Godmindbody, A Book About TMS and Christianity: Part 1

What follows is the introduction and part 1 of my book Godmindbody, which is about TMS and mindbody healing. For Part 2, please see the pdf of parts 1 and 2 of the book, or the blog post entitled Godmindbody Part 2. Part 3 will be concerned with Bible prophecy, and is not finished yet. In this book (the full title), to the best of my ability I explain the origins and fate of humanity, how exactly to find salvation and live forever, as well as the most efficient healing method I have discovered, which combines Christian prayer with the mindbody approach. Currently, these two parts are available on this website for free. The book is not yet available as a paperback or kindle ebook, which will not be free.

By reading this book (the full title), you will learn:

1.     How the spirit created the mind, the mind controls the brain, and the brain controls the body.

2.     How symptoms and disease are caused by fear and negative, false beliefs about health, and how they can be healed by knowledge that changes those beliefs, kills the fear, and emboldens the sufferer to quickly resume normal activities.

3.     How exactly miracles were, and are, performed.

4.     The real reason for human suffering and how it can ultimately be resolved.

5.     How our relationships with the outside world and other people are shaped by our beliefs and can be changed by a shift in mindset.

6.     Insights about healing mindbody symptoms and diseases through Christian prayer and/or mindbody knowledge. (There is a secular option).

7.     How to master and overcome desire, fear and negativity for peace of mind.

8.     How to find salvation and hold onto it in a troubled world, with the reward of eternal life, thanks to Christ and his hidden teachings about spiritual rebirth.

9.     Those teachings are clearly explained and revealed in this book so that the reader comes to a true understanding of Christianity.

10.     The origin and ultimate fate of humanity and the earth, with reference to The Book of Revelation and other Bible prophecies.

Read part 1 here or download the full pdf of Godmindbody parts 1 and 2:

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Jesus ascending to heaven

Godmindbody: The Beginning and The End of the World, How to Heal TMS (Chronic Pain, Anxiety, Depression, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Ankylosing Spondylitis, IBS and Other Mindbody Symptoms) and Live Forever, with Detailed Explanations of Doctor Sarno’s Work, Genesis, The Gospel of John, The Book of Isaiah, The Book of Daniel, The Olivet Discourse, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians and The Book of Revelation

By Robert Ensor

This book is dedicated to my father, God, who inspired it.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank God for helping me out many times during the course of writing this book, and my mother, for her constant support, as well as Steve Ozanich and the late Doctor John Sarno. The mindbody part of this book draws upon their work, which helped me to recover. None of this would have been possible without God’s inspiration, and permission.

Copyright © 2025 Robert Ensor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. The author’s moral rights have been asserted. First Published May 2025.

All Bible quotations, unless otherwise stated or referenced, are taken from the online World English Bible, which is in the public domain. It is available at the following link: https://ebible.org/eng-web/index.htm

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, therapist or a healthcare professional – merely a concerned layperson (!) – and nothing in this book should be considered medical advice. Nor should it be considered a substitute for diagnoses, prescriptions and treatments from qualified doctors. If you have symptoms, I recommend that you see a doctor to rule out anything serious. It is also recommended that you only undertake any of the methods referenced in this book under the supervision of your physician. Some of those methods involve talking about stressful life events; if you have a diagnosed psychosis or other psychiatric condition this should only be done with the supervision of your doctor or psychiatrist.

Do you know what’s waiting beyond that beach? Immortality! Take it, it’s yours!– Brad Pitt as Achilles, Troy (2004)

No one, when he has lit a lamp, covers it with a container or puts it under a bed; but puts it on a stand, that those who enter in may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not be revealed, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. Be careful therefore how you hear.

­­– Jesus, Luke 8:16–18. World English Bible.

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.– Jesus, 8:32. World English Bible.

Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is valid, because I know where I come from, and where I am going.– Jesus, John 8:14. World English Bible.

For everyone who asks, receives. He who seeks, finds.– Jesus, Matthew 7:8. World English Bible.

I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world. – Matthew 13:34. Psalm 78:2. World English Bible.

The Treasure Map

Around the time of the fall, the Lord buried some treasure in a field. His farmers and their families continued to work in the field, unaware of the riches beneath their feet. Then the Lord sent his Son to announce the existence and location of the treasure by means of riddles, stories and hints. Despite clear displays of his wealth, most ignored or hated the Lord’s Son, but some took his advice, and found the treasure, and toiled no more. Years later, the Lord’s Son showed his son where the treasure was buried, and commissioned him to draw and disseminate a detailed map, revealing the precise location of the treasure, along with instructions on how best to dig it up, for the harvest time was drawing near, when the field would be ploughed.

Therefore, when the harvest is over, and the wheat separated from the chaff, do not say, we did not know where the treasure was buried.

The Sword in the Stone

Legend has it that a sword lodged in a stone miraculously descended from the sky on Christmas Eve. The sword was called Excalibur. The stone was inscribed with the following words: ‘whoever pulls the sword from this stone shall be the rightful King of England.’ The nobles and strongmen of the realm could not move the blade from its resting place. One day the boy Arthur, who was not believed to be of royal blood, easily pulled the sword from the stone. This act led to him being acclaimed King of England, and it was revealed that he was the son of King Uther Pendragon. The blade Excalibur was exceedingly sharp and strong. It was able to cut through steel and blinded Arthur’s enemies when drawn in battle. Two phrases were engraved on opposite sides of the blade: ‘take me up’ and ‘cast me away’. The scabbard was accounted of even greater value, as it prevented the wearer from bleeding, conferring de facto invincibility in battle. Excalibur is a metaphor for the power of almighty God. Only those who are chosen can wield it. As with the sword in the stone, only God’s chosen – which is to say, everyone who truly wants it – will be able to claim all of the knowledge contained herein.

The Holy Grail

Parsifal spent his youth looking for the Holy Grail, the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper and later by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood of Christ. The grail bestows immortality and great power upon those who possess it. Parsifal searched far and wide for the grail, getting into many adventures and encountering innumerable difficulties. Only when he was wearied by his travels did Parsifal discover that the true grail is the human body when it is filled with the spiritualised blood of Christ, and that to find it, all he had to do was ask for it.

The Herd

A herd of 100 sheep were pastured on a field beside a cliff. The shepherd came to feed them. He was a good shepherd. One sheep was irrationally frightened of the shepherd and ran in the direction of the cliff. Acting on herd instinct, the other sheep followed her. They all fell off the cliff to their deaths. Except for one sheep, who ran towards the good shepherd when she heard his voice, instead of following the herd towards destruction. This sheep was fed, and taken to a better pasture.

Introduction: The Big Questions, Answered

What is the origin of humanity and the universe? Where are we headed? How can diseases be healed, efficiently, cheaply and even freely? How can we find peace of mind? What is the key to immortality? What is the meaning of life? These are the central questions confronting humanity, past and present. For millennia, the answers proved elusive. In our jaded age, many people still think they are unanswered, unanswerable, or that only science can shed light on them. But the science of today only describes the observable universe. It thereby remains ignorant of root causes, which are invisible, and unable to satisfactorily address the fundamental questions. Centuries of scientific materialism and decades of postmodernism have left western culture with a perceived lack of meaning, that has plunged us into crisis.

In reality, the answer to all of the big questions above was provided long ago by Jesus and the prophets. The short version of that answer can be given as a single word.

God.

The rest of this book is a longer version. All is revealed and explained, as clearly and briefly as I am presently able. Insofar as is possible, evidence and logic are deployed, to satisfy modern scepticism. For example, there are instructions on how to prove the existence of God to oneself. If you think these claims are bold, read on and judge for yourself, but bear in mind that the truth is only revealed to those who want to know it, and once it is known, ‘forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing,’ is no longer a valid excuse.[i] With knowledge comes responsibility.

Ignorance is not a perfect excuse, however, because our knowledge is a function of our will; when we really want to know something, we find it out. Nonetheless, God may forgive ignorance if he wishes; that is his prerogative.

There is a limit as to how much I know, of course, but this book is not limited by God, it is limited by me; at the time of composition, there was only so much truth I could handle. God’s candour is amazing, and it demonstrates that the rules have changed in view of the lateness of the hour.

The final version of Godmindbody will have three parts and be available as an ebook and a paperback. This version, available online and as a pdf, contains only Parts 1 and 2, which are primarily about mindbody healing, prayer and salvation. Part 3, which is concerned with Bible prophecy, is not included in this document as it is not yet finished.

[i] Luke 23:34. World English Bible.

Part 1: Mindbody

I will begin by discussing what is perhaps the most urgent problem. The problem of sickness.

