“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
~“Hamlet,” Act 1, scene 5
When I first read those lines as a Sophomore in high school, I thought “Hell, yes. Finally, somebody’s talking about it.” I didn’t have any idea what those “more things” were going to turn out to be, but somehow I knew I wasn’t getting the full story, and only the poets seemed to be catching at its threads.
I listened to the angry, driving cadence of Ginsberg’s Howl and knew I was among the starving. I ached to just eat the damned peach with Prufrock. My heart shattered with each pulse of Arnold’s melancholy, long, withdrawing roar -- always knowing, somewhere deep inside, that there had to be more. That life cannot be meant to be this unrewarding, this “nasty, brutish, and short.”
It took me a good 25 years to decide that, more than just teenage idealism, the truth for me was that nothing made sense without the “more.” And so, what began as a physical healing journey for me has turned into a profoundly spiritual one, as I’ve realized the two are inexorably, supportively, beautifully, interwoven.
And by spiritual, I’m not talking about what Joseph Campbell calls the “thunder hurlers,” I mean the thing inside of you that’s alive. The thing that knows the difference between the happiness of digging into a triple-chocolate torte, and the joy of watching someone you love embrace her full potential. The thing that knows what’s real for you.
So I’m not here to tell you what your healing path is. Mine turned out to be trying all the conventional (and not-so-conventional) stuff first: antibiotics, supplements, diet, “stress release,” homeopathics, naturopathics, detoxes, cleanses, you name it, I tried it. Some of it helped for a short time, some of it -- cutting out wine & cheese as I’ve mentioned berfore, stand out here -- did little more than make me extremely cranky. But I always knew there was something more underlying it all. My path was to take me there.
Still, I really don’t know much. I think I know that healing is a thing that goes on between you and me, that you are your best & only true healer, that asking for help (or even asking to help) can feel like an unbreachable barrier, that sometimes the reason we can’t heal is that we don’t know how to make peace with that force inside of us that so desperately wants to express itself.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s only the distance between who we are and who we think we are that’s “nasty, brutish, and short.” For me, true healing has been about closing that gap.