Not Hope, But Direction – What I Tell People With Terminal Cancer
When cancer is terminal and everything has failed, people ask what I did to survive. I didn’t fight. I didn’t believe. I changed direction. This is not a story of hope, but of radical alignment with the field behind all life — and what happens when we listen.
POPULAR
Paul Hager
7/1/20256 min read


More and more people are reaching out to me.
Not those still comparing options.
Not those exploring, weighing, analyzing.
But people for whom everything has already been tried.
They’re not asking for comfort.
They’re not looking for a method.
They ask, quietly but piercingly:
“What did you do?”
And what they really mean is:
Why are you still here?
Because I had cancer.
Terminal.
Metastasized.
Untreatable.
No surgery. No chemo. No alternatives offered.
I followed no therapy.
Took no supplements.
Subscribed to no beliefs.
And yet I’m still here.
Not because I had hope.
Not because I fought.
But because I did something else:
I changed direction.
The break
Somewhere along the way
in that body that was breaking down,
something shifted.
Not suddenly.
Not like an insight.
But like a field.
As if my inner trajectory —
Ψ(t), my current projection —
had lost connection
to where I once came from: Ψ(P), the original field direction.
Ψ(P) isn’t your personality,
not your past,
not your upbringing.
It’s the vector you entered life with.
The direction your field intended to unfold
before it got shaped by work, expectations, relationships.
When Ψ(t) drifts too far from that,
your cells lose their cohesion.
Coherence λ drops.
Tension ∇Φ — the internal strain of the field — rises.
Circulation Ω, your life flow, falters.
And what we call illness occurs.
Not as a mistake.
But as a logical outcome
of field incoherence.
No hope
So when people contact me,
and quietly hope I’ll offer reassurance,
I say:
“I don’t offer hope.”
I offer direction.
If it’s still available.
Because the field decides.
Not you. Not me.
Not your doctor. Not your fear.
Only the field knows
if it still wants to project.
And if it does,
it asks one question in return:
Are you making space?
The radical shift
If I’ve learned one thing, it’s this:
small changes are not enough.
No adjustment.
No improvement.
No search for balance.
Only a rupture helps:
ΔΨ — a radical shift in vector.
Not a spiritual decision,
but a physical rewriting of direction.
The old field must stop.
Otherwise, everything keeps revolving
in the same vectors that made you sick.
What I say then
I say:
“Pack your suitcase.”
Not symbolically.
Literally.
Leave your home.
Leave your job.
Leave your roles, habits, even your name.
Go to a place where your field
holds no memory.
Sometimes I say: “Maybe a monastery in Thailand.”
Not because I’ve been there —
I never have.
But because I know what such places carry:
no history,
no expectations,
no mirrors.
I went to Sicily.
Later, Marmaris.
Places where no one knew me.
Where my field could reconfigure
without echoes of the old.
And then?
Then something begins.
Maybe.
Not a process.
Not a treatment.
Not a result.
But a rhythm.
You get up.
You breathe.
You walk.
You eat lightly.
You speak little.
You stop finishing thoughts.
You stop asking questions.
You become a field
searching for itself again.
The physics behind it
What I’m describing here
is not metaphor.
Not belief.
It’s physics.
In my field model,
the body isn’t a cause
but a projection.
Spacetime arises where field tension — ∇Φ —
stabilizes into form.
The spacetime metric of your body
emerges from a tension projection:
gμν = ⟨Ψ∣∇Φ⊗∇Φ∣Ψ⟩
Your cells, bones, skin, breath:
all are imprints of tension in your field.
When that field is incoherent,
everything collapses.
But if the field realigns —
toward Ψ′ —
the projection can change.
Not guaranteed.
Not magical.
But physical.
What science calls spontaneous remission
When I recovered, no one asked:
“What just happened here?”
No doctor came.
No investigation.
No record.
No follow-up.
Science calls it spontaneous remission.
It sounds neutral.
But it means: we don’t know.
No cause.
No pattern.
No interest.
As if I statistically vanished
from a disease that was terminal.
As if I were a blip in the curve.
But that blip is exactly what’s missing
from the entire system.
We treat effects.
We attack cells.
We kill tumors.
But we never ask about field direction.
About coherence.
About origin.
Meanwhile:
In the Netherlands, cancer is the #1 cause of death.
Despite all treatments.
Despite billions in investment.
People don’t heal.
They survive.
With chronic symptoms.
With recurring mutations.
With bodies that keep fighting
because the field was never rewritten.
But you don’t see that in the data.
You only see if someone is alive.
Not whether the field is aligned.
What I see is different:
Not a spontaneous remission,
but a spontaneous remembering
of direction.
