Hi, I’m rena and I’m so happy you’re here and you’re ready to do some deep digging into our belief systems about health, disease and our immune systems. I’ve been a homeopath for 11 years and I work mostly with families and children. The information I’m about to share with you is based on homeopathic science in particular but is substantiated by the practices and sciences of traditional medicines like Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic Medicine and Prophetic or Sufi Medicine of which I am a student. For those that do not know, homeopathy is a complete system of medicine unto itself and has been time-tested with over 200 years of evidence.

 

Ok, so let’s start with our very first question-- What is the immune system for? 

 

The immune system’s primary function is self-individuation or self-differentiation. From the moment we are born we begin a process of learning who am I and who I am not and we are exposed to billions of bacteria and microbes as information to determine who we are . The immune system immediately begins to discern what belongs to it and what doesn’t, it essentially wants to know who am i? A deep philosophical question right? Thus, the immune system is operating on an intelligence that requires learning and education. 

 

The immune system is an highly intelligent interface between ourselves and the world. It has an intelligence and needs information to build on that intelligence. 

 

How does the immune system learn to individuate? 

Well, like a muscle in our body, the immune system must be challenged to build awareness of self and begin to self differentiate. Just like a muscle in our body, our immune systems must be challenged to build strength. 

 

How does the immune system do this? 

It learns through being exposed to non-self entities or pathogens and by getting sick and then learning how to get better when it gets sick.  So in essence, to answer the question Why do we get sick? We get sick to challenge our immune system so that it builds its muscle of self-differentiation. We get sick as to offer information to our immune system of what it is and what it isn’t. This process is known as the disease cycle-- the process by which the immune system contracts a non-self entity, uploads or learns the information from this pathogen or microbe and then archives this information. The getting sick part is the most fundamental part of the learning process because it’s through this getting sick that the immune system is challenged and builds awareness of what it is not? Only through understanding what it is not or learning the other, does the immune system learn who it is or who I am?

 

What is the immune system exactly? It’s a network of communication between different mechanisms in the body. The immune system, like every other system and organ in the body, is inter-related and interfunctional with all the other systems in the human organism. So what is happening to the immune system is happening to other systems as well. Thus, if there is dysfunction in the immune system there will be dysfunction in other systems and vice versa. The immune system is most especially related to the neurological system, the digestive system and the endocrine system. It follows then that if the immune system’s ability to self-differentiate is interrupted or stumped, that the functions of other systems in the body will also be affected negatively.  

 

Now, this is not to say that all viruses and bacteria are the same. Not all diseases are created equal and of course certain diseases carry greater risks. What I’m talking about here are benign infectious diseases, things that we used to get before the media and medical establishment up kick of  disease hysteria-- or fear from things like colds, flus, chicken pox, the measles, that used to come and go with little consequence. Yes, it’s true that measles causes deaths in 3rd world countries but the problem is not the disease. The problem is poverty, malnutrition and lack of sanitation. In fact, all public health officials know it to be true that if places in Africa where most people can die of something like the measles, that problems of disease would be fixed if the people were pulled out poverty as is their natural human right.

Human beings have a universal right to clean water, adequate nutrition and proper sanitation. Lack of these things is what leads to complications and deaths from benign infectious diseases will likely be zero like in the developed world. Yet, we have developed a gross anxiety of all diseases because of the distortions of these facts and truths. All people deserve the right to health, this is a fact. 

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This is not to say that people can’t get complications from typically benign acutes illnesses like colds and flus however. We know that thousands of people die from complications of the flu each year. Yes, most of the time those people have compromised health or weak constitutions and immune systems like the elderly. And that is why when someone begins to get sick, we do want to treat the person with homeopathy and herbal applications at the first sign of symptoms to support the immune system when activated. We will be discussing this more on Day 4. We will also see on Day 3 how homeopathy has single handedly stopped outbreaks and epidemics and has historically had a greater success rate in preventing complications and deaths from flu or other acute outbreaks. Finally, as a disclaimer if we are not able to keep an acute illness from developing complications, it’s important to use all the tools in our toolbox. We have homeopathy, herbal and natural medicine but also allopathic medicine like antibiotics or oxygenation if necessary. We don’t want to have any prejudice when dealing with potential life-threatening situations. We use what we need to use to save people’s lives. 

