This is http://www.essayz.com/a9112254.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %ROOT CAUSE DISEASE SICK ILL DISINTEGRATE TENSION 911225 Often in the face of diseases of various kinds we have the tendency to look for traditionally considered "agents" which we regard as the primary "causes" of disease: bacteria, viruses, molds, amoeba, etc. We tend to regard such "foreign" living organisms residing within our bodies as the "causes" of our dis-eases, and seek to overcome our dis-eases by eliminating the "foreign" living organisms. We need to broaden the range of "agents" which play significant roles in "causing" our diseases. Many of our dis-eases are rooted in our internalized conflicting ideas, ideals, values, principles and goals. We are not at ease because we have not worked openly and honestly on resolving the conflicts which we have internalized in our souls. Such internalized conflicts leave our bodies weakened and unable to deal with internalized "foreign" living organisms. We need to regard internalized conflicts as "foreign" to our integrity, just as we regard many internalized bacteria, viruses, molds and amoeba are "foreign" to our integrity. When our integrity is threatened, we need to consider the full range and combinations of threats to our integrity. Threats to our integrity do not threaten us in isolation one at a time; they threaten us in a multitude of combinations. The nature of our diseases and of appropriate responses to our diseases depend upon how threats to our integrity are combined, as well as upon which individual threats occur. It makes little sense for physicians to focus their and our attention exclusively upon bacteria, viruses, amoebas and molds; without giving related consideration to the conflicts raging within us among our ideas, ideals, values, goals, attitudes, hopes, aspirations, expectations and emotions. We need a more comprehensive theory of disease which takes into account the full range of combinations of threats to our integrity. The threats to our integrity reside not only internally within our hearts, minds, bodies, souls and spirits; but also within the unresolved conflicts which rage in our communities as social organisms. We cannot overcome our personal diseases without wording to overcome our social dis-eases by resolving the traditionally unresolved social diseases which threaten our personal security. If we are not secure because of our social dis- eases, we cannot be at ease as individual persons; and so we are prone to become diseased, sick, ill, dis-abled. Health maintenance efforts need to include broad ranging programs of personal and communal conflict resolution in the sense of the books "Getting to Yes" and "Getting Together" by Roger Fisher and associates. Such ideals, values and goals which lead people as individuals and as communities to be participants in tragic conflict with each other. Tragic conflicts are dilemmas, not technical problems. Technicians cannot resolve tragic conflicts because the conflicts are not technical problems. Thus it is futile to depend upon medical technicians to solve or resolve our problems with health, dis-ease, illness, and sickness. We must accept and fulfill our own responsibility to resolve the conflicts which make us dis-eased. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================