surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, the cancer recurred in his neck, then
his side, and finally his calf. Each time, he underwent a similar course of
treatment.
Naturally, Bill experienced “Why me?” moments. He understood that his
excessive sun exposure was a risk factor, but he knew others who had been
similarly exposed and didn’t develop cancer. He fixated on that unfairness.
After treatment for the same cancer on his left flank, Bill pondered
whether his own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors had contributed to his
condition. In a moment of self-reflection, he realized that for more than 30
years, he had been stuck in resentment, thinking and feeling that he always
had to give up what he wanted for the sake of others.
For example, he had wanted to become a professional musician after high
school. But when an injury left his father unable to work, Bill had to join
his family’s roofing company. He habitually reexperienced his feelings
upon being told he had to give up his aspirations, to the extent that his body
still lived in that past. This also set up a pattern of dreams deferred.
Whenever something didn’t go his way, such as the housing market
collapsing just after he expanded the business, he always found someone or
something to blame.
Bill had so memorized the emotional response pattern of bitterness that it
dominated his personality and became an unconscious program. His state of
being had signaled the same genes for so long that they had created the
disease that now afflicted him.
No longer could Bill allow his environment to control him: the people,
places, and influences in his life had always dictated how he thought, felt,
and behaved. He sensed that to break the bonds with his old self and
reinvent a new one, he would have to leave his familiar environment. So for
two weeks in Baja, Mexico, he retreated from his familiar life.
The first five mornings, Bill contemplated how he thought when he felt
resentment. He became a quantum observer of his thoughts and feelings; he
became conscious of his unconscious mind. Next, he paid attention to his
previously unconscious behaviors and actions. He decided to halt any
thought, behavior, or emotion that was unloving toward himself.
After the first week of this vigilance, Bill felt free, because he had
liberated his body from its emotional addiction to resentment. By inhibiting
the familiar thoughts and feelings that had driven his behaviors, in a sense
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(Stevenselfio)
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