My journey to the work of Healing the Healer has its roots in my own experience as a healer. I grew up in a small community, with parents who were both deeply involved in contributing to community life and caring for others. I value my inheritance of the desire to serve, and the valuing of community and connection to others. However, there is much about how this dedication affected my parent’s ability to meet their own needs that I also inherited, and it is these elements that I have struggled with in my work as a healer. It is my own personal experience of what it is like to be a ‘healer’ in balanced and unbalanced ways, and watching and sharing the experience of other healers that has led to my work in Healing the Healer. In this article, I will begin to share some of my reflections on what has led to imbalance in our paradigms of healing. I will explore how we can return to our experience of wholeness and capacity to heal ourselves, and offer some practical suggestions and exercises for regaining balance and flow.

Attempts to heal another are often apparently easier than attending to our own healing. Far easier, it would seem, to play the saviour than to save myself. In my time working in the community as a counsellor I have worked alongside many professions including doctors, nurses, community workers, youth workers, psychologists, social workers, welfare workers and housing workers. At the same time, my personal spiritual journey has bought me into contact with many other journeymen and women taking their roles as healers in tarot, dreamwork, Feng Shui, Reiki, Astrology, massage, past-life regression, etcetera.

There is one common thread that I perceive across all these varied paths of healing work, which originates in our shared cultural histories. The role of healer has been steeped in two traditions: that of the trinity, and the related idea of separation and return. We see a doctor or naturopath to give us the substance or intervention that will affect our illness and so return us to health. We see counsellors, therapists, and spiritual healers to reveal that which is hidden or lost, and to assist us in finding a path back to connection of the differing aspects of ourselves. There is nothing wrong with our need for such assistance. However, what often occurs is that, in seeking help or providing it, there are assumptions that the provider is expert; somehow knows more about our imbalance than we do, and in knowing more is therefore able to save us. The other dynamic is that of the healer as conduit; the means to get to the medicine we need, the knowledge that will heal, or, in the case of religious leaders, the one who is the intermediary or path to God. All of these dynamics are threes: sufferer/illness/healer, sufferer/wound/saviour, believer/priest/God. Where we have 'tripped up' with the dynamic of three is getting stuck in communicating about rather than to/with the third element. Thus, we communicate with a priest about God, and if we put a lot of energy into this relationship, we can cease to hear the direct voice of God. Similarly, we can get caught in communicating with our doctor/healer about our illness, and not hear the direct voice of our symptoms because we are not speaking directly with them. It is a dynamic that separates, which keeps us blind to our own wholeness, our own capacity to heal ourselves, and to know and be connected directly to the Divine.

This separation occurs as much for the ‘healer’ as for the ‘patient’. It is a valuable tradition in psychology that one must explore and understand one’s own experience in order to be able to assist others. However, if the healer’s expectation is that the journey of self-knowing is aimed towards being the ‘perfect expert’, then the experience of assisting others’ healings will deplete and drain the healer. As healers, we need to ‘deal with our own stuff’, not so we are clear of issues (an impossible judgement, no human ever will be) but so we are clear about our issues, so that we are able to continue our own healing path as we offer support to others. As we create new ways of being, it is time for the paradigm of healing to shift from one of saviour/expert to co-creator, the concept of healing-in-connection. As healers we are only ever as powerful as our own ability as ‘patient’ to respond to our need for healing.

The deepest teaching of Christ as the universal light of love residing within humankind, has been somewhat obscured by doctrine, structure and the dynamic of the Trinity within our religious and cultural experience. Nothing is ‘bad’ by nature. However, we have come to use the energy of three in a separating and alienating way. It is now time to release this trinity pattern as it has indeed functioned as a way of veiling ourselves from the Divine, from each other, and from ourselves. And where there are veils, where there is a sense of separation, there will be fear, and then judgement. The key to releasing these patterns is hidden in the meaning of the number three, for it is the number of creativity. Developing the creative relationship between the inner self and the Divine is a key to releasing our patterns of fear and judgement.

Our wholeness as human beings is paradoxical, for to be whole, we are beautifully incomplete. We need. It is essential to our existence. We need the heartlight of human love in our lives, the fire of purpose and a path to walk upon. We need the sustenance of food, shelter and beauty around us. We need to know and weave our story of life, and feel the divinity within, around and beyond us. We all have within our stories the scripts of what we ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ need. We have all struggled with a prohibition against having a fundamental need met. If I wasn’t allowed to have my own ideas I may come to reject empirical/objective life, yet ultimately need to embrace it to heal. For it is within the wounded need that the potential for divine connection resides.

That wounded need within us has been the expression of our sense of vulnerability. Our wounded need gives rise to the longing of wholeness, and longing leads us along the path to our sacred doorway within. Longing, yearning for completion, for the balm to soothe our souls, is an energy that leads us back to conscious connection with our divinity. Wherever we yearn in life, we hold a key to divine connection, if we will allow the yearning and the vulnerability underneath to show themselves.

We all possess the gentle voice of inner knowing, of spontaneity and honesty, generosity and kindness within ourselves. That voice is the Christ light, and it shines when we are centered and experiencing ourselves as sacred children of the universe. Balanced and flowing from the central light of our souls, we are able to experience our mortal/immortal life, not as a wound, but as a sacred portal between the manifest and unmanifest worlds. Returning to full embracing of the sacredness of our mortal existence here on earth is the portal to our Divine source.

