The role of Intuition
There is much uncertainty in our profession about the role of instinct and intuition.  How do homeopaths prescribe remedies they have never studied, or have not even been proved?  Or discover a patient’s remedy in a dream? We often distrust that dimension, unless it has been confirmed rationally.  Yet there seems to be a yearning for an instinctive, or inspirational approach. In the art and science of homeopathy, we straddle these two worlds. But how do we know when we are inspired? 
What appears like an inspiration may be a wish or an illusion. For example, the patient may dream repeatedly of the ocean, and the practitioner decides it has to be an underwater remedy – but the totality leads to Medorhinum or Natrum Muriaticum.  Yet on occasion, you may receive a very powerful insight:
A patient told me about how she often felt in childhood. She described a forlorn feeling, thought herself ugly, and felt belittled and put down by people around her, especially her father.  I asked her to say more about the ugly, forlorn feeling, and she came up with an image of being like a duck. Afterwards, when I reflected on this, my mind was drawn to the story of the ugly duckling, and how she discovered, after a long winter, hiding from the world, that she was not a duckling, but a swan. But at that time, no duck or swan provings had been published.  About two years later, this patient had a broken relationship, which affected her profoundly. She went into a period of recluse, in which she didn’t want to see anyone, or for them to see the state she was in. She felt that same forlorn feeling, very isolated and frightened.

At that time, she had a dream:
" I was at the racecourse, and I knew which horse was about to win the race. My father used to take me to the racecourse as a child.  To find the winning horse, I had to divine it with a divining rod. The divining rod was very strange. It was made of two long white feathers. Like swan feathers."
I was at once reminded of the Ugly duckling from years before, but in the interim period, the provings of Cygnus had been published. With this confirmation, I prescribed Cygnus Columbiana LM1. This remedy has helped her rejoin the world, and heal her confidence, damaged since childhood.

Studying Materia Medica
When we study remedies, the subject of our study is not the information on the page in the book. We are studying a living, organic energy in nature. What we seek to understand is the dynamic pattern, the heart of the matter, the essence that infuses every aspect, and makes it what it is. To penetrate to understand in this way, we have to look beyond the written texts about the remedy, to the materials themselves. The medicines exist within the context of their eco-system, the Earth, with her cycles and rhythms, and the Cosmos. To establish a relationship with a medicine, we must be firmly in connection with the Earth. And when we study a medicine with the aim of perceiving the core principles, just as with the patient, we must approach it as the unprejudiced observer. The practice of being centred, working from stillness, emptiness and silence, applies to the study of Materia Medica as well as to the taking of a case. We use our own mind and body as the vehicle to perceive the remedy. We can bring the medicine to life within ourselves – not only in the mind, but in our eyes, our nose, the throat, stomach, intestines, into our limbs, and our circulation, to discover how it thinks, how it feels, how it breathes.  When we embrace a remedy in this way, we can recognize how it feels to be the person who needs this medicine.

Be yourself
To understand what needs to be cured in the patient, or what is the curative power of a medicine, we have the most wonderful instrument at our disposal, which is our self. We can move our centre, to resonate with the other, and if we do this consciously, we can then recognize the characteristics of the altered state. But then we must know how to return to our self once more. It is an important part of the practice to develop a strong sense of one’s own self.
When you are centred, energy can flow freely. This state of peace, and being present is a simple and wonderful gift. It is not derived from ‘knowing yourself’ as mental information. Think of it more as BEING YOURSELF. Your feet firmly on the Earth, connected with the heavens, heart open, balanced left and right, being in the centre of your self, silent and still within, alert and attentive.  That is the Unprejudiced Observer. 

Please send comments or feedback to:

tony@remedycentre.org