Perhaps we should stop eating sweets

 

 

 

A recent occurrence on ‘belonging’ to something made me think; specifically it happened at a Clinic where I rent a room for my acupuncture.  Without going into the details, I disagreed with a proposal that was approved by the majority of other practitioners.  What to do?

 

As you might have expected, this led me into thinking about us as individuals ‘belonging’ to wider groups – these are issues you’ll have to confront as you enter the world of complementary therapy.  For instance, you may have to give this some thought if you rent a room from a GP’s surgery, or support arguably suspect WM techniques such as IVF, Cancer treatment and the like.  To what degree do you compromise your own standards to ‘belong’ to a group and enjoy its benefits, or take the arguably opposite view of ‘to thine own self be true’?

 

Groucho Marx opined: "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."  You could argue that the BAcC’s drive for Statutory Regulation could fall into this camp – I’m not sure that being part of the ‘big boy’s club’ is necessarily a good thing if the restrictions it brings with it negate the very principles that underpin our discipline.  Discuss ……….

 

But I suppose that belonging to a society, club etc obliges me to go with the majority, limiting my own personal freedom and giving power to whosoever leads that club.  Living in the UK makes me a member of the UK Government’s club; and what a responsibility that puts upon us!  The leaders of this particular club can impose conditions on me such as taxes, laws of the land etc, and can act in my name even though I violently disagree with them such as going to war in a Muslim country or borrowing £178 billion.  Short of leaving the country, MY country, I have no choice but to comply.

 

But it is this issue of choice that is fascinating - it the instruments of Government, which we cannot ignore because of retribution from the law, that are the most strident in demanding that we meet their requirements; for instance, IR demands are much more virulent than those from private companies.  And law-making (especially the plethora of legislation created under the current administration) is reaching the point of stupidity – take the ‘No Smoking’ law which, in addition to it being legislated, demands that we put a notice declaring it on every building – murder is illegal, but we don’t put a notice on every building saying ‘Murder prohibited here”.  It’s almost that our leaders are paranoid that we won’t follow their directives.

 

And now you can get stopped, searched and arrested for photographing the Houses of Parliament – such a Police state is reminiscent of the Eastern Bloc countries under the old Soviet Union or modern day North Korea etc.  Would someone tell me the logic of this?

 

It is interesting to hear what the Tao te Ching Chapter 17 says on Government (and Chapter 18 if you want guidance on how to vote in the next election):

 

The highest form of government is what people hardly realise is there.

Next is that of the Sage who is seen, loved and respected.

Next down is the dictatorship that thrives on oppression and terror.

And the last is that of those who lie and end up despised and rejected.

 

Where do you think we are at the moment?

 

…………………………

 

 

So “what’s that got to do with the price of tripe?” as one of my Tai Chi students asked me recently.  Well, does this apply to us as acupuncturists - to what degree do we ‘belong’ to a culture or how close do we adhere to our own values?  Can we recommend courses of action to our clients whilst, at the same time, not observe them ourselves? Shantanad Saraswati in his “The Man who wanted to meet God – myths and stories that explain the inexplicable” tells the story:

 

There was a certain holy man who was visited by an elderly lady and a small boy who was addicted to eating sweets. She wanted the influence of the holy man to remove this bad habit. When the holy man heard about this he asked the old woman to come back in a fortnight. After a fortnight when the old woman returned, this holy man simply said to the boy that eating sweets was not a very good habit, it would result in some sort of disease later on: "So, my good boy, you should give them up." The old woman said, "If that's all you had to say, you needn't have bothered me to come back after a fortnight."

 

The holy man said he could not have done this the other day because he himself was in the habit of eating sweets and had no authority to ask anyone else to give them up. So he had to give up eating sweets for a full fortnight and control his own desire, because if he did not control it he could have no authority, and even if he had said the same thing to the boy it would have had no effect.

 

In fact just these few words did the trick.

 

You will already know of Ghandi’s assertion that: “you must be what you want the world to be”.  So do we avoid Damp foods, nurture our Yin over the Xmas time, avoid emotions that create Liver Qi Stagnation, keep our lower backs warm, maintain personal fitness and so on?  Or do we take Douglas Bader’s assertion that  ‘Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the observance of fools’ and apply the ‘do as I say not do as I do’ option? 

 

I would suggest we don’t abuse the power you have over our clients by recommending something we don’t do ourselves.  Our way, therefore, possibly is to guide rather than force  - ideally we should apply Wu Wei and allow things to happen naturally, to nurture the ‘tendency’ of change, or at least do just enough and no more (as Einstein suggested) and generally avoid becoming ‘holier than thou’.

 

And I’m as guilty as anyone – it’s just that I have to be reminded, now and again, that we don’t have all the answers and that we should practice more tolerance – with ourselves as well as with others.

 

Metta