Spiritual Medicine

Susan E. Kolb, M.D., F.A.C.S.
Certified by The American Board of Holistic Medicine, 2-01
Plastikos Surgery Center
Millennium Healthcare
Avatar Cancer Center
4370 Georgetown Square
Atlanta, GA 30338
(770) 457-4677
www.templeofhealth.ws
www.plastikos.com
www.millennium-healthcare.com
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Spiritual medicine begins with a doctor or practitioner becoming more aware of energy fields. Usually this is as a result of spiritual practices such as:

· Meditation
· Yoga
· Tai Chi
· Breath work

The practitioner begins to sense his or her energy fields and only then can begin to sense these fields in the patient.

As the majority of other practitioners do not yet have this perceptual awareness and traditional medicine does not yet recognize energy fields, the practitioners undergoing these shifts have few reference points. Each person's awakening is different but these seem to be common elements. Most begin with a desire to be more in silence, often out in nature. Radios are turned off and the person avoids large crowds and noisy bars and restaurants. Music is soft often without words. More and more time is spent in meditation or other spiritual practices. Dietary changes occur away from alcohol, caffeine and red meat as a result of preferences not abstinence. Spinning sensations are felt in different parts of the body as the charkas or energy centers open up. Often neurological symptoms such as tingling, heat or jerking occur spontaneously. Intense emotions including fear, anger and love rise up from within, often with no apparent connection to external reality.

Relationships often change abruptly with the person sensing that they must leave a job or a mate or both simultaneously. My own awakening occurred more quickly when a clairvoyant came to my plastic surgery office with the book "Hands of Light" and told me that I was a healer and needed to get started. When I went into meditation I was told internally to quit my job. I did so and did not work for the next five months but instead meditated 5-7 hours a day, began a vegetarian diet and worked with a spiritual group several times a week in order to develop spiritual sight and hearing.

Faith is developed and tested as the person learns to walk "the razor's edge", relying on intuition rather than logic or the advice of others. Families are often alienated as they sense an abrupt change in the person and resent their advice not being followed.

As energy shifts occur the practitioner becomes more aware of their energy body, especially of weak areas. By working in meditation with weak energy centers, many acute illnesses can be avoided. Whereas before the shift, I would suddenly become ill with a viral infection, I now have a chance to work with weak "charkas" or energy systems and often can avoid the cold or flu. As energy centers open up, one develops an ability to sense or feel things intuitively. Other sources of clairvoyant information develop including spiritual hearing or clairaudience and spiritual sight or clairvoyance. And finally, the strongest intuitive information comes through an acute sense of "knowing".

My experience with this shift included having my car radio break 11 times within a six-month period so that when I was in the car I would hear internal lectures on the spiritual cases of illness. Later I would read Carolyn Myss' and Dr. Norm Shealy's book, "The Creation of Health" and have an interesting confirmation of the information in these lectures.

My beeper would go off and I would "see" the injury of the person waiting for me in the emergency room or I would lay hands on a patient and see the conflict of hear the name of the person with which they were in conflict. Several of my patients must have thought I was a witch, considering how high they jumped when I said a few words to them. But this is the core of spiritual medicine. Conflict not previously resolved in the mental and emotional plane can cause illness in the physical plane.

Spiritual medicine acknowledges this and helps the patient see how conflict resolution is crucial in order to get well quickly. As a hand surgeon, I have seen time and again these principles in and hand injuries. The thumb is involved in spiritual will issues, the index finger in faith issues, the middle finger in self-love issues, the ring finger in material and security issues including money and the little finger in relationship and sex issues. If I can help my patients recognize the connection and they are able consciously to work on these issues, they recover faster and are less prone to re-injury.

So how do we become ill?

Each of us has a certain amount of "life force" energy. We can measure this energy with devices that measure the aura. Without such devices we have to rely on our intuitive senses. Often we can feel the energy around the person. People with large bright auras make us feel better and people with dark auras drain us.

Each of us is given a "quanta" of energy, to use for "our daily bread". How much we have at the end of the day depends on how we use it. Life force energy can be stimulated by sunlight, exercise, meditation and vital foods. Dr. Valerie Hunt has a videotape of a machine that measures auras, recording the difference in the aura of a person eating vital food and eating junk food. Anything or anybody we bring into our field has the capacity to change our field. Meditation, yoga and breath work very much increase the life force as if we are tapping directly into the source of this energy. Any creative activity also increases the energy flow into our field.

What depletes us?

The two most significant ways to waste energy is through judgment and defending one's sense of self-importance. Certain types of foods, electromagnetic fields, and additions deplete the field. Addictions actually use up a certain amount of etheric or life force energy with each "desire" created. Addictions can be to a wide variety of things - food, drugs, sex, alcohol, body image and materialism. All addictions suppress spiritual growth by depleting life force energy. All are serving the same purpose, to suppress some form of emotional energy that should be allowed to surface and be released.

What can we do to encourage such releases?

