We in the modern West most often think of medicine as either something given to us or done to us by a medical professional. In a nutshell, pills or procedures. But in many traditions across space and time, there has been a deep and intimate knowledge of the primary and essential place that the fulfillment of your soul’s expression has on your physical health and well-being.
On the whole, we are soul-starved and instinct-injured,* leaving us disconnected from our gifts and our reasons for being here. We squander our days recklessly, filling them with busyness, stress, worry and addiction. So long as we remain a stranger to our unique contributions to life, our bodies will always suffer in one way or another as we effort in vain to fill the void of an unexpressed life with food, shopping, screen time, alcohol, anxiety, and on and on it goes.
What would it look like “to live as if life depended on the gifts we try to hide?”** To come to the knowing that all of life is depending on you bringing forward what you came here to do. Can you imagine the power and the healing that would course through your life if it was charged with meaning and purpose? Would not the expression of your gifts negate the need for distraction and medication in all of its forms? Like a well healed scab, all of the ways you hide would begin to fall away. No effort involved. The new growth pushing off the old.
So, what is it that you love to do? What lights you up? What secret yearnings do you have buried deep within? These sensations point you in the direction of your purpose. What is one, simple, easy step you could take in that direction? Today. Pay no attention to the machinations of the mind when it starts in on the futility of doing this or of the need for it to be polished, perfect or a paycheck. What is it that you do (or want to do) that makes you feel most at home, most right, most in the flow? For you see, when we bring that level of expression into our life, our physical health will reflect that level of aliveness. Let that be your guide and let the power of this ancient medicine heal you and all of life.
* From Clarissa Pinkola-Estes The Women Who Run With Wolves
**From Climbing Poetry