Feb/March 2001
It
Does Pay to Fight
by Jackie Alan Guiliano
Bipartisanship
at the Expense of the Citizenry
by Howard Zinn
The
Greens Great Opportunity
by Blair Bobier
DLC
Says Gore's Presidential Bid Ruined by Populist Message: Others Disagree
by Brian Hansen
Letter
from Porto Alegre
by Norman Solomon
Doing
the Right Things, Without Making Someone Wrong
by John Darling
Globalization
From Below
by Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello & Brendan Smith
Book
Review by Suzi Aufderheide
No Logo: Money, Marketing and the Growing Anti-Corporate Movement
by Naomi Klein
Book
Review by Gerry Cavanaugh
Hannibal
by Thomas Harris
Money
Talks
by Kayla Starr
America's
Food Safety Crisis Intensifies
by Ronnie Cummins
Coming
Home
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
The
Secret of the Valentines Angel
by Peter Melton
A
Prescription for Well-Being
by Peter Moore
Age-old
Concepts Benefit Modern Babies
by Pamela Jorrick
Cancer:
An Unexpected Way to the New Being
By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.
Book
Review by Kent Shew
Quantum Touch
by Richard Gordon
Cosmic
Calendar
By Salina Rain
(continued)
Cancer: An Unexpected Way to the New Being
By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.
New Being
as Love & Freedom
Great spiritual texts, such as the Bhagavad-Gita, the Koran, the Dhammapada,
the Old Testament, and the New Testament point to the New Being as an example
for becoming an archetypal lover in the world. These world scriptures point
us toward
Self-realization through making us aware of our inner God image as an inner process that pulls us beyond ourselves. American process philosophers and theologians John Cobb and Charles Hartshorne describe the Self-realization process in their many works as the "subjective aim" of one's life÷the many possibilities God presents to us in our existential concrete daily reality. God lures and persuades us by presenting us with many daily opportunities to choose love and nonviolence over hate and resentment. It is our responsibility to choose the basis on which we prefer to live our lives.
The diagnosis of cancer can cause us to feel a lack of influence over our health÷ or to feel helpless, worthless, hopeless, and depressed. Visualizing and concentrating on the empty tomb and the resurrection of the New Testament can combat these negative emotions and replace them with the feelings of empowerment and love as cancer survivors. This is a path of individuation and self-growth that uses our active imagination to visualize the empty tomb and resurrection, creating a psychology of hope that helps us to overcome the frightening and depressing emotions that naturally come to us as when we have an illness that could lead to our death. Visualizations of the resurrection, or the appearances of the risen Jesus, present us with what the great American philosopher and theologian, Martin Luther King, Jr., called the "Supreme Personality" that helps us when our lives are threatened. Pannenberg, the German theologian, encourages us to use these images so that we can realize that the future has already appeared in the resurrection of Jesus the Christ. The appearances of Jesus after he arose from his tomb are the images of the Love-Force that can help patients to have a psychology of hope as they live through the five-year probation period that all cancer survivors have to learn to accept. The positive side of this life style is that, after a year of cancer survival, life for me has more purpose and meaning. If we put the necessary effort into being aware of our own subjective aim, of God luring us to Himself/Herself from moment to moment, we can learn to move beyond our negative emotions and to live more authentically in love and nonviolence. To be loving and nonviolent toward others and to ourselves is important in the healing process.
This self-growth toward being a loving, compassionate person through the healing process and God's grace benefits all our family members and friends. We receive feedback from friends who feel our positive energy and who observe the healing process that cancer stimulated actually changed our life for the positive. This appreciation from family and friends helps to keep us on the path of healing and love and helps us benefit from the empowerment of living an authentic life.
The New Being can see that God is truth and love. When we live more in truth and love, we experience liberation and we enjoy a deeper freedom. Truth and love delivers us from the feelings of fear, anxiety, and resentment that we may experience as cancer survivors. God is luring, persuading, and presenting us with many choices of truth or falsehood so that we have opportunities to be more responsible for our own destiny. The existential battle between freedom and destiny is a reality that we face as cancer survivors. Rollo May, the great modern existentialist writer, said that we have to make daily choices between our freedom and our destiny. We do not get to select our parents, the region of the globe in which we are born, nor the historical time in which we live. Cancer, AIDS, and other life threatening illnesses make us face our own existence as a fact of our destiny. Existence is a process of always growing, becoming, and dying. The forced awareness of death by having illnesses such as cancer or AIDS is a threat to our personal freedom. Our whole existence is threatened and the idea that we may not survive triggers anxiety, sadness, and fear. The idea of our nonbeing is so frightening that we feel like we cannot bear the loss of freedom, the loss of life. Death is the ultimate threat to our existence.
The absence of love threatens our spiritual and emotional survival. Love is necessary for anyone who experiences a menacing illness. Cancer patients can come to live a meaningful life if they follow what the Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, advises us to do÷to look into the face of others, which pulls us to help others. In the faces of others we may see the despair and anguish that our illness is causing them because they love us. The cancer survivor must learn to face the pain being caused to their family and friends without a sense of guilt, understanding that pain, fear, love and concern in the faces of the people who surround them can bring a sense of balance and an awareness of their own center. This direct experience of love that comes from looking in the face of the other can provide the cancer survivor with the motivation and the desire to live for the loved ones. Seeing the anguish and pain in the face of the other, as well as their joy and gratitude, is a direct expression of God's love for us through family and friends. Love is God. This type of love, coming at a time of extreme need for reassurance, restores our freedom to live life anew. Love is the direct experience of the New Being as freedom.
Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D., is a Licensed Marriage, Child and Family Counselor, co-founder of the Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychotherapy Center in Arcata, California and adjunct faculty at Saybrook Graduate School in peace studies, conflict resolution, creativity and shamanism.
