Spirituality and Medicine
Raphael Kellman
Raphael Kellman, M.D., practices holistic-integrative medicine in Manhattan at the Center for Progressive Medicine. This article emerged from a set of conversations with Michael Lerner and some of its formulations reflect ideas that emerged in that context and will appear in Lerner's forthcoming book Spirit Matters.
A spiritual approach to health care must both ensure that everyone who needs medical care can have access to it and reflect a holistic, ecological, humanistic perspective based on meaning and spirit.
Spiritual medicine is based on a different perception of ourselves and our world than we currently have. It is based on the belief that the world can also be perceived from the perspective of the heart. Just as interconnectiveness and interdependence is vital to the natural world, it plays a vital, not merely an ancillary role, in spiritual medicine. Indeed, spiritually based medicine can be better termed a medicine of meaning, rooted in an ecological orientation with a simultaneously transcendent and imminent relationship to the world. From the standpoint of a medicine of meaning, nutritional imbalances, environmental toxins, and an unnatural relationship to food and the food chain are secondary to the loss of compassion and meaning. Our culture's escalating medical costs, rise in chronic disease, and financial inability to provide some level of health care to all are precisely due to the fact that we have not taken a spiritual or meaningful approach to medicine.
In short, a medicine without meaning will always be bankrupt-figuratively and literally. We cannot resolve problems of accessibility without at the same time addressing problems of content.
Recent advances in various disciplines of science are more consistent with a medicine of meaning approach than with the framework on which modern medicine rests. In modern physics, for example, the boundary between subject and object is nebulous at best, shattering our belief in a mechanistic understanding of life and of the human body. In the study of life systems as well, scientists now employ a non-linear model in which the parts of a living system contribute to, but do not define, a living system, and the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
In medicine itself, we are beginning to realize that the mind is not localized in the brain. We know that the heart can send messages to the brain and might have its own mode of perception. Indeed recent studies are beginning to make us wonder if the connection between love and the heart isn't more than metaphor but represents something physiological. Even the gastrointestinal system has more neurons and neuropeptides than the spinal column; perhaps the medical community has not digested the fact that the gut has its own mode of perception as well.
Spiritual medicine is, in fact, more consistent with science and is rooted in the belief that we live in a vast, interconnected, interdependent world.
In order to achieve such a medicine of meaning, however, we must first understand the philosophical orientation of the modern medicine most of us experience. Modern medicine is still deeply rooted in a mechanistic model. In medical school, aspiring doctors learn to think of human beings as machines. Medical science itself was developed through the study of the anatomy of a corpse. But a human being is not a corpse--we are something else that needs to be understood in a different way.
Take, for example, the mechanical model of a pump used to explain the heart, first proposed by the scientist William Harvey in 1628. This model has helped doctors understand heart disease, but does not and cannot explain the true nature of the heart or give us a deep understanding of the causes of heart disease. Recent studies in fact have shown that meaning, job dissatisfaction, compassion, and interconnectiveness are more important variables than all the known risk factors for coronary heart disease. For example, a behavioral medicine specialist, Mark Goodman, evaluated forty-one patients who had angioplasty and showed that patients with a high potential for hostility tended to block off again. Another study showed that the chance that one would survive their first heart attack was not dependent on cholesterol, diabetes, or high blood pressure but rather job dissatisfaction. A third study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1993 showed that those heart attack survivors who suffered from depression characterized by feelings of decreased self-esteem had a three to four times greater risk of dying within six months than those who were not depressed.
On the other hand, emotions like compassion and interconnectiveness improve cardiac function in patients with heart disease. This "interconnectiveness variable" was demonstrated to make a difference in a study of 2,700 residents in Tecumseh, Michigan. The study showed that men who volunteered for community organizations were two and a half times less likely to die from all causes of diseases than their non-involved peers. A national survey conducted by Allan Luks involving 3,300 volunteers showed that volunteers get an immediate "helper's high" which consists of a surge in energy, a feeling of optimism, and a feeling of empowerment; such helpers also reported better perceived health. Many also reported fewer infections, improved eating and sleeping habits, and even the relief of pain. Other studies have show that this state is associated with improved immunological function and even improved cardiac health.
Spiritual medicine would argue that the heart is more than a mechanical pump, but a particular kind of mind interwoven with this thing we call the heart. There is nothing in the world that we can compare to this organ that can perceive in a particular way the interconnectiveness between all, and the deep need for the experience of meaning, not only for its own function, but to sustain the world itself. This perception motivates our biochemistry, so that we see the world as a grand experience of sharing. Receiving for the self alone not only impedes our own physical health, but short circuits the flow of the world. Spiritually based medicine can maintain the flow of the world because it empowers us to mold our destinies. The more we can embrace this belief, the more we can not only prevent but literally reverse disease.
