one good thing

This year people everywhere have found their voices. They have spoken to reporters, mounted a podium, and put it out there on social media. We have heard from parents who are struggling to keep their jobs by working from home while schooling their children. We have heard from families who have lost their husbands and mothers, sons and daughters to senseless police brutality. We have listened to men and women decry the injustice, cruelty, and arrogance that threaten our health, our environment, our democracy, and our lives.

"It's not about finding your voice.

It's about giving yourself permission

to use your voice."

~Kris Carr~

But that's not all. There's the husband and father who has lost his business, wondering how he will shelter, feed, and support his family. What about the friends and families of Covid victims who couldn't be at their loved one's side when the ventilator went silent? Who can imagine what it must be like for the firefighters battling raging wildfires in the middle of a record breaking heat wave? When will we hear from them? What will they have to say?

"Boys, you must strive 

to find your own voice, 

because the longer you wait to begin,

the less likely you are to find it at all."

~Robin Williams~

The one good thing that has come out of the year 2020 is a profusion of stories...stories that explore the Covid-19 pandemic, that expose the problem of violence against people of color, that acknowledge the economic crisis among working class Americans and small business owners. Stories that report on the raging forest fires in California, the debate over reopening schools, and the presidential election. 

Unfortunately, we have also witnessed the silencing of some voices, through suppression of free speech and the right to peaceful protest. Through insults and derision meant to intimidate and censor. Because of grief and fear too deep to be put into words.

We have suffered the emergence of cruelty, of bigotry, of hatred. We have faced silence when we looked for leadership, anger when we needed compassion, and lies when we sought the truth.

If you don't tell your story, or express your thoughts, or reveal your feelings, who will? How will we come to know you? Who else will teach us?

"Our lives begin to end the day

we become silent about things that matter."

~Martin Luther King, Jr.~

jan

 

a whole new world of possibility

 

This week I was reminded of something Aristotle observed with such wisdom:

"The more you know,

the more you know you don't know."

~Aristotle

I have been reading about local vs. nonlocal reality, the microbiome, and the field of epigenetics, awash in science that didn't exist when I was in medical school. It unnerved me a bit to realize how many years I devoted to learning what has already become obsolete, or been proven wrong, or been questioned anew. It boggles my mind to contemplate the myths we embraced, the mystery that continues to unfold, and the masterpiece it reveals.

 Medicine's timeline went like this:

• ERA I Medicine: Beginning in the 1860s, it embraced a mechanical, physical approach to cause and effect, and relied on traditional therapies such as drugs, surgery, radiation, etc. The mind was not believed to exert either harmful or beneficial effects on the body.
• ERA II Medicine: Beginning after WWII, it acknowledged the effect of the psyche on the body, with the introduction of mind-body approaches to healing through biofeedback, stress management, and alternative methods like accupuncture, yoga, and meditation. It explored ways the mind can influence the condition of the body.
• ERA III Medicine: Beginning in the 1970s, the concept of the nonlocal mind emerged...the idea that healing can be achieved at a distance, for example through intention, intercessory prayer, and intuition, positing that consciousness is not limited to the self or the brain, but is shared, unlimited, and accessible across time and space.

"May your vibes

shift the whole damn frequency

of the room when you walk in."

~themindsjournal~

Each of these transitions represented a quantum leap in our ability to understand the origins, manifestations, and treatment of illness. It has been a challenge to accept these changes, much less to convince health care providers to integrate them into clinical practice. Many are still stuck in ERA I. Some have ventured into ERA II. But ERA III medicine overlaps with concepts that are associated with spirituality, telepathy, intuition, and even trickery, so they are off-putting to many in the scientific community.

Think about it, though. How does hypnosis work? Is there some fundamental basis for synchronicity, ESP, instinct, or telesomatic connection (experiences in which we share physical sensations with a distant individual)? What about our connection with animals? How do we account for spontaneous healing? What is at work around and between us if not a psychic connection? If not consciousness, itself?

A whole new world of possibility is opening up to us if only we are open to it.

"The reality I'm facing

is calling up a whole new person."

~Stephen Cope~

jan