My thoughts on Dr. Iacoboni’s new book

If you’ve read posts here in the past, you’ve likely noticed articles about the mental nature of health and how spirituality affects lives. The great need, as I see it, is for spiritual understanding. Only spiritual answers truly get to the root or cause of problems. Only spirituality provides lasting peace.

This is why it’s encouraging to see physicians honestly question and analyze their methods and results. Through the humility it takes to be truly open for answers, will answers come. Such an odyssey leads to discoveries; to spiritual awakenings. This is what I found in the new book by Stephen Iacoboni, MD.

The Undying Soul, is a touching story of an oncologist’s search for what will provide his patients with peace as they face disease, pain, and death.

This book should stir every healer, whether MD or Christian Science practitioner, to look in the mirror and examine whether they love enough and yearn enough for what will help each of their patients.

Dr. Iacoboni, near the end of his book, writes:

I began this book by introducing tragic cases, from a time in my life when I served patients only as a physician, because I was not yet accomplished as a healer. In those days I saw myself as a humanist and “post-modern” warrior, saving lives sometimes, hoping to rescue the helpless and alleviate untold miseries. Even so, I was spiritually bereft. My awakening was agonizingly slow. I learned that dying patients needed and wanted more: it took Pavel, Patricia, Clarence and Maria [his patients] to convince me that there was more, somewhere. Through them I grew in awareness, compassion and spiritual insight, oh-so-reluctantly shedding the blinders of pride and intellect.

The Undying Soul is not a book for those who don’t like to see the word cancer or read about its impact on the body. It might be possible to zip past some of the descriptions of symptoms and of suffering. However, if you do open the book, you will find the tale of a doctor’s awakening. It is a journey filled with dignity and peace (where peace is hard-pressed to be found), and an eventual discovery of the undying soul.

By the way, detailed descriptions of disease and pain tend to make deep impressions on minds. The fear of them makes mankind more susceptible to them. I will explore this phenomenon in another post.

Now, some may differ with the theological conclusions that Dr. Iacoboni comes to at the end of his spiritual journey. This is quite natural. Yet, I believe the readers of his book will all agree that they have had the privilege of glimpsing a Christian heart at work.

The doctor writes:

In our busy, productive, high-tech-powered pursuits, we don’t seem to need a God, any God, for anything . . . until we get cancer. … Then all of a sudden we do need God. The problem is that we’ve lost track of faith in the hustle and bustle. This simple and humbling truth kept haunting me. Finding our way back to faith was clearly what was needed, but how to do so was exactly the great mystery, the unanswered question. Somehow, I had to get on the path to that holy destination, and discover whatever there might be out there that could bring peace to my patients, and to myself.

We all need to learn about the undying Soul, God. We must do so in order to conquer fear, the enemy that is the cause of the world’s pains.

Thank you, Dr. Iacoboni, for sharing your inspiring journey.

I rejoice with all those discovering the power of spirituality. I know that soon each of us will discover even more about Soul, even more about God’s ability to heal every disease. I’m learning that prayer, empowered by God, enables us to remove whatever is unlike the goodness of God.

I believe, you will find the follow healing accounts helpful:  Cancer verdict overruled, Vaginal cancer healed, Leukemia healed.

Keith on Twitter: @TexasCS
Related post: Acceptance of spiritual healing, an uphill climb