"I’m doing much better. I attended a success conference last week and then I was sick for 3 days. That conference cost me five days. A client shared a new healing technology with me. It really helped. Although, it’s only temporary, it will work as long as I keep reinforcing it."

Sushila had become almost instantaneously ill at that conference. She’s been here before. It materializes as a chronic cough, often times accompanied by flu-like symptoms, that she has lived with for some 18 years.

In Messages from God it says: "Increase your consciousness. See the symbolic messages of life, not the literal illusions, that the Universe is sending you."

Sushila was focusing on the illusion. She was treating the illusion. And, each time she experienced something that brought up her "cough" and its related physical reactions it seemed to hit her harder and harder. Medical treatments, even homeopathic remedies, didn’t do the trick any more, unless incredible amounts were used.

Perhaps you too experience reoccurring chronic symptoms or pain — physical or emotional. In Sushila’s case it’s a chronic cough. For others it’s a backache or a slipped disk. For me it’s stomach cramps. Over the years you’ve found the best way to treat it and with time it recedes or disappears for a while. And, then for no apparent reason the pain, the illness, the dis-ease returns.

On a cellular level our body retains every thing we’ve ever experienced. It holds a mental picture of the inner feeling we felt, expressed or withheld, for every situation. In essence, we’ve programmed our body to respond a specific way to specific types of interactions and experiences. Of course, we didn’t consciously set out to do this. And, never the less, it happens automatically.

Your body, like your subconscious, doesn’t judge the experiences of your life as good or bad. It simply remembers your feeling to each and on "cue" plays it back when something in your current reality recalls that cellular imprint.

It is up to us how we respond when our "buttons" are pushed again. We can respond literally as we have in the past or we can choose to increase our consciousness.

Increasing our consciousness means knowing that when we are in the midst of suffering chronic physical or emotional pain and discomfort that the Universe is sending a personal, a spiritual, message. Pain and suffering are universal messages that we have stepped off our spirit’s soul path. It is a cry for help and healing. It’s a wake-up call to listen inside.

When asked, we all know what is at the root of our pain. We know our truths.

Sushila recalled immediately the experience that prompted her coughing attacks. It started some 18 years ago when she wasn’t able to say no to an authority figure, her spiritual teacher. She had planned a trip with her son for the holidays and her teacher wanted her do something else. Torn between serving both as well as concerned about disappointing them, Sushila stifled her true feelings and didn’t speak up. In her inability to speak her truth, the decision was made for her. Sushila became very sick with pneumonia. The cough is a symbolic reminder.

She never really confronted her teacher and mentor. Over the years, she has rationalized what happened and found a way to be at peace with it. However, her body, her cellular memory, her spirit’s voice continues to affirm emotional blockage.

How many times have you said or thought that given the opportunity again you would do it differently? Yet, if we continue to experience chronic pain we are physically, mentally or emotionally still responding the same way to similar experiences.

It takes more than willingness to choose differently. Figuratively speaking, we have to change the picture inside. We need to revisit and revise our cellular memory of that "spirit-limiting" experience. In your mind’s eye, go back and relive that experience and respond differently. Respond to it from who you are today.

See it as if you are the director of a movie and you’re viewing the rough cuts. Replace the ending from your past with the ending you would choose today. Fill in all the words, feelings and outcomes that empower you. Now, go back and see the whole movie from beginning to end. See it right, feel it right -- now.

To your subconscious, the only time that exists is now. There is no past and there is no future. There is only the present. That is why this works.

Sushila, not her spiritual teacher, had limited her full expression. By changing her cellular memory, by changing the picture inside, she releases the blocks and opens her consciousness to passionately express her divine, beautiful, authentic power and grace. Now she is back on the path of fulfilling her destiny, of realizing all she came into this world to be, of fully expressing her divine gift and purpose.

The Universe wants us to be happy, harmonious and prosperous. Above all else, the Universe wants us to be love. By honoring the symbolic messages of our life we honor our spirit. Replacing the pictures of our past that don’t work with ones that do is aligning with the Universe.