Dr. Charley Cropley, ND
@CharleyCropley
Each of us longs deeply and authentically for a way to decrease our anxiety and misery. We constantly and incessantly yearn for some way to do good for ourselves. Even my patients steeped in self-hatred and self-loathing will readily acknowledge that their greatest longing is to be free of their self-hatred and to experience themselves as a good person, worthy of admiration, love and respect. They simply do not know how to do this.
You have a primal passion for goodness that is burning in you right now. Is it not your desire to do good for yourself that is motivating you, right now, to read this article? Your “passion for Good” is the very essence of who you are, your very nature. In Naturopathic Medicine we call this, “Vis”,short for“Vis Medicatrix Naturae”. It means “The Healing Power of Nature”. Vis is your innate capacity to Self-Heal. It is your yearning to feel good, to have a better life, and to assuage your anxiety.
Your mind can and will make Vis into a concept, which then appears to be something mystical, a mysterious power separate from you, unknowable and inaccessible. I want to show you Vis as something absolutely real and directly knowable. I want you to know Vis as who you are, your essence, your nature.
You are probably aware that you can experience yourself in a variety of different ways. All of these are manifestations of Vis. One of the most common ways is as the ordinary “you”, the self you commonly know: a struggling human being, doing her best to avoid pain and suffering and to experience Health and happiness. S/He is constantly searching, desiring this and fearing that, ever grasping and avoiding. While she may have many fine qualities, she is also weak, faulted, imperfect, discontent and knows this all too well.
Another other common expression of Vis is what we’ll call your Authentic Self. Your authentic self is the self who urges you to do what is good and wise, to do what reduces your anxiety and suffering and makes you genuinely happier, without regret.
We experience an ongoing dialogue between these two aspects of ourselves—our lower, suffering, struggling self and our higher, authentic self. This dialogue is commonly portrayed as having an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.
In whatever way we may picture these two aspects of our self, each of us knows this dialogue intimately. One central aspect of my work is teaching my clients how to become more conscious of this largely unconscious dialogue by intentionally speaking or writing from the perspective of both their devil and their angel. I am going to use my own experience to illustrate how I engage in this dialogue.
I converse with my higher self as I would with a normal guy. I call him “dude”, I use my normal language, and I indulge all my moods and emotions. I am as real and unpretentious with him as I can be. After all, he knows everything I think and feel. He is me. I am Him.
I adore him, love him and tell him so. I say to him, “You are my beloved, the source of all goodness that has ever come to me. You give me my Health, my virtue, everything that I most love. You are precious to me beyond all else. You are my true savior. You save me from eating compulsively, being afraid, doing what destroys body and mind. I could not possibly love you more. In this instant, right now I feel you with me. Though my mind, addicted to materialism, may not get it, I know you are right here with me, invisibly present.
This is exactly how I talk to Him. In these dialogues I am doing my most creative work. I am working my cutting edge of calling forth my innate goodness, self-love and guiding wisdom. I am speaking the highest truth I can possibly conceive of. This is a creative act. I am convincing my own mind that my authentic self, my innate goodness, is actually real. I am becoming a better person through this process of self-dialogue.
I continue, perhaps like this:
You, you perfectly good and wise being, you are me. I am your servant, or more, your son. Your character, nature and spirit are my own. I am realizing this more and more. You give me everything worth having. You give me Health, happiness, caring relationships, prosperity, dignity, and peace. You are pure Goodness itself, the wisdom and desire that brings forth what is truly beneficial. You are my own Spirit of goodness. I know you to be real. Again I repeat this to deepen my own understanding, “You are my spirit of goodness. Mine. My own. You actuallyare me and I am you. What we both are is pure goodness.”
Here is how I make this process absolutely real. I say, “I know you hear me. I want right now, in this exact moment to invite you into me and to make my present action your present action, an expression of you and your goodness. I want you to become me. I want to be you. So, since there is no other you who is going to mysteriously take over my actions, I now fill this present action with all my power of goodness.” (I may be working out, talking to a patient, drying off from a shower.)
Filling my present action with goodness can be very confronting for me because I think that I need to do whatever I’m doing “perfectly”, i.e. according to my concepts of perfect. If I can’t or am not willing to behave “perfectly” this can give rise to a very valuable conversation, which for now, I will skip.
The above is what my dialogue sounds like coming from Charley to my authentic self.
I also listen for his response, knowing that the one responding is none other than me. Here is My Lord, my authentic self speaking to me.
