Many cancer patients have devoted their entire lives to helping and supporting others. Their selfless service can be very a noble quality, depending on the motivation behind it. If they sacrifice and neglect their own well being to avoid facing any shame, guilt or unworthiness within them, they are actually cutting off the very limb they are hanging on. They are 'selflessly' devoted to please others so that, in return, they may be loved and appreciated for their contributions. This, however, serves as an unconscious acknowledgment of not loving oneself. This may lock up unresolved issues, fears, and feelings of unworthiness in the cellular memory of organs and tissues in the body.

"Love your neighbor as yourself" is one of the most basic requirements for curing cancer. This phrase means that we can only love others as much as we are able to love and appreciate ourselves, no less and no more. To be able to truly love someone without cords of attachment and possessiveness, one has to fully accept oneself with all the flaws, mistakes and inadequacies one may have. The degree to which we are able to care about the well-being of our body, mind, and spirit determines the degree to which we are able to care about other people, too. By being critical of ourselves, or disliking the way we look behave, or feel, we close down our heart and feel unworthy and ashamed. To avoid exposing our shadow self (the part of us we do not like) to others out of fear of rejection, we try to win over the love of others by pleasing them. This way, we assume, we can receive the love we are unable to give to ourselves.

However, this approach fails to work in the long term. Your body always follows the commands given by your mind. Your thoughts, emotions, feelings, desires, beliefs, drives, likes, dislikes, etc., serve as the software your cells are programmed with on a daily basis. Through the mind/body connection, your cells have no other choice but to obey the orders they receive via your subconscious or conscious mind. As DNA research has recently proved, you can literally alter your DNA's genetic setting and behavior within a matter of a moment. Your DNA listens to every word you utter to yourself and it feels every emotion you experience. Moreover, it responds to all of them. You program yourself every second of the day, consciously and unconsciously.

If you choose to, you can rewrite the program in any way you want to, provided you are truly self-aware. Once you know who you truly are you cannot help but love yourself. You can no longer judge yourself for making mistakes in life, for not being perfect, for not always being how others want you to be. Seeing yourself in this light, you send a signal of love to your cells. The bonding effect of love unites differences and keeps everything together, including the cells of your body. When love, which should not be confused with neediness or attachment, is no longer a daily experience, the body begins to disintegrate and become sick.

It is the expansion of love that is the main purpose of our existence here on earth. Those who love themselves are also able to love others and vice versa. These two aspects of love always go hand in hand. People who accept themselves fully have no real fear of death; when their time comes to die, they leave peacefully without any regrets or remorse in their hearts.

Whenever we close our hearts to ourselves, we become lonely, and the body begins to become weak and diseased. It is known that widows and people who are socially isolated, or have nobody to share their deepest feelings with, are the most prone to developing cancer.

Your body cells are the most intimate 'neighbors' you can have and they need to feel your love and self-acceptance, to know that they are a part of you and that you care about them. Giving yourself an oil massage, going to sleep on time, eating nutritious foods, etc. are simple, but powerful messages of love that motivate your cells to function in harmony with each other. They are also messages that keep elimination of toxins flawless and efficient. There is nothing unscientific about this. You can go around a number of hospitals and ask all the patients whether they felt good about their life prior to falling ill. The overwhelming response would be a "no." Without being a medical researcher, you would have conducted one of the most important research studies anyone could ever do. You would have stumbled over the most common cause of ill health, which is 'not loving yourself', or, to use a different expression, 'not being happy about how your life turned out to be'.Not being happy or satisfied in life is perhaps the most severe form of emotional stress you could possibly have. It is, in fact, a major risk factor for many diseases, including cancer.

A recently published study suggests that severe emotional stress can triple the risk of breast cancer. One hundred women who had a breast lump were interviewed before they knew that they had breast cancer. One in two who had the disease had suffered a major traumatic life event, such as bereavement, within the previous five years. The effects of emotional stress or unhappiness can severely impair digestion, elimination, and immunity, thus leading to a dangerously high level of toxicity in the body. Just ridding the body of cancer through 'weapons of mass destruction' doesn't remove the unresolved emotional pain behind it.

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This is an excerpt from my book 'TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH AND REJUVENATION', available on http://www.ener-chi.com/book.htm