told me that a woman, who is getting weekly chemotherapy, expressed that she is enjoying the fact that a member of her family joins her every week, for lunch and a good chat, before the chemo treatment. Humm. What we do to get love and bring our families together. Sometimes when our mission to mobilize love is accomplished, we heal.

In a conversation with a woman who has breast cancer, I identified that she didn't feel that her life had purpose. She felt bad every time a friend asked her what she was doing with her life. I helped her understand that her life purpose was to hold the space of love. Every time she laid down for one of her frequent naps, she was to remind herself that she was performing a very special service for her family, community and the Planet. Something very profound seems to have shifted. She feels better and looks much better too. When I talk to her, she enthusiastically shares that now her life has more meaning - she is 'holding the space of love'.

Breast Cancer and Self-Love

There are, of course, physical causes of most diseases, including breast cancer, but an emotional component of breast cancer has to do with lack of self love. Most women are trained to look outside themselves for love. We look for love from a partner, from friends and associates, and from our children. The energy we spend, on trying to get attention and love from outside ourselves, dissipates and consumes our emotional energy. If we used our emotional energy to love ourselves, the satisfaction quotient of our lives would mount dramatically.

Self-love begins with attention to the subtle energies that course through our body. Our physical and emotional sensations are messages from our soul. Self-compassion is a requirement for healing. We have to 'give ourselves a break' and not be so hard on ourselves. Self-criticism and judgment are our worst enemies. When we try to avoid feeling our emotions by escaping into our minds, where we manufacture stories about our feelings, our emotional body (inner child) feels abandoned and unloved.

Love It!

We avoid going to our midnight point because we find pain or numbness. What do we do with the pain or void that we feel? WE LOVE IT! WE LOVE IT WITH ALL OUR HEART! We use our emotional body to love what we are feeling - comfortable or uncomfortable. Like a small child or a pet, we caress ourselves with our own compassion and tenderness. Our inner child may have been crying for decades. It may take days, weeks, months to calm it down and soothe its wounds, but it is possible with daily attention to reclaim the hurt feelings, and transform them into deep satisfaction, creative power and pure love.

LOVE IT may appear either simplistic or unrealistic, but we will never know what is possible until we dedicate alone time every day to self-love. The special gift of the archetype of Cancer, is to invite us to pay attention to the feelings in our body without stories and judgment, to gently embrace what we are experiencing, and to honor the sacred aliveness of our soul.

Communicating with the Universal Energy Field

The water signs invite us to relate to our world and ourselves in a non-linear, non-verbal, sensory manner. The Universe, our world and our being are made of up of waves of electrical and magnetic patterns of energy. Our physical and emotional bodies, mind and heart, all monitor, respond and adapt to how we synchronize, or not, with universal patterns. The only thing that will satisfy our emotional body is to resonate with these energies.

Quantum physics tells us that everything in the Universe is connected through a field of energy. Our thoughts/beliefs and feelings/emotions determine how we communicate with, and how we relate to, the world beyond our bodies. Our feelings and emotions create patterns of energy in our bodies. These electrical and magnetic patterns influence our health and healing.

The nonverbal language of our feelings and our heart communicate with our bodies, our environment and non-physical reality. The feeling language of love can affect miraculous healings in ourselves and in the world.

Heart vs. Head - The Power of Emotions and Feelings

Gregg Braden writes that "The electrical strength of the heart is up to 60 times as great as the electrical signal from the brain. Our heart's magnetic field is as much as 5,000 times stronger than that of the brain".(1) This explains why feelings and our emotional body control our reality. It also gives us an important clue on how we can effectively participate in our own healing.

Because there is more power in our feelings than in our thoughts, our heart and emotional body have a bigger role to play in healing than our mind.(2)

An essential step in our healing process, is to recognize the extent to which we have been conditioned to believe we are powerless. When we are diagnosed with a disease, we often feel victimized, betrayed and powerless. We trust the medical authorities more than our ability to heal ourselves.

Healing involves using our emotional body and our neutral mind to experience the infinite space where healing is possible. Our healing is facilitated by feeling the outcome we desire in our body. We must avoid thinking (linear analysis) about how healing might occur. We must learn to work with the faculty of feeling, not just the faculty of thought. Physical matter and emotional energy respond when we 'speak' their language.

Linear Thinking vs. Non-Linear Feeling

When we think about creating something in our physical world, we usually think in a linear, step-by-step, logical manner. We proceed through a sequential process to work toward our goal. We are trained to think in this linear fashion, which is appropriate for physical manifestation.

However, when we use spiritual, nonphysical energy, we work in a different manner. We have to train ourselves to FEEL the quality of the outcome that we desire - peace, health, abundance. We have to generate within ourselves the FEELING of the outcome.

