Read this inspiring article to learn how to cure illness and increase your ability to strengthen your powers of recuperation. In a cogent lesson, Master Okawa guides us toward the answers to a life where sickness is banished and disease can be rendered powerless. The miracles of healing are taught, leading not only to a life free of disease, but to the gift of a grateful heart, non-attachment and the road to the true self. Below is an exceprt of the Chapter 1 of the book,“The Healing Power.”

1. We Create Our Own Illnesses

We need to bear in mind this important point; basically, we are able to create illnesses ourselves. As I have mentioned in the “Miraculous Ways to Conquer Cancer” and other books, all parts of the human body replace themselves within a year or so. The body replaces its hair, skull, internal organs, and even the tips of its nails. In fact, it just takes six months for many parts of body to be renewed. Therefore, if we suffer from certain diseases in some internal organs that have remained incurable for over a year, this means we have kept producing the diseases ourselves. Spiritually speaking, when we get diseases, we have developed blueprints to create them.

As the teaching of the “impermanence of all things” indicates, the physical body continually changes. It is just like a flowing river. The water of the river is never the same. It is constantly moving, so it is never the same river. Likewise, the human body is basically flowing and changing. Please awaken to this fact.
 

2. The Astral Body that Designs the Physical Body

Each part of our body basically tries to create cells or organs according to the blueprints drawn up by our thoughts that define what we are. Even if illness is not designed at first, the “blueprint of disease” sometimes comes into our lives. This blueprint is in fact the “astral body” that is identically shaped with the physical body. The astral body is the most outer layer of the spirit body, and it carries an awareness of the organs that correspond to each physical body part.

This astral body builds the physical body using protein, bones, and other constituents.

Therefore, when we get ill, pathological abnormalities first appear in our astral bodies. Something negative, that is, dark thoughts or lesions begin to appear in our astral bodies before they manifest themselves in our physical bodies. When negativity affects a part of our astral bodies, we usually send forth destructive thoughts or self-punishing thoughts repeatedly at the level of the surface consciousness. Holding feelings of aggression, strong hatred, and grudges against others can also make us fall ill because those destructive thoughts boomerang back at us and affect us, instead of affecting the objects of our hatred.

With spiritual sight, we can locate some abnormalities appearing in the astral body. When they manifest themselves in the physical body, they result in the creation of uncommon diseases.

In trying to heal an illness, medical science cures it from the outside [the physical body], whereas religion tries to cure it from the inside [the spiritual body]. In other words, religion tries to find out what is causing abnormalities in the spirit body and tries to eliminate it. So when we suffer from some illness, it’s probably the result of developing a certain mental attitude or way of thinking that we ought not to have. To put it another way, it is “attachment” in a sense. When our minds have become strongly attached to something, this attachment in our minds starts to appear as forms of disease.

3. The Mental Attitude that Cures Illness: Self-reflection and Gratitude

If we want to cure our illnesses, we have to first change the perception of ourselves. If we think of human bodies as types of machines like cars, we may well think that the only way to repair the fault is to replace our damaged parts. But this is not the way of our human bodies. Our physical bodies continually change. New ingredients and getting rid of old cells remodel them. With this awareness in mind, we need to give a clear direction to our minds so that we can transform our bodies. Of course, this direction should be positive, not negative.

We do not often realize that our minds are creating bad “casting molds”. It is not easy for us to look at ourselves, as we do when we look at our own reflections in the mirror, so we are not aware of the distortions in our minds and lifestyles. Hence, it is important to have grateful hearts and practice self-reflection. Those who get sick usually have a strong sense of self-justification or self-preservation, and despite their strong sense to defend themselves, they become ill. They justify themselves by insisting, “I am not at fault.” Or they quite often blame others and outside factors. Such people basically get ill, so it is important to have gratitude in our hearts and to practice self-reflection.

Put Love, Gratitude, and Appreciation into Practice

When we reflect on ourselves and feel grateful, we discover the joy of being given life in this world. Once we feel grateful for having been allowed to live up until today, we must put “love for others” into practice. By expressing love, gratitude, and appreciation through our behaviors, we are able to transform the “molds” themselves that we have created in our minds. So it is important to put love for others, or altruism, into practice.

Sick people usually think only of themselves. Even good people can become self-centered when they get sick. Yet, to prevent ourselves from becoming ill, we have to make efforts to form our self-images opposite of the people who have such egotistic attitudes.

We must try to reflect on ourselves every day and correct the mistakes in our thoughts and actions. We may find ourselves filled with discontent and with complaints about others. Still, we should look to others for something to be thankful for, and if we find anything, we should be grateful for it. Then, we should express our gratitude in words.

Furthermore, we should stop being selfish, and instead think about whether there is anything we can do to help those in need. It is important to understand others’ pains and sorrows, and to ease them.

Use the Power of the Subconscious to Heal Illnesses

When we get ill, we very often become self-centered, so we need to visualize images that are the exact opposite of our selfish, miserable selves, and try to become what we envision in our minds.

Even if our illnesses cannot be cured at once, we have to keep telling ourselves that we are changing for the better little by little. In doing so, we are planting certain attitudes of mind in the subconscious. To heal illnesses, it is important to develop certain patterns of thinking and engrave them into our subconscious every day.

The same is true of involuntary muscles. Internal organs are made up of involuntary muscles, and various diseases occur mostly in these muscles. We may think that we cannot control them, but in fact we can affect them. The reason is that involuntary muscles are greatly affected by the subconscious. The subconscious contains the tendencies of our minds, so if we keep certain thoughts in our minds for long periods of time, they will soak deep into our internal organs and affect them.

Stop Making Excuses and Choose Positive Thoughts

Negative thoughts soon surface in our hearts, so we should try not to let our complaints destroy the positive thoughts or positive images of ourselves. Some people get ill to try to avoid their responsibilities. So if we have the tendencies to justify ourselves or escape our responsibilities, we have to correct them. We must make efforts to hammer “positive nails” into our minds every day.

They say that human beings cannot think about two different things at the same time, so we cannot keep both positive and negative thoughts at the same time. Therefore, we need to choose to create positive visions or envision positive images of ourselves in our minds, and try to make those visions or images realities.

4. Meditation Fights off All Kinds of Illnesses

Please awaken to the fact that we are essentially spiritual beings. Believe strongly that our spiritual bodies are our true selves, and focus less on the physical.

Moreover, it is beneficial to meditate on an image of our spirit bodies shaped like a golden orb every night before going to bed. A “golden orb” here mean “absolute perfection”.

It is important to hold onto the image of our spirit bodies, shaped like perfectly round, golden orbs, and consider how God or Buddha gave us precious life.

Holding such an image in our minds can fight off all sorts of diseases that occur from our heads to the souls of our feet. This image of the self, which is shining like gold bullion, reflects the true nature of our spirit bodies.

When humans die and become spirit bodies, in the beginning they retain the same forms that they possessed while they were alive on earth. When we realize that they are not our true forms, and we return to the heavenly world, we will find that we are nothing but energy bodies that shine brilliantly like golden orbs. They are what our true selves look like.

Let’s train ourselves to envision our true selves in our minds, and this will help us to increase our recuperative powers and resistance to sicknesses. Practicing the “meditation on the true self that shines like a golden orb” every day will also help us to eliminate evil viruses from our bodies.