The Alternative Healer

A Medicine of the Void

In his book Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love, the author, Daniel Odier, tells the story of his guru, Devi, who, before becoming a tantrika, was a potter. When Devi took one of her ceramic jars to the master, she recounts the following:

The master, amused, asked me if the inside of the jar was empty or full. I answered that it was full of emptiness. Immediately he took me on as a disciple.

Devi continued with this comment:

The void no longer obsessed me, I had realized that the void is the bone and the marrow of each being, of each thing. Without the void nothing would be possible. If you read the Vijananabhairava Tantra, you’ll understand that all it talks about is the void.

This story relates to the relationship between conventional medicine and alternative medicine, specifically classical homeopathy. Conventional medicine concerns itself with the jar. Classical homeopathy, in some real sense, concerns itself with the emptiness within the jar, “the void,” and the void’s relationship to the jar. That classical homeopathy can so efficiently heal physical symptoms only tells us that there is a strong relationship between the jar and the emptiness it holds.

Of course, this points to exactly the conflict. Because in preparing a homeopathic remedy, the substance is diluted beyond the point where a chemist can find any molecules of the substance, homeopathy becomes a medicine of “no substance.” It is not a medicine that acts on the physical or material plane, i.e on the jar. Because conventional medicine acknowledges no reality outside of this, it ignores any and all successes of homeopathy throughout the last 200 years. Yet by denying that homeopathy is possible, conventional science essentially says, “It doesn’t hit me between the eyes, therefore it cannot exist.”

Our physical bodies are the jar that Devi hands to the master. In this way of thinking, our physical beings are “full of emptiness,” corresponding to the 3rd and 4th dimensions, the emotional body and pure consciousness. The senses we are given are almost completely given over to perceiving the jar. Easy to say “emptiness is merely empty” when our perceptions are made to perceive physical reality. Then again, as we are going through our day, it is easy to overlook that our heart is beating. Then if we lie down in a place of absolute quiet and listen, we begin to tune into its sound.

To perceive the more subtle energetic currents of life requires attention and practice, and, in some sense, “silence.” This points to the use of meditation to quiet the mind and gradually open oneself up to the void of pure consciousness. It is no different in medical practice. To tune into the 4th level when treating a patient requires much practice in becoming attuned to what it is and how it makes itself known. It flows through everything, the words he chooses to talk about himself and others, the way he moves, how he connects to others, and so on; and yet it is nowhere in specific. It is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Medicine is more straightforward when it sticks to the physical body. We can take rules of physical reality, such as “For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction” and apply it to your health. Thus, you trip, fall and hit the ground, your body records this event with a bruise. Ouch. Yet more straightforward is not more holistic, nor more grounded “in reality.” The roots of most forms of disease are unseen; that is, they belong to the void, not the jar. In this way, it is like all of life, which springs from the fullness of the void. We cannot treat the body in any lasting way without perceiving and treating the unique consciousness that flows through it.

Disease and Resistance to Change

During a rainy few days on Long Island, an idea from my undergraduate years at Colorado College drifted back to me. I had a favorite philosophy professor who used to exclaim, “The only two realities are poetry and revolution.” Sometimes I think it is better phrased, “The only two realities are poetry and transformation,” owing to the politicized nature of the word “revolution,” but I understand the meaning as essentially the same.

To live is to undergo a series of shifting states of consciousness, which we can broadly classify as “joy,” sadness“,” “happiness,” “contentedness” “depression,” “indifference,” and so on. It is the change itself, the transformational nature of our experience, that is remarkable. Disease itself is an entry into a state of consciousness, and it is the peculiarity of disease that our perception of flux and change, the finiteness of our time in our given form, is heightened.

When illness strikes, we simply want to get rid of it, make things go back to the way they were. Still, we have to be fair to illness. To get a cold or a flu is one thing, but when something major strikes, it is like trumpeters line up in the town square and blow a magnificent cadenza, announcing the arrival of a whole new way of life. I once knew someone who suffered through a head injury. She was walking in a Brazilian city and a piece of ceramic tile broke loose from a building, fell a number of stories, and--bad luck--hit her in the head on the street below. She spent the next three months in a coma in intensive care. She woke up, found herself in a time warp, recovered, and, surprising everyone, walked out of the hospital under her own power.

Then she utterly changed her life. She left her marriage--her job had already been conveniently lost--and set in motion a sequence of events that landed her permanently in the United States. Wow, you think, that’s quite a change. Yes, but all illness is like this--the bigger the illness the bigger the change. This woman, we might say, woke up from her coma and read the writing on the wall. She did not dally. She swiftly brought the life she knew to an end. When it comes to illness, this “clean house” attitude is not bad to have. We need to find a way to honor these rites of passage, those times when we are cut loose into new lands.