For example, in the Study for the Advancement of Medicine in 1995, researchers showed that when patients experience caring and compassion, salivary SIGA, the body's first line of defense against viruses and other pathogens, increased significantly. A study by A. Thomas McLellan at Harvard University showed that an experience of compassion raises SIGA, even in people who claimed that they had no subjective feeling of compassion.
Meaning-based practice, then, should be a high priority for medical practice as a whole. Unfortunately, we are taught in medical school to leave our souls behind, and this really undermines our work as physicians. I've worked in hospitals where you can feel the lifelessness in the caregivers and everyone else. In these cases, the institution has already removed the soul from its interactions with the patients, and I'm not surprised when healing in such a setting doesn't work so well.
Of course, I don't deny the physical dimension to healing. Spiritual healing doesn't have to be counterposed to chemotherapy. We need to approach people on all levels because interventions on many different levels all have a synergistic effect. But neither is approaching someone purely on a physical level alone adequate. And I say this not only about traditional forms of medicine, but also about "alternative" medical techniques. If, for example, you give people a regimen of vitamins without any other meaning-level of intervention, your work will be less effective.
To stay with the example of vitamins, a far better way to approach nutrition is to show people that in order to restore their body's capacity to heal they need to work on their entire way of relating to food and to the body. Eating for ourselves alone, without thinking about how we will experience sharing, is antithetical to the theme of life and will have negative physiological consequences. Changing this consciousness can have penetrating effects on our physiology. When people can see that food is an act of giving by the earth and that we have a corresponding need to give back, they gain a sense of meaning. They learn that the earth gives to us so that we can give in turn to others--because we are all fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Our atoms are constantly being shuffled from the earth and the air through us and back to a tree or to another human being or to the earth in a constant dance of sharing. When we block this cascade through fear or greed, we interfere with the life-giving and nurturing qualities that are available and were meant to sustain us.
That's why part of a meaning-oriented medicine is that a doctor must try to instill an understanding of the systems-nature of our health--that on the one hand the health of one part of our body is linked to the health of all other parts, and on the other hand that the health of the body is linked to the health of the economic, political, and ecological systems outside the body. So, for example, caring about the environment is good for our health, even when we are not yet successful in stopping the polluters or restraining those who are misusing the earth's resources. When someone activates the concern in themselves for ecological improvement, they are simultaneously activating a transpersonal aspect of their being that aspires to meaning and that, in turn, has significant physiological effects.
Modern medicine has not yet moved toward a spiritual practice in part because it is very much influenced by money--the money made by large pharmaceutical companies and by the insurance companies. It is to their advantage, they believe, to keep medicine based on mechanistic models of the body. The current system has proven valuable and profitable for them, and though there might be a way to make money even with a revised conception, they don't want to risk it. And they've been amazingly successful in shaping the dominant consciousness, not just among medical practitioners but also among ordinary people.
What's more, these new ways of healing will be cost-effective. When we live in a society in which health care is available to some but not to others, we are living in a society with a meaning-deficit--and that will have immediate health consequences. Conversely, if we live in a society in which the bottom line is radically different from what it is today, we will experience benefits not only from the increased availability of health care, but also from the type of health care we all will receive.
Such meaning-based medicine is not new. Ancient traditions have long encouraged us to acknowledge our physical connection to the universe. Look at how Judaism, for example, requires us to do a blessing at the beginning of the meal, before eating, and then to spend a good period of time in a long prayer after the meal, so that attention gets directed to the spiritual reality of eating. We have always known that to strengthen our bodies we need to get nutrients from food. What a meaning-based practice teaches us is that how well we absorb such nutrients depends on our state of mind when we eat. If we can get ourselves to slow down and really respond to the world with awe, wonder, and radical amazement, we will certainly create a healthier attitude and, eventually, a healthier world.
Ultimately, spiritual medicine is based on a radical change in our perceptions of who we are and our relationship to the world. Ironically it is more consistent than modern medicine with recent advances in so many disciplines of thought. Why modern medicine is not up to date has more to do with sociological, political, and economic reasons than with scientific ones. A medicine of meaning, if understood properly, not only has the potential of healing the human being but of healing the world as well.
Illustration (medical symbol in the shape of two people praying.)
