I'm creating all of the experiences I'm having in my body. This is a really powerful belief I hold, and it might not be something you'd realize about me even after watching all of my videos. But what I can tell you is that this belief, that I am creating all the experiences in my body, means I feel in control of my body. It means I feel very powerful, connected, and grounded in it. And it means that when I have some kind of symptom, I start from the foundation that I created this.
For example, I had a hemorrhoid a couple of months ago, my first hemorrhoid. I didn't even know what it was. I thought, what is this? Oh, this is the hemorrhoid people talk about. This hurts, and this is obnoxious. A lot of us, when we have that experience, our first thought is to fight it, to feel that the body has betrayed us. We feel that the body has somehow created this to hurt us, to harm us. And when we come at it from that thinking, we go looking for solutions that try to tackle the symptom.
But when I had this experience a couple of months ago, I thought instead: why did I create this? What can I learn from it? I went to Louise Hay's book, You Can Heal Your Body. It was also intuitive to me. At the time, I was obsessed with one person in my life who I was ignoring, who I was upset with, who I had a resentment toward that honestly felt like a pain in my ass. And then I manifested a physical pain in my ass. As soon as I figured out what it was, I could see what I'd done. I had focused so much on this person being a pain in the ass in my mind that my body was like, oh, so you'd like a pain in your ass? Here you go.
Taking responsibility instead of fighting the symptom
As soon as I observed this and figured it out, I immediately got motivated. I thought, I'll do whatever it takes to get rid of this hemorrhoid. I read Louise Hay's book and I immediately started asking people for advice. I did not go to a doctor. I asked my massage therapist, and she said her friend had a similar experience and that taking Epsom salt baths helped. I read the affirmations in Louise Hay's book, and part of the cause she listed was something like resentment, with the solution being to let it go, to be at peace, and not in conflict.
So I immediately tried something new physically, Epsom salt baths, which I had never tried before. At the same time, I started talking to people in my life with the intention that I was going to remove this resentment toward this person from my mind and my body. I knew that if I did that, the hemorrhoid was likely to go away and my body would naturally heal it. I also started talking about it openly and asking people for their experiences. My wife said she had gotten hemorrhoids when she was pregnant with the kids and that they went away on their own, perfectly naturally. I said, oh, I didn't know that. I talked to another mom I know, and she said she'd had hemorrhoids since she was pregnant with her first son and that they'd persisted for a year and a half.
Obviously the fear thought came up there: well, I could have this for a long time. I remembered a stand-up comedian writing in her book that she'd had awful hemorrhoids for years. I heard other people say they'd gone to the doctor and gotten them burned off. And I thought the most awesome outcome would be if I did the mental and emotional work and my body healed this rapidly, just like my wife experienced, so that I would be free of the hemorrhoid. And not only that, but I would then have the story to tell of exactly how I did it.
Saying thank you to my body
In those days when I had the hemorrhoid, I started saying thank you. Thank you, body, for showing me what I'm doing in my mind. Thank you, body, for giving me the motivation to work on my mind based on what you've signaled to me. Thank you for this experience. And I said thank you while the symptom was still there. I took full responsibility that I created this. My body did not betray me. My body didn't suddenly do this to me and leave me a victim. My body sent me a signal. It sent me a message and said: hey, your mind is garbaged up with this resentment against this person, and it's obnoxious to everybody in your life, and here's what it looks like to me. Here's a pain in your ass. That's what it looks like to me. I'd like you to get to work on this. And I said, thank you, body.
I felt that I created it. I created the hemorrhoid. As the operator of the body, I created it, and therefore I could uncreate it as well. So I started taking Epsom salt baths. I talked to everybody, and eventually I talked enough. I asked for very clear advice. I talked to people who knew the person very well, like my wife, and I asked what she recommended I do. She said it's simple: all you need to do is talk to them and apologize. If I were you, I would talk to them, say I'm sorry, and hope they accept your apology and move on.
It took me a couple of days to process that, because at first my thought was, screw that. That was my first reaction. I'm not apologizing to this person. They're wrong. But as I kept thinking about it, I thought, I really would like to be free of this hemorrhoid. I would absolutely love to be free of it. In that way, my body had given me a strong incentive to go to work on my mental functioning. If my body doesn't produce that hemorrhoid, I can get away with this resentment for longer and longer. But since my body served up a hemorrhoid, I realized I couldn't afford to keep wasting my time with this resentment, because holding on to it mentally meant keeping the hemorrhoid until I let it go.
The apology and the result
After a couple of days, a massage, and processing everything, I took an Epsom salt bath as suggested. I got out of the bath and immediately sent an apology message to this person via text. Thinking about who this person is, I felt the easiest format for them would be to receive the apology by text, so they didn't have to deal with the awkwardness of talking in person. For some people, like my wife, my kids, my mother, or my brother, I would have apologized in person or on the phone rather than by text. But for this specific person, a text message seemed to be the best way to handle it.
So I sent this person a text, about four or five sentences, no long rambling message. Clear and to the point: I'm sorry for this. I wish I would have done this instead. Here's what I'd like to do in the future. And I appreciate your patience and understanding. I addressed the hurtful behavior on my part, said what would have been better to do, and described what I plan to do next time, then trusted that they'd be okay with it. They replied the next day saying, it's all good, let's move on. And it was over.
And guess what? As soon as I got out of that bath and sent that text message, I swear the hemorrhoid went down about 50% almost immediately. It was amazing. Then over the next few weeks it was gone. It took a month or less. Gone. And I felt cleaned out inside mentally as well, which freed me up to focus better on my work, to take better inventory of what I'm doing online, and to stop sabotaging my work. So now I think, thank you. That hemorrhoid was very productive, very helpful. It was a good reminder that I create the experiences in my body. I create the symptoms in my body, not something else. And I don't need to fight the symptoms. I need to look for the true cause.
My experience, not medical advice
Now, I'm not a medical doctor. This is my experience, and these are my beliefs. There are books from medical doctors, like Mind Over Medicine, that explore these ideas in much more detail and with research, and I've read them. I'd suggest reading them too, because the authors are doctors and they've written far more about how this works than I can here. I'm really grateful. My ass feels great right now. And I hope that if you've got a pain in the ass in your own life, this might help you release it.
I'm not saying you need to let people walk all over you. I'm saying I addressed my own behavior. The other person did not apologize to me at all for their behavior. But as long as I'm good with my own behavior, I don't have to resent people for theirs. As long as I adjust my behavior based on how other people are behaving, I can understand their behavior, adjust mine, and decide how much I want to be around them and what I want to do with them accordingly. But if I'm resentful and angry, it's hard to make decisions out of love. Sometimes the decision to make out of love is, I'm not going to hang out with you anymore. Maybe it's best if we aren't around each other that often.
I'm really grateful to have this to share. I'm grateful for all the experiences I've had with my body, and I hope you can be grateful for yours too. If you'd like to follow more of these reflections on how I'm living and what I'm learning, you can explore my Life playlist. You never know what might be in there for you.