Universal Healing Salves

    Along with Thomas Moore's The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life I've been introduced to another writer recently, who reflects on another time and place where people have pondered life's meaning, asking What's it all about? or "Is This All There Is?"

     Easy to imagine it in our day and age, with mindless television to numb us, blaring ads to detach us, stimulating games to entertain us, endless technology ever shortening our already shortened ADD attention spans...

     But to think that questioning life's meaning has been around  as long as we've had brains with which to reflect, well to me, that's a reflection unto itself.

     The following is an excerpt from The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Path of the Warrior, Healer, Teacher and Visionary, by Angeles Arrien, PhD:

      In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complying of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions:

When did you stop dancing?

     When did you stop singing?

            When did you stop being enchanted by stories?

                   When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experienced loss of the soul.

Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.