To Be Known

"Health is the functional result of a living system'sfull engagement and participation in the process ofcontinuous creation for the purpose of self-revelationand self-affirmation. It is not the absence of illness."(P. Donovan & H. Joinerbey: "The Face of Consciousness")

"The good physician treats the disease; the greatphysician treats the patient who has the disease"(Sir William Osler)

The Real Medicine

I have worked as a professional health care provider for morethan forty years immersed in the intimate, sacred space oftherapeutic relationship with my patients. Over this time, Ihave learned a lot and have become acutely aware of an importantpersonal truth: Patients do not come to the doctor solely to becured; they come to be Known. The "real medicine" that healseach one of us on the deepest of levels is not found in a pill, a food,or an exercise alone. It is found in the discovery of ourselves. Weare healed in the realization of who we are and why we are here.

For us to taste this real medicine of self-discovery, we areinvited to risk our life for a fuller life. To experience its potency andmagic, we must be willing to slay dragons and apply penetratingand purposeful introspection to our daily life so that we canacknowledge and bless our successes and failures. To be healedby this medicine is to experience our life as a revelation of itselfbecause this medicine is one that is fashioned of self-revelation andself-transformation. Its actions are facilitated by our struggle togrow, evolve and self-affirm against the incessant drag of entropyand transform into a fuller realization of our self through thedisintegrating trend of death and chaos we call illness.

Through my decades of patient care I have come to understandtrue healing to be a creative act of self-discovery and self-transformationmade possible only by the transformative journeyillness provides us. The 20th century philosopher and theologian,Paul Tillich tells us, "Healing is not healing, without the essentialpossibility and existential reality of illness." I agree. Withoutillness, our healing could not happen. Illness makes our healingpossible. It allows for the "essential possibility and existentialreality" of our healing. I have witnessed that healing open mypatients up to a greater emergence and awareness of themselvesand the world around them. Further, our life is what providesus with the fertile soil for our healing to occur out of which ourultimate and full life story then emerges as its own revelation.

Illness as Healing

Any one of us taking the time to truly look at ourselves canreadily see that our lives are a continuous experience of birth,death, and rebirth. I like to refer to this triumvirate of experiencesas continuous creation. Through continuous creation, our lifecontinually and creatively affirms and reaffirms itself repeatedlyagainst the unremitting drag of ennui, stagnation, and sameness.It continuously reaffirms itself against the continuous demandsof death looming always in the shadows of our life. As our life'sarchitect, we are expected to endlessly create newness out of thearchaic, novelty out of uniformity. We are always in a constantcreative flux of change. As the Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aureliushas instructed, "Unceasingly contemplate the generation of allthings through change, and accustom thyself to the thoughtthat the nature of the universe delights above all in changingthe things that exist and making new ones of the same pattern.For everything that exists, is the seed of that which shall comefrom it." Thus, we bear within ourselves the continual, eternalregeneration of the seed of our new life.

It is said, the only constant is change. The change requiredfor our life's continuous creation and renewal of itself isself-transformation, hopefully a transformative change wehave consciously acknowledged and chosen. Death is thetransformational agent hidden within change. All life withinthe Creation requires of itself this transformational death for itsrebirth, continuance and evolution just as all healing requires thedisruptive dynamic of illness for its realization and fulfillment.When we think of it, death and illness are necessary catalystsin our lives; they provide us with the motivational constructs totransform, grow, adapt, and evolve. Through illness, death, andrebirth our life becomes a revelation of itself, a continuous yetfuller recreation of itself. As Pierre Teillard de Chardin wouldtell us, we continuously move toward the Omega Point. Healing,when we choose to pursue it, is always a transformational eventand our life is a continuous series of these events. As we live, weare healed. The more fully we live our lives, the more completelywe are healed. Healing, therefore, is an agent of our individualself-realization that transports us into a greater level of wholeness,integration, and completion.

Chaos and Change

Chaos, as described in the new theories of complexity andchaos, is the harbinger of change. It is the bringer of chanceand opportunity. It heralds the beginning of the transformativeprocess through death into new life and healing. As such; it is aninescapable reality of life yet, it is a necessary and welcome realitywhich beckons us toward growth, fulfillment, and ever expandingpossibilities for healing. Chaos is found everywhere in natureas life struggles to survive and evolve against the disintegratingtrend of entropy. To paraphrase N. Hall in Exploring Chaos, chaosstimulates the generation of new manifestations of complexity anddiversity from tiny stimuli allowing us to evolve. It deconstructsthe existing order of our life, so the new, more complex, and moreself-affirming order of a new "I" can emerge reconstructed fromthe ashes of the old "I." As Nobel Prize-winning physicist, ErwinSchrodinger describes, "At every step, on every day of our life, asit were, something of the shape that we possessed until then has tochange, to be overcome, to be deleted and replaced by somethingnew." So, functioning as the transformative or chaotic elementin our healing, illness is the root of our healing's creativity, theessence of our healing's beauty, and the purpose of our healing'sliberation.

