The Awakening of Choice

A most significant part of healing lies in the renunciation of the victim position and the assumption of 100% responsibility for ourselves as embodied by the actual choices that we make. A goal of any healer in a spiritual tradition of medicine, one that recognizes the primacy of spirit, must be to assist in liberating the patient’s choosing faculty from the fears and desires of the ego. Simply put, freedom means “free to choose” as opposed to being a slave to the mechanism of a conditioned mind. Free to choose what? Free to do the right thing. When it comes to the “spiritual practice of medicine,” positive change in behavior is far more significant in assessing efficacy then a change in a patient’s feeling state.   Read more...

 

Behavior Modification in Dogs and Cats with Chinese Herbs

Robert J. Silver reminds us that archeological evidence indicates that early hominids observed animals using plants for food and medicines, and emulating their use of these plants was the beginning of the art and science of herbal medicine for humans. Our domestic animals have lost much of their herbal instinctual knowledge. Dr. Silver believes in view of this historical perspective, it is appropriate that we humans give back to them the benefits that we have learned from their ancestors by practicing herbal medicine on animals.  Read more...

 

Beware the Rampaging Hun

Individually embodied spirits engage and accumulate experience through the combined agency of the five aspects of Shen (Spirit). Each of these shen is associated with the primal movement of one of the five phases (wuxing), is contained within its zang (vital organ), and expresses interactions with the world through its paired fu (storehouse). Together the five shen provide both the motive force for each individual’s life, and his or her capacity to learn and grow.  Read more...