Healing today
The definition of healing is to “restore, release and to return to original integrity and purity.” We all want to restore our lives to goodness. We want to be completely free of anything that hinders us. Healing is getting the Mind, Body and Soul back in alignment with God/Source (our true, infinite nature and purpose).
All too often in today’s world, stress and suffering have become the normal experience in life rather than limitless health, peace of mind, joy or happiness.
Better to understand healing as a journey. Healing is not something that happens overnight. Expect it to be a life-long learning progression and commitment, where you will be challenged in all areas of your life - diet, exercise, lifestyle, relationships, right-choice, etc.
An important distinction however must be made before exploring the types of healing methods available today. To Hea is not to cure (which is more about eliminating disease and symptoms). People can heal altaugh they might not be cured. Healing is not always connected with staying alive, and that is sometimes the most difficult lesson to learn; healing is sometimes a preparation for death.
It is believed that all healthy new born are in a blissful state and are in total spiritual and physical balance. Then this balance is soon lost and people carry on as normal until one day disease might surface and if not external event might change a natural course (i.e. car crash), the gravity of the disease or the aging process will eventually become a vehicle for death.
However is just the body that dies. It is crucial to understand this concept, common to all forms of healing. The body is a physical representation, but we are also made of emotions, thoughts, memories which are not physical. Healing deal with those as well as the soul, intended as an eternal essence/source/grace. Healing is for every breathing moment and can be experienced as a serious letting go of all traumas, resentments and attachments that keep the person unwell. The final destination of complete healing has been often compared in eastern philosophical tradition to enlightenment itself and its intrinsic essence of freedom.
This brings me to conclude this introduction by saying that healing has been dealt by medicine people, witch doctors, religious figures, tribal shamans, and healers have then many names. However self healing is what ultimately has to happen where all healers are just catalyst and helpers in what is a very individual experience. In the paragraphs that follow I will discuss, Spiritual healers as well as self healing methods which I believe will help to understand what healing is today.
SPIRITUAL HEALING. Healing is always spiritual, however through the ages people with some kind of ‘calling’, a predisposition, where recognised to have an authority in the field and in the case of witch doctors and shaman, they often put a theatrical performance so that a spirit from outside could enter this world and through them, heal instantaneously a person.
Spiritual healing in Sufi tradition acknowledge the Divine as The highest source of healing and the healer works as a conduit between the source of healing and the one who needs healing. The very word "spiritual" in the context of spiritual healing refers to the divine nature of the energy, which comes from one invisible source. In today’s world, wherever conventional allopathic medicine fails, healing becomes a possible second possibility and Healers are experiencing a renaissance as a result.
While they might use herbs, natural remedies amulets and so on to perform the healing, most often as in Reiki, or Prana healing is only an invisible energy that is channeled through the healer.
There is no authority’s body (only practitioner association of general practice standards) or scientific empirical evidence. So there are a vast number of charlatans and impostors as well as many famous and trusted healers and a vast majority of in betweeners. In a later article I will explore and give some guidance in choosing a healer, here I just wanted to define it. There are healers that work in exchange of a donation as well as the ones that charge sometimes more than a doctor visit, as well as the evangelical ones who performs group miraculous healing as well as the one who just preach and don’t even call it healing (but this does little to change what they are indeed doing).
On the other hand there are people who are so fascinated by the subject that spend years trying many of them across the entire world. If you have such experience I invite you to join my list by clicking here and reply to the email I send you with your story and experience, most importantly your results. Or join my forum on this site.
I see little difference here, in today’s world, with the work of Psychotherapists and counselors. In other words, they too can also be seen as modern healers, they do no claim connection to spirits or an invisible realm so cannot be classified as spiritual but they are serving as aid in restoring psycho emotional balance of their patient. In all of those forms of healing, the degree of participation of the person healed varies from the total surrender of classic spiritual healing to a more interactive therapist/patient relationship. This suggest that whoever has some interest in healing can dedicate long time to it or simply do it once and complete healing in one successful session. There are not rules, only a combination of result, belief, and inclination that account to the whole journey.
SELF HEALING. Let’s examine the following claims that healing is a journey, a journey of love. Love for ourselves and the paths we walk. Healing is a journey that lasts a lifetime and beyond. There is no reason this challenging path needs to be walked alone.
All of them sound appealing, though, reassuring and rewarding at the same time. No wonder many more people today open themselves up to self healing, many however still will chose healers, spiritual masters and therapist as their allays in their journey.
Rather than surrender totally to those healers, they will invest most of their time in knowing thyself as well as engaging in practice of divination (prayer, meditation, visualization) rituals (i.e. cleanses, sweat lodges, diets), lifestyle habits (exercise, connect with nature, behavioral/emotion/speech control, dream examination)and self empowerment exercises (affirmations, incantations, goal setting, letting go of the past).
There is a risk here to become self absorbed and obsessed as well as utterly mad (this type of madness is seen as the dark night of the soul and is part of the journey) however those are challenges that should no stop the person to engage in these journeys. This is where spiritual enlightenment, psychotherapy and healing are beautifully woven into a lyrical creative expression, rather than focusing on the outcome taking a subscession of steps towards the outcome is the very journey of the self healer.
This path is not confined by time, in fact it might extend in the after life or reincarnation all depends from the individual belief on the subject. The main difference with spiritual healing is that in self healing the person becomes responsible for their chosen path and for each individual steps taken, while this weight is undertaken by the healer in spiritual healing. The destination is however unchanged.