Alternative healing and business

The world does not need yet another alternative healing method. What we need is to understand that they’re based on using our own energy and the abilities we’re all born with.

Of course, that would put a lot of healers out of business.

Maybe a change of focus would be better. Right now many alternative healers are locked into the same approach as conventional medicine, the very system they refute: “Come to me and I will heal you”.

Human beings come into the world equipped with skills to keep themselves healthy and functional — physically, mentally and spiritually — and to heal themselves if something goes wrong. Sometimes by themselves and sometimes in a shared approach. I’m sure many people have had the experience that just talking out a problem with somebody else triggers something inside that gives them the key to solve the problem.

In our society, the tendency is to turn every new idea, every new skill we learn, into a profit-making business. Nothing wrong with that; we all need to make money. But there are many ways to focus a business and design its goals.

Today the thinking goes something like this: This new thing I’m using as the basis of my business will be my own territory, legally protected for me alone and patented if possible. People can come to me and I’ll tell them what to do or give them something, in exchange for a price. But I will never, never reveal the knowledge that makes it possible. That’s mine!

This is the standard model that reigns supreme today: authority, hierarchy, top-down. It’s all in the individual, and society be hanged.

Unfortunately, as is now becoming obvious to many, there are flaws in this way of thinking. If individuality is all that counts and the attitude toward society is dog eat dog, soon all the dogs start eating each other. So what happens when there are no more dogs left to eat? And how do we produce more dogs if we’re more interested in eating them? In some insect species the female, once impregnated, eats her mate. But I’m not sure humans are ready to go that far.

Besides, then you’d have to deal with the problem of a lack of males, which could be handled by equally brutal methods, but this kind of circular reasoning becomes meaningless.

Inevitably the “individual-above-all” mindset will turn against the individual.
The human being has always been a social animal, living in some kind of group setting, and none of us could survive for long outside a social situation. Actually, all life beyond the simplest of the simple is ultimately social because the only way to perpetuate a species is to reproduce with a fellow member of the species. And that means finding enough food to get to reproductive age and then have the energy to procreate.

Even a virus needs some other living being to get its sustenance from. Parasitism carried to the ultimate extreme is a dead end. And the first to succumb is the parasite itself, when it’s destroyed its host. This is known as the paradox of the overly successful parasite.

So Individualism, carried to the extreme, turns the individual into a parasite living on society.

Life is always a balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of society. Business is a social affair because it needs people willing to buy its product or service, so the success of the individual means the business enterprise must succeed. The model that seeks individual success above all perpetuates selfishness and egotism, which are destructive traits and will eventually have negative consequences.

More to the point in perpetuating the ideals of the alternative-healing world, if I refuse to share my skill, when I die it dies with me and deprives society of a valuable resource.

It’s been said that the measure of success of a healer is when a person no longer needs their services. When healing became a business, some practitioners fell into the trap of following the standard business model of keeping customers coming back for more. In other words, convince your clients that they need you to make them feel better. Don’t tell them what they need to know so they can care for themselves.

Of course, some of their clients eventually get tired of this and go elsewhere. So, ultimately, this approach doesn’t guarantee a stock of faithful followers.

Other healers are more generous and truly believe in helping their clients. They know that their success means “losing” a client who doesn’t need them anymore. But there will always be people on the planet who need help. And they’re also likely to get a good recommendation from a satisfied client.

There is also a market for teaching others what you know, in passing down your skill for the future.

All of which would seem to turn the belief in individualism on its head and indicate that the success of society is a good guarantee for the success of the individual.

The importance of words

God, Creator, Spirit, The One, All that is, etc.

All of these are ways that different people describe the unifying force in the universe.

Some people say words are not important. So why are science and religion at each other’s throats when both are talking about the same thing?

Survival of the fittest?

Turning “survival of the fittest” on its head.

The so-called “fittest”, who are supposedly the favored victors in the battle of evolution, get to the top of the heap largely by virtue of the menial labor of the so-called “weaker” members of a population, whose sacrifice helps get the so-called “stronger” ones up there.

So what will happen to the fittest when they become so successful in sacrificing the weaker ones that there are no longer enough losers left to sustain the winners? It’s the eternal paradox of the parasite that becomes so successful (i.e., such an efficient parasite) it ends up killing its host.

In other words, what would happen to the so-called “leaders” of today’s society if the menial laborers of the world decided to work for themselves instead of the bosses?

Take a look at what happens every time the garbage collectors go on strike.

