Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 33/46

Life Medicine and ‘Spiritual Healing’
– The Man Who Didn’t Want to See

No form of medicine can guarantee a ‘cure’ for any illness – not least one whose basic principle is that ‘the illness is the cure’. The types of truly effective self-healing that Life Doctoring can aid in therefore also require a readiness on the part of the individual patient to alter deep-seated and fundamental beliefs about the nature of medicine, health, illness and healing – and to concentrate primarily on attaining insights into the meaning of their illness rather than seeking to get rid of it through either conventional or alternative forms of medical treatment. This readiness to alter basic beliefs and interest in understanding both themselves and their illness more deeply may not always be present in the patient. If they also lack experience of any form of inter-personal counselling or therapy – or even have a negative view of it – such a readiness and interest may also be difficult to cultivate. Nevertheless, the importance of the type of insight into the meaning of an individual’s illness that Life Medicine offers can even be exemplified by precisely this kind of unready patient, unwilling to see or change their fixed beliefs.

Case Example 4

The patient had, since 2003, been suffering from progressively worsening vision due to a retinal detachment in both eyes. Still being able to read, though only with a magnifier and book rest and more slowly and not as easily as someone with healthy eyes, Life Doctoring was conducted on a correspondence basis.

The Life Doctor was first contacted by the patient by e-mail for three reasons. Firstly, because the patient had exhausted all options offered by conventional medicine, secondly, because out of despair the patient had sought out a spiritual healer and tried alternative methods of healing (one of which promised cellular regeneration of the retina) and, thirdly, because the patient saw in the Life Doctor someone who, as a practitioner of a new form of yoga, could help him as a spiritual teacher and healer on his spiritual ‘quest’. This was a quest not just for ‘enlightenment’ but also to develop superhuman yogic powers or siddhis – including not only powers of levitation but also and above all the power to heal his eyes himself.

Below I cite two of his own descriptions of his sight disorder and its relation to both the ‘spiritual quest’ it triggered and his notion of ‘spiritual healing ’.

“Since 2003 I am on the spiritual path due to severe vision-problems (deterioration and detachment of retinas), which urged me to give up my career. I studied hundreds of spiritual books, I am initiated into Kriya-Yoga in the line of Paramahamsa Yogananda and Roy Eugene Davis; I follow now a Taoist Buddhist path (Cosmic Freedom Qigong) to heal my eyes (trips to a healer in Brazil, John of God, helped me to avoid becoming totally blind. Now in one eye the retina is partially detached, with one eye I can see 30 %.”

“No doctor can help me anymore. I already had 13 surgeries (both eyes, I think 10 in the left, 3 in the right eye). In both eyes the vitreous body has been removed, silicone has been filled into the eyeball (to re-attach the retina) and has then been removed again. In the left eye the procedure has been repeated without any success. In both eyes I have artificial lenses, because the operations had damaged the natural lens. There is no effective treatment with conventional medicine any more, it is over since 2003. I really did everything what was possible; during one of the operations there was a problem with local anaesthetics and I felt every stitch of a needle in my left eye. I got some treatments with eye-laser, the first of which was so painful that my whole body was wet with sweat after treatment. I was in hell. Only my trips to Brazil to “John of God” had helped me a bit – my eye doctor (an internationally well-known expert) was astonished that I had not become totally blind in both eyes. She even told me to go to Brazil again! In 2003 I had already purchased a gun to commit suicide, but after my first trip to Brazil (April 2004) my condition improved and again I hoped for a healing. In Brazil I was very brave: John of God claims to be a medium for high Beings (King Salomon, Ignatius from Loyola …) who accomplishes spiritual operations through his body and I trusted him. I got a knife directly into the edge of my eyeball, hoping that his claims were true and they were. I had nothing to lose. There is no apparent other illness in my physical body, no diabetes, nothing. With healthy eyes I would be in a very, very good condition, apart from now being too fat out of frustration. This was … the reason for the beginning of my spiritual quest. In my case extraordinary spiritual power is necessary for my healing. New retina cells must be produced and the retina in the left eye must be re-attached… Currently I try again ‘cellevelhealing’. They had amazing results. I already got 3 treatments, two more are scheduled, [but] till now no result, let us see.”

The last sentence of this letter, underlined, already points to the Life-Medical ‘diagnosis’ that was arrived over seven months of correspondence with the patient. For though it begins with a claim that the healing method referred to by the patient had “amazing results”, it concludes with a totally contradictory admission that “till now no result”. The patient then adds “let us see” – but seems oddly blind to the contradiction, as if unwilling to face up to the fact or see that the method had not had the “amazing results” he wanted for himself.

