Did you know…

that life is about relationships, and that there are natural and spiritual laws that govern them and determine whether they are healthy for us or not?

We’re going to take a different tack this week. I am often asked a question by patients, and it is one that we all ask ourselves at some point: “How does one determine when they are in a relationship with someone if it is really love or not?” And then there is usually some explanation that follows from this: “I am struggling with this since I am in a relationship and sometimes doubting if it is the right relationship for me or not, even though in many ways s/he has all the attributes I want in a partner. I find myself often not feeling happy, or as happy as I want to be. I am unsure if this is my own doing or if it means things are not meant to be. I am looking for any helpful insights as to how I can determine if I should stay in a particular relationship or not.”

What has this to do with Heilkunst? The answer is that life is about relationships at all levels of our being, with people, places, and things. The nature of all of our relationships can contribute to our health or undermine it. Ultimately to be healthy is to be in healthy relationships with the world around us and the world within.

The first ‘dating manual’ we could say was written over 200 years ago by a German doctor, Samuel Friedrich Hahnemann. Dr. Hahnemann had left the conventional medicine of his day in despair, realizing that it was both blind and destructive of health. It was blind because it was based essentially on guesswork, dressed up as authority, regarding the proper relationship of medicines and disease. The conventional medicine of his day (continued to this day) was not grounded in any real understanding of natural laws regarding the removal of cause (cure), but only based on intellectual speculations, governed by the suppression of symptoms, pretending that the suppression of symptoms was more or less the same as removing the cause. Dr. Hahnemann termed it allopathic, that is, based on no law of disease whatsoever. Not much has changed in 200 years. Today, conventional medicine prescribes drugs based on statistics from the fabled double-blind randomized clinical trials, of which the authorities require that only 2 out of 10 trials can show that the drug being tested is at least better than placebo. In most of these cases, the drug is only marginally better than placebo, not taking into account all the ‘side-effects’ of the drug.

Dr. Hahnemann proposed an entirely different approach–to use natural law to match the medicine with the disease. The natural laws of health, known since the Egyptians and Greeks, were based on a more universal law of resonance. Resonance derives from the natural and proper relationship between things, “association as it ought to be”. In the case of matching the right medicine to the right disease, Dr. Hahnemann set down a whole system of medicine, called Heilkunst, through his major works, the Organon of Heilkunst, The Lesser Writings, Chronic Diseases and other writings. Dr. Hahnemann recognized and understood that health depended on the proper relationship or resonance between individuals. He stated that a person’s health would more readily endure ten years hard labour in servitude than one year in a loveless marriage.

In an ideal world, true love governs our actions, at all levels. Love derives from a natural affinity for those people and things that are beneficial and healthy for our development according to our purpose on earth. We don’t live in an ideal world, but one created specifically for us so that we can exercise the freedom of choice given us. The power to make choices, our capacity to reason, creates a veil between us and our inner wisdom, setting up a conflict we experience between what we think and what we feel. We are all too often of ‘two minds’ – the brain-mind and the ‘gut brain’ or gut feeling. Science has shown that we actually have two ‘brains’. This split in our perception of the world creates doubt, but it also creates in that space something called the ego. The ego acts out of fear and often in contrary to what we truly want–which is to act out of love. The ego is defensive, suspicious, doubtful and never at peace. Before the maturation of the true self, our relationships to the world are built according to our temporary guardian, the ego. These relationships are often based on fear instead of love. The ego-directed and fear-based relationships stifle our life in all aspects, which can eventuate in physical illness.

Heilkunst works on removing the barriers and blockages that prevent the emergence of the true self. The true self takes over from the ego when we are truly healthy. We can then take our rightful place within ourselves. The true self operates out of love and we are guided by love to experience those things that are resonant. Love is the quality at all levels of our being to connect with and to know intuitively within our heart that which is right for each of us, with no questions or doubt. Resonant relationships are derived from love. They are health-giving and nurture our development. They make us fulfilled as human beings.

Now, resonance doesn’t mean that we always feel it as positive. Resonance consists of a dynamic, living polarity between that which is consonant (which we feel as positive) and dissonant (which we feel as negative). The polarity of light and dark, expansion and contraction, of gravity and levity is the very basis of creation. Without the one we cannot know the other. The growth of our being and consciousness is due to a living polarity with all things we are resonant with. All love involves a creative tension and it is this tension that allows for growth and evolution of self.

When we feel negative about a relationship, how do we then know if it is simply derived from the ego or the dissonant side of resonance? The healthier we become, the more we are able to know, not intellectually, but in a deeper sense, what is resonant to us, and therefore, what is true love. True love is based on a resonance between our true self and the true self of another. Only out of true love comes true happiness; not the subjective happiness from outer things, but the deep, inner sense of peace and fulfillment that comes from being what we truly are, not what the authorities of this world – whether parents, acquaintances, bosses, rulers, leaders – want us to be. No one knows what is good for us except our true self and we cannot know what is ‘right’ for another. We may not like many things, and may feel things as unpleasant, but if we are truly doing what is resonant, then we are in pursuit of happiness, the becoming of who we are.

Heilkunst takes us through a journey of learning to act more and more according to the law of love and resonance and to abolish the false law of like and attraction. In the movie Smoke(1995) an older man tells a young man about a decision he made based on his true inner desire and love, which went against his family and culture. He was effectively disowned and banished. The young man asks him if he had it all to do over again, would he make the same choice. The older man looks steadily at the younger man and answers, “What choice?” And that is the answer to all those patients who asked about when they would know if it was the right relationship. When the true self acts, there is no questioning, no doubting.

For more information about Heilkunst treatment and studies please visit our website.