What Can A Cancer Cell Teach Us?

I am a great fan of Dr. Zach Bush, a medical doctor who uses his great scientific knowledge in unconventional ways. He is repository of wisdom and humanity who can lift one’s spirits in a matter of minutes. I hasten to add that in talking about this topic I am not presuming to give medical advice, and that I relay some of Dr. Bush’s ideas as an allegory.

Cancer cells are the most isolated, damaged and fragile cells in the human body. Their repair mechanisms are destroyed, they cannot produce adequate fuel, they have lost their cell identity and natural function. In a last ditch effort to survive they multiply uncontrollably and form a tumour.

Despite many years of research, medicine is no closer to a solution to cancer than in the 70’s for the reason that we continue to see cancer as the problem and not the symptom of a body that has lost its inherent ability to heal. In treating it we poison instead of supporting. We treat rather than inspire. The body often removes cancer cells naturally during life. Only when all our means of communication and metabolism experience a profound disruption does cancer become a clinical problem that we have to deal with. Cancer is just the symptom.

In Dr Bush’s poetic parlance the first step to overcoming cancer is to love those cells back into the community of your body. If the cancer cells cannot be cured, they will give way (apoptosis or programmed cell suicide) to new, healthy cells (stem cell activation). Cancer, just like a person, needs love. Many people have been able to recover from it with the help of meditation/prayer, love, positive thoughts, and lifestyle changes.

Another wonderful inspirational medical guru of mine is Dr Gil Yoseph Shachar, who tells the story of a young mother who had just given birth to a daughter and while in the maternity home, the young mum had a bad fall. Doctors were perplexed at the way her leg buckled, and upon scanning it discovered a cancerous growth. They also found that the cancer had metastasised. She was sent home to look after her newborn for as long as possible and prepare for the worst. The young mother went home and a few months later came back to be checked only to be found clear of the illness. When asked what she did, she replied that she did nothing other than developing a practice of joyfulness and daily gratitude. She said that the cancer had liberated her to focus entirely on her beautiful child and on her own healing. Nothing else mattered.

If we know how to take care of ourselves, find the time for meditation and prayer, eat good and nutritious food, drink clean water, show others and ourselves compassion, laugh loudly and wholeheartedly, find connections with the people close to us, take care of the environment and nature, find ways of growing food that benefit the earth, we can create a world around us that manifests much less of the loneliness and fragility that leads the ultimate breakdown.