Evolution of love

AN IMPRESSIVE HEALING

I would soon discover that I had broken six vertebrae: I had compression fractures in thoracic 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 and lumbar 1 (ranging from my shoulder blades to my kidneys). The vertebrae are stacked like individual blocks in the spine, and when I hit the ground with that kind of force, they collapsed and compressed from the impact. The eighth thoracic vertebra, the top segment that I broke, was more than 60 percent collapsed, and the circular arch that contained and protected the spinal cord was broken and pushed together in a pretzel-like shape.

When a vertebra compresses and fractures, the bone has to go somewhere. In my case, a large volume of shattered fragments went back toward my spinal cord. It was definitely not a good picture. As if I were in a bad dream gone rogue, I woke up the next morning with a host of neurological symptoms, including several different types of pain; varying degrees of numbness, tingling, and some loss of feeling in my legs; and some sobering difficulties in controlling my movements. So after I had all the blood tests, x-rays, CAT scans, and MRIs at the hospital, the orthopedic surgeon showed me the results and somberly delivered the news: In order to contain the bone fragments that were now on my spinal cord, I needed surgery to implant a Harrington rod.

That would mean cutting out the back parts of the vertebrae from two to three segments above and below the fractures and then screwing and clamping two 12-inch stainless-steel rods along both sides of my spinal column. Then they’d scrape some fragments off my hip bone and paste them over the rods. It would be major surgery, but it would mean I’d at least have a chance to walk again. Even so, I knew I’d probably still be somewhat disabled, and I’d have to live with chronic pain for the rest of my life. Needless to say, I didn’t like that option. But if I chose not to have the surgery, paralysis seemed certain. The best neurologist in the Palm Springs area, who concurred with the first surgeon’s opinion, told me that he knew of no other patient in the United States in my condition who had refused it. The impact of the accident had compressed my T-8 vertebra into a wedge shape that would prevent my spine from being able to bear the weight of my body if I were to stand up: My backbone would collapse, pushing those shattered bits of the vertebra deep into my spinal cord, causing instant paralysis from my chest down. That was hardly an attractive option either.

I was transferred to a hospital in La Jolla, closer to my home, where I received two additional opinions, including one from the leading orthopedic surgeon in Southern California. Not surprisingly, both doctors agreed that I should have the Harrington rod surgery. It was a pretty consistent prognosis: have the surgery or be paralyzed, never to walk again. If I had been the medical professional making the recommendation, I’d have said the same thing: It was the safest option.

But it wasn’t the option I chose for myself. Maybe I was just young and bold at that time in my life, but I decided against the medical model and the expert recommendations. I believe that there’s an intelligence, an invisible consciousness, within each of us that’s the giver of life. It supports, maintains, protects, and heals us every moment. It creates almost 100 trillion specialized cells (starting from only 2), it keeps our hearts beating hundreds of thousands of times per day, and it can organize hundreds of thousands of chemical reactions in a single cell in every second—among many other amazing functions. I reasoned at the time that if this intelligence was real and if it willfully, mindfully, and lovingly demonstrated such amazing abilities, maybe I could take my attention off my external world and begin to go within and connect with it—developing a relationship with it. But while I intellectually understood that the body often has the capacity to heal itself, now I had to apply every bit of philosophy that I knew in order to take that knowledge to the next level and beyond, to create a true experience with healing.

And since I wasn’t going anywhere and I wasn’t doing anything except lying facedown, I decided on two things. First, every day I would put all of my conscious attention on this intelligence within me and give it a plan, a template, a vision, with very specific orders, and then I would surrender my healing to this greater mind that has unlimited power, allowing it to do the healing for me. And second, I wouldn’t let any thought slip by my awareness that I didn’t want to experience. Sounds easy, right? A Radical Decision Against the advice of my medical team, I left the hospital in an ambulance that brought me to the home of two close friends, where I stayed for the next three months to focus on my healing. I was on a mission. I decided that I would begin every day reconstructing my spine, vertebra by vertebra, and I would show this consciousness, if it was paying attention to my efforts, what I wanted. I knew that it would demand my absolute presence . . . that is, for me to be present in the moment—not thinking about or regretting my past, worrying about the future, obsessing about the conditions in my external life, or focusing on my pain or symptoms. Just as in any relationship we have with anybody, we all know when someone is present or not with us, right? Because consciousness is awareness, awareness is paying attention, and paying attention is being present and noticing, this consciousness would be aware of when I was present and when I wasn’t. I would have to be totally present when I interacted with this mind; my presence would have to match its presence, my will would have to match its will, and my mind would have to match its mind. So for two hours twice a day, I went within and began creating a picture of my intended result: a totally healed spine. Of course, I became aware of how unconscious and unfocused I was. It’s ironic.