Whilst discovering the work of Doctor Sarno, Steve Ozanich and almost all the other mindbody leaders, recovering from a vast array of severe and debilitating symptoms, writing the amazon bestseller The Mind Solution: Healing TMS Pain with Doctor Sarno and joining the esoteric order of mindbody coaches, I have been constantly refining my coaching techniques, always looking for ways to make the process more efficient. I have consulted with a variety of clients and spoken with most of the leading experts in the field over the past 18+ months. What follows is the simplest solution for TMS that I have been able to devise. Simplicity is necessary with TMS because there is a tendency for perfectionists and people in general to overcomplicate; this applies to practitioners and sufferers alike, my former self included. Maybe I’m still doing it to some extent and my next book will be three words long.

What is TMS? TMS, or Tension Myositis Syndrome, was discovered by Doctor John Sarno of New York’s Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in the 1970’s. It was later updated to stand for The Mindbody Syndrome. Over the decades, TMS became a catch-all acronym for a wide variety of psychosomatic conditions and symptoms, including but not limited to: anxiety, depression, addiction, chronic pain (including most herniated discs, most osteoarthritis, most stenosis, spondylolisthesis, spondylolysis, spina bifida occulta, bone spurs, coccydynia, and scoliosis, bursitis, tendonitis, pinched nerves, sciatica, and ‘strained’ muscles, partial tears or ruptures of tendons and ligaments and repetitive stress injuries), endometriosis, whiplash, frozen shoulder, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME), hay fever, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Raynaud’s, perceived food intolerances, psoriasis, Long Covid, indigestion, heartburn, eczema, TMJ (temporomandibular joint), insomnia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, brain fog, Fibromyalgia, migraines and similar conditions. People have healed from all of the above using mindbody methods and information.

Steve Ozanich and I have made the term TMS still more inclusive. For me, every chronic, endogenous disease is mindbody. That includes autoimmune diseases. In one sense, all ailments and injuries are mindbody, because the universe is generated by the mind of God. People have healed from Ankylosing Spondylitis (my client Ozzy and possibly myself included), Multiple Sclerosis,[i] Lyme Disease[ii] and even cancer using mindbody methods, brain retraining or something very similar. The proof is in the pudding that I and others who were severely lactose intolerant are now able to eat. The mindbody approach does not work in every case, but if even one person is able to heal an illness, then it obviously can be done.

Sarno noticed that most of his pain patients had a certain personality profile. They were nice people. They were perfectionists.[iii] They were anxious and tended to bottle up anger rather than voice it. This led him to the conclusion that TMS was caused by repressed emotions, especially rage.[iv] The unconscious is the part of the mind that we are not aware of and repression is the process of rejecting a memory, idea or emotion from the ego – one’s conscious personality. Doctor Sarno believed symptoms were a distraction from these threatening emotions, that prevented the sufferer from being overwhelmed by the unpleasant feeling. Sarno also observed that mindbody ailments come and go like fads.[v] Hysteria was a leading ailment among Belle Époque women; since Breuer and Freud blew the whistle on it as a ‘conversion’ disorder, it is virtually obsolete. Ulcers were frequent back in the 1930’s but are less common now that people know they are stress-induced. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome wasn’t prevalent until the '70s, despite the fact that typing was physically harder on old typewriters than it is on modern computers.[vi] Food intolerances were almost unheard of as recently as the 1990’s, but are now very common. The human body doesn’t change much on a structural level over a few generations, but this strange historical picture is entirely consistent with psychologically caused pain, spread by shifting misinformation trends and fear.

The manifestations of ‘classic’ TMS are as follows: symmetrical pain (structural damage is unlikely to be perfectly symmetrical), symptoms that follow a certain sequence (e.g. first back pain, then knee pain, then diarrhoea), symptoms that tend to occur during periods of relative inactivity such as weekends, holidays, retirement, and unemployment (when the mind is not preoccupied with something else a.k.a ‘holiday syndrome’),[vii] symptoms associated with obviously arbitrary stimuli (such as feeling tired when getting even one minute less than seven hours sleep at night or suffering insomnia every second Wednesday of July), symptoms worsening the more you think about them, symptoms worsening the more you worry about them, symptom onset associated with stress or just after a stressful period, symptoms that shift location, symptoms that come and go (if pain were truly structurally caused, it almost certainly wouldn’t vanish all of a sudden), pain that improves with movement or exercise (if the pain was structurally caused, it would probably worsen when increasing physical stress is placed on the supposedly ‘damaged’ area) and symptoms that substitute for each other (e.g. back pain replaced by stomach upset or anxiety).

TMS pain can be sharp, dull, heavy, burning or tingling.[viii] Certain muscles may be palpably tense or tight in TMS.[ix] Sometimes this leads to visible postural issues and lop-sidedness, which are part of TMS and healable. Popping, clicking, tearing and cracking noises have presented no obstacle to recovery either. Acute attacks are quite common, followed by extra fear and pointless restrictions intended to avoid another flare up, that ironically make a recurrence likely.[x] A common pattern I have observed is that medical tests revealing some abnormality and diagnoses that carry a negative prognosis are frequently associated with the exacerbation of symptoms. All too often, sufferers believe they are physically broken and incurable after talking to their well-meaning doctor, eliciting a nocebo response. A nocebo effect occurs when negative beliefs about health lead to negative health outcomes. Proper medical diagnosis by physicians is nonetheless recommended, as rarely there is something serious going on that may be worth knowing about.

Although there are success stories for more serious conditions like autoimmune diseases and even cancer, in practice not everyone is able to successfully apply a TMS approach even to garden variety back pain – which can be extremely painful, though it is physically harmless – and people generally find it more difficult with serious diagnoses, if only because it is harder to believe healing can occur in these cases. Therefore, the TMS approach is not for everyone and some people may be better off with conventional therapies.

What about the role of genes in disease? Well, it is hard to tell what is due to the gene and what is caused by the fear of a given disease and the unintentional nocebo effect within a family. In many cases, genes don’t guarantee the individual will become sick. They are merely correlated with an illness. For example, most (but not all) people with Ankylosing Spondylitis have the HLA B27 gene. And yet, most people with the gene don’t have that disease. Correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation. In other words, just because two factors tend to coincide, it doesn’t mean that one is definitely the cause of the other. The field of epigenetics has shown that genes can be turned on or off. But the bottom line is, people with AS – such as my client Ozzy[xi] and Norman Cousins – have healed.

Only 10 – 20% of Doctor Sarno’s referrals accepted his TMS diagnosis and what it implied. Most of that open-minded minority went on to recover without being referred for psychotherapy. Therefore, accepting the mindbody nature of the problem is a prerequisite for successful mindbody healing and thorough emotional expression is not strictly necessary to recover. I will allow that sometimes, when there is a great deal of trauma that has been repressed, emotional expression can be profoundly therapeutic, and relieving the psychic tension may have something to do with that.

Perhaps the best scientific evidence for the efficacy of TMS therapy is the Boulder back pain study carried out by Alan Gordon and colleagues. The study found that 66% of subjects suffering from chronic pain were cured or almost cured after four weeks of treatment with mindbody methods.[xii] Dr. Schubiner and colleagues have found that significant percentages of people with Fibromyalgia[xiii] and IBS[xiv] heal or improve through emotional awareness and expression, a mindbody technique. Noteworthy improvements have been reported in empirical studies testing meditation and journaling on autoimmune patients.[xv] The best scientific evidence that chronic disease is mentally generated though, is the adverse childhood events study, which found that conditions like autoimmune diseases, heart disease, cancer, depression and addiction were strongly correlated with adverse childhood events such as abuse, parental substance abuse, and growing up in a broken home.[xvi]

It is generally advisable to take scientific studies with a grain of salt, however, since there is potential for confirmation bias (certain hypotheses are under-investigated, due to paradigmatic preconceptions and lack of funding), spurious correlations and unexamined factors like beliefs and emotions to affect the outcome, as Steve Ozanich observed in his excellent book, Back Pain Permanent Healing: Understanding the Myths, Lies and Confusion. A placebo is a sham treatment with no active ingredients, that can create a positive effect on health through the patient’s positive expectations. The placebo effect is more powerful than is commonly thought. For example, in a study on Parkinson’s disease, many of the placebo group showed improvement in symptoms.[xvii] Moreover, due to decades of cultural conditioning that bad diets and stress have a negative impact on health, is it any surprise if elimination diets, therapy and journaling outperform placebo – a pill that subjects know has a 50% chance of being a dud – during double blind empirical studies? Likewise, once a medication has been approved by regulatory agencies, its placebo power will very likely increase because at that point consumers ‘know’ that it works, as opposed to clinical trials subjects, who were uncertain about efficacy and couldn’t be sure they weren’t taking a sugar pill. When a medication annihilates or diminishes a symptom on a physiological level, but the root cause hasn’t been understood, symptom substitutions[xviii] appear as side effects. For me, the best pieces of evidence are success stories from people who have healed and one’s own experience.

