Healing with Dialectics
Hello fellow retrainers. I am what might be called a “graduate” of the Gupta Program, but although I have recovered full health for going on four years now, I consider health and healing an ongoing process that lasts a lifetime.
I have remained a member of the Facebook group because it motivates me to remember and practice all I learned in the retraining process. I also feel that if everyone who reached 100% health leaves the group, the voices of all the many people who have healed would be silent. So here are some thoughts that might be useful to some of us struggling for hope.
When I was young (I am now approaching 70), I studied the philosophy of dialectical materialism. This is basically the concept that everything is a process in which opposite forces are at play. Positive and negative electricity, for example, or life and death (which are going on inside our bodies all the time, as new cells are born and old ones die).
Having some understanding of dialectics served me well during my retraining and I’d like to share a bit about it as it may help others too.
One of the laws of dialectics is that what is internal to a process is the main or primary driver of that process. So, for example, keeping an egg warm will result in a chick, but keeping a rock of the same size and shape warm won’t. This seems obvious, but when we think about our illness, we are often sorely tempted to look outside ourselves for a cure. The beauty of the Gupta Program is that it teaches us how to harness our own internal processes to heal ourselves.
Another law of dialectics is that there are two types of change: quantitative and qualitative, in other words change in amount (like a child growing taller) or change in essence (like a child going through puberty and becoming a sexually mature adult). In most cases, quantitative changes eventually lead to qualitative changes. For example, a baby bird inside the egg grows bigger and bigger until we no longer have an egg but a young bird.
What does this have to do with retraining? Well, think about that egg. While the baby bird inside is growing, developing and beginning to strain in its confined space, what do we see happening? The answer is: nothing! All we see is the same egg in the same nest, day after day after day, looking just as inanimate as a rock – until suddenly one day, the egg is in pieces and a baby bird is in its place.
Another example: you put water in a pot and put it on the stove. As it heats up, the water molecules begin to move and bump into each other, faster and faster and faster. But what do we see happening? Nothing much – until it rather suddenly begins to boil.
The same thing happens in our retraining. The processes of healing that are going on in our brains and our bodies often remain invisible to us. Or the improvements we notice are small: quantitative, not yet qualitative.
Sometimes, when we can’t “see” the improvement, we lose our faith in the retraining. What would happen to the egg if the mother bird, looking at the unchanging egg, said to herself, “well, this obviously isn’t working! Nothing’s happening to that egg. I think I’ll go do something else.”
Or if we looked at the pot of water on the stove and thought: “well, I’m just wasting gas (or electricity). The water looks just like it did five minutes ago. Might as well turn off the stove.”
Either of those things makes about as much sense as faltering in our retraining! Despite not seeing external or obvious evidence, we can understand that healing IS happening, deep inside us, and will make itself known when it has reached that qualitative point. When it’s reached the point where the baby bird is ready to break open the eggshell. When it’s reached the heat at which the water boils and turns into steam. And there’s no predicting just when our individual, unique selves will reach that point.
If we stop retraining, we are taking the mama bird off the nest; we are turning off the stove. So even when you’re not seeing changes, keep up the retraining: keep the heat on! Don’t give up!
(By the way: I credit the GP with the fact that I am now a published author. While I was ill and looking to bring joy and meaning into my life (as Ashok discussed in the last Webinar), I realized that my illness allowed me to write while in a recliner chair. I wrote the first draft of my novel (Freedom Soldiers: published under my married name, Katherine Williams) while retraining my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome! I’d probably never have "found the time" in my busy life to do that if I hadn’t gotten sick and been retraining myself: a true blessing in disguise.)
Kathy Fischer
I developed CFS at age 62, following a traumatic series of events. This was on top of a lifetime of political activism, raising five children, teaching high school, and the loss of my beloved husband ten years earlier. I was a very good example of a people-pleaser, helper and achiever, all wrapped up in one. I only valued myself when I was in one of those roles!
After three years of researching and trying everything I could find to heal myself, I stumbled on the Gupta Program. Five months later, I had achieved full health and, as Ashok suggests, spent the next year rebuilding my physical and emotional conditioning. Meanwhile, while ill, I had done something I’d privately aspired to since childhood: I wrote a novel. So I can now (amazingly) call myself a writer, and I’d like to use that skill to assist and hopefully motivate others to retrain their brains and emotions to recover full health, as I have been fortunate to do.
Now approaching 70, I live most of the year in my late husband’s village in rural Jamaica with my three dogs. I also spend time in my old hometown of Chicago and keeping up with my five children and numerous grandchildren, who are scattered around the world and are my greatest love. I’m dedicated to doing what I can to create a just and equal life for all of Earth’s people. My love of Nature keeps me in the countryside and motivates me to help preserve this beautiful planet we call home.
So heartfelt your words…just what i needed today when despairing about so many of my dreams now being so out of reach….such a debilitating struggle Fybromyalgia is! Is this program really worth trying? Ive done so many other pricey things that have not worked & am quite desperate……. praying God will give me a sign….