A checklist for healing

Some years ago, I contributed to a monthly on-line magazine called The Meta Arts. It occurred to me, it may be worthwhile to share the columns that appear particularly relevant to our time today.

A checklist for healing

I often think that healing work – energy work – is easier done than said. In many cases, the hardest thing to accomplish is to get people to understand what needs to happen, on the receiving end and on the facilitating end. Once the necessities are clearly communicated, more than half the work has been accomplished.

Recently, my brother asked me to do some healing work for a friend of his who was having a difficult time post-surgery. I was glad to do it – it’s always a privilege – but a little nervous beforehand, lest through lack of preparation I be unable to be of any real assistance. So I did what I usually do: I asked the guys upstairs for assistance. It came from a deceased friend, in the form of a shorthand checklist. Of course, you can’t refer to a checklist while you’re doing the work. At least, I can’t. While you’re doing the work, it’s essential to be in the moment. Nonetheless I have no doubt that I had been helped by this advance review of the basics, and I hope it helps you. Here, expanded somewhat, are the reminders I was so kindly given.

1. Ground-clearing. Before you begin to work with someone, remember to clear away two issues that are often present but are rarely mentioned. These thoughts may not even be conscious, so it is important that you bring them up and dispose with them.

The first is, “I don’t want to deplete your energy.” Remind them, the energy you offer flows not from you but through you. Any effect on you will be benign and helpful, not harmful. (And if this isn’t true for you, you’re not doing it right; you’re draining your batteries.) The second unmentioned thought amounts to this: “I don’t want to take more than my fair share.” Remind them, there is a limitless supply of healing energy, available to all, ours by right of being in the body. They are no more capable of taking more than their fair share than they are of drinking Niagara dry. Can’t be done. So there is no reason to worry.

You may think that these two worries –draining the person doing the energy work, or taking “more than their share” of the healing energies of the universe – would be highly unusual, but I have found that many people are more altruistic, more fair-minded than is good for them in this regard. Before you do any other thing, remind them that they have a right to use the resources available to regain their health, or you will face needless obstacles to their recovery.

2. The ground cleared, I explain that we will be working to help them to receive and direct that limitless flow of healing energy. Probably you, like me, are not trained in anatomy or physiology. Fortunately, it isn’t necessary that we be. The body is perfectly capable of maintaining and healing itself unless obstacles to the energy flow arise. So, when problems arise, the answer is to find and remove any physical, mental, energetic or emotional obstacles and allow the body to heal itself.
3. And, since we will be using active imagination to find and remove those blockages, I want them to experience their energy body, so that what we are about to do will seem more real to them. Here’s a very fast technique I learned from my friend Robert Bruce’s book Energy Work. Have them use one hand to slowly brush the other hand, as if the one hand were a paint brush and the other were a surface being painted. After a few seconds, have them pull the hands a few inches apart, while continuing the brushing motion. They will very probably feel the “painted” hand tracking the movements of the “paint brush” hand. (If they attribute this to “mere imagination,” tell them, that’s fine, just go with it.) Have them change hands and do it again. When they then place their hands parallel to each other, about two inches apart, they should be able to feel the energy body – especially if you have them more the hands up and down relative to each other while you hold your hands parallel to theirs, a couple of inches outside them. I suppose that this step isn’t essential, but sometimes it comes as a revelation, opening them up.
4. So, the next step is to find and remove blockages. (And here, although it should go without saying, I feel it necessary to say it: Healing comes from the heart. You help by coming with an opened heart, and the person on the other end is helped by receiving with an opened heart. In the absence of open heart energy, I doubt that healing can be facilitated or experienced.) I have the person I’m working with address the injured or ailing part of their body as if it were a person, asking it, “how are you serving me by manifesting this problem?” (The assumption here, you see, is that anything the body does is designed to provide what it thinks we want or need, or to avert something worse.) The answer may come as words, or as a knowing, or as a sudden memory, or in some other form. In whatever form it comes, it will be important! I look for an emotional cause behind any physical problem, because life offers no coincidences, no meaningless accidents. Get them to actively feel whatever emotion presents itself, so that they both feel and understand the connection. Direct them to release the emotion, usually by forgiving themselves and others concerned. Emotional release clears the way to physical healing.
5. Now you are ready to help them heal. I would suggest you do it in two steps: Specific healing and a general remembrance of the wealth of energy available.

Specific healing. Have them draw a mental cartoon of the situation to be healed. If a scratchy throat, say, perhaps they could imagine the inside of their throat as lined with barbed wire. Have them compose a real definite cartoon. They aren’t illustrating anatomy books, they’re communicating with their subconscious mind, directing it to repair what’s wrong. Once they have that cartoon in mind, have them see it changing into a second cartoon that represents the throat as it is when functioning normally. Again, a cartoon, not an anatomy lesson. Maybe the barbed wire gets sprayed with magic barbed-wire removing solvent. Whatever they want.

Remembrance of the great flow of energy. You might suggest that they visualize themselves standing under a waterfall of healing energy that surrounds them and penetrates every cell of their body. That water washes away obstacles and revitalizes every cell. This is simple, and can and should be done as frequently as they happen to think of it and wish to do so.

BTW The session went well. I believe that any healing session will go well (assuming the proper attitude in both parties) if conducted in this way. Naturally there are scads of ways to do healing work; perhaps as many as there are people to do it. But as E.F. Schumacher once said, it is amazing how much theory we can dispense with, when we set out to do some real work.