Heal Thyself
Harmonious Healing: Heal Thyself
The Rising Firefly Magazine provides a forum for the sharing of the traditional knowledge from the root cultures of human civilization. In each issue of the Harmonious Healing column we try to provide a look into different illnesses. We provide a clear definition of the disease as it is understood in the colonial world as well as how it is understood by several different traditional cultures. In this issue, we will veer from that format in order to investigate more deeply the position of the individual being healed or the “patient”. With more and more choices being made readily available to the individual we need to bring our attention to the contrast of logics that hold up the alternative medical systems. It is the adherence unknowingly or not to these logics that will determine what medicinal school we are submitting to and if or if not we are truly benefitting from traditional alternatives rather than just being a consumer to a new alternate medical product.
The colonial territories of the world are not much more than societies built around marketplaces. Supply and demand runs any market. Many in the modern world lose sight of the fact that they are born and live in the market places of the Earth. In societies such as these, each individual is no longer seen as a human being by their leaders. Instead they are seen as a number in a business plan or cash flow chart. X number of high school graduates become Y number of employees. X number of college dropouts become Y number of prison inmates. X number of sick people become Y number of pharmaceutical sales and our lives keep going from one business plan to the next until we fill in the numbers of the flow chart of the undertaker.
In a society such as these anything we are looking for we can find because any desire or interest we have can become a profit for the first one to provide it to us. This can be dangerous especially when it comes to our health and livelihood. In the health arena even more than others expertise and professionalism is a necessity. Below, the logical context of the two major medical options are provided. May this information provide an understanding so that the reader can secure a context to ensure the success of the remedies they have chosen.
Modern Medicine:
The modern medical system functions on some basic principles. These principles result in a certain behavior in the modern patient. From childbirth, babies are brought in for routine checkups. Youth are immunized so that they will not contract some of the illnesses that our grandparents faced like: chicken pox, measles, mumps, hepatitis, polio, etc. As we grow older we go in for seasonal shots for the flu, scabies, tuberculosis and any other medical scare that has arisen in our location. When we get a headache, or an ache, or a pain, we can go to the pharmacy and get a pain killer, if it persists we go to the doctor and after some tests and an explanation he assigns us a higher level painkiller. If we come down with an infection we do the same with anti-biotics and anti-histamines. We get the harder stuff on prescription from our doctors.
For the patient, a lifetime of pills that mask discomfort and pain and a sterilized hospital room provide the idea that the process of healing should be one of comfort and sterilization. Today in the modern world of supply and demand, “natural medicine” is presented as using nature to heal oneself in a serene environment with candles and incense, aromatherapy and natural fiber furniture as if the healing took place in your neighborhood spa.
One of the biggest influences on the human being living in Western Society is the necessity of the system to make individuals into consumers and employees. When individuals enter a Western Medical institution the responsibility for their own health is taken out of their hands. They depend on a nurse to take their vitals and ask them a few questions to prepare them for the doctor. They depend on a doctor to examine and provide them with the medicine that is necessary to alleviate whatever pain, dysfunction, or disease they are plagued with. The overwhelming majority of the time, a dysfunction is not taken care of but instead masked long enough to clear itself or masked while the doctor does a good job in providing reasons why it is incurable and the patient should prepare for a life sentence of pharmaceutical medicines.
When patients leave the doors of the doctor’s office, the advice coming from their doctors for dietary or lifestyle changes battles with the many advertising campaigns floating around in the marketplace to bring one back to quenching the desires that put them in the situation they are in. This paired with the lack of humility produced by a modern education becomes a huge obstacle for any doctor’s treatment to be effective.
How many times have you watched a television show, observing a professional do their job, a job you have had no training or experience in but found yourself judging the way that the person did it, even to go so far as to say that you, even in your inexperienced position from your couch in our imagination, can do it better than they can. If we are honest, we know that we have at some point or another done this. Perhaps you are doing it now as you read the articles in this magazine. Patients carry the same thought process into the doctor’s office. A doctor’s orders quickly become just an opinion that can be devalued. After our appointments end we can return to our own idea of what is best for our health and what is really causing our problem.
It is important to note that the new age natural-medical system has been created out of the demand for health alternatives, yet it uses the same medical philosophies as the ones that created the medical system we are looking to avoid. There has not been any great revolution in the university medical schools. They still teach the same philosophies of medicine whether under the title of “traditional medical school” or “natural medical school” with the minor differences being mostly in the treatments chosen after the same methods of diagnosis and understanding of anatomy, disease and treatment are used.
Traditional Medicine:
To truly utilize a health alternative, one must be able to conform to the protocols and perspective that accompanies it. A leaf eaten in a doctor’s office is not a “natural health alternative”. This is just a leaf brought into the same philosophy and practice of medicine. If an individual is truly interested in taking his/her health into his/her own hands and giving it to a natural form of medicine than one must do the research to find out what it means to exist in the world of natural medicine. The reality is traditional medicine is not a simple thing. The traditions in general are complex protocols which ensure a human being to stay in harmony with nature and not repeat any of the mistakes that were already made (or avoided) by his/her forefathers.