In love, there is not fear, where there is not fear there is no hiding, where there is no hiding, there is honesty, and so honesty with ourselves is the path to love within ourselves. Longing brings forth some of our deepest unmet needs, and so, listening to our yearnings deeply develops our self-honesty as well as our connection to the truth of our inner experience. Honesty is not "telling" myself or others "how it is", honesty is a way of being, walking the talk, revealing ourselves to ourselves through how we live life. It’s no coincidence that elders the world over emphasise a balance of silence, listening, reflection and action as measures of integrity and maturity. Our yearnings clear a path to deep self-honesty within and, hence, to releasing our fears and self-judgements about our incompleteness.

No one else is responsible for this happening. No one else can heal you on this level, for no one else has the answer, the key to the door of your wounds and your healing. The key, the door, and the healing are all within each of us. When we recognize this fact, we en-able ourselves to respond to our needs, we become response-able. As we allow ourselves our own compassionate acceptance, the door is opened for others to shed their light upon us, too. It’s the old maxim "you alone can do it, but you cannot do it alone."

As we release our self-judgements we release fear, and the space for compassionate acceptance grows within. As we release fear, the veils of taboo that have shrouded our wounds begin to thin and disappear. Compassion is integrally honest, for it is the capacity to be lovingly present to all that is within life. And as we are compassionately present to our wounds they are transformed. The love light of compassion flows into the wound, and the deeper secret of our wounds as divine portals is revealed. For as we bathe our wounds with the inner light of compassion, this inner light opens the sacred portal within the wound, and the love of the Divine floods through into us. Our wounds are sacred doorways, and so are not to be jealously guarded and hidden away. Bring the light of compassionate love to wash away the cobwebs of fear and judgement, and gently transform that door from a heavy iron barrier of human pain to a flowing gateway of light and love.

SOME PRACTICAL STEPS TO CLEARING THE FLOW OF ENERGY

In my group and individual work I help people to review what "is" in life, including exploring patterns of balance and imbalance. We then create ways to shift the energy behind patterns, which allows energy, and thus experiences, to flow again with ease. Following are some simple techniques I use. In a later article, I will explore in more depth how we can tap into the energy behind our thoughts and feelings.

Practice inexpertness.

Allow yourself to say "I have no idea." Feel the liberation of being clueless without shame. This frees up a lot of energy.

Allow the "is-ness business."

Accept that everything "just ‘is’." No right, no wrong, it all just is, and we discern what we need from life and choose to interact, or to let alone situations, depending on whether they meet our needs or not. An enormous amount of energy gets caught up in our expectations, which are just sophisticated expressions of underlying judgements, and beneath these, of fears that we either do not have - or will not get - what we need. Taking the following approach can be useful in helping to release energy that may otherwise get eaten up in disappointment, frustration: "Ok, so this is how things are right now. What do I need? Can it be met in this situation? Do I need to redirect my energy elsewhere?"

Taking an approach such as this can help release energy that may otherwise get eaten up in disappointment, frustration and failed expectations.

Balance the elements.

This is a topic that will be explored further in this series. In the interim, try paying attention to the presence of differing qualities in your experience. Notice your fire/passion, water/emotion, air/thought, and earth/physical needs and world. Invent your own ways of balancing excessive energies. For instance, if I find myself "spinning out" and feeling all heady and ungrounded, I pay a lot of attention to my feet, imagining roots extending into the earth and releasing excess energy. Invent your own ways of bringing in a diminished element. For instance, feeling depressed and stuck has an earth/water sense, and lacks the perspective of air and the aliveness of fire, so try lighting a roaring fire, and then go outside at night and really "let yourself go" into the stars to bring back some fire and air energy.

Breathe.

Obvious, I know, but we forget to do it well. Breathe deep slow breaths right to the base of your abdomen that blow up your belly like a balloon. As you breathe out, allow all the muscles of your belly, chest, shoulders and neck to go all floppy. On your out-breath, feel all the tension dissipate. On your in-breath, allow gentle, refreshing new energy to come in. Keep this up for 5-10 minutes, and do it as often as you can, especially when you are stressed, anxious or depressed. The aim is to do it so often that your habitual breathing pattern starts changing and returning to this natural deep, slow, refreshing state.

Focus on a living symbol of healing

Whichever ones you are most attracted to. I personally love aloe vera, and have healthy plants dotted throughout the house. Whenever I look at them I send them my delight, and am reminded of their qualities: enduring, powerful self-healing qualities that are available to other beings to utilize. Choose herbs, trees, plants or flowers…anything that you experience as healing. Then keep this plant in the house or garden where you will encounter it daily.

Next Issue

In the next article I will explore in more detail how we can access and work with our fundamental energy, that which lies behind our thoughts and feelings, and describe some practical methods for centering and balancing this energy.

© Clare Richards

Clare Richards is trained in counselling psychology, and currently works in private practice, consultancy, training and in a community organisation as a therapist with young people. Clare also has a long history of involvement in spiritual and esoteric disciplines and has trained in the Kabbalah, tarot, dreamwork, psychological astrology, mythology, massage, Reiki and shamanic practices. An Australian, Clare lives and works in the beautiful Bambra hills, 1 1/2 hours west of Melbourne, the capital of the State of Victoria.