Graduate Into Better Care of Your Health

Graduate Into Better Care of Your Health
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2014-06-05-Graduate6.3.14.S.jpg June is the season of graduation ceremonies and speeches, and I'm no stranger to them, having just watched my high school senior walk the stage this past weekend.

Indiana University student Parker Mantell recently delivered his commencement speech to over 17,000 people, and his inspiring words have since traveled speedily across social media channels.

Mantell shares how, despite a stutter, he landed internships in Washington, serving some of the most high-profile lawmakers in the country. He answered the phones of Congressman Eric Cantor, conducted tours of the U.S. House of Representatives, and made outreach calls on behalf of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

"Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will," said Mantell. "If doubt were to be a disease, its cure would be confidence."

Don't we all deal with doubt on some level? Those thoughts that attempt to hold us back from our life purpose and keep us trapped in the cells of our own making-ones we have the keys to open. They may tell us we're not good enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, healthy enough.

I'm convinced we each have the tools to kick doubt out. Let's consider for a moment that doubt is as much a contributor to disease as the diagnosis of disease. If we could erase doubt, would we be well on our way to erasing the picture of disease?

This may sound like a radical way of treating disease, yet I would suggest that only looking at the physical evidence of illness would be to disregard the mental nature of disease and thereby miss a key element of its cure. Because doubt in a healthy outcome would make just about any potential cure that much more difficult to implement.

At my son's graduation, I quickly took note of a line from his principal's speech: "Just because something can be measured or counted doesn't mean it will ultimately count for anything."

Dr. Jocelyn Lowinger admits she's spent most of her career as a physician defending and utilizing evidence-based medicine -- that which can be measured and counted. But now she wonders "if an over-reliance on evidence has watered down the intuitiveness and people skills that we have used for millennia to provide unconditional empathy, encouragement, hope and other ingredients for healing" ("The problem with evidence-based health is not what you think").

As someone who has seen the benefits of a spiritual system of health care, in which prayer and trust in the Divine promotes the essential ingredients of healing such as hope, encouragement, unconditional love -- it is my firm belief that these and other innate spiritual sensibilities dissolve doubt in the mind of a patient and lead to the reality of the present possibility of health. Since these qualities are always at hand, the antidote to doubt is available for all.

In answer to the question, "Will you explain sickness and show how it is to be healed?" theologian and Christian healer Mary Baker Eddy said in part that disease is "fear made manifest on the body."

Having healed countless cases and taught her students to do the same, Eddy gave clear instruction for how to refute disease: "Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious -- as Life [God] eternally is -- can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 495).

A "clear sense" and "calm trust" in the sustaining power of Life is true confidence. It's a doubt-defier that is worth employing.

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