Shambhala Sun
November 2000
Glimpse of a deeper order
She smiled at me warmly. 'I feel that things are hard for you too.
My grandmother gave me something to help me. I would like you to have it.'
According to the Buddhist understanding of auspicious coincidence, all circumstances can be brought to the spiritual path. Everything that happens in our lives, whether positive or negative, can serve to awaken us to the nature of the world. But occasionally, events cluster in particular ways that give us a glimpse of the deeper structures of reality, and suggest that time and linear causality may not be the ultimate way in which the world is ordered.
There are many possible responses to such happenings, which Jung called synchronicity. Some people give them a highly individualized meaning, finding guidance in a personal decision they are facing or confirmation of a direction they have already chosen. But perhaps the real meaning of synchronicity is more universal than personal, with every instance simply pointing to the possibility of a hidden pattern underlying the events of this world.
reprinted from Noetic Sciences Review
Summer 1993
Pray Without Ceasing
Some personal thoughts on the nature of prayer
These might be considered some disorganized and odd thoughts about the nature of prayer. At first I found myself asking, "Why did I agree to do this talk, when I don't pray?" And because that's where I started, preparing this talk has been most interesting and surprising. It really made me examine my experience - how and why I live.
Shambhala Sun
July 1999
A Revolution in Health Care
Integrative Medicine offers the promise of living a good life,
even though it may not be an easy life, or even a long life.
For the past hundred years the goal of health care has been the curing of the body. Restoring the concept of healing to the heart of health care is no small thing. It requires rethinking the assumptions on which medical relationships are based, rethinking the goals of every health care interaction. It will require a revolution.
This is what the newest movement in medicine, Integrative Medicine, is about. This field, which hopes to synthesize the best from alternative and conventional approaches, actually goes far beyond these techniques to recognize the potential for wholeness in everyone. Integrative Medicine is a call for all health professionals to commit to strengthening the wholeness in their patients by all means possible.
Archived articles:
In the Service of Life from Noetic Sciences Review, Spring 1996
Recapturing the soul of medicine from Op-Ed, Western Journal of Medicine, Vol 174, January 2001