The Journey: A Practical Guide to Healing Your life and Setting Yourself Free

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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