To Be Whole Again

Minerva - or, to call her by her other name,
Pallas Athena - was thinking to herself
about the connections between praise and virtue.
Praise, she thought, is what we offer when
we think someone has acted for the hightest good.
But is that enough for actions of that sort?
And if it is, why do we not praise ourselves?
Why, she asked, do I not praise myself, my dignity,
my special virtue? All excellence, Minerva thought,
demands respect and praise - even our own

--Ovid, Metamorphoses

Our bodies' difficulties tell us a great deal aobut the condition of our inner life. As we learn to attend to ourselves and our body's messages, we grow toward wholeness.

As a practitioner of Reiki, as well as as a Wiccan, it is odd to me that people need telling these things; to be reminded that mind, body and spirit are one and that whatever happens to one will affect the others. Even so...that comment there down in black and white, there are still times when even I 'forget.'

Like everyone else - dare I say 'normal people' - if I feel sick, or my head aches, I'll reach for medicines to heal the 'outer' The tangible and very few and far between look for a deeper cause - and emotional one, or a spiritual one, maybe both, and it's a hard habit to break. The quick fix - treat the symptom, not the reason... going for the holistic approach, though better in the long run, takes time. And it's time we are losing even more of, day by day under the pressures of modern society.

The solution of course is to listen to our bodies. If we are tired, lie down to take a nap, hungry - eat something, preferably something healthy; that can help to feed not just the body. And I think it also pays to remember, when we feel ill, that the word, disease can be separated from it's prefix, dis-ease. Perhaps a place to start in treating what ails us is to find a sense of ease - then perhaps we can see, and treat the cause, and not just the symptoms.