Sarno originally believed the physiological mechanism for TMS was oxygen deprivation via the circulatory system, muscles and nerves.[xix] Lately, researchers such as Dr. Howard Schubiner have identified neural misfire as a more likely culprit.[xx] Like Doctor Sarno, I believe that the mind can use any organ or bodily system to generate symptoms.[xxi] That being said, it is impossible to feel pain without a nervous system, and of course the nervous system is connected to, and controlled from, the brain. For example, some paraplegics cannot feel injuries to their legs because the nervous system is not functioning there. The brain is the command and control centre of the body. But it is, after all, merely the seat of the mind. We know the mind or soul can exist independently from the brain, and controls the brain, from various evidentiary sources. For example, people and animals missing large chunks of brain matter have retained memories and been capable of more or less normal functioning.[xxii] Some people with unusually small brains possess normal intelligence.[xxiii]

People like Anita Moorjani (whose work I found via Steve Ozanich) have had near death experiences and reported verified details of what was going on in the outside world (even beyond the hospital) while they were unconscious. Anita doesn’t believe conventional treatment helped her to heal from cancer believed to be terminal. Instead, she attributes her recovery to the loss of fear she derived from her experience of the afterlife.[xxiv]

A seven-year-old named Katie almost drowned in a swimming pool and entered a coma. Doctors were pessimistic, but she recovered within three days. When she returned for a follow up, she accurately described the doctors who treated her, and the medical procedures they used. Katie recounted how she met an angel who reunited her with her dead relatives. She followed her family home and was able to correctly report what they ate, what they did, and what clothes they wore. Then she met Jesus and the Heavenly Father. Jesus asked her if she wanted to see her mother. Katie said, ‘yes’, and woke from her coma. Many near death experiences involving Jesus have similar features and confirmed details.[xxv]

There is very strong evidence for extrasensory perception (ESP), the ability to perceive what is happening at a distance using the mind alone, without the aid of the senses. SRI international practically proved the existence of ESP during the Cold War. The chances of their findings being coincidental are less than ‘one in a billion’.[xxvi] There is also empirical evidence that distant healing, a form of psychokinesis in which the healer prays for or intends the recovery of someone at a significant remove, was able to help AIDS patients.[xxvii]

Strong evidence for reincarnation has been furnished by the likes of Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, who studied case histories of over 2,000 children with past life memories and experiences. Some of them demonstrated the ability to speak a foreign language they had never heard before; others provided data that Stevenson was able to corroborate from reports of the deceased.[xxviii] For example, a Sri Lankan baby had an innate phobia of buses and baths. The child later recounted a past life in which she was knocked into a flooded rice paddy by a bus and drowned. Details of a dead girl matching that description, whose family lived a few kilometres away, were later confirmed.[xxix] To me, such stories are significant, as they prove the existence of a soul capable of surviving bodily death, and that the soul’s history can influence subsequent incarnations. The only alternative explanation is that these people are psychic, but if that were so, isn’t it odd that they typically only seem to be psychic in relation to specific dead people?[xxx] It should be noted that some people do not reincarnate, for good or bad reasons, and some have never had a previous life. Most of those who have had prior incarnations don’t recall them automatically because they don’t really want to remember, and they may become ill before their time if they were burdened with the past life trauma. One must typically demonstrate that one is ready to remember, and truly want to remember, to receive genuine information about previous lives. The exceptions to that rule are mostly children whose prior existence was terminated abruptly, and still feel a connection to their former life or family.

But again, the best evidence that the mind controls the brain and body are the countless stories of people who recovered from various ailments by understanding and believing.

It is a scientific fact that the prefrontal cortex (associated with executive faculties such as decision making) and the limbic system (thought to house ‘primal’ subconscious emotions) interact heavily with the nervous system. The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is responsible for unconscious or involuntary biological processes. It regulates respiration, circulation, the digestive system, the immune system[xxxi], the genitourinary system, the skin, and much more. The implications of this fact are huge and largely unappreciated in the medical community. It means the brain controls the body. And the mind controls the brain. This should be obvious; limbs and digits respond to mental commands, after all.

The brain’s power over the immune system is highly important; when the immune system is weak, infections or tumours may develop and when it is overactive, autoimmunity may occur. People have had visible swellings and measurably high inflammation that resolved with a mindbody approach. I’ve had colds that disappeared instantaneously through prayer.

The order of causation for mindbody symptoms is thus: 1. Mind

2. Brain/nervous system 3. Rest of the body

Therefore, a shift in mental state can have profound implications when it comes to health.

But which mental states cause sickness?

Fear of symptoms and limiting beliefs about health.

Yes, the fight or flight response – the biological substrate of fear – is associated with TMS. But the bottom line is, we know this is true because when people cease to fear a mindbody ailment and believe deeply and fully that it will go away, it does. (You can fear things other than mindbody symptoms and still resolve the illness). When sufferers worry about a particular symptom, it is generated and/or exacerbated. When they get pessimistic about their health and prospects for recovery, or indulge in negative beliefs about their symptoms, TMS persists or worsens. These are general rules that you can apply to your own symptom history. Are symptoms associated with stress or do they appear just after a stressful period? Do they worsen when you worry about them? When you get pessimistic about your health and believe you’re incurable? Or when you do something that you believe exacerbates the symptoms? Do they get better when you do something that you believe will help? Have they gotten worse as fear-driven efforts to heal have increased? And every effort to heal is driven by fear. Fear that recovery won’t happen unless something is done, and a belief that something needs to be done in order to feel better – otherwise, why do it?

But what exactly is behind this fear?

There is obviously something inside of everyone that wants to mess us up. In order to win a war, you must first acknowledge the existence of the opponent. Then you must understand him or her. As the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, ‘if you know yourself and know your enemy, you will win a hundred battles’. Freud observed the self-destructive tendency of the human psyche during the carnage of the First World War. He called it Thanatos, the death drive, and by the end of his career, he was so impressed with its power that he put it on an equal footing with the sex drive (a major compliment, coming from him).[xxxii] Human history and behaviour make absolutely no sense without such a mental factor. I am talking about the deceiver.

The deceiver is an archetype; an innate inner personality. Everyone has one. It comes with the equipment. The deceiver is the fear voice in your head, the mental factor that seeks to make false associations between arbitrary stimuli and symptoms, tries to tempt you into adopting harmful false beliefs about health, people and the world that may become self-fulfilling prophecies, attempts to introduce unnecessary interventions that prolong and exacerbate suffering, tricks people into taking placebos that don’t last, overthinks and overcomplicates the situation, bringing about tremendous confusion amongst healthcare practitioners and sufferers alike, distracts from the truth and above all the spirit, represses the contents of the unconscious and sees these buried traits in others via projection, causes strong materialistic desires, compulsive behaviours and addictions. The deceiver orchestrates and generates most negative emotions. Such a psychological factor undoubtedly exists; the experience of fear, desire, suffering and symptoms that are the deceiver’s primary effects is about as empirical as it gets, since the definition of empirical is ‘based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation and experience rather than theory or pure logic.’[xxxiii] Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am’ is an empiricist mantra, but you mustn’t confuse yourself with the deceiver.[xxxiv] The ego or mind is not identical with the deceiver because it is capable of shaking off its influence and acting contrary to its intentions. Similarly, the brain is involved in TMS, but it is downstream of the deceiver, which manifests in places like the amygdala. ‘For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of darkness in this age and against the spiritual forces of wickedness….’[xxxv]