Our resistance to change, as a rule, is strong. Interesting, in this regard, to think about our medical system. I can’t speak for your experience, but doctors are the most change-resistant people I know. It is a conservative profession. Think of your doctor, wrapped in his white lab coat: changing his view of things is going to take some work. Medical technology and pharmaceutical companies are constantly throwing new material at doctors, but they are careful that the new technology does not challenge the doctor’s paradigm.

Resistance to change in medicine is many times good. If I am in an accident, and I arrive at the hospital, bleeding out uncontrollably, the sort of change this will produce is problematic, and I am resistant to it. I want the doctors treating me to resist it too. This means IVs and blood transfusions and surgeons to sew up where I am bleeding. In the same way, if I blow my knee out while skiing, I will hire an orthopedic surgeon to put things back the way they were. This is a beautiful thing. This kind of resistance to change the medical system does very well, and we love those who help us in this way.

Chronic disease is a different matter altogether. Chronic disease, in my understanding, originates out of a failure of transformation. If you are anxious, have blood pressure that steadily is going up, or perhaps kidney stones that send you to the emergency room for pain relief, a system that resists change may find a way to keep you stuck in the same place. All chronic disease appears to come about because of a roadblock deep inside of us. Hitting this roadblock, it is like things back up, mushroom, and eventually we experience symptoms. We come to know about the roadblock because our symptoms tell us about it. You protest, you have never experienced such an internal impasse. Things were going relatively well when you developed your asthmatic symptoms. But that is the point: if you could see this impasse, you would be unlikely to have gotten the symptoms in the first place.

To understand disease is to understand how our state of consciousness finds itself sailing into stormy seas. It’s a passage, a transformational one, but to where? As I see it, a good doctor of chronic disease is someone who eases you through the necessary transformation, making it appear less rough. In some way, he must accept “poetry and revolution” as the basic building blocks of reality.

On the One Year Anniversary of My Blog

I started this blog a year ago to outline the different levels of our being that different forms of medicines address. This anniversary week I plan to return to the this fundamental question. Last August I began by listing the levels of therapeutic intention that various healers can have. In other words, what is your healer trying to do. I saw this as an important question that all who seek health care, whether conventional or alternative, should understand. I outlined the levels as follows:

1) Intention at the level of diagnosis, i.e. fix the abnormal number or test

2) Intention at the level of feeling, i.e. fix the pain or discomfort.

3) Intention at the level of vital systems, i.e. fix the energetic imbalance.

4) Intention at the level of consciousness, i.e. shift the pattern of perception underlying the expression of physical and mental disease.

These I called the four basic levels of healing, seen from the point of view of any given healer’s therapeutic intention.

Around that same time, while reading in ancient Egyptian medicine, I had a realization. The medicine of ancient Egypt divided the human being into seven different dimensions:

1) the physical body (The Khat)

2) The vital or energetic body, also called “bio-plasmic body",   (The Ba, the soul of breath)

3) The emotional body  (The Khaba or astral body)

4) The intellectual body which consists of the lower and middle states of consciousness  (The Khaibit)

5) The spiritual Self, or Higher Mind (The Ka)

6) The Super-consciousness. The plane where Universal knowledge is available to those attuned to it.  (The Sekhen)

7) Pure spirit, or divine mind (The Ren).

What I noted in looking at these seven levels was the strong similarity they had with my levels of therapeutic intention. The only difference was the ancient Egyptians viewed the emotional dimension as deeper (i.e. further from the physical realm) than the energetic dimension. Levels two and three were switched around. I agreed with the ancient Egyptians. My levels of therapeutic intentions, in contrast, addressed the way healers in our society actually work. It might be worthwhile to put another level of intention between my 3rd and 4th levels. I have found healers with specific therapeutic intentions at the emotional body to be relatively uncommon. They do exist however. For example a shamanic journey has as its intention to retrieve lost or traumatized parts of our emotional selves--an intention specific to the Egyptian emotional body (3rd dimension).