I have italicised the word ‘see’ both because of its relation to the patient’s sight (which has since deteriorated by a further 10% in one eye) and also because of countless similar examples of statements made by the patient in the course of his correspondence with the Life Doctor – in all of which he appeared not to have understood or ‘seen’ what the Life Doctor had written to him – giving rise to the conclusion that he did not actually want to see. I should stress that the patient did not initially know about Life Doctoring or write to the Life Doctor as a therapist but rather as a spiritual teacher and yogin – someone who the patient believed could either heal him instantly or help him to develop extraordinary yogic powers with which to miraculously heal himself.

As a result, most of the patient’s initial correspondence was very narrowly focussed on questions relating to detailed terminological and ‘technical’ aspects of yogic practice. Here again I emphasise the term narrowly focused – with its optical and visual connotations. Indeed, on many occasions the Life Doctor deliberately opted for visual metaphors in his correspondence with the patient in order to emphasise their significance for his sight problems and even pointing out to him that he had done so – by referring for example to blindspots in his thinking. Over the course of the correspondence however, what became ever more clear was the patient’s fundamental unwillingness to see yoga and meditation as a method of attaining profound insight into himself and into his own medical condition – rather than as offering a mere method or set of theories and techniques for attaining miraculous powers of self-healing.

Below are just a few examples of language used by the patient in his emails which show instead how fixated his spiritual ‘vision’ was on transcending his body and on using spiritual powers and his ‘third eye’ to instantaneously and miraculously “burn away” his condition rather than gain any insight into it – let alone that of any other human beings:

“It must be possible to bring divine perfection to the physical plane.”

“It must be possible to heal instantaneously by yogic powers.”

“I clearly refer to what is called ‘a miracle’ by ordinary human beings.”

“I want to be physically strong and healthy like a ferocious tiger, a mental genius and a spiritual giant with remarkable powers.”

On the other hand, he admits that “it was always a struggle for me to meditate” and that “to identify with another human being is for me quite terrifying … my own weaknesses are enough.”

Though right from the start of correspondence with the patient, it was recommended that he read materials on Life Doctoring, and ask himself the sorts of question a Life Doctor would do, he did not initially do so. And even when the basic principles of Life Medicine were shared with him through correspondence, the patient – like many in search of spiritual ‘healing’ – had great difficulty in truly ‘seeing’, let alone heeding the basic idea that a specific illness might hold a specific meaning for the individual, that this meaning might itself be something worthy of meditating upon – and that in this way his illness might itself have a spiritual message for him and come to serve as his principal spiritual teacher and healer.

Indeed it seemed at times that this particular patient’s ‘reading’ of the Life Doctor’s letters was highly selective – as if he often did not even optically register those parts of them dealing with the nature and meaning of illness – let alone take any interest in the suggestion that a particular illness is always chosen by the individual for a well-intentioned reason and that its history must be viewed in the larger context of the patient’s life story, life world and relationships.

On the contrary, it became ever more clear that this patient’s vision of attaining healing powers over his illness and the very sight problems he sought to heal were both in fact symptoms – symptoms made particularly visible through his written correspondence – in which he continued to show little understanding or interest in any form of ‘enlightenment’ based on illuminating and meditative in-sight. And even without any experience of it he adopted a stereotypical negative viewpoint that any form of insight-based counselling was merely ‘dredging the mud’.

Given that this was a patient, who, despite his serious sight problems simply ‘did not want to see’ the point of Life Doctoring, the Life Doctor felt that all he could do was to share with the patient precisely this Life-Medical insight – which itself had all to do with the patient’s lacking interest in and capacity for deep ‘in-sight’ into himself and others.

Below I cite from two emails that constituted part of the climax of the Life Doctor’s attempt to get the patient to ‘see’ the meaning of Life Medicine and the potential benefits of Life Doctoring, albeit taking care to do so in a way that respected the patient’s relationship to him as ‘spiritual teacher’:

“All that you write confirms to me there may indeed be an important role that Life Doctoring can play in your life – though in a way very different from seeking a spiritual or biological ‘miracle’ cure of any sort. For I see your spiritual search for a miracle cure as more of a hindrance than a help.

The reason is that every healer you have been too, and every form of healing you have tried in order to find a cure for your eye condition is essentially a denial that it has any meaning. It seems that for you, as well as for the doctors and healers you have gone to, the only ‘meaning’ of your illness and what it can teach you seems to lie in finding a way to get rid of it.

But think of it this way: if your illness wants to be your most intimate and important spiritual teacher but all you want to learn from it is how to annihilate that illness – then you are looking for ways to annihilate your own teacher – in fact trying to kill it!

If and when you are ready to accept that this might be the most basic and important in-sight I can give you, then we can begin to consider ways and means in which, with my help – and through the reading and writing you are still (miraculously!) able to do – Life Medicine and Life Doctoring might bring you to a different and to a healing understanding of what your illness might be seeking to teach you.

