3 Layers of healing
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3 Layers of healing
The word healing gets thrown around a lot these days. It can be used in both the traditional sense of the word – as in ‘to get better on the physical level’ – and it is also used to describe healing that is more energetic in nature.
All too often these two definitions are pitted against each other, when in reality both may be needed.
For the purpose of this article, the word healing is considered to be anything that allows the body and being to become more settled, connected and aware. So, while the cessation of physical symptoms may be part of the healing, without the increased awareness, connection (to what we will explore) or sense of settlement in the body, there has not been a true healing. This definition of healing suggests that there is a difference between what is needed to remove the symptoms and what will bring healing.
For example, when we get sick, the body can discard toxins or strengthen its immunity and after recovery we return to the world feeling refreshed. This could be seen as a healing, because we are experiencing a greater level of ease and vitality in the body. Sometimes, regardless of modality or method of healing chosen, we can find that after an illness we may be completely symptom free yet our vitality has not returned, our outlook on life is the same or we are even less ‘settled’.
Another important aspect of healing is recognising that it is not always the end product of an illness or ailment. Have you ever heard a concept or an idea that unlocks a thought that has been stuck playing in your head and was taking up too much energy and space? Or have you walked onto a beach or into a forest and felt different, more settled, more relaxed? Or have you talked to a friend or colleague and your perspective on something shifts, leaving you with a greater awareness of yourself and your role in life? This list could also include the times when we begin to give ourselves a deeper level of care and nurturing by adjusting our diet, exercise or sleep patterns that supports the body to function more freely. Or when we receive a deeper level of care and nurturing from someone and in doing so, appreciate our own worth.
Could not all of these be called healing of some kind?
Too often, the term healing becomes too narrowly focussed on either the relief of symptoms or the delivery of some ephemeral epiphany, yet it may not be either/or and it is also not the whole picture. To look at the whole picture, we need to go deeper into energetic integrity and the 3 layers of healing as presented by the Ageless Wisdom Teachings.
Understanding true healing starts with the awareness that there is more to us than human form, flesh and bone – that our beings also have an energetic quality to them. Some call this spirit, some call this Soul, and others call it consciousness, divinity, and more. While the terms and definitions of this ‘other element’ can differ, the world’s religions and traditional medicines have all independently come to this same understanding – that life cannot be understood simply by looking at the human frame.
From an Ageless Wisdom point of view, the definitions are very clear. Human form, the Soul and the spirit are three distinct aspects of our being, and each has their own role to play:
- Human form/being – the physical expression and practical life that we live on Earth
- Soul – the energetic aspect of ourselves that is part of an originally divine impress, our ‘godliness’ if you will. This is the aspect that could be said was ‘created in his image’
- Spirit – the energetic bridge (and at times barrier), between the human being and the Soul.
This distinction is critical for two reasons. One is because it is shows that 2/3rds of our lives are played out on an energetic level. The other is that all energy is not the same and that there are two different energetic qualities that we need to become more aware of: the quality of the spirit and the quality of the Soul.
Learning to feel and interact with these two energetic qualities sits at the heart of healing, because everything that happens to the physical body is the outflow of the energy that predominates it. Said another way, if your car is meant to run on diesel but you run it on petrol or vice versa, you are in for a world of car trouble.
Thus, we have spirit & Soul – the diesel and petrol of our energetic makeup. And we have the bedrock of our energetic responsibility in life – energetic integrity – or said another way, knowing which fuel is running you.
The spirit is a bridge to our Soul, and the Soul is the divine aspect of ourselves. The problem however, it that rather than being a bridge, the spirit often becomes a barrier.
Have you ever met someone who is so selfish that they don’t care what or who they harm to make sure they stay in control? Welcome to the energy of the spirit, the energetic aspect of ‘selfishness’, individuality, greed, fear: in essence, anything that will leave the spirit in control. There are many more refined aspects of the spirit that can be explored – like niceness, good and righteousness – but for the moment we will use these extremes.
