Healing
Through Understanding
You may wonder
what I mean
by the phrase “Healing Through Understanding”. In its most simple
meaning it
refers to the healing we can experience when someone is willing to
listen to
our story and we find they are able to understand us. This empathy
allows our
heart to open and we become whole again.
Another form of
healing through understanding is when we stop and take a good look at
what is causing us concern, an approach that leads to greater
self-reliance. We can simply watch the whole
activity of our minds without
judgment, reaction or identifying with our thoughts, feelings or reactions. In its agitated state the mind is like a
bird flying
backwards and forwards in a room, frantically searching for a way to
escape.
The search then further agitates the mind and encourages compulsive thinking,
anxiety and
confusion. And while it can be very distressing, this mental and
emotional
activity is quite superficial, like skating on the surface of our lives.
If
instead of
identifying or
reacting with this activity we simply accept it, then we can move deeper
into the
Heart, where feeling reaches a deeper, more potent level. At this
level the lower self tends to recognise its inability to be happy and we
get in
touch with our yearning for the Absolute, our true nature. And if at
this point
we can surrender all that we think we are to God, then we can
experience our
true nature as love, awareness and joy. We suddenly realise that we are
not our
thoughts and emotions and that the bird has escaped from the room and
has flown out into
the infinite sky of love.
As the heart
opens the
deeper perspective that emerges brings discernment and an intuitive
understanding that all the usual fuss of the mind is simply the antics
of the
ego. We also understand that the ego and mind are unreal from the
perspective
of the Spirit. Like the climber who has reached the peak of a mountain,
the
Self looks down on the things below and has a clearer perspective
on them. It
sees the forests of desire that the personality gets lost in, the dead
end
tracks of delusion and anger that lead nowhere, it sees many walking
around in
the same circles that its own personality is stuck in and then feels motivated to
show others
how to reach the top of the mountain.
This Self is the
same in
all and is a living Presence beyond thought and emotion. Contact with
this
Presence, which we can call God, the Absolute or the Father can and
does heal
us on all levels, because it is Wholeness. It is the One Life in which
we all
share and nothing exists apart from It. Fear
does not exist in Reality, s o we should stop
our
struggling, relax and simply open our hearts to the Silence and the
Presence of
the Absolute. Individually, we are like pieces of burnt offering,
flickering
and dying in one lifetime, but joined to our inner Reality we are
everything,
the timeless present moment,… absorbent, creative and full. As we grow
closer
to God our creative capacity becomes aligned with His and then it has
infinite
potential. This explains the nature of miracles, but there must first be a
heart
relationship with God.
While fear can close us off from our heart, we can
transcend it by recognising that we have temporarily identified with
the mind and its
transient and unreal desires, memories and fantasies. By simply
accepting and
understanding the mind with all its contradictions and limitations, it
becomes
still, allowing us to experience the living Presence of our Spirit.
The counsellor in the process of Spiritual
Psychology
encourages us to understand the dynamics of the mind, to open our heart
and
surrender to the Absolute. This choice to surrender allows us to see
and
understand both the ego and the mind and they then naturally fall away, revealing
our
shining Soul in its inherent Wholeness. Hence the phrase “Healing
through Understanding.” This is the ultimate spiritual healing.