I have since decided to use the word ”levels“ when I am referring to healers and their intention and ”dimensions“ when I speak of the actual layers (dimensions) of human energy. They are not exactly the same. As it turns out, you can numb the 3rd dimension by addressing the physical body (i.e. a 1st level intention), for example the use of prozac, tranquilizers, or pain killers. Therefore, 2nd level intentions are close in character to 1st level intentions in the physical dimension. i.e the 2nd level usually addresses the physical, although in a different way. The 1st level intention addresses an objective finding or diagnosis; the 2nd level intention addresses the unpleasant feelings the person is having, both working through the physical plane. People for millennia have learned to numb the emotional body (3rd dimension) through substance use (acts through the 1st dimension), whether it be alcohol and drugs or simply overeating. It’s the realm of self-medicating the emotional body through the material or physical dimension. Today’s medicine simply does this in more sophisticated ways.

Some people wonder whether the physical and emotional might not be two aspects of the same dimension, like their doctor tells them. But they are not. Energetically they are different. The emotional body appears to be a field of energy that exists in and around the cells of the body.

Because we as humans necessarily process experience through the physical body--e.g. the stress (emotional dimension) of the office today has landed in your tight, aching shoulders (physical dimension)--all experience from deeper dimensions will impact our physical dimension. It does this in ways that are predictable with knowledge with what is happening at deeper dimensions. For example, grief will energetically affect our lungs. In the same way, experience that impacts the physical realm (e.g. eating, sleeping, sex, accidents, exercise) will affect the deeper layers of who we are. These are more difficult to predict. For example, a person sensitive to fright (an issue that goes into the 4th level and dimension; note how 4th dimension is the same as the 4th level) has an accident on their bicycle and goes home and dreams of being chased for the rest of the night. Any aggravation at the physical dimension can aggravate specific, idiosyncratic 4th dimensional issues.

Welcome to a new year of my blog. I will continue to define these levels and dimensions in coming weeks.

Method and Mystery in Alternative Medicine

The method of the use of Mystery must involve a high degree of intellectual precision combined with an equally high degree of enthusiasm or passion for what is being done. Real Mysteries must be explored and penetrated both objectively and subjectively. -- Stephen Flowers.

I have always felt that the above quotation says something essential about the universe we live in and those healers who strive to reach their highest potential within it. Any diseased patient will pull a healer of open heart and mind beyond the mechanics of the body into the emotions of the sufferer, and then into the mysteries of life and consciousness. To make that journey, a healer must take the risk of leaving the comfortable sterility of science behind.

The great advantage of practicing the 1st level, mechanical medicine I learned in medical school is its intellectual precision. The lab value comes back 16.2. It should be between 1 and 6. Correcting this lab value is a precise therapeutic intention. Its great flaw is that to obtain this precision it has excluded the deeper realms of human emotion and consciousness from its therapeutic plan.

Scientists do not see this as a flaw. Why not? Because they secretly justify their point of view by restricting the playing field of what is human. Emotions become nothing more than neurotransmitters mechanically linking up to their receptive spots. Any spiritual problem quickly becomes a “chemical imbalance” that the newest pharmaceutical drug can address. There are no Mysteries in the halls of science, only data not yet returned from the lab.

Alternative medicines need precision to reach profound results. One thing I noticed in learning to practice was that, in the casetaking encounter, I was unable to separate the need for this precision from my passion for reaching it. I have never seen a great homeopath who does not have this. Blocks regularly develop in the homeopathic interview, and the homeopath uses his passionate subjectivity to move past the subjective block in the patient. Thus, one’s subjectivity becomes a tool to penetrate to the deeper levels of the human. Healing becomes inseparable from a specific intention of caring.

I suspect that the highest achievements of what is human result from mixing deep passion with precision of mind. Is it not something to aspire to in living? It may be that our universe is incapable of being indifferent; that is, it shifts when confronted with the subjective passion of one of its living beings. If so, this will be impossible for science to study, because the subjectivity will always be melded with the experiment.

This feels right to me. Life and Mystery will always remain out of the grasp of the rigid, intellectual construct. Science with its laboratories is a safe house that eliminates subjectivity in hope of gaining control over the emotional storm. This would be fine if there were some idea of “re-engaging” once we learned what we needed to learn. Unfortunately, the intellectual construct of science has become an end in itself, and those in our health care system feel as if their souls are in straitjacket as a result.

In fairness to traditional doctors, it takes much self-knowledge and risk of the self to work in the deeper energetic layers of the human. It can be scary when healers come face to face with a subjectivity that pushes them into their own contradictions. When this happens, doctors typically write the prescriptions and quickly leave the room. Let the nurse finish up. Medical school instructors never taught that, not only were doctors supposed to assist in the development of their patients, but that their patients would assist in theirs. Doctors have become some of the most rigid “control freaks” on the planet. Missing a broader model of what is human, they have had little other choice. Going to medical school often means a step backwards in spiritual development

The Unhealing Wound: The Patient's Story

In my last post, I briefly described a case of homeopathic Agathis australis (the New Zealand kauri tree). I gave the doctor’s side of the case. Today I am posting the patient’s side. As promised, she sent me her detailed account of what happened after she took the remedy. You may want to review my last post, The Unhealing Wound, before continuing.