From the point of view of Life Medicine ‘the illness is the cure’. Life Doctoring is about finding out what the illness is attempting to cure in the patient!!!”

A short response to this message was then received from the patient in which he stated:

“… I really do not know what it is that I do not want to see. I will meditate that.”

Since the Life Doctor’s own email had already indicated to the patient what it was he did not want to see, a second e-mail was sent under the subject header ‘What I see you as not seeing…’ – once again making this as explicit as possible in the hope that this time the patient would ‘see it’.

Your questions and vision have always been very narrowly focussed on ‘techniques’ of meditation. Throughout our correspondence however, I have tried to encourage an insight-based approach to your questions rather than a purely detached and technique-based one. I believe cultivating such an insight-based approach to life is also of central importance in relation to your eye problems.

You write that you “do not know what it is that I do not want to see”.

So how about looking inside??!! And also listening inside and feeling inside.

That way you can come to your own answers – your own in-sights.

That is why I believe it terribly important that you learn to understand ‘meditation’ in a new way – not just as a set of techniques but as taking time to look inside yourself – for insights that can arise from feeling awareness.

Unless you learn to value deep personal and philosophical in-sights much more than you value yogic techniques and powers, and unless you learn to look inside yourself to feel for and find such insights, then I fear your eyes will just force you to do so.

For through increasing loss of ‘out-sight’ or even blindness you may eventually be unable to do anything but ‘look inside’ and also listen more deeply to yourself and others.

Put simply, through the decrease in your vision I believe your eyes themselves are telling you what you don’t see – namely that despite all your knowledge and will power, without valuing and cultivating feeling in-sight, but instead continuing to narrow your thinking and spiritual vision either to detached intellectual and theoretical knowledge or to mastering yogic powers and techniques to exercise in a detached way over your body, then your inner self or Atman will continue to narrow the vision of one or both of your bodily eyes through retinal detachment and eventually cut off your ‘out-sight’ completely. In other words, your illness – as your spiritual teacher – is saying that if you refuse to see inside you will lose your outer sight. It is therefore also urging you to put all your efforts into seeing the difference – perhaps for the first time in your life – between knowledge and wisdom, between your detached intellect and theoretical knowledge and deep feeling insight into yourself – and between manipulative techniques on the one hand and basic inner truths on the other. Using theoretical knowledge to attain power over your body from a detached ego or I are no substitute for your body’s own inner knowing and powers of healing – and certainly no remedy for a detached retina in your eye – a clear symbol of your own detachment from yourself and others.

The only substantive response to the message of these letters – and to an accompanying request for them to be incorporated into a case example in this book – was puzzlement that the author should wish to present a case study in which the patient had not been healed. This of course, simply re-affirmed the patient’s misunderstanding of Life Medicine and Life Doctoring as an approach to medicine whose validity could only be proven by its effectiveness in healing the patient’s illness – rather than offering potentially life-transforming and healing understandings of and insights into that illness. As for the idea that an illness might be there to heal and transform the patient – it was, again, simply not seen or registered on the mental retina of this patient – ‘the man who did not want to see’.


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Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection part 50

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Frederick George Jünger - Die Perfektion der Technik (1946): “There can be no talk of riches produced by technology. What really happens is rather a steady, forever growing consumption. It is a ruthless destruction, the like of which the earth has never before seen. A more and more ruthless destruction of resources is the characteristic of our technology. Only by this destruction can it exist and spread. All theories which overlook this fact are lopsided because they disregard the basic conditions which in the modern world govern production and economics”

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‘When I hear Tories and the purple-faced UKIP go on now about Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians coming to Britain to work, I think back and remember what Mrs Thatcher did.  She signed the 1986 Single European Act to create the free market of people.  She was championing the eastwards expansion of the European Union into the former Soviet satellites.  She wanted the EU to embrace that part of the world to roll back the Iron Curtain, and stick it to Mikhail Gorbachev and Communists.  The Single Market was designed deliberately to allow employees to transfer cheap labour across national borders.  It wasn’t principally about letting workers decide where they’d look for jobs.  That’s a by-product.  The Single Market’s main aim was to supply cut-price workers to capitalism. A capitalism with an insatiable appetite for the dozen-a-penny workers she created by stripping away employment rights, by shackling trade unions.  The problems we wrestle with today can be traced back to her door.’

Dennis Skinner

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My conviction has always been that aristocratic and popular values are fundamentally the same or naturally complement each other, and that they are both frontally opposed to bourgeois values. By aristocratic values I mean the sense of honor, courage, fidelity to one’s promises, self discipline, selflessness, the sense of sacrifice and generosity. Popular values, also linked to the earth, mostly overlap with them, adding what George Orwell summarized with a beautiful expression: common decency.

