BERNIE By Bernie Siegel, MD
Create Your Orchestra I
f you want to be separated from people become deaf. If you want to be separated from things become blind. Sound affects us because it creates the rhythm we live or die by. Sound effects are real and can lead to healing or disease. The word Aum, or some spell it Om, when repeated creates a meditative state. Try it for a few minutes and you will see what the sound and the vibra- tions do to you. The words you keep repeating to yourself become the script of your life and the mottoes you live or die by.
What voices do you keep hearing? Are the messages from
your past mottoes you live by or mottoes you are dying by? The words of the authorities in our lives be they parents, educators or clergy, keep being replayed and are hypnotic for the child. The hypnotic effect may kill or cure depending on the message they gave you. If they told you there was something wrong with you and that life was a disaster they did not know the truth because of how they were parented.
You can silence their voices by abandoning the past nonsense they dumped upon you. What you hear from the voices of your past is only what you are willing to listen to. You can edit them out and censor their comments. You must believe in your intrinsic value and divine nature to do this.
How do you help troubled friends? If you had to be blind or
deaf tomorrow which would you choose? When we give advice to people who are not prepared for it or unwilling to change, nothing is accomplished except frustration and separation. Helen Keller made it very clear that deafness is darker by far than blindness. We are separated from each other by deafness and not listening to each other.
I have learned that when people in my family come to me for help and I tell them what to do they always say, “You are no help.” But when I listen and say, “Mmmmmm” for twenty minutes, with varying inflections they always say, “Thank you. You have been an enormous help.” Why the difference? Because when we are will- ing to listen to others they hear themselves, realize their needs and where their solutions lie.
There is only one thing we control, our thoughts. We cannot
control what happens in our lives due to other people and various afflictions. We can control how we react and what we do with the events and thus establish rhythm in our life. Rhythm will vary from person to person. Some like a loud and fast paced life and others are comfortable with a slow, quiet pace. Some of us are sleepless because of the noise of a city and others lie awake listening to peepers filling the country air with the sounds of nature.
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Find your rhythm. It is not an accident that a trained, athlete’s heart will beat at 60 beats a minute or that there are sixty sec- onds in a minute or that slow, baroque music, such as Pachelbel’s Canon, relaxes everyone in the operating room. Listen to that pace and you relax. Think how you would feel if your clock was ticking at the rate of one hundred seconds a minute.
Find your pace and live it. Life is a marathon, but you don’t
have to finish first to be a winner. The loudest sound I have ever heard is silence. Take the time
to listen to what is going on inside your mind and body. Silence your intellect and listen to the wisdom of the ages which are avail- able to you. The cost is less than cable or satellite but can be more frightening to those who are unwilling to silence their intellect and put aside their fears and just listen.
Go out and let nature surround you. Listen to the sounds of
water, wind, birds, animals and more. Then listen to the sounds of society…horns, engines, sirens. Tell me which heals and which sickens you? Which brings you peace and which brings you anxi- ety? Which reminds you of who you are and where you are and which reminds you of what you should be doing and where you should be doing it?
Let nature surround you and bring peace to all your senses. Nature is in harmony and man is not. Create your orchestra and orchestrate your life and your symphony.
For many, Dr. Bernard Siegel-or Bernie, as he prefers to be called-needs no introduction. He has touched many lives all over the Planet. In 1978, he reached a national and then international audience when he began talking about patient empowerment and the choice to live fully and die in peace. Read Bernie’s
regular blog posts on his website where you will also find his books, articles, and CDs:
http://www.berniesiegelmd.com. He is the Co-Academic Director of the Integrative Health and Healing M.A. Program at The Graduate Institute, Bethany, CT
Bernie currently holds a cancer support group the second and fourth Tuesday afternoons of the month 1:30-3:30PM at Coach- man’s Square at 21 Bradley Road, Woodbridge. If interested contact Lucille Ranciato:
lranciato2@yahoo.com 203 288 2839; or Bernie:
bugsyssiegel@sbcglobal.net. You can find Bernie’s books ad CDs at Wisdom of the Ages in Simsbury, Ct. See ad on page 9.
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