Spirituality and MedicineSpirituality and Medicine
Raphael Kellman
Raphael Kellman, M.D., practices holistic-integrative medicine in Manhattan at the Center for Progressive Medicine. This article emerged from a set of conversations with Michael Lerner and some of its formulations reflect ideas that emerged in that context and will appear in Lerner's forthcoming book Spirit Matters.
A spiritual approach to health care must both ensure that everyone who needs medical care can have access to it and reflect a holistic, ecological, humanistic perspective based on meaning and spirit.
Spiritual medicine is based on a different perception of ourselves and our world than we currently have. It is based on the belief that the world can also be perceived from the perspective of the heart. Just as interconnectiveness and interdependence is vital to the natural world, it plays a vital, not merely an ancillary role, in spiritual medicine. Indeed, spiritually based medicine can be better termed a medicine of meaning, rooted in an ecological orientation with a simultaneously transcendent and imminent relationship to the world. From the standpoint of a medicine of meaning, nutritional imbalances, environmental toxins, and an unnatural relationship to food and the food chain are secondary to the loss of compassion and meaning. Our culture's escalating medical costs, rise in chronic disease, and financial inability to provide some level of health care to all are precisely due to the fact that we have not taken a spiritual or meaningful approach to medicine.
In short, a medicine without meaning will always be bankrupt-figuratively and literally. We cannot resolve problems of accessibility without at the same time addressing problems of content.
Recent advances in various disciplines of science are more consistent with a medicine of meaning approach than with the framework on which modern medicine rests. In modern physics, for example, the boundary between subject and object is nebulous at best, shattering our belief in a mechanistic understanding of life and of the human body. In the study of life systems as well, scientists now employ a non-linear model in which the parts of a living system contribute to, but do not define, a living system, and the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
In medicine itself, we are beginning to realize that the mind is not localized in the brain. We know that the heart can send messages to the brain and might have its own mode of perception. Indeed recent studies are beginning to make us wonder if the connection between love and the heart isn't more than metaphor but represents something physiological. Even the gastrointestinal system has more neurons and neuropeptides than the spinal column; perhaps the medical community has not digested the fact that the gut has its own mode of perception as well.
Spiritual medicine is, in fact, more consistent with science and is rooted in the belief that we live in a vast, interconnected, interdependent world.
In order to achieve such a medicine of meaning, however, we must first understand the philosophical orientation of the modern medicine most of us experience. Modern medicine is still deeply rooted in a mechanistic model. In medical school, aspiring doctors learn to think of human beings as machines. Medical science itself was developed through the study of the anatomy of a corpse. But a human being is not a corpse--we are something else that needs to be understood in a different way.
Take, for example, the mechanical model of a pump used to explain the heart, first proposed by the scientist William Harvey in 1628. This model has helped doctors understand heart disease, but does not and cannot explain the true nature of the heart or give us a deep understanding of the causes of heart disease. Recent studies in fact have shown that meaning, job dissatisfaction, compassion, and interconnectiveness are more important variables than all the known risk factors for coronary heart disease. For example, a behavioral medicine specialist, Mark Goodman, evaluated forty-one patients who had angioplasty and showed that patients with a high potential for hostility tended to block off again. Another study showed that the chance that one would survive their first heart attack was not dependent on cholesterol, diabetes, or high blood pressure but rather job dissatisfaction. A third study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1993 showed that those heart attack survivors who suffered from depression characterized by feelings of decreased self-esteem had a three to four times greater risk of dying within six months than those who were not depressed.
On the other hand, emotions like compassion and interconnectiveness improve cardiac function in patients with heart disease. This "interconnectiveness variable" was demonstrated to make a difference in a study of 2,700 residents in Tecumseh, Michigan. The study showed that men who volunteered for community organizations were two and a half times less likely to die from all causes of diseases than their non-involved peers. A national survey conducted by Allan Luks involving 3,300 volunteers showed that volunteers get an immediate "helper's high" which consists of a surge in energy, a feeling of optimism, and a feeling of empowerment; such helpers also reported better perceived health. Many also reported fewer infections, improved eating and sleeping habits, and even the relief of pain. Other studies have show that this state is associated with improved immunological function and even improved cardiac health.
Spiritual medicine would argue that the heart is more than a mechanical pump, but a particular kind of mind interwoven with this thing we call the heart. There is nothing in the world that we can compare to this organ that can perceive in a particular way the interconnectiveness between all, and the deep need for the experience of meaning, not only for its own function, but to sustain the world itself. This perception motivates our biochemistry, so that we see the world as a grand experience of sharing. Receiving for the self alone not only impedes our own physical health, but short circuits the flow of the world. Spiritually based medicine can maintain the flow of the world because it empowers us to mold our destinies. The more we can embrace this belief, the more we can not only prevent but literally reverse disease.