Alain de Benoist, Mémoire vive

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The organized nation can only be a nation where class differences have been eliminated in a real way, and not by pious wishes, because such differences automatically imply tensions harmful to national harmony.

- François Duprat, Manifeste nationaliste révolutionnaire

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He that buys a thing in order that he may sell it, entire and unchanged, at a profit, is the trader who is cast out of God's temple.

+St John Chrysostom

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Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 32/46

Life Medicine and ‘Energy Medicine’

“Science is the new religion.”

Martin Heidegger

What might be called ‘energeticism’ has long become the new ‘materialism’ – an insight that nicely equates with Einstein’s famous mathematical equation of energy and matter. Hence, in almost all ‘alternative’ or ‘New Age’ forms of healing that are offered in place of biological medicine, one word is religiously worshipped above all. This is the scientific-sounding word ‘energy’ – as used in the terms ‘energy medicine‘ and ‘energy body ’. Through the use of the term energy, deference is made to a central term in the “new religion” of modern science – yet without any attempt to define or question what exactly is meant by this term – what ‘energy’ as such essentially is.

Behind this lack of basic questioning lies ignorance of both the linguistic and historic roots of the word ‘energy’ – for example the fact that the term ‘energy’ was first promoted in the 19^th century by a group of well-known scientists called ‘Energeticists’ who wanted to place the term at the very top of the ladder of physical-scientific concepts.

“… the ‘Energeticist Movement’ associated with Wilhelm Ostwald around the turn of the 19^th century advocated a World Government based on the use of ‘energy’ as the universal, unifying concept not only for all of physical science, but also for economics, psychology, sociology and the arts … Not accidentally, the Kelvin-Helmholtz doctrine of ‘energy’ became a key feature of Anglo-American geopolitics, from the British launching of Middle East ‘oil politics’ at the beginning of the 20^th century … to a new Middle East war.” from The Difference between Dynamis and Energia by Jonathan Tennenbaum

The fact remains however that the modern scientific concept of ‘energy’ bears little relation either to its roots in the Greek language or to the vocabulary of any ancient ‘spiritual’ or ‘healing’ tradition whatsoever, Eastern or Western.

For if we look at the original meaning of those Greek words from which the term ‘energy’ is derived, it make no sense to speak, for example of ‘energy imbalances’, or of working in any way ‘on’ or with our own or someone else’s ‘energy’. That is because one of the most basic root meanings of the Greek word energeia is purely and simply ‘to be engaged in work’ or ‘to be engaged in a work’ and consequently also ‘to actualise something’. So to speak of working ‘with’ or ‘on’ energy is tautological – meaning nothing more, in Greek terms, than ‘working’ with or on a ‘work’ one is engaged in.

Given its Western and Greek roots, the term ‘energy’ is least of all appropriate in translating Oriental terms such as Chi/QI or Ki that are so central to Chinese and Japanese forms of healing such as Chi Gong or Reiki. To speak of Chi/Qi or Ki as some sort of ‘energy’ flowing through the body (for example through so-called ‘meridian’ lines) also makes no linguistic sense, since the Oriental ideograms for words such as Chi/Qi and Ki, do not refer to any form or flow of ‘energy’ but rather, like the Sanskrit prana or the Greek psyche – to breath (‘the breath of life’). What in Oriental or Orientally-derived healing traditions is translated as ‘energy’ can instead best be understood instead as essentially a breath or air-like flow of awareness – for example to a particular point or points in the body where pressure is applied or acupuncture needles are inserted.

Today however, no one even thinks of questioning the use of the now taken-for-granted and sacrosanct term ‘energy ’, the many varieties of ‘energy medicine‘ in which it has become so central, or the way in which it is used to mistranslate terms derived from ancient healing traditions. In this way however, the misuse and overuse of the modern term ‘energy’ not only blocks all fresh exploration of the root meanings of terms derived from these traditions, but also prevents a deeper exploration of the root experiences from which they first arose. So even today’s highly trained and qualified practitioners or ‘Masters’ of these traditions do not think of asking themselves from what sort of direct, inwardly felt experiences of the human body such traditions arose in the first place, i.e. before they were systematised into unquestioned bodies of knowledge and structured into fixed or ritualised healing procedures and practices. They do not ask themselves, for example, how and in what manner Indian and Chinese sages first came to subjectively and inwardly sense what later came to be called ‘nadis’, ‘meridians’ or ‘acupuncture points’? Nor do they recognise the vast historic, linguistic, experiential and cultural gulf that separates the intellectual abstraction of different ‘energies’ from traditional Greek, Galenic and Islamic medicine : with its emphasis on four essential fluids or ‘humors’ (yellow and black bile, blood and phlegm), four fundamental qualities (wet, dry, warm and cold) and four basic moods or ‘temperaments’ – choleric, melancholic, sanguine and phlegmatic – all of which were inwardly felt as central in shaping human bodily self-experience.

