Second Week of September: Spiritual and Energetic Healing

Click the link below for this week’s video lesson.

An Overview of Spiritual and Energetic Healing

There are countless approaches to spiritual and energetic healing, and our work here won’t begin to explore any of them in depth. Everyone has the potential to be a healer, in the same way that everyone can sing and dance, even though some are truly gifted and others are too inhibited to try. What we’ll do over the next few weeks is experiment with some approaches to healing that anyone can easily apply. If this month’s shallow dive into this vast area awakens a calling in you, I encourage you to find classes and teachers in your area to develop your skills.

What the following offers is some explanation of the different broad categories most healing approaches fall into. Some methods require many sessions, some take just seconds. Many use different hand positions and specific manipulations, some involve no touch at all, and others are practiced over long distances. Some are designed to treat specific symptoms and some are aimed at changing our very DNA. Some are steeped in religious dogma, ritual, and ancient traditions. Here are a few basic styles of healing and their main characteristics.

Energy Healing

Energy healing works with an energetic field that permeates and extends beyond the physical body. Signs of illness show up in this field before manifesting as physical symptoms, and with a little practice this “aura” can be experienced, even by a novice. While the awareness of an energy field has been an integral part of mainstream medicine in the Eastern hemisphere for thousands of years (with medical systems such as acupuncture being every bit as precise, specialized, and effective as Western medical techniques), it’s a relatively new addition to Western ways of thinking.

Energy healing generally operates in much the same way as conventional medicine, by addressing symptoms, identifying energy blocks and areas of dysfunction, and moving energy around in specific, mechanical ways. The healer often visualizes transferring or channeling healing energy to the recipient, using energy in much the same way an MD uses medication, surgery, and other treatment. Therapeutic Touch, a technique developed by a nurse, Delores Krieger, Ph.D., R.N., is a well-known example of this approach that has become increasingly integrated into mainstream medicine since she introduced it into New York University’s nursing curriculum in the 1970s. Her book, The Therapeutic Touch, is an excellent introduction to the practice of energy healing.

Spiritual Healing

With spiritual healing, instead of moving energy around to address specific problem areas, the healer goes into a powerful state of unconditional love and has an experience of becoming one with the healing recipient. Rather than focusing on illness, the healer joins with the person’s spiritual self, where there is no illness. This powerful attention to the recipient’s intrinsic wellness helps call it forth. I think of this style of healing as “repatterning” rather than repairing.

Faith Healing

Faith healing doesn’t require that the healer “diagnose” energetically, direct energy, or be versed in a particular methodology. There may still be a focus on symptoms and on disappearing signs of illness, but healing is performed by invoking the power of a higher spiritual source, as in Christian faith healing. Faith healers often describe their work as “prayer.”

Attitudinal Healing

Attitudinal healing is simply a shift in perspective that assumes illness to be illusionary and the spiritual essence of our being to be eternally whole and complete. Thus, by identifying with our spiritual wholeness rather than our physical dis-ease, we can feel at peace regardless of outer circumstances and often release physical symptoms of illness as well. The term “attitudinal healing” was coined by psychiatrist Gerald Jampolsky to describe a philosophy he drew from A Course in Miracles and applied in his work with children and adults experiencing illness (there are now many Centers for Attitudinal Healing around the world based on Jampolsky’s model; Google “Center for Attitudinal Healing” to find out more); but there are numerous approaches to healing that give attention to attitude rather than illness. Some metaphysical paths even discourage healing practices altogether on the premise that the act of “healing” affirms the reality of illness and is counterproductive to achieving the greater reality that we are already perfectly whole.

The Common Denominator: Healing Follows Intention

All of these methods are very good at facilitating a peaceful state and all have been known to facilitate the healing of physical illness, sometimes quite miraculously. Is one method better than another? I tend to think they’re like apples and oranges, different and useful in different ways. The key principle that makes them all work, even ones that seem to contradict one another, is that healing follows the intention of the healer. While healers may be using hands or voice in very specific ways to direct energy, invoking higher powers, using elaborate ritual or working within a framework of specific religious dogma, it’s their expectations, beliefs, and envisioning of the healing process, along with their heart-felt caring, that are bringing about a healing response.

Seven Key Elements of Healing

The following are some key elements that facilitate a powerful experience of healing with any of these methods. The first two are aimed specifically at the recipient in the healing interaction, but many of these are equally applicable to both healer and recipient.

