Where's the Bees?

In reading a distillation of an alchemical text, Sir Francis Bacon is paraphrased:

The Ant experiments by haphazardly collecting and using materials, which method indicates the all-too-human tendency to use materials without clearly understanding them.

The Spider neither experiments nor collects but produces webs from its own substance, which method indicates the tendency to formulate hypotheses based upon subjective bias, opinion, and conditioning leading to the confusion of subjective ideas and beliefs with direct perception of truth.

The Bee gathers both the nectar and pollen of many flowers and, little by little, transforms this nectar into honey through individual and collective effort and inherent nature. The product of this labor is then used to feed itself, the community, and the world at large. This method indicates an approach which uses both experimentation and observation (a posteriori); as well as using direct
interior penetration (a priori) in such a way as to eliminate the abuse of either, or the confusion of the one for the other. Assistance and guidance throughout the process is provided by a community of expert practitioners; the end of which is the transformation of the self and society in the service of all Life and the Source of life.

The disappearance (and hopeful reemergence) of the honey bee can thusly be seen as a metaphorical extension of man in the world today. I find myself thinking about the current climate talks in Copenhagen and what it truly means to practice Chinese Medicine as a bee.

Blue Fire

The caelum, then, is a condition of mind. Envision it as a night sky filled with the airy bodies of the gods, those astrological constellations which are at once beasts and geometry and which participate in all things of the world as their imaginal ground. The caelum does not of course take place in your head, in your mind, but your mind moves in the caelum, touches the constellations, the thick and hairy skull opens to let in more light, their light, making possible a new idea of order, a cosmological imagination whose thought accounts for the cosmos in the forms of images.

-- James Hillman

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and, finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

-- Goethe

The Fifth Month and Hexagram 44

As things tend to do this time of year, my regular post for this month is a bit late. The fifth month started on June 5th with the seasonal qi of “grain in the ear" which is a reference to the corn harvest and also contains the qi of the "summer solstice" which occured on June 21st. The month will end on July 6th. In a way, my tardiness is good because this month is all about relationships and warmth of people (as opposed to the cold clickity-clack of computers). I don't know about you, but it has been really difficult to concentrate on school work in the midst of finals - all I want to do is hang out with friends and eat food and enjoy the sights and smells of a Portland that seems otherworldly from the dark winter of last.

Hexagram 44, 姤, is translated as Coupling, Meet, Rendezvous, Intercourse, or the Royal Bride. It is wind beneath heaven and aligning with the organ of the Heart, this hexagram is really about connection and contact: it's the spaces (distance and proximity) between all of us as individuals where the magic happens and where we can discover who we really are as an individual.

Here's the hexagram text:

《姤》女壯，勿用取女。

A strong or royal woman, do not marry such a woman.



《彖》曰：《姤》、遇也，柔遇剛也。「勿用取女」、不可與長也。天地相遇，品物咸章也。剛遇中正，天下大行也。《姤》之時義大矣哉！


The image says: Encounter, a meeting, be soft yet firm in the meeting. Do not marry such a woman, for it will not last. Heaven and earth are both meeting, they produce the rules of all things. Firm and equitable meetings, produces great movement under heaven. Encounter is a time of great honor!!!



《象》曰：天下有風，《姤》。后以施命誥四方。
The image says: Below Heaven there is Wind, Encounter. The queen uses this to carry out her imperial mandate int the four directions.

The idea of wind below heaven indicates to me an exchange on a purely energetic level that is not to be cemented into the material. The sage uses this energy to draw into himself while simultaneously connecting to the will of heaven. This is a good time to see that our desires are not to be placed into the material realm, but to appreciate the ever-changing nature of the flow of energy, which at this time is pivoting.

Wilhelm writes:

This hexagram indicates a situation in which the principle of darkness, after having been eliminated, furtively and unexpectedly obtrudes again from within and below. Of its own accord the female principle comes to meet the male. It is an unfavorable and dangerous situation, and we must understand and promptly prevent the possible consequences.

on healthcare costs

The hot topic of the moment, and likely for the next few years unless something drastic happens, is healthcare. The Obama administration is attempting to revamp the insurance system, which is in dire straits. The question is, how to balance quality care with affordable care? The criticism for nationalized healthcare is that it becomes inefficient and slow, and lacks quality. People use Canada as an example. Though prioritization is certainly a problem when you have a lack of doctors and services, quality does not, necessarily need to suffer. This is the argument from the free-market champs who believe that the free-market is the only mechanism that can deliver the best quality. But as we've seen in the auto industry with respect to fuel efficiency, this is far from true. The so called "free-market" focuses on making profits, not delivering superior goods. The latter is only true if you have customers making informed honest decisions based on good information. But because corporations are required to make money, they often use obfuscation and dishonesty to bolster the image of their product. So we aren't operating in an environment where customers can really make informed decisions because they are being duped or expected to be experts in fields that they clearly can't be. (e.g. the recent financial crisis).

