Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

It wasn?t long ago that Halloween dominated stores in October. Thanksgiving was solemnly displayed on the shelves in November. And we all waited until Thanksgiving to see the lovely Christmas displays in the downtown department stores. So when I went to the local drugstore in the middle of October and saw the shelves already starting to fill with Christmas decorations, I started to think about what this kind of marketing represents. Seeing Thanksgiving losing out to Christmas in October reminded me of something I heard in school. Two thousand years ago a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner said man had grown so far from his true nature that we could no longer use the spirit of the plants to heal but now need to use the plant itself. If he thought that then, I wonder what would he think of today?s world?

Technology advances exponentially now, routinely faster than we do as users. Western medicine certainly struggles with this. The newfound possibilities of cloning, stem cell potentials, and extending life to those severely injured are all so new that the implication of each is difficult to fathom, yet their development is an inevitability. TCM, by contrast, has the blessing and curse of its age. While being able to solve many of the problems in which western medicine stills fails, it is often much slower and not the first choice of the impatient.

Yet it is this very lack of speed that makes it so powerful. In a society where we now blink past the month that was traditionally focused on gratitude, TCM reminds us of the importance of the moment, of the need to pace ourselves and pay attention to the world around us. You don?t remain healthy for long if you move too fast to see the world around you. Or appreciate it. Each meal you eat was the result of so many efforts by so many people. To lose the awareness of this miracle is not just a sign you?re taking the world in which you live for granted, it?s sad. It?s a miraculous system that can be celebrated at every meal simply by reflecting on what?s in front of you, how it got there, and on all the lives involved in providing you with something not just sustaining but often extraordinary. We experience miracles every day yet forgo gratitude to focus on the absurd, becoming frustrated because there?s a line in the supermarket or bank with more than two people, or that it?s been two minutes and our server hasn?t taken our order.

TCM established balance as not just the key to health, but as a measure of health itself. How better to balance the speed at which the world moves than with taking time to be thankful for the miracle of each meal. Stop and think of where you are, and all you have. The marketing people may have the job of making you feel you need whatever they?re selling, but it?s your responsibility to be thankful for what you have in order to remain peaceful inside.

A friend was describing to me his experiences with the subtle world. I mentioned that I was often amazed at how patients would heal from a treatment by an intern with almost no experience, and he described two subtle world entities, one that promoted illnesses and another promoting cures. Of the two, he said those that cure come to help the practitioner. When I asked him more about the entities that helped heal, and how to cultivate their presence, the only thing he said was that they like gratitude. Something tells me he?s right.