What if that thing that feels like your arch-nemesis only ever wanted to be helpful to you; your best support and ally? What if you could think of it as some sort of consultant that came into the “business” of your body to show you what wasn’t getting done and where you needed to get a grip on your handling of that all-important business of YOU so that you could take yourself to the next level of THRIVING? Like an expert troubleshooter meaning business, you could feel every part of your system quake at its tinted-windowed arrival and its first brusque walk through your corridors and yet…perhaps you have forgotten this…at some level you may have called it in, having hired it to bring about these very changes that are evolutionary and all about realising your best self. It was for you, not being done to you like some sort of victim, all along.

This is a perspective that I’ve played before but which gained all-new clarity for me this morning when I woke with a distinct Epstein Barr Virus tingle on the left side of my face extending all the way from the corner of my lip up into to my eye. I’ve been noticing this more and more for the last week, including in my left thigh which (I recall) was where some of my earliest, most bizarre nerve pains switched on at the very beginning of this chronic stage of my 40 year journey with EBV; when it first stopped its covert operations and became this painfully visceral thing playing liberally in all my tissue and nerves. In the half-asleep state of my morning, I took this retreat back to its original turf as a GREAT sign, seeing it as a handing back of the reins to ME since I am clearly ready to go solo in the care of my own boundaries; a core topic of any recovery program.

The reason I think so is that I finally get its full reason for being here in the first place. When EBV arrived, it was stepping into a gaping hole left by me, where I wasn’t doing all I needed to for myself in order to thrive. If, at some level, I called it in, asking for its help, why would I do that? Because I wasn’t setting boundaries in my world, I was leaving myself wide open to anything that wanted to encroach upon my energy field so that I was (actually) already feeling way too much only I wasn’t even noticing, it was all just more of the same and I had lost sight of myself in all the hullabaloo of an overwhelming life. I felt it all…everyone’s elses pain included…and so I prioritized nothing, least of all me.

It’s as though I came into this life wired to have no judgement about anything to the extreme that I lacked discernment, I simply wanted to get on with everything and everyone and mistook that for leaving all my own doors and windows wide open with a sign saying “help yourself”. Hell, I even spent decades trying to be nice about some of the worst experiences of my life and those who perpetrated them; had become the ultimate soft system with no set boundaries thus open to abuse at every turn. Something had to be done and EBV was “my man” for the job since (as I’ve written about before, though my theories have evolved a lot) when it came into my body as a child, life was already treating me “rotten” (I was being bullied at school) so I came to associate it with the bully/boundary-abusing energy of those times. Whenever I experienced more of the same, there was that tickle on my top lip again; then came the glandular fever and early warning signs of some of the more bizarre health issues in my twenties. Thirty years after it first showed up (now drowning in all the overwhelm of a life that had become bullying from every angle possible) it was called to step up to become the extreme version of itself, way beyond that merest prickle on my top lip…taking over the reins of everything I was feeling, across the whole of my nervous system and registering nearly all my experiences as a version of pain; that thing they call fibromyalgia. Basically, it FORCED me to feel all this stuff I was still trying to be so complacent about and so, bit by bit, I took ownership of what I was feeling and what felt good/not so good in my experience.

Then I see how, over the most recent decade, this gradually woke up my higher consciousness which…married to my sensory body, yin and yang together…has become the most powerful version of a discerning, thriving human that there is; namely one that is both physical and non-physical in equal proportions. Under that partnership, I have been forced to tweak my whole lifestyle, my environment, my food, who I spend time with, how I think…etc, until they are all in full alignment with my highest blueprint (that gold standard of what feels like a true expression of who I am, no compromises). I did this because, initially, I HAD no choice since if I didn’t follow the directive of those alignments, using my innate sense of what felt good or not so good at the broadest level of discernment, I would feel all these pain alarms go off in my body. Bit by bit, I was able to appreciate the higher wisdom of all those choices since they led me towards a recovery that felt better than anything I had ever known before. So now – over a decade into this stepped-up version of it’s training program – I find I don’t need EBV any more. With a firm handshake and a nod of appreciation, I can let go of the inner “consultant” that it has been to me, thus releasing it from the very daunting job of guiding my way just as I can now be freed from it; and when you can clearly see the benefit in a situation for both parties, this is how you know you have struck gold in your negotiated truce. 