 

The point of today’s talk is to shift from our collective fear of getting sick. Because not only do we often have actual disease epidemics from time to time but we also have a collective psychological epidemic-- a collective panic attack if you will as we are seeing right now with the outbreak of the Corona Virus. We will also discuss the Corona Virus more on day 3 but just so you know, there are more deaths from the flu each year than there have been of the coronavirus. And yet there is a massive hysteria right now surrounding the Corona Virus.  This collective fear around getting sick can be the single most detrimental reason why we are more sick as a society. 

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It is now known that people who are allowed to get acute illnesses as children have less chronic ailments later in life. Why? Because acute sickness like colds and flus are opportunities for the immune system to gain information, learn and to self-differentiate, which is what it is meant to do. It is also an opportunity for the organisms  to throw disturbances out of the body rather than letting them settle in and cause deeper disturbances later. It’s also an opportunity for the body to liberate trapped toxins or imbalances in the body, to move stagnant chi as one may say in Chinese medicine. In fact, my homeopathy teacher used to say that people who get colds and flus do not cancer. 

 

We now have an unprecedented epidemic of autoimmune disorders, cancers and autism worldwide. All of these can be linked to dysfunction in the primary purpose of the immune system and the inability to self-discern and self- differentiate. 

 

For example, autoimmune disorders are the immune system attacking itself. When there is no learning of non-self entities because we are so afraid of getting sick and either over-sanitize our lives or suppress the disease process either with vaccines or over the counter medications that only mask the symptoms, the immune system doesn’t have the chance to learn what it is and isn’t and confuses the self for the other and therefore attacks itself.

 

Cancer is a mutation of a cell that takes over the body and the immune system does not recognize it a threatening non-self entity and doesn’t attack and destroy. In both cases, the immune system is readily confused. 

 

Finally, and this may be a bit metaphysical but autism can also be attributed to a dysfunction in our immune system. In Arabic is called Al tawahodi-- which comes from the root word of alone-ness. A lot of people on the Autism spectrum are non-verbal, have sensory issues and in many cases are not even able to connect with others through eye contact. Many of them are stuck alone in their own world unable to connect with the environment or people around them? Doesn’t this sound like a problem with self-differentiation but on a neurological level? If The immune system’s primary function in regulating self from non-self is so out of order that even the neurological system is unable to differentiate and thinks everything in the environment is itself, thus causing the person to withdraw so deeply out of the world into the deepest type of dysfunction-- complete disconnection from life. 

 

Thus, the paradigm shift I’d like for you all to make today is huge I know. It’s shifting from a collective fear of getting sick to embracing getting sick. Because getting sick is how the immune system learns and operates. It is what the immune system is meant to do and when it is able to do so with support, this intelligence then translates into all the other systems in the body enhancing their particular functions and abilities. 

 

The paradigm shift I’d like you to make is: that which we resist, persists-- this is a known concept in psychology, in the metaphysical laws of resistance and surrender and is learned over and over again from just plain old life experiences.

 

I want you to start thinking of the immune system like an intelligent entity, even smarter than a computer. But like a computer, it needs to download information to update its software and work more efficiently. The information it needs to download so that it can function properly is exposure to germs and pathogens and working through the disease process. Once it has worked through the information through the disease process, it archives the information or builds immunity and then upgrades its capacity. You know the saying, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? That couldn’t be more true for the immune system. What it learns by getting sick makes it stronger. Every time our kids get sick, their immune systems are answering the questions, is this me? Is this not me? Every time our kids get sick, their immune systems are challenged and build strength. Every time our kids get sick all other systems in their body are also activated and optimized. 

 

Yes, I know we don’t like to see our kids get sick and there are ways to optimize the function of the immune system and help them feel comfortable when they do get sick without stopping the immune system from doing what its meant to do, without stopping the immune system from individuating. And that’s what we’ll be discussing in the next few days.