Essential life wisdom is grounded and practical information, data that can be used every day. Every day life gives us something to heal, if only to release a judgment against something we thought was negative about our own life. We are never going to run dry of something to heal, or someone who needs our prayers for healing. And we are never, ever going to cease learning more about the mystery of healing, most especially when it comes to the mystical content of healing experience. I am referring specifically today to reaching the wall, the point at which we utter these questions:

1. What is the reason for this illness?
2. What more can I do?
3. Is there anyone else I should see?
4. Are there any more techniques, healing practices, nutritional programs, vitamins – anything – that I should introduce into my healing routine that will make a difference?
5. Have I reached the moment at which my only hope is a miracle?

Ultimately who heals and how we heal and why we heal is a mystery. And if the healing is dramatic enough, we call it a miracle. I have been an observer of people involved in healing practices, both as patients and practitioners, for almost twenty-five-years now. I deliberately avoided any hands-on healing work because during all of these years, hands-on healing was not my skill. My own work began in phases: Phase One: investigating why people became ill. These were the years when I actively worked as a medical intuitive with my dear friend and colleague, C. Norman Shealy, M.D. We wrote an excellent book, THE CREATION OF HEALTH, in which we listed the energetic causes of almost 80 illnesses along with the physical, launching the field of medical intuition.

My next phase was studying why people didn’t heal. That consumed me for a few years as I interacted with thousands of people around the world, gathering my data on how people sabotage their healing processes through emotional, mental, and various other methods of behavior. As a result, I wrote WHY PEOPLE DON’T HEAL, as many of you know.

Phase three took me into archetypes and Sacred Contracts, where I became completely absorbed in our more transcendent lives, including the more subtle influences of our lives, namely our archetypal patterns. I thought I had – symbolically speaking – fallen down the Rabbit Hole. I was absolutely enchanted with being able to perceive the archetypal patterns at work within the psychic fields of individuals. I felt as if I was able to hand people the key to their cosmic codes and with this key, people could begin to interpret the “latitude and longitude” locaters of their lives. I marvel as I listen to people “speak archetype” and they don’t even realize it. It is our common, symbolic language and without a doubt some of the most fluent purveyors of this language are advertisers and governments press agents. But anyway….

Phase four has opened up and it is the one arena I would have preferred to sidestep in my career. Healing as a subject matter to write about or to lecture about is one thing, but field work is quite another. And yet, as a result of writing INVISIBLE ACTS OF POWER, which was my bridge into mysticism, I wrote ENTERING THE CASTLE. I was a graduate student in the study of mysticism, but the study of mysticism is hardly the experience of mysticism. And no amount of study can “cause” a mystical experience to occur – certainly not a genuine one. The mystical experiences that the great medieval mystics, like Francis of Assisi and Meister Eckart or later mystics like Teresa of Avila, wrote about are out of our control – “control” being the operative word.

But I am getting ahead of myself a bit. Let me say that I wanted to avoid any direct contact with “healing in the field” because I saw it as too emotional, too difficult, too painful, and I did not want to feel as if I was responsible for finding out “why” a person had become ill. And we are relentless about needing to find out “why” things happen as they do to us – including illness. We have been sculpted by the minds of rationalists like Descartes who believed in the power of “reason” and the natural laws of the Universe. Cause and effect rule the natural rule and therefore that same law must rule the spiritual world. We have applied our love of reason to healing and now we are so rooted in our love of the rational mind that we have long believed that IF we can find the REASON for something, THEN we can find the SOLUTION. In fact, though we are loath to admit this at times, deep down we believe that are OWED a solution to our problems – a resolution (ie, a healing) IF we discover the reason why a system, such as our bodies, broke down. Who or what exactly “owes” us this answer or insight is another topic of discussion; suffice to say we believe in this logic this as the mechanics behind great scales of cosmic justice. Others consider it the working mechanics of the “mind” of God as we have determined that God must have a “mind” – because we do – and that this mind must follow the rules of reason and rationality because this Universe is built upon reliable laws of nature. Simple as that.

That way of thinking does not, however, fit into the reality of the world of healing, prayer, faith, miracles, and the will or mind of God, if you can even transfer such terms to the Divine – and I doubt very much that you can or even should. Reason and faith “X” each other out, as a matter of fact. Just read the Book of Job to see how far back this argument goes. Yaweh made it clear thousands of years ago that the Divine does not owe humanity a reason for anything – not our suffering, not our losses, not our misery, and perhaps not even our good fortune. (Never thought to ask God about that, did you?????? Bet it’s because you’re afraid all your blessings will evaporate if you said, “Why me, God? Why did you bless me with so much wealth? Come on, admit it…a little superstition never hurt anyone). No one is owed anything at the level of “earth logic and reason”. But that does not stop us for ordering our life around a system of order that simply does not exist and does not function. This is the core reason why we are control freaks and are driven to control others, to make people do what we want them to in our external world. It is a substitute and superstitious-based method of attempting to do what cannot be done – which is to outrun the random “mind” of God. However useless this is and regardless of how many times we fail in our efforts to control others – and scream betrayal when they break out of our loop of control – we must attain a life ruled by “reason” and “logic”. And when that system fails us and perceived injustices occur, then our need for personal justice, sometimes vengeance, and sometimes a need to put something at rest, takes possession of us. Ultimately, it is our need to have endings to our stories that work for our personal sense of justice that make us search for reasons and more reasons and more reasons. And if we can’t find those reasons in this life, why, we’ll go hunting into past lives, by God, but we’ll find those “reasons” somewhere - anywhere, just so long as we find an agreeable, livable, suitable, justifiable reason why we were “violated” with “just cause” – according to how we see our world. Period.

