I’ve been in the healing “business” for 30 years now and it’s still fascinating and meaningful to me that the word “heal” comes from the same root as the words “hale”, “holy” and “hallowed”, and that their common root means “whole.” I love that because I believe we are spiritual beings having a spiritual experience (the only separation between the spiritual and the human being in our minds), so we are already whole, and therefore health and holiness are our normal states. This makes the whole business a lot simpler for me!
Wholeness is defined as “an undivided or unbroken completeness or totality with nothing wanting.” So to say we are whole means we aren’t missing anything physically, mentally or emotionally; we’re not missing any parts and all the parts function in harmony because they’re not really parts, they’re just aspects of one indivisible whole.
For me, the best news about all that is that because I am already whole, healing on every level is always possible. I am whole, but my awareness of that wholeness may not be fully expressed. My “polar bear cage” (see last week’s blog post) may be quite small when it comes to my ability to see and know my own wholeness. But anytime and every time I become more aware of that wholeness, I heal!
I need to make a distinction at this point between curing and healing, as they are not even remotely the same. Curing is something that happens to our symptom or our health problem; healing is something that happens to (within) us. Curing is something that happens in the realm of appearances and form, healing is something that happens in the realm of consciousness and energy. Curing is sometimes not possible; healing is always possible.
Given a particular situation, healing can show up in many ways: in helping us tap into resources, support, or help we didn’t know we had, in strengthening our relationships, in helping us to not stress the small stuff, in helping to transform fear into love, in teaching us that sorrow and joy can coexist in the same moment, etc. Healing is a movement in consciousness or energy toward wholeness, on whatever level that happens and by whatever means that happens. We are not the same after such a movement in consciousness; we generally experience more peace, more love, more faith and/or more joy, more of the truth of what we are, as a result. On the other hand, a cure can happen but nothing shifts on the inside and often the fear remains (“what if it comes back”?). I have nothing against cures (though they are often worse than the disease), in fact I admit there have been times in my life when nothing else seemed important. But without healing only the appearance of things tends to change; our inner atmosphere and our state of consciousness often don’t.
It takes imagination to see our wholeness, to see past the appearances and the bars of our cage, and this is hard to do when our issue is in our face. When I have a health issue and all I do is focus on the diagnosis or the cure, the problem becomes like a stone I hold right up against my eye. I can’t see beyond it, even if the stone is relatively small. I can’t see the bigger picture or the possible gifts; I can’t take advantage of the healing opportunity.
The same is true if all I do is ask why I got the problem to begin with. More and more I’m convinced of the truth of, “Everything happens for a reason.” And, I’m equally convinced that I don’t really ever have a clue what that reason is; at least the entire reason. So instead of asking why, why not use my imagination to see the wholeness that is always there? Generally that simply means I have to move the stone a little bit further away from my eye.
Here’s an example of what I mean. About 10 years ago, Hillary was in the throes of menopause. She was having weird pains and scary neurological symptoms, heart palpitations, significant sleep deprivation, and a bunch of other things I’ve happily forgotten. Through this time, the words of Archie Bunker kept going through my head, when Edith was going through a similar process: “Edith, if you’re going to change, just go ahead and do it!” Alas, that didn’t happen for Hillary any more than it did for Edith.
One day, upon returning from a breakfast meeting with our mastermind group, Hillary was convinced she was about to die. She was extremely agitated, fretful, angry, overwhelmed and hopeless. There was no cure in sight. I wasn’t sure what to say or do, but these words came to me: “If this really is your death, is this how you want to do it?” This was exactly what she needed in order to move the stone away from her eye. No, she didn’t want to do it that way; she wanted to do it with more peaceful acceptance and with much more awareness of the love within her and around her. So first she used her imagination to actually contemplate her possible death. This brought her fear out in the open where it couldn’t lurk just beyond her awareness and run her. Then she used her imagination to fill herself with light and love, to affirm her wholeness, to open to the unlimited possibilities inherent in that wholeness. This helped tremendously, not so much with the symptoms, but with her perspective. It was a healing. And to this day she’s convinced that if hadn’t opened up to that healing, she would indeed have died.
So the question for me becomes how do I want to live, whether or not I have a health problem, even whether or not I’m dying (which, you’d have to admit, we’re all in the process of doing). When I keep that question on the center stage of my awareness, the answer is obvious and my vision immediately becomes bigger, better and more beautiful. Every moment is a healing opportunity, and when I use my imagination to remember this, I can take advantage of more and more of them.
And if that’s all we remember, that’s more than enough for now.