“It is the great error of Western philosophers that they always regard the human body intellectually, from the outside, as though it were not indissolubly a part of the active self.”

Sato Tsuji

The Western tendency to confuse our subjective and inwardly felt body with intellectual concepts of an objective, quasi-physical body persists through the modern concepts of an ‘energy body’. As a result, the use of terms like ‘energy medicine‘ continues to substitute for a new type of ‘phenomenological’ research – inner feeling research – into the real experiential roots and essence of many traditional forms of healing and their languages. Instead the term ‘energy’ is used to offer a seemingly authoritative, scientific-sounding and ‘objective’ account of what is essentially an inner, subjective body – our ‘lived body’ or ‘body of feeling awareness’. The result is that no progress is made towards a radical rethinking of traditional healing systems and practices; ‘radical’ because it truly returns to the roots of those traditions – bodily, experiential, historical and linguistic.

So it is that what today is misleadingly called ‘Energy Medicine’ has become the pseudo-scientific New Age substitute for ‘Existential Medicine’ or ‘Life Medicine’. Yet only the latter can be said to be truly ‘holistic’ and also in resonance with the different root meanings of the term ‘energy’. That is because Life Medicine is based on the recognition that ‘to heal’ means to address the actually experienced life of the human being as a whole – and the way it does or does not work to actualise and fulfil the latent capacities or potentials of the individual – work or action which effectively actualises specific potentials or capacities being the essential meaning of the Greek verb energein.

‘Life Medicine’ therefore, most certainly does not constitute yet another of the countless forms of ‘Energy Medicine’ currently promoted on the ever-expanding marketplace of traditional or New Age medical practices. Similarly, a ‘Life Doctor’ is not simply some sort of practitioner of alternative medicine who has been indoctrinated through training in an alternative body of medical ‘knowledge’ but rather someone with a carefully cultivated capacity to directly sense and resonate with the lived body and life of the patient as a whole – and in this way come to understand the inner connections between their illness and their life.

As for those who claim that evidence for an ‘energy body’ exists by virtue of the ability of some people to perceive a colourful ‘aura’ around the ‘physical body’ – or even to photograph it through exotic equipment – this only goes to show their ignorance of the true nature of the inwardly felt or lived body as what I call a ‘body of feeling awareness’. For those who only see what they think of as a multi-coloured ‘energetic’ aura show only their inability to directly sense and feel the many and varied colourations of awareness or ‘mood colours’ that make up our lived body – even though these can be sensed by any human being and not just by trained ‘clairvoyants’ or practitioners of ‘colour healing ’. And for a practitioner of ‘colour healing’ to have to rely on colour charts that ‘explain’ how seeing a particular colour such as red in someone’s ‘aura’ might, for example, ‘mean’ that this person has ‘anger’ in them, only goes to show how little capacity that practitioner has to directly sense that anger – rather than interpreting it “intellectually” and “from the outside” as some type of negative ‘energy’.

All well and good, some might say, but surely the term ‘energy’ has long since passed, not just into New Age language but into ordinary, everyday language too – and that in a way which we all understand from experience – as when we speak of ‘lacking energy’ or feeling ‘energetic’. That precisely is the danger however – namely that as soon as a word such as ‘energy’ passes into common everyday usage, we assume there is some ‘thing’ it refers to, and do not stop to ask ourselves what exactly it is we understand by the word or what sort of experience it is that we use it to name.

If we would ask ourselves these questions however, we would find ourselves coming closer to the root Greek meaning of the word ‘energy’ – and cease to think of it as any sort of ‘thing’ at all. After all, what is a state of having more or less ‘energy’ than an awareness of a greater or lesser potential (Greek dynamis) to engage in ‘action’ or ‘work’ (ergon), in particular action or work of a sort which can bring something to actualisation (energein)?

What we call ‘energy’ then, is itself and essentially a dimension of awareness – a feeling awareness of a greater or lesser potentiality to be engaged in action or work (energeia) and not an awareness of any objective ‘thing’ or entity, scientific or spiritual.

Illness is often accompanied by a state of what we call fatigue or ‘low energy’, i.e. the feeling awareness of a reduced potentiality for action and work. This state may prompt or force us to suspend some or all action or work or bring to a halt a period of overactivity or overwork – instead bringing us to rest for a shorter or longer time in awareness as such – a meditative awareness from which in turn new and different potentialities for action may germinate within us. By limiting our potentiality for action or work therefore, ‘low’ energy may actually be doing us good – not only forcing us to rest but in this way giving ourselves time to meditate on our lives – something more healing than any form of treatment or ‘energy medicine‘ designed simply and purely to quickly ‘boost’ or ‘restore’ our energy – our capacity for action – but without any healing process or insights having occurred or arisen in our awareness.

