25. Life is Attention
Life is attention. Attention is life. Definition of ‘life’ Any doctor has ever learned a definition of ‘life’… and at the same time of the existence of at least one vague zone: viruses. A virus does not grow, does not eat and actually it does not multiply itself. Instead of this, it is ‘replicated’ by Read the full article…
24. Empathy in 1, 2, 3 – Part 3: ‘Beyond the Conceptual’
“Where two of you are together, I am present.” The human mind: rather a chest of drawers or a cloud? One could see the human mind as a collection of boxes, a kind of chest of drawers in which one can store all kinds of things. There is a clear subdivision. In each tray, there Read the full article…
23. Empathy in 1, 2, 3 – Part 2: ‘Openness’
Most important in empathy: Do not stand in the way of it. Openness to meaningful patterns By this I mean YOUR openness. It may feel like intuition or a deep sensation. You may have already heard of ‘non-conceptual communication’: in addition to everything a patient tells you at a verbal conceptual level, he/she always sends Read the full article…
22. Empathy in 1, 2, 3 – Part 1: ‘Silence’
Silence is the mental space in which the patient may be him/herself. Harsh destination In a previous column, you could read about the importance of empathy. [see: “Empathy: What it Was, Is and… Will Be?“] An empathic doctor does not need to be convinced of that. A non-empathic doctor does, because for him it is, Read the full article…
21. Empathy: What it Was, Is and… Will Be?
Empathy is difficult to conceptualize because it is ‘beyond the conceptual’. What it was In the second half of the 19th century, bedside manners were the main instrument of the doctor. The time of bloodletting, purgatives, and leeches (in 1827 in France still good for an import of 33 million specimens, in addition to the Read the full article…
20. The Little Man of Pain Inside Our Brain
Pain Neuromatrix: science, no fiction R.Melzack, Nobel Prize winner on the basis of his Gate Control Theory, has subsequently also developed the Pain Neuromatrix theory. In this theory he locates even more the mechanism that produces pain – so the fact of ‘feeling’ pain – within the brain itself. The Pain Neuromatrix is a distributed Read the full article…
19. Stressional Intelligence
This piece of text follows upon ‘Stress: an amorphous thing or a world of meaning?’ Stress is not some kind of blob that appears from nowhere, but a complex picture. In this text we look at stress from five different angles. Each of these angles brings some insight into the meaning of Read the full article…
18. Stress: Amorphous Thing or a World of Meaning?
Throw all colors in one and the same pot and the result is grey: that’s no basis for a beautiful painting. In the thirties of the last century, Hans Selye introduced the concept of ‘GAS’ (General Adaptation Syndrome) as the default response of an organism to a stressor. He was the first person who saw Read the full article…
‘Here and Now’: the Fourth Time
This is the so called ‘here and now’ that takes place neither in the past, nor in the future, nor in the present. Three common times if you want: past, present, future. The fourth time hovers over the other three, as it were. At first sight it seems to be only about ‘now’ of course, Read the full article…
17. No Sensible Person
Regardless of how it presents itself, black magic is what it is. One may keep pretending that nothing has happened. In the long run, this means: hands full of blood that comes indeed from somewhere. No side effects?!? Acupuncture, homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic therapy*. Just to mention four. In recent years, big research trials (bigger than Read the full article…
Rationality and Poetry
People are more rational than other animals. More poetic too. Probably we differ more in the latter than in the former. Rationality = taking into account as much as possible elements from reality and linking them together in the most logical way possible in order to generate new knowledge. Poetry = reacting deeply to something, Read the full article…
Sliding to the Underlying…
the distinction between ‘symptomatic’ and ‘symptom-as-tube’ is super important. A short review Medicine is often symptomatic. It is about fighting the symptom, attaching little to no importance to any signs of an underlying psychosomatic situation. In several forms of psychotherapy, one mainly focuses on the underlying. The symptom may decrease by responding to these underlying Read the full article…
Equality?
Everybody knows we live in a world of huge inequality. Indeed. But inequality in what? Where lies importance? Thus, in what should we strive for more equality? In money? Thus: in the currency that can be traded for any other ‘goods’: a car, a house, even a wife in (many men’s) imagination? A strict focus Read the full article…
Unconditional Love
There is no other ‘love’ than unconditional love. Love is the most important thing throughout AURELIS, as it is of course in many other traditions. So, from AURELIS viewpoint also: love is the most important thing of all. BUT: love is obviously just a term, a reference to a quite abstract concept. People may, as Read the full article…
Letting Go towards Wholeness
‘Letting go’ is an important attitude regarding anything that keeps you from ‘being who you are’. The latter is subtle, difficult and vital. [see also, more poetically but not easy: ‘Having ‘Control’ and Letting Go of It’] Goal: wholeness A sub-goal towards this is openness, as in ‘Open Leadership’, ‘Open Religion’, ‘Open Mindfulness’ etc. This Read the full article…
The Gentle Slope between Closed and Open Religion
People tend to be trapped at either side of ‘closed religion’. Getting un-trapped may thus be hard and hurtful. Before reading this, [see: ‘Triangle of Religion’]. With ‘closed religion’, I mean: where within the core itself, the inside and the outside of a specific system of belief are mutually exclusive. To the adherents, the main Read the full article…
How to Use Symbols
Any symbol. Let’s say you are a religious person. Then symbols may ‘talk’ to you. How? [see also: ‘Symbolism lost. Symbolism regained’] Eventually, any symbol is… you. You are the crystal. Does light shine from you or through you? It depends on how you look at ‘you’. Does your mind only consist of conscious – Read the full article…