Our process has been only in a forward direction. We have gone forward into a new understanding of responsibility; we have gone forward by allowing ourselves the time to get to know our real selves through a technique such as meditation and through listening more to our emotions; we have gone forward by recognising the need to change and by recognising our real desires and wants; we have gone forward by opening our minds to the possibility that there is maybe more to illness than conventional medicine would have us believe. Every step, by the very nature of the fact that it is being taken now or will be taken in the future, can only ever be a step forward. A choice made in the past that we now believe to have been wrong is in fact an opportunity for us to progress now. This whole approach is not about pointing a finger of blame and saying to oneself "Oh dear, I shouldn't have done that"; it is not about thinking that we may be a bad person due to our past actions or thoughts; it is about recognising that there may indeed be something wrong in our attitude, or in our actions, but it is something that we can now correct. It was stated earlier in the book that all dis-ease stems from stress of some form or another; it is stress that damages our energy systems and it is this damage that later leads to the onset of physical or mental dis-ease. When searching for the cause of dis-ease therefore, we are looking for areas of our lives that may have brought, or are currently bringing, stress. In this way we avoid the temptation to blame third-party influences for our poor health or unhappiness. By very nature of the fact that it is our own mind or our own body that may be showing signs of illness, we can be certain that the cause for that illness must lie within ourselves. For some people this responsibility will continue to be too much to accept. It is much easier, apparently much less painful, to blame all sorts of outside influences for our poor state of being. The fact remains, our own dis-ease, our own unhappiness, stems from our own unwillingness to assume complete responsibility for every aspect of our lives. The steps in this book have been mapped out to help us acquire the right sort of help and information to enable each one of us to pursue our own individual course of healing. Assuming that we work through these ideas, meditate regularly and learn to recognise our genuine wants through our lists of intention, then we will be getting closer to finding our own root causes. So what are these causes of dis-ease that have played such havoc with our body or mind? The truth is much less frightening than we may once have thought; because of the steps that we have already taken we will find that many of the causes have already been dealt with, at times with effort, at other times with ease. Just by listening to ourselves and changing our lives, in however small a way, to bring us less stress and more enjoyment, we will have reduced the number of causes of dis-ease. Of those that are left, we will not find a pollutant or a toxin amongst them. The remaining causes of dis-ease are to be found in the very areas in our life which are most important to us - ie those people and things with which we have close associations. If everything at home and at work is genuinely how we want it to be as guided by our Higher Self, then there is not only a very good chance that any old stresses will be allowed to leave us almost unnoticed, but also there will be no new opportunities for stress to cause damage. However it is very often the case that we do not feel entirely at ease about either our personal or working life. It is because we put a great deal of emotion into these particular areas that any negative experiences contain great power to cause damage initially in our energy bodies and eventually in our physical bodies. So it is here where we must finally look for the roots of any problems. It is in our ability to assess with complete honesty the problems of any part of our upbringing, present relationships, daily stresses and frustrated desires that we also have the ability to remove the problems and treat the causes of dis-ease. The lists of intention are vital to honest assessment of all of these areas; the daily increase of self-awareness that meditation helps to bring about will help these lists to become our reality and our dis-ease to become our past. When these final causes have been identified, we will immediately begin to feel more relaxed about our dis-ease; just by identifying the real problem, we have weakened its hold over us substantially. Eradicating this cause altogether will often be a question of facing our fear in relation to that cause. We will find that, whenever we really do face our fears, our ability to overcome them is far greater than we ever realised. Money Money, or rather our fear of not having enough, is a very common root cause of dis-ease. It seems to have the power to wreck relationships, health and cause all manner of woes. We seem to think that it is a monster which is wonderful when on our side, but disastrous when working against us. We often feel quite powerless to control it due to our misguided perception of its own power, and we therefore let our whole lives be governed by the need to acquire it. In short, many of us are inclined to let it control almost all aspects of our daily lives. And yet money by itself has no power. Without a person to respond to it, money is but an inanimate object incapable of causing one iota of trouble. Money is purely a symbol. If £1 million is placed on a table inside an empty room, that money would remain there completely powerless - even though we might regard it as a large sum capable of changing many peoples' lives. It is therefore not money itself that holds the power to cause us dis-ease, but it is our attitude towards it. We have seen through the Universal Laws that like attracts like; if we fear not having enough money we can be certain that, throughout our lives, however much we acquire along the way, we will never feel as though we have enough. We will never have enough because we will always be fearing the loss of what we already have. It is this fear that is important for it is the fear that creates stress. Once the stress exists, dis-ease can start its journey toward the realisation of physical symptoms. It may seem absurd to suggest to someone who lives in a huge house with lots of material possessions and who has a healthy bank account that the reason they are dis-eased is because of their fear of money; it may seem absurd but it is quite often true. Acquiring considerable wealth may mean our attitude to acquiring is positive, but it does not necessarily mean that our attitude to money is positive. We can be certain that if we fear it running out, then one day it will; if we lose that fear, we will