Rather than explaining it as something to do with ‘energies’ in either a modern-scientific or New Age sense, Life Medicine helps us to understand illness itself as ‘energy’ – but in the essential and root sense of this word: namely as a feeling awareness, experienced through a sense of ‘dis-ease’, of a potentiality for change that is seeking self-actualisation (energein) whether through clinical disease or through a new relation to action and work (ergon).

Etymological note 2

– on the Greek roots of the term ‘energy’

What unites all the following Greek roots of the word ‘energy’ are meanings to do with action or work, potentialities for action and the actualisation of potentials through work or action.

The Greek ergon was used to refer to any type of work.

Energein meant action or work which results in actual or effective result.

Energeia refers to a state of ‘being-in-action’ or ‘being engaged in work’. So again, to speak of working ‘on’ or ‘with’ a person’s ‘energy’ amounts to saying you are acting or working on action or work. Aristotle also used the term energeia to refer to specific states of consciousness or qualities of awareness associated with ‘being in action’ or ‘being engaged in effective work’ – happiness for example. However he denied the possibility of self-actualising potentiality and reduced the meaning of energeia to ‘actuality’.

The words energes/energos meant ‘powerful’ and were used to describe powerful siege weapons for example.

Energema refers to activity which is an expression or embodiment of a potential, ‘capacity’ or ‘capability’. It also means simply a working ‘operation’ or ‘procedure’ such as those carried out in surgery – or acupuncture – so again it makes no sense of that procedure working with or ‘on’ ‘energy’.

Energeitai refers in the New Testament to the working of divine or supernatural powers (energemata) through human action (New Testament).

Energoumene refers to action (such as prayer) set in operation and empowered by the divine (New Testament). Energesen to things worked or ‘wrought’ by God (Old Testament).



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Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection part 49

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“Decadence in modern mass multicultural societies begins at a moment when there is not longer any discernible meaning within society. Meaning is destroyed by raising individualism above all other values because rampant individualism encourages the anarchical proliferation of egotism at the expense of the values that were once part of the national heritage, values that give form to the concept of nationhood and the nation state, to a state which is more than just a political entity, and which corresponds to a particular people who are conscious of sharing a common heritage for the survival of which they are prepared to make personal sacrifices. Man evolved in cooperating groups united by common cultural and genetic ties, and it is only in such a setting that the individual can feel truly free, and truly protected. Men cannot live happily alone and without values or any sense of identity: such a situation leads to nihilism, drug abuse, criminality, and worse. With the spread of purely egotistic goals at the expense of the altruistic regard for family and nation, the individual begins to talk of his rights rather than his duties, for he no longer feels any sense of destiny, of belonging to and being a part of a greater and more enduring entity. He no longer rejoices in the secure belief that he shares in a heritage which it is part of his common duty to protect - he no longer feels that he has anything in common with those around him. In short, he feels lonely and oppressed. Since all values have become personal, everything is now equal to everything; e.g., nothing equals nothing.”

- Alain de Benoist

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Otto Strasser on urban alienation:

"Those who understand that life in our huge tentacular towns is a danger to the race cannot fail to regard systematic de-urbanization as urgently required for the sake of the people."

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A brief explanation:

1. Community Self-Policing, Ethnic Autonomy,

Every ethnic and/or cultural group shall be protected and preserved by the state, endowed with the right to collectively organize for the purpose of lobbying the state, community-policing, preservation and promotion of tradition/heritage, and organization and promotion of community-based businesses.

2. Traditionalism,

The state shall protect and preserve the institution of the family as the basic building block of civilization, with respect to the customs and traditions of each ethnic and/or cultural group.

The state shall uphold the right of every ethnic and/or cultural group to maintain it's own religious institutions and practice it's customs, traditions, etc... without fear of reprisal or repression.

3. Abolition of Debt Slavery,

Immediate and full forgiveness of all student-loans, mortgages, etc... to coincide with a general re-organization of the financial system. (See 6.)

4. Right to a Job,

Work is the right and duty of every citizen, the state will be empowered to ensure that unemployment is completely eliminated.

5. Healthcare for All,

Every citizen shall be fully ensured by the state and guaranteed access to a fully modern healthcare system, regardless of ethnic, cultural, financial, criminal, or political status.

6. Independence, Financial Sovereignty, Anti-Usury,

Abolition of the Federal Reserve (or any equivalent supranational banking institution) and the creation of a national bank with sole right to coin and regulate currency on behalf of the citizenry.

Withdraw from IMF, World Bank, and all other supra-national financial institutions.

Full liquidation of and re-organization of the entire banking system on a public basis by the National Bank.

Withdraw from NATO & the UN.

