Friday, August 31, 2012

Healing as a daily practice woven into daily life

When do you practice healing? Only while giving a healing session to a client? What if "healing" is practiced as a way of life? What if "healing" can be practiced even by those who do not have official training as a healer?

In healing training we are taught how to use a body of healing techniques for a client, to help the client with their healing process. One could come away from healing training believing two things: 1) that only trained healers can give healing sessions, 2) that healing is only performed in a healing room during a healing session where the healer is using the techniques they trained to learn.

What if both of those thoughts are false?

I'm taking a trip and while hanging out in the airport some people started congregating near me, one frightened with panicky breathing. It turned out to be a 17 year old young man traveling with his family. The airport police was there, and medics were on the way. The question was, what would be my choice in this situation.

I could have gone somewhere else, essentially running away from this fellow human being who was in need. I could have sat there doing my best to ignore the situation, and go about reading e-mail. I could have used some healing technique on the sly, unasked for, risking some kind of karma crisis. What I did was to pray, calling for divine presence, praying for health.

Holding divine space for a scene like this takes a long time. The person in crisis must allow himself to feel the divine space and shift out of the crisis mode. There may also have been something else such as a food allergy or mental illness that I am not aware of. In any case the scene unfolded over twenty minutes or more. Me, on the side of the scene, breathing deeply, praying for the divine presence, for health, staying centered as much for myself and the others involved in the scene, as it was for the young man. As the medics worked with him, coaching him into deep calming breaths, I noticed how the medics worked not only with the young man, but his family members. For, this scene was not just the kid, but his brother, his sister, his mother, and his father.

As the scene worked its way towards a conclusion it occurred to me, what if we healers lived this way in regular life? Do we hold this sort of divine space only in our healing room? Why not also hold divine space as we go about our lives? While waiting in line at the post office, rather than let the slow service turn you into a raving lunatic, what about holding divine space?

This could be a continual practice throughout the day. Of course nobody expects to be the perfect healer every moment of the day. But the spiritual practice we develop as a healer can be a routine part of every day.

There is a question to ponder about the karmic implications. My understanding at this time is that holding divine space is not the sort of relationship we have with regular clients. In a healing session we get into a relationship with the client a part of which is that the client must explicitly ask for healing.

On the other hand as we go through life and see someone (or ourself) in need of divine assistance, it is not always possible to get them to ask for our healing assistance. Divine space, however, is divine space. The prayer can be as simple as "come holy spirit, bring health!". The arrangement of the relationships in that space is clean, in that your involvement is solely holding the intention of divine holy presence. Divine holy presence is available at all times in every molecule of the universe, meaning that we are simply accentuating something that is already present.


Saturday, April 14, 2012

Money might make the world go around, but you shouldn't let it make your individual world go around

We need money to live in the modern world, to pay for food, rent/mortgage, travel, clothing, entertainment, etc.  It is easy for the subconscious to identify the need for money as a core piece of our identity.  Rich people are often given higher social ranking, while poor people often are lower in the ranks, and this segregation of people by how much money they have dismisses the individual value of the particular person.  Is the rich person truly better quality person than the poor person?  The answer is actually quite complex because examples and counter examples are all over the map on these distinctions.  But this and other issues can drive the subconscious of an individual to seek money as the source of stability and self worth.

This may turn into seeking to buy brand name whatevers of prominent brand names, because wearing Gucci shoes (for example) makes ones wealth more obvious.   But buying the prominent brand names means you spend more to buy your things, than if you simply bought the inexpensive generically branded items.  The question is whether that prominently branded item has a real qualitative advantage over the inexpensive generically branded item.

There are a few issues here: 
  1. The more money you spend requires you spending more of your life energy earning that money.
  2. Quality, well built, useful items, makes better use of your money than if you seek out the cheapest flimsiest item to save a few dollars.
  3. Feeling good inside yourself about the stuff you own
That is, what's the proper balance about owning stuff that makes sense to you, the time you spend to earn that money, and efficiently using the money you gather with the time you spend earning money.