The Soul on the other hand, is the ‘all’. The one and only expression of the Soul is love and nothing but love. This expression includes the qualities of truth, stillness, joy and harmony. One cannot be expressed without the other. The Soul is only interested in two things. First that we are equal to each other and to divinity, and second that we are all here to learn how to change our bodies from being fuelled by the spirit to being fuelled by the Soul.
Based on this frame of reference, healing at its truest level is when we bring this level of energetic awareness to any situation and change the energetic fuel that runs the body.
Let’s explore this more deeply:
Spirit – the fuel of everything that is not loving: individuality, emotional highs and lows, the intellectually driven pursuit of knowledge over wisdom, war, abuse, intolerance, greed, distractions, lying and anything else that is designed to leave you feeling less connected to your essence and less aware of your Soul. You could even be feeling blissfully connected to the universe, but if that connection doesn’t leave you feeling purposeful and equally connected to yourself and your responsibility for the greater whole, then it is a connection fuelled by the spirit.
Soul – the fuel of love and the essence of who we are in truth. It doesn’t ask us to become, but rather to be who we already are. Because it is love, it will never impose or force itself on you. It is our energetic responsibility to learn and discern the difference, and our level of energetic integrity that determines what level of healing you bring to yourself, others and the world. The Soul, because it is love, will also never abandon you, judge you and will forever be next to you, waiting for you to realise that the spirit is playing you for a fool.
How do we learn how to switch fuel? We listen to the body. The body, when allowed to communicate honestly, doesn’t lie. The body is interested in balance, truth, vitality, connection, harmony and flow – in essence, our bodies thrive on the fuel of love.
If the spirit is less interested in connecting you to your soul, this might explain why it invests so much time into enticing humans to live and act in a way that perpetuates disconnection from the body, from stimulating foods, drinks and other substances, physical and emotional trauma, a plethora of recreational pastimes and intellectual pursuits that leave people deeply locked in their minds.
The spirit’s backup plan to disconnecting people from their bodies is to convince people that we don’t already have the answer. The spirit likes the story that we are not love already and that there is something wrong with us that needs to be fixed before we can realise that we are worth loving. Or more subtly, the spirit can sell the idea that we are already love but that the only path to that love is to transcend who we are, rather than be who we already are, but just not consistently connected to.
On the other hand, there is the Soul and a Love that is the ultimate oil of the universe; it is what makes the engine of life and our solar system run smoothly and it is what we miss most when we focus on our own individuality or our intellectual capabilities. But the spirit knows this and has invested healing in converting its meaning. Today the word Love is casually thrown around… people sing about it, write about it, make movies about it. The real meaning has become so mangled that some people even suggest that love is a justification for abuse… “I hit you because I love you”; “Kill them if you love your country”.
The problem is that when we become oblivious to energetic integrity, we allow this mismatch between words and deeds. One stark example is the priest, who professes God’s love but then rapes children or nuns. They have all the right words but the fuel that interprets and drives their behaviour – showing their deeds to be anything but love, anything but Soul – means their fuel must be coming from the spirit.
So, what does the healing process look like for those that are interested in changing their fuel forever?
The first step is ENERGETIC INTEGRITY. Choosing which energy you connect to.
Universal Medicine presented the Gentle Breath MeditationTM in 1999 as a tool to rebuild our connection to the Soul. Though gentleness is but a stepping-stone to the light of the Soul, the Gentle Breath MeditationTM brings about a way to be introduced to the three levels of healing.
While these layers of healing can be represented in phases, the reality is they can be experienced simultaneously.
(1) Arresting:
The fuel of the spirit does not stop, rest or sleep and its primary purpose is to ensure that we are less connected to our in-built inner compass – the body – and its connection to our Soul.
Under the spirit’s careful watch we develop ideals and beliefs about life, identity, survival, diet and exercise. We develop forms of commerce that are as diverse as they are harmful. We build empires, institutions, governments and economic models that prioritise greed and power over collective understanding and love.
We form communities and cultures that offer connection and protection to a select few, while keeping us separate from others, who are in reality just like us.
