Don Beckett, the author of Reiki: The True Story, offers a poignant look at the realities of modern medicine, health care, and how to promote harmony in your life.
“Alternative” Medicine – the Real Alternative to the “Health Care” Crisis
By Don Beckett
First of all, let’s acknowledge that much of what is passed off as Reality nowadays is just the opposite. For example, any kind of medicine except pharmaceutical drugs, nuclear radiation, and surgery, is commonly called Alternative Medicine. The implication is that drugs, radiation, and surgery are Real Medicine, and any other kind of medicine is Fake Medicine. People easily accept this notion, especially because most of us have such a profound ignorance of history. The slightest glimpse into the past will show anyone that the so-called Alternative Medicines are, in reality, the traditional, natural, time-tested ones. The pharmaceutical approach is truly the Alternative – and whether it even fits the definition of medicine is questionable, to say the least. (Webster’s Dictionary defines medicine as: “the science and art dealing with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease” – which are not things accomplished or even intended by the use of pharmaceutical drugs.)
In the U.S.A. we’ve been simmering for months in a big debate over “Health Care” reform. And, again, the reality is just the opposite of what the words would lead us to believe. “Health Care” is really not about health, it is post-Orwellian code for the maintenance of disease. Pharmaceutical Medicine takes a materialistic and microscopic view of life; therefore, it cannot understand the origin of disease; therefore, it cannot possibly heal disease.
There was a time – before the use of pharmaceuticals became so overwhelming – when Medical Doctors had at least a desire to heal disease, and when their treatments often did allow the patient’s body to heal itself. The healing occurred not so much from what the doctor did as from what the doctor refrained from doing. It was understood that, in most cases, the body could heal itself if the patient merely stopped whatever behavior had created the disease in the first place. The doctors’ famous oath – including the pledge to “do no harm” – illustrates the traditional understanding of exactly this fact. But nowadays this pledge has become increasingly a travesty, as modern medicine has become synonymous with pharmaceutical medicine, and as the harmful effects of pharmaceuticals have become undeniable. In fact, “medical treatment” is now among the top causes of death in America (some say it’s Number One; and even the Journal of the American Medical Association has listed it as Number Three).
Sadly, doctors have increasingly become little more than delivery mechanisms of pharmaceutical drugs. And even the makers of these drugs have stopped pretending that pharmaceuticals are capable of healing anything; their admitted function is merely the suppression of physical symptoms. This in itself is contradictory to the pledge of doing no harm. The suppression of symptoms actually prevents the body from healing itself. The energies of disease are driven deep into the body and trapped there. People feel better, because the symptoms have been hidden; and they make the mistake of believing that the drugs have healed them.
Until recent years, this was not such a dangerous mistake. When I was a child, for instance – and even after that – doctors did not generally prescribe a drug for extended periods of time. Drugs were seen (accurately) as emergency measures; they were taken for relatively short times, only until the body could regain sufficient balance that the suppression of symptoms was no longer necessary. Then, without the continued intake of the drug, the body could bring the original disease to the surface and release it, and also (eventually) rid itself of the drug toxins. But nowadays the whole strategy is to get as many people as possible taking as many drugs as possible, every day for the rest of their lives! (Ka-ching, ka-ching – listen to the Song Of The Cash Registers!)
What people are not seeing in this picture (though I can’t imagine why) is that, after years of daily pill-taking, the body eventually breaks down to such a point that it can no longer hold the trapped and destructive energies of the mountains of pills that have been consumed. These extreme energies finally break loose and create havoc in the body (and people say things like, “I don’t understand it – I haven’t been sick a day in the past 20 years, and now suddenly, overnight, my whole body is full of cancer!”) … and, at that point, nothing can overcome them.
Thanks to this campaign by the drug industry, it has now become a life-and-death matter that we not succumb to their brainwashing! Despite the nonstop advertisements urging us to “Ask your doctor if *^%#@()()+&$$ is right for you!” … it’s crucial that we see pharmaceutical medicine for what it really is – extreme, emergency treatment – and that we use it only in that way. Any pills taken for long periods of time will have unintended and dangerous consequences. Therefore, it’s important that we take them for no longer than truly necessary.
Health Care … or Disease Maintenance…?
Yes, we’re having this big debate over “Health Care” reform – but the only reform will likely be in who pays for the drugs and the doctor visits and the high-tech tests and procedures, all of which are merely disease maintenance. And the reality is, these things have become so expensive that no one – not patients, employers, insurance companies, or government – can afford to pay for them any longer.
This is actually quite a blessing in disguise – because it will force us to get real about health care. It will force us to focus on health and healing instead of on disease!
One more false appearance we’ve been seduced by – and this goes back way before pharmaceuticals – is that there are many diseases. This leads to the belief that we need many different remedies. However, in reality, there is only one disease and one remedy.
We are not materialistic, biological machines, even though we give that appearance. Each of us – and every living being – is a projection of the One Spirit, the one and only Source, the true Self. Everything in our world is composed of vibrating photons of light, projected from the Source. We humans have been given the luxury, and the awesome responsibility, of controlling our energetic vibrations – and one thing we have done with that is to create disease: in ourselves and in the world around us.
There is only one disease, and that is the result of creating vibrations that are not in harmony with the vibration of the Source. This one disease manifests in various forms, as various symptoms. We mistake the variety of symptoms for a variety of diseases – which we call cancer, heart attack, pneumonia, AIDS, kidney failure, swine flu (also earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, pollution), etc. – but in reality the only disease is disharmony between our vibration and Source vibration. Compared to infinite Source, we are infinitesimal; guess which one (Source or us) is most affected by the disharmony!
Seen accurately, pharmaceutical-surgical medicine is emergency medicine. In life-or-death situations, drugs and/or drastic mechanical procedures are sometimes the only things that can keep us in the physical body – and I’m grateful to them for saving my life, at least three times. But we must realize the difference between such emergency provisions and real healing.
The only real healing comes from getting ourselves back into harmonious vibration with our Source, the infinite Self. In a word, Self-realization. All roads lead to Self-realization … because there is nowhere else to go! We are all continuously being healed, as we are drawn inevitably to Self-realization – though some roads are quicker and more pleasant than others, and we can choose our own road.
We can choose the pharmaceutical-surgical road (which will eventually get us there, by leading to something better) … or we can choose a road more in harmony with Source, to begin with. We can choose a road such as Meditation or Yoga, Martial Arts, Conscious Breathing, Affirmations, Macrobiotics, Johrei, Reiki, etc. (and many variations of most of these). In doing so, we are choosing real Health Care instead of disease maintenance.
CLICK HERE to learn more about Don Beckett’s book, Reiki: The True Story.
CLICK HERE to read Don Beckett’s story behind the writing of Reiki: The True Story.
CLICK HERE to visit Don Beckett’s website.
Bacteria and archaea (first discovered in extreme environments such as deep-sea volcanic vents, such as the one shown above) manage to survive thanks in part to a built-in defense system that helps protect them from many viruses and other invaders. (Credit: OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); NOAA)
Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.