You know writer's block?  I suffer from writer's flood.  Which is to say that when I sit down to write, I'm so overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I could write that I don't write.  Like... do I write about how I woke up this morning feeling like a changed person?  How suddenly I felt compelled to action in a way that wasn't going to manifest in passionate list-making or hour long conversations with my partner (that result in no action)?  Do I talk about how I just got up then, at 5am, and took my dog for a 45 minute long walk like I've been promising to do for two years?  Do I talk about how I'm waiting to hear back from the President's office at my school to see if I've been selected to participate in an awesome project?  About how impossible it is to find a job when you're energetically repelling every opportunity that comes your way because, really, you want to do a whole bunch of things that have nothing to do with working a 9-5?  About how much I am falling in love with Chinese medicine every day and how I feel that I am finally able to write about it (at www.deepesthealth.com)?  About how much promise I see in Zaadz and how I'm going to devote many hours over the next couple of weeks learning its ins and outs so I can become a fully participating member of the community?

I just don't know.  So, I'll start with that.

Eric

My other online presences are so focused - I find it nice to have a place where I feel comfortable mixing that more directed work and my more personal stuff.  Today I got the call that I will be one of the superstar team at National College of Natural Medicine known as the Presidental Ambassadors Leadership Society (PALS).  I'm very excited about this opportunity.  It's essentially a group of people judged by the administration to be exceptionally talented and dedicated to the cause of natural medicine who work to improve the NCNM community, natural medicine as a whole and - of course - themselves.  The three main points of excitement for me are:

1. The opportunity to work with the people involved.  I haven't learned the names of the other PALS members, but I'm sure they're as committed and passionate as I am in pursuing a greater system of healthcare for all people.  Also, the recently retired President of NCNM, Dr. William "Bill" Keppler and our new, full energized and amazing President, Dr. David Schleich will both be involved in the group and I'm very excited to work with both of them.
2. The group conceives of and works to complete a "legacy project" with the aim of improving some aspect of NCNM or natural medicine in Portland (and beyond).  Past projects have been wide reaching in their aims and have almost invariably been successful.  One example - the PALS worked to establish Natural Medicine week in Portland!  They got the support of businesspeople, governmental agencies and others... amazing work.  A true legacy.
3. Every month we have speakers come present their topics of expertise... from the CEO of New Seasons Market (a sustainable market here in Portland) to current and outgoing NCNM board members... and the opportunity there for personal growth is truly phenomenal. 
   

I just feel this is a great opportunity for me to take the next step in both personal and business development.  In concert with the continued growth of my blog, the accelerating growth of my partner's business and associated blog (still very much a work in progress)... it's just going to be a great year all around.

Eric

Just a quick post - I'm done with another year!  The first two years of our program are primarily about laying down theory, both Western and Chinese... mostly about teaching us to THINK in an ancient Chinese way... that trial by fire is over and now it's on to the hard part... integration and application.  Next year we will start to learn a lot more clinical information, we'll continue our observation in the clinic, we'll take the hardest class we will ever have to take - formulas with one of the worldwide kings of formula science and we'll just generally be expected to grow into our own with the medicine.  We'll be expected to pick a mentor for the rest of the program (we do a traditional-style mentorship in our program) and expected to pick our thesis topic and begin work on that.  It's going to be a watershed year.

In other news - I've started to take blogging really seriously.  Not here - but at Deepest Health and Sea Change Massage - also in my work with Helfgott Research Institute at Helfgott Blog -- But mostly at the first two.  Over the next two weeks or so those sites will be transformed into centers of great information on massage, bodywork, Classical Chinese Medicine and associated topics.  I'm really excited.  My mentor in taking my blogging to the next level is Yaro Starak
I've signed on to his Blog Mastermind program, which I'm very excited about.  I like Yaro because he's an energetic guy with a lot of enthusiasm with his topic, yet he doesn't just babble on and on about things of no practical use.  He has already helped me think differently about blogging as a viable business strategy.  I can see some real good in the model - particularly insomuch that it will take the pressure off my needing to make so much money at my clinic, allowing me to serve underprivileged people without putting myself in their position!

If you've ever thought about blogging and making a living at it, I recommend you check Yaro's site out.  In fact, if you are interested in joining his program (which I can highly recommend) following the link below will help me out a little.  :)  But before you read that page, maybe you would like to learn a little more about Yaro's philosophy on blogging... I recommend you check out his Blog Profits Blueprint

It's an amazing free article that details, more or less step by step, the basics you need to master in order to create a blog that delivers great content to your readers while also allowing you to live a more effortless lifestyle.  It's what really got me thinking about kicking up my blogging efforts, and I think it will do the same for you - if you're into that kind of thing.  :)

Click here to learn about Yaro Starak's Blog Mastermind program and sign up to get yourself on the road to a better lifestyle, ethically!  (For more on blogging as an ethical activity, see my next post!)

Anyway - I'm excited about this summer.  All I have to do is:

1. Finish my thesis from my prior program at Oregon State.
2. Learn Chinese at a high enough level to pass the language proficiency exam at Oregon State.
3. Get my two main blogs functioning at a high level, promoting dialogue about Chinese medicine and natural health and helping people in their journey to maximal wellness.
4. Review all of what I learned this year so I can be ready for next year.
5. Participate in a few committees and some side jobs that I've already made commitments to.
6. Take care of my family - I'll be the housedad all summer.
7. Try to relax a little.  :)

No problem!

e

For as long as I can remember, I've been concerned about doing the right thing.  It's the Aquarian in me, maybe.  In particular I have always wanted to find something that I can do with my life that will both support and sustain me, while also allowing me to do good.  I went through most of the normal thoughts a kid has along those lines:  policeman, teacher, astronaut, veterinarian, etc...  Somehow in college this transformed into wanting to become a Philosophy professor.  I figured teaching young people how to think things through and how to act in an ethical manner could be a good thing...  but I couldn't stand the environment of academia and I saw a lot of things going on there that were less than ethical.

So I turned to medicine.  Chinese medicine, as you know.  The thesis I'm writing this summer for my Applied Ethics degree at Oregon State University is going to explore the topic of Chinese medicine as a profession that produces ethical individuals, among other things.  I have no doubt that this career choice is the best in a long line of fine to middlin' choices.  But it can, like all things, be wielded in a less than ethical manner.  For one thing, the healthcare system in this country along with the extreme gap between rich and poor creates a situation in which most Chinese medicine physicians end up servicing the already privileged.  That's ok - the privileged feel pain, for sure.  But I'd like to give back to the communities I came from.  Middle class, working class and lower class.  These are people who work long hours, often in hazardous and back-breaking jobs (if not simply mind-numbing) for very little.  These  people need quality healthcare as much as anyone else.  I'd like to provide that.  Unfortunately, the system makes it difficult to earn a decent living while servicing those populations.  This is a fact that I've struggled with.  But, I think I see an answer - diversifying streams of income.  Yay!

My thought is this - if I can provide excellent information to people through an online format while not diverting a significant amount of time from my medical duties and make money doing it... I can more effectively provide low-cost and free services to those people that need it most.  I will be doing good in both ways - providing a place for dialogue and education around an issue poorly understood in the Western world and in directly helping people overcome their mental, physical and spiritual difficulties.  Blogging, here, is kind of the cornerstone.  It pulls the pressure off of my clinic to be super profitable (although I hope I can still make it be so) and also provides direct value to my patients and the public at large.  Sweet deal.

Let's see how it goes, shall we?

Eric Grey

Being called to the Christian faith is a royal pain in the hide.  Especially for a person who was born and raised atheist, or at the least, agnostic.  All my life I have surrounded myself with people who were like me, raised without faith, or people who lost it somewhere along the way.  We were a pretty choir, all singing the same songs with the same vehemence.  It's so freaking EASY to be anti-Christian as a young. West coast, progressive person.  It's endemic in our piece of American culture and I think it's growing, viral-like, to consume half the hearts of this nation.  The other half have to resist in the only way they know how - with unthinking adherence to whatever belief system seems most unassailable - fundamentalist Christianity.  That one is a belief system so unreal, so beyond the realm of common sense and even most people's experience of God, of Christ that it's somehow easier to grasp for people who see their way of life rapidly disintegrating.

But god, is it embarassing for the rest of us.  These people!  I see the pure beating hearts in their chests.  I see the pain in their eyes.  I understand their worry, their fear.  But, it's embarassing.  Please!  Process with your therapist or something - don't do it in public!  There ought to be a law.  ;) 

For people who don't have an inroad into the faith, fundamentalism is all they see of Christianity.  Whatever else they do see they paint with that brush.  That's what I saw, that's what I did.  So coming to the faith was very, very hard and it continues to be a royal pain in the... well... you get it.

