the mystical aspect of healing

A beautiful person once shared with me that life is like a tapestry that requires discovering the right threads to complete it, as we go through our journey. A tapestry unable to be wholly appreciated until we can stand back to see it, in its totality. This resonates with me. Life, over and over again, strikes me as an active creation of this tapestry as we weave the pieces together, moment by moment, thread by thread, in resonance with our own truth. It can sometimes call for blind acts of faith as we follow the guidance of what we know deep within us to be the next best course of action to keep our creative and life force energy in flow. 

That’s why it would be remiss of me, after so many years of studying and teaching healing (be it for psychological or physical issues, or both) to not speak into the spiritual and mystical aspects of the healing journey, and more generally, the journey of life. This is not to exclude or minimize the importance of medical and specialist expertise, both allopathic and complementary, nor the wide-ranging holistic health practices on offer, but more to highlight that we cannot dismiss that which is beyond ordinary human comprehension as not only a legitimate pathway for healing but for some of us, a key player in our recovery process.  

Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. It is a universal human 'felt sense' experience that defies translation into words, encompassing warm, peaceful feelings of interconnectedness, faith, hope, meaning and purpose. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. Mysticism, on the other hand, takes us a step further. You will find mysticism baked into all religious and spiritual traditions, all of which subscribe to the common belief that we need to know ourselves deeply to gain clarity on reality as it actually is and to perceive a higher purpose for the life we have been given. As humans, we gather and accumulate protective mechanisms from our challenging life experiences, often obscuring our ability to see reality as it is, requiring a consciousness journey to dissolve identification with these unhealthy aspects of ourselves. This is ultimately where symbolic sight and deep wisdom reside with a growing ability to read the ever-present 'felt sense' of our intuition and guidance, and a greater potential to tap into a connection with a higher intelligence, however each individual chooses to define this. 

Intuition and guidance is, simply put, about working with our truth moment by moment, even if it doesn’t make rational sense or is well received by those around us. It goes beyond the well-reasoned, logic mind and moves us into an intuitive ‘felt sense’ orientation. It also enables us to move beyond taking life events personally by transcending into a higher altitude perceptual awareness; one that is neutral, unbiased and symbolically meaningful. It asks us to step into the realm of TRUST, FAITH, SURRENDER and OPEN RECEPTIVITY, where we may perceive a greater intelligence to be at play, and where, in a state of humility, we can stay open to the divine design of our own unique life path and what it is calling us to do (which might I add, may not be what we were expecting nor even wanting for that matter!) It is a soul-aligned journey that could be connected into any philosophical, faith-based, spiritual or wisdom tradition of our choosing, requiring a diligence towards ongoing encounters with truth through self-reflection. 

We all have multiple senses through which information and guidance is constantly coming to and through us. At a base level, if we are sad, for example, the emotion is the guidance. We need to process our sadness in a way that best fits us, remaining open to the small whispers along the way. At a more symbolic level, guidance pertaining to our broader life journey may appear as internal 'felt sense' nudges, auditory messages, visual data, or a sense of simply knowing or feeling a truth from deep within us. We may receive information from a person or book that deeply resonates or piques our interest. In addition, we may also experience symbolic or prophetic messages through dreams and/or visions. These types of guidance simply mean we feel, in our inner most being, a resonance of truth – it feels right, it’s clear, and it comes from a place of neutrality rather than from a scattered psyche riddled with fear, anxiety or frenetic energy. 

I was re-awakened to my own guidance system in an earlier episode of poor health when I learnt to connect with and listen to my physical body. As I began to treat my body as a best friend, it guided me moment-by-moment, in baby steps, towards healing. It was the intuitive nudge to ‘shift your position this way’ or ‘try sitting under a tree and breathing’. These small whispers that I learnt to detect over time helped me to incrementally shift what could have been a lifelong pattern of dis-ease into a healing process. The key learnings of this initial intense physical crash were holistic health practices, beyond the mainstream medical ‘pill for an ill’ approach, and the importance of respecting my body rather than beating it into submission. But essentially and most importantly, I learnt the need to still myself and listen with open receptivity for my intuitive 'next steps', moment by moment, day by day.

