9/12/2002
Dear Shari and Toby,
WHAT
IS THE PATH TO WHOLENESS?
Unfortunately, the path to wholeness is different for each person. If you are throwing a party and try to provide instructions each invitee can follow, some serious accidents could occur if you describe à left turn, 1.2 miles, right turn……., and provide the same path to each invitee. People will be starting from different locations and the instructions will need to be tailored to each invitee’s needs. An alternative is to provide the address for the party and let each invitee find his own way. A third alternative is to provide a map containing enough familiar major landmarks and local detail that each invitee can find a familiar starting point and follow the map to the party. The map does not have to provide the name and location of all streets in the local area but just enough to provide a sure, direct path. Roadmaps are two dimensional objects. The path to the wholeness party lies in three dimensions (spirit, mind, body) with a healthy twist created by time. We may, or may not, have all three dimensions charted correctly today only to see the resulting destination tomorrow. We can easily see that tailoring an individual set of instructions for everyone to the wholeness party is impossible. We can only guess at their starting point in two of the three dimensions. We do have the address (Wholeness is attained when the person’s spirit, mind, and body are able to maintain an acceptable level of health at a steady state or improving level.). MD’s have taken the approach in one and sometimes two dimensions to bring most people as close to the party as they can. If we provide a three dimensional map, containing enough familiar major landmarks and local detail, each invitee can find a familiar starting point and follow the map to the party.
The landmarks in the physical dimension are usually obvious and familiar. Either something physically does not work or it is obviously dysfunctional. In the physical dimension we have a lot of help. MD’s are more than willing to treat the physical symptoms. However, they are human just like the rest of us and are capable of mistakes just like the rest of us. The probability of error is multiplied when more than one doctor is involved. The most common error is the interaction of prescriptions from one or more doctors. Any time more than one drug is prescribed (especially if by more than one doctor) you should look up the medicines and check their side effects and interactions with each other. You would think the doctor would do this and warn you to be aware of the possible reactions but this just does not happen most of the time. On more than one occasion in our family serious symptoms were ignored by doctors and were traced to the interaction of prescribed medicines. The mistake was only found by checking the medicine’s side effects and cross reference information by a family member. This takes time and most doctors will not take that extra time. Another major practice most doctors are negligent with is the side effects of surgery. Most surgeries involve areas outside the area of illness. These outside areas are affected and may become dysfunctional dependent on the care taken by the surgeon and his staff. These side effects should be discussed with your doctor prior to deciding on surgery. Another highly recommended physical service is the Chiropractor. The process of realigning the structure of the body, along with electrical and mechanical massage, is a powerful healing tool. It can, at times, be as effective as surgery, less invasive and less expensive. If the Chiropractor teaches you how to prevent the illness and provides instructions to be self sufficient you will not be dependent on his services continuously. Ask what you can do to keep this from reoccurring. If you are not self sufficient in six weeks you may need to consider another practitioner. He can only do so much. It is up to you to ask the right questions and learn how to care for the illness yourself. Although I have not had any real experience with osteopathy or massage, they are rated similar to the chiropractor in treatment and results.
The landmarks in the mental dimension are much more difficult to identify and treat. This area concerns our daily habits and choices. The actions taken in this area are the result of attitude and spirit to be discussed later. Doctors can prescribe medicine and Chiropractors can recommend specific exercises. If these are not taken or performed correctly by the patient the desired results may not occur. More importantly, we have been taught many details for daily health which we have the choice to either use or ignore. The little daily choices of how to bathe, eat, sleep, exercise, work, and rest add up to form the majority of our health. Most of these choices involve a balance of time and resources. These choices are also usually based on information gathered from our parents, school, studies and experiences. Some information we have absorbed may be erroneous or an emphasis misplaced resulting in more or less than the proper weight being placed on its value. To establish qualified familiar landmarks in this area requires reexamination and evaluation of all information in the areas of bathing, diet, sleep, exercise, work and play. Much has been provided in the last ten years in studies, tests, and practice on each of these subjects resulting in conflicting theories and many commercial promotions of books, gimmicks, and devices. Each day we must decide the path to take for each of these areas and choose our balance between them. Each of these will be discussed in a separate letter. The landmarks are identified and multiple detailed paths provided in these letters. What remains is the choice of how to balance them to provide the best path for you to wholeness. This balance is provided by the weight placed on each by our attitudes or spiritual condition.
