The pursuit of healing and the quest for truth have long been intertwined branches on the tree of human inquiry. From all corners of the Earth, from the beginning of time, people have both sought medicines and sought to create systems of medicine based on clear principles that could be passed from generation to generation. With widely diverse epistemologies, these traditions and practices have arisen from unique sets of circumstances that have shaped their paradigms of healing. Consequently, contextual truths have emerged, i.e. systems of medicine that operate with excellence within the parameters of their own principles, but whose principles very widely from one to the next. From a phenomenological perspective, this presents a curious conundrum: if truth is one, a fundamental principle that all spiritual traditions have upheld, then how can the varying underlying truths of these paths be reconciled? Logically, what is needed to accomplish this is thus a level of awareness that has sufficient meta-perspective to see above and beyond the provisional truths upheld in each myriad path. Ultimately, the system of philosophy or religion with the broadest understanding would be the one most capable of containing the greatest diversity of healing paradigms within the breadth of its net of truth. Just as the sailor traveling with the most accurate chart is most likely to arrive at his or her destination, so too is the tradition that supplies the finest cartography of what it means to be a human being going to provide the best map in each person’s journey to health of the body, mind, heart, soul and spirit.

Naturopathy and Chinese Medicine are examples of two traditions with roots separated by both time and location, with two very different maps of the terrain of health, but which are being used concurrently by an increasing number of practitioners. This too raises an important question: How does a two thousand year old system of medicine from the East have similar ideas with a two hundred year old method from the West? Interestingly, what unites these two methodologies is precisely the piece that is missing in the puzzle of Western medicine. This keystone principle, embedded in both these traditions, is that there is a self-organizing intelligence inherent in living systems that serves to maintain the health of the organism on all levels. To the Naturopath, this self-healing property is called “The Vital Force,” long recognized as the innate wisdom to restore and then to preserve homeostasis of the individual. For the practitioner of Oriental medicine, this same property has been known as ‘Qi,’ the functional energy of life that regulates and harmonizes all activities. Hence, the holistic practitioners of both East and West have a similar intent and primary goal within their respective traditions, i.e. to awaken this capacity for healing that is innate in all beings.

However, while solving for a missing piece in Western medicine by acknowledging the energy behind the process of healing, both Naturopathy and Chinese medicine are themselves incomplete in answering the deeper question of whence this energy itself originates. The intent to solve this inquiry is firmly established within the heart and soul of Sufism, a spiritual path deeply rooted in the understanding that all systems, including those governing healing, fall under the domain of a divine source of universal intelligent energy. From the perspective of this ancient gnostic epistemology, all energy emanates from one source, one creative field of energy that is the origin of everything in existence including the energy of self-healing. In Sufi terms this is the realm of the divine, the center of all charts, the creative force that is the source of all but which remains unique in its qualities of being self-subsisting and eternal. What is known in the West as Vital Force and in the East as Qi are thus properly seen as sub-sets of a unified field of energy to which existence is endemic and which is the root and branch of all healing processes. The healer is effective to the degree that he or she is in service to this Unity; the patient benefits by the curative energy that arrives as a beneficent dispensation from this divine source of infinite potential. Medicine, in whatever form it takes, ceases to be inert substance or technical procedure, and becomes instead energy and matter shimmering with the light of this holy blessing, infused with the potential to bring us into deeper unity with the source at the center.

By witnessing that the capacity for self-healing is indeed one iteration of this universal energy field with the observed outcome of ease of suffering and increase in well-being, the Sufi draws the logical and happy conclusion that what generates the Vital Force and Qi is at its most intrinsic level an omniscient consciousness governed by the spirit of mercy and compassion. Aware of this divine presence, the Naturopath still seeks to awaken the Vital Force, but now does so by being conscious of what foods, exercises and activities will serve to best realign the patient with the sacred energy that is the very root of life. Similarly, the Chinese medicine practitioner continues to do acupuncture and to prescribe herbal formulas, but now with the deeper wisdom of how to open the meridians so as to increase the patient’s direct tasting of the universal energy of love, peace, mercy, holiness and freedom. With the illuminated wisdom of Sufism lighting the way, and the complete map of the human potential revealed, the path of the healer becomes one of surrender to the conscious energy and presence of the divine. The practice of medicine is therefore elevated to become an act of service and loving compassion wherein the patient receives the spiritual healing of walking towards increased proximity with the Source, Reason and Destination of his or her own existence, the very essence of Love itself.