I like to think of myself as possessing a moderately high intelligence when compared to creatures like bivalve mollusks, but I am not so sure. Upon examination it seems that my friends, the oysters, have great wisdom that I would do well to incorporate into my own life on a more consistent basis. There are three pearls of oyster wisdom I would like to share and discuss. When faced with life-changing challenges, an oyster entrusts itself to the ocean floor, does not alter its nature and responds in a patient, methodical way to its source of pain. So what does that mean to us? How does that knowledge bless our lives? Let’s consider it together.

It is common knowledge that an oyster lives firmly secured to the bottom of a sandy, shallow ocean floor. It is designed with a hard, protective outer shell that encases its soft inner workings. In order to eat and breathe an oyster must open and close its shell—the action of which causes water to flow across its mostly formless insides where nutrients are extracted and breathing transpires. The risk of these actions lies in the fact that sand is a way of life for an oyster on the ocean floor. Sometimes while “breathing” water, a grain of sand becomes lodged between the soft belly and hard shell of the oyster, becoming part of its life from then on. It is painful and problematic to the creature, but the first beautiful lesson of our friendly oysters is that they continue to entrust themselves to the ocean floor—sand and all. Our lives are wrought with painful eventualities that could cause us to withdraw our trust and close ourselves off from the nutrients and breath of life. If we employ the oyster’s wisdom, however, we will continue to hazard the sands of life and entrust ourselves to the process of living.

When an oyster is opened it is immediately apparent that its insides are—by nature—soft, tender, and vulnerable. The infliction of a single grain of sand renders pain and discomfort with no option of extraction. The mollusk must simply accept. What I love is that when this offending grain causes continual pain, the oyster does not alter its soft nature, becoming hard and leathery in order to survive. To do so would be a self-inflicted death sentence. And so it is with us. To choose hard leathery subsistence is to choose a spiritual, emotional, and/or mental death. I invite us to remain soft, tender and vulnerable, implementing this second peal of oyster wisdom.

Perhaps my favorite lesson of the oyster is the fact that even in its vulnerability, it does respond. And it is a brilliant response. Very slowly and patiently, the oyster coats the grain of sand in multiple translucent layers. Only over time does it create something of great value in the place where it was most vulnerable to its pain. I believe the same can be true of us. In the beginning our grain of pain is still very much visible through a few layers of translucence. But over time and with the methodical response of patience, our grain of pain is eventually rendered as a luminescent pearl of beauty and value, if we apply the wisdom of the common oyster.

A pearl might be thought of as an oyster’s response to its suffering. The pearl-making process can also be our response to suffering. If we have the wisdom to entrust ourselves to the process of living, the courage to remain soft, tender and vulnerable, and the patience to methodically coat our pain in multiple layers of healing, we, too, will find that these are the very places in which wisdom will begin to grow. And if anyone looks inside our protective outer covering they will find in us a luminescent sense of the value of life and a greater capacity to live it.

The Gift of Symptoms and Emotions

If symptoms are the language of choice from our subconscious—that vast storehouse of 98% of our experiential data—and e-motions, (or “e”nergy in “motion”), are the triggers that want to call them forth, what happens when our e-motions end up being internalized, denied, or disconnected?  What happens to our bodies?  And what do our bodies do with the energy produced by our e-motions?  When the “motion” is stifled and stopped we are left with trapped energy.  It has to go somewhere. It doesn’t sit idly by waiting for permission to move about.  It is banging up against our walls and locked doors, driving autonomic responses with under-the-radar messages to our physical bodies. Energy is neither created nor destroyed.  It is meant to be in motion, to affect and experience continual change.  That is the energy of Life.

It would seem that often our e-motions are considered overwhelming and the symptoms they produce to be bothersome.  To bear that theory out one need only witness the massive array of pharmaceuticals produced to subdue and quiet our simmering symptoms in the hopes that they will just go away. The thing about the subconscious is that it is automatic.  In other words, we cannot rationalize it or control it.  Its intention is for the sole means of survival.  The more e-motion we disconnect from—and the longer we remain disconnected from it—the more imbalance it creates and the greater its affects on our bodies.

When we experience a symptom, such as headache, nausea, or back pain, it is our body trying to create a dialogue with us.  The message is that there is an imbalance, or blockage, of that energy going on inside of us.  There is dis-ease.  This is different from a break-down resulting in a pathology.  Pathology is by definition a diagnosable dis-ease.  What is crucial to know is that a diagnosable pathology requires a 40%-plus breakdown of our body functioning.  So then one must ask, what is happening all during the preceding 40% path?

An imbalance, or blockage, of energy is what will trigger symptoms to appear.  Along a continuum from optimal health to death, an imbalance may not produce a dialogue of symptoms until 17% to 20% of the way away from optimal health.  Then when symptoms begin to appear, there is a minimal requirement of at least 10% more breakdown of our bodies to be diagnosable in the typical model.  At the onset of symptoms the normal protocol is to self medicate with over-the-counter remedies, essentially telling the body to “shut up,” and we “don’t want to hear it,” instead of looking for the cause.

So what does any of this matter to an energy Kinesiologist?  Return with me, if you will, to the continuum from optimal health to death.  Because of the intelligence and pure genius of our bodies, and by being able to access the subconscious by monitoring a muscle, which is tied into and run by the subconscious, we can ascertain an energy imbalance within the first 1% to 2% of that health continuum!  The dysfunction can be found even before the body tries to get our attention and dialogue with us through the appearance of symptoms.  And certainly, if we find ourselves anywhere further along the continuum, from no symptoms, to symptoms, to pathology, we can honor that dialogue—which is truly a gift—and access the imbalance in the subconscious so as to remove it and restore the energy to its natural flow,  allowing our bodies freedom from the endless cycle of survival living.  The body’s innate wisdom will then be able to regain health and wellness more readily.

Should we do away with pharmaceuticals?  Certainly not!  And we can also avail ourselves of the opportunity to avoid the need for them if possible.  All these things can work together for our good.  So I strongly issue the invitation to call 801.599.2253 and see what your body would like to dialogue about, and what it might request for health and wellness.

One of my favorite quotes is by Deepak Chopra and goes like this, “…as the proud children of science and reason we have made ourselves the orphans of wisdom.”  This idea induces delicious banquets of thought and pondering in me.

We work and struggle and espouse lying voices, employing vast quantities of energy in denial, repression, doubt, and stress.  It all begs the question, if we weren’t so engaged what would those liberated energies allow us?  Deepak suggests, if that were the case, that our lives would be constant revelation.

There seems to be a clarion call afoot to see with new eyes and be willing to explore the many levels and dimensions that make up a living soul.  Since the mid 1980’s the medical model that we are all so familiar with has also heralded new understandings about the independent intelligence of the smallest particles of our bodies.  It was discovered that the immune and digestive systems showed signs of intelligence.  There are special messenger molecules that are in all the organs carrying information to and from the brain—but also functioning with independent intelligence.  It turns out that cells have been outthinking us for millions of years.

If our life is to be constant revelation, it would behoove us to look at the wisdom that lives right within our very bodies, and listen to what that wisdom is telling us.  Our cells—and the universe all around us—are practicing basically the same things that we want for ourselves.  They are achieving growth, expansion, and creation.  The difference is that our bodies are cooperating with the invitations of Source much better than we—the conscious we—manage to.  If, then, our bodies are showing or manifesting stress and dis-ease, wouldn’t it be a great jumping off point into the world of wisdom to listen to what it has to say about our well-being on all levels?  If our cells are functioning to the call of wisdom, could they be trying to show us ourselves as a great mirror reflecting our welfare?

A thousand years ago Spirit was accepted everywhere as the true source of life.  We are now finding our way back to that same intelligence after a long and lonely absence.  It is time to learn a new language, and it is the language of the Spirit—of truth, of order, of learning, of wisdom, of God.  It is time to remove our ceilings and reshape our path and passage.

My invitation this month is to just notice our inner wisdom speaking to us.  GI Joe says that knowing is half the battle.  I think he is wrong.  I think it’s three-quarters of the battle.  A genuine, authentic shift in our consciousness is an open door to revelation and real solutions.

And, from the desk of an Irish girl, may the luck of the Irish be with you this month.