For example, in the Study for the Advancement of Medicine in 1995, researchers showed that when patients experience caring and compassion, salivary SIGA, the body's first line of defense against viruses and other pathogens, increased significantly. A study by A. Thomas McLellan at Harvard University showed that an experience of compassion raises SIGA, even in people who claimed that they had no subjective feeling of compassion.
Meaning-based practice, then, should be a high priority for medical practice as a whole. Unfortunately, we are taught in medical school to leave our souls behind, and this really undermines our work as physicians. I've worked in hospitals where you can feel the lifelessness in the caregivers and everyone else. In these cases, the institution has already removed the soul from its interactions with the patients, and I'm not surprised when healing in such a setting doesn't work so well.
Of course, I don't deny the physical dimension to healing. Spiritual healing doesn't have to be counterposed to chemotherapy. We need to approach people on all levels because interventions on many different levels all have a synergistic effect. But neither is approaching someone purely on a physical level alone adequate. And I say this not only about traditional forms of medicine, but also about "alternative" medical techniques. If, for example, you give people a regimen of vitamins without any other meaning-level of intervention, your work will be less effective.
To stay with the example of vitamins, a far better way to approach nutrition is to show people that in order to restore their body's capacity to heal they need to work on their entire way of relating to food and to the body. Eating for ourselves alone, without thinking about how we will experience sharing, is antithetical to the theme of life and will have negative physiological consequences. Changing this consciousness can have penetrating effects on our physiology. When people can see that food is an act of giving by the earth and that we have a corresponding need to give back, they gain a sense of meaning. They learn that the earth gives to us so that we can give in turn to others--because we are all fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Our atoms are constantly being shuffled from the earth and the air through us and back to a tree or to another human being or to the earth in a constant dance of sharing. When we block this cascade through fear or greed, we interfere with the life-giving and nurturing qualities that are available and were meant to sustain us.
That's why part of a meaning-oriented medicine is that a doctor must try to instill an understanding of the systems-nature of our health--that on the one hand the health of one part of our body is linked to the health of all other parts, and on the other hand that the health of the body is linked to the health of the economic, political, and ecological systems outside the body. So, for example, caring about the environment is good for our health, even when we are not yet successful in stopping the polluters or restraining those who are misusing the earth's resources. When someone activates the concern in themselves for ecological improvement, they are simultaneously activating a transpersonal aspect of their being that aspires to meaning and that, in turn, has significant physiological effects.
Modern medicine has not yet moved toward a spiritual practice in part because it is very much influenced by money--the money made by large pharmaceutical companies and by the insurance companies. It is to their advantage, they believe, to keep medicine based on mechanistic models of the body. The current system has proven valuable and profitable for them, and though there might be a way to make money even with a revised conception, they don't want to risk it. And they've been amazingly successful in shaping the dominant consciousness, not just among medical practitioners but also among ordinary people.
What's more, these new ways of healing will be cost-effective. When we live in a society in which health care is available to some but not to others, we are living in a society with a meaning-deficit--and that will have immediate health consequences. Conversely, if we live in a society in which the bottom line is radically different from what it is today, we will experience benefits not only from the increased availability of health care, but also from the type of health care we all will receive.
Such meaning-based medicine is not new. Ancient traditions have long encouraged us to acknowledge our physical connection to the universe. Look at how Judaism, for example, requires us to do a blessing at the beginning of the meal, before eating, and then to spend a good period of time in a long prayer after the meal, so that attention gets directed to the spiritual reality of eating. We have always known that to strengthen our bodies we need to get nutrients from food. What a meaning-based practice teaches us is that how well we absorb such nutrients depends on our state of mind when we eat. If we can get ourselves to slow down and really respond to the world with awe, wonder, and radical amazement, we will certainly create a healthier attitude and, eventually, a healthier world.
Ultimately, spiritual medicine is based on a radical change in our perceptions of who we are and our relationship to the world. Ironically it is more consistent than modern medicine with recent advances in so many disciplines of thought. Why modern medicine is not up to date has more to do with sociological, political, and economic reasons than with scientific ones. A medicine of meaning, if understood properly, not only has the potential of healing the human being but of healing the world as well.
Illustration (medical symbol in the shape of two people praying.)