With this in mind, we might want to think much morecarefully about the ramifications of completely removing orsuppressing illness as it is addressed in our present healthcaresystem. The journey through our illness may be precisely thevery experiential journey we need to realize our healing and tobecome something greater, to realize ourselves more fully. Afterall, we don't "get" cancer. We are not healthy one day and thenget cancer the next day. Cancer, like any illness, is a process. We"become" our cancer over time as it becomes an expression of us.We "are" the cancer we manifest. Our cancer arises out of ourown tissue and cellular make up. To rid our self of our cancer is torid our self of a part of our self. Instead of thinking about illnessas something we "get," something separate from ourselves needingto be removed or defeated ... as we do when we undertake the"war on cancer," we might well do better viewing our illness as atransformational journey that must be undertaken and completedfor our healing to occur. This way we end up transforming ourself into something more whole and complete instead of gettingrid of a part of our self.

If we view our illness as such a journey, then the "true job"of a health care provider must be as an educated, intelligent andcompassionate guide directing us through the chaos of our illnessinto the new order of wellness awaiting us at the completion ofour healing journey. By understanding illness in this way, healthcare providers may quickly realize the important questions to beasked here of their patients. These questions are no longer solelyfocused upon, "How do I eliminate my patient's illness or helpmy patient fight it?" More significantly, the questions become,"What is it within my patient that needs to die ... that needsto be sacrificed, released, and transformed?" and "What is it inmy patient that needs to be reborn ... what is it that needs to befacilitated and realized into a fuller manifestation?"

My personal observations over these many years of caringfor people professionally has taught me that illness serves us byacting as life's destructive, disintegrating, and profaning process.I have come to appreciate illness as being absolutely crucial toour health as death is absolutely indispensable to life; just as therotting wood and the decomposing debris on the forest flooris absolutely essential for the healthy growth and lushness ofthe forest's canopy. Health cannot exist without disease and ourhealing is impossible without the transformative opportunity thechaotic struggle of illness offers us. Healing through our illnessis our path toward greater Being.

We might further understand that all healing involves a risk,a sacrifice or loss of something, a death of some kind to transformand facilitate the rebirth of new life. Like the phoenix out of theashes, something of the "old" order and function of who we havebeen, something of our life style, belief system and story must belet go and sacrificed in the transformative fire of illness in orderto make way for our healing and "new" order of being. As Tilichinforms us, "Life must risk itself to win itself, but in the risking itmay lose itself. A life which does not risk disease ... even in thehighest forms of the life of the spirit, is a poor life, as is shown, forinstance, by the hypochondriac or the conformist." Our illnessis the physical evidence of this sacrificial, transformative processoccurring in our life. It is the evidence of our healing takingplace. It becomes the very process through which we must passto complete our healing journey. "Healing is not healing, withoutthe essential possibility and existential reality of illness." Theyare one and the same, just different sides of the same continuum.

The Dynamics of Illness

The extent to which we manifest our illness when caught inthe state of our transformational chaos is directly related to:

1) Our initial vitality (the strength of our "vital force") andthe potency of that vitality needed to propel us throughthe chaos of our illness;

2) The characteristics of the triggering stimuli (stressors;environmental exposures; dietary, genetic and life stylerisk factors; etc.) associated with the onset of our illness;

3) The intensity of the chaos causing our illness into which wehave been plunged;

4) The magnitude of resulting disorder we undergo due to theillness; and

5) The degree of rigidity and resistance we have to thetransformative change demanded of us through ourillness process.

With these factors in mind, it becomes imperative for ourhealthcare providers to:

1) Assist us in maximizing our vital force;

2) Understand the characteristics of the risk factors andpathology underlying our illness;

3) Minimize or palliate the intensity of the chaos (pain anddisability) that is underlying our illness and distracting usfrom our transformative work so as to facilitate our abilityto more readily and consciously complete our healingjourney;

4) Minimize the resulting disorder of our illness withoutsuppressing the transformational process of it; and

5) Remove or reduce the obstacles obstructing our healingprocess on all levels.

