The Journey

A Practical Guide to Healing Your Life and Setting Yourself Free

By Internationally Bestselling Author

Brandon Bays

Dedication

In gratitude to my mother

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

A Letter from Brandon

Introduction to The Journey

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29 Your Journey Begins

Contact Details

Seminars: Information and Resources

The Journey Accredited® Practitioner Program

Stop the Food Fight

General Overview of the New Process Work

Instructions for the Effortless Emotional Journey

Detailed Instructions for the Emotional Journey

Effortless Emotional Journey Pre-Frame

The Effortless Emotional Journey Process

Physical Journey Instructions

Staircase into Source

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

Praise for The Journey

Also by Brandon Bays

Copyright

About the Publisher

In gratitude to the healing grace pervading all of life.

May we all experience the magnificence of our own souls.

A Letter from Brandon

Beloved Reader,

In creating this new, revised, updated edition of The Journey book, it was my deepest prayer that you get the latest up-to-the-minute teaching and process work. It has been nineteen years since I healed from a basketball-sized tumor. This profoundly transformative and liberating healing work was originally born from that humbly life-changing experience.

Of course, over the years as I worked with tens of thousands of people around the world, I have seen what works and have also seen what doesn’t work. So the work has quite naturally, quite organically, evolved, deepened and expanded. Over time, new work birthed itself. It has not only become more user-friendly and refined, it has become more liberating, more freeing.

The Journey Method™ was not derived from some theory or conceptualized formula, but rather was born from people’s direct living experience of healing their lives: physically, emotionally, spiritually. And my wish for you in reading this book, dear reader, is that not only are you inspired by the stories contained within its pages, but also that you are catalyzed to begin your own healing Journey into the freedom and wholeness within.

It is my prayer that you come “home” to the love and peace that is your own essence, your own soul. And that you not only use this grace-inspired process work to heal your own life, but that you give the work away to your loved ones to begin liberating their lives, helping them to discover and open into their divine potential.

Since the book was first written and became a bestseller, I have been awed by how Journeywork seemed to “catch fire” wherever it traveled around the world. In the last two years, The Journey Intensives—our beginning workshops—will have been offered in thirty-five countries, and this book is now translated into twenty-three languages—and that number is still growing.

Wherever I travel globally (and most years I am on tour usually around forty-four weeks a year), I experience that, no matter which country I am in, there is such a deep longing to open into, to “awaken” to, the divine potential, the greatness that exists within all of us. There is in all of us a genuine thirst to heal our lives. And people want tools, methods and process work that will liberate them, free up their lives. They long to bring healing and wholeness into their everyday world. And they want results. Lasting results.

There is a huge wave of awakening and healing sweeping our planet right now, and I think all of us are feeling a “pull” to respond to a global imperative that we be a part of the change, the healing that our world so sorely needs during these tumultuous times. And we seek practical work, work that is real, down to earth, that gets measurable results. Work that helps clear our blocks, silent saboteurs and our limitations. Work that gets right under our skin to the root cause of our emotional and physical issues and clears them. Work that opens us into our essential greatness, into the love, the freedom, that is our own essence. We all long to have a direct experience of our own authentic greatness. We want to liberate our lives and experience the natural joy in the core of our being.

Ultimately we want to take the lampshade off our own lights and discover our own truth, find our own answers. We want to live a guided, grace-filled authentic life, lived from the love that is our essence.

And this book is designed to give you those tools, those methods, the life-changing process work needed to experience that healing.

Since this work was first published, Journey Outreach, our international humanitarian organization, was born, and for me it is a source of daily inspiration, gratitude, indeed, awe to see this healing work transform the lives of people who ordinarily could never afford to come to a seminar, let alone buy this book.

We have been graced by being invited into some of the most heartbreakingly challenged communities, and daily I marvel at the human heart’s capacity to heal, even in such adverse, seemingly insurmountable conditions. Many indigenous people around the world have welcomed us into their tribal communities, villages, ghettos, reservations and townships to help clear the results of violence and abuse, and the addictions that have resulted from the intolerable life circumstance of oppression, separation, disenfranchisement.

We have worked in the desert reservation in Ceduna, Australia, with the Aboriginal community there, and with the elders from the Maori community in New Zealand. We have fostered over one hundred projects in the African continent—in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia—and in North America we work closely with the First Nation’s People in Saskatoon, Canada. In India, our work is with orphans and the “train children” who have been abandoned by parents who could no longer afford to feed them, and we have projects all over the world with schoolchildren in their schools. We work with “lifers” incarcerated in prisons, and with medical teams working in the most intolerable, impoverished conditions.

If people in these most heartbreaking of circumstances can genuinely heal their lives and find wholeness and peace, then we certainly can. These individuals are a true testament to the work, a vision of possibility to us all, and they offer to us a compelling invitation to begin our own healing journeys.

One project that is particularly dear to my heart is a project called the Phelophepa Train Project in South Africa. Journey Outreach joined with other international charities to create a “Health Train” complete with an operating theater, a team of medical doctors, psychiatrists and Journey Practitioners. When the train pulls into a village, the villagers can board the train and receive the medical attention they need—even surgery. If they have some kind of mental challenge, they can see the psychiatrist on board, and if there is some kind of emotional block or shutdown in their lives, they can see a Journey Practitioner.

So for instance, let’s say a child has been bullied in the schoolyard. Well, no one gave that child a manual with instructions for how to deal with that kind of trauma. So naturally the child tries to cope by shutting down emotionally and withdrawing. Then when he gets into the classroom and the teacher says, “Turn to page 356 in your textbooks,” the child can barely read what’s in front of him. He can’t focus. He is too shutdown. He ends up being classed as dysfunctional at school.

With The Journey Process, the practitioner helps you get to the root cause of what put that shutdown in place, and you are gently guided to release the trauma, to come to an understanding of what took place and ultimately, to forgive so that the body and the being can naturally heal. The Journey Method helps you open up to your own innate potential so the natural intelligence can shine, once the old “cell memories” shutdowns and limitations have been cleared.

In essence, these kids are given the opportunity to take the lampshade off their lights.

So at the behest of the South African Ministry for Education (and we now work with several ministries worldwide) once the train has pulled out of the village, then a team of Journey Practitioners is invited into the schools to train the teachers in The Journey Method, so that the kids can undergo regular Journeywork. After a year’s worth of case studies, they found that children who received weekly Journey Processes averaged 91 percent to 93 percent pass rates on their exams, while those who did no Journeywork averaged only 67 percent. (Check out our website www.thejourney.com to view quite a heartrending video of this project.)

What recently has been blowing me away, as it is a sign of hope in these most challenging of times, is that many businesses and governmental ministries are actually trying to bring consciousness into the workplace—to liberate and empower their employees by using the powerful work from our Visionary Leadership Program (Conscious Company, with its Visionary Leadership Program, is now a sister company to Journey Seminars). Kevin Billett, my partner and CEO of both The Journey Seminars and Conscious Company, is currently working with the Ministry of Justice Department in Canada. And I have worked with a number of education ministries around the world, and have been moved by my recent work within the Education Department in Israel, where the ministers themselves have undergone the work. In Holland, if you are an employee of any governmental ministry and have “work-related stress,” then the government will refer you to and sponsor you to undergo The Journey Method at a government-approved clinic, to get to the bottom of and clear whatever is causing it.

So we are living in very exciting times indeed!

And of course, over the years the work itself has developed and expanded way beyond what I could initially have envisioned. We now offer the Journey Practitioner Program on four continents, so that everyday people from all walks of life can bring this powerful, life-changing work into their lives, into their family’s lives and into their communities. And as the work evolved many additional courses have become available to address and heal just about any aspect of your life. So there are many ways you can use this work to liberate your life and go on your own unique healing journey.

There are so many more projects and stories I wish I could share with you here. Unfortunately, there’s just not the space, and I know you are keen to get into the book. But what moves me the most, above all, is the human heart’s immense capacity to heal. Your body’s extraordinary healing potential can heal almost impossible seeming hurts, pains, even the most deeply held traumas, and each of us can find our way home to the wholeness, the joy that is our own essence. (If you want to be truly inspired by some of the stories, get the companion book to this one, Living The Journey, and it will break your heart open. It is filled with life-transforming stories.)

