Subtle Self-Healing: Measuring Your Progress
Getting in Touch with Our Healing Process
People seek healers in doctors, metaphysicians, and psychics thinking that healing is a product they can purchase when in fact it is a process, an ongoing process that doesn’t end. Our bodies, minds, and hearts are a road map to document where we have been and how far we have distanced ourselves from our place of original hurt. Even the subtlest distancing is an integral part of the healing process.
If we look at our arms, legs, hands, faces, we see that everything is not smooth or monotone. We are no longer pristine and perfect as we were when we entered this life…in fact, our journey has continued to brand us with physical imperfections from which we recover. We accumulate age spots, rough spots, calluses.
If we find a scar and recall how we acquired it, we slide back in time and then return to the present almost effortlessly without re-experiencing the original event. That ability to move from the original pain and recognize it objectively as just another notch on the headboard means we have healed.
Appreciating Scars from Our Often-Hazardous Life Path
Our scars are not flaws but physical testaments to our recovery. The process itself is subtle and natural. If it works for small splinters and scraped knees, then it is possible for the larger, life-altering dramas we experience. Wounds heal, and scars fade. That occurs internally as well.
We don’t credit ourselves for our successes though the healing journey often enough. More likely, we berate ourselves for not healing quickly enough and continue to seek out others to validate that we are pain or “heal” us within a one-hour appointment. By using our own ability, even subconsciously, to get through (as opposed to getting over) a situation, we have indeed healed.
It is only when we expect healing to be a grand miraculous event that we feel disappointed and static. False expectations are the culprit. Although hope and expectation are often combined, the truth is that more often, they collide. Similarly, we assign equivalency to healing and curing. When we conflate these, we are disappointed. As the Buddhists teach, it is the expectation that leads to disappointment and that disappointment leads to unhappiness.
Healing? Curing? What is the Difference?
If we separate the notion of healing from our expectation of curing, we move farther from the original hurt whether it was physical or emotional. We can’t insist upon a time frame or a level of healing but trust that the slightest change, the slightest relief the mind-body continuum is indeed healing. Healing means accelerating to a higher vibration. And often while we are still looking elsewhere for that magic healing potion, we already experience the healing without noticing it.
We may just realize one day, “Wow, I’m not obsessing over my ex anymore,” or, “Hmm, I just realized I haven’t had a headache in two weeks.” John Lennon wrote, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” The same is true of healing. Releasing our expectations, all those “shoulds” with which we bombard ourselves, allows us to do that. We heal without negative mind chatter when we turn our attention elsewhere, releasing the anxiety over our situation.
Once we distance ourselves and recognize our progress, we can confront the more profound healing facilitated by the admission that perhaps we played a part in the original pain. We can do this only when we no longer willingly wallow in hurt.
Inviting Healing to Occur Naturally
Experience teaches us that something as subtle as recognizing our culpability in the wounding process is, on its own, healing. A flash of recognition brings heightened reflection and awareness.
By taking ourselves out of the equation, we invite healing to occur naturally. When we no longer refresh an old injury, we venture back in and accept our responsibility. This change can take years, but it is the catalyst for what becomes meaningful and lasting change. Here a therapist can be most helpful.
Meditation plays an integral role in this level of healing. When we begin, we assume to quiet all our thoughts and feel frustrated when random and stray thoughts interfere, distracting us from the piece we expect to be feeling. When those peace-invaders jolt us, we must merely acknowledge them without judgment, let them drift by, and then do the same with the next thought that arises, and the next. Very quickly we see that the peaceful interludes are longer and with fewer interruptions. We raise our vibration and experience peace. We have healed.
You will enjoy Honoring the Darkness on the Healer’s Journey
