September 2003, Volume 3, No. 3

Editor's Musings

Faith is based in logical truths and faith is based in the heart – known directly rather than deduced through reason. Our personal and collective challenge is to seek the healing balance between the two ways of experiencing an d practicing our faith.

Numerous components of can be identified within the broad contexts of faith:

A. There are three broad approaches for developing faith:

1. Accepting what we are told

2. Logical reasoning

3. Intuitive, experiential knowing

B. James Fowler identifies six stages in developing faith:

1. Basic faith (Fowler: “Intuitive-Projective Faith“)

2. Mythic-Literal Faith

3. Faith based on popular idols (Fowler: “Synthetic-Conventional Faith”)

4. Faith by personal choice (Fowler: “Individuative-Reflective Faith”)

5. Faith through inner knowing (Fowler: “Conjunctive Faith”)

6. Faith anchored in transcendent awareness (Fowler: Universalizing Faith)

C. Personality types and stages of faith

D. Societal stages of awareness parallel the stages of faith

Each approach and stage has its advantages and drawbacks. None can be proven as valid beyond question without prior assumptions or. Each of these five stages can be experienced through any or all of the three broad approaches to experiencing faith. Each will be colored by our personality styles...

Research

Sex, in the absence of psychotropic drugs or esoteric or meditational techniques designed to bring about altered states of consciousness, can trigger a wide variety of altered states, most of which resemble those considered in various traditions to be signs of spiritual attainment. Kundalini, out-of-body experiences, telepathy, and various experiences of the Light, including unio mystica, are found in sex as well as in NDEs. The transformative effects of these sexual experiences closely parallel those of NDEs, including increased spirituality, personal growth, psi (psychic) experiences, improved relationships, and changed beliefs about the nature of reality, among others. The fact that sex can bring about such powerful changes suggests the need to reconsider what NDEs and contemplative altered states represent.

Sacred sex is a venerable spiritual path despite its long decline as an open practice with the rise of civilization - societies characterized by city-states and bureaucratic institutions rather than tribal- and clan-oriented societies. Originally, and as still may be detected in the relicts of tribal- or clan-based cultures, sex was recognized as a potential gateway to certain non-ordinary phenomena available to adults, associated with spirituality...

We began to do experiments...

Now, the way he impacted on the green bananas was by holding each banana, sometimes two at a time, with one hand at each tip of the bananas. Occasionally, he would handle one banana at a time and twirl it, slowly... after three to four weeks' time, many of his bananas hardened in a way that looked like a kind of mummification was taking place. The pulp of the banana became much more like wood. and have remained the same for years...

Planetary Transformation

And we are social and political hypochondriacs.

Unwittingly, everyone who is working in the field of complementary/ alternative medicine is helping to put together a new and powerful philosophy that can transform western politics.

Beneath all the political sub-languages or lexicons that drive political debate, there is actually one lexicon that rules. We all use it within the political arena, but no one recognises its existence. It is the lexicon of orthodox medicine. Or, to be more precise, it is the lexicon conventionally employed when analyzing sentient organisms.

Being political hypochondriacs, we treat our politicians as if they are orthodox doctors. Political agendas focus on our social, political and economic pains: and symptoms. Legislative programs consist primarily of diagnosis and prescription. We are all legislation junkies. And just as when we visit our doctors, too often we place ourselves in the hands of those who are presumed to be experts. We trust that there will not be side effects, and we do not want to take responsibility for bringing about the cure of our problems ourselves. Indeed, we are all too ready to externalize our social and political pains rather than accept ownership of them. Does this sound familiar?

But the lexicon of orthodox medicine is mechanistic, and the mechanistic paradigm breaks down when applied to complex organisms such as human beings and the polity. Hence all the side effects that are endemic to both medical and political practices...

Wholistic Approaches

In the last year I have had the privilege of meeting healers from all over the country. Some of them have shared tales of their most profound healing experiences with me. My friend David recently shared a story that shows how intent and belief can turn even a simple exercise into a powerful healing tool.

