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best teacher is personal experience, but I believe that whatever we can share will in some way make it easier for others to learn. A teacher’s responsibility is to facilitate the progression of one’s students, and as someone who has had the privilege of acting in that role, I can attest to the enormous pleasure of listening to my younger col- leagues presenting at a conference – perfect examples being the IAVH contribution to LMHI in Turkey last September, and the BAHVS Conference in Eastbourne in November. I find them simply awesome in the true sense of the word. Our courses in UK have benefitted from a range of experienced teachers, of which I have been privileged to have been but one, and I have always tried promote the message that ‘as soon as you start to study homeopathy you will know something I do not – so please share what you have learned!’
Some of us have a need to share by writing, myself included, and I feel honoured that so many people have enjoyed my efforts that I have now had the opportunity to create a revised and expanded edition. There is more I could add, but I am beginning to find it flows less smoothly off the pen and I am having to think a bit more before put it onto the paper, and I have enlisted Geoff Johnson and David Lilley to write with authority on a couple of important areas on which I am less confident.
Another epithet that springs to mind is that ‘there are none so blind as those who will not see!’. In other words it is futile to try and change the mind set of those who are determined to cling onto their negative beliefs about homeopathy. So instead we can put that energy into concentrating on our own development and try to lead by example.
I freely admit that am still striving to achieve anything near the level of development described in this final picture, and I’m pretty certain I never will, but I’m sure it is valuable to have that aspiration: Be yourself, share your experience, knowledge and under- standing with anyone who asks for it, and do the best you can for your patients, with wisdom and compassion. One teacher I encountered introduced me to the concept of the North Star: it can guide you in the right direction, even though you will never reach it. Perhaps that is the value of the Oxherding pictures.
Welsh people often end a conversation with the expression: ‘well there you are then’ and I feel that is an appropriate phrase on which to end this set of essays. I have of course used the writings of others as a template, so I have learned a lot in writing them, but I sometimes found the discipline was quite difficult to maintain, and I thank Phil Barker for pressuring me to come up with the goods
whenever I looked like I might lapse. The challenge for me has been to justify my assertion that homeopathy represents a spiritual pathway in parallel with other great traditions, and I’m happy with that, in that it presents us with a path towards a deeper understanding of ourselves and the universe which is compatible whatever personal beliefs we may hold. Writing these essays have also given me the opportunity to assess how far along the path I myself might have travelled. My answer varies from ‘not very far’ to ‘quite a way’ depending on my emotional state at the time, so I strive on in the knowledge that practising, teaching and living homeopathy for animals can help me on the Way through the sequence of the oxherder.
A few weeks ago I realised that after a few essays I had dropped the haiku after each one. Maybe I
will go back sometime and
complete the set, but in the mean time , here is my parting offering:
Practising, teaching With wisdom and compassion
Well there you are then