So, beloved reader, I pray this book will not only heal your life, but that it will also propel you on your own extraordinary healing journey. I hope it will open the door to your deepest self and that you will respond to your heart’s calling and come home to the magnificence that you are. And I pray I’ll get to meet you personally along the way, at one of the seminars somewhere in the world (check the back of the book: in addition to the new process work, we have information about all our seminars, website, contact details and products to give you continued support in your healing journey), and that together we will open into this infinite presence of love.

Until then, all love and blessings.

Namaste,

Brandon

Introduction to The Journey

This is a book about freedom—freedom to live your life as you’ve always dreamt it could be.

Deep inside all of us a huge potential beckons, waiting to open us to the joy, genius, freedom and love within. This presence is calling you home right now, longing to set you free. Yet all of us have issues we have felt trapped or limited by. We hear the whispering of our own soul calling to us, but feel unable to access that greatness. Instead, we feel covered or blocked in some way, limited by our issues—anger, fear, depression, grief, hurt, anxiety. It may be as simple as feeling there must be something more to life, or as complex as feeling a complete failure. It may be as debilitating as an addiction or as life threatening as a serious illness.

No matter how deep the issue is and no matter how much you have struggled with it, the possibility exists for you to become absolutely free, whole, and healed. You are capable of getting to the root cause of these issues, resolving them, letting them go completely and setting yourself free to live your life at your highest potential, as a full expression of your true self.

Through the humbling and profoundly transformative experience of naturally healing from a tumor in only six and a half weeks, I uncovered a boundless joy and freedom that have been my daily experience ever since. This is the most priceless gift of my life. Since that remarkable journey nineteen years ago, it has been extraordinarily moving and inspiring to watch Journeywork catch fire in every country in which it is offered. Across the globe, tens of thousands of people from all walks of life use The Journey Method to discover true freedom in their lives. They’re discovering their own answers and uncovering their own deepest truth. They are cleaning out past emotional blocks and physical challenges that have held them back. And they are finally healing on all levels of their being. Ordinary people are getting extraordinary results. It seems that no matter what your background is, how old you are, what your culture or upbringing has been, everyone knows there is a huge untapped potential, a boundless presence, inside, and we all secretly long to experience it. This presence is awake while you’re asleep at night, making your heart beat, cells replicate and hair grow. Part of the extraordinary gift of my own healing journey was to discover and pioneer a simple yet powerful step-by-step method to get direct access to this infinite wisdom—a wisdom that can reveal to you old emotional patterns and memories stored in your cells, and a healing energy that is capable of resolving and clearing those old issues completely, so the body and the being can go about the process of healing naturally.

Today I travel all over the world with Journeywork, giving workshops and advanced programs. I’m always delighted that it attracts people from all the helping professions: medical, traditional, complimentary and spiritual. I give talks and seminars at hospitals, hospices, abuse centers, homeopathic colleges, healing centers, spiritual organizations, churches, and to cancer support and addiction rehabilitation groups, schools, universities, government ministries and of course to people from all walks of life. Everywhere I go, people successfully incorporate Journeywork into their professional programs with ease and grace. I believe we all recognize that there are some issues that simply require truly in-depth, roll-up-your-sleeves-type healing work. We know it’s important to address an issue at the deepest level to finally clear it out and resolve it completely. Together we understand that The Journey Method is a way of bringing about profound healing, wholeness and a deep sense of well-being—no matter what our healing backgrounds. One of the programs I give is a worldwide practitioners’ accreditation program, which has attracted medical doctors, alternative therapists, counselors of all types, psychiatrists, priests, nuns, ministers, social workers, schoolteachers, college professors and, most of all, ordinary people from all walks of life.

In South Africa, there are doctors taking this healing and forgiveness-based work into communities where they can’t afford medical treatments, and we are helping train their staff. Police trauma units are using this work with victims of violent crime. I’ve trained abuse counselors in Soweto to use the work in their community. In the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia, priests are taking the work back to their flocks. Schoolteachers are getting extraordinary results with their youngsters, helping develop the most balanced, confident, high-achieving classes in their schools. In Australia, where this book was a number-one bestseller in its field, several medical doctors and complementary healing therapists keep the book in their waiting rooms for their patients’ reference, recognizing that some illnesses require more than just a pill.

Addiction rehabilitation groups are using the work to clear out the intense self-loathing connected with drug abuse, and nurses in cancer treatment facilities are using it alongside the chemotherapy treatments. A swami has taken the work back to his ashram to help people deepen in their experience of the Infinite, and nuns are using it to experience the deep peace within. Rabbis in synagogues in Israel are helping their people free themselves from long-standing emotional issues, and some grief counselors who help people on their deathbeds are using Journeywork to open their patients into the infinite peace inside to ease their passing. Journeywork is clearly cross-cultural and appeals to people from all religions, creeds, all ages and walks of life.

What moves me most are the hundreds of phone calls, letters and emails we get from people who haven’t had a chance to take the workshops—people who are courageously using the processes explained in this book to undergo their own healing journeys. We hear from people who have successfully and completely cleared long-standing debilitating emotional issues like chronic depression, overwhelming grief, intense low self-esteem, jealousy, abuse and betrayal. We are always inspired when people share how they’ve become free from physical challenges including heart disease, breast cancer, chronic fatigue, debilitating arthritis, Crohn’s disease, skin diseases—the list goes on. Every day in our office we receive messages of healing from all over the globe. And the message is always the same: “I was able to tap into my own infinite intelligence, uncover my own blocks, free them and set myself free—just by using the processes in this book.”

It has been the greatest gift of my life that grace revealed the means to let go of the past and discover the beauty, love and peace that is inside all of us. And it is my deepest prayer that everyone, not just some of us, awakens to this extraordinary presence of greatness inside and that we all begin living our life as a full expression of the love, the potential within.

This book is written as an expression of the deep gratitude that I feel for the powerful healing process I underwent, with the prayer that it will be a living tool that will inspire you to embark on your own journey.

May you discover the boundless joy at the core of your being. This is your invitation to freedom, your road map to the soul. Are you ready to soar?

“Come to the edge,” he said.

“We can’t, Master, we’re scared.”

“Come to the edge,” he said.

“We can’t, Master, we’re scared.”

“Come to the edge,” he said.

They came. He pushed them . . . they flew.

Freedom is our destiny. Yet we fear taking the very step that will carry us into the greatness that is our own true nature.

Foreword

I once heard a story that each of us comes into this life as a pristine, pure, flawless diamond. And through the trials of growing up and the course of life’s pains, our innate brilliance becomes hidden by a load of rubbish—lies, judgments and limitations we buy into.

Then, when we become adults, we cover over the whole mess with a coat of bright, shiny nail polish. We present this artificial veneer to the world and wonder why no one seems to think it’s that extraordinary. Over time, we may even come to believe that this protective shell is who we really are, and we shape our whole personal identity around it.

But if we are very lucky, life presents us with a gift—a “wake-up call.” Something takes place when for a moment we crack through the hardened surface, look past the layers of all the lies and shutdowns. We penetrate the layers of muck, and we catch a glimpse of the radiant brilliance shining from deep within.

Then, if we are very, very lucky, we spend the rest of our lives journeying homeward into this exquisite beauty and freedom. We discover that we have always been, and will always be, this pristine, flawless diamond—completely whole and free.

This is the story of the journey home, and the soul’s incessant call for us to recognize the greatness inside ourselves. It is your wake-up call, your invitation to finally come home to who you really are.

You are that which you are seeking.

Chapter 1

I woke up that morning in the summer of 1992 and realized I finally had to face whatever it was that had made my tummy grow so large over the last few months. I just couldn’t stay in denial any longer. Some part of me knew there was something seriously wrong inside, and that I was finally going to have to face the doctors and get it checked out.

I didn’t want to believe that anything could possibly be “wrong” with me. It seemed I had been doing everything right! I’d been extremely health conscious, proactively conscientious for over twelve years. I ate vibrant, nourishing, vegetarian food, drank only pure, clean, filtered water and rebounded on a mini-trampoline every day. I lived in a little cottage on the beach in Malibu, California, and breathed fresh sea air. More important, because of all the personal growth work I’d done over the years, I no longer needed to direct my thoughts along positive lines; that was already happening naturally. I was deeply fulfilled in my marriage, loved my kids, and felt enlivened by and extremely grateful for my work—traveling the world giving seminars, inspiring others to create vibrant health. My life was everything I had ever longed for.

