Hugh Mann | organicMD.org

Health is metabolic efficiency. Sickness is metabolic inefficiency. Nobody is totally healthy or totally sick. Each of us is a unique combination of health and sickness. And each of us has a unique combination of abilities and disabilities, both emotional and physical.

As we grow up, we learn that we are loved for our abilities but hated for our disabilities. This happens at home, at play, at school, and at work. Sometimes, this even happens with our doctors, especially if our disabilities mystify them or remind them of their own disabilities.

So, we try to hide our disabilities from people and from ourselves. This charade undermines our relationships and our self-esteem. We learn to fear society and hate ourselves.

Self-hatred is the most debilitating sickness. It interferes with our ability to seek and accept help. And everybody needs help. How do we free ourselves from self-hatred?

First, we reclaim our disabilities, whether society accepts them or not. This means that we learn to accept ourselves. Then, we cope with our disabilities. This means that we learn to take care of ourselves.
(read more. . .)

healingarts | July 3, 2005 |

Marianne Williamson | The Gift of Change : Spiritual Guidance for a Radically New Life

Life as we knew it is passing away, and something new is emerging to take its place.

All of us are playing a part in a larger transformative process, as each of us is being forced to confront whatever it is we do, or even think, that keeps love at bay. For as we block love’s power to change our own lives, we block its power to change the world.

Humanity is moving forward now, though in some ways we are doing so kicking and screaming. Nature seems to be saying to all of us, “Okay, it’s time. No more playing around. Become the person you were meant to be.”

We would like to, but it’s hard. The problems of the world today seem larger than they have ever been before, making it easy to succumb to cynicism, fear, hopelessness, and despair. Until, that is, we remember who we are.

For who we really are is a power bigger than all our problems, both personal and collective. And when we have remembered who we are, our problems — which are literally nothing other than manifestations of our forgetfulness — will disappear.

Well that would be a miracle, you might say. And that is precisely the point.
(more…)

healingarts | June 27, 2005 |

Stephen and Ondrea Levine, from Embracing the Beloved : Relationship as a Path of Awakening

This book is not meant to be read in only a linear manner. It often offers an experiential process. It is as much poetry as prose. Absorbed phrase by phrase, image by image, it allows healing to enter the heart, the mind, the body.

We share the process from which we are learning daily for the benefit of all who wish to use relationship as a path of self-discovery. This work is not to be taken lightly. This is a book about co-commitment, not co-dependency. These techniques are not applicable to anything that resembles the old-style dominant/submissive relationships which have for so long perpetuated our all-too-human suffering.

When true hearts truly join there is a mystical union. An inter-connecting of whole human beings which, is the foundation for great insight and growth. It is a collaboration in healing.

Although we often speak in terms of merging, or becoming one, or dissolving into oneness—-this is not a giving up of one person to another. It is not - as the great German poet Rilke fears of such commitments, “a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both of their fullest freedom and development..”

Indeed, if two people attempt only to become one, they certainly may get lost. But if the oneness just beyond such concepts is their ultimate concern–if each heart is committed to the universal heart, our birthright, our original nature–neither stops. And the ongoing aerial act is spectacular.
(more…)

healingarts | June 25, 2005 |

Louise Hay, from The Power Is Within You

Who are you? Why are you here? What are your beliefs about life? For thousands of years, finding the answers to these questions has meant going within. But what does that mean?

I believe there is a Power within each of us that can lovingly direct us to our perfect health, perfect relationships, perfect careers, and which can bring us prosperity of every kind. In order to have these things, we have to believe first that they are possible. Next, we must be willing to release the patterns in our lives that are creating conditions we say we do not want. We do this by going within and tapping the Inner Power that already knows what is best for us. If we are willing to turn our lives over to this greater Power within us, the Power that loves and sustains us, we can create more loving and prosperous lives.

I believe that our minds are always connected to the One Infinite Mind, and therefore, all knowledge and wisdom is available to us at any time. We are connected to this Infinite Mind, this Universal Power that created us, through that spark of light within, our Higher Self, or the Power within. The Universal Power loves all of Its creations. It is a Power for good and It directs everything in our lives. It doesn’t know how to hate or lie or punish. It is pure love, freedom, understanding, and compassion. It is important to turn our lives over to our Higher Self, because through It we receive our good.

We must understand that we have the choice to use this Power in any way. If we choose to live in the past and re-hash all of the negative situations and conditions that went on way back when, then we stay stuck where we are. If we make a conscious decision not to be victims of the past and go about creating new lives for ourselves, we are supported by this Power within, and new, happier experiences begin to unfold. I don’t believe in two powers. I think there is One Infinite Spirit. It’s all too easy to say, “It’s the devil,” or them. It really is only us, and either we use the power we have wisely or we misuse the power. Do we have the devil in our hearts? Do we condemn others for being different than we are? What are we choosing?
(more…)

healingarts | June 24, 2005 |

Erich Fromm | The Art of Loving

Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one “falls into” if one is lucky? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter.

Not that people think that love is not important. They are starved for it; they watch endless numbers of films about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love — yet hardly anyone thinks that there is anything that needs to be learned about love.