For people unfamiliar with classical homeopathy, I should mention that intense reactions occur to a correct remedy less than 5% of the time. I do not often see it. Nevertheless, this is such a case. Realize that taking a homeopathic remedy does not produce anything that is not already there. If the body (and mind) has held on to a lot of toxicity, a good remedy helps in expelling it. Realize also, in relation to this case, that classical homeopathy is the best way to cure someone of herpes outbreak. This patient is very unlikely to see an outbreak of it again. Her outbreak, in some mysterious way, needed to occur for her to heal.

Detoxifying reactions exist, and this is such a case. This patient’s reaction to the remedy was dramatic in a holistic way; that is, both the mind and the body reacted vigorously. In spite of its difficult content, I am happy to post what she has to say, because it shows first, just how complex healing can be when it is deep, and second, how profound classical homeopathy is when the healer hits the mark. The point is that the emotions life brings to us can be terribly complex, and healing may take us straight into them. Those who are interested in an unvarnished look at the complexities involved are in for a treat. I thank her for her candor. Her story follows:

The night I took the Kauri remedy was like any other night. Nothing stood out of the ordinary. In fact, I dreamed nothing and, upon waking, I still felt the same. Perhaps this day I woke up feeling more tired than usual. What I did know was that it was still very wintery cold outside and I was slightly depressed.

Another day passed and I still felt bad. I found myself wading around in a thick soup of emotions surrounding an incident with a minister who I had seen for spiritual counseling. It was nearing the one-year anniversary of when I filed paperwork that would start another difficult ethics investigation into his sexual misconduct. During the investigation, this man had promised the Ethics Committee that he would set up a meeting so that he could apologize to me face-to-face. Said meeting never happened. This man and his ethics violation robbed me of four years of my life and vitality. I was angry that I never got an apology.

The third day greeted me with an overall sense of fatigue and lethargy and a menstrual period that arrived a week and a half early. I dragged myself out of bed (like I usually did on cold dark mornings) and managed to get myself to work on time. Mid-morning, I felt as though I suddenly hit a brick wall. My joints ached and every bone in my body hurt. Then the chills emerged. The rigors I experienced nearly shook me off my chair. These symptoms manifested so quickly that I at first thought it was a nasty case of influenza. To be safe, I phoned Dr. Branch to let him know what was happening.

The drive home was long and painful as the intensity of my physical symptoms brought me to tears. I felt as though my joints were filled with searing hot liquid and that they would explode if I exerted myself too much. Strangely, I also felt as though all my bones where completely separate from my joints and that everything was stacked on top of itself with only my skin holding everything intact. Once home, I piled blankets on top of my bed and crawled inside and shivered myself to sleep. By evening, my fever burned brightly and continued for three days. I slept a lot and ate little.

During this time, my body started expelling all kinds of toxins. I was constantly changing my bedclothes as “night sweats” soaked the sheets. No longer able to smoke cigarettes because I was so ill, I was coughing up mucus continuously. And then I was coughing so hard that I discovered what “stress incontinence” was all about. My urine smelled like horse urine and stung like acid every part of my skin that it touched. My throbbing lymph nodes were nearly the size of large marbles. I had never been this sick in my life but I also knew that toxins and built-up stress chemicals were exiting my body. I began to marvel at my body’s healing ability until I got out a mirror and discovered what the stinging urine was really trying to tell me. I was horrified and repulsed by what I saw.

Herpes.

Intuitively, I knew what it was even though I had never before seen it on my body or anyone else’s. I didn’t even know where it came from. I had been in a monogamous relationship for the past two years and both my partner and I thought we were clean. In disbelief, I sat down and cried—my head started to spin from all of the emotions I was feeling. After confirming with a Nurse Practitioner that it really was Herpes, I called Dr. Branch to fill him in on this latest development. In his usual inquisitive fashion, he asked what I was feeling.

One word came out of my mouth: “SHAME.”

“…Now everyone will know what I’ve been doing. I am dirty and tainted. No one will love me ever again.”

After hanging up, I started to cry again and once these tears started, they flowed for three days. I never felt more alone and abandoned in my life. I felt such overwhelming emotional and spiritual pain as though I was facing complete annihilation. Shame poured out with my tears and continued to flow out of every pore in my body. Then the grief came.

