Bernie Siegel, an American surgeon, was one of the pioneers of mind-body medicine. He recounts some of his experiences and journey in his bestseller Love, Medicine and Miracles. It shows the power of love as a force for life and healing. Here are a few excerpts.
I don’t see death as a failure. For me, failure is the fear of renouncing the negative conditioning of childhood.
The fact that the mind governs the body, although neglected by biology and medicine, is the most fundamental knowledge we have of the life process. Lower peace sends a message of life into the body. Depression, fear and unresolved conflict send messages of death. How many doctors understand that an individual’s attitude to life determines both the quality and duration of that life?
Live fully before you die
Few people make full use of their life force before a life-threatening illness prompts them to change course. But why wait until the last minute? The fundamental problem is often the inability to love oneself because one was not loved at a crucial period in one’s life. Usually during childhood. The ability to love oneself, combined with the ability to love life by accepting that it won’t last forever, enables us to improve the quality of our existence. As a surgeon, my role is to prolong my patients’ lives and give them time to heal. I try to help them feel better, but also to understand why they got sick in the first place. This will enable them to really heal, not just get rid of a particular disease.
I try to help you reach that part of yourself that knows what’s best for you, and to strengthen your resolve to follow its advice. If you’re suffering from a so-called terminal illness, the change I’m talking about can save your life and extend it far beyond medical expectations. At the very least, it will enable you to derive more satisfaction from the time you have left than you think possible today. If you’re just sickly, always unwell, and don’t know why, the principles I’ve learned can restore your zest for life and prevent you from getting sick in the future.
Death is not a failure
Because no one is eternal, death is not a failure. True failure is refusing the challenge of life. Healing against all odds is not a miracle. It’s the result, more often than not, of hard work. That’s why I prefer the term self-healing, which emphasizes the importance of personal, conscious work on the part of the sufferer.
What my medical colleagues call “giving false hope” is simply telling patients that they are not a statistic and that they can be cured against all statistics. Even if what we hope for most – a definitive cure – doesn’t happen, hope sustains us and pushes us to achieve many things while we live. Refusing to hope is nothing more than deciding to die. And I know that many people are alive today because I gave them hope and the conviction that they didn’t have to die.
To heal is to create
Healing is a creative act that requires as much work, as much patience and as much determination as any other form of creation.
I’ve come to accept illness and consider that my main task is to help sufferers find serenity. This puts physical problems in a fairer perspective. Health is not the only goal. It’s much more important to learn to live without fear, to be at peace with oneself and with the idea of death. Then you may get better, and in any case, you’re no longer threatened by failure, which is inevitable when you think it’s possible to cure all illnesses and never die.
We’re alive until our last breath
We must never forget that we are not living or dying, but living or dead. As long as someone is alive, they should be treated as alive. I find the word “terminal” particularly odious because it implies that the person is already considered dead.
The doctor’s attitude plays a decisive role in the success of a treatment. Above all, patients need to feel that their carer is giving them his undivided attention. Only empathy can create the bond necessary for healing.
We can all learn to look after ourselves and stay healthy. We just need to learn to love life, others and ourselves. We must seek balance and serenity so that the necessary transformations can take place.
Being happy supports our health
The truth is that happy people are generally healthy. The relationship with oneself is the determining factor in healing and health. Those who live at peace with themselves and their immediate environment have far fewer illnesses than others. Moving towards greater self-acceptance boosts the immune system and helps fight off most illnesses. One of the things we need most is to forgive ourselves. To accept ourselves as perfectly imperfect and to love ourselves as we are.
Another thing that helps us to heal is to become aware of the – often very negative – ideas we unconsciously form about our health and illness. If we stop thinking about illness and start thinking about healing, we have already laid the foundations for our treatment.
I advise all my patients to make their decisions based on what would seem right to them if they were to die the next day, or a month or a year later. It’s a way of making them immediately aware of their desires, even if they’ve never paid any attention to them. Psychoanalysis cannot be undertaken with people who may not live long enough to complete it. We need to bring about rapid change, and the best way to do this is to encourage them to ask themselves what they would do if their lives were to end quickly.