Life cycles

There is nothing delicate about Earth’s ecosystem. Humans have got into the habit of complaining about “upsetting the delicate balance” whenever things change in a way that doesn’t suit them.

Balance is never permanent. Balance occurs when the moving parts of a system align in such a way that all the parts are equal.

But any living system is in constant motion, which means that a situation of balance can never be permanent. A permanent balance would mean that all motion stops. Lack of motion is stagnation, death.

Similarly, imbalance is never permanent and balance will always return.

Energy circulates throughout a system and is constantly being exchanged among its parts. Balance is lost when any part (or parts) of the system becomes overcharged because it acquires too much energy from the other parts and becomes too “heavy” to support itself. It collapses under its own weight and the excess energy is released back into the system, where it becomes available to other parts.

A sudden release of energy (sometimes explosive) will cause a period of chaos when the energy is moving in a disorderly fashion, and naturally affects the entire system. But the forces of attraction will then cause it to coalesce into a new order, which moves toward balance, and the cycle begins again.

Such is the cycle of life. Such are the “laws” of nature. The lives of humans would be more peaceful if they could accept that they are part of nature and cannot control nature.

Feminine in masculine

In the garden center this morning I saw a man, fiftyish, dressed in a business suit, totally absorbed in browsing the cactuses. A place full of plants with soft, gentle music is a calming space, but there was something different in his calm. Picking up cactuses, examining them, replacing them carefully.

My impression was that I was seeing the feminine side of a man who wasn’t ashamed to reveal it, refreshing in a world where macho is the norm. Even when I’m in the presence of a man who shows respect for me as a woman and treats me as an equal as much as one can expect today, the macho is still very much there.

I chose my plants and went to pay for them. While I was there he came out and went to the other cash register to pay for his choice — a round cactus with long, tough thorns. Which rather surprised me.

He walked out to his car just ahead of me, opened the trunk and started to put in the carefully-wrapped plant, then changed his mind and took it into the car with him, where he carefully secured it on the passenger seat. All the time he was so absorbed in what he was doing that he seemed to be in a world of his own.

I was tempted to ask him what he was going to do with the plant and why he had chosen that particular kind of cactus. But I preferred not to break the spell.

Just one of those everyday occurrences that make one aware of the beauty in the world.

Musings during a heat wave

Don’t know what to do with myself today. Plenty to do but can’t get going. Blame it on the summer’s first heat wave, which arrived before we had time to adjust to summer temperatures.

I signed up to Twitter a few weeks ago but then couldn’t think of anything to tweet about — until last night, when a whole lot of stuff came rolling out, after an email from Sandra saying she was following me and then a phone call from her. I’ve stored it all in a note in here, so I’ll have a supply of tweets available when inspiration eludes me.

Here’s hoping I’ll have better luck with Twitter than this poor neglected blog. The first one went out today. How about that?

Poem written for a friend

There was a pied piper in Hamelin,
with a profile photographers dream of,
who enticed all the mice away
to no one knows where.

And when the last mouse
had finally been been sent scampering,
our piper decided a cat would be really the thing.
But while waiting for just the right cat,
in the meantime
a discovery was made.

That, lo and behold,
there was more to Hamelin than one might imagine
and beyond that tiny town
a great world to explore.

So like all good music makers who follow their music,
this one went off to see what could be had.

(Maybe even that elusive cat)

Repeating history endlessly

Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: Doing the same things over and over again and somehow expecting different results.

The way humans deal with events in their lives and societies with events collectively would seem to fit the definition perfectly. One can only wonder…

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/08/20/sirota_deja_vu_all_over_again/index.html

On stress

Stress is the tension of the tiger preparing itself for action.

But the tiger also rests. He only springs into action when there is a need.

Where does the tiger go, what does he do, when he rests, when there is no need for action? Become a tiger and you will know.

Belief and faith

Listening to a podcast from The Sons of the Law of One (episode 24), I was struck by what was said about belief and faith.
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As never before, you as spirit are trying to batter through the pictures of reality that you as personality are holding. Ascension is such a vast concept that these little pictures have to go if you are to grasp even a fraction of what it means. So let go of any opinions of who you think you are, who you think other people are and what you think Spirit is. Keep your belief systems wide open and discrimination alive and well.

If belief is cerain death to understanding, what do you have left? Belief stems from wishing something to be true. It is built on preconceptions and prejudices, and opens its mind only to whatever fits its models. Faith, on the other hand, is a plunge into the unknown with an open mind, in the certain knowledge that it’s all right to let go. Faith knows that it won’t necessarily be safe or comfortable, but that it will be all right.