EXISTENTIAL EXPLORATION

Beads on a Cord: Inheritance, Medicine, Madness and Prophecy

“Story is our only boat for sailing on the river of time, but in the great rapids and the winding shallows, no boat is safe.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea

At last, we arrive at Prophecy. At what surfaces when we stop clinging to the overhanging branch and surrender to the wider current.

Receiving and channeling prophecy demands conversing and creating with the unknown. It means daring to be original even as one discovers that anything “original” is old as time.

There’s an important thread in this line we’re tracing — from Inheritance through Medicine then Madness to Prophecy.

Prayer beads on a shared string. Fragile skin on sacred spheres. No beginning. No end. Round and round we go. Reciting. Reverent. Forgetting. Remembering.

With Inheritance, all that we get upon arrival and all that we inherit along the way determines us — body, form, and beyond. This human bequeathment holds tremendous treasure and unbearable heartbreak.

Except, we do bear it. We survive, until we do not.

In the meanwhile, before crossing the threshold from here to not here, our path is not only marked by hurt and heartbreak, but also Medicine.

All that offers hope and light. All that reminds us to return home again. To re-inhabit a more whole, more connected expression of self. A more whole, more connected expression of what is moving and manifesting through us.

In this partaking — in this communion — with Medicine, what we took as normal no longer makes sense. Old stories, opinions, and beliefs. Worn handholds on me and mine and rightness and righteousness.

These fall away or, at least, soften. Dissonance between what we’re up to and what actually matters comes into sharp relief. Us in our orbit. Our species as a dominant, domineering collective.

So much destruction. So much loss. Such a shame.

In calling this out and ourselves out — in choosing Madness rather than playing along with a mad, mad world — we arrive at a freer, more honest place.

A place of finally voicing what we knew all along, even if just to ourselves.

Namely, that none of us knows much of anything. Namely, that most of what we claim to know is made up.

What remains — what still feels important and true — is shared and sacred. The Oceans. The Trees. Breath. Being-ness. Love at its most elemental. Its most essential.

If this is Madness, I choose it. And, in choosing Medicine and Madness over what is familiar and constructed and dulling and destructive, we open a door, a pathway, a conduit.

From here, we invite Prophecy. From here, Prophecy moves through. Arriving to shape Inheritance…offer Medicine…dance with Madness…lead into Prophecy again.

Beads on a cord. Held for a while, in human hands.

Thank you for reading. I’m a doctor of Chinese Medicine and write about sobriety and soulful living. Find all my links here: