Health and Prosperity Sore Ankle- pt 3

So here I am; in my dream job and enjoying my ideal romantic relationship. My Universe is all good. My life is better than it has ever been and gets better each month. And I have a sore ankle from gout. I understand there is a mind body connection. Intuitively, it just doesn’t make sense to me to be feeling so good in my life day to day and then hold the perspective that stress is causing my body pain. (See the prior posts on that topic)

There must be another way to understand these physical symptoms that appear even when things are flowing smoothly. There is. Some in Unity call this process “chemicalization”. It means the stored toxins and body memories located in our body begin to be released from our cells as our consciousness becomes more aligned with spiritual truth and less aligned with material goods and worldly matters. The natural and healthy result of transformation on the spiritual path is thus occasions of physical symptoms that we typically would deem undesirable and perhaps even bad.

This idea of chemicalization was so uncomfortable to folks at Unity Village that for decades they deleted this subject from one of their best selling books. There are those who want to present a dogma that prosperity consciousness leads to good health and thus, any experience of bad health is a symptom of unhealthy consciousness. But dogma itself is not the Truth, it is the attachment to a certain idealized concept in spite of the truth.

So let’s look at my gout and my life situation more fully. I sold my home in California at the height of the real estate boom. Its value went up over $100,000 between the time I decided to sell it and the time I could get it on the market. I put the vast majority of proceeds into short term treasury bonds, and so while everyone in the stock market got hammered with the current financial meltdown, my assets held their value. I have all the money I will ever need. I am so well off that I can offer to increase my own tithe to Unity just to make the lives of others I care about easier.

My relationship with Debbie is better than it has ever been and it is growing deeper and more intimate as we work together in co ministry. She is a gem and I love her dearly. After so many years of being single and failing at relationship after relationship I feel so utterly blessed to have her as my sweetheart. Our home life is good, our garden is flourishing, I am eating for optimum health more and more consistently. My relationship with my adult children is likewise better than it has ever been. My son is in college and I am supporting him in many ways to become the young man he always wanted to be. My daughter and her boyfriend plan to take an extended vacation with us soon.

Over the past year we have grown our ministry in a way that is very satisfying to me, in that we have focused on depth of relationship rather than numbers. We are solvent or nearly so each month and are more fully aware of our core values concerning prosperity as we make decisions. We have aligned our services with the intimate connection we crave rather than in a fashion that might appeal to others but is unauthentic to ourselves. Debbie and I are taking vacations together now, trusting that the church will thrive even when we are gone for a Sunday now and then. My job satisfaction is higher than it has ever been- and I have been working for almost 40 years now.

My men’s team had a recent retreat that I helped lead which was exceptional for the gentleness and kindness that we shared. My work in the Unity Association has been immensely fulfilling and has brought me into deep companionship with other ministers in way that I had not imagined a few years ago. The healing here is truly astounding.

So, all of this good keeps flowing into my life and yet I have gout. I think it is more than just chemicalization, I think it has to do with breaking the trajectory that my ego saw for me when it had a vice grip on my life. My ego’s first and foremost job is to keep me safe- safe according to its immature understanding of safety. It is amazingly scary to my ego for me to love my job, to be doing what I love in a way that I love doing it.

To my ego, it feels vulnerable to have a loving relationship and friendships based on authentic connection. As I live more fully each day by building supportive and authentic relationships it brings up the insecurity of rejection. Each supportive friendship takes a little power away from my ego’s grip on my thinking. Each moment of success on the spiritual path diminishes to some small extent the deeply embedded attachment I had to the unconscious thought that I did not deserve a good life. This idea that I am not worthy of success and enjoyment is utterly false and the more I release it, the more chemicalization occurs.

Even writing about my success here feels scary, like a jinx will take it all away if I am not careful. But each day that I claim my good, and live well, then I am breaking that trajectory that held me in the grip of scarcity and fearful living.

Thus, perhaps this gout is a form of retaliation from my old thinking. My unconscious fear-based conditioning is trying to hinder me as I move toward authentic thriving. It is trying to pull me back into victim thinking and away from co creative empowerment. It is trying to slow down my turbo-charged success and make me doubt the truth of who I am. My exponential growth is leading to more and more good flowing to me as I connect more fully with my spiritual center and that undercuts the power of the ego to run my life.

Today, I am more determined than ever to allow my good to flow into my life. I will find the blessing in every situation and circumstance. I will be my Christ Self. I am alive to possibility today and willing to feel all the feelings associated with being truly prosperous.