Charley, thank you for your prayers and for being open to me right now. I love you. This is true and I want above all else for you to feel my love. Feel it. Feel me. Right now. My love has the power to deliver. I am real. I am not imaginary. Just because I speak as your own voice does not make me imaginary. There is no other voice you can hear inside yourself but your own. Every voice is yours. And likewise, every voice is Mine. Yes, your coward, lecher, thief are all Me. But for now, stay open to Me as your own goodness and love. Feel how wonderfully good I am and open yourself that I might infuse into you the goodness you long to experience. You only, only, only know Me by accepting Me, by being Me.
Accept me now, you turkey. Don’t fall back into being Charley, this historical creature of memory and imagination, this story of strengths and weaknesses, skills and ineptness. Let your old self go! Do good now. Whatever that looks like, whatever you are doing, offer it, do it, infuse it with goodness. I give you, Charley the power to do good. Right now, and only now. It may be easy. It may be a struggle. I love whatever you do with intention, even the faintest hope of it being good. And, hey, why not make it incredibly good? Fabulously good? Great?
I keep going in this dialogue, back and forth. disbelieving that there really is such a source of good and yet knowing with certainty that there is. Certainty eventually prevails because goodness, my own goodness is provable beyond any possible doubt, in my direct experience. My desire for goodness is always with me. In the same way as I know that I exist, I know that I am good, that I love myself.
My goodness is innate, inherent, always and already present. Goodness is my nature. It is who I am. In any moment I can check in and discover anew that I am hoping and yearning for good for myself in some way. I am wanting to experience benefit, to feel better, to taste, think, feel something that feels caring, kind, beneficial to me.
Thus this dialogue deepens my understanding of my own goodness. I experience that I genuinely do want to do good for myself and that I genuinely do not want to do what harms me. This more accurate perception of myself leads naturally to beneficial action. I am strengthened in my desire, intention and, in a word, my power to do good. And my power to do good is my power to Self-Heal.
This is exactly what you and my patients come to me for. You want to Heal your very real maladies—your colitis, diabetes and heart problems. I help you understand that the causes of your disease lie in your sick ways of eating, moving, thinking and relating. As you engage the work of mastering your self-harming behaviors you discover you face insurmountable challenges. You try and fail repeatedly. Not because you are weak, lazy or incapable and certainly not because you don’t criticize or hate yourself enough. Rather you don’t know how to access your own power to do good.
The essential work of Healing comes down to this work of finding and increasing your power to do good and to do it in the most practical of ways: to eat this and stop eating that; to move your body in this manner and not that; to think this and not that; to desire this and not that; to speak this and not that. You allow Love to be made manifest in the actions of your own flesh and blood. You unite God and Man. This is Healing.
Trace back your own power to do good to its very source and you find that the source is none other than you, yourself. Goodness is both your very nature and the Nature of nature itself.
I have shown you one practical way to cultivate your own Self-Healing power by talking to yourself; by intentionally bringing into your experience the previously subconscious dialogue between your ordinary self and your authentic self. You can practice this dialogue silently, in a contemplative, self-reflective manner. You can speak audibly to yourself. And you can also write out these conversations.
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Some final questions I want to leave with you are these. “Who is the self who is aware of both the ordinary self and the authentic self? Are you really two or three distinct selves? Is it even possible to be more than one self? Who are you, really?
This core question, “Who am I?” cannot be answered intellectually. It confounds the mind. It can only be answered by you, who witnesses your mind. “Who am I?” is a living question. You live the question. The question lives you.
Pause from time to time amid these dialogues between your authentic self and your ordinary self and ask yourself, “Who am I?” Am I my ordinary self? My authentic self? Neither? Both? Am I the witness? “Who am I?”
Don’t expect an answer. Allow the questioning to enrich your life by deepening your understanding of yourself. The more you understand yourself, the more you understand how good you are. This quest will help you realize how sincerely and authentically you long to care for yourself, and how enormous is your power to do the unique kind of good that you want to do for yourself and others.
Doing good, being kind Heals your body, mind and relationships.
Dr. Charley Cropleyhas been a practicing Naturopathic Doctor, teacher and author in the Boulder/Denver since 1979. He has trained hundreds of doctors in his methods of nutrition and Self-Healing. He teaches a variety of courses and retreats. He is author of numerous articles, several books, a blog and an array of audio and videos. He is a frequent lecturer at the colleges of Naturopathic Medicine, and is regarded by his peers as one of today’s leading thinkers and teachers in the philosophy and practice of Naturopathic Medicine.
Charley works with all types of Health problems using no medicines or supplements. He teaches his patients to Heal themselves through wholesome nutrition, strengthening exercise, positive thinking and honest, caring relationships. He lives what he teaches.
For Personal Appointments. DVDs, books or classes call 303-442-6161 or[email protected]