At first it was a trickle. Then it became a torrent. Waves of grief poured from the depths of my soul. With my body being so weakened from four days of fever, I could not maintain old defense systems that previously kept these emotions at bay. I cried so freely and easily that for the first time in my life, big wails and sobs came deep from within and shook my entire body. Tears tasted old and mucus ran thick like molasses.

Memories of past sexual abuse floated to the surface. I sat and witnessed myself as a little girl losing my sexual innocence in a swimming pool to a cousin. I mourned lost innocence. I saw myself again being drugged and date raped and sat with myself in compassion despite my poor choices. I sat there witnessing the many sexual transgressions and victimizations that peppered my life and felt myself filling up with love and compassion. I sat there holding myself in the light as I watched how time and time again I put my health and safety in the arms of another man—how I would blindly trust him with my life—how I gave away my power in exchange for what I thought was love. And at the same time, I took a good look at myself and how I used sex and my seductive power to manipulate and meet my needs. I saw victim and victimizer all at once.

The more I watched these scenes float by, the more compassion I felt for myself. By the time that I had no tears left to cry, my heart felt like it expanded three feet outside my chest. It hurt to have a heart this big and to love so much. I felt so exposed and vulnerable. Simultaneously, I felt tender and sweet. Illuminated in pure white innocence, my past ended and my future began. I reclaimed my virginity.

Once I was able to process these intense emotions, I realized how much my toxic shame colored my relationship with the world and myself. I had always felt that there was something inherently wrong with me—that if people knew who I really was, that they would not love me. I was so dirty and tainted that no one could love me anyway. After all, I was an illegitimate child born in shame to a 14-year old mother and given up for adoption. I had experienced sex at a very young age and even then, I inherently knew it was wrong. I remember as a child wanting to become a nun in the Catholic faith that I was raised in—but I sincerely believed that God would not want me because I was sexually impure and, therefore, unworthy. As an adult, I still felt this way. This barrier of shame and unworthiness kept me from loving myself and from truly connecting with others in a positive healthy way. Robbed of my joy, I would attract relationships and life situations based on this woundedness.

I struggled to disown my shame. In doing so, I became even more disconnected from my Self. I felt as though my personality were fractured. As strange as this sounds, I was well aware that different aspects of my Self had never really gotten acquainted with one another. This lack of integration diminished my power while keeping me in a perpetual victim state and more prone to codependency.

Now that I no longer carry this burden of Shame, I cannot believe how my life has shifted. In the week that my body was going through the healing crisis, I lost 10 pounds. (I feel that much of this was actually emotional and spiritual baggage.) Additional weight started to melt off my body because I no longer feel the need to “fill” my bottomless stomach and maintain physical boundaries with a thick layer of body fat. I’ve quit smoking and drinking caffeine as I have no desire to create ill health. I am eating to nourish my body instead of stuffing it with food. For the first time in my life, I feel happy, healthy, and WHOLE!

Interestingly, a wart fell off my left hand a week after the healing crisis ended. And those little ulcers in my nose disappeared.

As for the Herpes, well, the sores healed within three days after they first presented themselves and I have not had another outbreak since. I feel as though I have a platoon of little armed foot soldiers guarding the entrance to my sacred cave. Their presence is assisting in helping me maintain healthy sexual boundaries. I ended the sexual part of my relationship with my partner of two years (who, by the way, tested negative for Herpes) and am going to remain celibate for a while—until I find the man who wants to father my future children and grow old with me. If anything, disclosing that I have Herpes will separate the men from the boys. I am not bitter about this because I feel as though I am blessed and deeply healed. Anyhow, this virus is not who I am. Herpes showed me what I desperately needed to see in myself. I have a feeling that it will go dormant and I will never have to deal with it again. If the Herpes does resurface, it is obviously going to tell me something important.

My experience with the Kauri remedy has been absolutely amazing. I continue to interact with my world in a much more positive and healthy way. I notice little things—like looking in the mirror and seeing a fully-grown woman. To the average person this may not seem important, but I had literally felt like a child much of the time. I have become more grown-up but I have also become younger at heart (people have also told me that I look younger!). I am less rigid and more flexible with my world and myself. I am more capable of forgiveness. My dreams are more vivid and powerful. I am more able to remain true to myself and stay on my life’s path. And I never thought I could honestly say this, but I feel beautiful…and I even love myself!