In her last days, my gran left a message for the family to read, knowing we would probably only see it when she was dead. It was about the importance of not going against what you want merely to fit in with others. She was absolutely right. It was an urgent, timely and wise message. One of the deceiver’s best tactics is to exploit humanity’s impulse to conform and fear of social disapprobation. I have always been unpopular, and the many rejections I have endured in my life only served to make me more and more sceptical of ‘conventional wisdom’. I was only able to learn about mindbody healing and Christian salvation because of my innate nonconformity, for which I thank God. The fact that Christianity and TMS are somewhat countercultural was actually a selling point for me, whereas it has put countless others off. The dangers of conformity are stated in the Bible. For one, there is the story of the Gadarene swine. When Jesus cast demons from two madmen into the swine, the herd ran off a cliff to their death.[xxxvi] This episode illustrates not only the dangers of the herd instinct, and rash panic, it also demonstrates the demonic origins of groupthink, since the pigs were possessed. Then there is Christ’s statement: ‘If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.’[xxxvii] Thus it is that in our present fallen world, God’s chosen are the odd ones out, belonging as they do to a different world. Christianity is not about fitting in. The Irish novelist and theologian C.S Lewis wrote in his book, Mere Christianity: ‘Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy occupied territory – that is what this world is.’ If the world had loved me, I probably wouldn’t have suffered enough and questioned enough modern shibboleths to find the measure of truth God has entrusted me with. But I am not advocating automatically going against the norm merely for the sake of being awkward, I am for learning and spreading the truth, which is usually not normal, because most people just don’t want to hear it, especially in our era. Without the tendency of the majority to blindly conform and follow orders, even when it goes against their own self-interest and/or what they believe to be right, the many atrocities of totalitarianism and tyranny would have been impossible. That is one of the most important lessons to take from the horrors of history, yet it is one we rarely hear. To pass God’s final period of testing will require a degree of nonconformity. Going with the crowd will not be enough. Instead of worrying about pleasing people, we should be concerned with pleasing God, by whom all will be judged.

Fear of symptoms and disease is at an all-time high in our society. The deceiver is running amok, going all out in a desperate bid to prevent the coming awakening of a significant section of humanity. Make no mistake, this is spiritual warfare. People are absorbing fear-inducing information about health and sickness through the internet and a growing number of screens, at an unprecedented rate. And this, at a time when most Americans have at least one chronic illness.[xxxviii] It’s no coincidence.

Chronic diseases are the leading drivers of the US’s staggering $4.5 trillion annual expenditure on healthcare.[xxxix] Chronic disease is estimated to cost $47 trillion worldwide by 2030.[xl] That’s without even considering the opportunity cost of working days lost to sickness, estimated at over £100 billion a year in the UK.[xli] This is not just a health problem; it is one of the biggest economic problems facing the world today. ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,’ is a quote often attributed to Einstein. To actually afford healthcare, we need to move from the current flawed diagnostic model of medicine towards a cheaper TMS model; doctors should present mindbody therapy as an option for chronic disease alongside conventional treatments.

The mental health crisis has also worsened in the last 20 years. Mental illness costs the US economy more than $280 billion annually.[xlii] This is not because people today have more trauma than the greatest generation that fought in two world wars and suffered the devastating Spanish influenza epidemic, or their ancestors who had to endure tuberculosis, The Black Death, high infant mortality rates and the ravages of the pox. No. It’s because of the rise of the internet. Psychological disorders, like TMS, are mind viruses that are increasingly contracted via the web. People read articles and watch videos online and become health or mental health conscious. They start to worry, ‘maybe there’s something wrong with me.’ Since TMS usually requires anxiety and/or depression, it follows that most of those who healed from TMS have also healed the anxiety and negative beliefs that caused it, at least regarding their symptoms.

From 2000 to 2020, the prevalence of chronic disease has risen in America by 7 or 8 million people every five years.[xliii] There was less fear-inducing information around 25 years ago and it was easier to ignore back in the good old days when people had flip phones and cumbersome desktop computers. The bombardment with bad, anxiety provoking news wasn’t as constant as it is now that people upload their whole lives to smartphones, carry them everywhere and check them compulsively. I advise people who can’t moderate their internet use to delete their social media and swap their smartphones for older models. Unless I need to find out something specific, I don’t look at the news. When it is normal to be miserable and sick, why be normal? But avoidance isn’t the only remedy; if alarmist information has made someone sick, they can heal, and the right understanding can make one immune to misguided information going forward, as Steve Ozanich has noted (his book The Great Pain Deception: Faulty Medical Advice is Making Us Worse outlines various ways that TMS can be engendered by exposure to false information, when people believe it). For the sake of balance, it should be noted that the internet is also being used to spread the truth, and that some technologies are undeniably convenient.

Modern problems have ancient solutions. Jesus said to two blind men who came to him because they believed he could heal them, ‘According to your faith be it done to you.’[xliv] And they could see. Christ had a talent for saying more in a sentence than others can in a book (or an entire library), and he adeptly summarised the whole game of sickness and recovery in a single line. Of course, there was more going on than mere belief on his end – Jesus received and directed the awesome power of the Holy Ghost – but all the people who came to him had to do was believe Jesus could heal them and it was done.

The power of belief is profound. People have healed or improved their symptoms with herbs, surgery, diets, supplements and meditation. A common theme is that most of them believed in their chosen method. The problems with placebos are that they tend to lose effectiveness over time or they must be adhered to indefinitely in order to keep symptoms at bay, because the root causes (misunderstanding and fear) remain unaddressed. Engaging in healing modalities consciously or unconsciously reflects and reinforces the belief that you are sick and sends that message to the brain, which can perpetuate the problem physiologically.

Even mindbody methods like journaling and somatic tracking are used by people because they’re afraid they won’t heal if they don’t practice them, and believe they need to use those modalities in order to heal. Fear is one of the main causes of TMS, so you can see how fear-driven methods can be ineffective for some people (an insight derived from Steve Ozanich’s book The Great Pain Deception: Faulty Medical Advice is Making Us Worse and Anita Moorjani’s Dying To Be Me). We know belief is an active ingredient in mindbody therapies because people who don’t believe that journaling or psychotherapy will heal their mindbody symptoms typically don’t get significant improvements no matter how much emotional work they put in. Those who believe the disorder is caused by repressed emotions and that expressing those emotions will cure it, get results. Because they believe in their method.

Placebos are intimately connected with nocebos. A nocebo is a negative expectation leading to a negative health outcome. You can’t have a placebo without a nocebo; they are two sides of the same coin. For example, journaling helped me get rid of my symptoms. But if I skipped a session, I’d have insomnia and wake up feeling tired or depressed. That was the nocebo, the flipside of my placebo. The mindbody methods are much better than physical remedies though, because at least when they work, it is evidence that the disorder is indeed psychogenic. When writing about emotions significantly improves back pain, that means it’s TMS, even if belief and not catharsis is the primary factor at play. So journaling and other mindbody methods can be helpful in that regard, but if you really want to go down those roads, please bear in mind the power of the placebo effect, do not become overdependent on the method, and know that ultimately all methods must be discontinued for healing to be complete and total. Therefore, the end goal should be to stop using mindbody methods, even if they’re working.

This applies to somatic tracking too. It has worked well for some people. Partly, no doubt, due to the placebo effect, but also because it associates symptoms with a state of reduced fear or even relaxation. Effective as it has been shown to be, however, somatic tracking is not a perfect modality because, in addition to the above cited risks that come with any method or healing routine, it focuses attention on symptoms. In my experience, giving attention to symptoms either makes them worse, prolongs them or makes them harder to get rid of than ignoring them, once they are well understood. People who are fully healed typically don’t think much about the pain or engage in any activities related to it at all. It is easier not to believe scammers if they are not in your face 24/7. And it is easier to resist temptation when your mind isn’t seething with tempting thoughts.

Temptation is one of the deceiver’s favourite ways to distract and manipulate humanity. Buddha said that desire is the cause of suffering. If a person is not predominantly afraid, he or she is generally consumed with desires for money, sex, love and/or status, which are so prevalent in our society that most people have never even considered opting out of them. Think about it. You can’t suffer – mentally, at least – unless you wish things were different from the way they are. Desire is the same thing as fear, because if you want something, by definition you worry about not getting it. And we’ve seen the deleterious effects of fear... Then there’s the anger and sadness that follows when your desires are frustrated. When repressed, these may contribute to sickness. And even if you get what you want, you feel terrible grief when it is absent.

Of course, getting married and having children are not sins, but they place so many demands on people’s time that it becomes much harder to render service to God. Hence the single, celibate Saint Paul said, ‘But I say to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them to remain even as I am.’[xlv] Because: ‘He who is unmarried is concerned for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he who is married is concerned for the things of the world, how he may please his wife.’[xlvi] This is not a blanket recommendation to divorce or break up, though. Commitments should be honoured, once undertaken, though there are exceptions. Paul said: ‘Are you bound to a wife? Don’t seek to be freed.’[xlvii]

Of course, desires for food, water, and shelter are morally acceptable and to some extent unavoidable. Desires to help others, progress spiritually, and connect with God are beneficial and laudable. Obviously, not all desire is bad; it’s usually the excessively materialistic and self-centred kinds that steal peace of mind and cause trouble. Obsessions with money, sex, etc. are attempts to fill an emotional hole that can only be filled by God. They are distractions that generate suffering, which paradoxically pushes some back to God. God is the only true and lasting solution for the basic insecurity of humanity, because that insecurity arose as a result of separation from him. Being in the spirit, not in the flesh, insulates one against temptations and enables the practical application of Christ’s commandments.[xlviii] The trick is not to try to be without any desire at all, but to sublimate the lower desires into altruistic ones.

