Are We Ready for Healing?
Last week I said I was sharing the first in a series on the tenets of long life. I'll circle back (you can read the first installment here), but this week I received a message too on-point not to cut the line and share.
You come to me to for all kinds of reasons, ranging from the relatively mundane to the absolutely sacred; sometimes back pain is a pulled muscle or a misalignment, sometimes it's evidence of having exhausted yourself in pursuit of a life that was never meant for you. Either way, you're seeking relief from your suffering - be it musculoskeletal or existential (or both).
I've been at this a long time and often I'm able to help. But sometimes I'm not.
As a young practitioner, full of knowledge but short on the sort of wisdom that shows itself only with age and experience, I assumed it was all on me - the successes and failures, both. Twenty-some years later I know better. There is a story unfolding in each of us, starting from the moment of our first breath and playing out across the arc of our lives. It's a story that includes our experience of health or disease in our bodies, and the relative peace or agitation of our spirit.
I am not in charge of that story for you; I've earned the wisdom to understand that now. But I continue to be fascinated by the healing process, and the ever-evolving role I have to play within it.
This essay by Rob Brezsny, shared this week in his newsletter, speaks so eloquently to the mysteries of the healing process, the ethical role of the "healer" (in quotations here because I don't love that label - you are your own healer), and the readiness of "heal-ee." He puts words to much of my experience and approach.
For anyone on a healing journey, I encourage you to read all the way through; let me know what you think. I’ve included the full text, below
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We cannot predict the results of healing, either our own or the world around us. We need to act for the sake of a redemption that will be a mystery until it unfolds before us.
-Rachel Pollack
ARE WE READY FOR HEALING?
There’s a paradox at the heart of healing work: The people who might benefit most from transformation are sometimes unable to receive it.
Some of us are in so much pain, are so overwhelmed by our suffering, that it’s hard to be aware of, let alone welcome, certain blessings and healings that may be nearby and available.
I’m not judging these suffering souls in the least. When a person’s entire nervous system is screaming with distress, the subtle frequencies of possibility may become imperceptible.
Pain creates its own gravitational field. It bends reality around itself, narrowing the aperture of perception until all someone can see is the hurt and the impossibility of things ever being different.
This is an understandable response to being overwhelmed. The body and psyche have protective mechanisms that sometimes work too well, sealing us off not just from further harm but from healing itself.
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UNFORCED HEALING
I want to be a source of blessing and healing for anyone in pain who is drawn to my work. At the same time, I never want to force my blessings and healings on anyone.
This ethical principle matters deeply to me. I’ve seen spiritual teachers, self-help gurus, and well-meaning healers who operate with an evangelical fervor that disregards consent. They believe so fervently in their medicine that they forget healing, like love, has to be chosen rather than imposed.
I respect that some people aren’t ready for help; I honor their free will about what influence or inspiration they want to take in. My respect for their autonomy is an acknowledgment of the truth that timing is everything in transformation.
The same teaching that might illuminate someone’s path at one moment could feel like a violation at another. The blessing offered too soon can feel like pressure or judgment, like a reminder of how far a person is from wholeness.
There’s also the fact that what looks like resistance to healing may be a different kind of wisdom. Sometimes the soul knows it needs to stay in the crucible a while longer.
The pain may still be offering essential teachings. Or it’s possible there’s healing work to unfold that doesn’t match the shape of what we healers are offering, no matter how sincerely we offer it.
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THE CRACKS ARE WHERE THE LIGHT GETS IN
With those caveats, I pray to my spirit allies to help me find ways to gently crack open a willingness to be blessed and healed in anyone who is ready for such gifts.
Notice that phrase: “anyone who is ready.” The prayer isn’t about breaking down doors. It’s about finding the hairline fractures where light might seep through.
My aspiration is to locate the moments of receptivity, those precious instants when the pain loosens its grip just enough for another influence to enter.
Key factor: Again and again, I have seen healing arrive disguised. It might come wrapped in humor when solemnity would be rejected. It might arrive as a sideways glance, an unexpected metaphor, or a seemingly unrelated story.
The “gentle crack” is crucial. Not a violent rupture or a forceful intervention, but a subtle opening. A crack that opens possibility without demanding it. A gap through which grace might slip, if the person is ready to notice it.
There’s an art to planting seeds without demanding they sprout according to the healer’s timeline. The most powerful workings are often gentle. They work with the grain of reality rather than against it.
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HOW TO BE READY?
Readiness isn’t always logical. Someone might be in tremendous pain and suddenly, mysteriously, become permeable to healing. Another person with seemingly lesser challenges may remain sealed shut. The factors that determine receptivity are complex.
I’ve seen situations where readiness has come from hitting bottom. That’s the moment when the old strategies have so completely failed that anything else seems worth trying.
Or readiness may arrive through grace: an inexplicable shift in consciousness where a previously impossible intervention becomes imaginable in an unexpected way.
Sometimes readiness is catalyzed by love: being seen and being reminded of our fundamental worthiness despite everything. Or it may emerge from rage — from the refusal to let pain have the final word. Now and then, I see it sneak in through dreams, the messages from the unconscious that bypass our defensive mechanisms.
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MORE BLESSINGS ARE AVAILABLE THAN WE REALIZE
I believe that healing and blessing are more abundant than we typically recognize. They’re woven into the fabric of reality. The universe is constantly offering us opportunities for transformation, redemption, and renewal.
But these gifts can only be received, not forced. And reception requires a certain quality of attention and openness that pain may make impossible.
That’s why I pray to my spirit allies for help in creating those gentle openings. Not because I think I can save anyone; I can’t. But because I can maybe help create conditions where someone might become aware of resources they didn’t know existed and remember their own capacity for healing.
My life and work have taught me that reality is more malleable than consensus consciousness admits. Small shifts in perception can catalyze enormous changes. A single word at the right moment can reorient an entire destiny. A metaphor can unlock a door that logic couldn’t budge.
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WHAT IF MORE HEALING IS AVAILABLE THAN YOU IMAGINE?
Whoever is reading this: I hope that you can and will feel how much you are loved—and how much healing and how many blessings may be available to you.
I don’t know what pain or burdens you might be carrying. But I know this: You are more loved than you realize. You’re more supported than you recognize. You have more resources, both internal and external, than you’re currently aware of.
These aren’t empty platitudes. They’re statements about the nature of reality as I’ve come to understand it through decades of spiritual practice, chaos magick, dreamwork, and communion with spirits who understand subtle truths I’m only beginning to grasp.
You don’t have to take my word for it. But I invite you to consider the possibility. What if it were true? What if healing were more available than you thought? What if blessings were closer than you imagined?
What would change if you allowed yourself to be open to receiving help? What might become possible if you loosened your grip on certainty about how bad things are, how limited your options are, or how impossible transformation is?
I’m not asking you to abandon healthy skepticism or ignore genuine challenges. I’m simply suggesting that alongside the legitimate difficulties you face, there might also be resources you haven’t yet discovered. Alongside the real pain, there might also be real possibility.
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