Alternative and Complementary Self Care Education
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Alternative and Complementary Self Care Education
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TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHY
OF HEALING Despite appearances to the contrary, the terms, healer, physician and patient are rarely applied correctly. The normal idea of a healer physician is someone who possesses the ability and knowledge to effect a healing for another. All known societies hold their witchdoctors, shamans and medical priests in high regard. This respect is only fully justified when we understand the true role of a healer, especially in a rapidly proliferating, high technology world economy. The alternative to an adequate philosophy of medicine and healing will be a worldview that confuses medical practice with a very sophisticated bio-technological health model that is remarkably similar to the maintenance procedures and systems concepts utilized by NASA in the space shuttle program! Healing techniques, although an integral part of all curative processes must never be identified with the essence of healing. Thus, the use of, for example, herbs and acupuncture to treat arthritis is on a par with the allopathic approach, which uses anti-inflammatory drugs and joint replacement therapy (when vital). One can make a very strong case for the superiority of the oriental techniques over the western methods in many, but not in all, instances. However, the argument is related to wholes versus parts and systems functions, etc., and is the fitting fulcrum for a debate about the merits of the Holistic approach to treatment rather than a clarification of what constitutes a cure. Precisely because both systems work (and many others, too) and sometimes strongly oppose one another, etc., one can infer that neither one contains an adequate philosophy that can fully explain the true nature of healing and thus the role of the healer. To gain insight into healing one must begin with the idea of individuality, both as causative of dysfunction and also as containing the capacity for cure. This idea requires that an individual self be onto-logically prior to its manifestations in any dimension one cares to imagine. In this way of thinking, the mind/body duality is the expression of the self and not a framework of limitations controlled by so-called 'evolution'. Given this point then 'individuals' must also be at least one of the prime causes of what we believe happens in human evolutionary process. A further corollary is that the concept of choice' must operate at the level of the individual rather than in an empirically observable fashion. Therefore, freedom of will is a critical feature of both disease and its cure. Human individualism seeks experience in terms
of novelty and value fulfillment as one method of growth - esoteric and esoteric
sciences all seem to affirm this idea. Thus health and wellness cannot be the
only way in which the mental/physical system can manifest if the ideas of
'choice', 'variety' and 'learning' are to have any profound metaphysical value.
When people choose to be sick, the causes are
hidden within their own individualities. Secondary causes are definitely
perceivable in medical, social, ecological and psychological ways, etc. These
latter, however, to a large extent represent the workings of individual purposes
and intentions. Only when the primary causes have been removed, will illness
disappear. If a person has not elected that change or transformation then it is
unwise to try to effect a real healing because that person has not traveled far
enough at an inner level to have resolved the crisis or learning experience
which the self needed to know. On this basis it is possible to see the true
function of the healer/physician. The healer is always a servant (not a slave) of the master physician who resides within every individual. The servant's help is always the result of an invocation by the distressed part of the self that has, to a large extent, lost its connectedness with its deeper aspects. Very often, deeply ingrained beliefs are the reason for the split in awareness between the inner and outer layers of consciousness. The healer's job is to aid the patient/physician to form a bridge between the soul and the mind/body so that a true restoration of all layers of the self can take place. The servant must always try to be in rapport or resonance with the patient / physician so as to accurately perceive the patient/ physician's deviation from his or her own blueprint of health. In this way the healer/servant becomes, for a short time, almost one with the patient/physician. Under these conditions enormous amounts of energy can be exchanged between the individuals. However, it must be restated that the purpose of the dysfunction will usually not be thwarted so, in many instances, healing is only partial and sometimes very minimal. From the healer/servant standpoint it should be stressed that there are times when healing should be withdrawn, no matter how hard that may seem at the time. Usually those instances are rare in everyday practice but they do exist. Traditionally, physicians have been admonished to 'heal thyself'. Without that policy, society is always in danger of licensing highly qualified technicians whose skills exclude the ability to enter with compassion and love into a true healing ritual. This situation is currently very evident in psychiatry. An undue proportion of these doctors suffer from severe depression and suicidal tendencies. Their training often prevents them from taking the servant/healer role, which is a necessary ingredient for complete cure of both parties given that the healer/servant temporarily takes on a projected aspect of the patient/ physician's dysfunction. Their spiritual nature impels them to participate deeply in the journey into which the patient is leading them. Sometimes the conflict that results is too difficult to resolve in conventional terms. The ancient spiritual tradition of 'service'
certainly requires that everyone needs to examine carefully the roles we play
and the titles we use when talking about healing. It is the viewpoint of this
writer that true service and healing involves the privilege of temporarily
entering into the personal realities of his or her clients to a level where, on
a rare occasion, it is possible to experience the mystery of individuality in
its creative domain. Copyright: Peter Moscow 1988 Dr. Moscow is hard to impress when it comes to
high technology in the healing process. He has used the Harmonic Translation
System in his practice in Louisville Kentucky for over four years. You can
contact Dr. Moscow at
holistic@aol.com.
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