Spirituality and MedicineSpirituality and Medicine
Raphael Kellman
Raphael Kellman, M.D., practices holistic-integrative medicine in Manhattan at the Center for Progressive Medicine. This article emerged from a set of conversations with Michael Lerner and some of its formulations reflect ideas that emerged in that context and will appear in Lerner's forthcoming book Spirit Matters.
A spiritual approach to health care must both ensure that everyone who needs medical care can have access to it and reflect a holistic, ecological, humanistic perspective based on meaning and spirit.
Spiritual medicine is based on a different perception of ourselves and our world than we currently have. It is based on the belief that the world can also be perceived from the perspective of the heart. Just as interconnectiveness and interdependence is vital to the natural world, it plays a vital, not merely an ancillary role, in spiritual medicine. Indeed, spiritually based medicine can be better termed a medicine of meaning, rooted in an ecological orientation with a simultaneously transcendent and imminent relationship to the world. From the standpoint of a medicine of meaning, nutritional imbalances, environmental toxins, and an unnatural relationship to food and the food chain are secondary to the loss of compassion and meaning. Our culture's escalating medical costs, rise in chronic disease, and financial inability to provide some level of health care to all are precisely due to the fact that we have not taken a spiritual or meaningful approach to medicine.
In short, a medicine without meaning will always be bankrupt-figuratively and literally. We cannot resolve problems of accessibility without at the same time addressing problems of content.
Recent advances in various disciplines of science are more consistent with a medicine of meaning approach than with the framework on which modern medicine rests. In modern physics, for example, the boundary between subject and object is nebulous at best, shattering our belief in a mechanistic understanding of life and of the human body. In the study of life systems as well, scientists now employ a non-linear model in which the parts of a living system contribute to, but do not define, a living system, and the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
In medicine itself, we are beginning to realize that the mind is not localized in the brain. We know that the heart can send messages to the brain and might have its own mode of perception. Indeed recent studies are beginning to make us wonder if the connection between love and the heart isn't more than metaphor but represents something physiological. Even the gastrointestinal system has more neurons and neuropeptides than the spinal column; perhaps the medical community has not digested the fact that the gut has its own mode of perception as well.
Spiritual medicine is, in fact, more consistent with science and is rooted in the belief that we live in a vast, interconnected, interdependent world.
In order to achieve such a medicine of meaning, however, we must first understand the philosophical orientation of the modern medicine most of us experience. Modern medicine is still deeply rooted in a mechanistic model. In medical school, aspiring doctors learn to think of human beings as machines. Medical science itself was developed through the study of the anatomy of a corpse. But a human being is not a corpse--we are something else that needs to be understood in a different way.
Take, for example, the mechanical model of a pump used to explain the heart, first proposed by the scientist William Harvey in 1628. This model has helped doctors understand heart disease, but does not and cannot explain the true nature of the heart or give us a deep understanding of the causes of heart disease. Recent studies in fact have shown that meaning, job dissatisfaction, compassion, and interconnectiveness are more important variables than all the known risk factors for coronary heart disease. For example, a behavioral medicine specialist, Mark Goodman, evaluated forty-one patients who had angioplasty and showed that patients with a high potential for hostility tended to block off again. Another study showed that the chance that one would survive their first heart attack was not dependent on cholesterol, diabetes, or high blood pressure but rather job dissatisfaction. A third study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1993 showed that those heart attack survivors who suffered from depression characterized by feelings of decreased self-esteem had a three to four times greater risk of dying within six months than those who were not depressed.
On the other hand, emotions like compassion and interconnectiveness improve cardiac function in patients with heart disease. This "interconnectiveness variable" was demonstrated to make a difference in a study of 2,700 residents in Tecumseh, Michigan. The study showed that men who volunteered for community organizations were two and a half times less likely to die from all causes of diseases than their non-involved peers. A national survey conducted by Allan Luks involving 3,300 volunteers showed that volunteers get an immediate "helper's high" which consists of a surge in energy, a feeling of optimism, and a feeling of empowerment; such helpers also reported better perceived health. Many also reported fewer infections, improved eating and sleeping habits, and even the relief of pain. Other studies have show that this state is associated with improved immunological function and even improved cardiac health.
Spiritual medicine would argue that the heart is more than a mechanical pump, but a particular kind of mind interwoven with this thing we call the heart. There is nothing in the world that we can compare to this organ that can perceive in a particular way the interconnectiveness between all, and the deep need for the experience of meaning, not only for its own function, but to sustain the world itself. This perception motivates our biochemistry, so that we see the world as a grand experience of sharing. Receiving for the self alone not only impedes our own physical health, but short circuits the flow of the world. Spiritually based medicine can maintain the flow of the world because it empowers us to mold our destinies. The more we can embrace this belief, the more we can not only prevent but literally reverse disease.