I realized back then that when crisis or trauma occurs, we spend too much of our attention and energy thinking about what we don’t want instead of what we do want. During those first several weeks, I was guilty of this tendency on what seemed like a moment-to-moment basis. In the middle of my meditations on creating the life I wanted with a fully healed spine, I would all of a sudden become aware that I’d been unconsciously thinking about what the surgeons had told me a few weeks prior: that I would probably never walk again. I would be in the midst of inwardly reconstructing my spine, and the next thing I knew I was stressing over whether I should sell my chiropractic practice. While I was step-by-step mentally rehearsing walking again, I would catch myself imagining what it would be like to live the rest of my life sitting in a wheelchair—you get the idea.

So every time I lost my attention and my mind wandered to any extraneous thoughts, I would start from future. And that realization solidified the journey for me, because right around that time, as I was creating this vision of what I wanted, reconstructing my vertebrae, it started to get easier every day. Most important, I started to notice some pretty significant physiological changes. It was in that moment that I began to correlate what I was doing inside of me to create this change with what was taking place outside of me—in my body. The instant I made that correlation, I paid greater attention to what I was doing and did it with more conviction; and I did it again and again. As a result, I kept doing it with a level of joy and inspiration instead of such a dreadful, compromised effort.

And all of a sudden, what had originally taken me two or three hours to accomplish in one session, I was able to do in a shorter period. Now, I had quite a bit of time on my hands. So I started to think about what it would be like to see a sunset again from the water’s edge or eat lunch with my friends at a table in a restaurant, and I thought about how I would never take any of that for granted. In detail, I imagined taking a shower and feeling the water on my face and body, or simply sitting up while using the toilet or taking a walk on the beach in San Diego, the wind blowing on my face. These were some things that I had never fully appreciated before the accident, but now they had meaning—and I took my time to emotionally embrace them until I felt as if I were already there. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but now I do: I was actually starting to think about all these future potentials that existed in the quantum field, and then I was emotionally embracing each of them. And as I selected that intentional future and married it with the elevated emotion of what it would be like to be there in that future, in the present moment my body began to believe it was actually in that future experience.

As my ability to observe my desired destiny got sharper and sharper, my cells began to reorganize themselves. I began to signal new genes in new ways, and then my body really started getting better faster. What I was learning is one of the main principles of quantum physics: that mind and matter are not separate elements, that our conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings are the very blueprints that control our destiny. The persistence, conviction, and focus to manifest any potential future lies within the human mind and within the mind of the infinite potentials in the quantum field. Both of these minds must work together in order to bring about any future reality that potentially already exists.

I realized that in that way, we are all divine creators, independent of race, gender, culture, social status, education, religious beliefs, or even past mistakes. I felt really blessed for the first time in my life. I made other key decisions about my healing as well. I set up a whole regimen (described in detail in Evolve Your Brain) that included diet, visits from friends who practiced energy healing, and an elaborate rehabilitation program. But nothing was more important to me during that time than getting in touch with that intelligence within me and, through it, using my mind to heal my body. At nine and a half weeks after the accident, I got up and walked back into my life—without having any body cast or any surgeries. I had reached full recovery. I started seeing patients again at 10 weeks and was back to training and lifting weights again, continuing my rehabilitation, at 12 weeks. And now, almost 30 years after the accident, I can honestly say that I’ve hardly ever had back pain since.