Preparing for Healing

Identifying a desire for healing: Identifying a desire for anything we wish to call forth is a creative act. It directs intention and focus toward this issue and starts healing energy moving in the direction of our intent.
Identifying and releasing the payoffs of dis-ease: As last week’s lesson addressed in depth, as long as we need the payoffs of a painful condition, we will subconsciously hold it in place. Giving attention to how a condition is still serving us makes any form of treatment or healing more effective.

Cultivating a Healing State of Mind

Living in the moment in unconditional love: When Lawrence LeShan studied a large group of spiritual healers, as described in his classic book, The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist, he found the experience of deep caring to be common to all. In the words of one of his healers, “Only love can generate the healing fire.” This is also the essence of attitudinal healing, which is all about letting go of the past and the future and simply amplifying love in the moment. In Gerald Jampolsky’s early experiments with this, he brought seriously ill children together with adult helping professionals to relate as peers, practicing these principles of unconditional love. What began simply as an exercise in creating a peaceful state of mind proved to facilitate healing miracles as children defied doctors’ prognoses and healed from terminal illnesses. Dean Ornish’s excellent book, Love and Survival, pulls together decades of medical research documenting the connection between all different forms of love and physical healing. He concludes that, “love and intimacy are among the most powerful factors in health and illness.” Quite simply, every time we experience even an instant of unconditional love, inner peace, compassion, and forgiveness, we’re in a powerful healing state. We heal ourselves and we become healers to others as well.
Faith: Faith isn’t a hope or wish for a future outcome. Rather, it’s the feeling of certainty that the future is going to be fine, no matter what. When we have faith, we’re free to be at peace in the present and able to let go of worry about the future. With hoping and wishing, we’re focused on what we don’t have and attach our peace of mind to a specific future outcome. It then becomes easy to vacillate between hope and fear and, consequently, lose our ability to be present and at peace. Ultimately, faith isn’t about trusting in an outcome; it’s a willingness to trust God and the process of life. Paradoxically, when we deeply trust that we’ll be OK no matter what, we begin to attract miracles.
Surrender: Surrender isn’t the same as giving up in defeat. The kind of surrender I’m suggesting here is a lightness of being; not about losing the battle, but about stepping out of the fight. So often we think of ourselves as “battling” a health condition, and we even use that very word. (Choose your words carefully as you speak about illness, as they describe the reality we’re creating. Would you rather be battling cancer, suffering from cancer, living with cancer or healing from cancer? Think carefully of the implications, because your words help shape your experience.) In another lesson I told a story of a woman who “battled” melanoma for fifteen years and finally became cancer free after weeks of working with the affirmation, “Thank you, God, for cancer.” The first thing she noticed, just days into this affirmation work and before there were any noticeable physical effects, was that for the first time she felt at peace with her disease. As last week’s lesson addressed, every condition we battle is in some way serving us. Even if we don’t fully understand how, the more we accept the truth of this, the more swiftly we can release the struggle and pain.

There’s an exercise I sometimes do in workshops where I have an individual who feels hopelessly stuck in some area of life invite people from the group to represent the various limiting messages she has going on in her own head. These helpers externalize and dramatize the person’s inner dialogue, and what ensues is generally a noisy debate between the protagonist and her “voices.” At some point in this drama I ask the rest of the group to call to person, now locked in battle with her own demons, and see if they can entice her with offers of love and kindness. It’s fascinating to see how many people stubbornly hang on to the fight and find it more compelling than the breath of fresh air coming from beyond. There’s never an end to these battles. They could go on endlessly if I didn’t intervene and, even though fighting in the same old way doesn’t produce any new results, people keep at it as long as I let them. When I do finally step in, the protagonist typically says, “Yup, this is how I feel stuck in my life!”

Eventually, many in this exercise discover that as much as they hate the battle, it’s energizing and seductively holds their attention. Some realize that this inner battle feels comfortably familiar, and safer than being fully available and intimate with another. Those who break free from this internal war don’t do it by “winning;” they do it by losing interest in it. They shift their attention from fighting what’s wrong to embracing love. The voices don’t go away; they just fade into the background and eventually wither from lack of attention. This is the power of surrender. It requires letting go of stubbornness, of being right, of trying to control the outcome, and stepping back from fighting whatever condition we love to hate.

One last important word on surrender: it’s not to be confused with the highly debilitating states of passivity and depression. There are times when achieving a “fighting” state of mind is a good thing and supports healing. “Battling” is a big step up from hopeless despair, and early studies of mental attitude and illness showed that the more “difficult” cancer patients who fought their treatments and medical caregivers had a better survival rate than passive, “good” patients who just gave up and died. Sometimes getting mad is a step toward feeling alive. Surrendering to love is a next step, if and when we’re ready.

