Hi All:
Here is one I wrote recently to someone in med school, having doubts about the medical profession...
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Hi:
Thank you for your kind thoughts and sharing.
You have an interesting background, and great potential to help others for a better life. So often, the struggles of our youth are a search for our vision and our path. We can sense it, and the steps of our awakening can be messy, kind of like childbirth.
![[:)]](http://www.aypsite.com/plus-forum/Smileys/akyhne/icon_smile.gif "Smile")
While it may not seem like it, this is a great time to be studying medicine. A shift is getting underway in the profession, though it may be barely visible at present. Yet, more is being spent every year on R&D in Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), and I think this is going to be a major spearhead in the transformation of our society to prevention-based healthcare, and ultimately a shift to a central focus on cultivating the underlying process of human spiritual transformation.
So, where you are is a good place, assuming you want to be part of this long term shift, which it appears you do. The thing to do is get on with it by connecting the dots between where you want to go personally and professionally with what has to be done right now to keep heading in that direction, i.e., pass those exams, do that residency, become fully credentialed, and move on through while favoring the kind of career in medicine you want to have, rather than the kind that past ways would compel you to have. Bringing your ultimate aims in tune with present activities will help you find the motivation to do what is necessary to move ahead. It is the effective application of bhakti!
It is important that more people in the science professions make these connections, and carry forward. People of science have a lot to say about where society is going. The present system is not impregnable. It can evolve, and it will. It must. That is the nature of science.
You are really in a much better position than I was coming through school 40 years ago. My education was in engineering and I felt many of the same frustrations and lack of motivation you have. In my case, there were no fully integrated open source spiritual teachings (it was all closed source and sectarian) and my industry was not one moving into a spiritual transition like yours is. After school, I went into a 30 year technical and business career, and worked quietly underneath all the while to develop for myself what would eventually become AYP. So here I am, reporting on what was discovered, and now your generation can take it to the next level, which is ongoing development and widespread application of this kind of knowledge. It can change the quality of life for all of humanity. We know that from our own experiences.
So, if you get the credentials and some solid experience under your belt, both spiritual and professional, then gradually blending these together can develop into a very rewarding career.
Many of the seemingly mundane traditional skills we develop in our profession can provide a foundation for future innovation. There would be no AYP if the spiritual component in me had not been combined with the technical, writing and relationship skills developed over the years in the professional environments I was in. So, what may seem boring and irrelevant now, will eventually become a part of your overall ability to undertake actions that can fulfill your dreams. Knowing this can bring great relevance into the most mundane of tasks in the present, and we can then do them with more joy and enthusiasm. Of course, rising inner silence plays a major role in this, going far beyond the intellectual part of it. Then we can just happily do what has to be done (stillness in action), and in time we see the openings that our actions have created, and then do what has to be done there. In that way we gradually become instruments of not only our own evolution, but of the evolution of everyone around us. See how that works?
As for specifics, don't expect it all to happen right away. It will take a lifetime. As you continue to find more joy in each day, a great patience will arise also. With expanding stillness and expanding patience, no undertaking will be impossible. If it is CAM you want, then I suggest looking at the major institutions involved in it that are mentioned in the
"Applied Spiritual Science" forum topic I started some months ago. If you go to the National Institutes of Health CAM website (in the topic), many other programs are listed. So there are quite a few options for a young physician wanting to gain experience in this field. I am not saying it will be easy. It will be a can of worms, because there is still a lot of confusion out there about what "health" really is and how we can improve it, and little understanding about the spiritual underpinnings of health, which also transcend the condition of the physical body. Some of the "healthiest" people I have known have been terminally ill in the physical sense. So that is the challenge you are laying out as your potential career. Actually, it is really quite exciting to be approaching it in a way that gets to the bottom of things. So I say, go for it!
Regarding your question about a role for open systems like AYP in medicine, definitely! Honestly, I do not know of any other open system that is as fully integrated as AYP. There are no closed systems that are either. But this does not mean that there are not many other knowledge sources in play. There certainly are. In fact, currently, all the CAM research that is occurring out there is with other systems, fragments of the whole for the most part. An integrated approach like AYP is not the subject of a single study that I am aware of. We are still very much below the radar -- an R&D project in our own right. It will change eventually, but that is how it is today. AYP is still primarily a web phenomenon and an ongoing experiment. So the work continues, still largely behind the scenes of the mainstream, though interest is on the rise. Perhaps we are the 1000 gorilla of the future in open source integrated spiritual systems?
Regarding your question about teaching certifications, due to AYP being still early stage, I think certification of teachers is a bit premature. It is still primarily a web-based peer-to-peer transmission of knowledge. If and when AYP begins to enter structured teaching environments in medicine, universities, yoga studies, etc., then I think the need for certifications will become obvious, and someone will do something about it. On the other hand, with the AYP writings being what they are, I think there will always be a sort of self-certification built into it -- people are either following the teachings, or they are not. Even at this early stage, we see a lot of variations in application of the knowledge in the forums, and it is usually pretty clear who is doing something close to AYP, and who is not. Who knows, maybe someday the AYP writings can serve as part of the basis for an academic program with degrees and recognized credentials like in medicine, engineering and other fields. I'd like that, because it would be a permanent implant in our culture that would assure the knowledge for future generations.
I am in favor of the development of any programs that will advance human spiritual evolution over the long term on the basis of
verifiable applied knowledge, rather than the charismatic personalities that come and go. It is time to move on to something much more solid in the field of applied spiritual knowledge.
Carry on!
The guru is in you.
