May/June 2003 Alternative Health
Living Homeopathically in Time of War

by Doug Brown

What does it mean to live one’s life homeopathically?

The homeopathic recognition of the vital force points to a more general principle of accepting our own participation in the condition in which we find ourselves. The allopathic model is a kind of warfare, focused on identifying an infectious agent, or defective organ and rooting them out or vanquishing them.

The homeopathic viewpoint is quite different. Rather than conceptualizing illness as something external that happens to us, we postulate the existence of a vital force which expresses symptoms based on our reaction to, and, more deeply, our perception of, the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Disease is not so much something that we are passive victims of, but rather the form and manner by which our vital force expresses its distress.

What lessons might this provide us in our daily lives? For one thing it reinforces the necessity of looking within. We participate–usually not consciously--in our own suffering. While pain may be imposed from without, suffering is a participatory affair.

While others are certainly involved, it is our suffering that we feel, and no attack on others will cure our tendency to engage in whatever pattern it was that led to the particular quality of suffering. Relief from suffering is obtained not by changing others, but by changing ourselves. In fact, the only effective way to change others is to change ourselves, as it is our very pattern of perception and reaction which entrains others in the cycle of suffering we have unwittingly engaged in.

Reactivity is a core aspect of illness. In homeopathy, when we potentize a substance we are left with an echo, a nonmaterial ripple full of meaning and devoid of compulsion.

Is there a lesson in this? Perhaps it is not too much of a stretch to say that homeopathy is proof of the power of nonviolence. Killing is not only not necessary, it is beside the point. It further contributes to a cycle of attack and victimization that perpetuates the suffering. Just as the pen is mightier than the sword, self-understanding and consciousness are superior to force and compulsion in responding to whatever situation we find ourselves in.

What is it in the U.S. national psyche and polity that leads us to become embroiled with the dehumanization of the enemy and with terror destruction as a means of control and intimidation?

Perceived homeopathically, the U.S. is in a state characterized by high levels of violence. Having developed this state in a high intensity, we attract terror and destruction in much the same way a debilitated, tubercular patient will attract to himself mycobacteria. While we do not have remedies that can be put on the tongues of nations, we know from our craft the extraordinary power of consciousness. And it is only through our consciousness that we can save ourselves from the deadly path we are treading.

We can see in our work with patients that what we do not either express or acknowledge of our inner condition becomes not only projected, but embedded, in the world we perceive as external to us. Just as Jung spoke of the importance of owning, of reclaiming our projections, we must call for the acknowledgment of our own participation in the cycle of violence and terror that is engulfing our country and those that we choose to lock horns with in conflict.

We witness with homeopathy that the relief of suffering entails a clear perception of the patient’s own condition, rather than the identification of external enemies. One must go directly to the heart of the suffering, through the pain, rather than around it, to reach a cure. It seems to me that we have a great many more choices than we have been led to believe, and I, for one, will uphold the power of the minimum dose and the echoes and ripples of insight and compassion over bombs and invasions.

Doug Brown, CCH, FNP, RSHom is a graduate of Yale University School of Nursing and the Hahnemann College of Homeopathy. He became a homeopath when after 11 years of working with conventional medicine as a Family Nurse Practitioner he remained dissatisfied with its failure to cure chronic disease and with its fragmentation of care. He treats children and adults in Portland, OR, and Walla Walla, WA, and can be reached at (503) 253-6334, or by email at healing@teleport.com