On a walk today, we were discussing an elderly woman with chronic joint pain problems. She had had knee surgery years before, but that still ached; now her hips, the other knee and her feet were making it almost too painful to walk. Regular doctors had recommended pills or operations, promising no great breakthrough.
Finally, she alighted on the idea of acupuncture, which had surprised us. It is not traditional to either modern or alchemical (traditional) western medicine, and is not covered by medicare. Yet there she went, happy to spend her own money on a form of therapy that she only thinks she knows about.
We disagreed as to how many today accept acupuncture, but one thing I would bet on: most people do not know that acupuncture is a spiritual science. Perhaps people are fooled by the presence of needles that actually penetrate the skin, but the main job of the needles is to block or ease the passage of "chi", or subtle life energy. Many probably think it has more to do with an actual material structure, and probably picture in their mind a ganglia or cluster of nerves that are affected by the needle. But this is not really the case. Instead, the bodily chakras are involved, loci which correspond to the spiritual body, and it is these that are pinpointed, located by the practitioner through both training and "touch", for these are invisible things. If this older woman really knew this, would she be so ready to go to the acupuncturist?
And yet acupuncture works. It is more dependent on the skill of the practitioner than our materialistic medicine, but it often works in ways that our standard doctors do not understand. Operations have been done without the use of anesthetics, for instance, using only acupuncture; this might be "mind over matter," but if it is, who cares? It works.
The point being, while the modern world does not have an adequate explanation for the success of acupuncture, it works none-the-less. This goes for the placebo affect, spontaneous remission, certain definite results of out-of-body experiences ("I saw a blue tie on top of the (7 foot tall) cabinet during surgery"), and so on. And so we come back to Louie Zamparini, the focus of the book "Unbroken." Brought to his knees and to alcoholism by his flashbacks and nightmares from the Japanese POW camps, he finally lays himself at the mercy of God during a Billy Graham revival meeting, and in one day he is permanently done with alcohol abuse, flashbacks and bad dreams. Finished. PTSD is still largely incurable today, helped only somewhat by the use of psychiatric drugs. But it is a subtle condition, a mental one, and so little is said about such cures of grace by people like Louie. This is because we have no proof that his god cured him at all - only that his belief did, somehow. And yet, who should we depend on more for the explanation of the cure, those who say they correspond with God or those who only theorize about how such a belief could have a psychological affect? Put another way, which explanation about acupuncture is more satisfying; one that claims some sort of unexplained psychological affect, or one that knows that it is done by a type of primal energy that can demonstrably be controlled?
What explanation for Louie's cure would you prefer? A blank "psychological affect" shrug, or the acknowledgment from those who themselves experience such cures that a higher cosmic power - call it what you will, but it is invisible - is at work? While this latter explanation might not solve our need to be able to hold the answer in our hands, so what? Can we hold spontaneous creation, eternity and death in our hands? And yet they are fundamental aspects of our reality. Most certainly, our understanding of God is extremely limited - one may laugh at another's concept only if one is able to laugh at one's own - but that means only that we are still too "young" to understand. To say that such things don't exist is to create an immense circle of poor logic: "we have miracle cures due to psychological effects. But we do not understand what psychological effects really are; we cannot control them in the lab and cannot see or experiment with them as discrete entities. They create miracles, however." In the end, with "chi" and "God," it seems we either accept them as a concept, or we circle around to purposefully confuse ourselves while 'psychologically' admitting to them anyway. FK
Finally, she alighted on the idea of acupuncture, which had surprised us. It is not traditional to either modern or alchemical (traditional) western medicine, and is not covered by medicare. Yet there she went, happy to spend her own money on a form of therapy that she only thinks she knows about.
We disagreed as to how many today accept acupuncture, but one thing I would bet on: most people do not know that acupuncture is a spiritual science. Perhaps people are fooled by the presence of needles that actually penetrate the skin, but the main job of the needles is to block or ease the passage of "chi", or subtle life energy. Many probably think it has more to do with an actual material structure, and probably picture in their mind a ganglia or cluster of nerves that are affected by the needle. But this is not really the case. Instead, the bodily chakras are involved, loci which correspond to the spiritual body, and it is these that are pinpointed, located by the practitioner through both training and "touch", for these are invisible things. If this older woman really knew this, would she be so ready to go to the acupuncturist?
And yet acupuncture works. It is more dependent on the skill of the practitioner than our materialistic medicine, but it often works in ways that our standard doctors do not understand. Operations have been done without the use of anesthetics, for instance, using only acupuncture; this might be "mind over matter," but if it is, who cares? It works.
The point being, while the modern world does not have an adequate explanation for the success of acupuncture, it works none-the-less. This goes for the placebo affect, spontaneous remission, certain definite results of out-of-body experiences ("I saw a blue tie on top of the (7 foot tall) cabinet during surgery"), and so on. And so we come back to Louie Zamparini, the focus of the book "Unbroken." Brought to his knees and to alcoholism by his flashbacks and nightmares from the Japanese POW camps, he finally lays himself at the mercy of God during a Billy Graham revival meeting, and in one day he is permanently done with alcohol abuse, flashbacks and bad dreams. Finished. PTSD is still largely incurable today, helped only somewhat by the use of psychiatric drugs. But it is a subtle condition, a mental one, and so little is said about such cures of grace by people like Louie. This is because we have no proof that his god cured him at all - only that his belief did, somehow. And yet, who should we depend on more for the explanation of the cure, those who say they correspond with God or those who only theorize about how such a belief could have a psychological affect? Put another way, which explanation about acupuncture is more satisfying; one that claims some sort of unexplained psychological affect, or one that knows that it is done by a type of primal energy that can demonstrably be controlled?
What explanation for Louie's cure would you prefer? A blank "psychological affect" shrug, or the acknowledgment from those who themselves experience such cures that a higher cosmic power - call it what you will, but it is invisible - is at work? While this latter explanation might not solve our need to be able to hold the answer in our hands, so what? Can we hold spontaneous creation, eternity and death in our hands? And yet they are fundamental aspects of our reality. Most certainly, our understanding of God is extremely limited - one may laugh at another's concept only if one is able to laugh at one's own - but that means only that we are still too "young" to understand. To say that such things don't exist is to create an immense circle of poor logic: "we have miracle cures due to psychological effects. But we do not understand what psychological effects really are; we cannot control them in the lab and cannot see or experiment with them as discrete entities. They create miracles, however." In the end, with "chi" and "God," it seems we either accept them as a concept, or we circle around to purposefully confuse ourselves while 'psychologically' admitting to them anyway. FK
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