Below I would like to add my understanding of how we can participate, at a feeling level, in our own healing. Perhaps I can bring some clarity to some of the concepts that are currently being discussed.

[1] Trust and Responsibility

Healing is facilitated by trust and taking responsibility for being co-creators in our lives.

Current literature on manifestation asks us to experience what we want "as though it has already happened", that it already exists in our lives, and this is where most of us get hung up. Because it has not already happened, we can't lie to ourselves.

What is required is to live in TRUST that other possibilities are available. Authentic trust has a very magnetic feeling. Wishing, hoping, pleading on the other hand vibrate at a lower frequency and, if accompanied by any form of fear, can actually repel instead of attract. LOVING, TRUSTING FEELINGS line up our magnetic field with the universal magnetic field, and become triggers to create what may appear as miracles and miraculous healings.

The tricky part is that we can't fake our feelings. We sabotage ourselves if we are driven by conscious or unconscious beliefs, of being passive observers or victims. We have to take RESPONSIBILITY and act from the stance of being co-creators. When we doubt and succumb to a victim mentality, our feelings do not align with healing. When we do not trust our body, our soul or the Universe, healing usually does not happen.

[2] Non-Judgment and Acceptance

Healing requires non-judgment about our current situation, and acceptance of what has happened.

Healing requires overcoming our need to judge our current and past situations. This does not mean that we like or condone what has happened. Most likely we won't! If we liked what was happening, we wouldn't want to change it. We only acknowledge that it has happened. We don't judge an illness or a situation as bad or unfortunate.

Judgment creates a wall between our current situation and other possible realities. Judgment stands in the way of healing. This is because judgment vibrates at a lower frequency than the field of infinite possibilities. Acknowledgement opens the door to new possibilities. Acceptance is a form of love, which vibrates in sync with the field of infinite possibilities.

Think of non-judgment and acceptance, as mechanisms of a technology that works to get you what you want. Judgment gives energy to the disease or unsatisfactory circumstance. If our mind and emotional body are being consumed by negative thoughts and feelings, they cannot be used to believe and feel the possibility of healing.

[3] Gratitude and Appreciation for the Past and New Possibilities

Healing also requires FEELING gratitude and appreciation for the past, and for the availability of other possibilities.

It is key to recognize that we are not requesting or praying for something that we don't have. If we acknowledge the absence of something, we affirm that something is missing, and give energy to what which we wish to change.

We simply relax into our body, let go for a moment, and experience what it feels like to be healthy, to have more energy, to be more prosperous, or to be in another situation. We use all our senses and feel as many sensations as we can in our body. We bless our current situation for awakening us up to new possibilities. We thank our current lessons for moving us forward on our journey to self-discovery and self-love. We express gratitude and appreciation for the sweet, healthy, loving moments in our lives. In doing so, we fan the embers of health, prosperity and love, so that they can be rekindled and alive in us.

THE MEDICINE OF LOVE IS NEUTRALITY AND GRATITUDE. In the sacred space of an aware and compassionate heart, we choose to evolve, to grow, to learn and to co-create anew. Some of our goals may be tangible. That is fine. We are here to learn how to manifest and to enjoy physical reality, but our focus and spiritual goal is to LOVE AND HONOR OURSELVES every step of the way, for it is not our physical accomplishments that we will take with us, it is the love in our hearts.

Kundalini Yoga for Self-Love

To align and balance our emotions we must move our body. Any active Kundalini Yoga set works. The kriya for Balancing the Depository System on pages 90-91 in Transitions to a Heart-Centered World 2nd Edition, and the Exercise Set for the Liver, Colon and Stomach on pages 108-110 in Relax and Renew 2nd Edition, are great for moving and aligning emotional energy.

Between exercises, and at the end of the kriya, pay attention to the sensations in your body, and the movement of energy in your belly and solar plexus. Go deep into your midnight point within. You may find it in your heart, in your solar plexus, in your belly, or somewhere else. Whatever you feel - LOVE IT! LOVE IT WITH ALL YOUR HEART!

Practice accepting, being with (without wishing to change), and loving whatever you feel. When feelings arise during the day, do the same. Notice how the feelings shift in the process of gentle, non-judgmental attention. (Please also refer to the directives incorporated in this newsletter. Use these guideline to design your own self-love and healing program). These directions are simple. The important thing is to spend time each day cultivating self-love in a FEELING way. You will experience a major shift. I trust it will happen. It is the destiny of your soul to experience the power and pleasure of self-love.

References and Footnotes

"Your Beliefs Are Not What You Think", an Interview with Gregg Braden by Marlene Martin, The Light Connection, Vol. 24, No. 5, May 2008, pp. 44-51.

1. Braden, pp. 44-45
2. Braden article: "Isn't it interesting that Braden is Sun sign Cancer?"

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