My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen

Author:Rachel Naomi Remen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-20T16:00:00+00:00

THE SHELL GAME

T HE CAPACITY FOR spiritual experience is so universal that every language has its name for it: the Atman, the Neshuma, the Ra, the Purusha, the Ruach, the Divine Spark. The Seneca called it the Orenda; the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart called it the Godseed. We call this capacity the soul. The soul is the basis for the value of every human life, and the foundation of our experience of wholeness and integrity, despite physical change. It may also be the source of our healing.

It is only recently that illness and healing have been defined in terms of the body. At the beginnings of medicine, the shamans, or medicine men, defined illness not in terms of pathology but in terms of the soul. According to these ancients, illness was “soul loss,” a loss of direction, purpose, meaning, mystery, and awe. Healing involved not only the recovery of the body but the recovery of the soul.

Listening to people with cancer as their physician and living with my own chronic illness have shown me a great deal about the power of illness to draw the soul and its issues closer. These experiences have shown me that the soul is not just a human capacity; in times of loss, illness, and crisis, it is a human need. At such times, spirit is strength.

The language of the soul is meaning. We may first discover the soul when life events awaken in us the need for meaning. In serious or chronic illness, even people who have never considered this dimension of experience before instinctively reach for a personal meaning in events that have disrupted their lives. Meaning helps us to see in the dark. It strengthens the will to live in us.

In the sixties when I went to medical school, the meaning of illness was seen as irrelevant. We did not know then that there is a healthy way to have a disease, a way to use this difficult experience to come to know more intimately who we are and what is important to us. Our focus was on cure and not healing. Science and its expertise cures, but often it is meaning that heals us. Such healing is highly individual. The same disease means something different to every person touched by it. Over time, meaning heals many things that are beyond cure.

Finding meaning does not require us to live differently; it requires us to see our lives differently. Many of us already live far more meaningful lives than we know. When we go beyond the superficial to the essential, things that are familiar and even commonplace are revealed in new ways. Meaning may change the way we see ourselves and the world. People who have felt themselves to be victims may be surprised to realize they are heroes.

Through illness, people may come to know themselves for the first time and recognize not only who they genuinely are but also what really matters to them. As a physician, I have accompanied many

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