Animal Medicine, Human Paradigms

Each animal species has a particular consciousness. So each flavor of consciousness is a particular medicine.

Hawks skillfully spot prey, and dive in for the kill. Owls listen into the night and silent stalk. Mice scurry around, collecting details. Each animal, a bundle of instincts for its particular eco-niche. And so Self incarnates in a particular reality that is an animal, and learns that particular way of surviving in the world. This is medicine.

So the medicine women and the magic man connects you with the medicine you need. Too obsessed? A taste of being flaky. Too flighty? A taste of being grounded. Too conventional? Let me introduce you to a trickster. Here is something lost for your disconnected self, a further completion of being that never left.

When we talk about "paradigm" though, we tend to talk in terms of systems. We acquire them like little idols. Souvenirs for the soul. Badges to put on your social network profile. "Look at me! I am X!" Shopping therapy for the paradigm-starved. The more studious, perhaps, mix and match. Or attempt to create their own. "Get a complete set, and you get +1 to Awesome Jedi Powers!"

The original meaning of paradigm relates to the meaning of paragon. The word has that crystalline flavor of a Platonic Ideal. It goes beyond the collection of assumptions and axioms one maps out intellectually: it relates to the very reality-space your being vibrates in. Paradigm is experienced, not abstracted.

Just as we incarnate as different animals, we incarnate in different paradigms. A hippie vibrates in a different reality than a punk. A maker vibrates in a different reality than a businessman. Likewise, traditions, cultures, and subcultures all allow people to vibrate within its manifold. This too is medicine.

Conservation of animals has less to do with animal cruelty. Predators eat prey. Prey are eaten by predators. Was that cruel? Does that mean animals have rights? Shall we be eco-terrorists for all the two-legged carnivores? Nay, conservation of endangered animals has more to do with conservation of medicine. A species that dies out means that particular consciousness -- that particular medicine -- dies out. Lost, at least for us time-bound bodies.

Likewise, conservation of traditions and cultures have more to do with conservation of medicine than with politically-correct notions of diversity. It's not that all cultures are created equal. Some cultures are fantastically abusive. Yet, perhaps there's medicine there.

Avoiding paradigm-bashing has less to do with "all paradigms are valid." Sure, some paradigms are more idiotic than others. Maybe the idiot is you. After all, we're each thrashing our way through the transmigration of souls.

Namaste

Hello Qaexl.

Hmm. You say that animal consciousnesses are forms of medicine. And that when we lose something in reality we lose some medicine. Do we lose the ability to cure ourselves as well then, when we lose a part of the world? Or perhaps our own world? Perhaps I'm asking too many questions. Does that make me an idiot. Or perhaps you're an idiot for suggesting it to the readers? Or perhaps the finest fool? Well fools doth think themselves wise, but the wise know themselves to be fools. We all play the fool at times. Sometimes the foolish lecture and the wise respond, or perhaps even more fools...

But again, back to your idea... What do you think about Paracelsus and his idea that everything is poison, not medicine. Poison. Medicine. Just a small bit of poison makes a remarkable cure. But too much and your medicine will be poison quite pure. Yes, the fools and wise. We each play our proper role at the right moment. I'm sorry you, obsessed me with that line of thought by suggesting possible idiocy of the reader, guessing I'm a bigger idiot for being the first to respond.

But I'll tell you truly. I am mad. And for now that's good enough for me. For now at least.

Medicine. Your Animal Animistic Spirituality
Poison. Paracelsus' idea of Poisonous Reality
Pharmakon. That which is both poison and cure. Derrida's Hegelian transformation. The poison is the cure and the cure is the poison based on the decisions you make around the moments of its use.

Well what do you... "your choice of word" ?

I am not familiar with Paracelsus's precise teaching. If I had to guess, I'd say it is similar to the Tathāgata: medicine is poison in the Maya. I'm speaking of non-duality here. It's easy to chase your own tail when you push symbols around. I suppose that is medicine-poison too.

-Qaexl

The Dream That Must Be Interpreted
(Rumi)

This place is a dream.
Only a sleeper considers it real.

Then death comes like dawn,
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought was your grief.

But there's a difference with this dream.
Everything cruel and unconscious
done in the illusion of the present world,
all that does not fade away at the death-waking.

It stays,
and it must be interpreted.

All the mean laughing,
all the quick, sexual wanting,
those torn coats of Joseph,
they change into powerful wolves
that you must face.

The retaliation that sometimes comes now,
the swift, payback hit,
is just a boy's game
to what the other will be.

You know about circumcision here.
It's full castration there!

And this groggy time we live,
this is what it's like:

A man goes to sleep in the town

where he has always lived, and he dreams he's living

in another town.

In the dream, he doesn't remember

the town he's sleeping in his bed in. He believes

the reality of the dream town.

The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities
settles over us like a forgetful doze,
but we are older than those cities.

We began

as a mineral. We emerged into plant life

and into the animal state, and then into being human,

and always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we slightly recall

being green again.

That's how a young person turns

toward a teacher. That's how a baby leans

toward the breast, without knowing the secret

of its desire, yet turning instinctively.

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,
through this migration of intelligences,
and though we seem to be sleeping,
there is an inner wakefulness
that directs the dream,

and that will eventually startle us back
to the truth of who we are.

From Essential Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

Apparently, some non-shamans developed a theory of animal medicine, called umwelt or umwelten.

You can experience it a bit for yourself in the digital world with XKCD's 2012 April Fool's joke: http://xkcd.com/1037/

Try it with different browsers and browser sizes.