by Robert Aitken in 1992
As appeared in Aitken's column 'As Above' so 'Below'
My intention as teacher/writer, therapeutic counsellor and workshop leader is to encourage our dignity as more open, loving, human beings...to tout ways which prohibit stagnation, non-growth and crystallization
In the interest of our shifting from a paradigm of unsatisfying compromise (victim/martyr/sacrifice) to one of uncompromising satisfaction (which is what the prevailing "regenerate, or else!" energies are all about, there are certain paradoxical notions that best be confronted and dealt with. Only then, are we able to comprehend the true nature of the healing experience and take responsibility for our own healing. Dr.'s Michael Greenwood and Peter Nunn are conventionally trained Canadian physicians, authors of Paradox and Healing: Medicine, Mythology and Transformation. They point out that we only get "better" when we stop trying to "get better".
This book is a 'must read'; a synthesis of their years of meaningful experience, working with patients suffering from chronic pain or illness, and their own personal life experience of unresolved trauma and pain. Many patients find their way to them at the "Meridian Holistic Health Centre" in Victoria because they have exhausted the possibilities of the conventional medical system.
Its clear from this lucid 246 page work, beautifully illustrated by Miles Lowry, that this pair of Docs (pun intended) fully appreciate the capabilities of modern medicine. But the downside of the technological marvels, they eloquently point out, is that people all to often give up responsibility for their own well-being and place their complete trust in a medical system which is incapable of dealing with the very real irrational and emotional characteristics of their illness. They inform us that 20% of all illness is inadvertently caused by doctors attempting to treat conditions that are simply not treatable by conventional means.
Greenwood and Nunn fully explain the holistic approach to well-being and its impact on the patient-doctor relationship...indeed, on the whole concept of conventional medicine. Using myths in their traditional role as teaching tools, what we have here is a deeply heartfelt advocacy of the profound power of holistic thinking and its enormous importance to us all.
As I point out in my own work, in order to participate in the healing process, one must be in relationship with the self, with another human being, with the cosmos...in reality, all one and the same. Greenwood and Nunn know that at the root of everything, all is one.
You may well be astonished by some of the insights this book/tool for transformation provides. "Energy medicine forces us to deal with concepts which contradict many of our cherished beliefs. That a doctor do nothing at all, that patients be their own physicians, or that the patient and disease are one, are ideas that at first glance may seem absurd; and yet..."
In a chapter on "Denial", they write that some psychologists such as Shelly Taylor, author of "Positive Illusions", argues that a certain amount of self-deception is an attribute of a healthy psyche."
In one of my favourite chapters, "Accidents and Metaphysics", they opine, "One of the ideas which seem to permeate 'New Age' thinking is the notion that 'we attract that which occurs to us.' Nothing is more irritating to the average scientific mind than that particular 'causal' explanation of events. It seems that the metaphysician wishes to ascribe causality where no causality can exist. What's more, the idea seems to lay the blame with us for the disagreeable events in our lives. It is bad enough to get ill. If we must also accept that we somehow attracted our misfortunes, we have to add guilt to the burden of sickness and pain.
They then go on to make plain, "Laying the blame is not the intent of such a belief. Instead, it suggests a restoration of the sense of personal power, which an accident, if seen as 'victimizing' necessarily removes. This sense of personal responsibility, in the sense of power, not blame, is the fuel of the transformational journey. If we could step back and observe the high ambient stress we all carry, it would be easy to understand the reasoning behind the 'attraction' principle of metaphysics."
This is what I've learned from 31 years of metaphysical research, practice and experience.
"The truth is that healing implies wholeness, and wholeness implies the totality of perspectives. When we refuse to embrace all points of view, illness is the reverberation which brings us back to the truth."
Robert Aitken :