Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Healing and Curing


Here are two quotes that I find especially significant. Let me know what you think.

Healing does not mean curing, although the two words are often used interchangeably, While it may not be possible for us to cure ourselves or to find someone who can, it is always possible for us to heal ourselves. Healing implies the possibility for us to relate differently to illness, disability, even death, as we learn to see with eyes of wholeness. Healing is coming to terms with things as they are.

–Jon Kabat-Zinn, from Letting Everything Become Your Teacher (Delta Trade Paperbacks)


This one has been pinned on my bulletin board for years and, hopefully, inspires the book that I am writing.

In curing, we are trying to get somewhere, we are looking for answers. In curing, our efforts are specifically designed to make something happen. In healing, we live questions instead of answers. We hang out in the unknown. We trust the emergence of whatever will be. We trust the insight will come. The challenge in medicine is not the choice between one and the other. We need both.

--Dr. Paul Epstein, Naturopath

10 comments:

  1. YES to both of these; yes, yes, yes! Thank you for posting them.

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  2. Yes very, very true! I am a Reiki practitioner and that is one of the first things you learn. We don't cure, we heal and that can mean very different things to each person we work with. Wonderful post. Namaste, Sarah

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  3. I think you're talking about the dignity and respect factor here. In many ways Sophie (and all of us) are perfect and not in need of being "fixed," but in need of respect. But you are right to say they are both right - because there is something in Sophie that needs a balm and a cure - and I am still praying for some dude with a degree out there to know what to do .......

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  4. So very true! Thank you. I'd never pondered the difference before...but now I realize that, over time, I have shifted my own behavior more toward a balance (with perhaps more weight on healing) rather than solely on curing which is where I started. For me, hope has emerged from the healing. I'm going to turn this into a bookmark.

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  5. Another difference is you can't heal bacon.

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  6. Is healing another word for acceptance or is it different. For me acceptance is huge. Healing could be acceptance plus something else, something reverent.

    Writing a book? Can't wait to read it.

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  7. AMAZING quotes. love them. a book? im so jealous and cant wait to read it! i know it will be awesome!

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  8. I like both those quotes.

    I like this one too:

    "Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God." Ram Dass

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