Healing is ultimately a gift, one we stand in awe of. It is not one thing but many things and different for each person. To be open to healing requires us to know we are always in need of more health in order that our wholeness can grow larger, more inclusive and abundant.
It is a bit the way trees layer in diameter, root deeper and wider to support more branching and a larger canopy and so ultimately supporting the earth with more oxygen. Our healing is not for ourselves alone. When looked at this way we may take it more seriously. As long as we are alive our bodies, our thoughts, our feelings, our actions can increase in their wholeness. It is a continuous process, a daily wonder, and one that benefits others whom we may never meet.
Phrases posted on Facebook, December 2015
More often than not, doesn’t healing happen when we lean into our deepest longing until we discover belonging? The subjects I want to think about this December.
I have been a psychotherapist for more than forty years and I still am in wonder and amazement at what brings about healing. The word has a root in the word wholeness. After all this time the one thing I have learned is that wholeness does not come into being without the willingness to embrace our vulnerability.
In time, perhaps with much struggle, we can understand that healing and cure is not the same thing. We may not be cured of a disease, a difficult circumstance, or any other trouble and yet be healed. Healing is essentially integration and whole making which includes every aspect of life, even the un-curable.
In prayer, or stillness, or simple grace we may come to a place with “nothing to do, nowhere to go, and nothing to be”. That nothing is a mystery that can open us to oneness with everything and so to deep healing.
A profound healing happens when someone in our life understands and sees us in our raw humanity and inner longing. Their loving gaze helps us be born (both senses of the word) into more capacity to express and become. Without such witnessing it is very difficult to unfold and realize who we really are.
We may have particular ideas of what healing should be for us. What we don’t realize is that insisting on something particular may actually stop the healing that would be best for us. To pray for the highest good keeps our hands off the reins and opens us to another sort of grace.
A well-trained dog will sit down next to your foot when commanded to “heel”. Could we say, “heal” and train our minds to come to stillness and so feel the infinite love that is for us and with us? We would then be more rightly guided to wholeness in our lives.
Healing may often be a process of letting go of what no longer serves us. If we look closely we’ll see that we are, in fact, losing what has already died. But we can’t rush or pick at this process any more than we rush the natural process of allowing a scab to fall off when it is time for it to go.
When we listen deeply and allow our minds to hear the heart’s wisdom and longing, and when we then take the steps to act on what we have heard and know, we begin to heal our hidden separation from living meaningfully.
Each day brings us closer to our eventual ending. Understanding this fully can help us fall in love with life. Humbled and grateful the door opens to the home of healing.
Constantly noting our inadequacy and our daily self-criticism is a sure way to never heal. We all make mistakes, but we are not mistakes. Is it too hard to accept that in essence we are beloved? We are each one of a kind. So let us be kind.
I think you would agree that it is the little things that add up to the big thing. How we approach each day with a groan or gratitude and reverence. How we eat our food– stuffing and fueling or dining. How we greet others –automatically or consciously. Isn’t it in the care and embrace of the present that our lives become whole, healed and meaningful?
Sometimes to heal at the core level we have to surrender a great deal of our “doing” in order for our “being” to dictate how we should live a more fulfilled and humane lives. It is no accident that we are called human beings.
No New Year’s resolution that will be broken in a matter of days for me. What does the heart long for but commitment, not a glib and meaningless ritual? It is when we step into something necessary and new with our whole selves that actualization has a good chance to be realized. May it be so! Happy New Year to each and every one of you.
