More Health "Concerns" - Quareness Series (39th "Lecture").
Could it be that success or failure in dealing with a health issue depends crucially on our thinking? How we think about ourselves and our relationship to everything going on around us impacts on our level of health? Take for example the apparent "truth" that people cannot be "convinced" but rather must learn for themselves. They must evolve a belief system of their own and human life seems to be engineered around that paradigm. We can see this in the struggle between teens and their parents where the former having been bombarded for maybe 14 years with the unique belief systems of the latter, must fight to establish pseudo individual identities of their own. A vital question here, however, may be whether this is all down to genetics or because of the "frequencies" of the parents' beliefs?
All of the cells in our bodies have a basal frequency, as indeed does Mother Earth herself (the Schumann resonance of about 7.83 cycles per second), and this cellular frequency is thought to be affected by the thoughts of both ourselves and of those around us. Again here we might wonder whether say gene mutation which leads on to illness is a straightforward process or maybe a gene mutation arises from its basal frequency having been altered by the energies that surround it? Some "alternative medicine" appears now to be increasingly focussing on this latter idea - how we program our minds to handle things will affect our health outcomes. This suggests our minds create conditions whereby our cells react and that reaction, in some cases, results in "palpitations". Until people see this "bigger picture" maybe large health gains should not now be expected?
For my own part I've suspected for quite some time now that our health is intimately bound up with how much we are in touch with reality (our own and that all around us). To put it another way...to be well we may need to return to being vulnerable....a point well made by the Canadian writer Alma Barkman - "surely I do well to keep my medicine chest well stocked with love and compassion as well as with bandages, for I never know when I will be called upon to deal with tragedy, or when tragedy may call to deal with me". With our invulnerability shattered, disease can show how walled off we have become from the world and our own inner reality.
A great challenge today is to understand the complexity of causes that may foster disease. Our bodies possibly (probably?) have a core or central point, just like the solar system does. Without a coherent centre, systems just don’t seem to work e.g. without the sun at the heart of our own neighbourhood in space, the planets would just fly off. And our health and sense of well-being (and perhaps even our very existence) appears to come into doubt when we lose our centre. Obviously our sun leads to life on earth through a combination of forces and factors - gravity, light, warmth, radiation on non-visible spectrums, magnetism, etc. Its place in the centre anchors our entire solar system. In each human too, such a core may exist providing cohesion to all the cells in the same way that the sun unifies the solar system. This notion was acknowledged in ancient Chinese medicine which recognised the human heart as the supreme controller of body functions, the nuclear core of our lives.
The heart is an electromagnetic generator and the frequencies it radiates outwards change dramatically, depending on what emotional state a person is in. Most western-trained minds immediately think of the heart as a pump and indeed much more can be said about the physical heart and its central place and electrical magnetic influence on the body. However, beyond the physical there is perhaps something even more important and crucial to health and happiness and a life lived without disease....something we are born with....the home of our pure being housed in the universe of feelings as opposed to that of mind and thoughts. And this metaphysical core of our being (of our "heart nature") would likely be more primordial and basic to health than the mind because it pre-exists the mind.
It's feasible too that our pure being deep within (incarnated into our bodies) is ultra sensitive and has been picking up subtle impressions from the environment through the heart centre of pure feeling even before any of us emerged from our mother’s womb. The central point here is that our core nature is highly attuned to love and when it faces a lack of such (for whatever reasons) our "heart being" suffers and begins to close itself off from that suffering. Furthermore our heart centre is maintained when we're able to accept and deal with any pain, but the moment we begin to repress and deny we begin to separate from that which is absolutely central to our health (= an interesting echo of the religious view of sin as essentially separation from God).
Accordingly, for this pure being the more closed the heart is, perhaps the weaker and more vulnerable a person becomes to illness and disease? We may be well "in being" only because it's in the nature of the heart (love) to protect and provide us with emotional and physical well-being. Perhaps a human being without a live active pure being is already ill? In this view emotional and physical health is synonymous with heart health and we might wonder if a weakening of love (including self-love) or heartbreak or heartache can be detrimental to our true well-being. In this regard it's also interesting that Mother Theresa once identified "loneliness and isolation in the West" as the most significant “disease” she had encountered during her lifetime.
The heart, in the meaning intended here, may be defined as the vulnerability of being - a quality of existence most people apparently tend to avoid. Nevertheless, when Christ himself said we must be born again, perhaps what he was referring to was a return to vulnerability, a return to the pure feeling that is so natural to infants and young children. And maybe in essence a great part of the matrix of human disease is involved with a forced return to vulnerability?
People are emotionally fragile when sick and this could be because our mental well-being is normally (at least in part) based on an illusion of invulnerability. Vulnerability is the capacity or susceptibility to being hurt, not a weakness but a capacity to feel. For most people the feeling of being exposed to emotional hurt or exposed to being taken advantage of/abused relates to feelings of vulnerability. But a deeper understanding can teach us that a return to the vulnerable state is most likely necessary and healthy?
