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Introduction and complete list of Healing Cancer Naturally articles: Why Choose Alternative Cancer Treatment, a powerful sequence of incisive, outspoken (and often shocking) statements & articles
by cancer specialists, researchers, patients and thinkers on subjects surrounding conventional and alternative cancer treatment.
Why even very ill and suffering people-in spite of conventional-orthodox therapy
failing to help them-may ridicule, reject, and attack any medical & holistic alternatives to mainstream cancer treatment options
by Ulla, webmaster of Healing Cancer Naturally, copyright © 2004
"The pain of a new idea is one of the greatest pains in human nature... Your
favorite notion may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded. And your favorite foods may be the root cause of your greatest pains! It's a fact of life that people find it much easier to believe a lie they've heard a thousand
times than a fact they've never heard before." ~ Daniel P. Reid
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
~Arthur Schopenhauer
”Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.” ~Thomas Huxley
Are you the friend or relative of a person who has been diagnosed with cancer and who just follows ”doctor's orders” of chemo, radiation and surgery without
appearing to benefit - but rather seeming to steadily go downhill? Have you tried telling them about ”alternatives” – basic common-sense approaches like optimised nutrition, detoxification, prayer, meditation, taking charge of
one's health etc. etc. but found yourself and your suggestions ignored - or worse brushed off and ridiculed, if not met with outright hostility?
Why cancer sufferers may actively reject your
pointing out alternative or holistic cancer treatments
Here is a comment by alternative cancer treatment consultant Arthur C.
Brown on the the psychological reasons behind behavior such as described above – very ill and suffering people insisting on mainstream cancer treatment in spite of its obvious failure to help them:
”Unhappily, this phenomenon is all too common, and all too fatal.
With all due respect, to do otherwise would require a complete upheaval of cherished beliefs. To do otherwise would mean giving up values and trusts that are
decades old. To do otherwise would mean admitting one has been a ‘patsy’ for the conventional medical system and the media and the government for years. To do otherwise would mean having to face one of the scariest prospects of
all: that we are in fact responsible for own own fate. Nobody else. Nothing else.
Or as the poet Emerson put it: ‘Most people would rather die than think. In fact they do.’
Not kind words here to be sure, but ain't it the
truth? The survivors among us all will find a way to survive. Period.”
... to which words one could add:
- To do otherwise, would trigger enormous fear - fear of being different, breaking out of the mold, going against what "everyone does" and thereby
showing oneself a renegade to one's society's and peer group's extolled virtues and ways, a rebel against the norm/mainstream - and fear of the expected ensuing ostracism, ridicule etc.
...And if you believe in many lifetimes (as I do based on reading and personal experience), you can expect many people to have relevant past-life memories including being put to
death for speaking out against authorities/rules/daring to be different etc.
In fact, being different from one’s peer group and society might be one of the greatest fears of humankind, which
is why nearly everyone seems to try to conform - and be it only in the way they dress: for instance there are few people around daring to wear some comfortable let's say Egyptian 100 BC clothes, or are there?.
- To do otherwise, would mean WORK, STUDY, learning about nutrition and a healthy lifestyle and giving up many cherished eating and other habits, i.e.
discipline...
- To do otherwise, would also mean giving up one's emotional attachment to accustomed ways...
And last but not least, such ”sticking with doctor's orders” could even be some kind of loyalty to a system that up to now seemed to have served a person well
(I am thinking of my best friend's mother here who developed cancer and who had certainly lived in [outwardly] comfortable circumstances up to her cancer diagnosis. She did change her mind, however, towards the end of her life,
some 2 1/2 years after diagnosis and enduring all the doubtful blessings of conventional cancer treatment. This is what she said to me.).
If attempting to discuss these underlying belief (and conformity) issues with friends or relatives who have developed cancer and insist on mainstream
"treatment", I would hazard a guess that these ”patients” will try to avoid these issues...