Envision healing: Instead of waiting for healing, envision it. Any time you’re in a healing process and find yourself tempted to dwell on the evidence that your symptoms are still there, vividly imagine them leaving or already gone. Build this envisioning into your daily routines. I knew a young woman with cancer who attached her healing imagery to the unavoidable act of peeing. At every opportunity, she imagined herself peeing out all the cancer cells in her body.

Healing Together

Group Agreement: The opportunity to do healing work in a group offers some powerful advantages. Some healers have even noticed a higher proportion of healings in their group sessions than when working with people individually. There’s a powerful amplification of energy created when a group of minds join forces. Excitement, faith, and willingness to believe grow exponentially in groups and create fertile ground for miraculous outcomes. Individuals are propelled far beyond where they could go on their own steam alone. Even nonbelievers are more likely to experience dramatic results as the energy of the group becomes wave-like, lifting everyone.

Group intention can literally suspend the rules of the natural world as we know them. For example, if you put your hand in fire, do you believe it would burn? Of course you do, and it would! But if you were to attend a fire-walking event and spend a few hours with a group of people led by an experienced guide, convincing yourselves that the fire wouldn’t hurt, more than likely you’d successfully trot across a big bed of hot coals, unharmed.

This is just one of many examples of how group agreement can change the rules of the physical world. In more obscure religious rituals in this country and around the world, groups of people have been practicing snake-handling, poison-drinking, flesh-piercing, and other frightening acts, and doing amazingly little harm to themselves, for hundreds of years. The world-known healer and the man who ordained me, Dr. Willard Fuller, defied known reality on a regular basis in his amazing healing services where, each time, numbers of people come away with shiny new fillings and other dental miracles—sometimes even new teeth! Dr. Fuller noticed a higher rate of healings in his large services than in his one-on-one healing sessions, and I believe this is due to the group-mind factor.

States of mind-over-matter that might take years of dedicated practice for an individual to achieve alone can be realized with phenomenal speed in a group, even by those who feel doubtful of the process or of their own ability to have a positive result. When people join together in an intention that reality is going to work differently, miraculously, it does. This happens in groups that are separated by space, as our student group is, and even by time. As we address in another lesson, the fixed nature of time is as illusionary as the apparent solidity of the physical realm.

We’ll use this power of group agreement next week to create a powerful healing experience for all of us. Earlier, I compared the ability to heal to the ability to sing. Even though an unpracticed individual might not be able to belt out a virtuoso solo concert, that same person might hold his own perfectly well in a group sing-along, and the chorus might still sound fine if a few people are just mouthing the words! So, even if you don’t feel experienced enough to think of yourself as a healer, know that your sheer intention to help adds power to the whole. As Delores Krieger describes this in the context of therapeutic touch, “from the moment one turns one’s attention to helping or healing another, an energetic interchange between those two people has already begun.” The focusing of your intention gives explicit, although perhaps unconscious, direction to your energy flow.

Potential Healing Outcomes

All of this is preparation for the actual spiritual healing work we’ll do together this month, starting this week and continuing in an even bigger way next week. Trust that you will have a significant healing experience, if you want it, and if you give a reasonable amount of attention to this work. Along with the expectation that healing will happen for you, also be open to it taking the form you most need, not necessarily the form you expect. Healing comes in whatever way best serves us, and as you prepare yourself for a healing experience, trust that it will happen in the best way for you, not just the best you can currently imagine. Typical healing outcomes include:

Spontaneous physical healing where manifestations of illness disappear instantly. In my own healing services as well as the distance healing work of my healing ministry, I’ve seen many examples of a physical condition disappearing so completely and immediately that surgery or medication became no longer necessary. These occurrences seem to happen as often over distance as in person. On a night when my weekly group was experimenting specifically with dental healing, a woman with a painful dental condition, who was unable to be there, just took a moment out from her other commitment to join her mind with the group work in order to receive healing. Not only did her tooth stop hurting, but she kept her scheduled dental appointment the next day just to be safe, and the dentist could find nothing wrong.
Attitudinal shifts such as feeling at peace even though circumstances haven’t changed, or seeing new options where choices had seemed limited. For example, a woman who attended a series of monthly healing services with me, first came wanting to heal the chronic pain she had lived with for years. The next month she appeared quite improved and reported that her pain hadn’t gone away but she did have an experience during the healing service of feeling happy for the first time in years. This happiness stayed with her all month and so changed her state of mind that her pain slipped from the foreground to the background of her awareness. She felt able to get on with her life in a whole new way, and several months later, she reported that the pain was much diminished.
A slow, steady course of growth and healing where results may not be noticeable for some time (like planting a seed that grows invisibly at first). For example, another woman who had attended many healing services with me reported that a chronic condition of asthma had gone away and she didn’t even know it until she found herself in a situation that would have ordinarily triggered an attack. As she tried to remember the last time she’d had an asthma attack, she realized it had been many months.
Circumstantial shifts that bring new conditions, opportunities, or people into our lives. It’s very common for fortunate “coincidences” to occur within days of spiritual healing work. Jobs show up unexpectedly, money shows up, new relationships form, connections are made to the perfect medical helper or healing practitioner, etc. These are things we might not see as directly connected to the healing we want, yet they support the totality of our well-being in a way that serves us even more than the simple disappearance of a symptom.
Relationship healing where specific relationships or relationship patterns shift to create deeper love, compassion, forgiveness, and interpersonal harmony. I’ve often seen this happen with great serendipity, as with a woman whose estranged daughter called her after years of silence, just days after she’d talked about this painful situation in a healing service. Because the connection between love and healing is so strong, as our relationships heal, so do we.

It’s important to understand all the forms healing can take because it’s easy to come away feeling like nothing happened if we don’t get the outcome we had in mind. While we could participate in healing work and receive its benefits passively and unconsciously, it becomes far more powerful when we consciously recognize the positive results. Firstly, as we’re able to recognize the tangible results of our spiritual work, we have more faith in it, which makes it more effective. What’s more, when we recognize the subtle beginnings of healing, we’re more apt to nurture them and allow a small healing effect to grow into a greater one. Imagine if the woman with chronic pain dismissed her experience of happiness as momentary and insignificant and left the healing service disappointed that she still had pain. She might never have nurtured that new state of mind into a more fulfilling life that ultimately resulted in far less pain. Last but not least, any time we give grateful attention to our blessings in any form, we attract more opportunities to feel grateful. Recognizing healing is, in and of itself, a healing act.

Why Would We Not Heal?

We’re stilling learning something from the illness/symptom. Perhaps it’s meeting a need we haven’t found another way to fulfill: for caring attention, time for ourselves, protection from risk-taking, etc.
Healing it too quickly would shake our sense of reality in a way that would be more uncomfortable than the illness. This level of discomfort may be unconscious until we’re faced with it. A healer I know who had successfully healed himself of a terminal heart condition, diabetes, and more, decided to grow a missing tooth back after seeing this happen in his work with the dental healer, Dr. Willard Fuller. He set about it in the way he had healed so many other conditions, and there was a point in the process where he actually felt a cracking sensation in his jaw, right where the missing tooth had been. Instead of embracing the sign of healing, his first impulse was a big inner “NO!” He was very surprised at his own response and understood it to be a manifestation of his limiting beliefs: even though he had healed himself in so many other ways, this one seemed “too big!” Fortunately, the more we’re aware of these hidden agendas, the more power we have to choose and the less they control us.
We’re focused more on battling something painful than on pursuing something joyful. What we give attention to, we magnify. If we’re giving a large amount of attention to our distress over the problem, we hold it in place. When we stop battling an illness we free up a tremendous amount of energy that can then move in the direction of healing.
The pain we know may feel safer than the potential risks of the unknown. If there’s a symptom or problem we’ve been living with for a long time, one that’s gotten a lot of our energy and attention, its sudden absence would undoubtedly leave a big empty place in our lives. While on the surface this might seem all good, this change could create significant stress and anxiety if we don’t know how to fill the space. A Pandora’s Box full of issues, from intimacy to life purpose, may be next in line to be addressed once the familiar struggle is no longer there.

Questions for Thought

Healing of any magnitude can happen instantaneously, and next week will offer us all a chance to experience healing limited only by ourselves and our own beliefs in what is possible. Spend this week giving attention to how you can make the best use of this opportunity. Let the following questions help you identify your readiness for and possible resistance to healing.

If you could heal anything of any magnitude in your body, mind, or life circumstances, what would you most want to heal (not what you think you should heal, but what you have the most emotional energy around)?
If you were to imagine how many steps and how much time lie between you and the healing you want, what do you immediately envision? Does it seem like something that could happen quickly or does it feel more likely to be a long, arduous process? Is it hard to imagine ever manifesting this healing?
If you could skip time and steps and be healed spontaneously right now, would that feel completely acceptable, or is there any way it feels not quite right? Use the preceding information to help you become conscious of any reasons you might possibly resist the healing you want. Becoming conscious of resistance is the first step in loosening its power to stand in the way.

