Dr. Griffin:

I’d like to relate the following two stories.

My sister started using the oils a few months after I did, and although I tried to guide her using the techniques used to guide me, it was more like making someone take their medicine, and I could tell she was always debating whether it was worth the effort and cost or not.  About a week ago she made the decision that the oil wasn’t working and sent word that she didn’t want me to order any more for her. The week has gone by and last night she sent word that she would like for me to order more of her special blend of oil. When I asked the messenger (our youngest sister), “Why?”, she said that after a couple of days she realized that although she didn’t know why or how, she felt better when she used the oil than when she didn’t.

My sister has used the oil faithfully, daily, and even admitted to noticing that she felt unusual when she was too tired or just forgot to go through the procedure, but  when asked, said she couldn’t tell if ‘it was working or not.’ I knew by the statement that she was expecting the oils to do something dramatic to her, or she would regard them as of no value. I also realized that while she’s not on the wrong path, she hasn’t yet reached a level of understanding, or even faith or belief, that will allow the oils to work with her to their greatest potential,  but she has made a decision and now has a real expectation.

The next story is my own continuing one. First of all I need to say that although I am more drawn to the concept of alternative health and healing practices than I have been to the conglomerate of physicians, nurses, and specialists, I really haven’t had faith in either, and didn’t expectations when I first contacted you. Your documentary made me a little more hopeful, but as I look back on my mental activities at the time, I had already lost hope (in everything except that bizarre universal rarity, the spontaneous miracle). I was just faking enthusiasm and hoping I might win the medical lottery. According to the medical definition, which medical practitioners avidly enforce, the disease that my sister and I have is “chronic and irreversible, and the only available intervention techniques are merely palliative.”  And no matter how much I vocally resisted, Icompletely believed them and almost instantly became a sick person. I remember telling you my sick person story during our initial consultation, and although I seemed enthusiastic about your positive comments and energy, I was more interested in (maybe even proud of?) my illness. What saved me was probably the only true vestige of my former self. (Some of the pre-illness self I remember never happened, but I was truly always energetic and enthusiastic.) I began to have faithfully used the oils, and actually began to feel something about what appeared to be very real progress, but it wasn’t what I expected to feel.  I now know I had to break through the same barriers my sister is facing.  My logs and notes and daily journal showed a sustained respiratory improvement, almost from the first day, but my mind was uneasy and distressed. I called you in almost a panic of anxiety, and you said the most enlightening thing, “Of course you’re uneasy. You’ve grown accustomed to being ill, and feeling better is out of that now normal state and will likely be alarming.”

“I had grown accustomed to being ill.”

And during the last few months I’ve begun to sort out just how quickly I became accustomed (the instant I was given the diagnosis), and how thoroughly I adapted to, and was catering to, the demands of, the AMA definition of the illness. It absolutely ruled my life, and then the struggle to escape that bondage began to rule my life, so it still ruled my life.

Too complicated to elaborate on, but I’ve now spent months developing and routinely engaging various physical and mental routines around the oil and their use.  I wasn’t believing anything, but working with thoughts of what I would want to happen, I started imagining that something about or related to the oils might infiltrate my lungs, “bronchial tubes, bronchioles, and alveolar sacs and surrounding capillary beds”, and repair them – rejuvenate and replenish the alveoli;  cull senescent cells and encourage development of new ones; and facilitate gas exchange between alveoli and blood cells, and (per your suggestion)when I used the oils I would relax and visualize and meditate on those things. Also, per you enlightening statement about adapting to illness, I started a process of resisting negative thinking (mostly expectations.) And finally, I have exercised daily and concentrated on expanding exercise types and increasing amounts of exercise.  From practicing and repeating these, even with half-hearted enthusiasm, I inadvertently created rituals which have elevated the quality of my life in the most surprising ways.

Within this past month have realized that I no longer feel like a sick person. I am aware of limitations and consequences, I have attained a mental perspective from which the disease is incidental to myself. My lungs are still broken, and that still affects me, but it no longer controls me. And the best news is that even as I wallowed in physical deterioration, the other parts of me have been developing and maturing as they always were.  I actually feel more comfortable, and more able, than I have ever been.  Before the onset of the illness I felt immortal. I woke each day expecting to feel good physically, and I expected my body to be able to achieve whatever my mind might lead it into. Now I realize that even when I was operating under that delusion, the reality was, and still is, that wellness or good health is not a state of being that we attain easily, and that we shouldn’t hold lightly. From birth our bodies are constantly contending with attacks by other forces and organisms, so in a sense, rather than anyone really experiencing long periods of uninterrupted wellness or good health, we are always either fending off attacks, or recovering from the effects of successful  attacks. I haven’t transcended anything, I’ve just stopped indulging in sickness.

I was only in active rapid deterioration for a short period of time, but long enough that my mind embraced and amplified all of its aspects, and  most embarrassing, I willingly participated in that misery and resisted its cessation.

Making up for what I lost will require all of my best abilities, attention, and energy, for the rest of my life. Like a normal life.

The essential oils aren’t a cure, but it is likely that nothing on earth cures in the sense that the word/concept cure is used professionally and commercially. They are beneficent catalysts, something able to affect my body’s ability, and even tendency,  to cure itself. I am now able to utilize what I can only describe as a place or state that the essentials oils have helped me discover or maybe even create, within which my mind is curing itself, and as that process progresses,  my body also improves and will continue to do so.

I no longer think and feel like a sick person.

Thank you Dr. Griffin

Kenneth