Imagine if we could all play out this scene with the very thing that feels like it has had our very wellbeing in its vice-like grip for so long; appreciating it, learning from it and then letting it go since our stepping up to do what it was doing for us has now made it obsolete. Regarded this way, there always comes a point when it serves both parties to part ways; that moment when neither of you needs the other any more in what has become a co-dependency at the cellular level…and so you get to negotiate a severance package that suits you both as you move on to other things. Perhaps the biggest milestone boundary of all is when you demonstrate to the very thing that got you there that you don’t need it anymore so that, without taking umbrage, it can peacefully slip away. This truly is love in action in its most practical, worldly sense; it allows live and let live while we peacefully preserve our own sense of domain.

So, how did EBV show me what was so misaligned about my life? Well, bit by bit and with the volume switched up very high, I was suddenly made aware of all of those things that had been freely partying in the house of me with no regard for my personal domain or whether I wanted them in there or no. Like an early warning system or a high-security intruder alarm, my whole system was suddenly rewired with a network of triggers until it felt like its beams crossed every square inch of my body…and they did since EBV had now piggy-backed onto my central nervous system, with CCTV angled into every corner. Clanging alarms would trigger as soon as anything crossed those lines; one tiny compromise in my diet or environment and off it would all go again, every minor breach treated like a major security threat as all the barriers came slamming down.

It was as though I was taken to that extreme so I could withdraw inwards, reclaim my own space and my very identity, lay down fresh new (hand-picked) boundaries that served me better than anything I could have been taught by another and so I could remember who I was before the free-for-all of life blurred all my edges.

And so I noticed triggers in my diet and environment, how what I watched, how I thought, even the company I kept made a huge difference. I locked everything down and reintroduced new things one by one until they started to feel more comfortable; this has been my healing journey. Looking back, this was like an internship in my own body as I relearned every rope from the ground floor upwards; studying it all, learning its patterns, familiarising myself with all the jobs from the factory floor to the room at the top whilst allowing that I didn’t always have the answers (as every good manager does).Then I gained confidence, called up highest wisdom, learned that in order to pre-empt cells that would trigger off at the slightest provocation I needed to step in first with my consciousness, taking responsibility for parts of myself that I never even owned-up to having in me back in the old days. Before all this happened, it was as though nobody was in charge; so, then, my body itself took extreme control of its own operation, like communism gone mad yet nobody really happy…and finally, bit by bit, I took over from all that free-for-all  with my highest, most divinely inspired, aspect and the body was able to relax back into its support role, which is as it should be.

The time comes in every lock-down situation that you long to turn off all the loudest alarms and relax some of those borders since nobody wants to live like that for ever. In fact, I realise I’ve been shown how to set boundaries without any of that hard stuff; can do just about anything through the subtle use of my focus, my intention and the parameters of choice that I set, skills that are the jewels in the crown of my healing. It’s as though I have graduated with honours through the training ground of the body which…somewhere along the line…was my mounting block to a whole other level; and that’s what divine perspective through the human cellular experience is all about. I have returned home to “me” and the cellular aspect of my experience (my body) seems both more worthy of respect and yet less be-all-and-end-all than it ever did before. It is such a huge part of the picture (certainly not something to be ignored as though irrelevant) and yet it doesn’t call the shots; I do. In the process of learning that, I had amply demonstrated to myself and others how to THRIVE in far less than perfect circumstances and now my next challenge is to show that I can continue to do so without the counterpoise of these dire circumstances to push against; which can become a fear-point for may people facing the reality of their own recovery. Its like a big part of them is in terror and resistance, asking  “Do I even know how to be well?”

