MAP (the Medical Assistance Program) is a profound and simple health practice that is the subject of a previous post. Many people would not think of "resistance", "fear of failure", "fear of success", "resentment", "I want to get what I deserve", "I am set back by not knowing where to start", and "I am afraid that I look at it, it will get worse" as proper subjects for a "health program". Yet MAP will go to work on any physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual block to health that you are willing to bring to the team. So all of the above are fair game.
If this is not health, then this must be time for MAP.Many people don't make full use of MAP. The first impediment is that people haven't heard of it. If you haven't heard of something, it is hard to make full use of it.
A second impediment is thinking that MAP is too strange and unfamiliar or too nontraditional to be helpful. With a name like, The Co-Creative White Brotherhood Medical Assistance Program, MAP can call up people's previous associations. Some people (even many people) would prefer to stick with the medical models that are used widely in our current society rather than branching out.
Others might be willing to experiment, but find difficulty in suspending their disbelief. It can be tempting to think that believing in MAP is a prerequisite to exploring it. To experiment with MAP is to take it on its own terms -- Here, try this. Even to try MAP, especially for the five-month introductory period that the book itself recommends, does mean a leap of faith and an entry into a different world. But this is the leap of faith of the gardener who plants a seed in the spring never quite knowing what the fruit will be in the fall. You don't need to believe in a garden for the garden to bear abundant and tasty fruit. You just have to water and weed and tend and care.
Some people worry about MAP. I am not doing it right. Or, I don't feel a thing. Or, it doesn't seem like anything is happening. Or, the muscle testing thing doesn't work for me. Well, how many people give up on their gardens sometime between when it is planted and when it is harvested? I am certainly not saying that you have to wait "all the way until fall" for the results of MAP to show up. MAP can have dramatic and obvious effects even in the first session. But for many people and certainly for me, there has been a learning curve. And it has taken an ongoing investment.
MAP itself is the most powerful tool for learning MAP. If I bring to the team an issue such as When I don't feel anything happening, I get discouraged and want to give up, or even I want to be better at learning muscle testing, I have seen dramatic and often instantaneous results. At other times, a request such as I want to feel, see and hear more of what the team is doing when they are working results in a much more gradual and sustainable learning curve. It is as if the team is saying to me, "Do you as a beginner really want to see what the surgeon sees when he is doing surgery? Stick with your current work and eventually you can run the hospital."
Another area I have learned to bring to MAP is when I want to get better at something. There are health related aspects to any new challenge. Here's an example with physical, emotional, mental and spiritual components. My daughter and I sing in a chorus. Like many choruses, we were short on tenors, and I was asked to sing for a term at the higher end of my range. At first, it hurt. I asked my MAP team to help my voice feel better after a night of singing high. It worked. And then it branched out from there. How about, help me prepare ahead of time so that I can sing high for a whole night without even feeling bad at the end. It worked. How about, help open up my vocal chords so that I can sing effortlessly at the high end of my range and the notes are clearer and purer and more beautiful. It worked! Now I love singing tenor.
I am sometimes unsure what it means when MAP talks about "spiritual health issues". I am asking the team about this as I write this post. Here is an example, again from singing tenor, that the team is pointing me to. At first, there was a secret grief associated with what I had left behind as a bass. Part of what I have loved about singing the base notes of a piece is that the bass part provides the grounding or foundation of the whole. One knows ones place and ones value. One can sing the whole piece from the bass part. I missed this.
When singing tenor, one is "in the middle". The notes can be harder to find, and it can be harder to distinguish what difference you are making to the piece. I was singing tenor, and even enjoying it, but some deep part of my core wasn't yet aligned. So I asked the team to help me find ways to enjoy being a tenor as much as I had enjoyed being a bass. This might sound like an emotional issue, but the team is showing me that it is indeed a spiritual issue. It is really about, How am I connected to the whole? and What is uniquely mine to do here? And these are spiritual, not emotional, topics. Anyway, it worked! I was able to feel my way into "singing the whole song from the tenor part" the same way I had done as a bass. The secret grief was gone and had been replaced with a public joy. Amen.
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