As I was driving down the road it, I was thinking how often people think they get what is going on, but the answers always seem a little bit off or shallow to me. How can this one thing be about this other one thing. It occurs to me that cause and effect is really a fourth dimensional issue and we are three dimensional humans. It’s hard to see clearly into that fourth dimension as we can’t perceive it the way it should be seen.

That may be why it is so hard to find the exact cause. Additionally, as I consider this cause and effect to be fourth dimensional, I believe one beginning cause allows many other things to be picked up, like a caterpillar brushing against a bush. Those leaves stick here and there and come along for the ride. Who knows what they do farther on and what sticks to them?

Sometimes it’s just more important to be with the moment and the issue rather than trying to figure out what started it. It happened. It’s part of our caterpillar now. We can’t cut out that segment of ourselves and still exist, so we can try and pick it off or absorb the issues that have stuck to us as we go back down the line.

In later stage cancers, there is little that can be done. We often think of battling away against cancer. For some, to not battle is a little like giving up. Not battling the end stage disease often means palliative care. Palliative care is typically anything that makes the patient feel better for however long they live, without going to heroic measures. Chemotherapy is not typically palliative. Pain killers generally are.

Is palliative care giving up or giving in? In an article on a study on palliative care, the New York Times states, “doctors have found that patients with terminal lung cancer who began receiving palliative care immediately upon diagnosis not only were happier, more mobile and in less pain as the end neared — but they also lived nearly three months longer.”

Is that really giving up?

“The brilliance of this metaphor is in the observed phenomenon that you have to be in motion to see change. Just sitting there isn’t going to get you anywhere.

In writing that, I feel the need to explain I’m not talking about forgoing contemplative or devotional spiritual practice in favor of action. As I’ve written about time and time again, action can be useless or even harmful if it’s not based in connection and love.”

I was thinking that sometimes you just have to do something. I know when I was learning astrology they suggested that during difficult Pluto transits that you start cleaning out closets as Pluto was often about clearing out and transformation. If you were stuck doing that in life, perhaps clearing out the closets or the kitchen would help.

Sometimes when we get stuck and the changes we need to make seem overwhelmingly huge. Maybe we don’t even need to think how to start that but start changing something else. Something small that we know we can do. Can we change our schedule up a bit and eat lunch a different time? Can we change the color of the towels in our main bathroom? These are small changes and may be things that can be accomplished. In making these changes, we may free up our mind from it’s locked in patterns and we might find we have a brilliant insight.

Certainly it seems better to make changes that seem more productive, but there are times when life seems stuck in it’s rut. Making those other changes–just for the sake of change may shake things up a bit.

I think it is interesting that the person writing states that this is true even of people who do everything.

We can always second guess ourselves. Sometimes we can’t control everything. Sometimes our pets die. This is true in life as well.

We can do what we can to be responsible, but sometimes we have to ask, is it reasonable to expect ourselves to have had certain information at the time to make different decisions? How reasonable is it to expect that we should have known? Finally, would we hold another person to that same standard?

Feeling are always subjective and as such we create stories about what those feelings mean. If we just let them move through and be, perhaps we wouldn’t hang on to feelings like guilt and shame for quite so long.

Towards the end, one of the people in the book tells our writer that all happiness is relational. You can’t have personal happiness, it’s always happiness in relationship to another.

I think it’s something important to remember

Further, as you work inside the company and hope to advance, you can’t show emotion. Being emotional can kill a career. That means no tears, no issues, no emotion inside the workplace. While I think that professionalism is important, I have to consider the idea that most people spend forty or more hours a week at the work place. They spend a lot of time with people at work and you can’t talk about anything important? You can’t be emotional there at all? When CAN you be emotional? At what point do we forget the important of emotions.

Emotions are energy. They are meant to move and change. Clamping down on them is just as bad as the sociopath who has no real feeling or can’t access them. Why do we work so hard to be sociopathic? Next time you find yourself thinking you shouldn’t feel a certain way, maybe we can rejoice in the fact that we actually have feelings and aren’t pathological.

While I am a great believer in natural healing and the use of supplements and herbs, I am also a great believer in making sure someone who is knowledgeable about the use of the particular supplement or herb is giving the information. Supplements are generally considered safe because we think of them as food. On the other hand, food is a powerful medicine. Why do we constantly forget that too much of a good medicine can be bad for us? Supplements are just the same.

Each of our bodies needs certain things in certain amounts. We want balance. It is okay sometimes to take too much or perhaps to get too little (how much is too much and too little depends upon the thing in question). However, taking too much or getting too little over the long haul is a bad thing.

A trained practitioner can evaluate and rule out the wrong supplements and herbs. This is a far better approach than someone who is just trying things to see if they work.

It really is in the body. The pain may be originating with the emotional energy around the issue but the pain or other symptom is actually in the body. Sometimes resolving the underlying emotional issue just happens to create a more permanent cure for the physical symptom.

I don’t believe that we all always have to understand it all. Sometimes just getting in touch with the feeling is enough. Sometimes working on the physical symptoms help too.

I am reminded of this by my very angry Siamese. I got a new kitten. She’s really unhappy about this. She’s had vomiting and diarrhea for two days now. We’ve been to the emergency vet. We’ve been to her regular vet (who is a naturopathic vet). There is nothing to find. They can see gas in her stomach and at points throughout her intestinal tract. It is not consistent with a foreign object. My cat is just having trouble stomaching another cat. The vet gave her a homeopathic remedy (amongst other things). The remedy is for someone who wants to get close up is afraid to. I think that sums up my cat–who I adopted after her career as a breeding queen was over and she needed a new home. No doubt she gave up a lot of kits that she adored. She adored my kitten. I was surprised she just didn’t take to this little cat, but I suspect there is that fear of loss that she went through.

My cat’s symptoms are absolutely physical. They are also spiritual/emotional too. Hopefully by working with both we can make her feel better, both now and in the long run.

It’s easy to think that one has to concentrate on either the physical or the emotional. Some problems work best when both sides are addressed. Others are solved by going for just one side of the issue. Each person needs to decide which for themselves. If one works from the emotional side, however, this in no way suggests that the issue is purely emotional and not manifesting in the body. Sometimes we forget that.