What causes physical illness?

What causes physical illness? Is it state of mind, random factors, external influences, karma, past lives, or biochemical? Is it all of the above? Is it different for each of us?

I think you have answered your own question. It really is all of the above. However, there are some significant factors, which I would like to mention here.

One significant factor is that, if we ignore emotional dis-ease, it will most likely manifest as physical disease or illness. For example if you carry resentment within you for a long period of time, then that will have an impact upon your body and will eventually create physical dis-ease. It is the same with repressed hurt and anger. And guilt!

If the body has to carry all these repressed and unresolved feelings within it, eventually it will show the signs of that burden. That is why it is so valuable to live more fully in the present moment. To continually release the past and live more fully in the present moment is very supportive of a healthy body.

As for Karmic factors, the most important aspect in this regard is to learn those lessons that will heal your soul and release it from its Karmic history. Any conflict or disharmony in your life is a good indicator of those lessons. Sometimes a past life can be at the root of a physical illness and it is necessary to bring that past life to consciousness before a healing can occur. That healing can occur at the soul level as well as at the emotional and the physical level and is sometimes quite miraculous.

I once worked with a woman with an inoperable brain tumor. Her life expectancy was very short. When she uncovered a past life, which involved extreme guilt in that past lifetime, her brain tumor disappeared. It is interesting to note that there had been a significant re-creation of guilt in this lifetime, but healing that was not enough. The true source of her dis-ease was in another lifetime.

There are many factors involved in physical illness.

What you eat and how you eat has a direct impact upon your state of health. Your state of mind is obviously a significant factor. If you are constantly stressed or anxious, that will affect you.

If the inner environment is still and quiet and in a state of harmony, obviously that will promote physical well being. If you consistently release the past from you, there is no burden for your body to carry and so nothing accumulates.

On the other hand, if you accumulate the past within you, it becomes an increasingly intolerable burden for your body to bear and eventually it weakens, and illness or dis-ease sets in.

Sometimes illness is simply a result of environmental factors. I worked with a woman who had extreme toxic poisoning from the environment. This had nothing to do with her state of mind. Did her karmic history play a part in her being subjected to the poisoning in the first place? Possibly! But that was not revealed in my work with her.

Another client had been involved in a series of serious motor accidents several years earlier, and she experienced some permanent disability as a result of those accidents. In working with her, it was revealed that her karmic history played into these events, as did her unconscious resistance to actually being here on the earth plane. At an unconscious level, she wanted to leave, which somehow played into her involvement in the accident.

It is difficult to generalize. It really depends on each individual as to which causative factors are prominent. It is even possible that illness is simply a sign that the body is cleansing.

One thing is sure though. Whatever the cause of illness or disease, the actual experience of the illness or dis-ease provides an opportunity for healing and evolving at the level of soul. What is your relationship to the illness and to your body during the illness? How do you respond? Some people find great inner strength in the face of illness. Some people's lives are transformed in a way that is profoundly healing for the soul, even if it sometimes does not lead to the healing of the physical body.

Leonard Jacobson