Any activity that causes the release of negativity can infuse us with energy. These include forgiveness, gratitude, praise and praying for others. Healing occurs when there is a large release of negativity rather than the suppression of the energy. The healer helps the patient to transmute the energy.

Do not hold onto old relationships. Energy determines relationships so that if a relationship is not working, release it so that the energy can come back into balance. Do not hold onto any particular relationship, allow change to occur without fear. So many illnesses are related to us holding onto that which no longer serves us. Old patterns of behavior, relationships that are not working, and outdated patterns of thought. What causes us to hold on? Fear including fear of loneliness, fear of separation and fear of rejection. The hell we know is better than the hell we don't know.

Healing is transmuting that fear into faith. Faith that creation will provide us with what we really need, not with what we think we need. Fear causes us to breathe shallowly and causes our life force to diminish.

Forgiveness is a vast topic and one that is crucial to healing. For those of you working with forgiveness issues, I highly recommend Dr. Michael Ryce's work "Why Is This Happening To Me Again" including his No Fault Forgiveness Worksheet. Forgiveness, as Michael teaches, is for the release for energy in us, not for the person we are forgiving. The release of negative energy generated by the onset of forgiveness can stimulate the immune system enough to reverse diseases such as cancer.

Holistic medicine uses techniques to stimulate the "field". Chiropractic, acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, massage, homeopathy and other holistic methods increase the energy field and thus the immune and endocrine systems. Spiritual medicine adds to this releasing techniques of spiritual healing, forgiveness work, past life regression, and hypnotherapy to aid in the areas of weakness of the energy body. Spiritual practices such as meditation, fasting, yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and breath work help to balance the energy body. Add to this intuitive diagnosis and you really have lost he majority of the medical profession. But as we say at Millennium Healthcare-the shift is on, the shift toward more compassionate and effective healthcare. We are on the verge of an awakening. The institutions of medicine, law, and politics will only shift as those within these institutions wake up and start to shake the belief systems. And as with any transformation, there will be much "gnashing of teeth". But, as we move forward into the 21st Century, all we can say is "shift happens".

The tradition of spirtual healing

By Muzaffar Iqbal

Prayer can cause recovery from the pain of the heart, stomach, and intestines. There are three reasons for this. First, it is a divinely commanded form of worship. Second, it has a psychological benefit. This is because prayers divert mind from the pain and reduce its feeling whereby the power to repel [the cause of] pain is strengthened. Expert doctors try all means to strengthen this [natural] power – sometimes by feeding something, sometimes by inspiring hope, and sometimes by inspiring fear. Now, prayer [with concentration] combines most of these means of benefit, because it at once instills fear, self-effacing humility, love [of God], and remembrance of the Last Day."

SEPTEMBER 1998- Thus wrote the 14th century traditionalist and historian Abu `Abd Allah Muhammad al-Dhahabi in his Kitab al-Tibb (Book of Medicine). This emphasis on what can be termed "holistic medicine" in modern parlance – involving the spiritual, psychological, physical, and moral aspects of being – is the essence of Islamic medical tradition which traces its foundation to the revealed Book of God, the Qur'an, and to the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet of Islam.

This integrated approach is not specific to health only; in the Islamic world view everything – including the heavens and the earth and all that is in between – is seen as a manifestation of the creative aspect of God to Whom everything, living or non-living, submits. At the heart of this worldview is the concept of Tawhid, the Unity of God, embodied in the first part of Shahada, the testimony of faith: La ilaha illa'Llah ("There is no god but God"). Everything in Islamic civilization, including the health sciences, has sprung forth from this fundamental statement which is an expression of the transcendence of divine unity.

This consciousness of the oneness of God is placed at the center of the Islamic worldview so as to act as a directing force which draws to itself all levels of manifest reality in the cosmic plane. To proclaim that there is no god but God is to testify that there is an essential unifying principle behind the apparent multiplicity of the universe which, in Islam, is not restricted to merely the observable and perceptible reality but goes beyond to the realm of the Unseen.

Because God alone is the sole arbitrator of everything that exists, both health and sickness are viewed as coming from God. "There is no disease that God has sent down, except that He has also sent down its treatment," says a famous Hadith (saying of the Prophet). God who has created sickness has also created treatments.

The famous verse (16:69) of the Qur'an about honey is an example of the Divine design in creation: "And thy Lord taught the Bee to build its cells in hills, on trees and in [human] habitations; then to eat of all the produce [of the earth], and follow the ways of Thy Lord made smooth: From their bellies comes a drink of different colors wherein is healing for mankind. Verily in this is a sign for those who reflect."

Scientific research teaches that the process of healing involves the physical as well as the spiritual and psychological domains of human existence. The tradition of spiritual healing in Islam is based on the recognition of the effect of spiritual health on the physical body. The body itself is seen as a mere receptacle for the spirit, which alone constitutes the immortal part of human existence. The body is healthy if the spirit is healthy, and the spirit is healthy if it is not in conflict with the Divine Writ. The submission of the spirit to the Divine commandment produces a harmony in the soul and body which makes all the limbs and organs function properly.