I’d spent a lifetime attending workshops and seminars, learning everything I could about healing the body and the spirit. It seemed my entire life was about living the principles of health and well-being—I definitely “walked my talk.” Yet here I was faced with a tummy so large that I looked pregnant, though I knew I wasn’t. How could this be when I was doing everything right?

Embarrassed and ashamed, I couldn’t admit my fears to even my closest friends. Here I was, “an expert,” teaching others how to take charge of their health, yet I couldn’t even zip up my loosest-fitting slacks.

For over fifteen years I had been in the natural healing and alternative health field, and now, faced with a serious health issue, I felt lost at the prospect of going to a “regular” medical doctor. Though I knew I urgently needed a proper medical diagnosis, I had no idea of where to start or whom to call.

Not having the guts to call a friend, and with nowhere else to turn, I decided to check out the local book shop. I scanned the shelves and found a book written by a surgeon who specialized in women’s health issues; one who was known for not taking out all your organs as the first option. I figured she might be an intelligent place to start, and when I called the number at the back of the book I was surprised and thrilled to get an appointment in only six weeks’ time.

During that time, however, it seemed as if my tummy just “blew up” in size, and, oddly, my period began long before it was due. The night before my appointment, I plucked up the courage to tell one of my best girlfriends, Catherine, what was going on, and asked her if she would accompany me on my visit.

When we arrived at the doctor’s office, I felt sick at the thought of what might be diagnosed. As Catherine and I sat chatting away, waiting to go in for my examination, I broke out in a cold sweat as fear washed through me in waves. After an hour and a half, the nurse finally came and called us in. The forty-five-minute examination was painstakingly thorough and seemed to drag on endlessly. The doctor said virtually nothing as I waited to finally hear what I feared most.

When she finished she quietly turned to me and looked me straight in the eyes. In a kind but unemotional voice she said, “Brandon, you are equivalent to five months pregnant with a tumor the size of a basketball.”

It seemed as if everything started reeling inwardly as I tried desperately to somehow grasp what she had said. I made an awkward attempt at being lighthearted, saying, “Oh come on, Doc, aren’t we exaggerating a bit here—a basketball—isn’t that a bit over the top? A basketball is this big!” (indicating with my hands the size of a basketball), smiling incredulously and immediately feeling foolish.

Not warming to my attempted humor, she became firm and almost cutting, answering, “Would you rather I called it a beach ball? It’s this big (indicating a beach ball). And not only that, it’s crushing the rest of your organs. Haven’t you noticed you’ve been out of breath lately?”

I nodded and mumbled feebly that I figured it was due to the bloating and weight gain. She said, “It’s because this tumor, this ‘pelvic mass,’ has grown from your pubic area all the way up to your rib cage (touching my body—showing me exactly how much space it occupied) and is pressing against your diaphragm, making it difficult for you to breathe. It’s grown so large you need to go into the hospital today to have further tests done so it can be surgically removed.”

I felt as if someone had knocked the air out of me. I stupidly made a few more feeble attempts at lightening things up before I found the nerve to ask if I could speak to her in her private office.

As we walked down the hall, Catherine was chattering away, firing questions at the doctor. I presumed she was trying to buy me time to pull myself together and get my wits about me. We sat down together, and I asked the doctor what exactly it all meant and what my options were. It seemed the more she talked, the more dire she made things sound. Surgery was my “only option”—and immediate surgery at that.

My heart started to pound as the pressure began to build inside. I felt like a trapped animal. I finally had to come out with it: “I can’t let you do that, Doc—I’m in the mind-body healing field. I’ve got to be given the chance to walk my talk, to try to heal it my own way . . . How much time can you give me?”

She became even more intense and replied that this was not something to take lightly. “You don’t understand, Brandon,” she said. “It’s not just the size of your tumor. My immediate concern is that I could lose you within a few days because of the amount of blood loss you’re experiencing. This is not your period. You are bleeding internally.”

I began scrambling, negotiating from any angle I could think of. Everything the doctor was saying I was considering intelligently and logically, and I didn’t want to do anything to risk my life, but I felt a strong pull—somehow I just had to buy myself some more time. I had to have the chance to undergo my own healing process, to give it my best shot.

I asked, “What if I could stop the bleeding through medical hypnosis or homeopathics or something? Then how much time could you give me?” She shook her head in what appeared to be pure exasperation, and dropped into a kind but resolutely firm tone that seemed softly patronizing. She said, “Brandon, you seem like a very sincere person, and I even believe in alternative natural medicine when the diagnosis calls for it, but your pelvic mass is just too big to even consider it.”

Indicating the shelves and shelves of books lining her walls as if they were conclusive evidence, she continued, “There is not one case history in all these books of a woman who has healed naturally from a pelvic mass the size of yours. So even though you may have the best intent in the world, I can’t in good conscience let you out of here in the condition you’re in. As a doctor I’m in the business of saving lives, and you need to check into the hospital this afternoon.”

“What if you had to give me time; how much time could you give me?” I pleaded. And so the negotiation continued, until finally, after another thirty minutes, we reached an agreement that if I could somehow get the bleeding to stop over the next couple of days, I would have one month to do what I knew how to do—to give it my best shot. If the symptoms worsened, I would call her immediately, and if after one month the pelvic mass was not completely gone, I would come back and let the surgeons do what they knew how to do—remove it surgically.

As I left her office, I looked back into her concerned eyes, and at that moment I saw that she really cared. Yet I could also see that there was no doubt in her mind that I would fail at healing myself. Quietly, with a knowing tone in her voice, she said, “I’ll see you in one month’s time,” absolutely certain that surgery was my destiny.

My heart still pounding, I stepped out into the Los Angeles sunshine and felt that I had been let out of prison. Though I’d never been very fond of L.A., that afternoon somehow it seemed the most beautiful place on earth. The trees seemed to scintillate with color, the air was intensely fragrant, and I felt incredibly lucky just to be alive. My senses were so aware—so keen, so sharp. Life felt so very, very precious.

At that moment something radical happened. It seemed as if time stopped altogether. In that moment, all fear subsided into a deep calm, and a quiet but certain “knowing” arose from within—a knowing that I had been given a big wake-up call and that, in fact, this tumor was a gift, that it had something important to teach me, and that somehow I would be guided to heal myself.

It wasn’t even a question of if I would heal, but how.

Though I didn’t know what my healing journey would be, somehow I realized that the same part of me that had been responsible for creating the tumor would also be responsible for un-creating it. And in this recognition I felt a childlike innocence and trust that somehow I would be guided to discover what it was this pelvic mass had to teach me.

And so my healing journey began.

Chapter 2

As I stood in the L.A. sunshine for that brief moment when it seemed as if time stood still, I felt that the whole of my life had been lived to bring me to this very point. Snatches of memories of the various spiritual and mind-body healing teachings I’d experienced through years of study flowed through my mind.

I felt a welling up of gratitude for all I’d learned, for all the teachers I’d learned from, and for all the case histories I’d studied of people who had been diagnosed with illnesses more serious than mine, people who had, with great courage, been successful in healing themselves. Not only had I read, studied, and learned of hundreds of these cases, but also over many years I had been privileged to therapeutically help others as they successfully underwent their healing journeys. I realized that their experiences had been a real-life example for me, and their courage had kindled my own. I knew that if there was just one person who had been successful in healing at a physical-cellular level, then it meant that every human body was capable of cellular healing. So I knew without doubt it was possible; I just didn’t know what my healing journey would be.

I turned around, realizing that I had been immersed in my thoughts for some time, and that my dear friend Catherine was still standing next to me. I gave her a look of incredulity, and said, “Well, at least I’ve got a month’s time. Let’s go get some juice. I’m feeling a little shaky—I need to pull myself together.”

From the Good Earth health food restaurant I called my husband, Don, who was out of town, giving seminars as Head Trainer with Anthony Robbins. I tried not to let my voice sound overly concerned as I relayed the news—“Remember that appointment I had with the surgeon to check out why my stomach was getting so fat?”

“Oh, yeah, how did it go?”

“Well, I’ve been diagnosed with a tumor the size of a basketball, and I’ve been given one month to sort it out.”

There was a long silence over the phone—Don was speechless.

Then, “Shit, one month?”

