The causes of the violent destruction in Benghazi cannot be found if the investigation is limited to the time and locale of the bombing. Similarly, the Benghazis in your body—flu, IBS, MS, cancer, etc.—are not to be found with shortsighted diagnostics that assume the causes to be recent and local.
Naturopathic diagnosis examines causation in other organ systems as a result of long-term predisposing factors. Using MS as an example, MS is not a disease of the nervous system. The demyelination of neurons is the end result of the weakening of other organs, such as the small intestine, liver, and thyroid. (I mention these organs only as examples. The specific organs involved will vary with each individual.)
Breast cancer (and MS, IBS or flu, for that matter) do not begin the morning a woman finds a lump in her breast. The metabolic degeneration that allows cancer cells to live and multiply has likely been occurring for over 10 years.
The health of the immune system is inseparable from one’s nutritional status, sleep deprivation, emotional stressors, finances, and understanding and attitudes (policies) toward their body and health.
Similarly, to discover the deeper causes of Benghazi, we must look at the bombing events, the killing of Muammar Gaddafi over a year ago, the resultant social and economic damage and the imperialistic and militaristic attitudes that led to these events. No catastrophic event takes place in isolation from the events that preceded it. Healing, whether in the human body or in human society, is governed by the same laws.
Naturopathic medicine has been guided by the same universal principles throughout its history. Benghazis are predictable and preventable if one understands and lives by the principles of healing. Healing on any level is the result of understanding and living the practices that these principles dictate. You must examine the way you live, including your diet, movement, rest, thinking, and relationships, with the intent of having those actions express your love and understanding of natural law.
This path is not for everybody. Some are satisfied with short-term, local, violent solutions intended to destroy the evil “enemy” of disease. However increasing numbers of people are learning to interpret their maladies as harsh messengers instructing them to discover and heal their own self-harming behaviors. This less violent, less antagonistic path leads us to heal by growing in self-understanding and self-compassion. This means we must look first and foremost to our self and our own actions to find the causes of our suffering. Outside factors are generally secondary causes.
Honest self-examination is frightening, terrifying. Facing our own faults and weaknesses is impossible without self-compassion. Personal honesty and self-compassion are the attitudes, the spiritual medicines that Heal us. We ourselves are the object of our Healing efforts, not some evil disease like cancer or MS. What needs Healing is we, our self; our very character; our ignorance of our own needs and our lack of real caring and concern about fulfilling our needs.
Ignorance and lack of caring are recognized by naturopathic physicians to be the root causes of disease. The universal remedy is self-understanding and self-compassion. The misery of disease impels us on a quest for medicine that leads us ever deeper into ourselves. Early on we begin to understand the causal relation between our illness and our self-harming actions. Nearer the end of our journey, we find that it is our genuine love for ourselves that heals our propensity, our addiction to torturing ourselves. The power of love refuses to allow this abuse. We stop eating too much bread not because we don’t like it anymore and not because we bitterly criticize ourselves for eating it, but because we love ourselves and we understand with perfect clarity every little nuance of how too much bread (self-criticism, lack of sleep) turns into misery, be it neuronal degeneration (MS), breast tumors or bladder infections.
Is it not amazing that complex diseases; inflammation, oozing sores and the most sickening and painful changes in our flesh are healed by this most subtle “something” called kindness or love? And miraculously, mysteriously this healing power is our very nature. It is who and what we actually are. We love ourselves, and our love is so real and so strong that it heals, i.e. we heal our body, our actions, our thoughts. Love expels even the tiniest desire for anything that would harm us. We make our every thought, word and deed living expressions of our love for our self.
Our own kindness and intelligence heal us.
Disease, like Benghazi, is a symptom of our alienation from the living kindness that is our very nature.
Unkind actions produce misery; kind actions heal.
Very simple. Very challenging.
Dr. Charley Cropley has 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.
