Kashmir's Shak

Sermons In Stones

"Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head; and this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it."
As You Like It
(Act II, scene i)

I am in debt to the many great physicians across Europe and North America who have instructed me through their practice, what it means to be a true consultant.

I have spent a lot of time in the health care system. MD’s all wear white coats, they all go through the same schooling and carry the same titles, but their practice exists along a spectrum, with prescribers on the one end and consultants on the other.

Whether it is the local GP, a specialist, a cardiologist, gynecologist, neurologist, psychologist, or (I am ashamed to admit) even oncologist’s, all medical doctors exist somewhere along this continuum between prescriber and consultant.

Patients also exist on a continuum between codependant and interdepandant.

Prescribers look at the disease first, then the patient. They attend to illness not health.

Prescribers diagnose the illness based on the best mix of solutions (pharmaceuticals) to ‘fix’ the patient. If the drugs don’t work they default to surgery or psychiatric therapy. A prescribers goal is to get through as many patients as they can in the shortest space of time.

The prescriber is the ‘wise one’ who has all the answers, his or her solutions must be obeyed. They talk at the patient, treat them like a child. They create a codependence that is the burden of any health care system.

Prescribers give patients more drugs than they need or often ever use.

Prescribers do not learn from their patients, they learn from the producers of drugs.

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie"
Alls Well That End's Well
(Act I, scene i)

Consultants look at the patient first, then the disease.

Consultants diagnose the patients thinking, work/play habits, diet, sleep, exercise, family history, environment in order to get to the root of the patient’s health.

Consultants know that the body is the world’s finest pharmacy. They help the patient build their self awareness and discover the own strength that resides within.

Consultants work with the patient to help them to raise their self awareness and take accountability for their own health and well being, educate and empower them to alter their own habits and take control of their own environment.

You can spot the diference between the consultant and the prescriber simply by the amount of medication they use.

Consultants free the patient from their dependance on the doctor, they lift the burden off the health care system and put it back on the patient's back.

I owe everything to these doctors. They taught me the difference between being a true consultant vs. a con-slut-ant. Realilze the difference between iiving a life and living a lie.

“Who worse than a physician would this report become? But I consider by medicine life may be prolonged, yet death will seize the doctor too”
Cymbeline
(Act V, scene iv)

Friendship Makes Us

"Thy friendship makes us fresh"
Henry VI, Part 1
Act 3, Scene iii

We are born alone and will die alone. Whilst we breathe, our lives are defined through our relationships with others.

As true friends we do more than share values and appreciate each others strengths and flaws. We refine our appreciation of ourselves, re-tune what it means to be alive, like two hands that wash each other, we wash out the confusion, help each other to discover what it means to be ourselves.

True friends are mid-wives of change. Not the whores of influence. A true friend draws out the power that is concealed deep within us and gives it back to us. A friend does not expect perfection or for us to be like them, they lower their own defenses and allow us to meet them full head on, they do not waste energy fearing being judged or passing judgment on us.

Every day I am confronted by people tormented because they choose to invest every minute, their very heart and soul into cutting down, sizing up and placing emotional judgments on others. The people consumed by the futility of this foolishness, fail to realize the energy it takes to hate another human being and just how much this poisons their own view of themselves.

Every day I am confronted by people who are tormented because they will not forgive themselves let for being human. They heap shame on themselves and shy away from compliments, they are in a position to lead their tribe in a new direction, but do not know how to forgive themselves or others for being human or celebrate the greatness that resides in their midst. Rather than enjoy whats going on, they are too busy rushing to the next big thing, heaping even more self criticism on for good measure. This activity tap spurns more time poverty, consumes them with negativity, which in turn gulps up precious time and engulfs their ability to do it right once.

The headlong obsession with activity is an addiction to self annihilation. The busy-ness runs so deep that interrupting it is more painful than continuing the pointless punishment, so the beat goes on.

We are born alone and will die alone. Whilst we still breathe, perhaps our lives should be lived and defined through our relationship with ourselves? By be-friending ourselves, we can get past the poisonous self to the real self imprisoned beyond our rational reach.

Perhaps we need to do more than wear our values like a worn out fashion accessory? Perhaps we should challenge others to be more of themselves and if we care enough about each other to do so, perhaps we need to give the same gift to ourselves?

"To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,
Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none"
Timon of Athens
Act I, Scene ii

Hidden Worthiness

CASSIUS: Then, Brutus, I have much mistook your passion;   
  By means whereof this breast of mine hath buried 
  Thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations.   
  Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?   
BRUTUS:  No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself,   
  But by reflection, by some other things.   
CASSIUS:   'Tis just: 
  And it is very much lamented, Brutus,   
  That you have no such mirrors as will turn   
  Your hidden worthiness into your eye,   
  That you might see your shadow.

Julius Caesar
Act I, Scene ii

The media is overflowing with fuss over the portrait of Shakespeare. What did he look like? This question has as much substance as how much a Van Gogh is auctioned for has to do with Vincent’s tormented expression of the beauty locked inside the anguish. The portrait debate is a distracts us from the beauty in his work, I don't need to know if he was bald or bohemian to be enriched by his contribution.

The masks (faces) we wear are so convincing that we bow willingly in servitude to our own lies. When we take our own self portraits too seriously it consumes our lives to the point of extinction.

I went to dinner with a wonderful friend in Washington last night. She is beautiful but she is consumed with so much self-torment that you have to wait patiently to catch a glimpse of who she really is, beyond the thick haze of all her self hatred. She is wrapped up so tight, she has bound up her natural beauty in severe judgments of what has and has not happened in her life. Who has said what and did what or not to whom and all that. . .

She blames the past for the pain but the pain she is experiencing is not in the past, it is right here, in this very moment.  Her husband died recently after a long painful struggle and then she lost her sister. I cannot presume to know her pain, no one can, this pain is hers and hers alone. This pain will not wear out over the years, it will remain inside her for the rest of her life. She cannot afford to bury it nor be consumed by it. It hurts like hell, it is there, it is just what it is and it will always be there.

She struggles with the losses and the pain, this struggle has become her face, her mask, her lens on the universe and her own existence. She has built a fragile wall of anger around herself. She is consumed with anger at the people who are gone and her intense love for them. She is struggling to make sense of it all, as if an emotional condition can be resolved with an intellectual balm.

Her struggles are as much a cause of the torment as the justifiable pain for the tragic losses and suffering.

She is so intense that she has become a caricature of her suffering.

She is so busy labeling life as good or bad, people as right or wrong, that she turns this same vicious judgment on her own life, her own self. It is no accident that the way she sees her situation and life is burned by this same anger.

Occasionally she will laugh and the room lights up with her deep chuckle, the pain is not far below the surface but at least for these brief moments it is not defining who or what she is.

All I see is a dam of beauty being held check, diverted from its natural currency and flow back into the ocean of life and death.

What do we look like? Who knows? Who cares? It is who we are right now that counts, we are much more than our labels. What did Shakespeare look like? Which portrait is real, which one is fake? Who really gives a fuck! We have too much going on right here right now in front us to pay attention to such foolishness.

I see a friend wrapped up inside her pain. I do not look at her face. I push past her self portrayal.

All I can do is look into her eyes in the hope she may catch a glimpse of her own beauty in the reflection of the love in my eye for her.