Though an articulate, erudite Ph.D., he seemed utterly at a loss for words. Mumbling something unintelligible he handed the phone over to Tony, who was also my boss. I hadn’t expected that. I felt very exposed and on the spot, but tried to sound chirpy and confident as I gave Tony the news. Stumbling, I said, “Hey, Tone, I don’t know if you’d noticed my stomach has grown kind of fat in recent months.” (I thought I’d been successful in covering it up in long, flowing, romantic dresses.)

“Yeah, Brandon, as a matter of fact I had noticed . . .”

Embarrassment washed through me, and I suddenly felt at a loss for words. After a long, awkward pause, all my words came rushing at once—“Well . . . I’ve been diagnosed with a tumor the size of a basketball, and I’ve been given just one month to sort it out . . .”

Another long pause seemed to hang in the air, as I waited in anticipation for what I feared would be a humiliating response. But, unexpectedly, he replied in a breezy, encouraging tone, “Not a problem, Brandon, you’ll get it handled—I’ll see you at Mastery” (a seminar taking place in Hawaii in only one month’s time).

Tony passed the phone back to Don, and I gave him a condensed version of all the medical details, assuring him I’d get the blood loss problem handled immediately, and I got off the phone.

I stood by the phone box mildly stunned, mused over the conversation with Tony, and thought about his response. “Not a problem, Brandon, you’ll get it handled.” I realized the absolute confidence he had in me, and also the certainty he felt about how quickly healing can take place in the body—cellularly. I thought, “He’s right, it can and does happen that quickly, and I need to make sure I only tell people who have this knowledge and certainty. I can’t afford to invite the negativity of well-meaning people who project their own doubts, fears, and ill-judged sympathy onto me. I’ve only got one month. It’s precious time.”

At that moment I made a silent promise to myself that I would tell only those people whom I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt would wholeheartedly support me in a positive way—who were certain that I could and would heal.

I ended up telling only eight people.

After lunch, I immediately went to our local homeopathic pharmacy and spoke to the pharmacist about my condition. He suggested a few herbal and homeopathic remedies, including one to help stop the bleeding, and cautioned me to stop all caffeine intake, as there are statistics that indicate that caffeine can increase tumor size dramatically.

I then went home and did a simple neuro-linguistic mind-body healing process on myself to stop the bleeding. A day and a half later I was surprised and relieved to discover that, except for occasional spotting, the bleeding had stopped.

I then called the doctor. Upon hearing the news, she sounded skeptical but somewhat open, making sure she cautioned me before ending the conversation with “. . . if any of your symptoms worsen at all, call me immediately.”

It wasn’t until after I put down the phone that I realized I’d actually succeeded in safely buying myself an entire month. I relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief. Then it began to dawn on me that now my real work lay ahead.

Chapter 3

In one way I felt an almost childlike curiosity and an openness as to what my journey might bring. And yet I was all too aware that I had been given an urgent wake-up call, and that one month was a very short period of time. I could not afford to squander even one precious moment of it. Though I didn’t know where to begin, I felt this constant, insistent inner knowing that somehow I would be guided. So, all I could do was TRUST.

I made a simple promise to myself that I would surrender completely into whatever I was guided to do, and TRUST in wherever that would lead me. I would give it my best shot, no matter what the results. I had no doubt that part of my journey would involve uncovering and discovering what it was the tumor had to teach me. I knew I would need to find out what past unresolved emotional memories and patterns were residing in the cells, learn whatever lessons were there, and finally resolve and release them.

I had the belief, after years of work in the mind-body healing field, that everything happens for a reason and a purpose. Once you learn what the disease or physical block has to teach you and you finally let go of the emotional issues stored in the cells, then, and only then, can real healing begin on all levels—emotional, spiritual, and physical. Only then does the body go about the process of healing itself naturally. I knew my journey would have to include letting go of whatever emotional issues were stored inside the tumor. I just didn’t know as yet what those issues were.

I also knew I needed to support my body physically in a very practical way if it was to start dumping a huge amount of degenerative and toxic cells! So, the first thing I decided to do was to support my body with a vibrant and clean diet, using well-known natural hygiene therapies I had learned over the years.

I already ate extremely healthful foods, but now I decided to eat in an optimal way, to create the highest levels of energy. I boosted my vegetarian diet from 65 to 70 percent fresh and raw fruits and vegetables to 100 percent completely live food, including lots of freshly squeezed juices. I added food enzymes and increased my mineral intake significantly, and took herbs that I knew would help with the cleansing process. Additionally, I decided to keep my lymphatic system flowing with massage, and my colon cleansed with colonic irrigation, so that when the emotional letting-go was complete, my body would be in top condition to do the physical letting-go. But these were just practical physical supports that were easy to do. I knew my real work lay in discovering what was emotionally stored inside that tumor.

Don was in Canada, unable to leave the seminars he was giving. So I decided that day that, given the importance of what was taking place, I should be by his side and that we should take some time out to have a short vacation together, slow things down a bit. Then perhaps the inner guidance might reveal the next step. So I booked a flight to join him in Quebec.

I instinctively knew that my healing journey lay in becoming still, being open, and TRUSTING, TRUSTING, TRUSTING, allowing the next steps to be revealed to me. I somehow understood intuitively that I, the personality of Brandon, was not in charge, but the infinite intelligence inside would be taking the driver’s seat. I knew that the part of me responsible for making my hair grow and my heart beat would be doing the work—and that it would take great courage to surrender and relax into the stillness inside, so that the inner guidance could reveal the next step.

So, a little holiday seemed like the best next step.

Chapter 4

As I sat on the plane to Quebec, I realized I wouldn’t be enjoying all the glorious French food there—I’d be dining on crunchy salads and carrot juices and fresh fruit and colloidal minerals. A part of me grew restless and stubborn at the thought; yet I reminded myself I had only a month, and it was the least I could do to support myself.

As Don and I leisurely strolled the quiet, picturesque streets of Quebec, I felt a heightened awareness—my senses seemed so alive and acute. The trees appeared somehow more vibrant, and the smells from the street cafés so varied and full. The cobblestones were rounded from years of people and carriages and cars, and the clouds seemed to stand out vividly against the crisp blue sky. I felt so blessed just to be able to look and smell and feel—even the biting wind seemed somehow rare. It was almost as if my soul itself was tasting life as it really is.

A hush fell over me. Once again time seemed to stop. I found myself resting in a sharp stillness that was somehow both utterly unmoving and scintillatingly alive. The awareness that I was being “guided” arose strongly from within. Outwardly I must have appeared pensive and quiet, but inwardly I was near tears with gratitude for this knowing revealing itself so powerfully.

I looked back at Don; I didn’t know how long I had been standing there, but I noticed he seemed unusually quiet. When I probed deeper, Don admitted that he didn’t want to share his feelings with me as he knew it was essential for me to be with people who would support me positively with the certainty that I would heal, yet he had to admit that he was scared.

“It just seems so big . . .”

Long pause . . .

Quietly I answered, “It is big.”

I didn’t know what else to say. He’d stated the obvious, but somehow the obvious seemed at once incomprehensible and yet so stupidly apparent.

Another long pause . . .

Then I said, “I sometimes get scared, too. And I have to remind myself to be open and trust at those times. No use fighting it. I wish I could somehow explain to you this quiet certainty that keeps coming up from inside, but somehow no matter how worried my mind and personality seem to get at times, something deeper—from within—seems to know different. And this knowing is what is carrying me through this extraordinary journey. So, let’s just enjoy our time here, it’s such a romantic city.” We slipped into a café, and I encouraged him to enjoy the lovely French cuisine, even though I was only eating salad. Reluctantly, he agreed.

Day by day the peace deepened, and after three or four days in Quebec I knew it was time to move on. To what, I still didn’t know, but something inside seemed to be urging me onward.

Chapter 5

From Quebec I decided to give our friends Mark and Elaine Thomas a ring. They were living in a spiritually based community in upstate New York, and I figured I could visit them, have some good bodywork done, and get their advice on what to do next. It was with Mark and Elaine that Don and I had undergone much of our training in natural hygiene, iridology, acupressure, herbal healing, and so on, as well as a process called body electronics. Mark and Elaine had seen us both through a time of great spiritual and emotional transformation in our lives, and even though it was years later and we’d moved on to different aspects of mind-body healing, somehow they seemed to be the right people to be around. I knew they’d be supportive.

When we arrived, Elaine offered us all a cup of herbal tea, and said in her forthright and intuitive style, “So what’s up? Something’s going on!”

