A few days ago, a friend and I were talking about someone we knew. This woman had the misfortune of repeatedly having men stalk her. My friend knew more than me, and mentioned that this had happened to her more than just once or twice. I responded by repeating an old military adage that came to mind. I had encountered it once before, in a transcript of a seminar by psychotherapist/astrologer Liz Greene:
One time is chance.
Two times is coincidence.
And three times is enemy action.
Only in this case, as Liz Greene put it, the “enemy action” was one’s own unconscious. In other words, this obsessive quality that this woman repeatedly encountered in men in some way was a disowned part of herself. The psychotherapist Carl Jung put it in his own way: That which we deny in ourselves, we encounter through other people.
This idea reaches way back. The Vedic tradition from ancient India has a profound form of it. I paraphrase from the Sanskrit:
If you see evil, then remove it from your heart.
If you see good, imitate it.
What this tells us is that we can only see ourselves. That which we cannot recognize in ourselves, we certainly cannot recognize in others. Generally we first recognize things that are difficult for us in other people. From there we can move to recognize and accept it in ourselves.
This also has to do with disease, in particular cancer, but it has to do with all forms of disease. Cancer, after all, is seen as unwanted “invader.” Those who have cancer, at least initially, see it as a sort of unwelcome, out-of-control guest, who comes through our front door, sets up his quarters in a spare bedroom, and precedes to tear up the home on a daily basis. Try as one may, getting rid of this unwelcome stranger is a difficult task. This unwanted stranger could turn out to be violent, ending one’s life.
Yet, in the mirror of experience, the cancer is us, and this has to be one of the most profound psychological struggles of any lifetime. Because to own a cancer as one’s self is not unlike loving a deformed, ugly, adopted child. There may be a tendency to react and reject it, wondering where did it come from, and why should such a thing exist at all? From the point of view of the consciousness we live every moment, what could we have possibly have done to deserve such a fate?
When cancer occurs, buried material erupts into our consciousness in a highly unpleasant way. My sense from taking cases of people with cancer is that it often springs from one’s ancestral past. I seem to remember the medical intuitive Carolyn Myss mentioning this as well. That is, it is tied up with unhealed stuff that we inherit through our parents. What is unhealed stuff? If your father is a tyrant, and you unconsciously find yourself “becoming your father” and acting like a tyrant, this is unhealed family stuff.
I have written the rule in past blogs:
That which we cannot hold in our consciousness we express through the body.
In other words, physical disease is not unlike the obsessive, stalking characters that invaded our friend’s life.
This is a rule that can make my life as a homeopath an adventure. Deep physical disease is often challenging in homeopathy, because deep physical disease expresses a lost part of ourselves. You almost have to find a way to talk to the physical disease. All you have is the English language, but this physical illness here doesn’t speak English. What is it saying?! What language does it speak? The patient may not be so good at putting it into words, in which case you will have problems finding the remedy that will mirror it (remember, Like cures like. See past entries on homeopathy.) and heal it.
Everything I have seen in my life and in my clinic makes me believe that we are here on this earth to become conscious and heal. We are spiritual beings. Nevertheless, all of our experience, every emotion and every thought we have, has to be processed through the physical body. The ancient art of physiognomy, which reads character traits from the physical shape of our faces and bodies, e.g. a sharp chin represents a certain character trait, in my mind is a real discipline. Our body expresses exactly who we are because our body is nothing but the reflection of who we are, i.e our essence, our spirit. Thus, if we have strong emotions, our body has no choice but shift along with those strong emotions. Our body and deeper layers of our spirit are different qualities of energy, but there is a seamless interface between them.
This entry expresses why homeopathy is the one of the most, and probably the most, profound healing disciplines we have. Like must cure like because, from the point of viw of our own consciousness, the mirror of experience is all we have.
Recent Comments