On the second intense episode of poor health, 8 years later, it felt different, like I was drowning with no ability to break the surface for breath. It was suffocating. What was actually happening, as I eventually came to understand it, was an overloaded psyche desperate to purge and purify itself. It was ultimately a crisis of my soul (the inner most part of my being) showing itself symptomatically through my body and mind, which required a rigorous fistfight with the unhealthy parts of my ego identity, as outdated conditioning and trauma-induced belief systems that had been unconsciously running my life, surfaced one by one, to be healed. This was revealed to me out of the blue via a number of different intuitive channels. Dreams connecting me to ancestors; auditory downloads; visuals coming to me giving holographic context to situations in my life; an out-of-body experience; and a honing of my perceptual awareness of the sacred (however one chooses to define it) speaking to and through me. I can offer no proof of these experiences except that I live to tell the story which broke me open to a new reality that has supported my physical healing. The guidance received during this time, once I surrendered into the process, answered two major questions I had been grappling with for many years. They were: 

How do we understand and heal from intergenerational trauma?
How do we hone the skills of the multi-sensory system/temperament?
 
Although I did not realise it at the time, I now know I had to experience this process in order to translate and language the answers to these questions, both of which I was to discover were interconnected. It confirmed a pattern I had been observing in healthy multi-sensory people in my clinic: that many are called to partake in some form of healing and transformation as part of their earthly assignment, be it that they are breaking intergenerational patterns of addiction, abuse, or outdated conditioning and belief systems. That when their own psyche is clear, with their enhanced awareness of the bigger picture, they have the uncanny ability and unwavering courage to transform and heal aspects of their lives, which has a ripple affect into the wider system of which they are a part, modeling a new pathway for future generations to come. I have learnt over time that although life can feel so darned overwhelming as a multi-sensory person, because we pick up on SO much of both our own and other/s material, when our health is balanced and our skills refined, we actually have souls strong enough, and perceptual skills attuned enough, to do some really tough but incredibly vital work to lead the next generations into a healthier way of Being. 
 
Our multisensory system, I have discovered, when we come to understand the gift of it, enables us to SEE holographically, understanding CONTEXT: your context, beyond your accumulated limited conditioning and trauma-induced belief systems, and the contexts of others, bringing appreciation to why, we as humans, do what we do and have done in the past. Hence, leaving us with nothing or no one left to blame as we swing the pendulum back to neutrality through a clarity of perception.

Please note that as a multi-sensory you are also human, and it can be very challenging on your psyche to a) receive information at this higher level, b) process it until fully absorbed and accepted, and c) do something about it, if required, which can oftentimes go against the current of your mainstream tribe or culture. Also, if you have been carrying the conditioning and trauma lenses of your forebears, it can be very confronting to recognise your part in continuing harmful cycles. This is where the words of Jesus Christ, one of the greatest of Mystics himself, are so pertinent ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do’, now adapted as a personal mantra for myself as I continue to clear my own blind spots, and will continue do so for the rest of my life, 'Forgive me for I know not what I do'. A practice of humility, I have come to understand, has been essential in cultivating a trusting relationship with my multi-sensory nature. 

This is the mystical aspect of the healing life journey that I often see multi-sensory beings taking. As they clear and clean up the debris of unhealthy intergenerational patterns, through their inherent abilities to see a more nuanced picture, they courageously make different choices for themselves and pioneer a new path forward. This appears, from my clinical observations, to be a compulsory mission for many multi-sensory beings who are keenly adept at tidying up their own interior, as it persistently knocks on their door, which hones their inherent perceptual skills to see with precision through eyes of nuance and neutrality. In so doing, they tend to model and lead the greater collective into the new evolutionary paradigm I believe we continue to walk towards; that ALL life breathes together. That to make a difference to this interconnected web of life, of which we are all a part, requires transformation at a deep individual level which, with time, contributes to the growth and evolution of the greater human collective as a whole. 

This is, as I see it, invisible and oftentimes solitary, yet vitally important work to be undertaken by a courageous minority. To those people, I salute you. I see you. I hear you. I feel you. I honour you. I love you and I Thank YOU :)

If you resonate with this blog, I hope the material I offer in both my FB page and website help enlighten, give meaning, and provide encouragement on what may feel like the tolling aspects of your highly attuned system. Your need and search for truth and to do the right thing, no matter the circumstances, may not be necessarily welcomed, nor understood by your surrounding culture or tribe/s, but by creating a supportive, respectful, inter-faith based community who are on a similar journey, I hope we are all encouraged to keep moving towards an integrity-based and love-led united human collective and global community.