This peculiar attitude is based on several premises which either singly or combined tend to uphold it. Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable. In pursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, which is especially used by men, is to be successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one’s position permits. An-other, used especially by women, is to make oneself attractive, by cultivating one’s body, dress, etc. Other ways of making, oneself attractive, used both by men and women, are to develop pleasant manners, interesting conversation, to be helpful, modest, inoffensive. Many of the ways to make oneself lovable are the same as those used to make oneself successful, “to win friends and influence people.” As a matter of fact, what most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.
(more…)

healingarts | June 23, 2005 |

Kurt Chandler | Salon

Growing up, I was terrified of my father’s hair-trigger temper. So it was with surprise, and shame, that I found myself exploding at my teenage son.

It’s a fine Friday morning. My wife fries bacon in the kitchen as I lead our kindergartner daughter through her bathroom routine. In the living room, our son, a high school freshman, slouches on the sofa, reading the paper.

I hand my daughter, Emma, her toothbrush and spy a damp, green bath towel heaped on the floor, no doubt the property of her brother, Ben. It’s frivolous, an errant towel, and should be no more than a nuisance on this glorious Wisconsin day. But it’s the same green towel that was heaped on the floor yesterday, and the day before. Today it sets me off.

I snatch up the towel and stalk into the living room with the evidence.

“Ben. What is this?”

He glances up absently from the sports page.

“Ah, let me see. A towel?”

A smartass reply from a smartass 14-year-old. And normally I’d let it slide or come back with my own smartass reply. But he levels his remark at me with a look of such disdain — a glower that I see more and more as he grows older — that I lose it.

“Goddamn it, Ben.” My circle of vision collapses. I can see no light, no detail. Only the smug scowl on Ben’s face.

And it becomes my target.
(more…)

healingarts | June 18, 2005 |

Dr. John Sarno | The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain

Pain, disability, misinformation, fear — that quartet has plagued the Western world for decades and the plague shows no sign of abating. Back, neck and limb pain are rampant, and statistics indicate that the epidemic is spreading. Disability in American industry from low back pain continues to increase year by year.

Industries that employ large numbers of people working at computers are experiencing great disability and health insurance problems because of a new pain disorder known as repetitive stress injury (RSI). Millions of Americans, mostly women, suffer from a painful malady of unknown cause called fibromyalgia. While gigantic medical industries have arisen to diagnose and treat these conditions, the plague continues.

This book is about that epidemic. It describes both a clinical experience that has identified the cause of the pain disorders and a method of treating them. Sadly, mainstream medicine rejects the diagnosis because it is based on the theory that the physical symptoms are initiated by emotional phenomena. Intelligent laymen in large numbers have embraced the concept, however, no doubt because they are not burdened by the bias imposed by a traditional medical education.

As if the pain epidemic were not of sufficient magnitude, a large group of physical disorders have been identified as equivalents of the pain syndrome, since they appear to stem from the same psychological process. These maladies have occurred commonly for years and, taken together with the widespread pain maladies, are universal in Western society. I refer to many of the headaches, gastrointestinal symptoms and allergies, as well as respiratory, dermatologic, genitourinary and gynecologic conditions that are the stuff of everyday life.
(more…)

healingarts | June 15, 2005 |

John Bradshaw, from Homecoming : Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child

Buckminster Fuller, one of the most creative men of our time, loved to quote Christopher Morley’s poem about childhood:

The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold
Of being only four years old.

Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature’s great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast and tree
And unselfconscious as the bee-

And yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretense!

In your unstained transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life’s queer conundrums you accept,
Your strange Divinity still kept. .

And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
May make you poet, too, in time–
But there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself!

(more…)

healingarts | June 14, 2005 |

Marc Ian Barasch | dragonflymedia

Compassion as a Wave of Change

I’ve spent the past few years researching a book on the compassionate heart. I began what I called my “field notes” feeling both hopeful and hollowed-out. In a time of war, the ice caps melting like Sno-Cones, and meanness an item on the national agenda, I had set forth, as the poet Derek Wolcott once urged, “to fall in love with the world in spite of history.”

My journey took me to a man who had forgiven his daughter’s murderer; and to one who had given his kidney to a total stranger. I chatted (via pictograms) with oddly empathic bonobo apes. I hung out with Balkan kids who called themselves “the Post-Pessimists” — survivors of war who’d made peacemaking the whole point of their lives. I met Tibetan monks and neuroscientists studying the inner workings of the soul, and spent time with those who did the heart’s heavy lifting, succoring the sick, feeding the hungry, comforting the abandoned.

Spiritual teachers have always claimed that compassion is not a case of being born a saint, but of cultivating — like diligent, sweat-stained gardeners — the secret kernel of benevolence that is our birthright.
(more…)

healingarts | May 21, 2005 |

Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks, from Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Committment

For most of us, relationships are a struggle. We each have a strong inner urge toward conscious loving: toward love relationships that are free of mistrust, disharmony, and unspoken words. We want our relationships to be springboards to higher consciousness and enhanced creative expression. Yet within us also lives an urge toward unconscious loving: we are encumbered by the burdens of our past programming. In this book we will present the results of our exploration of relationship issues over the past twenty years. From our work with over one thousand couples we have discovered the key flaws that produce distortion in relationships, and we have developed a precise, step-by-step program for turning your loving into conscious loving. We have also identified the crucial choice points in the evolution of a relationship that enhance or ruin the opportunities for intimacy.
(more…)

healingarts | May 10, 2005 |