How Healing Works - A Personal View

As far as I know, every person has healing gifts, whether they acknowledge it or not. So the initially interesting topic is really what inhibits or suppresses those gifts.

From my own perspective, ignorance, disbelief and dismissiveness were the key factors. If a person doesn’t grow up in a family where such things are acknowledged or discussed, where indeed they are ridiculed, as was the case in my family, then the chances of discovering a gift for healing are slight.

It took me till middle age to overcome my distaste for the whole idea. Even when presented with clear proof, I needed many years to erase old habits of mockery. Despite the passage of nearly twenty years, I am still not above dismissing my role in the healing process.

This might seem a sign of foolishness on my part but, as with many things, there are other sides to the issue. Over time I have come across people with huge gifts and equally glaring faults. I have a tendency to want to see thoroughgoing clarity and integrity in anyone who claims to be a healer. Often it is the faults that strike me more forcibly than the gifts.

I would claim that a job done without integrity is scarcely worth doing. From the highest perspective, I might well be right in that but, when applied to my own gifts, this approach has the effect of stopping me doing anything until I am absolutely clear. Since this state of perfection is elusive I tend to do nothing unless a situation cries out for action. Am I therefore not making the most of my gift?

Once again, I would claim that to be no bad thing but there is another factor that has to be reckoned with. It is encapsulated in the question, “Who am I to know?” which neatly balances the challenging of the over confident with the question, “Who do you think you are?”

When all is said and done I know what I know but it boils down to very little in the grand scheme of things. And so I am reluctant to make any claims about healing. But there is no denying that I know something. This something is what I intend to discuss here.

My Personal Experience

Everything I mention here comes from personal experience and as such cannot be proven scientifically. Nevertheless, it may be useful information to those willing to suspend their disbelief and take a chance.

It has long puzzled me what I should call what I do. Back at the start, when I had the most striking insights into the nature of human reality, I understood from inner awareness that I needed to do nothing; not nothing in a passive sense, but positively nothing. What I know from direct experience enables me, if I let it, to do nothing in a very present and confident way.

A second understanding was that I was here to give people “a helping hand”. This leaves space for many interpretations but the most obvious one is to be present with someone and put my hand on them, usually on the upper back.

When I do this several things happen. Firstly I feel an extremely peaceful sense of focus and clarity. It is as if my hand becomes and extension of my heart and inner eye. I then find myself staring into inner space and as it were letting the light shine from my hand into the heart of the other person.

Obviously this light is very simple. It doesn’t know anything, contain any thoughts or intentions, beliefs or judgements. Its purpose seems to be to allow greater clarity to be shed on whatever is troubling or blocking the other person.

I do not feel that the light heals though in some cases it might have a dramatic effect. What happens is that the light reveals what has hitherto been hidden. Any healing that takes place depends upon what the other person chooses to do with that revelation.

It is at this stage that my conscious mind may feel the need to reassure the other person so that they can accept what is revealed. Often this may be information that runs counter to their conscious beliefs and understandings.

What we are dealing with is indeed the deeper truth that has been blocked or denied often since early childhood. What the revelation has the potential to do is clear up the confusion of ages.

It is not by chance that the truth can be as threatening as it is freeing. The whole edifice of who a person thinks they are can be swept away by the truth of who they really are. For this is the level of truth we are dealing with. And this is why I am almost reluctant to sit with people on a regular basis.

Most are simply not prepared for the revolution that is the whole truth and, as I see it, should not be exposed to even a hint of it without some explanation and preparation. Exploring the truth sometimes needs to be a process that lasts years so that it can be integrated bit by bit into daily life. The so-called healer needs therefore to be a teacher of truth so as to prepare the way for the revelation.

In my own case there were many years of mature life lived in fairly open minded darkness, a couple of years of more focused insight and then a big bang. Within a couple of months of that bang I had left the family home, wife and children and taken up the life of a semi student in a shared house in a nearby street.

By some miracle I managed to keep the freelance work I was doing and earn a living, but I gradually lost touch with most of the people I was acquainted with and slowly found a few new ones with whom I could speak more freely. The fact was that the truth that I had become terrified my wife and she wanted nothing to do with it. Not only that but the truth that guided me meant that I was not able to be open with many people at all except in a friendly, day-to-day way.

Fortunately, two factors saved my sanity. The first was that I had had many years practice at playing the game of workaday life and could do it without compromising my new sense of purpose. The work I did was to do with training people to be confident in their own abilities and, since that is an essential part of being at peace with oneself, I felt able to continue doing it.

The second saving factor was that my meeting with the truth had given me such inner certainty that I could be alone without feeling isolated or lonely. This meant that I could be eternally patient while the turmoil in my family played itself out. I was never in doubt about the outcome and never even considered eternal ostracism as a possibility.

For me, healing requires a willingness on the part of the other person to explore possibilities and be open to change. It is not simply a matter of removing symptoms. Symptoms represent the way in which the truth of the person seeks to be noticed and accepted.

Attitudes to symptoms reveal how much work needs to be done if any real change in awareness is to be achieved. Symptoms need to be accepted as the point of departure on the journey to understanding. The process of unfolding and unravelling of the truth is the path to freedom. Those who find life in prison too comfortable to give up will find healing threatening. Hell can be a very familiar and reassuring place for those who know of no other possibilities.

This brings me to the last piece in the puzzle. In order to have the courage to let go of the old and fall into the new, people need inspiration. What I try to do if people are interested is describe what paradise is like and that it is possible on earth once we find freedom.

We have been brought up in a culture where heaven is seen as a reward for spending a lifetime of dutiful service in prison. This state of affairs suits organised religions and political systems very nicely. It allows their leaders to live lives of very comfortable ignorance. The big fear all leaders have is of public revolt or disorder. It is a legitimate fear because very few people are able to handle freedom after the upbringing they’ve had. Revolutions often involve a great deal of brutality and bloodshed as a consequence of this.

Nevertheless, this culture is unnatural. If human beings are treated with kindness and clarity from birth and then gradually taught how to handle freedom with care and awareness from an early age, they develop the skills to balance self-interest and mutual benefit. This leads to an open-minded and openhearted approach to life where kindness, compassion and care are the key attributes. These, coupled with the strength and resilience that come from a deep inner security and confidence are the prerequisites for experiencing true liberation while still alive and incarnate.

In my experience, therefore, there is much more to healing than just the laying on of hands. For this reason I am quite circumspect in talking about it and even more so in sharing the gift.