and somewhat curtly, I thanked her for her time, and said that my belief was not that the tumor would blow up and down and up again, but that I was on a healing journey. I was determined to honor my body, and would give it whatever time it needed to complete the healing process.
She looked dumbfounded. She became very unattractive as she attempted to persuade me that I was in dreamland, and reiterated that my only option was surgery. I looked at her as I left, and felt a strange combination of compassion and disgust—is healing only about the food we eat, and the medicine we take? I realized that that was simply her model of the world, and that it wasn’t her fault—her training was necessarily narrow. Doctors are trained to work on bodies—in the same way that mechanics are trained to work on cars. They go into the healing field ostensibly to help people heal, but somewhere along the way they forget that people aren’t just their bodies. We have bodies, minds, and emotions, but most importantly what we are is soul—something that can’t be touched, tested, or surgically removed.
As I drove home, I was very glad for the wake-up call her lack of understanding had given me. Her arguments had been very seductive, and I had begun to fall into a doctor’s idea of how to heal someone—you fix them by taking out the parts. It took her total lack of interest in the rest of my healing journey to make me realize once again that I must follow my own truth no matter how foolish it appeared from the outside. It was a hard choice, because unlike attacking the tumor from a purely physical level, you couldn’t see, touch, or even “test” the emotional shifts that had taken place inside me; and yet, for me, they were every bit as real as the physical shifts that seemed to follow from them as a direct result.
At that moment I felt very alone. Logically, I knew it wasn’t true, as I had devoted, supportive friends and family, yet somehow I still felt lonely. I realized that there is a way in which everyone must follow their own, unique healing path, and it is an experience that no one else can have for you. Spiritual transformation is an inner journey—it’s the soul’s personal path of learning and letting go, and it’s something that must be experienced on your own.
When I stepped through the door, there was a message on the answering machine from Don, who was in Hawaii preparing for a Tony Robbins two-week seminar called Mastery. He had remembered my appointment with the doctor and was wondering how it had all gone—he sounded enthusiastic and supportive. I really felt I needed to talk to him, to share what was going on, but felt inwardly ashamed—that somehow I’d failed—it hadn’t completely healed.
At the thought of Don and my friends in Hawaii, I felt even more alone. Some of my closest friends were there. I didn’t want anyone to know—I knew they were rooting for me and would be very disappointed. I knew I needed to give it more time.
Then I remembered my first conversation with Tony—“No problem—you’ll get it handled, I’ll see you at Mastery.” I hadn’t made it to Mastery. My failure was so clearly obvious.
Tony’s wife, Becky, had sweetly called me three days earlier, warmly imploring me to come along to Mastery—“You don’t have to work—you could just come and hang out—be there in support of Don.” I’d been touched by her reaching out to me, but quietly answered, “Beck, it means so much to me that you would call, but this is one time I need to give myself completely into my own healing journey. I’ve been there for so many people over the past thirteen years. Right now is just not the time for me to give to others, even if I’m just in the background. I’ve promised myself that for once I’d just support me, and I’d give it my best shot.” These were hard words for me to say, as my whole heart and soul wanted to be there to help, yet I knew I had to keep my promise to myself.
I knew Don wouldn’t be available to talk to until late that night, so I decided to give my dear friend Skip a call, to confess my “failure” to somebody and at least get it off my chest. He’d been one of the eight people I’d shared my healing journey with, and had been there with me from the beginning. He’d held my acupressure points for both sessions as I’d continued my processing, and had really seen me through an intense and powerful transformation. He’d been irrepressibly supportive all along, and I figured he might help me lighten up, at the very least.
Skip answered the phone with his normal enthusiasm. “Hey, Brandon! How’d it go?”
“Well, not as well as I’d hoped. It only went from the size of a basketball to the size of a six-inch cantaloupe.” I related the whole doctor’s visit.
“Hey! Hey! Stop right there, Brandon. Did you say it went from a basketball to a cantaloupe? That’s incredible . . . you’re amazing! What are you worried about? It’s on its way down. Don’t listen to what that doctor told you—just look at the results. You know it’s not going to blow up and blow down—YOU KNOW what created that shift—I was there with you when most of it happened.”
Then, chastisingly, as if speaking with humor to a child, he said, “You know better than this. This isn’t the Brandon I know! LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE. IT’S ON ITS WAY OUT, BRANDON!!! It’s just a matter of time—give it a week or two. At the rate it’s moving, your stomach will be flat in no time! What are you thinking?”
His unbridled enthusiasm, coupled with his absolute certainty that I would heal, and his incredulity at my state were contagious, and made me laugh at myself. Sheepishly, I had to admit he was probably right.
“Well, Skipper, it’s just hard to stay strong when a doctor’s in your face basically telling you you’re full of shit.”
“She’s full of shit!” he said with a warm, “I don’t mean it” kind of laugh. “She doesn’t know the intensity of what you’ve gone through, or the surrender and trust it’s taken for you to really look at those old outmoded dinosaur issues that were lurking inside that tumor. She doesn’t know how free you’ve become. You’re radiant, Brandon. Look at yourself in the mirror. Give me a break!”
His enthusiasm won me over, hands down.
“Dump that doctor, Brandon. She doesn’t know who you are. She doesn’t know what you are capable of. Listen, my wife is going to an incredible doctor here at Cedars Sinai hospital. Why don’t you give them a call and see if you can get an appointment, say in two weeks? Your tumor’s gotta be gone by then. You know Cedars—it’s one of the best in the country. They’ve got this incredible high-tech equipment they’ve been using with Jill (his wife, who was having complications with her pregnancy), and they are really caring. Want me to give them a ring? They are state-of-the-art, Brandon. You should get it checked out by the best. You should put your mind at rest.”
Hesitatingly, I said yes—wondering if the tumor would actually be gone by then.
“I’ll call you right back. I’ll see what I can do.”
Five minutes later he called back, all excited—“Hey, I got you an appointment not this Wednesday, but next. You’re gonna love their office, everyone’s really nice. You might have to wait a couple of hours because they seem to get really booked, but I promise you it’ll be worth it.”
Over the next week and a half I was delighted to see Skip’s words about the tumor going down in size coming true. My stomach grew flatter and flatter as the week went on. When I went to my massage therapist, he kept insisting, “Brandon—I just get the feeling there’s nothing there. I can’t feel it with my hands anymore, no matter how deeply I dig in.”
My colon therapist echoed his sentiments, saying that she intuitively sensed I’d let go of years of emotional
