Some years ago Catherine Ponder published a book of healing techniques entitled The Dynamic Laws of Healing. When she writes of healing, she means the real stuff that goes to the origin of our physical maladies - what we believe. Ponder is a Unitarian minister, so there is some churchifying about God and evil in the book, but it doesn’t detract from her powerful message. She also provides a number of affirmations to help facilitate the healing process.
Techniques like this have been po-poed by the establishment because they are not “scientific,” ergo “rational.” But not being rational does not make them ineffective. You just have to learn how to use them!
A word about affirmations: Affirmations have gotten a bad rap because, as most of them have been postured, they don’t work. To be effective, affirmations first require a cleansing - a clearing - as it were, of the negative beliefs you hold about the thing in question. An act of generosity or a sincere act of forgiveness helps to remove blockages that will interfere with the process. Otherwise, you are just a beggar pleading for alms.
Forgiveness is not about someone else, it is really for you. It doesn’t mean forgetting or excusing the harm done to you or making up with the person who caused you harm. Forgiveness brings you a kind of peace that helps you go on with life - it is about extending mercy to those who’ve harmed you, even if they don’t “deserve” it.
What follows are some quotes from Ponder’s book that may give you an understanding of what true healing is about:
“… disease is self-inflicted! Disease is caused by wrong thoughts, opinions, and beliefs, moving upon and within the body, constricting the life force . . .”
“As a person thinks in his mind, so is he in his body.”
“Self love is the key to healing.”
“Permanent health comes from freeing the mind of its beliefs in ignorance. . .”
“People have long attributed ill health to everything but its true cause: their own wrong thoughts and feelings.”
“You can begin to release the healing power within you . . . through the power of your deliberate, conscious thinking.”
“Permanent health comes from freeing the mind of its beliefs . . .”
“A sense of guilt finds atonement in illness: when the mind does not get relief from guilt, it releases the guilt into the body as disease.”
“When you behold the good, you are powerful, but the instant you behold evil, you are paralyzed by the darkness of your mind. Evil has no life, substance or intelligence of itself. It is conjured up by the limited beliefs . . . of man.”
“If you will stop nourishing the thought of evil in your life, it will starve from lack of attention and fade away.”
“Bodily functions have a way of righting themselves when you correct the negative states of mind that caused them.”
Referencing great healers of the past: “These great men know that by saying ‘no’ to evil beliefs and appearances in your life, you first dissolve any fear that you have had about them. You next dissolve their power to affect you in any way. With the dissolution of the fear comes dissolution of the problem, which falls apart. It had no power except that generated by your previous fear and negative belief in it.”
“To describe and dwell upon what you do not like, magnifies its importance, and gives it negative power, which reacts upon you.”
RELEASING
“It is an immutable mental and spiritual law that when there is a health problem, there is a forgiveness problem. You must forgive if you want to be permanently healed.”
“Your problems do not create themselves. You create them by by your own fearful thinking. Through speaking words of release, those problems are then freed to work out in whatever way is best.”
“One of the greatest secrets of healing is to praise and give thanks for it, right in the face of illness, before there is anything to give thanks for.”
“Make a practice of praising your problems, troubles and difficult experiences.”
“Just as these strongly negative emotions affect the chemistry of the body, causing disease, so thoughts of love affect the chemistry of the body, producing restoration.”
“The imaging faculty of the mind is one of man’s most important for his health, wealth and happiness. Few of us realize the almost superhuman power that the imagination has upon the body.”
AFFIRMATIONS
“All that has offended me, I forgive, whatever has made me bitter, resentful, unhappy, I forgive. I forgive positively everyone. God is love, and I am forgiven and governed by God’s love alone. Realizing this, I abide in peace.”
“I am the radiant child of God. My mind, body and affairs now express this radiant perfection.”
“Divine love is doing its perfect work in me and through me now.”
“Every day in every way, I am getting better and better.”
FINAL THOUGHTS
“ . . . at times it will look as though this method is not working.” (Note: you must steadfastly keep up with it!) “Then suddenly everything will shift, changes will come, and matters that had seemed destined for failure will clear up very quickly.”
