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I have a radically expanded view of the meaning and purpose of healing and creativity which speaks to something I call Creative Healership for Peace.
Healership is deeply spiritual and transformational work. Healing of the kind I have sought out for myself and which I practice on behalf of others and the world, is deeply, personally transformational. It brings us up against wounds that are both individual, ancestral and collective—reaching into this life and others. It is also spiritual in that it enables us to reach beyond the veil of ordinary consciousness into the vibratory resonance which creates either peace or war, harmony or violence.
Ultimately, healing is about love. It is also about building the fires of peace.
I like to think of healership as having a wave effect. Every drop of water cumulatively creates the vast and deep waters of the ocean. So, when we lay our hands on a client, when we write a story about love, create a work of art, do a ceremony to expand consciousness and connect with the Earth. Creator/God and with others in this or other worlds, meditate on compassion, or myriad other generative, expansive activities, we are contributing to a great wave of light within, through and around All That Is.
Given this, what if billions of people sought out healing and creativity with the intention to transform the wounds of violence carried within them? What would happen? How would human consciousness shift? Could it shift?
This idea arises from personal experience. Back in 1992 or so, I had developed intense and intractable chronic pain in the soft tissue from my neck all the way down to my back. It wasn’t debilitating, but it was threatening to be so. Now, for almost a decade before then, I had been in talk therapy, including Jungian analysis, to unpack a history of childhood trauma and ongoing challenges with my mentally ill mother. Physical pain seemed to be yet another symptom from these hardships and begged to be addressed by something other than aspirin, opioids or “physical therapy.”
One day, I saw a flyer on a community bulletin board for “somato-emotional release” and energy healing. Something in me said, “This is it!” I tore off the little tab with the phone number and called.
Several days later, I was under the hands of an energy healer named Janet on a massage table in a beautiful, peaceful place. Within 10 minutes after she lightly placed her hands on my clothed body, I was experiencing the death of a Holy Warrior in the Middle Ages on a field of battle. As I sank into the consciousness and experience of this man, I was shown many things about his life. I also entered into his anguished mind as, in his dying throes, the faces of all the men, women and children he had killed and maimed passed before his eyes. Unbidden, his mind had awakened to how his belief—that His Lord Christ had wanted him to kill the “infidels” and, thus through the use of violent means bring them to Jesus had been a lie. The terror and murder he had caused he felt viscerally in his mind, emotions and body. He had a rude and powerful awakening that Christ did not want all this horror. He believed, therefore, as he lay dying that he would not sit at the feed of His Lord Christ. He believed he was irredeemable, unforgivable and unforgiven. That he would burn in a hell realm for eternity.
It was in that precious moment when my pain interlinked in a mysterious and magical way with another man’s pain many centuries in the past that healing could be had for all concerned. Through directing my own consciousness and intent, I engaged with him. I learned his name (Jean) and some about his life as a lonely warrior-monk. I came to understand the powerful faith and love that motivated his choices and actions—the violence he committed for years.
I reached for that love, into that love as the medium to heal him and heal myself. With compassion, I spoke to him in my inner mind and told him that no one—not a single person—is unforgivable. That this awakening out of the trance of violence was the reason for his life and was his ultimate redemption. I told him that he would surely sit at the feet of his Lord Christ.
And so, I felt and saw in my mind’s eye his spirit and soul released like a sweet outbreath released into the fabric of love that is Everything. All that Is.
For many years after that, as I sought to heal my own physical, mental and emotional pain, I dipped into humanity’s bloody stream through many other visions and journeys. Every time this happened, I would rise from the meditation, journey or healer’s table pain free and free in mind and heart.
This went on for a decade until one day, in a beautiful healing ceremony called Deeksha, I felt myself connect into the eternal vibrational resonance of love. What I learned when it happened is that as souls living in human form, we can plug into one or the other socket—love or hate, violence or peace. I also knew from my journey that love and light are always, always at the heart of every distorted thought and action.
In the heart of darkness, we can find our way to the light. It is always there. Never dead. Never gone. Eternally calling to us.
I know that right now, this seems like an unrealistic goal as the shadow of greed, fear and hatred seems to be on the rise. The specter of white supremacy, nationalistic fervor, racism, sexism, anti-semitism, and other manifestations of violence are having a heyday. It is easy to feel like nothing we do helps. It can feel like a tidal wave in which we are helpless to do anything.
Yet, it is precisely because of what is happening today, that the calling to healership is burning brighter and brighter in my heart and mind. I wish to end violence. To be a diligent seeker of what is within me that contributes to the unwinding of trauma and suffering. And to speak truth about what is wrong, unacceptable and dangerous. To call for love.
To call for those who embrace the calling to be a Visionary Healer and Creative for Peace to start and continue to do the work.
Maybe we won’t see this Great Shift in our lifetime. Yet I know that every effort on behalf of healing and peace, creativity and love plants a seed which will ultimately grow and flourish many generations into the future. It is adding to that frequency of peace I felt in the Deeksha ceremony.
Holding this vision and doing this work is not easy. It requires us to confront the shadow of the Will to Power Over and Mind of Separation within ourselves and in the world around us.
Therefore, I know personally that Visionary Healers and Creatives for Peace need a community of support. We need support in stepping up fully into the work we are called to do. To break down the barriers of insecurity, unworthiness, fear and shame which have held us back from believing in our mission to serve and help. We also need support and kindness when we feel overwhelmed by what is going on in the world and in our own lives which pulls us back into the undertow of that deep well of pain. We need to have a place to speak so we can keep holding onto hope even when things seem to go from bad to worse.
This is why I have created my Facebook page, Visionary Healership and Creatives for Peace. This group in an incubator for this call to service and compassion. It is where we can get support for our dreams to manifest fully our own calling to be a healer, writer, artist, dancer, musician, actor, or creative of any kind seeking to amplify the energies of compassion and love. We can speak heartfully of the pain. And keep up hope. We can share our triumphs—our art, craft, healership—and get feedback and love.
I thank each and every one of you for stepping into your healership in whatever way you feel called! Let’s keep on visualizing a world of peace together!