Healing Requires Far More of Us-Daily Meditation 5.17.23

Today’s quotation:

Healing requires far more of us than just the participation of our intellectual and even our emotional resources.  And it certainly demands that we do more than look backward at the dead-end archives of our past.  Healing is, by definition, taking a process of disintegration of life and transforming it into a process of return to life.-Caroline Myss

Today’s Meditation:

We like to put band-aids on things and consider them taken care of.  As long as the surface looks okay, we tend not to worry too much about what’s happening inside.  You can’t heal diseases by covering up the sores that they cause–we can only make things look a little better.  If we want to heal–physically, emotionally, spiritually–we have to work at the core of the issue and take care of it fully and completely.

I can’t heal the issues caused by my father’s alcoholism simply by acknowledging that the problem existed.  It takes a lot more work than that and completes acceptance of the past and present situations.  It takes acknowledgment of what has happened and what is happening and effort to deal with things honestly and completely.  How many people have lost weight on diets but not dealt with the underlying issues that caused the overeating in the first place?  How many of us are willing to turn to intoxicants to help us “deal with” pain without ever looking for the true causes of that pain and working to heal them?

I believe that when Caroline mentions the “disintegration of life,” she talks about how our sicknesses can tear us apart and keep us from living fully and completely.  And she says that dealing with those illnesses can make us stronger and help us “return to life”–to the state of health and well-being that we yearn for.  If we really want to heal, instead of masking or hiding and avoiding the problems, we need to face issues head-on and be brave in dealing with the things that are stealing our vitality.

We can heal.  Some diseases will take our lives, of course, but that’s a normal part of the cycle of life.  Other diseases, those that are physical but not fatal, that are emotional or spiritual, can be healed, and it’s up to us to find the path of healing rather than staying on the path of victimhood.

Questions to consider:

Why are so many of us reticent to deal with deep-seated issues that need to be healed in us?

Are we really able to heal ourselves?  Why do we often want to believe that healing comes from outside ourselves?

What are some things that you’d really like to heal yourself of?

For further thought:

It’s supposed to be a professional secret, but I’ll tell you anyway.  We, doctors, do nothing.  We only help and encourage the doctor within.  We are at best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.- Albert Schweitzer

If you missed our last Daily Meditation, it is right here.