Some of you may be wondering, ‘Don’t repressed emotions, desires and stress cause sickness?’ Well, yes, but they are secondary to fear and negative expectations. A certain amount of repression is inevitable and beneficial; without it, there would be a lot more craziness in the world. The unconscious is a somewhat nebulous and often misleading rabbit hole that can prove difficult for many people to figure out, so making a therapy hinge upon it is far from ideal. Though symptoms may sometimes be symbolic, it is unproductive to obsessively psychoanalyse every twinge, as that focuses further attention on the problem. The deceiver is not above using placebo effects associated with catharsis to send you off on a tangent. Also, it’s hard to disentangle stress and belief. Much harder than many people in mindbody world think. Since it was popularised in the mid 20th century, the concept of stress has gained cultural currency. People ‘know’ that stress is a major factor in diseases like cancer, heart disease and stroke and that awareness has definitely been raised in the past 50 years. As consciousness of stress has increased, chronic disease rates have risen…In short, the idea of stress is at least partly a nocebo. If we believe stress makes us sick, it does.

This brings us to the key concept of conditioning. The Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov kept a kennel of dogs. He rang a bell at the same time he gave the dogs food. Pretty soon, Pavlov didn’t even have to present food to make the dogs salivate; he only had to ring the bell. The dogs had been conditioned to associate the bell with food, eliciting the physiological response of salivation. Conditioning is all about these false associations. Associate bending with back pain, and every time you bend there is a chance your back will hurt. Believe eating gluten will upset your bowels, and it will. Believe missing a vitamin or supplement will cause fatigue, and it will. Believe comfy chairs will make your back hurt, and they will.[xlix] Believe deeply enough in any ritual, however absurd, and it becomes your reality. It is imperative to recognises these patterns for what they are – conditioned responses. False associations of (insert activity or inactivity here) with symptoms that become self-fulfilling prophecies if they are believed. The deceiver frequently tries to make these arbitrary associations in the minds of TMS sufferers, but if we choose not to believe him, he is powerless; conditioning relies on expectation. A particularly common conditioned response with TMS sufferers is for the deceiver to associate pain with a perceived, real or old injury. It takes around 6 weeks for broken bones and torn ligaments to heal, and they are only painful for part of that time.[l] Pain lasting longer than that is probably TMS. The injury is merely used by the deceiver as a pretext to kickstart and prolong pain. The way to unravel a conditioning pattern is to understand it for what it is – a mental construct – cease to believe in it and act accordingly.

Fear of symptoms is exacerbated by the belief that the body is somehow broken or worn out due to aging. Sarno believed that anger at mortality and aging was a large cause of TMS. A far bigger problem is that people tend to expect their health to worsen as they get older, which very frequently becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, or significantly exacerbates the symptomatic effects of genuine structural decay. ‘Physical’ problems seem harder – if not impossible – to fix and therefore create more anxiety, which is why the deceiver tends to gravitate towards them as an explanation for pain. But Sarno’s work, and the empirical evidence, has demonstrated that the body is more robust than people think. That many people without symptoms or disability have osteoarthritis,[li] herniated discs[lii] and torn rotator cuffs[liii]. Conversely, many people without any structural abnormalities at all are disabled by chronic pain.[liv] Except in rare, severe cases, the structural issues listed above are normal abnormalities. They are not the true cause of pain; the fear and beliefs are, via the nervous system. The principles of normal abnormalities and what I call ‘painful normalities’ are of much broader applicability than previously thought. Dr. Schubiner has noted that the vast majority of people with so-called ‘food allergies’ have perceived food intolerances and are suffering from a purely conditioned response, because typically nothing shows up on medical allergen tests (genuine allergies can be more dangerous).[lv] People have healed despite having Epstein-Barr infections,[lvi] Lyme tics and SiBO,[lvii] meaning that these phenomena are either normal abnormalities that don’t need to cause symptoms or healable on a physical level with TMS methods. The amyloid plaques typical of Alzheimer’s have even been found in asymptomatic individuals.[lviii] I am not suggesting that it is impossible for structural problems themselves to be healed, either. I myself healed lordosis – a back to front curvature of the spine – and grew a couple of inches during the course of my recovery, at an age when people have supposedly stopped growing. Joe Dispenza recovered from six broken vertebrae with a prognosis of lifelong paralysis through visualisation (backed by belief).[lix] Understanding this information about structural issues is vital to knowledge therapy, because knowledge kills fear and changes beliefs. When belief in recovery is total, and fear is absent or very low, mindbody symptoms vanish. That’s how people have healed merely by reading Sarno’s books and resuming normal activities.

So what is the root cause of sickness?

Somewhere along the way, almost all sick people (with a few exceptions, e.g. those with severe cognitive disability), decided to believe there was something wrong with them or at least doubted their health. With that belief came the worries ‘I might get worse,’ and ‘I might not recover.’ Followed by, ‘Maybe I should do something,’ and ‘I need to do something!’. Then, occasionally, come the thoughts, ‘I am incurable’ and ‘I will get worse.’ The way to heal is to remove this fear and uncertainty and blast apart the nocebo and limiting beliefs by simply learning about TMS and deciding, ‘I will definitely make a full recovery.’ Doing so corrects the root causes of TMS, which are negative beliefs about health, and the associated fear of symptoms, that are abolished in those who really believe those symptoms will disappear easily.

My recovery started with such a decision. Before I asked and received, I had to decide to ask Christ for help. To be optimally effective, it has to be a decision informed by the TMS knowledge, the knowledge that negative beliefs and fear caused the sickness, so lack of fear and belief in recovery can end it, because other people have done so before with the same condition and the same – or a similar – approach. There must be no doubt, no uncertainty; total conviction. Then, having received its marching orders from the mind, the brain orders the nervous system (and other systems) to stop screwing around and symptoms go away.

Once this decision has been made, what do we do about the deceiver on a daily basis? Recognise it as the cause of TMS, disidentify from it and do not believe it or indulge it. This is easy when you’ve caught the deceiver in a lie or found inconsistencies in the symptom history. There are sometimes occasions when the lactose intolerant ate cheese without issue, for example. Once you’ve convinced yourself this fear voice is not only not to be trusted or listened to, it is actually harmful, then you will be able to ignore it. Just like we ignore scammers. Once we know they are lying, we can never really believe a word they say again and just ‘send to junk’. Redirect focus from the deceiver to something interesting, something you enjoy, positive thoughts, healthy beliefs, your work (the devil makes work for idle hands), or simply the present moment.

Your headspace does not need to be 100% clear of health worries to heal totally, because some thoughts aren’t yours; they come from the deceiver. All you have to do, once you believe you’ll recover, is to not allow the deceiver to change your mind. Just don’t identify with or choose to believe the deceiver, though this is easier to do when you understand what is going on and are able to ignore it as an unhelpful distraction. Like the serpent in the garden, or an unscrupulous tech company, the deceiver cannot do anything without your permission. That’s why it is intent upon getting you to believe it. But if you believe the deceiver will regularly probe your psyche for weaknesses, it will. If you believe it’ll give up quickly, it will. A fear obviously cannot grow to harmful levels unless you believe it. Otherwise, it’s just ridiculous nonsense that is impossible to take seriously, like the boogeyman. Therefore, it really all comes down to what we choose to believe, as Jesus said. Should you find yourself agreeing with the deceiver, all you have to do is realise what occurred and believe in recovery again.

These principles apply to limiting beliefs about oneself in relationship to others, too. For example, some people believe that nobody likes them, and regardless of their actual qualities, nobody does. Conditioning patterns also affect our outer worlds, which explains why people find themselves encountering similar people and similar situations again and again, often in ways that seem beyond their control. These patterns can even span multiple generations and incarnations, with recurring tragedies and comedies taking place against different backdrops, in changing period dress. The mindbody connection is really a mindmatter connection, which extends beyond the body. My book, The Ghost Within: My Experience of Paranormal Activity and My Steps to Get Rid of ‘Ghosts’, ‘Hauntings’ and ‘Poltergeists’ By Understanding What They Really Are contains more information about the mind’s power over matter in general.