This last factor is of particular importance to us on the psycho-emotionaland spiritual levels. It is important to us here becauseit includes identifying, eliminating and resolving any of our self-destructivehabits and lifestyles or restrictive beliefs and fears wehave causing us to manifest rigidity and resistance to our healing.Oddly enough, I have found many of my patients through theyears to be resistant to the transformative changes required fortheir healing. Some have even been in opposition to it. Further, somany of them even find it difficult or are fully unable to visualizetheir life as it could be if they were healed of their illness and nolonger had to live under the restraints and limitations of theirdisease process. This aspect of human resistance has always beenmind-boggling to me.

How can we not know or not be able to visualize and imaginewhat our life would be like without our illness? What wouldprohibit this? Why would any of us, in the depths of our struggleand suffering with illness, not want to at least try to visualizeourselves in a better place surrounded by loving friends, familyand natural beauty doing the creative things we most enjoy doing?As I have witnessed far too often, fear is the common culprit here.I have observed so much of our lives to be directed by our fears:the fear of loosing anything even for the possibility of gainingsomething new and different ("fear of risking death for new life");the fear of realizing our own power and our own light; the fearof assuming responsibility for ourselves and/or others; the fear ofaccountability for our own feelings, thoughts, actions, and wordsand; the fear of dying as well as the fear of living.

I think for many of us, we are more fearful of change than wewould like to believe. We fear letting go of what is familiar androutine, of letting go of the experience to which we have come toself-identify as "our reality" even if it is based on illusion. We fearletting go of it more than holding on to it even if it has becomean obstacle to our healing and fuller self-realization. As the sayinggoes, "We would rather wrestle with the devil we know." Thisis where the rigidity and resistance to change plays its part inkeeping us ill. We would rather hold on to the burning, sinkingboat than risk letting go of it to swim to shore even if the shoreis a short distance away. Our human psyche is programmed byour ego mind to believe what is familiar to us is safe and whatis unknown to us is dangerous. This is where our life must riskitself to find itself.

Here is where our asking the appropriate questions can revealwhat must be risked and lost and what must be found and realizedinto manifestation so our healing may occur. I have witnessed theanswers to these questions hiding in the nature of our illness; inthe nature of our symptoms, signs, and underlying pathology. Itis here where the story of our transformative change is continuallybeing told and the answers to our healing are persistently revealed.It is important for our health care providers and for all of us tobe able to read our story through our signs and symptoms. Byunderstanding the story of our illness, we can better realize thecourse and direction of our healing and the guidance needed tobe given to us so as to help us fulfill our journey into healing.

The Story of Illness Is the Story of Healing

I have taken the complete medical, psycho-social, and familial"histories" of thousands of patients through these many years ofmy naturopathic medical practice. In listening to these histories, Ihave discovered an interesting truth: the story of our life reveals thestory of our illness and the story of our illness reveals the story of ourlife. The theme of our life's struggles and the resistance we manifest tothe transformational changes demanded of us by those struggles isthe theme that commonly plays itself out in our illness's pathologyand symptoms. The morphogenetic field of our consciousness(our conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, dreams, anddesires as well as our familial genetics) is the form matrix thatdictates and directs the underlying cellular and biochemicalpatterning of who we are as we manifest physically in this thirddimensional existence. If our morphogenetic consciousness matrixis dysfunctional in any way, so will be its physical outcomes onour cellular make up and physical functions. In this way, the fieldof our consciousness can dictate the physical form and cellularexpression of our illness.

So many of the stories of illness I have heard begin with a singlepsycho-emotional "wounding" event or with multiple woundingexperiences over time that carry within them the same generaltheme of trauma and dysfunction. We all appear to have our ownindividual experience(s) of wounding. However, many if not mostof our woundings involve primary archetypal themes shared byall of us in our "collective unconscious," as famously describedby the psychologist, Carl Jung. We experience wounding as someform of a violation to our intrinsic and authentic sense of who weare as a conscious individual and to our intrinsic expectation andunderstanding of what it means to love and to be loved and valuedas an individual. We feel and experience this wound deep in theconsciousness matrix of our being as it breaks the fundamentalrelationships that form the fabric of our human existence. As aresult, "our intrinsic, authentic sense of self is plunged into theexperience of annihilation and nonbeing."