Unexpected circumstances and disappointments may still catch me off guard, but I bounce back and regain my centeredness much more quickly. Recently, I found myself reacting to a situation where I felt betrayed by a spiritual teacher I had studied with for two years. The feelings and emotions were so intense that I found myself back in my old depressive pattern of negative rumination and irrational thinking. At one point, fear gripped me when I thought I might get stuck feeling that way. Those little nose sores even returned. I called Dr. Branch to let him know I relapsed and he instructed me to repeat a dose. Within two days, I was laughing at myself and pondering, “What in the world got me so upset?” I was able to ground myself so that I could see the truth in the situation and realize that it had nothing to do with me. How powerful and liberating that was!

I am still baffled at how quickly things shift for me every time I take one 30C dose of Kauri. I have been through years of therapy and I am certain that many more years of therapy would still have not gotten me to the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual place where I am today. When I first met Dr. Branch, I knew that Homeopathy stimulated the body’s natural healing response—but I did not fully understand that an immune response could actually heal a wound (shame) caused by abandonment and betrayal. I am so grateful that Dr. Branch found my matching remedy before I developed any physical manifestation of disease. Now that I know what it actually feels like to be happy, whole, and healthy, I can only imagine what diseases I would have suffered had I continued to trudge through years of dark and putrid toxic shame.

On Animal-Human Relationships

Recently a California-base homeopath who treats animals, Beth Murray, wrote to me regarding what she has observed in her practice regarding the relationship between humans and animals. Her thoughts, which I think are important, I paste in below:

As a homeopath who sees animals at Creature Comfort Holistic Veterinary Center and at the Oakland Zoo, and treats people at Back to Life Wellness Center in Alameda, California, I often think about how remedy states, which are often described as being shared with or inherited from family members, are also shared by animals and their people. If we accept that a remedy state is a condition of the vital force that affects a person's spiritual, emotional and physical self, it's not a big step to imagine animals and their people sharing these states. We've all seen the old couple we "look" like each other, and we've also seen the dog and person who "look" like each other. In some cases this may be because a person consciously or subconsciously chooses a companion animal to echo her own appearance, in other cases, this resemblance comes after years of sharing the same space - the two begin to move like each other, cock their heads like each other, etc. So I do not find it strange that often pets and their people share the same illnesses.

For example, I have a weak bladder, and have to frequently use the bathroom. I think it is no coincidence that my both my cat and dog "leak" while sleeping and lying down. Quite frequently I discover that the animals I am seeing at the veterinary clinic share a weakness in a certain area of their body with their owners. I also find that the remedy that heals the pet is often the remedy that the owner needs, and vise versa. For example, I suggested the remedy Naja, made from the cobra snake, for a ten-year old cat with a heart murmur and early hyperthyroid. The cat continues to do well on the remedy. The owner went to see my favorite homeopath, who had no idea what I had given the cat, and this homeopath also prescribed Naja for this woman.

Unfortunately, I see the same phenomena in cases of cancer and other serious illness. The most common pattern I see is that an owner will bring in a terribly sick animal. The owner will be completely loving and terribly concerned about the animal - but I will have a sense that this animal has "absorbed" the illness from his person. In no way do I feel that this is the person’s fault. This is the nature of companionship, we share energy, and sometimes, illness.

In his book, The New Work of Dogs, Jon Katz discusses how the "work" of urban and suburban dogs is emotional rather than physical. He discusses how the "job" of being a companion and soothing their human's anxieties, may be taking a toll on dogs. Having a clear-cut job such as keeping a herd intact or bringing back a duck without tooth marks is a satisfying experience for a dog; the job is doable, and ends in the satisfaction of accomplishment. These jobs also involves a dog's best skills - her sense of smell and physical prowess, and while using these skills, the dog is simultaneously "discharging" stress through physical activity. Emotional work is not so clean cut. In a sense, "the job is never done," and discharge of stress is often not built into the job. I would expand Katz's discussion of work, to include other companion animals such as cats and rabbits. I do not see this phenomenon in herd and farm animals, who are more affected by and spend more time with each other than any human.

Recently Dr. Branch wrote ,“ "That which we cannot hold in our consciousness we express through the body.” I believe this, and would extend his statement further to say, "Sometimes, that which we cannot express, our animals and family members express for us."

He wrote something which luckily, is also true: "We are here on this earth to become conscious and to heal.” Despite the fact that animals do not use words or have intellects quite like ours, I do believe they have energetic and spirit paths, just as we do. And that each animal and person somehow “choose” each other in order to work on her own spirit’s challenges. Even if that means that the relationship is radically changed as an animal or person faces his own death, there is always healing in that process, and we share this healing as we accompany our animals through life, and stand at the doorway as they pass through death. Just as we share illness with our animals, finding the spirit-healing inherent in this process is a task we can also share with them.