Sometimes, in the absence of solid understanding and belief, the deceiver goes fishing. That is, he generates symptoms out of the blue and tries to get you to take the bait by blaming some physical factor for the symptom, even if you didn’t believe in that theory beforehand. This may be a sneaky attempt to obtain ‘plausible deniability’ for when you learn about the nocebo effect. The deceiver is capable of thinking several moves ahead. The deceiver’s faculty of extrasensory perception, which it shares with the mind in general, as well as its unconscious ‘autopilot’ component (all archetypes are both conscious and unconscious), explains why people get reactions to mould or foods even when they didn’t consciously know these were present, and why the deceiver generates neural mindbody pain in areas with a previously unknown structural abnormality that later comes to light through medical testing, but is proven to be innocuous when comprehension of TMS information results in healing. It is vital to understand what has occurred, and such cases can only be explained by the deceiver, a malignant inner trickster.[lx]

It should however be noted that not all the deceiver’s fears become self-fulfilling prophecies if you believe in them. Some are just totally groundless, no matter how much we worry. A person with neuroplastic pain and zero structural damage probably won’t give themselves a herniated disc, no matter how much they fret about having one, for example. Let’s not fear fear itself.

The biggest stumbling block in a TMS recovery, once the mindbody nature of the problem has been accepted and some initial headway has been made, is what Doctor Sarno called the symptom imperative. I call it the symptom substitution, because sometimes – NOT always – when the original symptom subsides, the pain shifts location or another symptom altogether takes its place. Symptom imperative tends to take the form of whatever ailment the sufferer fears a lot (even if it is only a simulation of an illness) or ailments you do not consider to be TMS. This element of attempted deception is why I insist an inner personality is behind symptoms, and it is why a lot of people get rattled. They believe the new symptom is different. As a general rule of thumb, if it cropped up after the original mindbody pain went away, it’s a symptom substitution. In other words, the symptom substitution is TMS, like the original complaint, and can be addressed the same way. The nervous system is systemic; it is present throughout the body. The deceiver can use it to generate pains and symptoms anywhere or in any other system, if the original problem is no longer getting attention. The people who overcome the symptom substitution are those who recognise it as such when it appears and remain totally unfazed by it.

How do we do that?

Well, other than prayer, the secret to remaining unmoved by the symptom substitution is the secret to healing TMS; to know that it will go away if you don’t worry about it. When my back pain and digestive problems began to ease, my feet swelled up massively. I refused to be alarmed and kept up my routine of walking five miles per day because I knew it was the symptom imperative – thanks to Dr. Sarno’s excellent description of the phenomenon. When he got a flare, my client Ozzy would adopt a defiant, unafraid attitude and say to the deceiver, ‘give me more!’ It worked. When there is no fear of a mindbody symptom, healing has either already occurred or it is inevitable. Mindbody pain minus dread is just pain, like a harmless blister or a mild electric shock. It cannot continue indefinitely without a ready supply of fear and nocebo to feed off. Those who overcome the first symptom imperative will likely go on to heal completely, because if they can see through one trick, they will probably see through anything else the deceiver tries to pull. Bear in mind that expecting the symptom substitution to occur may generate it.

The next step, once TMS is properly understood, and a decision has been made to heal, is (as Dr. Sarno said) to cease all unnecessary interventions and resume all normal activities, including the most vigorous.[lxi] After the paralytic man’s desperation and belief drove him to Jesus, the Lord told him, ‘Get up and take your mat and go to your house.’[lxii] In other words, he got the man moving again. The definition of a full recovery, after all, includes a return to full functioning, which means there aren’t any special activities you need to do to feel okay or things you must avoid. Strict ‘healing’ routines are driven by fear (as Steve Ozanich has pointed out numerous times) and limiting beliefs. They must be dispensed with in order to heal. This generally only works with the right understanding and mindset. If you try to get back to normal with a mind full of worries and doubts, you may be in for a painful time and ought to work on comprehension and belief first.

Many people don’t think their healing interventions are unnecessary due to the deceiver’s trickery, so I’ll list some classics here. Vitamins. Supplements. Special diets, especially elimination diets. Ice packs, in the absence of visible acute swelling or injury. Special chairs. Yoga. Pilates. Chiropractic treatments. Stretches and lengthy warm-ups. ‘Strengthening exercises’ or physiotherapy.[lxiii] Journaling. Meditation. These are the kind of things to look out for. Not all of the above modalities are inherently bad. Sometimes, it is engaging in the activity in a fearful effort to prevent or remove mindbody symptoms that makes it unhelpful. If you want to get off your prescribed medications, it is recommended that you consult with your doctor about that as he or she will know about potential withdrawal effects, interactions and other pertinent factors.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide how to address your symptoms. Nobody can force you to do it one way or another, and we have to take responsibility for our own health decisions, rather than seeing ourselves as helpless victims of outside forces. That’s why I don’t blame doctors for making me sick; I had to believe most of them to get a nocebo effect, and a couple of doctors (Doctor A for anonymous in particular) actually pointed towards a psychosomatic causation, which I initially rejected. It was my choice, my mistake. But I’m not blaming anyone for being sick, because we can only act on what we know to be true at a given point in time. It is possible to make yourself sick without being at fault.

If you lose all your symptoms and continue to indulge in some pointless ritual, the symptoms will likely return because you are still showing fear to the deceiver. Actions speak louder than words. That being said, discontinuing all interventions can generate pushback from the deceiver. I encountered resistance when I finally stopped journaling, and just had to wait out the symptom storm, which eventually cleared. But then I was expecting some opposition to such a ‘bold’ move. Any belief that ‘I have or will get symptoms because of this, that or the other’ is likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least in part. How do we resume normal activities? Well, there’s no one size fits all rule here. The pace is up to you. Some people do it quickly, some prefer a more gradual approach. Both have worked. If you prefer ‘graded exposure’, then a sensible rule is to introduce the least feared activities first, to build confidence, and the most feared activities last, particularly on days when you feel good. When resuming activities, a trick I used was to ambush the deceiver by not announcing my intentions or making detailed plans in advance, but just doing it spontaneously, when it felt right. That being said, it only worked because I believed excessive planning and talking would create extra difficulties. We set our own limits; to a large extent, mindbody recovery takes as long as we believe it will take. I thought it would take me a little over a year, and it did. The fact is, it can take a minute, an hour, a day, a week or a year. It depends on the beliefs. But when there’s very little to no fear of mindbody symptoms, and an unshakeable belief that they will disappear, they stop immediately or soon after.

Now, beliefs are important, but what we believe is a function of what we will. What we truly and deeply want. Consciously, of course, everyone wants to heal. Unconsciously, people have their reasons for being sick. Sometimes, it is necessary to address those reasons in order to facilitate belief in recovery. A common one is an unwillingness to admit a mistake was made by not adopting mindbody methods sooner. Neglecting the TMS approach is a mistake almost everyone makes, including the famous practitioners and success stories, so there’s no shame in admitting it to yourself. Everyone takes several wrong turnings before finding the right solution, because TMS is so obscure and counterintuitive and goes against all the materialistic ‘conventional wisdom’ we were taught growing up. People don’t like the idea they wasted years of their lives suffering, but the fact is, if the lesson is learned, that time wasn’t wasted; it was a necessary initiation into higher knowledge, knowledge that relatively few people acquire, and a milestone in one’s spiritual development. The suffering is vindicated by learning the truth and applying it to heal. It’s an inevitable part of the human experience, because we typically only learn through suffering. Would you rather be ‘right’, or healthy?

Another mental barrier to healing is secondary gain, the hidden reward from symptoms that keeps them going. That is, some sufferers are getting unconscious benefits from their ailments, such as not having to perform work they dislike, receiving sympathy from relatives or some form of financial compensation. Not everyone who is on benefits is sick due to secondary gain. And most of those whose conditions are driven by hidden rewards are unaware of what is going on; they aren’t malingerers scheming for time off work, they are simply victims of neglected unconscious wishes. Recognizing the hidden reward and resuming normal activities is sometimes enough to pull these folks out of the mire. Ultimately, there has to be a choice between health and the benefits of being sick. If someone wants the rewards of sickness more than they want to heal, they won’t heal. Nothing other than the salvation of the soul is more important than health, because without it, you can’t do or enjoy much.

