For 500 years the vast and profound healer in each of us has been asleep in a dreamlike state. The dream that has enveloped our mind and hidden all other possibilities is a great dream - the dream of medical science. Through the progressive unfolding of this vision we have signficantly reduced the suffering of humankind and brought relief and comfort to the inevitable process of disease, aging, and death.

But whether our mind is saturated with the dream of medical science, the intense feeling of anger, or the delight of a moment of pleasure the result is the same, nothing else can enter such a preoccupied mindstream. So when it comes to health and healing we have been preoccupied, in a sense fully asleep, in the perspective that biological healing and the science that supports it is the fundamental and exclusively valid approach to well-being.

As mentioned above there is much to support this perspective but it is simply not correct. A vast and profound health, happiness, and wholeness cannot be attained by a singular focus on one aspect of our being. Without the equally full development of our mind and heart - our consciousness, love and compassion - we can neither attain the fullness of biological health nor a stable and expansive health, happiness, and wholeness.

Yet how are we to know this if we cannot awaken from the deeply ingrained and obscuring mental habits of our biological perspective? How are we to catch a glimpse of what is possible? There are several ways to approach this dilemma. First, reason alone informs us that our mental life, personal relationships, and worldy interactions are intricately involved in the causes of health and disease. To address only one aspect of our being is clearly a limited and partial approach to health leading to limited and partial results. Second, we've each had moments when we experienced a through-and-through sense of well-being. Perhaps this occurred in communion with nature, in the first blush of love, or in a moment of great achievment. This personal experience of happiness, wholeness, and profound well-being is what we are speaking of. It is a limpse of what is posssible to achieve in a stable and sustained way when we address our whole being. Third, there is the nagging sense in each of us that there is something more than our ordinary way of living, and our ordinary health. We sense there is greater meaning in life. And finally, we can look to those great beings that regardless of their age or state of physical health exude a luminosity and well-being that we each would choose to emulate. These are the hints that there is more than is envisioned by a mind saturated and blinded by an exaggerated notion of the possibilities of an exclusively biological medical science.

If we are fortunate to be sufficiently disturbed by the gap between what is and our intuitive sense of what is possible then we are at the first stage of awakening into a larger health and healing. For healers such as myself this is an awkening into a second medical education. For all of us this is an awakening into the full possibilities of the human experience. Once we taste these new possibilities we are ready to begin.

We begin by turning inwards towards the full development of our mind and heart. Just as we in the West have focused on developing our understanding of biology those in the East have focused on developing the mind and heart. So there are many methods and practices to support our awakening into a larger health and healing. These approaches are well-tested, specific, and allow us to gain a vast and profound understanding and full development of our inner life. We begin to taste a larger health as we begin to explore this uncharted frontier. There is no other effort, remedy, or therapy that can give us the promise of this larger health, happiness, and wholeness, than the turn inward and our awakening to these larger possibilites.

It is a lot easier to turn to another health professional, new approach, external remedy or therapy. That is what we learned. But it will not take us towards our full possibilities. It will only sustain what is.