Beth Murray, CCH, RSHom (NA)
www.wholehomeopathy.com
www.myanimalhomeopath.com
510.522.2469

Healing for all living beings

The Mirror of Experience II

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.

More Thoughts on "Healing the Rift"

In regard to yesterday’s thoughts on relationship:

--There is no right or wrong here. There is only the matter of a continuum between union and separation, where we fall on it, how satisfied we are with our intimate life, and what we need to do personally and as couples to heal where we are dissatisfied.

--There is nothing wrong with being what Marnia Robinson calls a “romance junkie.” Most of us live that for a while, and we all perhaps should. It may not even be good to completely shut off this part of ourselves. The only issue is, if this approach us leaves us feeling separate and dissatisfied, how we can go about healing it, if we so choose?

--Sexuality is a transformative arena because of its power to pull us into entirely new phases of life and identity. There are times when the only real option is to simply let go and find out where we end up. During such times we may give ourselves over with abandon to a tumultuous sexual experience, with great highs and lows. If and when we start to want more balance, knowledge of how to get it is important.

--In regard to men, I believe it to be true that ejaculation, particularly a lot of it, leads to separating behavior, if only to recharge the batteries. Where balance starts to be lost varies from man to man. If a man reaches a point where he desires a deeper union with his significant other, then it is important for him to become sensitive to his sexuality and how it affects his relationship. Learning how to manage sexual energy becomes a critical first step to deeper union.

--In regard to women, Marnia Robinson’s argument that orgasm in women affects her moods and ability to carry on a stable relationship is entirely new to me. I don’t know if she is correct. Certainly it must vary from woman to woman. My question was how true it would be if she had balance and deeper energetic levels (through a good homeopathic remedy, e.g). Read her book for the subtleties. My suspicion is she is at least partly correct, although you may need to be quite “tuned in” in many instances to pick it up.

--What is on the surface may not directly lead to what is underneath. There are many reasons that people are dissatisfied with relationships today. We hear people complain of sexless marriages, for example. The source of the problem is likely more complex than what we imagine. Balance at the deeper energetic levels becomes important.

--In this regard, what is a “spiritual relationship”? My understanding is that the relationship becomes focused on the deeper energetic levels where union can occur (union at the physical/material level is impossible, however hard we may try.) There is no better way to tune in to these levels than by subverting the power of the material level. When Marnia Robinson recommends forgoing orgasm, driven by strong biological, hormonal drives, this is what she is recommending. A couple cannot lose by exploring it. Only by exploring it can they find out what is true for them. In the end, what works for them only they can decide.

--If you want to understand more about what sexual energy management looks like, Mantak Chia’s books give the most detailed look. In the Taoist tradition, both men and women, as they near orgasm, draw the energy out of the genitals and up the spine into the head. The focus becomes an energetic union. Looked at from this perspective, we can start to see ourselves as primarily built of energy (Qi) and consciousness, rather than matter.

Healing the Great Rift

Three things have led up to this entry:

1) A psychotherapist who sees teens and young adults here in New York mentioned to me that she finds many of them are sleeping with each other without sex.
2) Through a social network in New York, I have met on several occasions a couple, Reid and Marcia, who are responsible for “cuddle parties” here in New York and elsewhere. These parties are exactly what they sound like, with a “referee” to make sure no sexual touching occurs. I haven’t been to one, but the reports I hear are uniformly good.
3) Marnia Robinson’s book Peace Between the Sheets: Healing Sexual Relationships.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, this emphasis in the younger generation on non-sexual touch? You get a sense of vulnerability that is outweighing the powerful sexual instinct.

Marnia Robinson’s book I have read with keen interest. Read it if you have the time. Ms. Robinson has done some deep thinking on intimate relationships. I usually am not impressed by explanations that center on the physical plane (1st level, see my Levels of Healing on the right), but in this case a lot of it makes sense, and she integrates it all with deeper spiritual levels.

Ms Robinson essentially argues that orgasm and heights of sexual pleasure create neurotransmitter changes (specifically an increase in dopamine) that mirror drug addiction, and this interferes with intimacy, creating emotional turbulence and the need to separate. She then links this with deeper spiritual issues, i.e. this turbulence is what prompts those of spiritual inclination to choose celibacy over relationship. Nevertheless, she astutely notes that celibacy does not necessarily open the door to enlightenment because celibates must still deal with the unrest of unresolved sexual polarity. We need look no further than Catholic priests to see the truth in that assertion.

