Image by Anthony Chinweuba
In this Article:
- What influences shape our beliefs about health?
- How can introspection guide us in choosing positive influences?
- What role do study and learning play in developing belief in healing?
- How can affirmation strengthen our belief in self-healing?
- How does meditation provide direct experience of our soul’s healing power?
How to Strengthen Your Belief in Unlimited Health and Healing
by Joseph Selbie.
We can develop belief in unlimited health and healing. To do so we can make methodical and deliberate use of the same influences that previously—and haphazardly—established the mix of beliefs we now hold—conditioning, learning, and experience.
Childhood conditioning is extremely effective because a child’s mind has no filters. Spongelike, too young to question or fully understand what they are absorbing, children soak up the beliefs of those around them.
Conditioning doesn’t stop with childhood, however. As childhood influences wane, the influences of popular culture wax. We are exposed to a near constant barrage of media that includes popularized science and medicine. Although age brings more filters and a greater ability to question, the unrelenting influence of popular culture deluges us with more information than we can process, subliminally influencing our beliefs.
Instead of being haphazardly influenced by popular culture we can choose the influences we want. Though the influence of popular culture is difficult to avoid—we can learn to embrace the best and leave the rest.
Choosing Our Influences through Introspection
We can develop a habit of introspecting about all our influences. Paramhansa Yogananda urged people to “plunge into introspection about every experience—good books, problems, religion, philosophy, and inner happiness.” Introspection gives us insight into both the positive and negative beliefs we now hold and into how specific influences are strengthening or weakening those beliefs.
Armed with such insight we can choose influences that strengthen the beliefs we want. Especially important among those influences are people. Find and mix with as many people as you can who share the beliefs you want to develop and strengthen.
Deliberate Learning and Study
Deliberate learning can produce stronger beliefs than does passive exposure to popular culture or the influence of the people around us. We can find inspiration to strengthen our belief in the possibility of unlimited health in the traditions of experiential spirituality, in the lives of saints and sages, in stories of near-death experience, in books that draw together science and spirituality, and in the testimony of people who have experienced amazing healings.
It is particularly important, if you are unwell or dealing with a serious disease, to strengthen your belief in your innate soul powers for self-healing.
If a “miracle,” such as permanent remission of cancer, happens once, it is valid and must not be dismissed as a fluke. If one patient can do it, there’s no reason others can’t.—Bernie Siegel, author of Love, Medicine and Miracles
You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that. We think so often that we are helpless, but we’re not. We always have the power of our minds... Claim and consciously use your power.—Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life
No doubt some medicines have healing power, since God gave herbs and minerals the power to affect the body of man, but medicines and doctors have only limited power and often reveal their helplessness in cases of chronic disease. Convince your mind that all human methods of cure are limited in their healing power, and that only God’s all-permeating, all-healing power is unlimited.—Yogananda, How to Achieve Glowing Health and Vitality
Affirmations Go Further
Affirmation takes learning and study yet further. An affirmation is a powerful, concentrated, and deliberate way to awaken and develop specific positive beliefs about health and self-healing. The key to success is to practice until you feel inspired and then believe your affirmation of unlimited health.
My body cells obey my will: They dance with divine vitality! I am well! I am strong! I am a flowing river of boundless power and energy!—Kriyananda, Affirmations for Self Healing
The healing power of Spirit is flowing through all the cells of my body. I am made of the one universal God-substance.—Yogananda, Scientific Healing Affirmations
Father thought Art in me; I am well.—Yogananda, Scientific Healing Affirmations
My outer life is a reflection of my inner thoughts. Filled with the joy of God, I express His joy and harmony in everything I do.—Kriyananda, Affirmations for Self Healing
Direct Experience of the Soul
The core limited belief that we must overcome in order to have unlimited belief in our power of self-healing is the belief that we are purely physical beings. From this core belief come all other limited beliefs about health—especially that the body is inescapably governed by the molecular-machine laws of genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology.
“You have hypnotized yourselves into thinking you are human beings...in reality you are gods.” —Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
The most effective way to overcome the belief that we are physical beings is to have direct experience of our soul—and the most effective way to have direct experience of our soul is meditation.
