Patrick Connor on Living Healthier

Patrick Connor, M.A., graduated from Cambridge University and has spent the last 20 years living with and learning about true healing from nontraditional practitioners around the world, including shamans in South America and healers in China and India. After leaving his unfulfilling career in business, he began this research project with the goal of uniting various global approaches to health and human development. His search led him to cellular biology and quantum physics, into spiritual inquiry and mystical teachings via psychology and psychoanalysis, through the healing traditions of alternative medicine and shamanism and, eventually, to consciousness as the foundation of all knowledge and the basis of all experience. In this interview, Connor explains how people can use various global health approaches to live better lives.

What does it mean to live healthier?

Living healthier and feeling healthier is about how to have better, stronger and more energy. People know if they have that or if they feel tired and lethargic. The way to do this is to bring together love, generosity, inner growth, peace, quiet, movement, breath, connecting with nature, silent time, resolving conflicts and expressing your real personality. All these will create, build and strengthen good energy. Yes, go to the gym, but also look at these other points.

What’s the most important question ask about health?

The big question is: “Why do things happen? Why is someone living to 100? What do they do?” Well, someone might comb their hair to the left and eat mangos. The truth is that the mangos and the hair combing may have nothing to do with living to 100. There’s no piece of the puzzle that represents the whole story. And just because this solution worked for this person doesn’t mean it’s the solution.

We all have a view of foods, eating and exercise, whether we’re consciously aware of that view or not. We all have a filter that we use to process our experiences, even if we couldn’t explain that filter to anyone. Knowing yourself is about deprogramming some of that filter, some of the beliefs, stories, attachment to ego and what you’ve been told. Give a microphone to your inner voice.

Why is change so hard and why do so many people resist it?

Everyone has their own stories that define their life. The risk of people letting go of their stories is the risk of losing love, losing friends, losing their jobs—there’s a lot of risk associated with it. It relates to identity, and forces the issue of, “Who am I and who am I in the world?” Giving people the fruit of what it means to take that path is something that needs to be done. It’s not an immediate-rewards path.

There are all kinds of influences that reinforce negativity, including television, friends and authorities. Letting go of “our stories” takes openness to oneself; the filter needs to get strong, which takes courage and humility. Change, by its nature, asks us to question what we’ve held to be true all of our lives. By the time people are ready to change, they are ingrained in an identity, and the structures they’ve built around them are entrenched. A person is known in his or her world in a certain way. But one of the reasons change is in our lives is to allow us to grow and get out of just having a safe, comfortable life.

Where does illness come from?

Imbalances come from being out of alignment with reality in some way. Germs and viruses do not “cause” anything; they’re always present in the air. The trigger for an illness may seem to be a virus, but the virus does not determine the illness. Scientists know that in a control group of people exposed to a certain highly contagious virus, only some of the people will get the illness. If the virus “caused” the illness, all who were exposed to it would get it.

Negative limiting beliefs potentiate illness. Health and unhealth are simply ways of being in the world, gradations on a scale of positive/negative energies that we are expressing. A necessary precondition to healing is being willing to change your life. For those who are willing, illness can be a great gift, a catalyst for lasting change that they may never have considered possible or found the way to do.

What helps people heal?

It’s a question of getting to the specific causes. It’s not enough to just have good energy around you; you need to dismantle and un-manifest the causes as clearly and effectively as you manifested them. You do that with guidance. Illness is a way of the universe stopping you in your tracks and orienting you to the things you still need to learn in your life that you otherwise won’t learn. Or to give you the opportunity to take the spiritual road that you otherwise wouldn’t take. It’s part of the self-regulating mechanism of the universe that is to help us all become spiritually awake while we’re here. You can do it the hard way or the easy way, but the hard way produces a lot of pain and suffering. Or you take the high road and address the causes at the core.

The relationship of diseases to parts of the body is nonlinear, but symbolic. There are certain illnesses that are often related to certain kinds of emotions. It’s so individual; there are as many imbalances as there are people. Because imbalance comes from spirit and our issues are individual to each of us, the nature of the imbalance that is expressed is equally individual. There’s no one cause of an illness; no five people diagnosed with breast cancer have the same illness. They have some of the same symptoms, but not the same causes. And the nature of their imbalance is related to their own specific issues and their own journeys.

Does genetics play a role in personal health?

People feel no responsibility for the things they believe have been passed along to them genetically. Why is someone likely to get cancer? It’s not that there’s a physical disposition to it; it’s that there’s an energetic disposition to it. It’s the energy field that you inherit, which is the powerful one. What we inherit from our families is energy. So, children who get disease are entwined in the energy fields of their families. The love energy can help you be healthy. You can choose whether you’re affected by the negative energy you’re around. It’s about consciousness.

How do you view traditional versus alternative medicine?

Traditional medicine is often at its strongest in physical emergencies. Alternative medicine is full of wonderful therapies that help balance the body. Integrative medicine tries to bridge the two, attempting to bring the best of different paradigms.

What are the benefits of living more spiritually?

Too many to list. The more of your natural state you realize, the more effortless and joyful life becomes. You realize that divinity is the source of your existence and is your own nature. When you allow it to flow by releasing negative beliefs that are the blocks to love, your life becomes a prayer. Anything can be achieved. Spiritual power knows no limits. Love is experienced everywhere all of the time, and the miraculous is commonplace.

How does someone make a lasting change in his or her health in the first 30 days?

Many people embark on change programs but nothing about their inner world or their “self” has changed, so they don’t reap the benefits of the program. Change is really about one’s relationship to life. Change is not expensive; it’s not about buying books, tapes, expensive foods and going to seminars. Quality of life and how we look at life is much more important than the specific foods we eat.

For more information about Patrick Connor, visit www.theeternalself.com.