Another obstacle is the fear of alienating friends, family and colleagues who don’t believe in TMS or are wedded to quack remedies. Again, what’s more important? Being liked, or being well? Anyone who doesn’t want you to heal isn’t your friend and you are better off without them. Those who unintentionally obstruct your healing are trickier. Of course, opposition can be minimized by tact. If someone is dead set against TMS or all for some alternative method, you can minimize how much you annoy them by making the pitch once, then giving up if it is rejected. You can soften the blow by saying that this approach is for me but not for everyone, which is true. Quite often, people soon forget about TMS if given the chance; the deceiver comes along like the Men in Black and wipes the memory away. This phenomenon also afflicts sufferers who forget key episodes of progress or symptom alleviation; Freud established over 100 years ago that forgetting is a form of repression,[lxiv] and in these instances the truth being repressed is the power of the mindbody connection. Jesus always maintained that some people would just never believe him, because they didn’t want to, and they belonged to the devil (deceiver).[lxv] He would give these people his message once and then move on to the next town.

Lastly, some people feel – consciously or unconsciously ­– that they don’t deserve to heal, and this makes them forget evidence of the mindbody connection and adopt limiting beliefs. Setting the intention to share their success story once they’re healed, or do something else good with their health, can restore a sense of self-worth to this group, and boost their motivation. The blind man Jesus healed in the Book of John was afflicted so that ‘the works of God might be revealed in him.’[lxvi] The same applies to others.

Let’s break down the mindbody healing process again. Incorrect information about health – that has usually been absorbed via the internet and devices – engenders false beliefs about health. Then comes the belief or suspicion that there is a sickness, which in turn generates more fear of symptoms, as there is now uncertainty about whether recovery is possible and anxiety about how bad the symptoms might get. Mindbody symptoms are thereby created, worsened and sustained via the mind’s power over the brain and the brain’s control over the nervous system and the body. False beliefs are dispelled by knowing the truth. Therefore, a proper understanding of TMS knowledge destroys false beliefs and fear, because it is impossible to worry about something you do not believe in. An informed decision is made to fully believe in a full recovery and the root cause of the issue – the belief that, ‘I’m sick’ – is thus corrected. The conviction that total healing is inevitable also destroys the fear that symptoms may never go away. When the fear is gone, the neural misfire is switched off and mindbody symptoms vanish. This often happens instantaneously or very rapidly. People are thus emboldened to discontinue all their counterproductive fear-driven modalities and live normally again, free of arbitrary self-imposed restrictions, partly because they now understand that false remedies ironically perpetuate the syndrome, and the deceiver’s deception is revealed.

But let’s go deeper. Why is there such a predisposition to fear and false beliefs? Why are so many allergic to the truth? It’s all due to the deceiver, of course. Why does the deceiver even exist, though? What is his purpose? He certainly isn’t trying to ‘protect’ us with the symptoms, because the fact is, they don’t protect. They may help to prevent embarrassing tantrums and other shows of ‘weakness’ that could negatively affect our social standing, but they don’t provide a net evolutionary advantage. Where exactly was the survival and reproductive advantage for early homo sapiens in rolling around on the ground in pain, vulnerable to innumerable predators? Where is it in our modern world? Indeed, if one was to imagine the ultimate Darwinian organism, highly adapted for survival, humanity, with all their manifold weaknesses, would definitely not be it.

The ultimate purpose of TMS and suffering in general is to force us to do an about face, stop looking outside ourselves to the material world with fear and desire, learn the truth and reunite with God in order to end the suffering once and for all. We separated from God out of lack of knowledge, desire and a wish to be our own bosses, like the prodigal son. That was the fall, and it was a fall from spirit into the lower world of matter.[lxvii]

Indeed, Adam and Eve were created three times. This first creation was the creation of the immaterial soul; ‘God created man in his own image’ means what it sounds like. It also implies that this was a soul without flesh,[lxviii] since God is a spirit. Then there was the second creation from the dust of the earth.[lxix] But Eden was nothing like what we think of as earth or matter today, it was light, spiritual matter, a deathless (plants excepted) realm in which Adam and Eve did not need to work for their food, closer to heaven than our present earth. There, the serpent (deceiver) tempted Eve, suggesting that to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which God had forbidden, would make her ‘like God, knowing good and evil.’[lxx] Eve ate, and Adam ate as well. Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was a third creation, a plunge into the hard, dying matter we know today. Only after eating this fruit did Adam and Eve cover themselves, because only after eating from the tree of knowledge was there any flesh (in the normal material sense) to be covered, and sufficient self-awareness to feel ashamed of being naked. The formation of the ego, the deceiver, and the fall into a physical body are intimately connected. The meaning behind ‘knowledge of good and evil’[lxxi] is that through the fall, humanity entered a world geared towards teaching people good from evil through tough, painful lessons. It is possible to learn enough to become somewhat ‘like God’ through Christ – though still obviously inferior to him – but the serpent omitted the part about all the suffering required to get there. He also neglected to mention that not everyone who fell is going to get back up again. Adam and Eve became mortal and had to toil for their food, because death and labour are conditions of the current material universe. God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and barred the gates, lest they eat of the tree of life. That, they would have to earn. Henceforth, heaven and earth separated. Eden, together with its life-giving tree, became part of heaven and Man went to earth, where he was further removed from the presence of God, though the alienation was never total, since we ‘live, move and have our being’[lxxii] in him. Those punishments were God’s curse for humanity’s disobedience.[lxxiii] Only by learning the terrible consequences of disobeying God, and experiencing great suffering, do people become willing to appeal to, reconcile with and obey the almighty, as a means of ending the suffering. That is the core truth of human existence and the Bible. It is the meaning of life.

Attractive as it may be to scapegoat others, we nonetheless cannot blame all of our pain on two distant ancestors; in truth, every soul that has ever incarnated on earth ate of the tree of knowledge and is responsible for his or her own fall. Every man his own Adam, every woman her own Eve. Adam and Eve were merely the first pair of souls to make the descent, who set an example for others to follow. This original sin or primordial mistake was however a mistake borne of youthful naivete, an inevitable consequence of inexperience, of souls who simply did not know any better. The fall was necessary for humanity to learn enough to come full circle as self-aware adult children of God, and return to the tree of life. The final answer to the question, ‘how can a good God permit so much pain and suffering?’ – the main reason some people don’t believe in God – is that every kind of soul who can exist, does, did or will exist, including those wilful enough to desire separation from the eternal God, who therefore found themselves in a mortal body and a world of transient forms, as well as those stubborn enough to remain unrepentant even until the end. When it comes to the unfortunate souls who are not chosen and never will be, God decided it was better that they should be than not be, even though that existence was never going to result in eternal life. The world often loves them,[lxxiv] a consolation quite foreign to the elect, who are usually fish out of water here on planet earth. Thus it is that those who have a hard time, who do not fit in, are gifted and cursed: ‘“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’[lxxv]

In short, suffering is God calling his chosen back to him. Pain demonstrates the limitations inherent to the flesh and creates a yearning in some for transcendence. The deceiver has a part to play in that and may be conceptualised as a kind of drill sergeant whose role is to unintentionally spur us on to graduate the rough and ready boot camp that is the current Earth. TMS is the beginning of that process for many in this sick age. To clarify, you don’t have to be religious or spiritual to heal TMS and, if you wish, the TMS parts of this book may be taken in isolation. Read Part 2 of Godmindbody here: https://www.robertensor.com/post/godmindbody-part-2-a-book-about-tms-and-christ

Endnotes

[i] Lowella, whose story is featured in The Mind Solution: Healing TMS Pain with Doctor Sarno.

[ii] The mindbody coach Rebecca Tolin was diagnosed with Lyme disease, among others, and recovered. Her story is shared in my book, The Mind Solution: Healing TMS Pain with Doctor Sarno.

[iii] Healing Back Pain (Reissue edition): The Mindbody Connection. 2018. Grand Central Publishing.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Sarno, J 2001. The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain. Grand Central Publishing.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Ibid.

[xi] https://www.robertensor.com/success-stories

[xii] Gordon, A, Ashar, Y et al. 2022. Effect of Pain Reprocessing Therapy vs Placebo and Usual Care for patients with Chronic Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. Jan 1; 79.

[xiii] Hsu, M, Schubiner, H, Lumley, S, Stracks, J, Clauw, D, Williams, D 2010. Sustained Pain Reduction Through Affective Self-Awareness in Fibromyalgia: A Randomized controlled trial. J Gen Intern Med. 25 (10).

[xiv] Thakur et al. 2017. Emotional Awareness and Expression Training Relieves Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Nuerogastroenterology and Motility. Vol 29; Issue 12.