This new experience bestows new enlightenment which places the experiencer on a new plane of existence. He experiences a sense of universality, a Consciousness of Eternal Life. It is not a mere conviction. He actually feels it.—Swami Sivananda (1887–1963)
Expanding Awareness Beyond the Physical
Don’t expect such a profound experience in meditation right away; but do expect experiences that expand your awareness beyond the physical body. As you learn to sit more and more still, your body will feel less and less physical—lighter, larger, less solid, its boundaries less sharp.
As awareness of the physical body decreases awareness of the subtle energy body will increase. As you breathe you may feel subtle energy flowing up and down in your core—a deeply satisfying expansion of energy in the heart—energy rising into the brain. And more...much more.
Even more than learning and study, direct experience will overcome limited beliefs about who and what we really are—and will leave us with the unshakeable belief that we are far more than a short-lived physical body. Repeated experiences in meditation of our non-physical soul nature lead not only to a strong belief in our health and capacity for healing but also brings true-beyond-any-shadow-of-a-doubt realization that the end of the physical body is not the end of our existence.
This Self is not born, nor does it perish. Self-existent, it continues its existence forever. It is birthless, eternal, changeless, and ever the same.—Krishna speaking to Arjuna, Bhagavad Gita 2:20
By [meditation], one can reach the point of relaxing the heart, and thereby rising above its compulsion to outwardness, experiencing death consciously, and eliminating one’s sense of the mystery of death and the fear of dying [Italics added]. One can learn, indeed, to leave his body voluntarily and blissfully, instead of being thrown out of it forcefully, often as a complete surprise, at death.—Yogananda, How to Achieve Glowing Health and Vitality
We Live On Beyond the Body
Once we believe deeply that we live on beyond the body, that we are eternal, we release many primal fears—fears that negatively affect our health, that block our willingness to live our lives fully. Our understanding of the purpose of the physical body, of who and what we really are, changes fundamentally.
We are so much more than we know.
At death, you forget all the limitations of the physical body and realize how free you are. For the first few seconds there is a sense of fear – fear of the unknown, of something unfamiliar to the consciousness. But after that comes a great realization: the soul feels a joyous sense of relief and freedom. You know that you exist apart from the mortal body.—Yogananda, Understanding Death and Loss
Copyright 2024. All Rights Reserved.
Printed with permission.
Article Source:
BOOK: The Physics of Miraculous Healing
The Physics of Miraculous Healing: How Emotion, Mind, and Spirit Enable Unlimited Self-Healing
by Joseph Selbie.
Our soul powers can be methodically used to develop resilient health and to increase our ability to self-heal from serious, even terminal, disease. In this book you will find many practical ways to awaken and strengthen positive emotion, increase your life force, develop health-creating beliefs, and make a transformative connection to Spirit. Practices and techniques include: meditation, deep relaxation, affirmation, energization, concentration, and more.
The Physics of Miraculous Healing is a companion to Selbie’s Amazon Best-Sellers, The Physics of God and Break Through the Limits of the Brain. These books are bridges of understanding between the modern evidenced-based discoveries of science and the timeless experience-based discoveries of the mystics.
For more info and/or to order this book, click here. Also available as a Kindle edition and as an Audiobook.
About the Author
Joseph Selbie is the author of the paradigm-changing book, The Physics of Miraculous Healing. He is also the author of The Physics of God, a unification of science and religion; Break Through the Limits of the Brain, neuroscientific support for spiritual experience; and The Yugas, a factual look at India’s tradition of cyclical history. He was nominated Trailblazer of the Decade by Om Times Magazine and appears with Elizabeth Rohm in the 2014 docudrama, Finding Happiness.
A dedicated Kriya yoga meditator for over fifty years, he has taught yoga, meditation, and universal experiential spirituality throughout the US and Europe. In 1975 Joseph became a member of Ananda, a spiritual movement inspired by the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, the author of Autobiography of a Yogi.
Visit Joseph Selbie's website at JosephSelbie.com
Article Recap:
This article examines how belief in unlimited health and healing can be deliberately developed. It highlights the role of childhood conditioning, the pervasive influence of popular culture, and the need for introspection to assess our beliefs. It emphasizes choosing supportive influences, engaging in study, and practicing affirmations. The importance of direct spiritual experiences, particularly through meditation, is presented as a key to overcoming limiting beliefs and realizing our true healing potential.