“Well, I’ve been diagnosed with . . .”—I laid the whole story out, including the physical things I was doing, and finished by saying, “So I’m letting myself be guided.”

Shrugging, she said, “Brandon, I don’t even see this as an issue. You’re going to get this handled . . . no problem . . . it’ll be a breeze. . . . I just know it. . . . Really, I mean it, Brandon.” And I knew she did.

Once again someone was hearing the news for the first time and using the exact words Tony did—“No problem, you’ll get it handled.” It was beginning to feel like the people around me were a mirror of that same inner knowing that was arising in me! The outer confirmation of what I felt inwardly to be true was somehow very reassuring.

I did manage to get some good massage bodywork while I was there, and also found a herbalist who suggested several herbs to aid in the cleansing process. As I prepared to leave, the massage therapist handed me a small slip of paper with a phone number. “I did some research for you and found a good cranial-visceral massage therapist in Santa Monica. That’s not far from Malibu, is it?”

“No, just down the road,” I replied. “Thanks, that was very kind of you.”

“Not to worry, Brandon—I really see this thing leaving you easily. You’ll get it handled.”

There it was again—third time! This time my hair stood on end. It really was beginning to feel as if the universe was trying to tell me something. If I ever believed in such a thing as a sign, then I was getting signs from all over the place, and they were all pointing to the same thing—YOU’LL GET IT HANDLED!

Holding the slip of paper, I thought, “Hmm, maybe this guy is one of the bread crumbs, the signposts along my path. I’ll give him a ring as soon as I get back to Malibu.”

Chapter 6

On my way home from the airport, holding the slip of paper in my hand, I felt an unexpected anticipation building. I could barely wait to see where this new signpost would take me next.

With a spring in my step I bounded through my front door in Malibu, reached for the phone, dialed the number on the slip of paper, and got the massage therapist’s secretary. She apologized profusely, but he didn’t have a single opening for one month. Did I want to schedule for then?

A month? I didn’t have a month! I had less than three weeks left.

I felt as if someone had stuck a pin in my balloon. How could it be that he couldn’t see me? I was just so sure he was part of my journey—one of my signposts. So far everything had flowed so perfectly, so gracefully—as if I was somehow in “the zone” that so many athletes speak of. This couldn’t be right. I asked her if she was absolutely certain.

“Yes, I’m sorry—he’s completely booked.”

Deflated, I put the phone down, still somehow unconvinced. Two minutes later I redialed—“Could I at least speak to him?”

“He’s with a client.”

“Well, could you pass on my message?”

“I’ll let him know you called.”

That night at 10:45 I received a phone call beginning with a flurry of apologies for calling so late. “My name is Benjamin—I’m the cranial-visceral massage therapist you phoned.”

We talked until 11:00 P.M., and he said, “Listen, if you don’t mind coming at 7:00 A.M. I’ll fit you in for as many sessions as I can between now and your time to go back for tests. Can you make it that early?”

“I can’t afford not to. I’ll be there at 6:45.”

Though early mornings have never been my best times, I was thrilled to be actively working toward physically healing myself, and glad that things once more seemed back “in the flow” and on track.

At the end of the first session, Benjamin turned to me as I reached for my coat, and said, “You know, I don’t get the feeling that this is really going to be a problem for you; I almost get the feeling it’s already healing itself. I know it sounds crazy, because your examination is less than three weeks away, but I get the feeling you are going to get this thing handled!”

I practically repeated it out loud with him! What was this, a mantra? I shook my head, smiled, and waved goodbye—“See you tomorrow.”

Benjamin had given me the name of a very good colon therapist. I promptly followed this up, and got an immediate appointment. During our colonic session she felt around my belly and said, “You know, I get the feeling this is going to move out very quickly, but there’s some old emotional stuff stored in there that you need to let go of.”

“I know,” I mumbled quietly. I was already all too aware that although I was actively taking care of my physical body in preparation for the healing, I still had not yet addressed the emotional side—I had not got to the core of what created the tumor in the first place. I checked inside to see if I was avoiding facing the issue, and I honestly didn’t feel I was. I was just staying open and trusting I would be guided, and I hadn’t yet felt “called” or pulled to dive into the emotional cause of the tumor.

It took a lot of courage, and more patience than I was normally accustomed to, to keep trusting, as I was fully aware that time was marching on! That night I got a phone call from my dear spiritual friend, Kabir, in San Francisco. He happens to be an oncologist, a doctor who specializes in cancer, and I listened as he gave an hour’s earful of technical medical detail, most of which I didn’t fully understand. I kept feeling, “There’s got to be a reason I’m listening to all this.” Finally, toward the end of the conversation, he got out of doctor mode and back into friendship mode, and I was able to get a word in edgewise. I let him know that it was not my intention to go the orthodox medical route. I intended to try healing on my own before giving the surgeons a chance to cut me open, and I really wanted to get at the emotional issues that I knew were at the core of it all, and get the learning that this pelvic mass had to give me.

“Brandon, I just got an idea! You should come visit me for a couple of days; I’ve got this great bodyworker who helps people let go of the emotional issues stored inside while working on your body—it’s fabulous work. I go there myself about once a week. She’s magic! I really have got a lot out of her sessions.”

For a doctor, sometimes he sounded so dramatic, but something in what he said called to me, and besides, even if she wasn’t that brilliant, I could always go over to the local meditation center there, meditate, and attend some programs—plus I’d get a chance to hang out with Kabir and have some of our spiritual chats.

“I’ll see if I can get good flights. If not, then we’ll assume it’s not meant to be.”

As grace would have it, I got one of those super-duper special discount deals on two tickets to San Francisco only forty-eight hours later. It was only two and a half weeks before I had to reappear at the doctor’s office and here I was once again—TRUSTING, TRUSTING, TRUSTING!

I was delighted to find Kabir had already organized a couple of appointments for me. Being a doctor, he himself had next to no time to see me, which suited me fine as I had a feeling when I stepped off the plane that something important was going to happen in San Francisco.

I made an uncharacteristic decision not to go to Kabir’s home, but to book Don and me into a great little bed-and-breakfast inn just down the street from the therapist. Figuring I had only a few short days there, I thought I might like to rest between sessions and keep quiet and let myself heal. Plus, the bed-and-breakfast was virtually down the street from the meditation center, where I could go to meditate and sit in silence.

Some part of me instinctively knew that the time had come to face the music—to turn inward and keep to myself. I didn’t know how important that decision would turn out to be.

Chapter 7

As I went up the steps to meet Surja, the massage therapist, something inside began to feel wobbly and a little scared. I wondered what that was all about, and dismissed it as I rang the bell.

A lady with a kind face answered. With very reassuring tones, she took me to her treatment room, which was warm and clean and somehow nurturing in a simple, homey way. I asked her what the teddy bears on the chair were for. “Oh, for kids when they come here. It makes them feel secure. Some adults like them too.” I smiled, and got the feeling that they were really there for the adults. It seemed a little quaint, but sweet, just the same.

She was burning some fragrant incense, and had pictures of a couple of spiritual masters she had studied with. Though massage was her speciality, I could see she had a great love of Spirit, and probably had the same thirst for learning that I do.

We got to chatting before we started, and I told her the whole story from beginning to end—that it was my firm belief that emotional memories are stored in the cells of the body and get passed on from one cell generation to the next, and that real healing begins when you let go of these cellular memories. I prayed, with all my heart, to finally face whatever was stored inside that tumor. I hoped she could help.

I admitted to her that, being in the mind-body field myself, I’d probably tried and done everything over the past twenty years. I felt I’d experienced every healing technique available, and figured I’d already handled all my emotional issues. So, when my belly kept growing and growing, it never occurred to me that there could actually be something seriously wrong. I had to admit that perhaps I’d grown arrogant—thinking it couldn’t happen to me.

I let her know something that I hadn’t shared with anyone else—how humbling it had been, and how ashamed I’d felt not only to find out how large the tumor had grown, but also to realize how long I’d stayed in denial. I just hadn’t wanted to believe that anything could be wrong with me, as I was supposedly doing everything right.

She stopped me to say, “You know, it sounds like you were doing everything right—it just seems to me like this must be some old stuff you need to get rid of.”

“But I feel like I’ve done every healing process on the planet!”

