From the depths of the silence, I heard the words (or rather somehow experienced them)—“You need to forgive your parents.”
It hit me like a stone. I knew it was the truth. It was so obvious, but it had never occurred to me before. So, in my mind’s eye, I reconstructed the campfire and put my parents by the fire. Then, inwardly, the younger me forgave both of them—in the innocent way that children forgive. I felt as if my heart was breaking as the words of forgiveness came from my lips. The forgiveness was absolutely authentic, and came from the very depths of my soul.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. Peace washed through my body, the peace of completion. A simple knowing arose from within, a knowing that THE STORY WAS OVER!
As I lay there on the massage table, I began to feel a subtle but palpable energy coursing through my arms and legs, then throughout my whole body. Somewhere deep within I knew the tumor’s healing had begun.
After a short while, Surja gently let me know that it was time for the session to end. Two hours had gone by. It had seemed so much quicker than that! Gently, I sat up, feeling a little light-headed, and she handed me a glass of water.
She suggested that I might like to go back to the bed-and-breakfast, maybe have some soup, take a rest, and just allow things to continue to process inside. I nodded silently—I didn’t feel much like talking—and quietly prepared to get down off the massage table.
Inwardly, my doubting, thinking mind had slowly crept back, and was now in full force saying things like, “This wasn’t that big a deal—so you found an old memory—so what? . . . You’ve done this kind of thing before. . . . Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. . . . All this was just in your mind, in your imagination. . . .” and on, and on.
I slipped off the table, my mind chattering away, and reached for my clothes. As I put my arm out to grab my slacks, I felt wildly off balance, woozy and wobbly all over. I had to grab for a chair to sit down.
In that instant my mind stopped all criticism, and quietly turned all of its focus to what was going on in my body. I thought, “Shit!—something is happening here—something big!” and I reached down to touch my taut-as-a-drum belly to find it had actually gone just a tiny bit soft! I thought, “I must be dreaming—things can’t happen this quickly.” My mind began to race—it couldn’t comprehend what was taking place. I felt sick all over. All I wanted to do was lie down.
Don was already out in the living room, waiting for me, and I didn’t want him to see how sick I was feeling. I felt extremely disoriented—I could feel that things inside were shifting rapidly, but if I had to explain what I meant by that, I knew I couldn’t.
Gently, I made my way into the car. When I got to my room at the bed-and-breakfast, I was unbelievably grateful to slip into the clean white sheets and just snuggle down and rest, while whatever it was that was taking place, took place.
I continued “processing” through the day, and during the night I slept fitfully. I woke up the next morning feeling weak and vulnerable, uncomprehending. Everything was happening so quickly. It felt as if the molecules in my body were buzzing and shifting, and when I touched what had been my hard, pregnant-feeling tummy, it felt like jelly.
For three days I was weak and disoriented. I felt somehow raw and exposed, as my body seemed to go about the process of doing what it knew how to do. I was absolutely certain of one thing. “I” wasn’t in charge—my body wisdom had powerfully taken over and was transforming my cells naturally and perfectly, of its own accord, without me having to think about a thing.
Strangely, my mind finally shut up—it had no more judging comments to make. The fact that things were working perfectly well without its interference was so powerfully evident, it had nothing more to say about it. I rested in a peace that was all enveloping. I felt very childlike, innocent, completely content not to understand any part of what was taking place internally. I just rested easily in the sweet, all-embracing acceptance that was present. The intelligence of the body wisdom was working its own miracle inside, and all I could do was rest in gratitude and surrender.
As I rested in quiet contemplation, it occurred to me that all along I had thought this tumor was clinging to me, when in fact I had been clinging to it—protecting myself from the memory and painful feelings stored there. And when I finally discovered the emotional patterns and memory connected to it, and finished the story, that’s when the need for the tumor finally finished. Once the issues were completed, healed and forgiven, the tumor was able to leave. It had fulfilled its purpose and given me its teaching.
It seemed as if I had literally put the painful memory into a package, and put a lid on it. Then the cells had grown and grown to keep the old memory encapsulated, protecting me from having to face it over the years. Or so it seemed, looking back on it.
It was now only ten days until I was due back at the doctor’s office. Daily, my stomach was growing flatter, although as I got close to the due date I could see it was not yet completely flat.
By this time I was already back in Malibu, and I decided to see if I could accelerate my healing. I asked a few of my closest friends to help me go through the memory processing two more times, although this time, instead of massaging my body, they held acupressure points relating to my internal organs.
Once again, I surrendered deeply into the silence, and spontaneously the inner knowing brought up a few more memories—different ones from the first, but all centered on the same theme. I found I was forgiving myself, as well as the other people involved, but I could see I was just learning different aspects of the same lesson.
It was as if there was one core issue and I had spent a lifetime repeating the same pattern, making the same painful mistakes, but with different people. It was as if I had a string of memories that was like a pearl necklace—even though each memory or each pearl had a slightly different shape, size and hue, they were all essentially the same. And it felt to me that on that day with Surja, we had broken the string, and now all the pearls were just sliding off—all the memories were just finishing themselves and leaving. When we were done with each process I felt profound shifts and movement that continued for several hours.
Two days before my doctor’s appointment, I kept feeling my tummy. It had gone down in size dramatically, but it still didn’t feel completely flat. So, when I sat in the doctor’s office, waiting for my examination, my heart began to pound. I felt a mixture of excitement, anticipation, and fear washing through me; my knees felt weak and my hands sticky. Once again I sat there fearing the worst, waiting for the doctor to lower the boom.
Once again, we went through a thorough examination, only this time the doctor talked to me as it was progressing. She mentioned that she had sent the previous test samples in to discover whether the mass was malignant or benign, but they had been contaminated with all the blood, so she was going to have to redo the tests. I kept thinking, “I don’t want to hear about the previous tests. Just tell me what’s going on now.”
As she was speaking, I suddenly remembered that a year earlier I had Pap smear results that had come up as precancerous. On a scale of one to five, with five being cancerous, I was a three. At the time I didn’t really give it any thought, as my alternative healthcare practitioner had dismissed the result, saying that many things could contribute to a precancerous smear result—even a vaginal infection. So, I had just let it go. I realized now that I ought to have investigated it further.
Finally, the doctor said, “Well, there’s been a big improvement. The pelvic mass seems to have gone down significantly—from the size of a basketball to the size of a six-inch cantaloupe melon.”
The words fell on my ears with a dull thud.
“A six-inch cantaloupe—are you sure it’s still that big?” I said. Disappointment filled me.
“That’s a dramatic change,