On Health & Healing
Health cannot exist without disease and healing is impossible without traversing the chaotic struggle of illness. Thus, healing involves a risk, a sacrifice or loss of something, a death of some kind. It demands great courage and willpower on your part because you must be willing to risk life in order to win life. As Paul Tillich informs us, “Life must risk itself in order to win itself, but in the risking it may lose itself. A life which does not risk disease--even in the highest forms of the life of the spirit--is a poor life.” This willingness to risk yourself for greater life is the key that opens the door to the wellspring of creativity inside of you and the ever increasing richness and renewal inherent in the creative process. It is what transforms you... what heals you.
The transition from life through death to new life is the Hero’s journey. It is the journey of life’s continuous creation. As the characters in life’s story, we are all assured of this journey if we are willing to periodically risk ourselves and surrender the illusory security of our comfort zones to engage the possibility of egoic death by living more passionately, openly, authentically and creatively as The One. By consciously engaging the possibility of egoic death, we are assured life. By consciously engaging the possibility of illness, we are assured healing.
“We have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” (Joseph Campbell, PhD)
(From, "The Face of Consciousness: A Guide to Self-Identity and Healing" by P. Donovan & H. Joiner Bey, 2006)
The transition from life through death to new life is the Hero’s journey. It is the journey of life’s continuous creation. As the characters in life’s story, we are all assured of this journey if we are willing to periodically risk ourselves and surrender the illusory security of our comfort zones to engage the possibility of egoic death by living more passionately, openly, authentically and creatively as The One. By consciously engaging the possibility of egoic death, we are assured life. By consciously engaging the possibility of illness, we are assured healing.
“We have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” (Joseph Campbell, PhD)
(From, "The Face of Consciousness: A Guide to Self-Identity and Healing" by P. Donovan & H. Joiner Bey, 2006)
Dr. Donovan is a Naturopathic Physician, author, educator, and a professor of clinical medicine at Bastyr University's Natural Health Clinic. In 2010 he was voted by his professional peers as one of Seattle’s Top Doctors in the Seattle Metropolitan Magazine. Dr. Donovan writes and lectures on the transformational process of healing and believes a person’s healing journey is ultimately a quest for his/her identity, purpose and meaning. He has more than 35 years of patient care experience as a Registered Nurse (RN) and a Naturopathic Physician (ND), representing a wide range of clinical settings from hospital-based surgical and intensive care as a registered nurse to outpatient primary care as a physician.
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