Understanding the iceberg model of disease helps comprehend how healing happens and the journey to it. Because it is a journey, sometimes a lifelong one.
Recognising that health goes beyond the surface of symptoms that need to be suppressed is a significant step already.
You can suppress symptoms in many ways, just by living life unconsciously and forgetting about your wholenesses. Alternatively, you can suppress them through medical intervention or drugs when that unconscious life or way of living reaches a point of “enough.” Then, you may need real painkiller suppression.
But there is always hope...
True healing involves going deeper, reaching all the way to the spiritual level and understanding that we are souls having a human experience. The body, mind, and emotions are tools for navigating this experience, and finding the balance between the spiritual and material worlds is crucial. Without this connection, life becomes a struggle, felt within the very tools that allow us to experience it—the mind, the body, and the emotions.
The key lies in acknowledging this interconnectedness and self-realization; that is, by finding who you really are.
Currently, you might find yourself reacting to life, and this reaction is rooted in subconscious programming that automatically shapes responses to events. While one might believe decisions are consciously crafted, the reality is that a vast majority—about 99%—of decisions stem from the workings of the subconscious mind. Even when it seems like deep contemplation is occurring, an automatic filter guides the selection of information, reinforcing decisions already imprinted by the subconscious mind.
This is because the limbic brain, the emotional brain, is doing most of the work. It's fast, and one cannot tell until higher brain functions are developed.
Healing involves going deeper, and instead of reacting, we start responding to life.
To respond to life, you need to know who you are in essence; that is, what is your uniqueness, what is your purpose here?
It can be any desire that propels your soul, distinctly different from the desires shaped by subconscious programming—typically influenced by parenthood, cultural norms, religious beliefs, and life experiences. Soul desire, in contrast, is intricately tied to your uniqueness and purpose.
For that, you need to go deep, uncovering the layers and layers of illusion until you reach the core of who you are.
When you get there, you start responding to life, and that is a game-changer. But as the iceberg model shows, you need to heal the body first, and then, going down, once you get there, to the core of the soul, the iceberg melts, you merge with the ocean of life, and you become one with the vast ocean.
This is living life like wholeness... poetic it is, but life when lived this way becomes beautiful poetry.
by Angela Stringhini