一再挑战死亡的人｜《健康之道》连载（17）--四柱八字,命理,八字命理,六爻占卜,命理百科-寅午文化

摘译自《健康之道》1984年3月15日

那些一次又一次向死亡挑战的人，实际上比大多数人更怕死。高空秋千表演者、特技演员、赛车手和许多其他团体都拥有一种生活方式，其中包括经常进行玩命的特技。

比如说，高空秋千表演者一天可能有好几场表演。这些人看起来表现得非常大胆，甚至带着一种大多数人所不熟悉的鲁莽。不过，大多数这种表演者都是极度规范化的。他们以精心计算的眼光来工作，在这种情况下，每个细节——不论多么微小——都是至关重要的。比如说，不管某些高空秋千的动作可能被重复多少次，总会有瞬间灾难的威胁——一次失足，一次终结坠落。通过测试“命运”，死亡挑战者每次表演时都试图向自己证明，他们的确是安全的，他们能够克服生命中最可怕的状况。

于是，生命有了最惬意的轻快和最大的满足感，因为与不断出现的死亡威胁形成鲜明对比。许多这样的人在日常生活条件下根本没有安全感。他们设定了这样一种冲突的条件并将这些条件控制到最小的细节，以此来保护自己。

只有当他们追求一些玩命的事业时，这种人才会感到足够安全，才能在其它方面放松，而在玩命的事业之外过一种相当正常的生活。

我无意对这类活动作出任何道德判断。它的确常常使人有一种极强烈的生机与活力感。不过，同样真实的是，不考虑各种可能的骨折和瘀伤，这种人可能多年来都享受极佳的健康——只不过，如果他们试图放弃这种活动，会突然变得容易生病。

当然，情况也不是必然如此。无论个人的活动或生活条件如何，自我了解和自我认知可能使个人的生活变得更好。说真的，这些人的确为自己选择了一种精心规划与安排的生活方式，在这种生活方式中，个人经常遭遇死亡的威胁；每一天都变成一段冒险之旅，在其中死亡和生命被果断地权衡。

小孩子可能患上许多儿童疾病，但实际上仍是非常健康的孩子。成人可能滑雪摔断了骨头，或沉迷于其它运动，却仍然很健康。人们因伤风感冒或其它社交疾病而“病倒”，那假设是由一个人传给另一个人的——但整体而言，这些人可能是非常健康的个人。

身体有自己的自我调节系统。这通常被称为免疫系统。

如果人们生病了，很流行的说法是免疫系统暂时失灵了——然而，身体本身知道某些“不适”是相当健康的反应。身体并不把“不适”当作通常所理解的“疾病”。它把所有的活动都看作是经验，看作一种生命的暂时状况，一种平衡状态。但身体具有一种完整感和整体的健全感，因为它意识到，即使在不同的条件下，它仍将继续存在；它意识到，如果每个个体要继续存在，这种变化就像季节的变化一样自然和必要，而地球本身拥有物质生命存活所必需的养分。

Individuals who defy death time and time again are actually more frightened of it than most other people are. Trapeze performers, stunt men and women, race-car riders, and many other groups have a life-style that includes death-defying stunts on a very regular basis.

Trapeze performers may have several acts a day, for example. It seems that such individuals perform with great daring, even with a rashness that is unfamiliar to most people. Most such performers, however, are extremely regulated. They work with a carefully calculated eye, under conditions in which each detail, however minute, is of supreme importance. No matter how often certain trapeze acts may be repeated, for example, there is always the threat of instant disaster — of missed footing, a final plunge. Through testing "fate," death-defiers try each time, they perform to prove to themselves that they are indeed safe, that they can overcome life's most dire conditions.

Life, then, has the sweetest buoyancy, the greatest satisfaction, because it is contrasted with the ever-present threat of death. Many such people do not feel at all safe living under life's usual conditions. They protect themselves by setting up the conditions of such an encounter, and controlling those conditions, again down to the smallest detail.

Only when they pursue some death-defying career do such individuals feel safe enough to relax otherwise and live a fairly normal life outside of their death-defying careers.

I do not mean to pass any moral judgment upon such activities. Often they do permit an extremely keen sense of exuberance and vitality. It is also true, however, that such people may enjoy excellent health for years, not counting perhaps an assortment of broken bones and bruises — only to fall suddenly prone to some illness if they try to give up their activities.

This need not be the case, of course. Self-understanding and self-knowledge may be able to change the individuals' lives for the better, regardless of their activities or conditions of life. It is true that these individuals do choose for themselves a carefully planned and regulated style of life, in which the threat of death is encountered personally and regularly; each day becomes an odyssey, in which death and life are purposefully weighed.

Children may come down with many childhood diseases, and still be very healthy children indeed. Adults may break a bone skiing, or indulging in some other sport, and still be very healthy. People "come down" with colds, or the flu, or some other social disease that is supposed to be passed from one individual to another — yet overall these may be very healthy individuals.

The body has its own self-regulating system. This is often called the immune system.

If people become ill, it is quite fashionable to say that the immunity system has temporarily failed — yet the body itself knows that certain "dis-eases" are healthy reactions. The body does not regard diseases as diseases, in usually understood terms. It regards all activity as experience, as a momentary condition of life, as a balancing situation. But it possesses a sense of wholeness and of overall integrity, for it knows that it continues to exist, though under different conditions, and it realizes that this change is as natural and necessary as the change of seasons if each individual is to continue to exist, while the earth itself possesses the nutriments necessary to the survival of physical life.