7. National Redevelopment,

State funded and organized overhaul of national infrastructure on a scale unseen since the FDR Administration

8. Profit-sharing, Share Our Wealth, Worker-Ownership, Anti-Monopoly,

The present system offers us only one thing, more monopoly, the concentration of private property into fewer and fewer hands, the inevitable abolition of property for 9/10ths of the population. The Communist 'alternative' is the complete and total abolition of property immediately, merely an acceleration of the present conditions.

We however must re-affirm the maxim "property makes free" and call for nothing less than total de-proletarianization of labor through the de-distribution of property accordingly. We are thereby in opposition to both the capitalist and communist modes of production, which endorse the total or near-total proletarianization, and by extension exploitation and alienation of labor, by separating it from it's only fruit, property.

The state is authorized to carry out de-proletarianization via the re-distribution of property on the principle 'from the hands of those who do not toil, and into the hands of deserving labor' through the institution of co-ops, collectives, profit-sharing schemes, etc....

9. Syndicalism, Industrial Self-Management,

The state shall immediately set-about the organization of a syndicalist (or corporate) system wherein every industry and occupation shall be organized, from the shop-floor to the office cubical, and endowed with the powers of self-regulation and self-government.

10. Populism,

The state shall seek the mandate of the people wherever possible, all public officials are servants of the people, and the state shall strive to be the fullest expression of the will of the people.

11. Anti-War,

The state shall end all foreign wars, occupations, interventions, etc.... dismantle all foreign military installments, largely dismantle the standing, professional army, abolish the Pentagon, re-institute a viable defense plan based on state-backed militias, wherein the draft would be re-instituted in times of National Crisis.

12. Action,

The executive branch of the state shall be endowed with legislative as well as executive powers via mandate, approved annually by Congress, and immediately revocable.

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The right wants to conserve the fatherland, unity, authority, but it’s uninterested in the anguish of the man, the individual, the fellow person who has nothing to eat.

José Antonio Primo de Rivera

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Our movement is not a way of thinking, it’s a way of being. We should not only offer political architecture and construction. We should adopt in each our acts, before the entirety of life, a complete, profound, human attitude. This attitude is the spirit of service and sacrifice, the ascetic and military sense of life.

José Antonio Primo de Rivera

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Ernst Jünger: “The real substance of history is the following: it consists in the confrontation of man with himself, that is: the confrontation with his divine power. If you want to teach history, you must know this” (The Forest-Fleer)

[Hier ruht die wahre historische Substanz, in der Begegnung des Menschen mit sich selbst, das heißt: mit seiner göttlichen Macht. Das muß man wissen, wenn man Geschichte lehren will]

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Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 31/46

The Anatomy & Physiology of the Lived Body

Life Doctoring is based on a quite different understanding of anatomy and physiology than that which is taken as standard by biological medicine - and also by some forms of ‘alternative medicine’. That is because Life Medicine understands the body essentially as a body of feeling awareness or soul, and the felt surface of the body as we perceive it from the outside – the so-called physical body’ - as essentially nothing more than a boundary uniting and distinguishing two fields of awareness. These two fields are:

1. an outer field of awareness encompassing and embracing the entire life world of the individual and all they experience within it including both things and other people.
2. an inner field of awareness consisting not of fleshly tissue and organs but of hollow spaces of awareness felt within the regions of the head, chest or heart, and abdomen or ‘hara’ (Japanese) respectively.

Part of both the training and work of the Life Doctor consists in cultivating their own and their patients’ ability to sense these outer and inner spaces or fields of feeling awareness, and to experience the latter as a singular inner space of feeling awareness allowing it to flow and centre itself freely in the regions of ‘head, heart and hara’.

Life Medicine also distinguishes between:

1. the lived body as a whole, which embraces both fields of feeling awareness or ‘soul’.
2. that portion of its inner field which takes the form of the ‘body consciousness’ or ‘physical soul’ – composed of those organising patterns of molecular and cellular awareness which are perceived from the outside (and within the outer field of any individual’s awareness) in the form of the ‘physical body’.
3. The atomic, molecular and, in the case of plants and animals, the cellular awareness which make up the physical soul of all perceived phenomena within the outer field of any individuals awareness, i.e. within their experienced life world or environment.

Finally, Life Medicine distinguishes between physiological functions and processes generally seen as belonging to the physical body and its organs – such as respiration, ingestion digestion and metabolisation of food – and the basic function of the lived body – namely to breathe in, digest and metabolise their lived subjective experience of themselves, other people and the world around them. It is these basic functions (or dysfunctions) of awareness that manifest in ‘organic’ physiological functions or dysfunctions – and not the other way round. Similarly it is patterns, tones, intensities and intents arising from feeling awareness that manifest as the sensed tone and motility of tissue and organs, muscular tonus and patterns of muscular tensioning and movement.

