Spiritual Healing
According to spiritual healer Joel S. Goldsmith, the key to healing a client was surprisingly straightforward. All that was necessary was to be “completely aware” that the client did not need to be healed. How this was actually accomplished takes a little explanation.
First, it must be understood that we are all divine aspects of God. Since God is perfection, our true nature is also perfection. However, our physical experiences (incarnations) have led to misunderstandings about our true nature, which in turn has led to the creation of inaccurate beliefs about ourselves. And these inaccurate beliefs are manifested physically in our bodies as illness and disease.
When we look at another person with our physical eyes, we don’t see a person’s actual divine essence. Instead, we see a physical body, which is nothing more than a shell which houses our divine-ness. The body is not who we are, but it is who we readily identify with.
Goldsmith, in his book entitled “Spiritual Healing”, outlined a 2-step process for curing illness. The first step was for the healer to connect with his own divine essence and perfection. The second step was to connect to the client’s divine essence via the healer’s own divine essence. If this could be accomplished, then the client would be healed of his or her disease.
This all might seem a little abstract, but there is something vitally important that needs to be understood about this method. It is not enough to know that each of us has a divine essence. In order to heal via this approach, the healer must have absolutely no doubt as to his divine nature, and the divine nature of his client. Goldsmith achieved this via personal experience of his essence. To obtain this personal experience, Goldsmith meditated up to four hours each morning to connect to his divine nature before leaving the house to go to his healing practice.
Seeing God in Others
Another spiritual author who emphasizes the need to see the divine nature in others is Dr. Joshua David Stone. Stone outlined numerous ways that a person could evolve spiritually in order to become an ascended master. One method that Stone felt was among the most important was to learn how to see God in others.
Seeing another’s Divine essence is therefore not just a way to heal others, but it is a way to “heal” ourselves and evolve spiritually. But it’s important to note that seeing one’s essence is not the same simply being aware that it exists. It is more about having a persistent and unwavering awareness of another’s true essence. As with many spiritual practices, the concept is simple, but the practical application is difficult and takes effort.
Connecting With Your Divine Essence
The first step to recognizing the divine essence in others is to recognize it in yourself. The following instructions are for a meditation technique that you can use to connect with your inner divinity.
Meditation
Step 1: Request to connect with your divine presence.
Step 2: Center yourself using whatever method you usually use. Many people choose to focus on the breath.
Step 3: Connect to the heart. Your divine essence is within, and you connect to it via your heart. More specifically, you are connecting to the love that emanates from your heart when you are not feeling vulnerable. You want to feel the love that you would feel if hugging a loved one or a small child.
While you are meditating, you will have thoughts and emotions come up. Here is how to respond to them.
Thoughts: be aware of them, but don’t get caught up in them. When a though appears, respond to the thought by thinking “Oh, that’s interesting, but the opposite could also be true.” And then come back to your center.
Emotions: once again, be aware of them but don’t get caught up in them. If emotions come up, it is because they have gotten stuck and weren’t initially allowed to express themselves. So when an emotion appears, think: “Oh, this is interesting. This is something that got stuck. I now allow it to fully express itself by being aware of it without judgement.”
Then allow yourself to feel the emotion to the greatest extent possible while at the same time holding a connection with the heart. In other words: if anger comes up, then feel anger but also feel love. For those that have never done this, it won’t seem possible, but it is. You can hold space for other emotions while holding love in your heart. You can most definitely have love for your pain.
The entire time you are experiencing an emotion, try to ensure that you remain centered and focused. Don’t be caught up in an emotion and lose your focus if possible. But anytime you become aware that you have lost your focus, simply recognize this and return to center.
Being able to love your pain is beneficial in itself. It allows you to learn that it is not necessary to be scared of the “bad” things or anything that you would normally be frightened of or dread. As you learn to accept the negative inside of you, you will learn to accept the negative things in life. And vice versa.