Why cancer patients may show no interest in alternative cancer
treatment but passively submit to doctor's orders
There may be hopelessness as felt by the cancer patient who wrote "I am fighting a battle that I know I cannot win". In fact, from statements and
attitudes such as this and similar ones (which I think are widely observable), it also appears that some people do harbour some kind of death wish, at least subconsciously, or disinterest in life and hence close themselves to
suggestions that would go counter... As Dr. Jürgen Buche lucidly observes: ”...(cancer) patients do not want to die or suffer but they have no compelling purpose for LIVING. They submit passively to regimes and procedures to
please their families or their physician but they spiral uncomplainingly downward. The litmus question to a cancer or AIDS patient ‘What real reason do you have for living?’ is often unanswerable. The will to live must come
from the patient and no amount of anguish, encouragement or threats from any family or friends will help if this will to live is not present. Often, such a situation is intimately linked to a lack of LOVE.” [...including, I would add, SELF love, a quality
possibly missing in many.]
And strange as it may sound, there even seems to be some kind of enjoyment in suffering felt by certain people - see this brilliant ”terminal” cancer healing example of someone healing his cancer by becoming aware of and changing his subconscious attitudes about pain. And personally I wouldn’t consider it too far-fetched to assume that a “mechanism” of self-punishment is at work in some cancer patients, where a deep internal (likely subconcious) feeling of guilt leads the person to feel a “need” to treat themselves badly (possibly coupled with a subconscious attempt to punish others), to feel that they deserve to suffer etc. See for instance ex-physicist Barbara Brennan’s and Martin Brofman’s (who healed himself of “terminal” cancer through a consciousness shift) in-depth studies and insights into the processes of disease and healing, their relationship to the mind-body interface and “the body as a map of the consciousness within” on
the many pages devoted to the energetic foundations of disease and healing.
Why cancer sufferers may ridicule you for pointing out
alternative or holistic cancer treatments
Calling proponents of new or unaccustomed ideas or inventions "crazy" and attacking them is an all too human reaction, in fact it is an extremely
widespread human characteristic from my observation. One reason for this, as implied by the introductory Daniel P. Reid quote, is the fact that it "saves" the person confronted with the new idea from having to think
and stretch their mental muscles, i.e. it allows them to continue in their inertia (a human behavioral determinant of possibly ubiquitous presence), in their accustomed ways and in the status quo. Or as the above-quoted Ralph
Waldo Emerson observed, "Most people would rather die than think. In fact they do."
To conclude: pertinent quotes on human attitudes, beliefs & convictions and on human hubris expressed as "I KNOW
ALREADY..." ("I have no need to learn.")
One's first step in wisdom is to question everything. G. C. Lichtenberg
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. William James
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. Albert Einstein
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. Albert Einstein
The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. Ruth Benedict
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem.
That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all. Thomas Szasz
Many receive advice, few profit by it. Publilius Syrus
It is easier to change a man's religion than it is to change his diet. Margaret Mead
Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a
time. Mark Twain
I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better
care than they plan their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change.
Jim Rohn
Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.
Philip Crosby
Just as the tumultuous chaos of a thunderstorm brings a nurturing rain that allows life to flourish, so too in human affairs times of advancement are preceded by times of
disorder. Success comes to those who can weather the storm.
I Ching No. 3
If you want
things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself.
Norman Vincent Peale
Everything that can be invented has been invented. Charles H Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents,
1899
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
You are always up against those people who think they know, but they don't!...I also thought I knew.......... but I didn't........... (paraphrasing Lila Lipscomb, the mother from Flint who lost her son in Iraq, commenting in "Fahrenheit 9/11" on a woman who had told her to blame her son's
death on AlQaeda)
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. Mark Twain
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. Albert Einstein
First they ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they fight you; then you win. Mahatma Gandhi
In conclusion and to enlarge upon the foregoing: if personally I had to pinpoint one
source of "evil" I consider the most impactful on this planet, it would be the immature and unevolved human heart or ego which puts various unloving attitudes (with the self-righteous conviction that oneself and one's
peer group already "know it all") before love, humbleness, willingness to learn and the thought of unity.
Compare Helping a Loved One With Cancer See the Benefits of a Healthier Lifestyle,
Diet & Alternative Therapy.
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