June/July 2003

Imagining A New Model of Justice
Denise Breton, Christopher Largent & Stephen Lehman

Breaking the Bank: The Economic Heresy of Herman Daly
Lissa Harris

A New Vision of Development
Roar Bjonnes

Sustainable Businesses Combine Ideals and Vision
Debi Smith

The Politics of Water in the Middle East
Leah C. Wells

Making Media Monopoly Part of the Constitution
Robert W. McChesney

Why People Don't Heal: A Homeopathic Perspective
Douglas Falkner, MD, M.Hom

A Change of Heart: The Sacred Journey of Relationship
Sri Estes

In Search of Enlightened Relationships
John Darling

Ten Things Couples Can Do to Enhance Their Relationship
John Eisman

Witnessing
Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP

The Movie Mystic: Matrix Reloaded
Stephen Simon

The Urban Permaculture Homestead
Jude Hobbs

Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain

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Why People Don’t Heal
A Homeopathic Perspective

By Douglas Falkner, MD, M.Hom

We are living at the threshold of a new revolution of our medical paradigm. Just as so many world systems—economic, environmental, political—seem to be in crisis or even teetering on the brink of collapse, so too our current medical model is failing us. Deeply and inextricably rooted in the Descartean split of mind from body, modern medical science has emphasized a materialistic, mechanical approach to treating disease. Our medical establishment, entrenched in this materialism, works wonderfully at suppressing symptoms. At the same time, it all but ignores the very forces that give us life and maintain us in sickness and in health. This method of suppressing symptoms will never enhance life, but only lead to further degradation in the health of our population and fuel the skyrocketing costs required to maintain us in this current model of healthcare.

In brief, when we fall ill doctors look at us as broken machines in need of repair. Symptom patterns are cataloged and categorized as “disease entities.” Pharma-cologic or surgical interventions are aimed at suppressing and thereby managing symptoms. The apparent success of this physical approach of relieving disease symptoms has given rise to our insatiable taste for quick fixes. It results in obscuring our understanding of the actual roots of illness and our need for radical curative approaches to achieve true healing.

The modern medical way has led us squarely into a crisis in which acute and chronic life-threatening conditions—cancer, heart disease, immune dysfunction, infections —are rampant and epidemic, and the tools we use to treat them are in themselves often toxic, debilitating, and dangerous. In the end, by remaining entrenched in our current model, many of us will suffer and even die, some will linger on for awhile in a somewhat compromised state, but few will ever be cured and restored to real health and well being.

Why is the materialistic approach flawed? Looking at a broader view, human beings are more than just their bodies. We are living creatures endowed with life forces that strive toward growth and maturation. We are evolving entities. The traditional perspective in most cultures worldwide considers disease as a kind of watchdog. Our illnesses in essence serve to guide us back onto our true life path. It is believed that those who maintain integrity with their spiritual purpose tend to be healthier and often recover spontaneously from most illnesses they might suffer.

People who violate spiritual principles and transgress against their own true nature often fall ill and suffer, most of the time chronically. Nature uses illness as a mechanism to point the individual toward making the necessary corrections corresponding to his or her own life. Although overly simplified, disease has a certain purpose in the life of the individual being, specifically as a help or teaching tool for personal growth and evolution. Once life lessons are fully learned and integrated, our illness patterns have no further basis and are subsequently annihilated by the corrective powers of the life or vital force.

In contrast, the modern medical approach has little to do with who we are as beings. Taking a mechanistic view, most conventional interventions are aimed at providing a “fix” on a material level. Drugs and surgery are used liberally to suppress symptoms or to remove damaged body parts. However, since the root cause of disease is spiritual or dynamic in the main, suppression will only serve to aggravate the underlying forces of illness. When an illness, tending to manifest in one way, is persistently blocked from doing so by drugs or surgery, it will simply find another way to manifest, usually at a deeper level and in a more severe way. And this in fact is more or less what we see. It explains why so many people on chronic medications tend to develop more and more complex diseases over a lifetime. They don’t seem to end up healthier.

While there is enormous support in the medical literature for a fundamentally spiritual approach to health and disease—including but not limited to the scientifically proven health benefits of prayer, meditation, changing thought patterns, etc.—perhaps the work of Dean Ornish, M.D., a medical internist with a special interest in cardiology, can serve as a revealing example.

Dean Ornish set out to prove that coronary artery disease (the condition that leads to heart attacks) could be reversed without surgery. He first performed studies in patients by making radical changes in diet. While these studies were promising, diet changes alone seemed insufficient. Then he began having patients engage in regular “heart opening” group therapy sessions and heart-centered meditation practices. With these more spiritually oriented treatments, he was able to show and confirm through accepted testing on the heart that his program was indeed reversing heart disease. A majority of participants who stuck with his program reported lasting reversal of heart symptoms and were found to have reversed their coronary artery occlusion by objective tests!

