Imagination Instead of Blame

Southern Cross, Australian Bush Flower (wikimedia commons)

"In recent years some have spoken against a metaphoric view of disease because they don't want us 'blaming' patients for their physical problems. If cancer is related to a person's way of life, they complain, we will hold the individual responsible for an illness over which he has no control. It is true that blaming a person for his disease only leads to guilt, and no increase in imagination. Yet, in Sardello's words, 'The object of therapeutic treatment is to return imagination to the things that have become only physical.' Whenever we place blame, we are looking for a scapegoat for a real dislocation which is difficult to find and in which we ourselves, as individuals and as a society, are implicated. Blame is a defensive substitute for an honest examination of life that seeks guidance in our mistakes. Fundamentally it is a way of averting consciousness of error. Sardello recommends that if our hearts are attacking us or if cancer is immersing us in fantasies of death, then we should listen to these symptoms and adjust life accordingly. Rather than blame, we could respond. Listening to the messages of the body is not the same as blaming the patient."

~ Thomas Moore in Care of the Soul

What I like about this view is that it provides us with the ability to step back from standard thoughts about ourselves and others; to allow some relational space between body and soul; to realize that there is more to life than what we can see or touch, or even feel. With each passing year, energy medicine gains ground and more people awaken to the possibility that we each have let circumstances influence and control us on an unconscious level. Imagination is powerful and empowering...