All of this keeps us feeling busy, safe and involved in life. But while the mind is busy, the body is less receptive to the messages from that inner compass. Some can wander like this for lifetimes, convinced they are right, secure in their own fortress of ideals and ‘my’ truths about life.
Yet we cannot turn off that inner compass and at some point, everyone’s asked the question, “There has to be another way”. In this moment, there is an opening to a new awareness; a chance to consider that our lives are first the product of energy and that any change first requires us to change the energy that drives us.
So, the arresting phase is about building your awareness of where and how the spirit runs the show. In your own time, in your own way, you find the people, modalities and practices that support you to learn energetic integrity and the ability to listen more consistently to the Soul’s impulses.
It can be a challenging time, because the spirit can seek multiple and varied modalities for healing that on the surface all seem different, but in truth are driven by the same light/fuel and the same purpose (blurring the inner compass and connection to the light of the Soul). Some of these modalities can make us feel better (remove the symptoms) but not actually change the fuel that runs the show.
This arresting phase is never perfect and smooth – you can begin to realise that your sense of ‘normal’ may not be normal but may be something you (and most of society) have gotten used to. This is the hardest part to accept; the fact that we have a sense of ‘normal’ that is defined by a society run by the spirit.
This means there can be some disruption and interruption when you stop doing what you have always done and start making new and on the surface what looks like very different choices to what you have done before. But in truth they are very natural steps towards greater self-care and self-love. True friends celebrate these changes, while others, who are more attached to the original arrangements, can react and reject these developments.
The arresting stage is about finding ways to reduce the constant bombardment and imposition of the outside world on you. It is also the beginning of exploring your inner world. This first phase is an introduction to energetic responsibility – the responsibility for what you put into and do to your body.
(2) Resurrecting:
Once we reduce (not eradicate) this constant bombardment of the spirit’s light on our bodies from the outside world, we are left with the energy (fuel) that is in our bodies. Some of this will be our Soul’s light, some of this will be the remnants of the fuel of the spirit.
This is the phase of the oil and fuel change. To continue the metaphor, the arresting stage is about bringing the vehicle to a stop and the resurrecting phase is about lifting the hood and beginning to work on what has been driving the engine, and reconditioning and refining it.
The assistance of a competent and energetically responsible ‘mechanic’ is extremely supportive through this phase. Through dialogue work, bodywork and healing from people that live with energetic integrity, we can rebuild the level of Soul’s light in our bodies.
Yet, there is a yet. The Soul’s light is love, which means ‘doing healing sessions’ is not actually how you build this light. In many regards, ‘sessions’ will only reduce some of the offending energy that the spirit runs in your body. This healing will offer you an opportunity to feel what it feels like to hold more of the Soul’s light within. Either way, this is not the totality of ‘healing’ – this is an offering, a momentary pattern of interruption, from which you are given a chance to make more refined choices in your own life. No one can ever do this for you; free will is everyone’s gift and responsibility.
We either take the offered new level of love or we return to the familiar behaviours we had. Love doesn’t judge this choice because it knows that it will only be a matter of time before you come back to this same opportunity and realisation for awareness.
Gradually, through the application of energetic responsibility, founded in a sense of energetic integrity, a new relationship develops with our bodies. We come to understand ourselves as beings that are deeply sensitive to energy and have an innate ability to discern these two vastly differing energetic qualities. We begin to deal with the fact that it hurts – deeply hurts – to not live in connection to the Soul’s light and we can begin to heal the myriad of hurts that we have taken on from a world that does not see us as love first, but as a something that needs to be moulded into a form of life and love that is not true love.
The spirit is ceaseless in its efforts to retain control, to convince us all that the essence that we are naturally from and connected to at birth is somehow NOT normal. Whilst it cannot stop free will and it cannot remove our innate craving for love, it can make sure there are plenty of ‘alternatives’ on offer to keep us busy, distracted and seduced, but waylaid.