Being vulnerable is synonymous with being open to communicate, to share and care. And being open may be a fundamental key to a healthy life. When we are vulnerable in a positive way we try out new behaviors, attitudes and maybe beliefs....we become willing to take chances and try out new experiences, accept challenges or take risks. Vulnerable people listen to life and to what others have to say and thus are open to feedback about what is off about their own lives. Real listening inevitably seems to involve change, something perhaps that chronic disease demands of us if we want to get better.
When someone is truly vulnerable there's an unobstructed view to their heart, being and soul. In the strongest or most enlightened person there is no protecting or concealing cover because it's not needed. Such people are not afraid of being hurt, because they are not afraid to suffer and they are not afraid of change.
Could it be that the deeper we dive into this heart and open up to its let's say super intelligent ways, the more balanced and coherent and healthy our bodies and minds and emotions become?
Western medicine seems largely to miss the boat on this issue by not addressing problems and disease on a being level. Rather it tends towards a one dimensional physical view and definition of human reality. Our modern psychology is also handicapped in this regard because of its stress on the mind instead of the feelings of the heart. Yet many have apparently wondered why it is that intimacy can protect and heal us from disease and why the reverse also holds. There may be much more truth in the fact that we are beings rather than simple mechanical machines needing fixing and repair jobs. Perhaps the single greatest requirement for health and proper function is love and even intimacy?
Pure heart, the will to live, the meaning of one's life, our attachment to truth or denial, our willingness to take risks and our honesty could all have a bearing on our well-being. But there's a huge difference between the head and the heart. The heart is into feelings of love and oneness whereas the mind is into separation and ego. Fragmentation and egocentricity are now prevalent in our individual, family and social relationships....the human heart has been run out of town in our modern civilisation. The consumerist culture, extravagant lifestyles and the unwarranted materialistic competition have caused fragmentation in family and social relationships. And television (that great constant in our lives today) has been devastating on this level leading both adults and children further and further away from their feeling centre....away from what could be called our heart intelligence.
One of the secrets to meaningful change and positive health outcomes can perhaps be found in our willingness to examine those things inside of us that we do not want to look at. The essential nature of the ego (besides separation) is self-blindness. Our minds tend to be caught up in an endless chain of rationalisations that continually justify our present existence. But because the "heart" may be the totality of our existence, we deny that totality when we deny any particular aspect of ourselves.
Of course there are certain things that we simply do not want to see about ourselves because it is too painful. We don't want to suffer and so we don't want to look. Few of us like to see our own weaknesses or like to be wrong. And maybe it is that which is obvious to the people around us that we least want to see and deal with, manifesting our resistance to change as a lack of listening. Even so the wisest person may be the one who listens the deepest.
The conflict between the head and the heart can be boiled down to something like this: Are you going to risk everything for something unknown (the heart risk) and appear ridiculous to the head, or are you going to go the ego preserving way of the personality? Everything is a risk when you push the frontiers of love and much of the problem with the heart's war with the head may be that the head always thinks it is going to lose something.
The Invitation.
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't matter to me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dream,
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed by fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning as to be careful, to be realistic,
to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling is true.
I want to know if you disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul;
if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty; even when it's not pretty, every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver moon "yes!"
It doesn't interest me where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up, after a night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't matter to me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you can stand in the centre of the fire with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you, from the inside,
when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself
and truly like the company you keep in empty moments.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer.
It seems we are always truly where our heart is and cannot be in any other place. It doesn't matter where your body is, it's where your heart is that matters. You can be anywhere but if your heart is not there, if your heart is not really into what you are doing, the real you will be somewhere else. Anything we do without our heart is a losing game.
What we call grace may well be the flow of pure heart energy healing, enlightening and warming us and touching us where we need to be touched. It offers us a quality of being that is healing, animating, invigorating, supporting, nurturing and comforting. And this grace of the heart offers an inner tranquillity and peace that the mind by itself rarely possesses.
The essence of this here heart is love, light and health. It represents our "being nature" which is given to us by the cosmic intelligence with these highly positive qualities. And yet modern man through his society, religion, law and politics has somehow found a way to almost completely squash the universe of heart, love, being and soul. Nevertheless this intelligence, love and power of the heart acts routinely to protect and to foster health on all levels and it is this intelligent protecting love force that seems to guide our steps and makes all the difference in life.
The view of health outlined in this "talk" rests on a conviction that deep in the nuclear core of the human is a love of life and indeed a love of love. Some beings appear to come here to earth with such a strong heart that no circumstance can beat it out of them. There's a furnace of heart energy in them and like the sun it will not be denied though they might have to go through great struggles to release and express this energy.
Though we all have hearts, our problems with life seem to come with the repression of the light and radiance of the heart. What we are born with hardly remains for most of us by the time we reach adulthood. And the path of regaining what was lost is a path of lifelong learning, growth and sometimes painful experience.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
February, 2014.
PS: These "strange" thoughts have arisen in part from a somewhat painfully frank self-appraisal of my own rather strong tendency to "live in my head".