“Well, clearly your body doesn’t think so! The fact that your emotional stuff has manifested at the physical level must mean that you’re finally ready to face it and let it go.”

I knew she was right, and nodded in quiet agreement. It seemed apparent that we shared the same beliefs about health, and I felt very comfortable.

We continued swapping stories of various therapeutic practices, and laughed at some of the more ridiculous things we’d tried when we were younger. Then we began sharing our different spiritual realizations. About forty-five minutes slipped away before we both realized we were taking up precious therapy time.

Before we started I made a silent prayer that I would have the courage to face whatever was stored inside that tumor. I then opened and surrendered inwardly, and allowed myself to expand into the stillness that had been my constant companion throughout my journey. I knew instinctively it was definitely from the stillness that all the answers would come—not from my personality, and certainly not from my chattering mind. If my thinking mind was to have come up with the answers, it surely would have done so by now. As it hadn’t, my only route was trust: trust in a deeper wisdom, the wisdom responsible for making my heart beat, my eyes shine, my hair grow; trust in the infinite intelligence responsible for making my cells replicate; trust in the part of me that is awake when I’m asleep at night. I knew I would have to trust and surrender into my very essence—into the real me—into what felt like “home” to me.

As she began massaging me, I closed my eyes and felt myself relaxing ever more deeply into peace, and once again I had the experience of time standing still—my senses fully alive, and yet my mind completely at rest, with a presence of peace that seemed vast, without boundaries. I felt myself connected with everything.

While massaging, Surja suggested, “Why don’t you, in your mind’s eye, take some steps right down into your tumor and see what it looks like down there?” Her suggestion seemed so obvious, but somehow it felt right. So I decided to do just that.

When I got inside my uterus I didn’t like what I saw. It was pretty scary-looking, and more than once I thought, “I’m getting out of here. I don’t want to see all this.” But my inner wisdom kept reminding me that I was here for a reason, and so once again I prayed for the courage to face whatever it was I needed to face. I was certain I was going to find something I just couldn’t bear to see.

As I was “walking about” inside the tumor, I came to an area that seemed particularly dark. As I approached the area, I could sense an intense feeling of fear emanating from the walls. Spontaneously, an old memory of an intense childhood trauma flashed before me. Instantly, my doubting, thinking mind checked in and said, “It can’t be that—I know all about that memory—I’ve long since dealt with that issue and put it to bed! It wasn’t that big a deal—it can’t be the cause of what’s going on in here . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah . . .”

As Surja continued to massage, I shyly relayed the judgments my thinking mind was making. She said reassuringly, “Well, your body wisdom is probably coming up with that particular memory for a reason. For now, why don’t you just go with what’s coming up for you? Even if your thinking mind is doubting it, what have you got to lose?”

And so I continued watching the memory. In my mind, I found myself going through the scene as if in living color, and in slow motion. Surprisingly, unexpected emotions that I had buried and long since forgotten seemed to be arising, and the true expression of how I felt at the time seemed to be surfacing. I hadn’t realized how intensely I had felt at the time. I’d been too successful, even then, at masking my true emotions by putting on a brave face.

Tears quietly streamed down my cheeks.

I felt very private, and I didn’t want to say much to Surja about it. And yet, there was a great relief in finally just being real with myself—taking the mask off and letting myself experience the incredible vulnerability and helplessness that I felt as a young child in that memory. I was finally letting myself feel the natural emotions that I hadn’t let myself experience at the time of the trauma. Somehow, even as a small child I’d learned that I wasn’t allowed to show my true feelings. And, more important, I hadn’t been able to admit them to myself.

So, in a very simple, pure way I was finally allowing myself to experience what had been there all along. I had never really forgotten this old memory, and the “discovery” of it was no real revelation. What came as a surprise was the intensity of my true feelings—I’d been so successful in putting a lid on them that I managed to convince myself that it wasn’t that important!

I shared a little of what I was going through with Surja, and gently she asked me, “Do you feel complete?” I checked inside with the inner wisdom. “No.”

“Well, why don’t you imagine a little campfire, and put all the people in your memory there with you; and why don’t you have a fireside chat and find out why the other people were behaving as they did, and let them know your true feelings—let the younger you talk to them as if they were here right now.”

Once again, what she said seemed like a good idea, so I thought I’d give it a go—I had nothing to lose. Meanwhile, I was still getting a lovely relaxing massage. Surja seemed to instinctively know in which area I was carrying tension, and she would ease it as I carried on with my internal processing.

Inside my mind’s eye, I pictured myself at a crackling campfire. Both my parents were there—they looked so much younger, and dressed in the corny style of the 1950s—and the four-year-old me who’d gone through the emotional memory was standing there in her little dress, looking very unprotected and unsure of herself. The present me was also there, so I decided to go over to the younger me and invite her to sit in my lap, so that she could feel safe and comforted.

I was very surprised at what was said at the campfire. I hadn’t realized how intensely the younger me had felt about this old memory. It seemed the little me had a lot of unexpressed pain to share.

She finally said what she had been unable to say for years. It seemed as if years of pain poured out of her. When she seemed empty of words, I turned to my parents and asked why they had behaved as they did. I was equally surprised to hear what was going on for them at the time, and tears of compassion sprang to my eyes as I finally understood the source of their pain, and how frustrated and helpless they felt. My sister had drowned at the age of four, and unfortunately their inexpressible pain would sometimes spill out and get directed at the rest of us.

The fireside chat continued until we’d all finally emptied ourselves out, having shared from our deepest hearts. And my little childhood self finally, for the very first time, truly understood why and how everything had taken place. I was left in peace—peace, simplicity, and true understanding.

I related a very condensed version of what had taken place to Surja, and she asked me once again if I finally felt complete with this old issue. I checked inside. “No, there’s something still niggling me inside, but I don’t know what it is—it’s just a feeling that something else still needs to take place.”

I felt at a loss. I knew there was no sense in turning to my thinking mind. It would only give me some obvious logical-seeming answer that had already been unsuccessful in helping me to heal, or it would judge me and tell me how stupid this all was.

So, once again I felt myself opening and trusting and surrendering into the silence—I knew the answers would come from there. As the silence became very vast, very pervasive, my thinking mind was arrested and, once again, I felt awed by the beauty of the peace that seemed to be emanating from my soul. My thoughts came to rest, as silence seemed to fill the room.

From the depths of the silence, I heard the words (or rather somehow experienced them)—“You need to forgive your parents.”

It hit me like a stone. I knew it was the truth. It was so obvious, but it had never occurred to me before. So, in my mind’s eye, I reconstructed the campfire and put my parents by the fire. Then, inwardly, the younger me forgave both of them—in the innocent way that children forgive. I felt as if my heart was breaking as the words of forgiveness came from my lips. The forgiveness was absolutely authentic, and came from the very depths of my soul.

Tears streamed down my cheeks. Peace washed through my body, the peace of completion. A simple knowing arose from within, a knowing that THE STORY WAS OVER!

As I lay there on the massage table, I began to feel a subtle but palpable energy coursing through my arms and legs, then throughout my whole body. Somewhere deep within I knew the tumor’s healing had begun.

After a short while, Surja gently let me know that it was time for the session to end. Two hours had gone by. It had seemed so much quicker than that! Gently, I sat up, feeling a little light-headed, and she handed me a glass of water.

She suggested that I might like to go back to the bed-and-breakfast, maybe have some soup, take a rest, and just allow things to continue to process inside. I nodded silently—I didn’t feel much like talking—and quietly prepared to get down off the massage table.

Inwardly, my doubting, thinking mind had slowly crept back, and was now in full force saying things like, “This wasn’t that big a deal—so you found an old memory—so what? . . . You’ve done this kind of thing before. . . . Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. . . . All this was just in your mind, in your imagination. . . .” and on, and on.

I slipped off the table, my mind chattering away, and reached for my clothes. As I put my arm out to grab my slacks, I felt wildly off balance, woozy and wobbly all over. I had to grab for a chair to sit down.

In that instant my mind stopped all criticism, and quietly turned all of its focus to what was going on in my body. I thought, “Shit!—something is happening here—something big!” and I reached down to touch my taut-as-a-drum belly to find it had actually gone just a tiny bit soft! I thought, “I must be dreaming—things can’t happen this quickly.” My mind began to race—it couldn’t comprehend what was taking place. I felt sick all over. All I wanted to do was lie down.