Rhazes (c.251/865-313/925), whose treatise on measles and smallpox is well known in the West, used to treat the maladies of the soul along with those of the body. In his book on the relationship of soul and body, translated into English as Spiritual Physick, he devoted 20 chapters to descriptions of various illnesses that beset the body and soul.

Avicenna (370/980-428/1037), honored in the West with the title of "Prince of Physicians," the author of the monumental Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi't-Tibb), is known to have practiced the art of healing with the help of spiritual guidance. The Book of Healing (Kitab al-Shifa), Avicenna's second most important work after the Canon, presents a unique synthesis of the Greek, Persian, Indian, and Islamic practices of healing.

Avicenna based his system of medicine on the equilibrium of the four humors (following Hippocrates): blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. These four humors were then related to the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth) of the natural world. Avicenna believed that the human spirit has been constituted with the power of restoring balance in the body, and that the task of medicine is merely to aid this process. The process of regaining health is, therefore, greatly facilitated by the use of practices which produce spiritual healing.

The system of spiritual healing is related to the cosmic order in the universe through the basic doctrine of the correspondence between all levels of reality, as Seyyed Hossein Nasr has pointed out in his book, Science and Civilization in Islam:

There is in the Hermetico-alchemical natural philosophy – which was always closely tied to medicine in Islam – a basic doctrine of the correspondence between all the various orders of reality: the intelligible hierarchy, the heavenly bodies, the order of numbers, the parts of the body, the letters of the alphabet which are the "elements" of the Sacred Book, etc. The seven cervical and the 12 dorsal vertebrae correspond to the seven planets and the 12 signs of the Zodiac, as well as to the days of the week and the months of the year. The total number of discs of the vertebrae, which they consider to be 28, correspond to the letters of the Arabic alphabet and the stations of the moon.

In Avicenna's medical theory, the human body is composed of three units: the Physical system, the Nervous system, and the Vital system. The Vital system conditions and suitably prepares the Vital Force for the sensory and motor function of the brain. This system is centered in the heart and functions through it.

The human body, according to the Islamic world view, is a weak vessel made of clay (Qur'an: 55:14), a frail material covering, enslaved by the carnal woes. Within the body, the heart is the seat of knowledge and consciousness. It is a lump of flesh, placed in a central void, a regular oscillation – from which flow all emotions and causes of actions. If the heart is sick, the whole body is sick.

Healing through supplications, prayers, and fasting is a well-established tradition in Islam. This is based on the fact that in Islam, humans are viewed as entities in which body and soul are united. The soul has its own maladies (like forgetfulness of the Divine presence, greed, jealousy etc.) and the body has its own ailments but both are combined in one living entity: the human being. Both act on each other and through each other. This unique integration of body and spirit is then linked to the rest of the universe through an elaborate system of levels of reality reaching up to the Divine presence.

"The best gift from God to mankind is good health," Prophet Muhammad once said. "Everyone should reach that goal by preserving it for now and the future." The fact that both health and illness are seen in Islam as coming from God has closely linked the art of healing to worship. The one who practices the art of healing does this for the sake of God’s pleasure. The physician and the patient are thus united through a spiritual bond.

According to a Hadith, God will say on the Day of Judgment: "O Son of Adam, I was sick but you did not visit me." "My Lord! how could I visit you when You are the Lord of the whole world," we will reply. God will say: "Did you not know that so-and-so from among my servants [i.e. human beings] was sick, but you never visited him or her? Did you not know that if you had visited, you would have found me there?" This high consciousness of the Divine, and the spiritual benefit of visiting the sick, is further elaborated by another Hadith-e Qudsi (a narration in which God speaks directly, but the words are attributed to the Prophet) in which God says: "O my servant! Health unites you with yourself but sickness unites you to me."

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Presently director of scientific research at the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, Muzaffar Iqbal has previously held academic and research positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, McGill University and University of Saskatchewan. He was editor of Islamic Thought and Scientific Creativity (1991-96) , a journal in the field of Islam and Science, and director of scientific information, Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation, Organization of Islamic Conference (COMSTECH). He is the author/editor of more than fifty works including Science in Islamic Polity in the Twenty-first Century (ed.) (Islamabad: COMSTECH, 1995); Health and Medical Profile of the Muslim World (Islamabad: COMSTECH, 1993), Possible Strategy for Energy Mixes in the Muslim World (Co-ed.) (Islamabad: COMSTECH, 1994); Mineral Profile of the Muslim World (ed.) (Islamabad: COMSTECH, 1995). He has also published papers on the history of philosophy of science, history of Islamic science, and the relationship between Islam and science in various journals.

FURTHER READING:

Rhaman, Fazalur, Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition (New York: Crossroad, 1987).

Rhazes, The Spiritual Physick of Rhazes, translated by A. J. Arberry in the Wisdom of the East Series (London: John Murray, 1950)

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein Science and Civilization in Islam, second ed. (Lahore: Suhail Academy, 1987).

from: http://www.science-spirit.org/