In a traditional society where natural medicine is treasured, a child is conceived by parents who more often than not are following certain rules and guidance to ensure that the child that they conceive is not exposed to any negative or harmful energy through the conception process. The act of copulation is done in a designated space: within the couple’s home and territory of energetic protection. During the pregnancy the parents keep an awareness of their behavior with each other and themselves and the energetic effect it will have on the baby. They consistently check on the energies of the pregnancy through Earth energy readings to ensure there are no blockages of energy that may present a problem to the health of the mother or the child. At birth they bathe the baby in herbs to build his/her immunity, ensure proper development of the nervous system and to begin to harmonise him/her with the other components of the natural world. The mother will then take herbs depending on the sicknesses that the baby may contract by facing the new world. These herbs are given to the baby through the breastmilk of the mother.
As the baby grows he/she is given herbs to protect its immune system and support it in being able to handle the constant and complex threats that nature provides. Pain or disease is not prevented. Some of the herbs that the newborn is bathed in are not to avoid disease but to help the baby face these natural challenges with strength and courage. As the child grows he/she begins to farm for food and harvest medicinal plants with their family and the majority of small illnesses can be solved themselves with the experience and knowledge they gain from following their elders through the natural environment. If an illness is too severe, or beyond the capability of the person to heal themselves, he/she will seek out a professional in order to diagnose and treat the illness. This process is very complex and can utilize life-support systems, systems of quarantine, restricted diet and lifestyle, herbal and energetic or spiritual treatments.
In the traditions it is well understood that one does not challenge a priest/healer by thinking one knows more than the healer or by trying to figure out how the priest/healer is doing what they are doing. In traditional healing, a healer who has been referred to you or is able to heal people is doing so because of the support of their ancestors and often other spirits and Divinities who help in the healing process. To judge, or disrespect the healer one goes to in attempts to ask for their health can be extremely dangerous and a client can even be punished by the various natural energies that are being used by the healer to heal. Pain is seen as a valuable part of the process because it allows the client’s body to communicate to the healer about the ailment and progress. Pain is rarely dulled or relieved because doing so creates a smoke screen between the priest/healer and the body’s natural communication.
When the individual is healed the person is extremely grateful to the priest/healer and will show their gratitude to him/her and the temple at which he works/keeps. In some extreme cases a client may even stay to serve the priest/healer and temple to ensure that they can help others in the way that they were helped. They realize that the priest/healer and whatever energies he is harnessing have provided them with their health again and in many cases their lives.
In one instance in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso in West Africa a couple brought their daughter to a priest/healer. The little girl had severe wounds all over her legs which could not be healed by any other healer or doctor that they had seen. The wounds were so bad they were eating away at her legs leaving them not only useless for walking but also mutated and deformed. The priest/healer diagnosed her situation and told the couple that he could help but the treatment would not be quick and it would take a lot of attention so he would need them to leave her at the temple to live with him. He would call them and tell them when she was healed and they could come and pick her up.
After a few months the priest/healer called the couple telling them that though he was not totally finished, her treatment was going very well and they could come and visit their daughter. When they arrived they saw their daughter who was now walking with bandages which held medicine around her legs, which now looked normal again. She was not only walking but she was now helping the priest/healer at the temple going to fetch different materials, etc. The parents were very surprised and happy to see this. They celebrated and thanked the healer and went back to their home after spending the day with their daughter.
A few days later they came to see the priest. They informed them that they were so grateful to him for what he was doing and that before him they didn’t know if anyone would be able to save their daughter from death or a life of no legs. They said that he had clearly done that and in doing so had given their daughter life back to her.
Now the only gift that they could give to truly honor the level of gratitude they had was to give their daughter to the temple. They then asked the priest if she could stay there and work with him as a temple maid. When she was old enough she could marry one of his sons or he could act as her father in setting up a marriage if it would not work with his son.
This is traditional healing. Life is valued first and you are greatly indebted to anyone who can help protect, maintain or save your life. For that reason total compliance is given to a priest/healer. When a medicine is prescribed to a patient it is understood that it is not the patient to stop the medicine when they feel better but the priest/healer to let them know when the medicine is no longer needed in their treatment. The same goes for dietary or lifestyle restrictions, etc.
It is for this reason that this article is so important. Today, more and more people are turning to a “natural alternative” however without the knowledge of the principles that allow a human being to respect and honor the natural energies that they are seeking to heal them an individual cannot truly benefit from this “alternative.” The individuals who succeed in removing their self-perception from the marketplace have a chance of healing themselves on many levels. That individual must learn to see themselves as another energetic expression in the symphony of energy that is “nature”. Within that symphony each energetic expression has an influence on the next and the knowledge of the mixtures of these influences and their benefits and dangers have been preserved in traditional medicine. It is a wealth of information but to gain access to such wealth one must abide by the principles that allow a human to be a non-threatening member of a larger community. When human beings can value this wealth as much as the imaginary wealth that their leaders have printed onto paper, we will see our potential to “heal thyself”, our species and our harmonious position on this planet and in this symphony we exist in.