[xv] Penberthy, J.K.; Chhabra, D.; Avitabile, N.; Penberthy, J.M.; Le, N.; Xu, Y.R.; Mainor, S.; Schiavone, N.; Katzenstein, P.; Lewis, J.E. Mindfulness based therapies for autoimmune diseases and related symptoms. OBM Integr. Complement. Med. 2018, 3, 1–11. Bombana et al. 2019. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy improves quality of life, anxiety, depression, coping in patients with SLE: a controlled randomized clinical trial. Advanced rheumatology. Smyth, JM et al. 1999. Effects of writing about stressful experiences on symptom reduction in patients with rheumatoid arthritis or asthma: a randomised trial. JAMA.

[xvi] Felitti VJ, Anda R, Nordenberg D, et al. 1998. Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. Am J Prev Med. 1998 May;14(4):245–58.

[xvii] C. McRae et al. 2004. “Effects of Perceived Treatment on Quality of Life and Medical Outcomes in a Double-blind Placebo Surgery trial. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2004;61(4):412-420. Cited in Ozanich, Steven Ray. 2011. The Great Pain Deception: How Faulty Medical Advice is Making Us Worse. Silver Cord Records, Inc. (1st edition).

[xviii] More on these later.

[xix] Healing Back Pain (Reissue edition): The Mindbody Connection. 2018. Grand Central Publishing.

[xx] Schubiner, Doctor Howard. 2017. Unlearn Your Pain: A 28 day process to reprogram your brain. MindBody Publishing. Pleasant Ridge, MI; 3rd edition.

[xxi] Healing Back Pain (Reissue edition): The Mindbody Connection. 2018. Grand Central Publishing.

[xxii] Talbot, Michael, 2024. The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality. Publishdrive.

[xxiii] Lachman, Gary. Wilson, Colin (Foreword). 2003. A Secret History of Consciousness. Lindisfarne Books.

[xxiv] Moorjani, Anita. 2022. Dying To Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing. Hay House Inc.

[xxv] Burke, J. Piper, D. (Foreword). 2015. Imagine Heaven. Baker Books.

[xxvi] Targ, Russell. 2012. The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities. Quest Books.

[xxvii] Fred Sicher, Elisabeth Targ, Dan Moore and Helene Smith. 1998. “A Randomized Double-Blind Study of the Effect of Distant Healing in a Population with Advanced AIDS”, Western Journal of Medicine 169.

[xxviii] Weiss, B. 2023. Many Lives, Many Masters. Piatkus.

[xxix] Fox, M. 2007. Ian Stevenson Dies at 88; Studied Claims of Past Lives. The New York Times.

[xxx] Reincarnation is not a part of church dogma, but it is hinted at in John 9, when the disciples asked Christ what a blind man did to be born with his affliction. The question reveals an implicit belief in reincarnation, because it assumes that people are capable of doing things before they are born. Then there are these verses from Matthew 17:12, uttered by Christ, ‘Elijah has come already, and they didn’t recognize him…then the disciples understood that he spoke to them of John the Baptizer.’ Another verse from Matthew (11:14) has Jesus saying of John the Baptist, he is ‘Elijah, who is to come,’ suggesting both a past and a future incarnation of John/Elijah. Reincarnation allows more room for error and more time for learning. It is fairer to judge a soul who has had multiple lives than it is to judge on the basis of a single incarnation, especially if that soul was born into desperate circumstances. Source for Bible quotes: World English Bible.

[xxxi] The hypothalamus, another brain structure, also has a known impact on immune function.

[xxxii] Freud, S. 1920. Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

[xxxiii] Oxford Languages. https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/

[xxxiv] Descartes, Rene. 1637. Discourse on the Method.

[xxxv] Ephesians 6:12. World English Bible.

[xxxvi] Matthew 8:28-34. World English Bible.

[xxxvii] John 15:18-19. World English Bible.

[xxxviii]https://www.cdc.gov/chronic-disease/about/index.html

[xxxix] https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/priorities/index.html

[xl] Hacker, K. 2024. The Burden of Chronic Disease. Mayo Clin Prov Innov Qual Outcomes. Jan 20; 8 (1).

[xli] Gregory, A. 2024. Hidden cost of UK workplace sickness rockets to £100 bn a year, report finds. The Guardian.

[xlii] https://news.yale.edu/2024/04/22/novel-study-quantifies-immense-economic-costs-mental-illness-us

[xliii] Holman, H. 2020. The Relation of the Chronic Disease Epidemic to the Health Care Crisis. ACR Open Rheumatol. Feb 19; 2 (3).

[xliv] Matthew 9:29. World English Bible.

[xlv] 1 Corinthians 7:8. World English Bible.

[xlvi] 1 Corinthians 7:32-33. World English Bible.

[xlvii] 1 Corinthians 7:27. World English Bible.

[xlviii] ‘But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if it is so that the Spirit of God dwells within you.’ Romans 8:9. World English Bible.

[xlix] Marc Sopher, 2003. To Be Or Not To Be…Pain Free: The MindBody Syndrome. AuthorHouse; 1st edition.

[l] Healing Back Pain (Reissue edition): The Mindbody Connection. 2018. Grand Central Publishing.

[li] Min Son et al. 2020. Absence of pain in subjects with advanced radiographic knee osteoarthritis. BMC Musculoskeletal disorders. Volume 21. Article no. 640.

[lii] Jensen, M et al. 1994. MRI of the lumbar spine in people without back pain. N England J Med. 331;69-73.

[liii] Larence, Rebekah et al. 2019. Asymptomatic Rotator Cuff Tears. JBJS Reviews. 7 (6).

[liv] Healing Back Pain (Reissue edition): The Mindbody Connection. 2018. Grand Central Publishing.

[lv] Schubiner, Doctor Howard. 2017. Unlearn Your Pain: A 28 day process to reprogram your brain. MindBody Publishing. Pleasant Ridge, MI; 3rd edition.

[lvi] The mindbody coach Rebecca Tolin is one such example.

[lvii] I had SiBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth), detected via stool test – for whatever that’s worth – and recovered anyway.

[lviii] Maté, G 2019 When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. Ebury Digital; 2nd edition.

[lix] https://drjoedispenza.com/dr-joes-blog/becoming-divine

[lx] Jung’s trickster archetype is somewhat similar to the deceiver but not as fleshed out.

[lxi] Healing Back Pain (Reissue edition): The Mindbody Connection. 2018. Grand Central Publishing.

[lxii] Matthew 9:6. World English Bible.

[lxiii] Unless you’re recovering from an injury that is actually causing pain or there is some other genuine reason for physiotherapy.

[lxiv] Freud, S. 1901. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.

[lxv] John 8:44. World English Bible.

[lxvi] John 9:3. World English Bible.

[lxvii] Genesis 3. World English Bible.

[lxviii] Genesis 1:27. World English Bible.

[lxix] Much of the evidence for evolution can be explained as adaptation within species, and nothing in the Bible says that adaptation was not a mechanism used by God. Just because one form is dated earlier than a more sophisticated looking form does not necessarily mean that one evolved out of the other, especially when the more sophisticated form may have come from somewhere else that we have no records of due to ancient natural disasters. In any case, Genesis is not completely incompatible with evolutionary theory, although it is not consonant with the idea that all life emerged from something as crude as single celled organisms – a theory lacking in evidence. For instance, the earth, animals, birds and fish are created before humans in Genesis 1. Only with the fall did humans appear incarnate upon our current earth. Nothing in Genesis directly contradicts the idea of God as the guiding hand behind the evolution of animal forms. There is no ‘missing link’ between homo sapiens and other hominids because we did not evolve from those hominids. The fossil record as it pertains to the first humans is also incomplete partly owing to cataclysms in the past, particularly the Great Flood, for which there is substantial geological and cultural evidence, including fossils of marine life high above sea level and stories of a Great Flood, a Noah figure and an ark common to numerous cultures separated by oceans and deserts. (For more on this subject, and the existence of a hyper-ancient civilisation in the Atlantic Ocean, see my book The Spirit Solution: Lessons Learned From My Spiritual Journey). Basically, the flood destroyed traces of the first humans, some of whom dwelt on landmasses that no longer exist. Also consider that DNA evidence for ancestors common to both humans and apes is explicable by interbreeding between humans and apes or early hominids, such as is believed to have occurred between homo sapiens and homo neanderthalis. Indeed, human interbreeding with apes could explain the origin of hominids such as Australopithecus.

[lxx] Genesis 3:5. World English Bible.

[lxxi] Genesis 2:17. World English Bible.

[lxxii] Acts 17:28. World English Bible.

[lxxiii] Genesis 3. World English Bible.

[lxxiv] John 15:19. World English Bible.

[lxxv] Matthew 5:3. World English Bible.