Resolving inner conflicts is the priority
Resolving inner conflicts must be the patient’s first task, because once conscious choices coincide with deep-seated desires, the energy mobilized by the contradiction is released for the benefit of the healing process. As a doctor, my job is not only to suggest the most appropriate treatment for each case, but also to help patients find a reason to live, resolve their inner conflicts and release their healing energy.
Medication and surgery are not to be sneezed at. They save patients precious time, which they can use to change their lives.
When we’re ill, our world can seem very dark. But there are sources of light. Each of us has an inner spark. Call it the Divine Spark, if you like. In any case, it’s there, and it can light the way to healing.
No conscious will can ever replace the life instinct in the long term. Carl Jung.
Seek first inner joy and peace
Healing is not the essential goal. If we set ourselves the goal of healing, we risk failure, whereas if we seek inner joy and peace, we can succeed. And by finding peace of mind, we can regain our health, because we create an atmosphere within ourselves that is conducive to healing. This is possible for each and every one of us.
Resolving inner conflicts, discovering and listening to your deepest self and living as lovingly as possible releases tremendous energy, which strongly supports the biochemical healing process.
Love and you’ll be happy
If you choose to love and make others happy, you’ll find love and happiness. The first step towards inner serenity is the decision to give love without waiting for someone to give it to you. Inner peace can heal anything. When we choose to love, the energy of love flows into our bodies and heals them or gives us what we need to leave this life serenely. The spiritual dimension – the belief that there is meaning in the universe and in our lives, and that this meaning is benevolent and positive – is essential to this. Believing in a benevolent higher power gives us strong reasons to hope, and hope is a very important healing factor. In fact, it’s one of the main keys to the effectiveness of the Alcoholics Anonymous program, which has enabled millions of people to finally escape the hell of alcohol.
Spirituality in this sense is the ability to find happiness in an imperfect world and to love ourselves with our imperfection. Peace, love, humility, trust and forgiveness are the hallmarks of spirituality. They are always found in people who recover from serious illness, as well as in those who end their lives peacefully.
Lack of love and conditioned love are at the root of all disease. Because the exhaustion and weakening of the immune system they cause makes the body more vulnerable. Any healing, and any peaceful end to life, are incredibly sustained by each person’s ability to give and receive unconditional love.
When I succeed in helping people to love and accept themselves as they are, they become capable of giving back. They discover that this makes them happy, and increases their energy tenfold.
Love, an incredibly powerful force for life and healing
One of the immediate rewards of unconditional love is a life-giving message for the body. Unconditional love is the best stimulant for the immune system. Love heals, that’s the truth. It cures us of the sickness of living a meaningless life. It enables us to live in peace and joy, however long we live. It also increases the possibility of physical healing, but that’s not the primary goal.
Those close to patients can help them enormously in accepting all their fears, resentments and unresolved conflicts. The path consists in learning to love oneself as much as to love others, to assert oneself and to forgive in the same movement.
To let the source of love flow, we have to free ourselves from our fears. This means embracing them without letting ourselves be invaded and ruled by them. Love will help us in this movement. For love is incompatible with fear. Forgiveness is another powerful means of freeing ourselves from the grip of fear.
Whether we’re sick or well, when we give others love and help, we feel invaded by warmth and peace.
Listen to your intuition, it will guide you
Remember that your deepest self is love, and let it express itself and spread as widely as possible around you, first to those who are pleasant to you, then as far as possible, even to those for whom this will be difficult. Love isn’t an emotion, it’s a choice, a way of living that sees the love deep within yourself and everyone else, beyond all appearances.
Love can transform everything, revitalize everything, reunite everything, heal everything. There’s nothing love can’t do, if we let it fill us and drive us. The worst thing is not to die. The worst thing is to live without love. Listen to your intuition, and it will lead you to the true life, the one that will make you happy and serene, however long it lasts.
To find out more, visit Bernie Siegel’s website and read my testimonial Can miracles heal?
See also the article on Dr. Sylvie Cafardy’s work on near-death experiences and the end of life.
The one about Lisa Smartt’s book Un pied dans le ciel et un pied sur la Terre (One foot in the sky and one on Earth)
And the one about doctor Christopher Kerr End-of-life experiences: hope and meaning for those leaving. And for those who stay.