For many people – that one quest is their entire life quest. Never mind their highest potential. Never mind the pursuit of an intimate dialog with the Divine. Their pursuit is finding a self-satisfying (and sometimes self-righteous) story to fit the crime. You can call that quest healing if you want, but I haven’t seen those life quests heal very many people. I’ve seen hundreds of support groups form, but very little full, robust, complete, return-to-life with exuberance healing occur. I have witnessed a continuation of psychic support, to be sure, but not an encouragement to “get on with your life now. Enough and don’t look back. Go forward now and get on with the business of building a healthy life.”

THE POINT: Healing is NOT a journey of the mind. It is NOT solely a “who done it”. The mind is incapable of healing the body. All the visualizations in the world are mind games that are best employed for relaxation and stress reduction. Visualization alone can is hardly the equipment required to handle cancer in your cell tissue, leukemia, diabetes, AIDS, MS, and all the other illnesses of the body. Few people – and I mean very few – have minds disciplined enough to hold an image in a solid position in their minds for thirty-seconds much less long enough to manage it slowly penetrating into their cell tissue and melting a cancer cell. I observe people in guiding visualization or meditation exercises constantly – the slightest sound causes half the people in the room to open their eyes. At least thirty percent nod off and enter dreamland. The mind has to be a trained instrument to take on an illness, not a sleepy, weak, undisciplined instrument that is unaccustomed to hardcore instructions with life or death consequences.

During the writing of ENTERING THE CASTLE, the subject of healing once again showed up on my radar. I had joined a healing prayer group at the Episcopal Church that I attend and as a result of INVISIBLE ACTS OF POWER, I had initiated the practice of channeling grace as part of my own healing devotion by creating a healing network via this Salon. The circle of healing began to grow as did the feedback from people who reported extraordinary experiences of Divine intervention and healings. There is far too much to write about in terms of my experience with healing now – far too much. I am discovering as I am writing this newsletter that I want to tell you more and more and more…..Bet me just get to the point of this newsletter.

THE GOOD NEWS:

Bet you didn’t think there was any good news after all of the information on why people don’t heal…and there’s more about that, but enough for today.

What I am discovering is that healing is essentially a mystical experience – not a mental one, not an emotional one, not a psychic one, but a mystical one. Healing is just what the word “mysticism” implies – it is a mystery. The soul is the healing vessel, not the body and not your past. Your soul and the present moment of your life and your capacity to embrace grace and channel that grace to all the participants of your life, past and present “without the need to know why things happened as they did and do” is the key. Healing is an act of mysticism and it requires that you accept the mysteries of your life without question and in faith. Nothing is more difficult and nothing is more liberating. Nothing is more difficult because in order to do that, you have to do battle with the forces of reason and logic, your internal ruling gods….and they do rule, make no mistake about it. Therein lies the blocks to forgiveness and transformation. The way through this, by the way, is what I write about in ENTERING THE CASTLE. I take you into your soul, room-by-room, deeper and deeper, and you do combat with the relentless power of reason. Nothing is easy about this journey. That is why full healings are so rare and true acts of surrender so difficult – they are completely and thoroughly “unreasonable”.

And let me be clear about something. When the word “healing” is used, people tend to think image serious illnesses. But we need to change that or create a new word entirely. The word “healing” should apply to a lens through which we decide to “re-view” a situation or relationship or an attitude or a memory or a trauma or a whatever that is causing us to enter into negativity. We need a healing lens. We need to live with in a fluid relationship with that lens as if it functions automatically: first you see things through your need to have everything work according to your system of logic, your need for order, and your personal world of cause and effect, your need not to be humiliated and your need for security on this earth. But all of that is illusion and no one is a servant or slave to your fears and insecurities. Re-viewing life situations in order to remind yourself of that one truth is simply

Essential life wisdom is the practice of re-viewing any situation that ignites imbalance. These situations require immediate attention as you have just entered the perception that the world is not working according to (Garp) your reality, your need for control, logic, order, reason, self-protection….and therefore someone is about to get hurt. It could be you. It could be someone else. But someone will pay the piper when a person loses control of his or her Universe…make no mistake. So get it through your head – you have no control. No one is her to make sure your Universe does not shatter. Everyone is here to make sure their OWN Universe works – and even then, they are going to have a rough time.

Life is a mystical experience. It is a mystery. The best and the perceived worse things that have happened to you and that will happen to you, you have never seen coming and you never will. Remember that.

And bless you all. (If you only knew how much more I wanted to write about as regards healing….on and on…I forgot this was a Salon and not a book.)