Notes From a Fellow Traveller

Conversations With Aesclepius: Part #4

For 800 years Aesclepius, the western god of healing, was the primal and supreme source of healing throughout ancient Greece and the Mediterranean region. Pilgrims made their way to his many healing sanctuaries to participate under his guidance in diverse holistic activities of mind, body, and spirit. For these Pilgrims to meet with Aesclepius was to experience the very essence of health and healing. The dialogue presented here is between Aesclepius and a student who much as our self seeks the wisdom and realization of a perfected health. It is the second of a multi-part listing.

Student: I have hard you speak of perfected health as immeasurable and unlimited. How could this be?

Again, I shall use words to communicate but remember that words are misleading. They cannot bring you to me. You can only know me directly. You can only know me through a discerning wisdom that arises in the stillness of your essential being.

All your current views of health are based on measurements. You measure health with tests done on the body – on body fluids, observations of solid tissue, measurements of the dynamic movements of physiology, or the character of changing energetic fields. In this way you determine that you are health or unhealthy. You quantify and compare your self to others. You aim for a perfect test rather than a perfected health.

Think about this. Your state of health is determined by a test. If your tests are normal you are healthy. If they are not you are ill or at risk to become ill. If you are normal by these standards there is nothing else you must do and nothing further you can attain. That is a partial, limited, and fickle health. It changes moment-to-moment and offers no more than the peak of the bell shaped curve which assures you “normality” – nothing more or less.

You may notice that your animals increasingly have access to the same tests, remedies, and therapies. You apply the same standards of health to them as you do to yourself. Yet you are far more.

I am perfected health. I am as vast and spacious as the sky. I am a circle without a center or a circumference. I have no boundaries. I am the expanse of pure awareness that is your being. I am immeasurable. I cannot be limited or held in the bounds of material testing which only know my surface appearance, my gross form. You cannot know me that way. You cannot define me by such measurements. Once you return home to the essence of your being you will know me as your spacious mind and vast heart. You will immediately realize that I cannot be measured. Health befitting a human is immeasurable. Only matter is measurable.

Once you know my expanse as peace,wisdom, happiness, love, and wholeness you will know that my qualities are similarly boundless. They cannot be measured by any of your physical measurements. Yet you know they are you natural self, your deepest truth. You know that they are essential to the fabric of your health. You know that they are health itself. You know that what you seek – a profound, vast an enduring health, happiness, and wholeness – can be realized and experienced but not known through reason, logic, and analysis.

When you move beyond your usual thoughts and ideas about health you will know that your essence is immeasurable and unlimited. Only then will you know your authentic and boundless health. Only then will you see with clarity the narrow ways you have defined your life and health.

Come home to me and rest with ease and joy in the essence of your natural and boundless health.

Conversations with Aesclepius: #3

For 800 years Aesclepius, the western god of healing, was the primal and supreme source of healing throughout ancient Greece and the Mediterranean region. Pilgrims made their way to his many healing sanctuaries to participate under his guidance in diverse holistic activities of mind, body, and spirit. For these Pilgrims to meet with Aesclepius was to experience the very essence of health and healing. The dialogue presented here is between Aesclepius and a student who much as our self seeks the wisdom and realization of a perfected health. It is the second of a multi-part listing.

Student: How do I experience a perfected health that you speak of? How do I discover it?

Aesclepius: Those who seek me travel a long distance and bear great expense. But that is not necessary as I am present at all times in every place. I am not an object that you can see with your five senses or a concept that’s elaborated by your conceptual mind. I am a presence within you.

You do not see me because your vision is dim and confused. It’s obscured by limited ideas that are mere confabulations of your mind. You think that health is attained when the body is momentarily free of overt difficulties. If there is no more to health than this we are doomed to ill health. As your medical science grows in precision you discover that you are either ill, about to become ill, or at risk for illness. What kind of health is this?

Your health is only relative to the extent that you can detect physical abnormalities and deter the inevitability of aging and death. If health, as you believe, is merely the absence of detectable signs or symptoms of illness you will become increasingly unwell as your science progresses and your age increases. And your medicines and drugs are only temporary respites that cannot undo the result of being in exile from your natural home.

You do not see me because your look outside for health. You look toward and practitioners of all sorts, remedies, and therapies to alleviate moments of pain and suffering. You look towards relaxation techniques for what you call moments of peace. You do not see that what you call relaxation is merely your lowest level of stress. Health is the name you give to this moment of release. That is not the vast and profound health that I am. It is not the peace and rest that I am.

You look outside toward sensual pleasure for happiness. You do not see that what you call pleasure and happiness is merely the temporary relief of a previous moment of suffering. You do not see how this becomes the basis for future addictive behaviors. You want more and more of what gives you pleasure. That is a formula for suffering of body, mind, and spirit. This is not the enduring, abundant, and ever-present happiness and bliss that I am.

You look outside for relief of isolation, alienation, and disconnection. But you do not see that what you call connection and wholeness is but a momentary release from mental distress. It is not the immutable oneness that I am.

I am not outside you. I am within. My qualities are not temporary or gathered from without. You do not have to hold me tightly for fear of losing me. I am yours. Like a shadow I cannot be lost. I can only be found. I am not scarce like your notion of health and pleasure. I am abundant ever renewing, and ever-present.

How can you achieve genuine health when the source of authentic health is unseen and unknown? How can a river flow freely if its wellspring is cut off?
If you wish to experience and know me you must begin clearing your vision, opening your mind, and looking in the right place where I have always been.

