When You Tire of Solving the Self, Click Here.

Medicine awaits you.

“People in our hungry modern world are always scraping at the clay of their hearts. They have a new thought, a new plan, a new syndrome, that now explains why they are the way they are…

In nature we do not see the trees, for instance, getting seriously involved in the therapeutic analysis of their own root systems or the whole stony world that they had to avoid on their way to the light.

Each tree grows in two directions at once, into the darkness and out to the light with as many branches and roots as it needs to embody its wild desires.”

— John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

When we emerge into this world, we inherit our lot and the lot of others. We inherit the actions of others and, more to point, we inherit our actions.

With each breath, a choice. With each choice, consequences big and small, inner and outer. Every thought brings a shift in feeling. Every feeling, a response.

Body, mind, spirit. Beings born and unborn. Surrounds seen and unseen. Nothing untouched. All giving and receiving reverberations.

Whether of a thought, a feeling, or an action.

Whether as a whisper or a wave.

Some call naming this — seeing our part and claiming agency — radical accountability. I do too, at times. More often, I call it Buddhism, Taoism, the Hermetic Law of Cause and Effect, or, simply, karma.

Merging lineages with novice eyes. Doing the very thing I rail against. I have no defence but to say, I practice. In that practice, I look for true, felt, common threads.

I mention all this because most mornings lately, I’ve been writing about Medicine. I mention all this as a teaching and a disclaimer.

First, the teaching: Our actions have consequences. So do our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and stories. Each energetic leaving an imprint. Each instant rippling and ricocheting in ways we cannot predict and can never fully know.

We inherit a great deal from others and from our circumstances, yes. Sometimes all manner of difficult things. Sometimes things no one should endure.

Also, we create our Inheritance along the way. We define our existence. We are the ultimate protagonist and antagonist in our being and continuous becoming.

Seeing this already changes things. Seeing this is already Medicine.

But there’s more. Because amidst all that we inherit from others and self — amidst the parts we pray would transform or wish never were — we find Medicine too. Poison and anecdote, humiliation and redemption, wounds and gifts. Same Source.

We inherit our perfect Medicine and, also, we create it.

Arising in body and form, we are born into memory. Places of strength. Places of struggle. All passed along. All making their way through the ancestors to find us.

Sometimes, this feels a curse. Sometimes, perhaps it is. And, it might just be the cure.

Holding this memory, moving about in shape and name, we then make memories of our own. We inherit the curses and cures of our own patterns, actions, and weaving of self.

This is not separate from what came before — from our original Inheritance or reverberations of long agos and never knowns. It dances with them. We dance with them. We are…a continuation.

Along the way, Medicine also arrives from others and from outside ourselves. It appears in forms recognizable. It appears in forms beyond us — beyond all we think we know and clamour to name.

All manner of helpers and guides are on this path. No need to unravel their mystery or solve the self.

Just Medicine. Just connection. Just salvation.

These threads are not separate or even distinguishable, really: The Medicine that comes from original Inheritance. The Medicine born of our own agency. The Medicine that arrives from sources known and unknown.

All part of a single spiral. All the same in a wider whole. Separated here to make meaning. Separated here to, perhaps, be useful.

Which brings us to the disclaimer.

First, the Medicine meant for me isn’t always meant for you. The Medicine meant for the now me isn’t always meant for me in other places and times. We each have things to work out. We each have the perfect way of doing it.

I will not pretend to know what that is. For me. For you. For any of us.

Today’s obsession with solving the self — with aggressively analyzing, dissecting, labeling, and by all means figuring it out — feels violent and more of the same.

Ignorance.

Arrogance.

Too much noise and too much doing.

Too much assuming that one sliver of one conscious mind knows better than the silent darkness orchestrating creation.

So, what you’ll find in my writing is shorthand. Sketches of Medicine received and created along the way.

Never the answer.

Never claiming to know.

Always with a reverent bow to ancestors and lineages that came before, gracing us with their learnings and wisdom and practices. Also with humble acknowledgement that my own healing and learning is ever unfinished.

In this expression of cosmic dust, the path of practice continues. Reaching into the light and into the darkness. Until we are all undone.

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