Exercise I: Healing with Energy

This next part is an experiment with energy healing and becoming aware of the sensations energy healers experience when they do healing work. What follows is a meditation so, before going on to it, make sure you have a few uninterrupted moments where you can relax, quiet your mind and imagine. If you want, light a candle, put on quiet music, go outside to a place that lifts you, or otherwise create a sacred atmosphere for healing.

Meditation:

Become comfortable, take some deep breaths and relax. Inhale deeply and exhale just as deeply several times. Take as much time as you need to quiet your mind and relax your body….

Let your attention come to rest on your heart and find there a source of clear, beautiful light. Know this light to be the light of your Higher Self that is always whole and perfectly complete. It’s the light of unconditional love and absolute healing. With each breath expand this light to every cell of your body. Take a moment to picture and feel every area of your body now filling with light.

Let the light expand beyond the boundaries of your physical body to form a beautiful light-filled cocoon around you. Experience a feeling of profound peace and well-being within this light.

As you give it attention, your inner light becomes so bright, it now draws to you an even greater light: the limitless light of the Divine. It’s shining above your head and you might picture it as a beautiful radiant orb, flower, or jewel. A stream of light flows from this Divine Source to you, joining with your light and amplifying it. It flows through you from head to toe like a river through an open channel. It passes in through your head, moves down the length of your body, through your arms and out your hands; down your legs and out the bottoms of your feet.

Experience this river dissolving away any discomfort or illness in your physical body, washing away whatever physical problems you no longer need. It carries them right through you, out the palms of your hands and the bottoms of your feet. As physical dis-ease leaves you, it loses its painful charge and returns to a state of pure energy.

Now allow the river of light to wash away all emotions that are painful. Let it dissolve away fear, anger, sadness, and any feelings blocking your experience of inner peace and well-being in the moment. Allow these emotions to pass out of you with the river’s flow, seeing all hurtfulness return to pure energy as it leaves you.

Finally, let your mind be cleansed and healed of all limiting thoughts by this flow. It washes away painful memories of the past, worries about the future, judgments you have about yourself and others, fearful beliefs that draw scarcity, danger, and separateness into your life, and any other thoughts that block your experience of inner peace and well-being. Again, as you release pain and limitation, see it return to a state of pure energy as it leaves you.

Now, as you release to the river of light everything you don’t need, the light becomes less of a stream flowing through you and more of a soft vibration, filling you and radiating from you. Feel this as a comfortable, pleasurable sensation. What was a moving river now feels more like a soothing bath. Take a moment to just soak in this healing energy, knowing that it’s having a very real effect on your biochemistry, your physical health, and your well-being on every level….

When you’re ready, let the energy begin to move like a river again. Once again it’s flowing in through your head, moving through your body and out the palms of your hands and soles of your feet. Play with it, so that you can feel your ability to turn it on and off like a spigot. Go back and forth once or twice from the experience of soft vibration to that of flowing movement.

Now, with the energy flowing, give attention to your hands and picture them very bright with light flowing out of them. Feel them becoming warm and tingling. Bring your hands together, palm to palm, without quite touching, and see if you can feel the sensation of this energy. Fan your hands back and forth and notice how that makes it stronger. Notice everything you can about the quality of this energy. Imagine that what you’re holding between your hands is concentrated Divine Love. As you feel the sensation of it, recognize this energy to be powerfully healing. Place your hands now on an area of your own body that you would like to give healing attention to and picture the area flooding with healing light. Notice how your hands feel as you do this. You may feel warmth, tingling, pressure or other sensations. Don’t be concerned if you feel nothing at all. That doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Remember, healing follows intention, so simply hold it strongly in mind that this energy is doing you good. Take as much time as you like with this. See if you can sense the right time to stop. You may feel a change in sensation or just know it’s done.

Let the flow of energy become a healing cocoon around you that will keep working even after you’ve stopped giving it your attention. Bring yourself back, fully alert and grounded, with a several deep breaths.

Take a moment to become fully “grounded” if you need to: place your feet firmly on the ground, stretch and make sure you’re not still feeling in an altered state before you jump in your car and get busy again. Drinking a glass of water is always a good idea after any kind of healing work. It’s both grounding and helps flush away toxins that get shaken loose in energy work.

Exercise II: Playing with Energy

From time to time over the week, call forth this energy flow through your hands. Many people find they can quickly sensitize their hands to energy by briskly rubbing them together. Experiment with the energy by giving it to your animals, your plants, or yourself. Turn the flow into a soft vibration and play with feeling the energy field that penetrates and extends from physical forms. See if you can feel an “aura” around yourself, other people, animals, plants, and rocks. Many people can feel very distinct sensations around crystals and other rocks. Just see what you notice as you pay more attention to the realm of energy this week.