Spirituality as physics
To me, this isn’t spirituality.
It’s undiscovered physics.
Everything we once called
soul, energy, karma, miracles —
these are field effects.
We didn’t yet know the field.
So we gave it names.
Now I see:
it’s just physics
that didn’t yet know its own origin.
What I did
When I felt that my field no longer carried me,
I let go.
I stopped everything.
No therapies.
No supplements.
No search for answers.
I knew:
I need to disappear.
I owned nothing.
No house.
No mortgage.
Everything I had fit in one suitcase.
And it still does.
That was my advantage.
I could disappear.
And so I did.
The mirror
Slowly, something returned.
Not my strength.
Not my body.
But my field.
It began to flow again.
Not fast.
But clear.
And one day I knew:
I’m allowed to return to form.
I stood in the mirror
and saw a crumbling set of teeth,
old fillings, a ruined molar.
I used to think: why fix anything?
If I’m dying anyway,
why invest in a body
that will soon be buried?
But when I felt the field return,
I knew:
Now I can choose.
I had my fillings replaced.
I got a crown.
Not for vanity.
But as a sign.
Now when I smile in the mirror,
I don’t see teeth.
I see a field
that has reclaimed its place in spacetime.
Not to preserve something.
But to say:
“I’m here.
I carry myself.
I’m alive.”
Children, partners, possessions
People say:
“But I have children.”
“But I have a partner.”
“But I have obligations.”
And I say:
“Your child doesn’t need a parent who’s stuck.”
“Your partner lives beside you, not inside you.”
“Responsibility is not a reason to stay incoherent.”
Field restoration isn’t selfish.
It’s the only thing that truly carries.
What flows, supports.
What is stuck, drowns everything.
Sometimes you have to break to love.
Sometimes you have to disappear to be true.
Not as betrayal.
But as restoration of the field.
And if it doesn’t work?
Then I say:
you’ve lost nothing.
You chose truth
over hope.
Direction
over therapy.
Silence
over struggle.
And that’s already more
than most people ever dare.
Not because it’s heroic.
But because it’s real.
Even if your body doesn’t follow,
even if the field can no longer project,
you’ve done something that surpasses healing:
you’ve returned to your essence.
Not to survive.
But to be.
Returning to Life
And then something strange happens.
You don’t feel like you’re healed.
But you feel like you’re alive again.
Not because the cancer is gone,
but because the field sees direction again.
Because projection becomes possible.
Not perfect. Not painless.
But real.
There’s no plan.
No goal.
No mission.
Only a field that flows again.
And that field wants to return.
Not to the past.
But to form.
Not to the monastery.
Not to solitude.
But to life.
So you come back.
To your children.
To your work.
To your city, perhaps.
To conversations, calendars, traffic.
Not as a shadow of who you were.
But as someone who rewrote something.
You come home.
Maybe literally.
Maybe not.
You unpack your suitcase.
Not to become someone again,
but to live as who you now are.
You go shopping again.
But you walk slower.
You look people in the eye.
You choose your food not by will, but by resonance.
You talk with coworkers.
But you don’t let yourself be rushed.
You say what’s true.
And you’re silent when it isn’t.
You do your job.
But you don’t give yourself away.
You care for others.
But not at the cost of yourself.
Not because you learned to.
But because the field no longer allows otherwise.
It says:
You may live.
But only if you carry your direction.
And how do you know?
How do you know the field wants to project again?
Because you breathe without pressure.
Because you walk without chasing.
Because your body no longer whispers resistance,
but carries what’s right.
You feel it in small things:
You don’t react automatically.
You’re no longer afraid of silence.
You say no faster—
without explaining.
And if you dare to trust that,
you’ll find that ordinary life
is exactly the life
where your direction wants to show itself.
Not despite the busyness,
but inside it.
Not away from the world,
but in the middle of the day.
A crying child.
A bill to pay.
A neighbor in grief.
They’re not distractions.
They’re invitations.
To tune in.
To feel.
To carry.
To be.
Not as a setback.
But as return.
Finally
I don’t know
if people follow what I suggest.
I never hear back.
And that’s fine.
I hope the very best.
For everyone.
Always.
But I don’t take anything on.
I offer no rescue.
No answer.
Only: a direction.
The field knows what it wants.
You only need to listen.
So if you ask me:
What should I do?
I won’t say:
Do this or that.
I say:
Do you dare to let go
of everything that no longer flows?
Do you dare to live
without a plan,
without safety,
without identity?
Do you dare to follow a direction
you cannot control
but only receive?
Because if your answer is yes
then the field will show itself.
Not because you demand it.
But because it can finally
breathe again.