When a decision is made, it is the sum of all the knowledge, feelings and experience we have at our disposal. When a female makes a decision it is usually what she “feels” is correct. When a male makes a decision it is usually what he “thinks” is correct. Either way, whether the resources are emotions, logical facts or any combination of the two, the inputs to the decision carry different weights or priorities and “add up” to a “yes”, “no” or some proportional response. The amount of weight placed on each input by the individual is infinitely variable and produces an infinite combination of correct answers for people to any question. Depending upon the attitude and spirit of the individual, the correct answer to cancer treatment can vary from dying with dignity soon, to fighting the illness with all their resources and prolonging activities in this world to the very best of their ability. Since each person’s concept of self wholeness is different and is formed from different weighted values of physical, mental and spiritual condition, only the individual can decide on the appropriate landmark to start his path to wholeness. The weights placed on physical, mental and spiritual characteristics are determined by the urges and emotional needs of the individual. These emotional landmarks are established by a single concept:
“WHAT DO I WANT TO BE
WHOLE FOR?”
Do I want to be an athlete, a doctor who helps people, a rich business man, a controlling power dealer, a house wife to create a healthy loving family, or, do I not yet know why I want to be healthy. Until this question is answered we are wandering aimlessly through life acting on someone’s suggestions and trying to be what others want us to be. As the old cowhand (Jack Palance) told the city dude (Billy Crystal) in “City Slicker”, “Life is all about one thing.” The dude asked what the one thing was. The cow hand answered “That’s what you’ve got to figure out.” The more specific the answer, the easier it will be to identify the appropriate attitude/spiritual landmarks/ideals to keep in sight and provide balance in your life.
The landmarks in the attitude/spiritual dimension affect the weight placed on the mental landmarks which add up to a physical response. The quantity of attitudes available is infinite and the range of each is infinite. Society has tried to provide a “bell curve” for each attitude with acceptable “standard deviations”. Individuals and groups have fought battles and wars over the limits of the standard deviations. The results have ranged from mental hospitals, prisons, to overthrown countries. Over the past 50 years I have watched the acceptable standard deviation in sexual innuendo and behavior for TV, Movies, and everyday life move from a conservative and restrictive level that offends no one to a free and unrestricted level that requires each person to decide his own limits. For people who want someone else to accept the responsibility for determining their morals this is an offensive and lewd atmosphere. For people who question what they are told and decide for themselves the boundaries to be set, this is no different than deciding what to eat or feed their families. In this case, it is first required to establish the ideal of what is the ultimate in beauty, brains, and personality and then seek that in your life and provide that ideal for your children. Lewd appearances and behavior have consequences as well as ultra-conservative appearances and behavior. Other attitude landmarks have results associated with the extremes. We cannot address all attitudes but, we can start a list with characteristics associated with the extremes and add to it as we go. Each person can look at this list with the results of each attitude and decide the emphasis he will place on its application to his decisions and life.
The path to wholeness starts with the first step of deciding what purpose I will serve with a whole body. This will establish the needs of strength, skills, understanding, knowledge and other qualities required for that purpose. It will also establish the relative importance of each. The next step along the path is to compare the needs to the current inventory of the required traits. Next, a plan should be developed for maintaining, or as needed, improving the required traits. This should be a written plan with a schedule and tracking for planed efforts and progress. This plan will be your path to wholeness.
WHAT IS THE PATH TO WHOLENESS.HTM