So sometimes I ignore God.  For like weeks.  Just ignore the hell out of the whole concept.  It's almost blissful, to ignore that gnawing feeling, to ignore the small but insistent voice in my head.  In the way that sometimes watching the snowy static on a television screen can be comforting when you've not slept for 40 hours and your mind is racing a million miles a second.  Or is that just me?  Either way - it's somehow satisfying.  Like disobeying a direct order.  Haha!  I have free will! 

But then... the discombobulation.  The unnamed worries.  The lack of focus.  The vague sense of discontent.  I meditate.  I do Qigong.  I bury myself in nature.  Still those feelings remain.  They persist.  They wear me down.  Then I remember - oh, right!  Somehow, just thinking of it doesn't work.  Even praying or reading some Scripture or talking with a like-minded friend doesn't help.  I have to go to CHURCH.

Oh, the humanity.  What did I do to deserve this?  Really?  Come on people.

So I go, and I usually cry or something.  I spend about half the service psychoanalyzing myself and resigning that I must suffer from some terrific mental defect.  The rest of the time I'm trying to get out of my own way.  Somewhere in between all of that, I see God.  It's a good thing.  I feel better.  I resolve not to forget anymore, even if it ties my brain in knots.  Every time the distance between resolving not to forget and actually not forgetting gets a little shorter. 

Being human is nothing if not chasing your own tail.

e

By the way?  I'm unreasonably happy with my life.  I left my parents' grasp when I was about 16 and until my daughter was born (when I was 20) things have been pretty rocky.  Various addictive type problems, lots of trouble settling my mind on any particular thing, working through various psychological trip-ups... it's not been smooth sailing.  When I turned I guess around 25, things started to improve dramatically.  Why?

Because I stopped letting myself think that I have all the time in the world to become the person I want to be.  I have THINGS TO DO.  I can do good in this world - lots of it.  The most selfish possible thing I can imagine is letting myself drown in my own inability to get over myself.  My father was a dick - so what?  People have variously abused, looked down on, oppressed and despised me - so what?  I'm over it.  Really.  I'm blessed with the ability to just absolutely be over things - rapidly.  I observe them, I consider them, I dwell on them for a bit, and then I forget them.  In-n-out.  Get your mind out of the gutter.

I stopped abdicating responsibility.  I stopped letting my emotional state have primacy over my spirit.  I started listening to God - even before I called it God.  I started taking very seriously the prospect that I am being guided through this life by something (internal, external, eternal, whatever) and started listening to that guidance.

I also stopped drinking, stopped eating and drinking things that were bad for me, and started loving my neighbor as myself.  It was all remarkably freaking easy.  Why?  Because I let it be. 

So, my advice to you?

Get out of your way.  You're trying to get things done here.  And if you don't think it's that easy, you're kidding yourself. 

Get.  out.  of.  your.  way.

How does that work?  Like this.  Take something you're struggling with.  My most recent?  Drinking (stopped November 2006 cold turkey without looking back).  So, take drinking.  Alcohol is fun.  Lots of people drink (especially my friends).  Drinking is a socially acceptable way to act like an idiot.  Along with, like, football and politics.  Alcohol is advertised all over the place, it's really hard to avoid.  If you're in a group of people like I was, it's also hard to avoid because people you really like use it for just about everything.  I also have a long long history of addiction issues, although I've always managed to avoid disaster (though I did not avoid jail, homelessness and general stupidity).  I also have a family history of alcoholism - on both sides, way back.  So, not an easy one - right? 

WRONG.  What did it take?  Deciding that I wanted to be the best person I want to be and that alcohol was preventing that.  Why was it?  Because it costs money, because it participates in causing me to do things that I wouldn't otherwise do, because it dampens down the voice of God, because it hurts my body, because no matter what any of us like to think it does, does, does negatively impact our ability to reason... the list goes on.  It wasn't good for me, it was preventing my easy access to God, to my family, to myself, to my body.  I knew that.  But the crucial bit was saying to myself, "Hey - you're actually just a whole lot better than this."

And so I am.  So it changed.  That's just one example.  It doesn't mean I'm perfect - far from it.  It doesn't mean I don't struggle.  But the struggle is ACTIVE.  I look my problems in the face, I look beyond them to the person I will be when I overcome them, and I fight.  I'm stronger for it, and happier for it.

Ain't that swell?

e