cancer

This book is profound. I bought it because I had read of Peace Pilgram and gotten a book that Cheryl Canfield had done of this incredible woman. Thus I found this book indirectly. Hesitated to get it.
Am so pleased I did. Full of messages. It is like an onion. What touches me may not be what touches you, but I am sure that you will be touched. Well written. I am savoring it...reading it slowly (that is right I have not finished it yet), but I am sending copies to friends that will benefit from it.

The last time I used a highlighter on a book, it was around 1988, I was writing a college paper on Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse," and I needed to mark recurring themes. In reading "Profound Healing" 15 years later, I finally reached for a highlighter again, because I knew that a) I would be keeping this book for a long time, and b) after I finished gobbling up the "plot," I would want to return to important passages and remind myself of exercises and references. So even if you're like me and using a highlighter on a book is a form of heresy, keep one handy when you're reading "Profound Healing." (I showed the book to my older sister, another book lover like myself, and she pretended to grow faint and need smelling salts when she saw the highlighting!)

This book tells the inspiring story of the author, whom I have met, and her journey from cancer, to an acceptance of and preparation for death, to physical healing. In Part One, she tells of discovering that she had advanced cervical cancer and how she decided to treat it (and NOT with the radical surgery recommended by her doctors). She refers to earlier spiritual training, but fear not! in Part Two she tells that story and introduces us to her spiritual teacher and her own inner (and outer) journeys. Part Three is the post-cancer adjustment period, and Part Four outlines the 12 Steps she identifies for the healing process.

Canfield writes, "Profound healing is not a cessation of physical symptoms, but an expanded awareness of our spiritual nature." She does not "blame the victim" or offer miracle cures for relieving symptoms, but rather points us to a deeper, more numinous realm. Having met Cheryl in person, I can attest that she is an unassuming and humble person and is not caught up in trying to convince people of anything their own intuition doesn't corroborate.

I am a skeptic. I haven't experienced the mystical things Canfield and other spiritual writers say they have experienced. But I don't discount their experiences. Who knows, maybe I'm the woman with her eyes closed who just hasn't seen the sunrise yet -- it doesn't mean that sunrises aren't "real." Fortunately for the skeptics among us, Canfield does not ask us to believe what she believes. She just presents her experience. Take what you can from it and find your own blessings.