Begin the Beguine

I have recently had some time to reflect on what it is exactly I am trying to do out here in Denver. While it is not unheard of, changing careers and pursuing a completely new course of study at my age may seem to some people slightly irresponsible and mildly self indulgent. Especially when one considers that I have no prior training or educational background in any healing art, Western or otherwise. But I will not be starting from the ground up. I will be building upon a foundation of tacit understanding and intuition. This is knowledge we all have. We know when someone we love isn’t feeling well just by looking at them. We know when a friend is depressed without even having to ask. Our bodies tell us things about our selves and others, we just have to listen. We all know what it feels like to be healthy and we know all too well what it feels like to be out of health. It is this shared human knowledge that will be my support as I begin my training.


Chinese medicine is built on a completely different system of understanding than Western medicine. Chinese medical traditions date back over 2,000 years and are based on the teachings of the Tao. I am not a student of Taoism. However, as I have begun to learn about Taoist practices I find them natural and intuitive. But I am a Westerner and have been brought up in Western schools and institutions. Psychologist C. G. Jung had some wonderful insights when he began to study Chinese texts based in the Tao. I would like to share some of his Commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower with you.


“A thorough Westerner in feeling, I cannot but be profoundly impressed by the strangeness of this Chinese text. It is true that some knowledge of Eastern religions and philosophies helps my intellect and my intuition to understand these things up to a point, just as I can understand the paradoxes of primitive beliefs in terms of “ethnology” or “comparative religion.” This is of course the Western way of hiding one’s heart under the cloak of so-called scientific understanding. We do it partly because the misérable vanité des savants fears and rejects with horror any sign of living sympathy, and partly because sympathetic understanding might transform contact with an alien spirit into an experience that has to be taken seriously”.

“Anyone who belittles the merits of Western science is undermining the foundations of the Western mind. Science is not indeed a perfect instrument, but it is a superb and invaluable tool that works harm only when it is taken as an end in itself. Science must serve; it errs when it usurps the throne. It must be ready to serve all its branches, for each, because of its insufficiency, has need of support from the others. Science is the tool of the Western mind, and with it one can open doors with bare hands. It is part and parcel of our understanding, and it obscures our insight only when it claims that the understanding it conveys is the only kind there is. The East teaches us another, broader, more profound, and higher understanding- understanding through life. We know this only by hearsay, as a shadowy sentiment of expressing a vague religiosity, and we are fond of putting “Oriental wisdom” in quotation marks and banishing it to the dim region of faith and superstition. But that is wholly to misunderstand the realism of the East. Texts of this kind to not consist of the sentimental, overwrought mystical intuitions of pathological cranks and recluses, but are based on the practical insights of highly evolved Chinese minds, which we have not the slightest justification for undervaluing”.


I have such an appreciation for what Jung says here. I already have encountered philosophies that have been very difficult to wrap my Cartesian brain around, and if you come along with me on this journey you will as well. Indeed, it would be so easy to brand these Eastern ideas as superstition or voodoo. It would also be a mistake to fain open-mindedness and except them head on without any digestion or assimilation into our Western thought systems. That would not be true understanding, only mimicry that is so common in this “New Age.”


“A Chinese can always fall back on the authority of his whole civilization. If he starts out on the long way, he is doing what is recognized as being the best thing he could possibly do. But the Westerner who wishes to set out on this way, if he is really serious about it, has all authority against him – intellectual, moral and religious”.


There will be people in my life that will simply refuse to understand the path I have chosen to travel. I can accept that.


“The individual must devote himself to the way with all his energy, for it is only by means of his integrity that he can go further, and his integrity alone can guarantee that his way will not turn out to be an absurd misadventure”.


I wanted this first post to give the reader a bit of insight into my approach on learning the subject matter. I hope that it has been interesting reading for you. Future posts will be more journal oriented and will discuss topics that are covered in my classes. I may get philosophical from time to time and I invite all of you to comment and contact me with questions.


So with love and excitement in my heart I go forward, and leave you with one last thought from Jung:


“A growing familiarity with the spirit of the East should be taken merely as a sign that we are beginning to relate to the alien elements within ourselves. Denial of our historical foundations would be sheer folly and would be the best way to bring about another uprooting of consciousness. Only by standing firmly on our own soil can we assimilate the spirit of the East”.


-C.G. Jung, Commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower