On Healers and Healing

Every six weeks or so I send out an email announcement to everyone on my email list to let them know about the upcoming New York city visit of a British healer named Malcolm Smith. This post is inspired by Malcom’s recent visit.

Malcolm is quite an extraordinary man. I’ve experienced his unusual gifts personally, and born witness to the experiences of many others. For more details: http://www.malcolmsmithhealer.com/index.html.

But the reason I’m here today, on a late May afternoon in Manhattan, is not to tell you more about Malcolm. Rather, it’s to share a bit about healers and healing. If you are seeking out a healer in order to be fixed or cured of whatever may be ailing you, I encourage you to read on.   

My thoughts on healers and some suggestions
I have had many experiences with “healers” such as Malcolm, and a good part of my work has involved researching their activities. I have witnessed miraculous healings and I have witnessed no healings at all. 

Through these experiences, I have come to believe that illness can be an opportunity for healing on a deeper level, for growing in many ways on our life journey, for moving towards and even gaining a greater sense of peace and well-being within.

For some, this “healing” may involve a physical healing. For others, it may be a deeper healing on a level that cannot be explained in words, beyond the physical. For some, this may mean the discovery of a new way of being, of experiencing life, that brings a sense of well-being and peace that was not known before. And yet for others,  “healing” may mean leaving the body, e.g., death.

A little more on this topic of healing and the physical body
We Westerners are very attached to our physical bodies; it is the nature of our Western culture: the reductionist, materialist world view that informs the tapestry of our lives. With only this very material fabric to cloak our experiences, for some, and I have found for many, health challenges can prove difficult and frustrating, present a struggle, and even cause deep discontent.

I have traveled to many parts of this planet over the years in my search to learn more about healing. Some of these journeys were inspired by my own health opportunities (I prefer “opportunities to ”issues“ or ”challenges.")  

Those cultures whose cosmologies accommodated more than the three dimensions of our “material” world, e.g. some sort of everpresent spiritual foundation for living, were cultures where there was much individual and collective serenity.

There was less attachment to the physical body, to the state of the body, or none at all. And more peace of mind regarding health issues. And more faith, and less fear. In fact, only faith, not fear. The two are really quite mutually exclusive. (In time to come, I'll write more on faith and fear. And how fear really can be a life-threatening emotion.)

Returning to the essence of this piece
If you seek out a healer, go without expectations. Go with an open mind. With a tabula rasa. You may not receive what you are seeking, if you seek a particular outcome, a “fixing” or your body, or some other situation, or circumstance in your life. Yet then again, you may.

Years ago a wise teacher of mine once told me that my job as a physician was not to cure my patients of their respective illnesses, but to teach them how to connect with their own inner wisdom, so that this inner wisdom would be their guide for getting well.

And sometime later, another wise elder suggested I pray not for the cure of my patients, but for their ability to see the light, to learn the lesson that their illness has come to teach them.

Perhaps some of you will resonate with the above, perhaps some of you will not. Wherever you are on all of this, try to know that the healer lies within you, not within the scope of any system or means of any practitioner.

In posts to come, I'll be writing more on how to find the healer within.