AFTER ALL THE OTHER GAPS are closed between the divine and the human, there is one final marriage that must take place: the union of body and spirit. This only occurs when we realize that the body is as important to the spirit as the spirit is to the body, and when we properly honor this symbiotic relationship. It is only then that true healing can occur.

Our tendency, particularly in the Western world, is to either worship our bodies and the pleasures they can provide, or to think of them as necessary evils. The latter tendency comes from teachings that imply that our bodies represent our animal nature and must be punished or denigrated. We often turn a blind eye to the purpose and importance of our bodies, rather than honor them as sacred. When they become ill, we panic, react, and fail to recognize the healing power they house within.

Our bodies house our spirit or consciousness. This spirit is synonymous with the God within us. The body therefore exists to transport, implement, and protect the spirit it houses. As such, a body is spirit formed. A body relies upon its spirit to exist.

The spirit, also, depends upon the body. Without the body, the spirit would be lost, without form and refuge. We are consciousness, and consciousness is God; therefore, our bodies, no matter what size, shape, or condition they are in, are temples of the living God. The body therefore must be honored as the necessary agent that it is, as a temple housing an invisible flame, protecting and preventing that flame from being extinguished. So the body plays just as important of a role in keeping the spirit alive as the spirit does in creating and maintaining the body.

When the necessity of loving our bodies became clear to me, I realized that, in order to heal our bodies, we must not only recognize their divine purpose, but surrender to their spirit within.

That spirit, then, has the power to transform our bodies, although not always in the manner in which we might expect.

To unravel and reject these errors, we must first reveal and focus on what is true; we can't reject what isn't if we do not know what is. We are granted the eyes to see the distinction through prayer.

This is where the temple comes in... When Jesus said, "Enter into thy closet" to pray, he was telling us to enter our temple consciousness. We all have a closet, or rather a temple, enabling us to safely behold the flame. Without it, prayer would be impossible. With it, we are granted a tremendous power to transform, to heal.

Healing is revealing. Healing is revealing the light in the temple. When we reveal the light in a temple, it dispels the error, the no-thing-ness, of darkness, allowing healing to take place. As the light shines, the appearance of the temple will then begin to transform into the likeness of the spirit.

This is the importance of realizing and experiencing the temple nature of our bodies. The temple is not the end-all. It is rather the crucial vessel of the spirit, and the spirit within it beholds the power to alter the temple's existence.

Try thinking of prayer as a kind of chemical process. Think of it as a chemical transition that takes place in your consciousness when you combine your spirit with your humanity. Sit down, convinced that you will achieve the healings or goals you ordinarily expect from prayer. The experience will transcend the thought when you feel what is taking place as a kind of spiritual chemicalization. If you experience consciousness as a fluid presence, or as a vibrational state, and you can transmute that spiritual substance into a higher vibration or spiritual energy, you can relate it to where you are and where you want to be. You can consciously let go of the present thinking and spiritually feel yourself entering into what the old- timers used to call "the alpha wave state." This is where a sense of divine oneness with all life appears.

I find specifically that if I take the time to gradually feel myself releasing finite judgments, fears, or desires into a kind of spiritual soup, then an all-consuming sense of rightness that encompasses our world appears. To me, that is prayer. I am not calling on something outside of myself, but I am lifting my consciousness into its divine nature, a kind of spiritual chemicalization, where the rhythm of my life is divine. When that happens, I know that my praying has been successful.

When we pray objectively for something material, however, such as an amount of money, most likely we won't get it. On the other hand if we pray subjectively, such as for spiritual renewal, we will be praying to experience supply without outlining the amount, and if we contact the consciousness of supply, it will meet our needs and then some. In other words, pray for anything you want as long as it is spiritual. Pray for a subjective experience and you will most likely receive whatever form is best for you - not just sufficiency, but abundance. Pray for spiritual healing, and you will likely experience a renewed body as well, although perhaps in a form you hadn't anticipated.