As you meditate, reconnect with your heart each time you realize that you have dropped the connection. There is no reason to be upset about losing this connection. All you are really doing is practicing for life. You don’t stop connecting to your heart when you finish your mediation. Instead, you practice connecting to your heart anytime during the day that you remember to do so.
As you continue to practice in this manner, you will more and more connect to the divine essence within. It is a gradual process, and will take time and commitment. But the more that you can connect with your own true essence, the easier it will be to see the true essence in other people.
Finding God in Others
To see the Divine Essence in others can initially seem challenging. But I’ve discovered a couple of strategies that can be very helpful in cultivating this awareness. Although I would suggest trying both, don’t hesitate to create other methods that work for you.
Method #1: The Avatar. Start by thinking of somebody that you do not get along with very well, or that you have constant conflicts with. It could be a partner, relative, friend, or coworker. Now imagine how this person would look like if he or she were a perfect and all-loving being. You could imagine him or her as a god/goddess, angel, wizard, fairy, etc. Imagine the alter-image of this person as flawless, beautiful, and unconditionally loving. Then feel how much that this wonderful being loves you, and how much you love him or her and are inspired by him or her.
The next thing to do is to bring the picture of the avatar into mind when you are in contact with this person. Recognize this imaginary, flawless personality as the person’s real self, instead of the physical body that you see in front of you. Then try to treat this person as you would if you were interacting with the avatar image of that person.
Method #2: Real-time Re-scripting. This is a method to use anytime you are in a situation where a person’s actions are hurting you in some way. First, simply recognize that the divine essence of the person would never hurt you. Next, realize that the person’s hurtful actions are caused by his or her own psychological wounds. Note that these wounds are causing the physical person to “badly translate” the message that the Divine essence of that person would otherwise communicate to you.
So what you want to do is “correct the translation” in real-time. For example, if your partner is telling you something in a mean way, imagine how her divine essence would be communicating with you instead. The love in the message that your partner is communicating has been “lost in translation”, and your task is to realize that the message you are receiving is simply a distorted version of a message of love. It’s just that the love didn’t come through in the message.
So you just want to imagine – as the hurtful message is taking place – how your partner would be communicating with you if she had been able to “translate the message” correctly. When you do this, it will help you to not react defensively to the hurtful “false” message. In time, your partner will recognize that you are reacting more with love, and will therefore find it easier to react out of love as well.
Heal Thyself
One of the interesting things I found in the Edgar Cayce books was that there are people in modern times that were healed by Jesus in a previous lifetime. This made me start to question: if Jesus healed these people and they were still reincarnated, what is the point of being healing?
The answer to this question is somewhat complicated. First, the healings that Jesus conducted healed their physical conditions. Secondly, these people were healed because of their faith that Jesus could heal them. Note, however, that the inaccurate belief systems that led to their illnesses were still in tact. Without a change in the these beliefs, it was necessary for these people to return to physical life to continue their spiritual evolution.
In the grand scheme of things, it is not important whether the body is sick or well. A sickness is simply a symbolic representation of what needs to be healed on a higher level. Therefore, illness is not something to be “fixed”. Once the cause of the illness is resolved, the illness will automatically go away on its own.
In holistic medicine, it is understood that a person cannot just be treated on the physical level. The mental, emotional, and spiritual levels must also be addressed. And although spiritual healers can potentially help heal a client’s belief systems (if properly trained), the responsibility for healing at the spiritual level ultimately lies with the client him or herself.
The entire point of free will was for humans to experience suffering and illness, and find their way back to perfection. If we were to let God heal us, then we would learn nothing from our physical experiences. The ultimate point of life is to learn how to develop and heal ourselves.
The first step in self-healing is to discover the inner perfection within each of us. Once we have a real awareness of this, our false beliefs will begin to gradually fall away. As a result, we will more easily think and act according to our true nature, and live our lives filled with unconditional love for ourselves and everyone around us.
Photo by Helena Lopes