A
Gathering of Flowers
In the
foreword to Healers
on Healing, Dr. W. Brugh Joy tells us the word
anthology
"literally means a gathering of flowers." The editors of this remarkable
collection of essays (Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shield) created it to
affirm the many approaches to healing, offering alternative
techniques and points of view. They asked healers from various perspectives to share
their ideas, to "help define and foster" the "common denominator,
or 'golden thread,' that unites all healers and healing methods of ancient, current, and
future times."
Below are some representative insights (there are
many more contributors -- and much more to each essay-- than are quoted below):
-
Bernie Siegel, M.D., F.A.C.S.,
founded the Exceptional Cancer Patients program and is author of
Love, Medicine, and
Miracles. He believes that teaching people how to feel and
express love succeeds only if he's able to show them they're lovable. He
also writes, "Many external factors, of course, may contribute
to our falling away from the path that is right for us –
parental conditioning, peer pressure, and the like. But to get
back on the path always means finding the way we can best
contribute love to the world."
-
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D.,
was noted world-wide for her work in death, dying, and transition, her books including
On
Death and Dying and AIDS: The Ultimate Challenge. She learned that
many people who are ill are "blocked by a lot of guilt, shame, and ambivalence.
Therefore, we first help them to get rid of their negativity... once they learn to love
themselves and trust themselves, the spiritual dimension begins to open up. Only then are
they ready for healing." She believed healing occurs at more than an
individual level: "Because each individual is connected through a vast network of
relationships to innumerable other people and creatures on the planet, the process of
healing even one person has far-reaching ramifications."
-
Hugh Prather, a crisis
therapist, columnist, and minister who has written such books as
I Touch the Earth/The
Earth Touches Me, believes "all healing approaches heal the body in
the identical way; the only difference is in how they limit their options." The
"great mistaken assumption" is that healing necessarily means a physical
improvement. It's not up to us to prejudge the form in which the gift of healing is to
be received for a given person. Prather reminds us to not judge ourselves or others:
"The pronouncement that cancer is caused by an inability to love, or that colds are
signs of lack of joy, or that AIDS is the manifestation of sinful-mindedness would not be
made in the first place if we had not already judged illness as wrong."
-
Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. – former
director of the Mind/Body Clinic at New England Deaconess Hospital, Harvard Medical School
and author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind – wrote,
"The message that underlies healing is simple yet radical: We are already
whole... Underneath our fears and worries, unaffected by the many layers of our conditioning and actions, is a peaceful core.
The work of healing is peeling away the barriers of fear that keep us unaware of our true
nature of love, peace, and rich interconnection with the web of life. Healing is the
rediscovery of who we are and who we have always been."
-
Jack Schwartz
is a research
pioneer and author in the field of voluntary control of mind-body processes. He sees
disease as a manifestation of a stagnant state where we hold back energy that
can be released if we align ourselves with the process of transformation. Even with
the label of "disease," Schwartz suggests we create an attitude that constricts
our life energy's flow... as if an enemy is attacking us from outside. He asks that
healers be "mapmakers" or "guides" who walk alongside clients,
showing them how to release their own power, how to overcome the fear of change.
-
Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.,
F.A.A.P., who specializes in chronic and life-threatening illness, asks, "beyond
all these techniques, what is it that truly fosters the healing process? I think it is the
way we stand in relationship to each other that is most important." In her use of the
Wounded Healer archetype, she's a model for any healer we might partner
with in our
journey of healing: "...two people in a healing relationship are peers, both wounded
and both with healing capacity... it is my woundedness that allows me to connect to you...
I know what suffering is. I also know that you may feel separated from other people by
your suffering. You may feel lost, frightened, trapped. My woundedness allows me to find
you and be with you in a way that is nonjudgmental... I don't believe that one person
heals another. I believe that we invite the other person into a healing
relationship."
-
Richard Moss, M.D., founded a
nonprofit organization for health and wholeness and is the author of
The I That Is We "When
I was a traditional physician," he writes, "I was content to
regard healing as the restoration of health. But today I know
healing is far more than a return to a former condition. True
healing means drawing the circle of our being larger and
becoming more inclusive, more capable of loving. In this sense,
healing is not for the sick alone, but for all humankind."
Describing healing as "a mystery," he continues: "In the end,
healing must be a ceaseless process of relationship and
rediscovery, moment by moment. The more we 'know' about healing,
the more we are simultaneously carried toward something
unknowable. For this reason all healing is in essence
spiritual."
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