Photo Credit : Milada Vigerova

Healing is coming into wholeness.

I felt it very important to begin with this sentence, because we can often think of healing as a journey or an experience that fixes us. We may extrapolate our understanding of the medical industry to healing. There is an expectation that a medication, an herb, a mantra, a person, will fix our symptoms, disease, or problem. It will just make it go away. An insta-pill if you will. "Prescriptions come from the outside, transformation occurs from within," says Dr. Gabor Mate and he couldn't have said it better. I will add, that prescriptions including lifestyle changes can kickstart transformation, but only openness and taking responsibility for one's life can facilitate transformation.

I am in the flow of allowing. Whatever comes is welcome and I notice I have more comfort with discomfort and that brings me a sense of trust, patience, and contentment. As I write this, I am allowing a heavy head with specific areas of twinging pain and nausea to be present. They are guests, here after arising from being buried deep within years ago. They came to the surface after a session with my teacher yesterday. I wish the discomfort would go and I appreciate it being here. Both are true and present.

It wasn't always like this. In fact, I'm marveling at how grace has me write this in this state of physical discomfort. Yet something within me is untouched by any of this, completely untouched. And perhaps it is this wholeness inside that inspired and is facilitating the writing of this blog post.

The flow is to share some of my harvest on what healing means and briefly touch upon some of our limiting ideas around it. For easy reading, they are presented as bullet points, in no particular order.

• You do not need to become worthy of healing.

  I'm saying this again "You do not need to become worthy of healing." Healing is not a reward for hard work or spiritual belief or being a good person. The less you think of healing as a reward, the more you receive.
  
  

• We can't buy/demand healing.

  Healing is a journey of openness. Healing is not a process of fixing. When we come with expectations, like a check list of what I want fixed in a session of life today, when we demand, we close ourselves to the abundance of the Source energy that facilitates wholeness.
  
  

• Healing has its own pace

  One session, one pill or even 10 can't heal something forever. The number of times I or my clients have to work on something we have worked on before! Sometimes people resist working on something because "I've worked on that with my therapist for 12 years and now its done. I'm not going there". The very fact that it brings up a charge, means its not done. That doesn't mean you haven't done enough. Experience reveals to me over and over again that we receive healing in the degree that we are able to handle it and to the degree we are open to it. Healing is always in the exact dosage that you need. Trust that.
  
  

• The "results" of healing are in the quality and energy of our relationships.

  We know healing occurs when our relationships change. What relationships? Our relationship with ourself, the inner dialogue, the way we treat our bodies
  
  

• Healing doesn't have to look a certain way (for myself and for others)

  Some people come to seek wholeness from drugs, sexual promiscuity, or crime. Everybody is on a journey of healing/coming into wholeness by design. I dare not have the audacity to decide that I know better than Source what someone's healing journey should look like. Certainly, it helps to drop the idea of incesne and crystals and mantras and zen faces. Don't be attached to the idea you have of healing.
  
  

• There are no healers.

  It is only the Source energy that heals, not the person. Calling oneself or someone else a healer may strengthen the ego, which gets in the way of connecting to Source. That Source energy is in each of us and we have only to want deeply to access it (at any cost). Everything will align from there.
  
  

• Deep healing cannot occur without the involvement of the heart.

  Yet it will not shut out the mind or body. They will be involved in the process. healing/wholeness is by its very nature integrative. Here I want to share the beautiful wisdom of the sage Ramana Maharishi. He said to a seeker, (I'm paraphrasing) "When someone asks you about yourself or who you are, do you point to your mind and say I am so and so? No, you point to your heart and say I am Mirabelle." Even though I may be considered an ego, word, the essence of who you are is in your heart, you instinctively point to your heart not your mind, even if your intelligence is your most prized possession.

  
  

• The more the avoidance, the more the resistance. The more the resistance, the more the discomfort.

  The longer we have avoided something and want to continue avoiding it, the more resistance we can experience to a process that facilitates healing. That resistance presents itself in the intensity of discomfort and more importantly judgment of discomfort and the impatient desire for it to go away.
  
  

• Conditioning and beliefs can get in the way of healing.

  It amazes me how the root cause of suffering is often belief, not experience itself. It is the story and belief that came out of a trauma that often gets in the way of the body processing the trauma. The body, allowed, is ever ready to express, share, be listened to, and be healed. Conditioning includes spiritual, societal, parental, cultural, and intellectual conditioning. We must be particularly aware of any religious or spiritual conditioning that causes us to reject or judge ourselves or others. This often comes from a misunderstanding of the teachings rather than the teachings themselves.
  