Dean Ornish gradually became convinced that radical life changes needed to occur if his program was to be successful. The changes that made the most difference were not merely physical and psychological in nature, but had a strong spiritual component, as evidenced and described by many of his successful program graduates. The implications of Ornish’s experience and many others point again and again to the fact that disease is essentially curable, that illness is a reversible dynamic state of being, that material fixes alone are far less effective than profound spiritual transformation.

Moreover, empirical evidence points to the fact that spiritual change leads to deep and profound healing experiences, while physical interventions alone tend to lead in the opposite direction. In my own clinical experience in Homeopathic Medicine, I have extensive confirmation of such findings. As is well known in homeopathic circles, homeopathic remedies, when properly used, promote health and well being and reverse, often entirely, acute and chronic disease along with their symptoms.

Gradually, over time, those who have worked with homeopathy grow dramatically as individuals and are well aware of it. As their disease symptoms subside and they begin to enjoy a real sense of wellness and vitality, many will spontaneously report that they are feeling more themselves than they ever have before, that they feel more in tune with their lives, that relationships and jobs are more harmonious and satisfying. It would seem from such reports, that our remedies are effecting the kinds of spiritual changes that Dean Ornish was seeing, and with the same magnitude of health benefits.

While it is beyond the scope of this article to explain how homeopathic remedies work, suffice it to say that these remedies are energetic in nature. Because they are not material substances per se, they are capable of stimulating the vital force of living organisms. Such stimuli lead to an effective and efficient healing response. Rather than suppress symptoms in the way physical medications do, homeopathic remedies trigger our innate healing potential, thus allowing us to overcome illness. With their help, we are enabled to blossom as human beings.

Homeopathic remedies, if correctly understood by mainstream medicine, would set a new standard for healthcare, specifically because they impact the life force or spirit directly. They do not directly alter or tinker with the complex mechanisms of the physical organism. As the life force is relieved of its dis-ease, so too the body is freed to regain balance and harmony. By taking a more energetic or spiritual approach one is saved from having to suffer and deal with the inevitable unwanted side effects of physical drugs. After experiencing a well-selected homeopathic remedy over time, one almost invariably begins to feel strengthened and renewed, as the remedy helps to catalyze a realignment along one’s true life path.

We are all born with the capacity to heal ourselves. These so-called inborn mechanisms are rooted in the instincts of our vital force. The vital force has direct effects on our organism which are ultimately translated into our physiology in order to carry out the corrective changes on a physical level. We heal because it is within our nature to be healed. True healing can occur when energetic or spiritual blocks are removed. Homeopathic remedies can accomplish this; spiritual work and the awakening of consciousness can accomplish this; prayer can accomplish this. When real healing does occur its effects permeate all levels of our being. These effects can and do impact even severe and serious physical illness.

In my view, the main reason people don’t heal well is because on some level they are not living well. They have somehow strayed off their own path and have not become aware of it and made the appropriate efforts or proper corrections. In order to heal from serious and chronic illness, most people will need to make real and radical changes in their lives.

Consider the following quote: “If you are not willing to change your life, you cannot be healed.” Suppressing symptoms, with medications, addictions, lifestyle habits, money, sex, philosophy or whatever, though it may lead to short term alleviation of discomfort or pain, is not real change. In the long term, such activities will only serve to weaken one’s vitality and compromise one’s health. All the evidence from observing the long-term physical treatment of chronic disease points to this fact.

Real change is hard work. True healing and cures take time. The end result, however, differs significantly from mere symptom suppression. Making changes on an energetic or spiritual level, though hard work, is very rewarding and usually long lasting. In fact, many leading edge researchers are discovering the power of the spirit. They are learning that most diseases, even those that seem to be so “obviously” rooted in the material world of viruses, bacteria, physiology, anatomy and genetics, are actually rooted in the nature and problems of the spirit. No amount of physical intervention alone will reliably produce a real and lasting cure. Cures lie in addressing root causes, not superficial symptoms.

Our failures and dissatisfaction with conventional approaches are forcing the issue upon us. What we decide will ultimately determine whether we suppress ourselves into deeper and deeper dysfunction or liberate ourselves through real healing of the more subtle levels of our natural being.

Douglas Falkner, M.D., M.Hom, brings nearly a decade of clinical experience to his Ashland based practice of Classical Hahnemanian Homeopathy. With a diploma of Master Homeopath from Vega Rozenberg’s world renowned Evolution of Self School of Homeopathy (ESSH) in Flagstaff, Arizona, Dr. Falkner has also trained in Emergency Medicine. He gives frequent lectures on homeopathic medicine in Ashland and surrounding communities and treats both children and adults. Dr. Falkner can be reached at his office at (541) 552-1400 or at drfalkner@qwest.net, his website is www.tryhomeopathy.com.