Eat Your Books, Too!
One of the shifts which my patients make on their way to greater health is in their attitude towards food and other basics of lifestyle. The person who rebels against “being told what to do”, and who stubbornly sticks to eating “whatever they feel like” (which everyone is ultimately free to do, if they wish), limits how far their state of health can be expanded over the long run. These sorts of pleasures typically exist only at the surface layer, and are actually suppressive of the individual discovering and unfolding their true self. Not that I advise against pleasure — quite the contrary! — it is rather a distinction between superficial ‘attractions’, and much deeper ‘resonances’ with what one engages in.
Food is not the only thing which we take in, and which we can do with varying degrees of consciousness and resonance. Our “nutrition” is also inclusive of ideas, various art forms, relationships, and any number of creative activities. Out of choice, we can select a film or novel to ingest based on its resonance for us as a remedial object — we all know too well how many “mind numbing” forms of entertainment there are, as compared to the select few pieces which connect to something deeper within us, and draw some truth out of our core.
Such choices of resonance are not necessarily easy to discern, and we may often have the tendency of avoiding them even when we know what we need. The resonant and remedial things available to us are often unconsciously avoided, as a kind of defence mechanism to keep from stirring anything up within ourselves from our depths.
We all have habitual musical genres we listen to, as well as certain types of film we routinely watch — but much of the time, there is a key growth opportunity we have in choosing to explore a genre we would typically avoid. Always keeping to our habits keeps us more in our subjective feelings, which exist at the surface, rather than connecting us to a deeper layer of our objective feeling about our self and life. As the science of Heilkunst expands, “remedies” will more and more include specific recommendations for books, movies, or other cultural activities which will provoke a healing process in the patient.
Take a few minutes to write down some of the specific genres which you dislike, and try to identify their objective feeling, which you could also find mirrored somewhere in yourself as a darker, unexplored aspect.