My breaking has, indeed, led me into an expanding love of being that is clearly God. I have been broken by disease and know fully that there are moments endured from which our lives will never be the same, severe moments beyond which everything is changed. No one asks for these moments. They simply happen the way a merciless wind cracks a tree we never imagined would crack.

I know now, that being human, we are each the crucible, the ever-changing inlet through which the greater Whole in all its forms ebbs and flows. Indeed, every time the Universe, through Nature or God, flows through us, we are rinsed larger, cleansed and charged again. What is medicine, if not the laws of nature applied to cleanse the self? And what is God, if not the laws of Spirit applied to enlarge the self? It implies that to enlarge is cleansing; to grow, healing. In this way, to talk about the art of healing is to investigate the various ways, both natural and spiritual, that the Whole, if taken in, can preserve the part.

Until my cancer diagnosis, I’d never been ill. I was terrified, and nothing was helping me conquer the fear. Initially, I felt a traumatic paralysis, the fast breathing, huddled fear of a wounded animal lying still in the brush, expecting to be struck again. This is worse than outright pain, this is withdrawing from anything that can help. This is the power of fear—to make us recoil from anything larger. While in this state, nothing flows through, and therefore, nothing cleanses or enlarges. The center remains cut off when it needs to be renewed more than ever. My life has taught me that how we first stand after doubling over is crucial to whether we will heal at all.

In time, I was broken of my illusion that fear could be conquered. Instead, I began to watch the winter trees as they let the wind through, always through. Since then, I’ve learned that fear gets its power from not looking, that it’s intensified by isolation, that it’s always more strident when we are self-centered. Now, when I am full of fear, which can’t be avoided, I try, though I don’t always succeed, to break its stridency by breaking my egocentrism. I try to quiet its intensity by admitting my fear to loved ones, and I try to disempower its exaggeration by looking directly into exactly what I fear. I try to know that though I can be fearful, I am more than my fear.