A basic motto of Life Medicine is that we are as much aware of our ‘self’ as a whole – our soul – as we are aware of our body as a whole - including both its outer field and all the inwardly felt regions or spaces of awareness that form part of its ‘inner field’.

As well as their capacity to directly see into and sense the tones of feeling awareness pervading the inner head, chest and abdominal spaces of the patient’s lived body, the advanced Life Doctor can also use their own lived body to sense various other critical features of patient’s own felt or lived body as a whole.

That is also why, in addition to biographical questioning (see What Most Doctors Don’t Ask) and in order to raise their own awareness of these features, questions of a very different sort tend also to be put to the patient during initial Life Doctoring consultations. For example:

1. To what degree, on a scale of 1 to 10, can you inwardly feel your body as a whole – from top to toe – including not just your head or upper body, but your entire lower body below the waist, including your legs and reaching down to the soles of your feet?
2. To what extent, on a scale of 1 to 10, are you aware of the entire surface skin and musculature of your upper body – including the surface skin and musculature of your face and eyes, of the surface of your entire head – top, front, back and sides, and of your trunk – front, back and sides?
3. To what extent can you feel the sensed inwardness of your felt body surface – in particular those of your head, chest and abdomen - as part of a ‘body without organs’ i.e. as hollow spaces filled with nothing but feeling awareness or ‘soul’.
4. To what extent, on a scale of 1-10 do you feel you are as much aware of your entire lower body below the waist as you are of your head, chest and upper body?
5. On an imaginary vertical line extending from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet, point to where you feel your breathing is centred.
6. On the same imaginary line point to where you feel your awareness is centred.
7. To what degree do you feel you can lower the centre of (a) your awareness and (b) your breathing, from a point in the inner region of your head or chest or belly to one in the region of your lower abdomen. Use your hand to point to the lowest point at which your can feel your awareness and your breathing centred.
8. Using your arms or hands, indicate both the size of any clear and hollow inner space or spaces of awareness you feel enclosed by your body surface and also where you feel that space or those spaces – whether just in your head, your upper body, or in your trunk as a whole including your abdomen.
9. To what extent, on a scale of 1-10, do you feel yourself and your awareness to be contained or encapsulated by your body surface, as if you were simply looking out at the world through ‘the peepholes of the senses’ – rather than actually sensing, encompassing and embracing that world in a larger more spacious field of awareness?
10. To what degree, on a scale of 1 to 10, do you feel your body surface to be sensitive to and aware of the entire space surrounding you in this room and all it contains?
11. Using your arms to indicate to what extent you feel your awareness extending into space in a way that reaches beyond the boundaries of your fleshly skin.

The answers sensed and given to these questions tell the Life Doctor about the specific ‘anatomy’ of the patient’s lived body, as well as providing suggestive keys to the patient about what it means to cultivate feeling awareness of their lived body as a whole – a body which is not enclosed or bounded by one’s skin but embraces all the spaces within and around it. Such whole-body awareness is a foundation for well-being as well as for the patient’s own capacity for self-doctoring. The questions above also provide a foundation for teaching the patient to engage in four basic movements or motions of awareness that are central to both sustaining whole-body awareness. These basic motions of awareness are:

1. Grounding – recovering and sustaining whole-body awareness – in particular through heightened awareness of one’s entire lower body below the waist as well as one’s head and upper body.
2. Centering – learning to seat or centre both one’s breathing and one’s very sense of self within the felt inner space of the lower abdomen: this being that spiritual and physical centre of gravity of the human being known as hara in traditional Japanese culture, but generally ignored in cultures that see human life only as an interplay of ‘head’ and ‘heart’.
3. Unifying – feeling the hollow inwardness of one’s head, chest (‘heart’) and abdominal region (‘hara’) as a singular and unified space of feeling awareness l – and one within which our awareness, like our breathing, can also be allowed to freely flow and centre itself in different regions and at different points.
4. Opening – using one’s upper body surface to sense the entire space surrounding one’s body as a whole and all other bodies within that space. In this way coming to experience one’s entire body surface as ‘all eye’ and as a totally porous membrane – one through which one can experience oneself as literally breathing in one’s awareness of the light and space around one.
5. Facing – giving form to a felt bodily sense of dis-ease through the look in one’s face and eyes, thereby both intensifying that sense of dis-ease and also coming to feel it as an all-pervasive state of consciousness i.e. an underlying mood, tone or texture of feeling awareness or soul that can be expressively embodied – rather than ‘somatised’ in the form of one or more localised bodily sensations, symptoms or organic disorders.

References:

Wilberg, Peter Head, Heart and Hara, the Soul Centres of West and East New Gnosis Publications, 2003 Wilberg, Peter The Little Book of Hara (Kindle e-book)



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