There is a way of bringing the infinity of well-being, healing, and supply into our lives; however, that way is not through repeating prayers, affirmations, singing hymns, or believing that God will then start giving us what he has withheld from us. The way is not in believing that we will get something we do not already possess, but rather we need to perceive and experience the fact that we already have all we need within our own infinite, divine, higher-spirit consciousness. The secret is that we cannot get anything that is not already in our consciousness. True mystical prayer happens when the conviction of "I have" is experienced. True prayer gets rid of past limitations by actively perceiving that now "I have" - not "will have," but "now have."

Looking outside ourselves for our good or our healings is what separates us from our good. We have looked everywhere except where it is, within our perceptions, deep within our temple. To pray aright is to look within our own consciousness for our good, not to a God or to someone outside ourselves. In the new dimension, you do not "receive" your good; you "perceive" it. The experience of your own God-being is the source from which it flows.

That is why the world is facing a crisis of perception about the meaning of spiritual healing. There is no such thing as a spiritual healing of a physical problem. No one has ever received health as an answer to prayer. On the other hand, diseases have been healed by human intervention and lack has been replaced by abundance, as the result of spiritual renewal. No, I am not contradicting what I just said. What was healed was not a disease or a lack. A perception was healed. Spiritual and often physical healing takes place when the perception of disease is replaced by the perception of health.

Others have the power to contribute to our healing as well, through love. When we feel loved, it is because the person who loves us has witnessed the truth of us - consciousness or spirit manifested as a physical presence filled with light. When someone loves us by revealing our truth, we respond to it and are healed. Our light shines more brightly because it has been revealed.

Though we have not figured out scientific explanations for spiritual healings, many so-called miracles do indeed take place. Physical growths actually disappear without any obvious therapy, and commonly accepted fatal diseases vanish without medical aid, because someone has spiritually pierced the cloud of unknowing. So when I claim that all healing is spiritual, I am not denying the priority that Jesus gave us when he said that the first and greatest commandment was the love of God - realizing God as the only power. It is paramount that to the best of one's ability, one faces every situation in life by first and foremost consciously opening one's self to one's higher Christ consciousness. Having done so, however, the resultant healing may then appear in a number of different ways, some obvious and explainable, some not.

Conditions are results, not cause. No matter what condition appears, it is the result of formed perception. To change the form, we must change our perception of what is present. When disease is perceived as a fact, it is created, not eliminated. When we resist it, we make it even more real, thus perpetuating it. So what can we do? Don't resist, replace! When we replace a perception of disease with one of health, that new perception becomes our reality.

Expecting our happiness and peace to come to us keeps them away from us. They don't come to us; they come from our own higher consciousness. Let peace flow from within, and we will have it. The moment we experience peace as "that which I AM," we are acknowledging success, and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Experience peace within regardless of conditions without, and this will ultimately change our outside conditions. In other words, the peace that we experience within creates harmony in our outer existence. Truth (God) is not mocked. Our prayers will succeed when we no longer perceive of our problems as problems. In order for tomorrow to be different, tomorrow's consciousness has to be different today.

© Walter Starcke, 2007

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Walter Starcke's extraordinary life reads like fiction, but it's true! On his quest for life's ultimate answers and with his uncanny ability to perpetually reinvent himself, he has donned the role of modern mystic, Broadway producer, successful business entrepreneur, powerful keynote speaker and author of six best-selling books, It's All God, The Third Appearance, The Double Thread, The Ultimate Revolution, The Gospel of Relativity, and Homesick for Heaven. His most current book, Joel Goldsmith & I, The Inside Relationship with a Modern Mystic, reveals the private side of Joel Goldsmith and the sometimes tumultuous and often inspiring experiences included in their 18 year relationship.

At the young age of 86, Starcke continues to amaze and inspire with his teachings that close the gap between our divinity and our humanity. He lectures nationwide, and offers seminars and intensives in select cities.

For more information on Starcke's books, tapes and lecture dates contact the GUADALUPE PRESS, P.O. Box 865, Boerne, Texas, 78006 or call 830-537-4655 or visit www.walterstarcke.com.