In terms of health insurance the problems are deeper because you: 1) don't know how sick you will be in the future, 2) can't understand exactly what you're buying and 3) the cost structures are inherently very complicated with rules about what is covered and what isn't. When you add in the necessity of healthcare, the customer not buying the product isn't really an option (though because of costs, it does happen). This sets up a market that is incredibly difficult to navigate for a customer. Therefore as customers we find ourselves in a position where the insurers want us to engage in "preventive medicine" but at the same time, they won't pick up the bill for such care.

As a future healthcare practitioner, I'm encouraged by examples of doctors who have tried alternative fee structures such as subscription services. For example, a doctor in New York, charges his patients $54-$130 a month depending on their age. They get unlimited access to him and he even makes house calls. He encourages his patients to get emergency coverage, and they have to pay for their own medications. But because he sees fewer patients, he gets to spend more than the disgustingly low average of 15 minutes with his clients. This extra time allows him to really streamline his patients treatments, often reducing the number of medications that they are on to half. This is real cost savings to the patient, and the system as well. Less referrals to specialists, and more patient-doctor interaction is a good thing for everyone.

on alternative medicine research

A big question arises in the scientific realm whether alternative medicine is actually helpful or not. Whereas alternative medicines like Chinese Medicine (CM) are bottom-up treatments (individually custom) with top-down (holistic) theories, western medicine is typically bottom-up theory (molecular and chemically based) and top-down treatment (applying the law of averages to individuals). This is the main problem of designing randomized controlled double-blind trials to a holistic theory medicine like CM. In western medicine, it is usually fairly straightforward to come up with a diagnosis for a common disease; there is typically a physical marker such as a blood count, antibody, or hormone level that can be tested and isolated outside of the body. But in CM such an isolation does not exist, and as a result we can see 5 patients with prostate enlargement and have 5 different reasons why each patient developed the enlargement. Moreover, the treatments will be completely different depending on the CM diagnosis.

In a recent article on alternative medicine research, the problems that are addressed don't even distinguish this important point. Instead of looking at the diagnostic criteria of an alternative medicine, most studies use conventional diagnoses and alternative treatments to measure effectiveness. Because of this very basic error in study design, the studies are largely unreliable. Most of the studies designed by practitioners of CM even miss this point, in an effort to try to "legitimize" their medicine. It is a difficult situation with no easy answers, because in actuality the 5 patient with prostate enlargement could see different doctors and have different diagnoses. This further complicates the problem in terms of designing studies in the typical western fashion, but what it does for the medicine is make it extremely powerful and potent. In CM we have individuals with particular lineages and viewpoints treating individuals with customized diseases. In conventional medicine you have individuals treating individuals according to the law of averages and statistics. Both are useful, but measuring the effectiveness of something like CM with western methods is not fruitful unless these differences are understood and taken into account when the study is designed. Until such a study is designed, it seems that case-based studies are our best avenue of information in CM.

the rhythm of life and light

Just read an interesting post about circadian rhythms and the classification of people into 3 categories: Hummingbirds (those that follow the normal sleep wake cycle of the sun), Larks (those that wake up very early and are at their best before noon), and Owls (those that don't peak until about 6pm or later). Apparently there are health benefits and risks associated with each group, the genetic factors of which largely contribute. But an important factor is exposure to light, especially sunlight:

" In brightly lit offices, the light levels are some 200-300 times less than they are outside on a sunny day. Even a cloudy day is some 20-30 times brighter."

So even though those fluorescent lights at work seem bright, they are still not cutting the mustard in terms of conditioning. When we add Vitamin D synthesis into the mix, the modern office worker is coming up short on two very big counts.

The article also discusses familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS) which is a genetic disorder where people fall asleep around 7:30pm and wake up around 3-4am. Though genetic, Chinese Medicine has a lot to say about such a disorder. The time of 5-7pm is considered the time of the Kidney in CM. This is the time when the yang qi is held by the yin qi for sleep (hexagram 12). If a person is yang deficient, they are going to be somnolent during this time: the yin qi is too great. At 3-4am we have hexagram 11, which is associated with the Lung. Here the opposite is true. Because the yang qi was deficient, the yin qi is not engendered at night causing a yin deficiency leading to early waking with up-rushing yang qi. So this type of a pattern could be a mixed deficiency picture of yin and yang, also known as yin and yang not communicating. The formula Si Ni Tang instantly comes to mind.