Don was already out in the living room, waiting for me, and I didn’t want him to see how sick I was feeling. I felt extremely disoriented—I could feel that things inside were shifting rapidly, but if I had to explain what I meant by that, I knew I couldn’t.

Gently, I made my way into the car. When I got to my room at the bed-and-breakfast, I was unbelievably grateful to slip into the clean white sheets and just snuggle down and rest, while whatever it was that was taking place, took place.

I continued “processing” through the day, and during the night I slept fitfully. I woke up the next morning feeling weak and vulnerable, uncomprehending. Everything was happening so quickly. It felt as if the molecules in my body were buzzing and shifting, and when I touched what had been my hard, pregnant-feeling tummy, it felt like jelly.

For three days I was weak and disoriented. I felt somehow raw and exposed, as my body seemed to go about the process of doing what it knew how to do. I was absolutely certain of one thing. “I” wasn’t in charge—my body wisdom had powerfully taken over and was transforming my cells naturally and perfectly, of its own accord, without me having to think about a thing.

Strangely, my mind finally shut up—it had no more judging comments to make. The fact that things were working perfectly well without its interference was so powerfully evident, it had nothing more to say about it. I rested in a peace that was all enveloping. I felt very childlike, innocent, completely content not to understand any part of what was taking place internally. I just rested easily in the sweet, all-embracing acceptance that was present. The intelligence of the body wisdom was working its own miracle inside, and all I could do was rest in gratitude and surrender.

As I rested in quiet contemplation, it occurred to me that all along I had thought this tumor was clinging to me, when in fact I had been clinging to it—protecting myself from the memory and painful feelings stored there. And when I finally discovered the emotional patterns and memory connected to it, and finished the story, that’s when the need for the tumor finally finished. Once the issues were completed, healed and forgiven, the tumor was able to leave. It had fulfilled its purpose and given me its teaching.

It seemed as if I had literally put the painful memory into a package, and put a lid on it. Then the cells had grown and grown to keep the old memory encapsulated, protecting me from having to face it over the years. Or so it seemed, looking back on it.

Chapter 8

It was now only ten days until I was due back at the doctor’s office. Daily, my stomach was growing flatter, although as I got close to the due date I could see it was not yet completely flat.

By this time I was already back in Malibu, and I decided to see if I could accelerate my healing. I asked a few of my closest friends to help me go through the memory processing two more times, although this time, instead of massaging my body, they held acupressure points relating to my internal organs.

Once again, I surrendered deeply into the silence, and spontaneously the inner knowing brought up a few more memories—different ones from the first, but all centered on the same theme. I found I was forgiving myself, as well as the other people involved, but I could see I was just learning different aspects of the same lesson.

It was as if there was one core issue and I had spent a lifetime repeating the same pattern, making the same painful mistakes, but with different people. It was as if I had a string of memories that was like a pearl necklace—even though each memory or each pearl had a slightly different shape, size and hue, they were all essentially the same. And it felt to me that on that day with Surja, we had broken the string, and now all the pearls were just sliding off—all the memories were just finishing themselves and leaving. When we were done with each process I felt profound shifts and movement that continued for several hours.

Two days before my doctor’s appointment, I kept feeling my tummy. It had gone down in size dramatically, but it still didn’t feel completely flat. So, when I sat in the doctor’s office, waiting for my examination, my heart began to pound. I felt a mixture of excitement, anticipation, and fear washing through me; my knees felt weak and my hands sticky. Once again I sat there fearing the worst, waiting for the doctor to lower the boom.

Once again, we went through a thorough examination, only this time the doctor talked to me as it was progressing. She mentioned that she had sent the previous test samples in to discover whether the mass was malignant or benign, but they had been contaminated with all the blood, so she was going to have to redo the tests. I kept thinking, “I don’t want to hear about the previous tests. Just tell me what’s going on now.”

As she was speaking, I suddenly remembered that a year earlier I had Pap smear results that had come up as precancerous. On a scale of one to five, with five being cancerous, I was a three. At the time I didn’t really give it any thought, as my alternative healthcare practitioner had dismissed the result, saying that many things could contribute to a precancerous smear result—even a vaginal infection. So, I had just let it go. I realized now that I ought to have investigated it further.

Finally, the doctor said, “Well, there’s been a big improvement. The pelvic mass seems to have gone down significantly—from the size of a basketball to the size of a six-inch cantaloupe melon.”

The words fell on my ears with a dull thud.

“A six-inch cantaloupe—are you sure it’s still that big?” I said. Disappointment filled me.

“That’s a dramatic change, Brandon—it’s gone all the way down from pushing against your diaphragm, three inches above your waistline, to right here, two inches below your waistline. I can cup my hand right around the top of it. Here, touch it with your own hand—can you feel it?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to fight back tears.

“Think of a basketball.” (She showed me with her hands.) “Now think of a six-inch cantaloupe melon. (She showed me again.) That’s a significant change.” Long pause. “But it’s not significant enough, Brandon. You still need to have it surgically removed.”

I turned my face away so she couldn’t see me as I wiped my eyes, and quietly asked if we could talk about it in her consultation room. I thought it had gone down a lot more than that. As I sat with her, her words seemed to come through a haze. She clearly could see I was upset and was trying to assuage me while remaining firm in outlining the direction I should take.

“It’s a huge improvement, Brandon. There’s nothing to be disappointed about. Clearly you’ve been doing something to heal yourself. But I feel I must let you know tumors are known to be volatile, and it is possible for them to vacillate radically in size—that’s why your tummy blew up in size in the six weeks before your first visit. There’s nothing to say it won’t blow up in size again. You need to get real about this, Brandon. You need to get the tests done to determine its nature, and once they are complete, have it surgically removed. That’s my strong advice to you. This is not something to take lightly—a cantaloupe-sized mass means it’s already quite advanced.”

Everything she said made sense from a logical point of view. But everything inside me was still saying NO! I sat there quietly as she spoke, not offering any outward resistance—just trying to take on board her words, and truly weigh their validity. There was no doubt she made sense. But that inner knowing of “you’ll get it handled” was still strongly in the background.

At one point, in a mildly disinterested voice, she asked what I had done over the last month for such a dramatic change to take place. I piped up, hoping that she might actually want to hear about the intense emotional healing journey I’d undergone. Innocently, with great enthusiasm I began to launch into my story. She stopped me short.

“No, no! I just want the facts. What have you been doing physically? What foods have you been eating? What herbs, if any, have you been taking? Has your diet changed significantly? What about your physical activity? I just want the facts for my file.”

So I began listing out all the herbs, enzymes, colloidal minerals, colonics and massages, and ended by saying that I was on 100 percent fresh and raw fruits and vegetables, combined with fresh squeezed juices.

She noted it all down, closed the file, and said dryly, “Well, you may have to remain a raw food-ist for the rest of your life, if you think that’s what created the change”—with a wry, sardonic smile that looked unbecoming on her otherwise pretty face.

Inwardly, a door slammed. I stopped feeling like a helpless wimp and got it: this was not a doctor who wanted the whole picture, the real facts, which included the emotional side of things. She wanted her idea of what the facts were! I realized there was no further basis for discussion, and something inside said ENOUGH.

Simply, 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.

Chapter 9

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 baggage. And throughout the time, I continued taking the herbs, eating only fresh and raw fruits and vegetables, drinking loads of freshly squeezed juices, taking the minerals, and supporting my thinner and more vibrant-growing body the best I knew how.

Chapter 10

The following Wednesday, when I showed up for my appointment, I felt quietly excited, a little scared, and innocently hopeful. Skip was right—I had to wait over two hours as the waiting room seemed in constant flux with expectant mothers and mothers with babies. I tried to interest my racing mind with the various magazines around, but found I was too restless with anticipation.

Finally, a nurse came and called my name, and I was ushered past several open doors through which I could see all kinds of complex-looking equipment. The nurse asked me to change, as she proudly explained the various pieces of equipment in the room I was waiting in. “It’s the latest technology—with it the doctor can quite accurately see inside your organs. If you want she’ll turn the monitor screen toward you so you can watch what she is doing. You’ll find the doctor very helpful—she’ll explain everything to you as she takes the pictures. If you want, we’ve got the latest thing—pregnant mothers just love it—it’s a machine which can develop the pictures within moments of the times they are taken. It’s like a Polaroid—pregnant mothers like to take them home to show off the baby in utero. If you want, just ask the doctor—she’ll give you yours.”