David is a Reiki master and Tai Chi instructor. For many years he has taught a Tai Chi class for cancer patients. In an effort to explain the concept of Chi (life force energy) to his students, David uses an exercise many of us learned in our first-degree Reiki classes. He has his patients move the palms of their hands together and apart until they can feel the energy between them, and then he has them form it into an energy ball or "Tai Chi ball" as he calls it.

David began, "One day after forming her energy ball, a woman who had just begun treatment for throat cancer asked, "Now what shall I do with it?" "She caught me off guard," David told me. "In those days, I'd never thought about it being a healing tool; it was a parlor trick, a way of teaching people to feel their own energy, no more.

"Without a lot of thought, I glibly answered, "Why don't you rub it onto the places on your face and neck where you are receiving your radiation treatments. It may help to reduce the side effects from the radiation." She obviously believed I knew what I was talking about even though I didn't myself."

"How often should I do that?" she asked.

"Oh, at least 5 or 6 times a day."

David continued, "She took me at my word and started doing what I had suggested. After that she never needed to take any of her pain medicine and she never developed the burns and blisters they expected to come with her radiation treatments. The doctors couldn't understand what was happening. They were so concerned they began rechecking and recalibrating their equipment to be sure she was really receiving all the radiation she was supposed to get. The machines were all working just fine...

Throughout humankind's history of healing therapies, such as Theraputic Touch, and their often-attendant Eastern mystical practices, such as reiki, charismatic individuals have contributed to the path of healers' development.

Mikao Usui wrote a manual of his teachings on reiki in 1920. In April of 1922, he opened his first "Seat of Learning" in Harajuku, Tokyo. His teachings inspired the senior population, who experienced them as a return to the older "spiritual practices."

Reiki is a healing art evolved from Eastern visions of what our universe is and how it functions. Today, in the West, we grow master teachers, who, like their patients and students, have rushed up the ranks through an "instant" reiki system of weekend seminars, offering little, if any, foundation in Eastern thinking, and who are continuing to churn the master-making machinery.

Is reiki a valid complementary healing modality? Yes. Are there honest, serious master teachers? Yes. However, qualified reiki masters are rare, and the responsibility of learning to navigate the legitimate reiki path belongs to the student...

I spent last month working with a really fabulous family doctor and three home birth midwives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Without a doubt, this was a very different experience from anything I imagine is offered in any medical school.

This issue of identity and internal clashing, being raised in a midwifery model of healing, yet training to be a physician, has been and will continue to be one of my most tremendous struggles to find my place within medicine. I am the daughter of a home birth midwife. I will soon be a physician. Apparently, this is not common. In fact, I am the only one that I know of so far.

After three and a half years of medical school, and another year of working with medical students at the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), I returned to the land I grew up in. I hadn't ever forgotten my homeland, not really. For years, I had focused on holding tightly to myself, expending all mental and emotional energy on remembering who I am, as an individual, as a healer. Somewhere along the way I forgot the essence of the system of healing that called me, that shaped me, that birthed me.

Eight months ago I planned a four-week childbirth rotation with three home birth midwives in Albuquerque, assisted by the generosity and advice of a family practice attending ally. I knew vaguely that I needed to do this; I needed to recover from my toxic experience of traumatic, rushed, hateful hospital birth...

Healing with Food

...I got involved in a dietary system known as macrobiotics, started by George Ohsawa. One of its tenets, derived from Japanese Zen monastery cooking, was that the intention of the cook changes the "energy" (prana, chi, or ki) of the food. We were enjoined to cook with care and attention. Who cooked was also important. The idea was that food creates the human who eats it, and therefore its quality and "energy" is of utmost importance....

There may be something to that notion. Intentionality, or the effect of intention on matter or organisms, has been studied extensively. A number of studies have shown that prayer has a healing effect not only on people (even when the praying person does not know the one prayed for) but also on bacteria and rats (Benor 2001), which certainly don't know the meaning of our prayers to begin with...

Wholistic News Reviews

Psychological factors with chronic pain

New Guidelines on Dyslipidemia Treatment in Diabetic Children

Evidence of effectiveness of psychotherapy with children and adolescents

Herbs and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder/depressed children

Poetry

Humor

Book Reviews