What a fantastic interview on the part of both Chris and Royce! Royce is a very articulate, aware, and intelligent man with wisdom beyond his years. To add to it, I’d like to emphasize the primacy of going a step above mental health in the hierarchy of importance to spiritual health.
Anxiety is but one subset of fear as is anger, bitterness, sadness, depression and the whole host of negative emotions. Ultimately, fear is the weapon of the enemy. In the spiritual realm which transcends material concerns, the antidote to fear is love. When you love your Creator, you will do all that you can to honor Him by your thoughts and actions. When you love your fellow man, you will treat him with kindness, respect, and consideration, guided by simple but profound principles such as the Golden Rule. When you love the Creation (i.e. which includes but is not limited to the environment), you will strive to be a good steward of it and protect it rather than exploit and destroy it.
It's interesting how fear works. In my own battle against cancer, when I read, listen to, or study things such as chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery for treating it, I feel fear creep into my body and my energy level drop. Conversely, when I look at cancer as a unique spiritual opportunity rather than a dreaded, fear-producing disease and begin to examine spiritual, psychological, and physical aspects
of my being that need improvement and take action to initiate and execute the changes necessary to achieve that improvement, I am empowered and feel my fear melt away and my positive energy levels rise. It is a most curious phenomena to experience but I cannot deny it as I have born witness to it over and over again.
This is not to dismiss the value of such things as chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. They can be life saving. But they never get to the root cause of the disease. They tend to take away disease, for a time at least, but they don't give health ... not true health. And because of this, the disease has a diabolical tendency to recur. Do we not see the same "diseases" of inequality, poverty, injustice, corruption, etc. occurring at a macro scale in our society and our globe where, down through the millennia, we see these recurring problems again and again and again and yet man's solutions never seem to offer lasting relief and resolution?
Until we can learn to overcome the fear with love, we will endlessly go down this same futile karmic path, seeking succor, rest, joy, and peace but never truly finding it.
This month, I am at the one year diagnosis of my cancer. My most recent PSA test shows an undetectable level as compared to 626 one short year ago. My alkaline phosphatase level is completely normal fro being sky high before and I no longer have any bone pain or pain of any type originating from the cancer. Some blood tests are still mildly abnormal but that is the result of medication, one of which I will no longer be taking and the next of which I hope to wean off of within the next year. I have examined spiritual, psychological, and physical shortcomings in my life and made some profound changes to the positive but I remain a work in progress and am continuing to study, to learn, and to make changes where necessary.
From a functional point of view, I enjoy swimming for exercise in Lake Superior in the summer. I normally swim 1 mile, if water temperature and wave and current conditions allow, but try to do one 2 mile swim per season. When I have done that in the past, I will almost always experience some cramping in one or both calves, some left shoulder pain (where I have a torn rotator cuff, torn labrum, and torn pectoralis major tendon), and some fatigue. This year, in contrast, I have done four 2 mile swims with no cramping, no shoulder pain, and no fatigue. The difference is really quite dramatic. Despite my cancer, I seem to be even healthier than before the cancer. The positive effects of a raw vegan diet (with no animal protein and fat, no eggs, no dairy, and no refined carbohydrates) with raw vegetable juices and with green smoothies (as described in Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko) cannot be denied. Praise God!
If I may offer a word of encouragement to Royce. God has kept, and WILL KEEP, EVERY one of his promises. We are in a spiritual battle, a fight to the death with the forces of darkness, but we have God on our side if we only let Him into our life and He will be faithful. Of all this, I have not the slightest shred of doubt. The truth of the Logos and first hand, objective experience reinforces what I know deeply in my soul.