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- Richard Whelan

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- Ancient wisdom in the modern world

Corruption

I met corruption in a pharmacy today a sweet smelling, well-packaged face for a thousand little white lies peddled by confident, complicit assistants no one is wrong to seek comfort, relief but without facing the cause when the treatment has no end in sight there is a strange corruption - there is a greed in it I come back here, this quiet little cave looking at tongues, feeling pulses playing matchmaker with a hundred, harmless, promiscuous herbs where I get to witness the most extraordinary things living miracles, healing that which makes the sickness sacred and necessary

Further thoughts:
The idea that a sickness could be sacred is, of course, utterly repugnant when one is in the middle of some ghastly set of symptoms. The seemingly endless ways that our minds and bodies can manage to suffer is truly appalling to contemplate.

And yet, what happens when the illness has passed in a way that has not been bludgeoned into numbness by drugs but rather through a true healing process?

Here I hear a recurring theme.

Time and again I've witnessed how after people get better from a long illness they describe the same feelings when they are looking back at their problems.

"as crazy as this sounds I'm almost glad I went through all that, as much as I hated it at the time I can see now how I needed to go through it..."

So I say, the sacred sickness.

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