not only always have enough for our needs, but we will also erase a major cause of dis-ease - our fear of money. This is also true of people who suffer constantly in poverty. For them their fear comes true on a daily basis and it is that much harder for them to see that they are continuing to be poor by the very nature of the fact that they expect it. Their fear of not having enough money, which again is very often passed down from generation to generation quite unwittingly, has got them to this stage and is now lived out on a real-life daily basis. The downward spiral is very often so advanced, that they cannot see and cannot believe that they are contributing towards it. Quite understandably, trying to think any differently is very difficult. It is, however, in the redirection of our thoughts that the power lies. If we continue to believe in our poverty, then there is no hope of escaping it; if, however, we start looking forward to our desires coming true, if we really begin to think of money as something that is readily available for our benefit, for our enjoyment, then we will start to attract money into our lives. When we start to attract it we are clearly putting out the right thoughts and emotions. As long as those emotions remain in the positive ("I want a new...") and not in the negative ("I worry about not having enough money to pay/buy/do...") we will have no fear of money and if we have no fear of it then it cannot cause us dis-ease. However strong our intention may be to be completely honest with ourselves, most of us have a problem with our attitude to money. We like to blame money, or our lack of it, when things go wrong because it again absolves us of responsibility. We put ourselves under stress for much of our lives just because we fear not being able to create enough money through doing things that we would thoroughly enjoy and that would be stress-free. We have been brought up to believe that life necessarily involves a certain amount of material possessions, a certain amount of physical and mental stress and a certain amount of luck. The thought of doing something in life that brings us great joy, as well as bringing us enough money, is one that makes many of us feel guilty. But by acknowledging that our own happiness is the primary goal in our lives, we will find that money will work for us as opposed to controlling us. When we have really worked out where our true happiness may lie, using the methods already given in this book, we will find that the money we need to realise this will come as we need it, in the same way as our intuition comes. Taking the time to listen to ourselves, taking the time to find out what really makes us feel good, is the key to correcting our attitude to money. For by doing this, money becomes no more than a consequence of our desire; a mere tool in the process rather than a reason for doing something. Provided that we are working in harmony with our Higher Self, our desire for money will never be in order that we may hurt, damage or deliberately create poverty for someone else; in addition, the process of acquiring the money we need will be almost effortless. We need to focus ourselves in exactly the same way as we do in meditation to allow money, and not the fear of not having it, into our lives. For example, if we become a stockbroker solely because we want to have as much money as possible, we will never be satisfied and will probably end up losing all that we acquire as well as becoming very stressed. Wanting money in itself is not an acceptable intention because without something to use the money for, the money is useless. If however we become a stockbroker because we really enjoy working with money and because we really enjoy the life that a stockbroker has, then our intention is very strong; as a result we will have little attachment to earning money and therefore little fear of losing it; the large amounts that we earn will bring us great pleasure and little dis-ease. In these two instances the job is the same, but the end results are very different because the intentions at the beginning are very different. We must not hide from our fear of money; this fear is not only extremely common, it is something from which we can learn a great lesson. It is not money itself that is one of the causes of dis-ease, but our perception of it. If we perceive of money as an endless supply that everyone can tap into whenever they really want to, we are relieving ourselves of much of the guilt and fear associated with wealth or the lack of it. The happiness in our life does not depend upon the money that we create - quite the reverse. The money in our life depends upon the happiness that we create. Create a life of happiness, and we will have all the money we need to keep it that way. Relationships Husband, wife, boss, son, grandmother, in fact any person really close to us has the power to turn our lives upside down emotionally from one minute to the next. Why should this be so, when all we want is to continue along our way in a relaxed and happy state of mind? The answer lies again in one word - fear. We fear those closest to us more than anyone else in our lives. It may sound ridiculous to state that we fear members of our family, but it is because we do that their attitude to us is capable of bringing out our strongest negative emotion. It is this emotion that lies at the root of the majority of dis-ease. Banish our fear and we banish dis-ease. Our fear of not being approved of by those closest to us is the most common fear of all. For example, let us imagine a woman who works herself to a state of exhaustion both in a job outside the home and in keeping the house immaculate, because she wants to seek the approval of her husband. She feels that she has to try and impress upon him how hard she can work. The harder she works, the greater becomes her need for approval. The husband, though he tries his best, is unable to give her the approval that she seeks. No amount of approval could ever be enough because the only approval that is really important is the approval that she gives herself. Believing that she is somehow failing to achieve what he wants, she attracts the powerful emotion of guilt. This is in spite of the fact that he is totally happy with her efforts. In time this guilt leads her into resentment as she begins to feel angry because of her perception that all her efforts are going unnoticed. Any one of these negative emotional states has the power to cause severe stress and therefore dis-ease. It is because she does not approve of herself and because she is denying her own lists of intention, that she can never gain enough satisfaction from the purely symbolic things that represent her life. In the same way that the person who works only for the acquisition of money can never have enough money, so neither can