I thought how technical it all seemed, but I warmed to the nurse’s obvious friendliness, and when she left my heart began to pound as I sat there in the cold equipment-filled room, waiting for the doctor to arrive.

Five minutes later she breezily walked through the door, not wearing the standard doctor’s coat. Immediately I liked her. We chatted together about what a nice couple Skip and his wife Jill were, and finally got around to the purpose of my visit.

I had already made the decision that I would not tell my whole story to this doctor. I wanted a fresh unbiased opinion based on technical results, not on the diagnosis of my previous doctor. So I got around it by saying, “I’m thirty-nine years old, and my gynecologist thought it would be a good idea to get a complete ultrasound examination—she was concerned I might have a small growth, and as I’m the age for such things to occur . . .”

She interrupted me to ask, “In the uterus, the ovaries—where?”

“She didn’t actually say,” trying to remain vague and non- committal.

“Well, why don’t we do a comprehensive exam? We’ll get the whole picture that way. There is a new piece of equipment that we recently acquired that makes it so much more accurate and easy to see. It may not be as comfortable, because it means I’m going to have to put a probe up inside you, but I promise I’ll be gentle. This way we’ll go at it from all angles.”

I answered I was actually quite eager to be as clear and thorough as possible, and would willingly cooperate with whatever she thought was necessary. The examination went much as the nurse had said it would. The doctor was very chatty, and clearly did her utmost to put me at ease while dealing with a very clinical, graphic subject.

Sweetly, she turned the monitor for me to watch as she probed about examining the organs. After the first five minutes she said in a delighted tone, “Well, first off I’m not finding anything. We need to be more thorough, and take a look at your ovaries as well as above your uterus, but it’s a good start.”

She explained that in order to get a more accurate picture, she would need to use the new machine they’d acquired, and tried to make me laugh through the uncomfortable parts, constantly directing my attention away from my body and toward the screen.

“See—this is your left ovary . . . everything looks clean there. Why don’t we take a snapshot of it so we can examine it more clearly when you’re done?” And so we continued for the next twenty minutes, checking it from every angle—or at least so it seemed.

When she finished she exclaimed, “Well, you’re not only clean—you’re textbook perfect clean! Your organs couldn’t be in better condition.” She took out some of the pictures and got out a medical textbook to show me the comparison.

“See, this is a perfect uterus. Now look at your pictures. Your organs are exactly as they should be—perfect in size, position, proportion—perfect in every way . . . remarkable for someone your age . . . I’m going to write you a clean bill of health. We’d be happy to send your diagnosis and pictures on to your doctor—just let my nurse know the details and she’ll call your doctor and send them wherever you like.”

When I came back to the reception room to write my check for the examination, I was blown away by how expensive it was for that half-hour diagnostic. And yet, I’ve never had such a huge smile on my face when writing a check for an amount that large. I couldn’t write it quickly enough. I wanted to skip out of that office!

When I walked down the hallway to the elevator, I checked to see if anyone was looking—and when the coast was clear, skipped three paces and skidded to a stop in front of the elevator door. When I stepped outside into the sunshine, I was struck once again by how beautiful L.A. seemed. Again, I was aware of how precious life seemed, and how grateful I was to be alive. And I felt a sense of awe and wonder at what an amazing miracle is stored inside the human body—how the infinite wisdom that knows how to make our hearts beat, our hair grow, that awesome perfection of inner knowledge that secretes exactly the right amount of hormones at the right time, had worked its magic. This amazing inner power that is awake, working while we are asleep at night—what an amazing grace it is. What an awe-inspiring mystery.

It had happened just as my inner knowing had told me it would—the same part of me responsible for creating the tumor had un-created it, and I had been given the amazing gift of being allowed to participate in that process, learning what it was the tumor had to teach me.

I felt myself to be the luckiest person alive.

Chapter 11

On the ride home, I felt like a horse champing at the bit—I could barely wait to get inside my house so I could call Don, who was just finishing the Mastery program in Hawaii. When I got in, I rushed to the phone, not even considering what time it might be in Hawaii, and decided to take a risk and call the front desk and see if someone could get him out of the seminar room. Sure enough, they found him in the hall, not far from the phones.

“Hello, Brandon—are you all right?” He knew it wasn’t my style to call while he was in session.

“Yeah, just got back from the hospital. I’ve been diagnosed to be textbook perfect clean! The tumor’s completely gone!”

Pause . . . as he digested just what had been said.

I began to launch into the whole story when he interrupted with, “That’s incredible! You’re amazing!”

By that night, word had gone out to all the trainers—not only that I had had a tumor, but that it had healed in only six weeks. When Tony heard the news, he said, quite matter-of-factly, “I knew she’d get it handled. I never thought it would be a problem for her—I really didn’t. I never expected anything less.”

I was glad that I had chosen to tell only people who were certain I could heal. They had been such a constant support, especially during those times when I began to wonder myself.

It wasn’t until the next Mastery program, six months later, that I got a chance to meet up with the rest of my fellow trainers, and there were many congratulations and slaps on the back. Then once again, our hearts and minds were enthusiastically focused on the seminar, and helping the participants.

Mastery is a powerful program where speakers from all over the world, who are at the very top of their professions—real masters in their chosen fields—come together to share their knowledge and expertise with over 1,000 participants. These masters include speakers like General Norman Schwarzkopf, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. John Gray, and Sir John Templeton, to name a few.

It was about half an hour before Dr. Chopra was getting ready to go on stage. I was really looking forward to hearing him—I always felt so inspired by his portion of the Mastery program because he spoke so eloquently about cellular healing and how it takes place, from a strictly scientific perspective.

He is probably the most articulate speaker on the subject of cellular healing in the field of mind-body healing today. As a highly respected endocrinologist, he took a radical approach. Instead of studying failure and the symptomology of what causes people to die, he chose to focus on success and made a life study of the process of the survivors who had healed themselves from serious disease.

I had studied with Deepak years before he’d started coming to Mastery, not having any idea how influential his work would be in supporting me on my own healing journey. I never figured that the countless case studies of people who had successfully healed themselves against the odds would end up being such a fundamental and inspirational model for me. I’d read of people with brain cancer, bone cancer—people with much more serious illnesses than I had been diagnosed with—healing themselves in record time. One woman whose entire body was riddled with cancer, who was diagnosed to die within three hours, woke up in the morning completely cancer free. So I knew if others could do it, certainly I had a good chance. It was because of their shining examples, and those of others I had helped and worked with over the years, that I had no doubt that my own healing journey was possible.

So on this day that Deepak got up to speak, I felt particularly grateful for both the man and his work, and I was standing in the hallway contemplating my good fortune when Tony sauntered up to me.

“Hey Brandon, why don’t you get up on stage before Deepak? You’ve got ten minutes . . . tell everybody what happened and exactly what you did to heal yourself. You’re a living example of precisely what Deepak is going to talk about—it’ll be a powerful model for people. This way they can all know how to fix themselves,” he said with a good-humored smile.

On hearing that last remark I chuckled. He’d made it sound like I could just stand in front of a room and say, “Do A, then do B, then C, and you’ll be ‘fixed.’ ” Softly, not wanting to dampen his enthusiasm, and yet wanting to be firm nonetheless, I said, “You know, Tone—I’m not really willing to do that. That would be such a disservice to people. You can’t say ‘Do A, B and C and you’ll be healed.’ It’s not like that. In fact I didn’t even heal myself—the infinite intelligence inside did all the healing. I just got the incredible blessing of being allowed to participate in the experience. So, I wouldn’t feel right getting on stage and talking about it.”

Just as I finished the sentence, some other Master Trainers joined us and started playfully quipping about the previous speaker. I used that as an excuse to slip away before Tony had the chance to pursue the subject further. More than once I’d been persuaded by his powerful enthusiasm to stretch—to do something I didn’t really feel up to—and this was one subject that seemed somehow very sacred to me. I felt very humbled and privileged by the amazing healing journey I had undergone, deeply grateful that I’d been guided so perfectly, and I certainly didn’t want to start pretending that all of a sudden I was an expert and had all the answers. More important, I didn’t want people to go away thinking it was a “mind over body” thing—because it definitely wasn’t. It was a journey of discovery—surrendering, letting go, and healing. And my mind had next to nothing to do with it!

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