For example, in the Study for the Advancement of Medicine in 1995, researchers showed that when patients experience caring and compassion, salivary SIGA, the body's first line of defense against viruses and other pathogens, increased significantly. A study by A. Thomas McLellan at Harvard University showed that an experience of compassion raises SIGA, even in people who claimed that they had no subjective feeling of compassion.
Meaning-based practice, then, should be a high priority for medical practice as a whole. Unfortunately, we are taught in medical school to leave our souls behind, and this really undermines our work as physicians. I've worked in hospitals where you can feel the lifelessness in the caregivers and everyone else. In these cases, the institution has already removed the soul from its interactions with the patients, and I'm not surprised when healing in such a setting doesn't work so well.
Of course, I don't deny the physical dimension to healing. Spiritual healing doesn't have to be counterposed to chemotherapy. We need to approach people on all levels because interventions on many different levels all have a synergistic effect. But neither is approaching someone purely on a physical level alone adequate. And I say this not only about traditional forms of medicine, but also about "alternative" medical techniques. If, for example, you give people a regimen of vitamins without any other meaning-level of intervention, your work will be less effective.
To stay with the example of vitamins, a far better way to approach nutrition is to show people that in order to restore their body's capacity to heal they need to work on their entire way of relating to food and to the body. Eating for ourselves alone, without thinking about how we will experience sharing, is antithetical to the theme of life and will have negative physiological consequences. Changing this consciousness can have penetrating effects on our physiology. When people can see that food is an act of giving by the earth and that we have a corresponding need to give back, they gain a sense of meaning. They learn that the earth gives to us so that we can give in turn to others--because we are all fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Our atoms are constantly being shuffled from the earth and the air through us and back to a tree or to another human being or to the earth in a constant dance of sharing. When we block this cascade through fear or greed, we interfere with the life-giving and nurturing qualities that are available and were meant to sustain us.
That's why part of a meaning-oriented medicine is that a doctor must try to instill an understanding of the systems-nature of our health--that on the one hand the health of one part of our body is linked to the health of all other parts, and on the other hand that the health of the body is linked to the health of the economic, political, and ecological systems outside the body. So, for example, caring about the environment is good for our health, even when we are not yet successful in stopping the polluters or restraining those who are misusing the earth's resources. When someone activates the concern in themselves for ecological improvement, they are simultaneously activating a transpersonal aspect of their being that aspires to meaning and that, in turn, has significant physiological effects.
Modern medicine has not yet moved toward a spiritual practice in part because it is very much influenced by money--the money made by large pharmaceutical companies and by the insurance companies. It is to their advantage, they believe, to keep medicine based on mechanistic models of the body. The current system has proven valuable and profitable for them, and though there might be a way to make money even with a revised conception, they don't want to risk it. And they've been amazingly successful in shaping the dominant consciousness, not just among medical practitioners but also among ordinary people.
What's more, these new ways of healing will be cost-effective. When we live in a society in which health care is available to some but not to others, we are living in a society with a meaning-deficit--and that will have immediate health consequences. Conversely, if we live in a society in which the bottom line is radically different from what it is today, we will experience benefits not only from the increased availability of health care, but also from the type of health care we all will receive.
Such meaning-based medicine is not new. Ancient traditions have long encouraged us to acknowledge our physical connection to the universe. Look at how Judaism, for example, requires us to do a blessing at the beginning of the meal, before eating, and then to spend a good period of time in a long prayer after the meal, so that attention gets directed to the spiritual reality of eating. We have always known that to strengthen our bodies we need to get nutrients from food. What a meaning-based practice teaches us is that how well we absorb such nutrients depends on our state of mind when we eat. If we can get ourselves to slow down and really respond to the world with awe, wonder, and radical amazement, we will certainly create a healthier attitude and, eventually, a healthier world.
Ultimately, spiritual medicine is based on a radical change in our perceptions of who we are and our relationship to the world. Ironically it is more consistent than modern medicine with recent advances in so many disciplines of thought. Why modern medicine is not up to date has more to do with sociological, political, and economic reasons than with scientific ones. A medicine of meaning, if understood properly, not only has the potential of healing the human being but of healing the world as well.
Illustration (medical symbol in the shape of two people praying.)
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