The spirit likes to sell the coming into awareness as grand quests, journeys, odysseys and explorations to understand life: we are encouraged to scale mountains, plumb the depths of the oceans, send probes deep into the universe and spend our lives looking for connection and understanding everywhere else but through our discernment and choice of energy. We are offered all kinds of therapies and healings that never once show an awareness of and/or responsibility for the energy that they use. We get sold how something looks, more than how the person/practitioner feels energetically.
Each of us goes through this learning to discern. Love and its hallmark signature, free will, leaves us with the freedom to choose, explore, hurt, be hurt. Some people starve, some become gluttons, some become rich, poor, practice some form of religion or new age theory, until in our own time* we eventually see the truth that what is and or isn’t working in life comes down to our energetic responsibility and the quality of energy we choose – ‘Energetic Integrity’.
*it is important to note that time, in this context is not talking weeks or even years. The Soul is eternal and as such, time means lifetimes.
Bringing life back to observing energy and understanding the quality of energy is the key to the resurrection phase; it allows us to walk through the sideshow of the spirit and be less distracted by all the so-called ‘joy’ rides that it is offering us to go on… the reality of which is anything but joyful.
Those that do this work and allow this deeper healing find that life is not just about ‘mopping’ up the mess but there is a joy, ease and flow that is on offer.
(3) Advancing:
Love cannot stop at healing hurts and ideals. Love does not rest when the person begins to heal their lives and begins to experience less stress, tension and more vitality and clarity. Indeed, promoting the idea of getting ‘better’ is one of the cleverest tricks of the spirit. When we compare our state of living to how we have lived or to people who are ‘worse off’, then we become justified in slowing down and simply enjoying the improvement we have achieved.
We start to think… ‘Now I am over my cold, I can go back to the way of life that contributed to it. Now that I am no longer addicted to illegal drugs, I will continue to use the more socially acceptable drugs. Now we have put a new policy or program in place we no longer have to look at the deeper cause. Now we have a pill, injection or operation that can relieve us of our symptoms, we no longer have to explore our lifestyle choices.’
So, the list can go on, where the idea of making life better (compared to making life energetically true), becomes an evolutionary off ramp.
Yet, free will applies and for those who make the jump, who don’t take the off ramp, there is a confrontation with one of the hardest realisations there is to face. It is the moment when we realise that the mess we created and effort we needed to put into cleaning up that mess was all to avoid the light of our Soul.
It sounds counter intuitive, because love is our innate essence, yet underneath the layers of hurt we begin to see that our sensitivity to energy is actually a source of power. This is when the real advance begins.
The first two phases are essential as they help us understand firstly that we are more than physical human form and that we have an energetic responsibility to ourselves and each other. Then through the second phase we learn that we are capable of becoming untangled from our past issues and from the web the spirit has woven around the world. In fact we learn that we are more powerful than our so-called problems.
Then, for those that choose, we begin to grapple with the true immensity of who we are in truth… we begin to feel the immensity of the light of the Soul that is within. We begin to understand that this light is equal to the light of our creator. We realise that our issue is less with trying to deal with the issues caused by the spirit, and more with accepting the grace, joy, harmony, truth and power of our real essence.
Could it be that the most fundamental advancement is learning to live that light in our day-to-day lives?
Love cannot stop at healing hurts and making life more comfortable. There is always more to understand about ourselves and our relationships.
Healing moves from dealing with issues to learning about the difference between judgment and simply naming something that is not true, between sympathy/empathy and understanding, between needing people to access the same awareness you have re-developed and then accepting they will need to do this in their own way and in their own time.
We are never free from the responsibility to live The Way we have rebuilt for ourselves, but in the same way others are to be afforded their own time and space to find their way.
This is the real advance; learning to feel normal living love in a world that can see love as foreign, strange or even a threat.
There are no conversions, pilgrimages or prophesying that can initiate this advancing awareness other than your ever-deepening relationship and responsiveness to the new fuel that is running your body, the Soul’s light.
As mentioned, all three phases are not distinct steps and you may begin to see glimpses of each phase at any point in time. Much like the universe is ever expanding, so too does our individual and thus collective awareness.
This is how we heal ourselves, our planet and societies. It all begins and ends with Energetic Integrity.
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