“I know this will heal me.”
I was standing in a parking lot selling a $400 juicer (for a song) to a woman who was trying to fix her chronic pain.
I didn’t argue – how could I? I used to think that way, too.
In the story I intended to write, there was no place for cancer. And there was certainly no place for chemotherapy. I took a lot of pride in my conscientious decisions about diet and lifestyle. My children were born at home in a rural Maine farmhouse. I baked my own bread and sometimes ground my own grain.
So when a doctor I had never met before called to tell me that some bloodwork I had ordered on a whim had come back with concerning results, I smiled and thanked him and said I would do some research.
“You might have leukemia. You should go to the ER right away.”
I didn’t. Instead, I started shopping. I bought juicers and supplements and bulk foods. I got on forums and facebook and google.
You’ve heard this one before.
But there was no cure for me in that juicer – juicing never made me feel good, and yet I persisted because I was listening to everyone but the inner voice that knew.
I was making things worse, spiraling further and further into incoherence, running from the deepest fear.
I was trying to find ‘green’ substitutes for pharmaceutical fixes, but I was only substituting forms, not principles.
To look for life
is to find death.
The thirteen organs or our living
are the thirteen organs of our dying.
Why are the organs of our life
where death enters us?
Because we hold too hard to living.
So I’ve heard
if you live the right way,
when you cross country
you needn’t fear to meet a mad bull or a tiger.
When you’re in a battle
you needn’t fear the weapons.
The bull would find nowhere to jab its horns,
the tiger nowhere to stick its claws,
the sword nowhere for its point to go.
Why? Because there’s nowhere in your
for death to enter.
-Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu, trans. Ursula K LeGuin
What does it mean to “hold too hard to living?” Shouldn’t we commit ourselves as fully to life as we can, while we have it?
.
When my time was much less precious, I used to fill out the consumer surveys that came in the mail. Under “Hobbies,” one of the options was “Supplements.”
We have all been tempted by the magic bullet, the miracle elixir, the Holy Grail of Healing in a bottle.
We’ve all been told THE cause: Candida, parasites, chronic Lyme, Vitamin A toxicity, mold, 5G, geo-engineering, wind turbines, glyphosate, etc.
Maybe.
But they are all tigers. Fight them one by one, and you are clinging to the fear, not dancing with your life force.
This is what is meant by “holding too hard.”
Once the tiger has you in his grasp, you need to extricate yourself. You need to staunch your wounds.
And yet, until the susceptibility to these predations is addressed, you are not free. The tiger is on your trail.
It took me ten years to sell that stupid juicer. I still have garbage bags of the latest, greatest, “detox” systems. I’m still not convinced I had a supplement deficiency.
As a homeopath, I assume that everything the body communicates through symptoms is information that points to the remedy that will heal the susceptibility.
Address that, and you needn’t fear the mad bull or the tiger.
.
Excuse me while I go throw out a few things.
Click HERE for your FREE Embark on Healing call, if you’d like to learn more about my Navigating Your Healing Journey shamanic coaching program of homeopathy-driven healing, growth, and self-discovery, and how you can gain greater access to your intuition and true path. I am offering you the Irresistible Invitation to Surrender. Will you accept it?
Thanks Sarah ❤️
I spend a lot of time in treatment facilities and see lots of folks who are so scared that they jump at every "cure" promised, only to be dismayed to discover they aren't immortal. Thank you for a much more realistic approach.