the person who works only for the approval of others ever have enough approval. Most relationships, whether at work or at home, run into trouble because of the inability of one person to express their feelings at the time to the other person. In the example just given, the married couple run into trouble because the wife fails to talk about her feelings of frustration and ends up setting herself an unachievable target. If we fully understand the idea that the most important thing is to be honest with ourselves, then we would find ourselves more able to cope with every relationship in which we are involved. It is only in our misinterpretation of being 'good' that our weakness in our relationships lies. We think being good means impressing others and getting approval from others; in fact being good starts with being honest with ourselves about what makes us feel good. We have a deeply rooted belief in our society that it is automatically selfish to pay attention to what makes us feel good. It is this belief that our own desires are selfish and unworthy that prevents us from leading fulfilled and happy lives; it also discourages us from looking too closely at the aspects of life that are currently bringing us distress on the basis that we are not worthy of anything better anyway. And yet it is in these very personal aspects of our lives that we will often find our major causes of dis-ease. Just by addressing honestly these very emotive aspects of life, we can help to eradicate all manner of stress. The temptation of course is to do the opposite. When we realise that there are elements of our relationships that are not working, rather than face these elements and try to correct them, we look for solace elsewhere. This is where the cause of much dis-ease is found; for it is in the areas of unhappiness and dissatisfaction that we leave unattended, that stress begins to take hold. Very few of us are able to exist without relationships; we are not meant to. It is an innate aspect of human beings to be social. Being social however does not mean being dependent upon any one or any thing else for our happiness. This is where our attitude to relationships, like our attitude to money, becomes imbalanced. And it is when the imbalance occurs that dis-ease can set in. We were given other people in the world in order to show how capable we are of love; we were given some of our senses in order to communicate. Denying complete and honest communication with another person about an issue that we know we need to talk about is representative of our own inability to show complete love not only to them, but also to ourselves. We need to remember that, in the same way as an illness has been shown to be an opportunity to learn, so is a problem that occurs in a relationship. If we all looked at these problems as opportunities and not just as disasters, we would realise that it is only fair to give every person involved the chance to express openly and honestly their own feelings. Using the law of non-attachment, we can listen to another's point of view without having an attachment to our own. In this way we are able to talk about each other's worst fears; we are able to express ourselves openly and freely, facing worst case scenarios in a way that bonds together all concerned. Our failure to have a successful relationship of any sort, comes down not to the shortcomings of the other person or persons, it comes down to our own inability to express how we are feeling when we are feeling it. If we feel that our boss is working us too hard and that we need to have extra support, running round trying to work harder while all the time resenting him will only lead to further resentment and anger. If we feel that our partner is shirking his/her fair share of the housework, not talking about it will also lead to resentment and anger. If our teenage son is failing to turn up to school and is becoming antisocial at home, not engaging him in frank and open discussion about his life will only lead to further problems for child and parents alike. As we have seen already, it is when these powerful negative emotions such as anger, resentment and guilt enter our conscious thought process, that stress is caused and subsequently dis-ease. So why do we allow these things to happen? Very often it is because we are so scared by the thought of someone's reaction to our true feelings, that we avoid talking about them altogether. It is yet another way that we let fear control us. Of course, not talking about our problems does not make them go away. Ignoring them is like building a house on poor foundations; we can paper over the cracks, we can make the house look lovely on the outside and every bit as nice as any other house that we have ever seen; but give it time, and that house will soon begin to show the signs of the poor work that went on earlier. Cracks will soon appear, redecoration will become an expensive and pointless exercise - and eventually the house will fall down of its own accord. When we deny the truth to ourselves, our bodies are very like that house. Try as we may, we eventually have to give in to the relentlessness of the negative energy that has developed as a result of our inability to be totally honest about what we really wanted in those key areas of our lives. This is why, where possible, it is important to address problems as they arise and to overcome them there and then. This is the equivalent of the holistic health care philosophy which focuses on the idea of prevention. Seeing problems in relationships as opportunities and then talking about them with the simple aim of reaching a solution that is agreeable to all concerned, is how we prevent stress and therefore how we prevent dis-ease. Recognising and accepting that a problem exists gives us great power. The damage it can cause is lessened by that recognition alone. By then taking full responsibility for our part in the problem and by encouraging others to do the same, we will begin to undo the most tangled knot. Problems that have already lead to dis-ease can also still be undone; it is never too late to try to create a solution, no matter how advanced the problem may seem. Realising that the root causes of dis-ease lie in our attitude to those subjects that are closest to our heart, gives us immense power to overcome the gravest of illnesses. The more honest we are with ourselves, the more powerful we will become in overcoming these unwanted invaders. Supported by a powerful technique such as meditation, we will find that each day will bring renewed peace of mind and strength. Our desire to take complete responsibility, combined with our recognition of what we want and what is good for us, will establish a strong foundation from which to build. There is only one way we can go when all these tools are being used and that way is forward.