  

• Healing is moving from abdicating responsibility to taking responsibility.

  Pain and stress are caused by disconnection. To protect ourselves we often fall into story, to escape the body, to make meaning of an experience that felt too intense to feel in the body. That story often keeps us in cycles of shame, blame, guilt, anger, judgment, etc. Healing involves feeling the pain as a sensation so the charge around it can drop and perception can shift. From this space, we can acknowledge the experience and shift our narrative. The freed energy allows us to take action, we realize we are the creators of our lives! It is a big responsibility and also immensely freeing.

  
  

• You don't need to make sense of healing.

  Often people tend to connect dots after healing, co-relating things that may not have any connection. When healing happens, the body will know, the mind will quiet and the heart will feel appreciation. Nothing else is needed. As my friend and mentor Sharon says "Don't ask who, why, what when". Healing takes time (in the initial stages). Patience and trust are prerequisites. When they are not present, ask for help to develop them.
  
  

• Investment of finances and time is important for healing

  How incredible that for most of life we think we have to work hard and consistently to grow but when it comes to healing, there are often 2 types of expectations. One tends to be that healing must happen instantly, like a facilitator just waves a magic wand and voila, all healed in one session. Another expects that healing will be a slow painful process that needs a lot of effort and lifetimes. Both can be extreme. What helps is being pragmatic. You can't expect your money to grow by itself. You can put it in fixed deposits and feel safe at a lower return or take some and invest smartly perhaps in an index fund attracting higher returns. If you don't put energy, heartfulness, time, and money into your healing journey, don't expect miracles.
  
  

• To recognize that we are whole, fragmentation must drop.

  This involves both conscious action and grace-filled shifts. These present as subtraction. Processes include the dropping/subtraction of beliefs, conditioning, opinions, grudges, blame, shame, guilt, decluttering of personal and digital possessions and space, relationships, over-identification with traits that are celebrated or denigrated by the world (including but not limited to achievement, being a "good" person, good "mom/dad/daughter/son".
  
  

• Healing leads you to be-ing in your own power

  This is the power of your heart, uncluttered by oversensitivity and sentimentality and aligned with Source. If modality or teacher or coach makes you dependent on them, run away.
  
  

• Always do due diligence on the person you are working with.

  This includes their qualifications and more importantly their energy. You wouldn't trust your body to a doctor without qualifications and a track record. Why would you not have as good or higher standards for who you trust your heart/soul with.
  
  

• Healing can look ugly and feel awful.

  It can be allowing anger, heat, screams, tears, letting the body collapse from exhaustion, and more. It can be allowing the body to fully experience for the first time, a moment of assault, abuse, neglect, or perception of the same. If you are looking for pretty, head to the spa or a sanctuary where you can peace out to zen music for temporary relief. (This is good and necessary sometimes too :) )

  
  

• Do not get fixated or attached to your guide.

  In a lifetime, you can be guided to work with many people, teachers, and mentors who will facilitate healing for you. Be so deeply appreciative of them and their integrity and hard work that allows them to facilitate healing, but don't get attached. Only your heart can guide you to what you truly need. Cultivate the ability to listen to and trust your heart above all else. (PS: Healthy gut function through lifestyle is important to develop and nurture this connection).

  
  

• Healing is not for when you are broken, it is for wholeness.

  Don't wait until you have a problem to invest in healing. There is always something to unravel, unpack, open to. Make wholeness your focus, not healing in the way of fixing yourself. Essentially, healing is recognizing one's wholeness and living from that space of embodied recognition.

  
  

• Leave achievement and spiritual materialism out of the healing journey.

  Many overachievers and knowledge geeks superimpose these traits on the healing journey. This can be very subtle or more direct, like constantly consuming courses or crystals or whatever your healing "poison/elixir" is. You don't need to do more, to make more efforts to heal.
  
  

• What isn't transmuted is transmitted.

  Our patterns of disconnection are not always our own or entirely our own. Healing often brings up patterns we are loyal to because they help us stay connected with dysfunctional parents. We often pass them down to our children. Doing work that heals affects our ancestral energy and that of our children. One guru told me healing works 7 generations back and forward. (I don't remember the textual reference for it.) This is also why every tradition has a day to pray for deceased ancestors.

If you are reading this, I am certain you have much wisdom to share about healing. I am always eager and open to learning. Please feel free to share your wisdom with me and the other readers in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post and think it would benefit someone on their journey, please share it along.