“Renouncing the Medical Model”
Photograph by John Diamond, M.D.
As a doctor, my work was to help, to encourage, to treat, perhaps even at times to heal. Always underneath is a degree, often a large degree, of preaching, of fear-mongering: “Do this – or else.” The other day I overheard a (lay) “healer” telling a “patient” that he could possibly come to need a colostomy. Telling – terrorizing.
The more I renounce the medical model, the more I find myself not diagnosing (there’s always some fear actuated when a diagnosis – however mild – is given), not preaching, not doing anything but suggesting, positing, certain activities that can – if so Meant – help them to find their Souls, and so Embrace their Lives. And to gratefully accept them.
Not to preach surrender – “You will now surrender yourself!” – but to come – if so Meant – to Realize that always we are Surrendered.
That seems to be what the Ancients meant by the Tao.