What then is the answer? She charts a somewhat radical middle course—touching and sex without orgasm. On a personal level, I have studied the Taoist and Tantric spiritual traditions as they apply to men. What stunned me about her book was that she is advocating that women avoid orgasm. Wow. To agree with her means a man must fundamentally change his approach as a man, i.e. he must lose his intention to bring a woman to orgasm. Of course, I do not expect many to agree with this, and some couples will benefit from it more than others. Nevertheless, I think it is worth thinking through.

I have processed it all in this way: to be male or female is fundamentally a state of dis-union, which we must inevitably feel in some form. To seek to bridge this rift is in some way connected to our spiritual urge to merge with the Divine. Celibacy may allow spiritual work and likely for some is necessary (often inexplicably) but does not answer the fundamental problem.

HOW we seek to bridge the rift between our own sex and the opposite pole is the key question. We can seek to do it in an uncontrolled, passionate way, yet this has desperation as its basis. The passionate answer is the multi-orgasmic explosion, if you will. This leads to addiction, suffering, and, in this day and age, the destruction of relationship. On the other hand, we can sacrifice our addictive need for pleasure and peaks of passion and bridge the gap in a controlled way.

Ms. Robinson, among other things, advocates two weeks of non-sexual touching at the beginning of any relationship. You can see the point: it shifts the emphasis from pleasure, i.e. self gratification, to a relationship. A relationship only exists by virtue of some sort of exchange, i.e. giving and receiving. In order for any sort of harmony to exist between the sexes, this shift HAS to happen. Orgasming shifts you back away from an emphasis on exchange into an experience not different from taking a drug or smoking a cigarette, and it is helped along by changes in brain chemistry that can make it difficult for the relationship.

It seems we can’t have our cake and eat it too, at least not initially. We can have relationship (exchange), or, we can take the passionate route and have a solipsistic experience of pleasure in our own minds. We cannot have them both at the same time, and the key question is whether even a small emphasis on the latter tips us out of balance to the point where intimacy becomes difficult. (Note too the difficulty those with substance abuse addictions have with relationship.)

Of course, once we make the shift to relationship, our addictive needs in check, then it seems we are open to experience a different, more spiritual, sort of pleasure—the pleasure of union. It appears, though, that this is something that takes work and discipline. Union, like its corresponding sanskrit word, yoga, is a spiritual discipline.

Food for thought, isn’t it?

Treating in the 4th Dimension

An interesting aspect of practicing homeopathy is that its very existence raises questions of who we are and the nature of the universe we live in.  The process of repeatedly taking cases down to the 4th level subtly alters one’s view of life.  One must become more attuned to subtle dimensions because that is where the homeopath directs his treatment.

Psychotherapists who are familiar with the way I take cases often say, “We are after a similar thing.”  I cannot agree with them.  The reason they see a similarity is that I am traveling through the emotional realm where psychotherapy sets its intention.  Psychotherapists, as a rule, do not have an intention of “curing physical symptoms.”  A classical homeopath does.  Adding in the physical symptoms to the psychotherapeutic emotional terrain brings a profound shift into the 4th dimension.  It is an entirely different layer of immateriality. 

To put it differently, let me go back to my discussion of the 4th dimension.  I have called the 4th dimension the energy of consciousness itself.  It is the camera lens through which we see and experience life.  Trying to see it would be like trying to see our own eye without a mirror.  It is the “stuff of life,” in that we apparently are swimming in it.  It is everywhere and nowhere.  It embodies everything we are, can see or experience.  Moreover, a particular pattern of consciousness streams through every molecule that makes up our individual being, giving coherence to who we are as individuals.   

The psychotherapist treats the picture that our consciousness forms in front of us, working to bring awareness to and alter the perceptions that frame our emotions.  A homeopathic remedy, on the other hand, treats and shifts the “camera lens” itself.  It is a subtle but profound difference.  It is amazing to watch as it becomes revealed.  High level homeopathy is the process of learning how to uncover the peculiar, fixed lens through which an individual perceives the world.   

It is a bit confusing for an outsider, because we interact with other people and we perceive it as merely human.  It is hard to imagine that within each of hides a non-human source through which we perceive.  Yet, if you watch people closely you can pick up on their deep patterns, even though you may not know what substance in the world matches it.  Watch Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western, the way he softly threatens.  Make my day.  It is a veiled threat.  It says, “Cross this line and I will blow you away.  Stay within bounds and I’ll let you live.”  He is like a rattler rattling his warning.  There is something very “snaky” about this.  Find someone who embodies energy like this in a deep, unalterable way, and he probably needs a homeopathic remedy of a snake.  In some way, he expresses the energy of a snake, yet this springs from a deeper source.  That source is a pattern of consciousness.