cancer of the base of the neck and John felt his repressed guilt and shame over the handling of his mother’s illness was reflected in his own bodily pain occurring in the identical area.
About four days later, just before John was leaving the Findhorn Foundation, I asked him about his neck pain and he told me that the improvement had been maintained. We had both experienced a powerful example of how the guilt in our mind is reflected in our bodily condition and how the power of forgiveness can dissolve both.
The above story is the first of a number of case histories which illustrate how healing can occur through forgiveness. I have chosen stories which have successful outcomes so that I can demonstrate what can be achieved when client and healer join together. There have, of course, been many instances when little or no progress has been achieved in healing sessions. The resistance of our ego to the healing process and the subject of the healed healer versus the unhealed healer will be covered in later chapters.
I was beginning to understand more clearly that only the mind is in need of healing, not the body. If the mind could regain its peace through forgiveness, then healing would be achieved. In Chapter 5, I shall explain more fully what I mean by forgiveness. Even if physical symptoms still remain after forgiveness has occurred, healing has taken place if peace of mind is the outcome. Looking back to when I first started to practise healing by laying on of hands, I now wondered what was really happening. In the Course I was to read:
It is not their hands that heal. It is not their voice that speaks the word of God. They merely give what has been given them.
(M18; M-5.III.2:8-10)
And, as previously stated:
False healing can indeed remove a form of pain and sickness. But the cause remains, and will not lack effects.
(S16: S-3.II.1:4-5)
I now saw that the use of my hands was but a form which helped me to join with my client. To join with another is to undo the ego’s thought of separation and allow the love of God to return to our awareness. It is this love that undoes the guilt in the client’s mind and allows the healing to take place. My function as a healer was to drop all judgement and criticism of my client. This then makes room for God’s healing love to be extended from my mind to the client’s mind. In the presence of that love and light, the client would have an opportunity to change their mind and forgive the past. I shall expand upon the subject of healing others in Chapter 7.
My challenge in a healing session is to reach a peaceful, centred and non-judgemental space and to withdraw any investment I might have in the outcome. The power of this has occasionally been demonstrated to me by some unintentional healings which have occurred over the years.
On one occasion a friend of mine was suffering from painful knees. This condition had started a couple of days earlier whilst she was watching television. The programme had made her fearful and when she got up from her chair both knees were painful. She stopped me in the corridor and asked for a healing session. I intuitively felt I should see her right away. I turned to her, put my hand on her shoulder and said that we could have a healing session now if that was convenient. She looked at me and said, "Don’t bother — the pain has just gone in both knees!"
There had been no intention on my part to heal in that moment and I became curious as to what had happened. When I analysed this and other times when spontaneous healings had occurred, I remembered that I was in a peaceful, joyful and accepting space. When we can temporarily lay our ego aside, there is no barrier to the presence of God’s love in our mind. God’s healing love is now free to flow spontaneously into the mind of the other person, giving them the opportunity to change their mind about the guilt they are carrying. When we are in a joyful and accepting state of mind we give them a different message about themselves in contrast to what their ego is telling them. We demonstrate they are not the sinful and guilty person that they thought they were and thus allow them to change their mind about themselves. This shift of perception, the miracle, allows them to forgive themselves and let their guilt, with its physical symptoms, disappear.
‘. . . sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body.’
(M17; M-5.II.3:2)
Everyone who has ever come to me for a healing has, and must have, a resistance to being healed. In some part of their mind is the decision to get sick in the first place. We believe we gain benefits from our disease and do not want to lose these benefits through being healed. Thus there is usually a strong ambivalence towards the healing session and the healer, although this may be unconscious. The pamphlet Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice makes this point very clear:
The therapist is seen as one who is attacking the patient’s most cherished possession; his picture of himself. And since this picture has become the patient's security as he perceives it, the therapist cannot but be seen as a real source of danger to be attacked and even killed. The psychotherapist then, has a tremendous responsibility. He must meet attack without attack and therefore without defence. It is his task to demonstrate that defences are not necessary and that defencelessness is strength.
(P9; P-2.IV.9:5-6. 10:1-3)
David was a participant in a two-week workshop I was giving at the Findhorn Foundation. During the first week he became aware of a hatred he carried towards himself. He felt the hatred to be ‘located’ in his solar plexus and that its origin lay in the sexual abuse he had experienced from his uncle when he was ten years old. He only realised in the workshop setting that following the period of abuse, he had repressed feelings of guilt and blame for what had happened. This new awareness caused him much discomfort and he developed asthma and a chest infection by the end of the first week of the workshop. David felt ashamed of his memories, did not want to explore this issue with anyone and considered leaving the workshop. He visited the local doctor and was given a course of antibiotics.
During the start of the second week of the workshop, David asked me for a private healing session. After a period of relaxation and laying on of hands, I decided I would try to get him to explore and accept the hatred he was experiencing in his solar plexus. The Course states "There is an advantage to bringing nightmares into awareness, but only to teach that they are not real, and that anything they contain is meaningless." (T159; T-9.V.3:1) If David could uncover his ‘nightmares’ of self-hatred and guilt without judging them, he would then have an opportunity to change his mind about his seeming ‘sins’ of the past. My own feeling of acceptance and non-judgement of him, which I experienced as I gently guided him on this journey, would also help this process.
To help him undo his state of repression — what the Course calls ‘denial’ — I asked him to explore the sensation in his solar plexus. Previous experience had taught me that important messages are locked up in our areas of pain. I asked him to describe how large the area of discomfort was, its shape and depth, its colour and texture, and whether it felt hotter or colder than the rest of his body. As it is impossible to resist and explore the pain simultaneously, I was encouraging David to undo his denial about himself. When clients follow this approach, they are describing the ‘clothes of the messenger’ and this can lead them into deeper levels of their mind where the ‘nightmares’ are to be found.
David discovered a hard red ball in his solar plexus. I asked this ‘messenger’ how it was feeling and David replied that it was angry. He experienced a strong resistance to his discovery. He could not accept it in his body and hated it being there. He said it felt like a foreign object which needed to be attacked and thrown out. Feeling his strong resentment towards this part of his body, I went within and asked for help in what to say or do. What came to me was to ask him how this hard, red, angry ball had served him all these years. After all, it was his creation and he was holding on to it with great determination. Not surprisingly, he objected strongly to my question and reiterated he did not want this ball inside him. I felt guided to continue gently exploring this issue with him without any investment on my part in trying to bring about changes in him that I thought were necessary.
Slowly David began to receive insights on how this ball of hatred was serving him. He realised that he had created it as a protection against his fear of opening his heart