So how does that integrated wellness roll out. For starters, I now find that where areas of my experience were feeling terribly amplified I can now choose to turn those dials down somewhat lower, not so that I can ignore them all over again but so I can live life in a rather more balanced way. I know now, for instance, that an environment saturated in EMFs is not a good idea for any body but I can choose to pare down my personal reaction to these triggers so that I can lead a more integrated and participatory life (using technology as I choose!); and the same goes for food choices and everything else where my health used to insist on taking the hard line. I’m asserting my own say-so, not in a belligerent way but in a way that refuses to take that hard line with anything anymore. And so my apprenticeship is complete and I feel ready to take over from the rather heavy-handed approach of this inner “consultant”; nor do I need to “kick its ass” out of my door since I remain truly grateful for the experience it has provided; which is how I know we are now ready to part ways so amicably. This is a coming of age for both of us; I get to graduate and it gets to move on to the metaphorical golf course or some other great challenge in a body other than mine. When it first arrived in my body and for the longest time, I think I detected in this virus all the detestation for my egalitarian “system” that a white collar expert would have had on entering the hippy commune it had been sent to train-up but, along the way, I have more than earned its respect and I like to think that it too has evolved hugely from the partnership.

My friend just went through her version of this, outlined in her new video on Kat Shines Through Cancer about setting boundaries when it comes to receiving different kinds of support during recovery. This material took a huge amount of guts for her to say out loud and so, I know, marks a pivotal point in her healing process because she is claiming the right to set those boundaries for herself. On the back of this, I can’t help wondering if cancer is one of those things that occurs when we omit to set enough boundaries of our own; stepping in to try and show us how to build the very walls we are missing in the free-state of our lives. When this free-for-all means we have a tendency to agree to everything and everyone, even when we don’t really want to “let them in”, out of kindness, a desire to be a “good person” or not to offend, the body can step in and show us the very hard-casing that we lack; and not necessarily in ways that feel as loving as they are intended to be at the highest level. The extreme territorial backlash of cancer (reminds me of our current world politics…) may not even need to happen at all if we all set appropriate boundaries around the territory of ourselves; Kat knows this and is using it to heal herself in a way that is entirely new.

Likewise, by making everything painfully obvious, EBV has taught me to demarcate what feels good, what must be shown the door and how to know the difference…and I know I have the innate feeling off pat now and am ready to go solo. I KNOW I can run the show on my own, without this thing sitting in its corner office, piggy-backing my nervous system like a fortress of pain…although I am extraordinarily grateful for the intensive training package it has been. Understanding this today felt like my own version of a major healing milestone and I intend to firmly, yet lovingly, remind EBV of the contract we long-ago drafted…which was for a temporary period of real-life training workshops and reminders, now complete…meaning that it can move on and so can I (it was never meant to move in forever).

Envisioning life without it is suddenly the most easy thing in the world, like my vision has cleared and I see the whole new way opening up ahead like never before. When we choose to see our biggest challenge as this brief interlude in our life or as a self-negotiated contract that actually serves us short-term, rather than as the permanent problem or evil arch-nemesis to be ass-kicked out of our life (as we have been conditioned to assume that they are), we get to take hold of a whole other level of healing potential. This is a level of healing that is offered for our much higher purpose and its ours just as soon as we open to these brand new interpretations as to “why” we are experiencing what we are; keeping that portion of our thoughts completely out of ideas of “enemy” or “attack” and all those other fears and focusing, instead, on what it offers us as its gift. I am convinced that THIS is exactly what activates a whole other level of recovery; marking the difference between short-term temporary improvements that don’t build momentum or sustain in the long-term and those full-blown remission scenarios that blow us all away with jaw-dropped astonishment. I have my name on one of those.

So, at the practical level, how am I healing from EBV? No surprises, I am closely following The Medical Medium’s eating and supplement protocols for both EBV and Shingles now (see those two links). This includes blueberries and pomegranate every day, colloidal silver, cats claw, almost total avoidance of eggs yet lots of lysine supplements, eating fresh-organic food, celery, papaya, green juices, avocados, oodles of sweet potatoes, Hawaiian spirulina, herbal teas…. Follow those links for much more dietary advice direct from the source. I am also dosing with lion’s mane mushroom, doing daily yoga and massaging my face, head and neck daily using a kansa wand (very helpful indeed and I feel sure it has made a difference; kansa is an Ayurvedic metal with very particular healing properties). Taking your chosen recovery protocol seriously is certainly one way to step up the healing process but is always so such more potent and permanent when you pair it with the deep-inner work as described in this post!

Disclaimer: This website is not designed (nor should not be construed) to, provide medical advice, professional diagnosis, opinion or treatment to you or any other individual, and is not intended as a substitute for medical or professional care and treatment.