the mystical aspect of healing

Life is like a tapestry that requires us to discover the right threads to complete it: a tapestry unable to be wholly appreciated until we stand back to see it in its totality. It is an active creative process as we weave the different strands of our tapestry together, in alignment with what we know to be true for us at any given moment of time. These threads may even call for blind acts of faith as we follow the instruction of an inner knowing, sometimes leading us in surprising and unexpected directions. This type of divinely or intuitively-led journey (however we, as individuals, choose to define it) tends to be a non-negotiable component of the life path of those who identify as being highly attuned, sensitive and empathic.

After many years of working in the field of psychology, it would be remiss of me to not speak into what I see as the spiritual and/or mystical, beyond-the-mind aspects of the human healing journey. 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 when faced with mental/emotional or physical health challenges, but more to highlight that we cannot dismiss the contribution of our intuitive and/or spiritual guidance. If we are open to this inherent aspect of ourselves, it has the potential to not only be a legitimate pathway for our healing but, for some, a key player in their recovery process.  

Defining Spirituality and Mysticism

Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. It is a universal human 'felt sense' experience that defies translation into words, encompassing peaceful feelings of interconnectedness, faith, hope, meaning and purpose. It generally includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, activities that lift our spirit, and a search for meaning and purpose in our life. 

Mysticism, on the other hand, takes us a step further. We find mysticism baked into most religious and spiritual traditions, all of which subscribe to the common belief that we need to intimately know and disentangle ourselves from our unconscious motives and programming in order to accurately perceive our reality. As humans, we accumulate layers of protective, yet limiting filters and behavioural patterns from our childhood conditioning and challenging life experiences. These projections from our past often lead to daily choices that sabotage our ability to tell the truth. It requires our awareness and reflection, followed by behavioural change, to break out of their trance-like urges. This is a type of depth work that could be described as a 'know thyself' journey, whereby intuitive sensory information received beyond our 5 senses, can start to show up in various different and unexpected ways. Dropping in like puzzle pieces, this information grows and supports our understanding, healing and transformation. The more we build confidence in what is being intuitively shown to us, the more we trust the invaluable contribution of our intuitive guidance. 

Intuitive Guidance 

Intuition means that we know something to be true without knowing how we know it to be true. Depending on an individual's belief system it can be interpreted as emerging from inside of us, such as our 'inner knowing', or from outside of us, connected to spiritual, religious, philosophical or wisdom tradition frameworks. Put simply, intuitive guidance is our personal truthtellor, supporting us to perceive our reality in more symbolic and nuanced ways , oftentimes pointing us in particular directions, even if it doesn’t make logical sense at the time. It cuts through the well-reasoned, rational mind, and is a 'felt sense’ experience of truth and clarity, expressing itself through individuals in uniquely different ways. It usually comes to us, unexpectedly and out of the blue, and is neutral and unbiased. It can be a deeply touching experience or like a quiet whisper that one struggles to catch in the moment, automatically giving us deep insight or later revealing itself as symbolically meaningful and/or directional. Without knowing our unconscious programming, however, we run the risk of accidentally running it through our historic filters, either dismissing it away as 'nothing important' or overthinking and distorting its message. To be able to read our intuitive guidance, therefore, requires an ongoing depth psychological work on oneself and an appreciation for that which is beyond-the-mind.

As intuition works to support our higher growth it often takes us out of our current way of seeing the world. Through this experience, we come to understand that even if we feel like we have taken the 'wrong' path at certain times of our life, there is actually no 'right' nor 'wrong' path to take, only learning, growth and evolution. 

But to be clear, intuition is not simply an acting out of hedonistic or self-centred urges, using 'intuitive reasoning' to bypass our basic duty of care for those around us. Conversely, it is not following urges to bolster our esteem by over-involving ourselves in others lives to the point of burn-out or unhelpful interference. Both scenarios are the extreme sides of the same coin, derived from an either self-serving or other-dependent posturing in life. To  read our intuition correctly, it requires us to SEE patterns such as these to be able to extricate ourselves accordingly. This ultimately frees up our psyche to connect more deeply with the 'knowing in our Knower'.

We all have multiple senses through which guidance is constantly coming to and through us. At a base level, our emotions are our guidance. Working with our emotional guidance system helps to keep our psyche clear and attuned to 'next steps'. If we are sad, for example, we need to process our loss in a way that best fits our unique individual needs as we come to terms with our new reality. 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 something to be true from deep within us. We may synchronistically receive information from a person, a book, or online that deeply resonates or piques our interest. Some of us may also experience symbolic or prophetic messages through dreams and/or visions. These different types of guidance are registered as a truth in the moment. They feel right, they are clear, and they come from a place of neutrality rather than from a scattered place of fear or anxiety. Of course, we may initially experience an emotional response to our guidance, especially if it is something that surprises us, but its lucid message will always be undeniably strong, direct and deliberate. 

The 'Dark Night' 

In Western culture where the logic mind has been pedestaled and intuitive knowing, devalued, we may only start to pay attention to our divine/intuitive guidance when we are faced with what I will refer to as a 'Dark Night'. This is a time when we find ourselves pummelled into uncertainty as our life as we know it begins to dismantle before our eyes. It is a time of great loss, re-evaluation and rebuilding, with every stage requiring more than just a logic appraisal of one's life. We come to realise very quickly that if we distract ourselves from the experience, and don't listen to our intuitive nudges, we run the risk of staying stuck in repetitive suffering.

Life after a 'Dark Night' is usually unrecognisable to the life we had prior. We discover that we, in many ways, are no longer who we thought we were. It is a highly uncomfortable process, as we patiently, diligently and proactively work with the puzzle pieces given to us, one piece at a time. We are, in essence, forced to take the path of a Mystic, often coming face to face with the sabotaging and unconscious drivers in our life. This experience is akin to a dying process as we release the many unhealthy aspects of our ego identity and realign ourselves with a more honest representation of the truth of who we actually are. Although this process usually involves multiple painful encounters with the disingenuous ways we have been running our lives, these are often followed by epiphanies that have the potential to change our beliefs, open our mind and heart, and set us on a more genuine and liberating life path. We get to consciously choose how we continue to create our own life tapestry in a way that is better aligned with the truth of who we are actually meant to ultimately become in this lifetime. 

In Summary
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Oftentimes through a 'dark night' process, we are forced to tap into the mystical and beyond-the-mind aspect of the human healing journey. By clearing the debris of unconscious patterns and programming, our intuitively and divinely-led guidance drip-feeds information to help us comprehend a more nuanced picture of life. And this allows us to courageously make conscious, healthy choices for ourselves so we can pioneer a more integrous way forward. This appears, from my clinical observations, to be a compulsory mission for many who identify as being 'highly attuned and sensitive'. With our natural inclination to resolve our unfinished business, we grow our ability to see life through clearer eyes as we strip away the muddied filters of past and intergenerational trauma. This is ultimately how we reclaim and grow mastery over one of our most important inherent gifts - our intuitive/divine guidance system - so this invisibilised aspect of the human psyche is more easily accessible for the future generations to come. 

This work, as I see it, is oftentimes invisible and 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 empower, offer meaning, and provide encouragement on what may feel like the more tolling aspects of your highly attuned nature. Your need and search for truth and to do the right thing, no matter the circumstances, may not necessarily be welcomed, nor understood by your surrounding culture or tribe/s, but by creating a supportive, respectful, inter-faith based community with those 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.

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