You ask how you can know me. I am here now and always within you. I have never left you. Turn inwards, come home to me and rest in ease and joy in the essence of authentic health, happiness, and wholeness. That is how you will find me

Conversations with Aesclepius: Part 2

For 800 years Aesclepius, the western god of healing, was the primal and supreme source of healing throughout ancient Greece and the Mediterranean region. Pilgrims made their way to his many healing sanctuaries to participate under his guidance in diverse holistic activities of mind, body, and spirit. For these Pilgrims to meet with Aesclepius was to experience the very essence of health and healing. The dialogue presented here is between Aesclepius and a student who much as our self seeks the wisdom and realization of a perfected health. It is the second of a multi-part listing.

Student: You say that a perfected health is always within sight and within reach. Yet it seems so distant from my day-to-day life. Why can’t I see what you say is always present? What keeps me from myself? Why do I endlessly search but do not find you?

Aesclepius: Your ordinary view of health is partial, limited, and more suited to an earlier time in human development. But you are accustomed to this familiar yet outdated viewpoint. It’s a habit. Habits are an expression of the conservative nature of life that seeks to assure survival over innovation. We do not change easily. We resist change. They obscure your view of me. By default you choose the comfortable, known, and convenient rather than your highest and most expansive possibility. You are in exile from your essence. Your habitual ideas about health and disease were once your salvation. Now they are your prison.

For your ancestors health was primarily a physical concern - and rightly so. Survival was a pressing concern for early humankind. Your focus on physical well being was then motivated by the real fear of imminent physical suffering and death for which you had no defense or remedy. As a result humankind’s efforts to date, including scientific diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and wellness, have been primarily oriented towards the body, towards insuring survival and warding off disease, disability, aging, and death. This is a worthy goal for a less developed humanity. It is the first step on the path towards a perfected health. But this exclusive focus on the physical no longer accords with your current capacities and potential. Your consciousness and capacities have grown and evolved over these many millennia.

There is now a more noble reason to sustain the wondrous body you’ve been given. Your body is the repository of your consciousness - your human brilliance. It is the vehicle that carries you along the path to your deepest self and being. It is the instrument through which you can arrive at a perfected health. Without a “healthy” body you cannot take this journey. However, if that is your only concern you can neither realize your full humanity nor perfect your health. So I encourage you to embrace the value of a healthy body not from fear, but rather, because of your further possibilities. Only then will you know me.

Yes, I know that you talk about mind and spirit and of greater health - of a condition beyond physical health. It is important that you have attained this intellectual understanding. But look beyond your new ideas. Look at how you actually live. What are your priorities? When was the last time that you concerned your self with health? Weren’t you pushed by a symptom, suffering, or fear of illness? When was the last time you concerned yourself with a higher health of mind, body, and spirit? Have you known the divine pull toward your full humanity? What resources do you assign to maintaining your ordinary view of health? To what degree you strive through study and practice toward a perfected health. The truth is in your actions rather than in your words. Do you “walk your talk? Do not live the illusion that you are seeking me while you continue to take refuge solely in your body. I cannot be found in your body.

For you my qualities are a vague far off possibility for another time. Yet they are always near and dear to you. They are your essence. Take them back from me. I am not a god. I am your unrecognized essence. Give health another meaning. Give health the name of harmony, peace, abundant and enduring happiness, wholeness, love, and compassion. Then you will recognize what is already and always within. And this natural state of perfected health that is beyond words and understanding will by its own force transform your ordinary imbalanced body and chattering mind into a perfected instrument of my divine presence.

Conversations with Aesclepius

For 800 years Aesclepius, the western god of healing, was the primal and supreme source of healing throughout ancient Greece and the Mediterranean region. Pilgrims made their way to his many healing sanctuaries to participate under his guidance in diverse holistic activities of mind, body, and spirit. For these Pilgrims to meet with Aesclepius was to experience the very essence of health and healing. The dialogue presented here is between Aesclepius and a student who much as our self seeks the wisdom and realization of a perfected health. It is the first of a multi-part listing.

Student: Aesclepius, can you speak to me about the nature of a perfected health?

Aesclepius: The perfection of health resides in your natural state of being. That is where you will find me, I am the essence of your being. I am the infinite and wholly perfected expanse of your existence. I am with you at the beginning, middle, and end of your journey. I have never forsaken you and never will. It is you who have forsaken me. It is you that has forgotten who you are. You look outside to gods and mortals for the perfection of health and healing that is always with you. So I have taken the appearance of a god in order that you may more easily see me and know indirectly from without the truth that is already and always within. When you realize the truth of your being in its nobility and splendor you will have no need for external reminders. Effortlessly, the health and healing you long and strive for shall be yours in a total completion that is beyond improvement.

You ask about my nature, about the nature of a perfected health. I am the natural harmony, the oneness, and wholeness that resides always at the core of your being unfettered, untainted, and pure. I cannot be seen because your limited notions of health and healing obscure my presence. I cannot be seen through the thick clouds of your ceaseless mental activity. I cannot be seen because I am not looked for. Yet you’ve always known me.

You’ve known me through the longing of your soul and your courageous and relentless striving for a larger life and more expansive health. You know me in the stillness of your heart and mind. I am the end of your search.

But you cannot realize a perfected health as long as you remain in exile from your very being. You are all that is and ever was. You live an ordinary life and an ordinary health unaware of the great treasures that have been there from the beginning. You solidify your self in time and space. In the midst of wealth you remain in poverty.

Natural harmony, oneness, and wholeness are my qualities. They naturally exist in my essence which much like sunrays are the luminosity of the sun. Here I am giving these qualities words but they are actually beyond words. They are your natural state. They cannot be known through words or the accumulation of knowledge anymore than you can know the sweet taste of a fruit through a verbal description. You must experience my essence and qualities to truly know me.

Listen carefully. If you realize the vast expanse of your pure being all efforts toward health and healing will come to an end. You will know that the perfection of health is who you are. It is now and always your essence, your treasure, and your possibility.