The Inner Path To Christ 13
The Healing
Love can come from a child reaching its hand to us. Love can flow between two lovers, skin to skin, wet with their own exuberance. A dog’s shining eyes call out love to us if only we listened. A flower casting its perfume on the air – an author giving himself to us in his words – an artist, a musician – all creators, shower us with their love in their own reproductive acts. A husband who stands and irons, or holds the baby for us, is giving us as much love in his way as the one who caresses the breast. The teacher loves us by being there day after day. In fact, the thousands of government and civil service workers who tirelessly work without recognition and who are the blood and muscles of what makes our society work are giving themselves.
All that is a form of healing, but the Christ spirit shows us how to open our being to Love as it exists in all its phases. It ‘preaches deliverance to the captives’; for are we all not captives of social rules, fears, environment, education and the many other prisons? The inner Light sets at liberty those that ‘are bruised’, for the events of our life, and the pain, or even agony, we may have experienced, often imprison us. When Christ is born in us it tends to start working to heal these pains, releasing us from the influence of them.
The first act of Christ is written as the healing of a blind man. The ‘blind are healed’, for we may be blind to the fact that Life constantly upholds us. We may not be able to see the wonder of our birthright, and our destiny as God’s children.
Sightless, we will deny that a great love and life are behind all the visible universe. Blind, we may treat people and animals like ‘things’, ‘objects’, denying they have the same Life in them as we have in ourselves; denying they have the same feelings, destiny, awareness and need for love and encouragement as we have ourselves, in whatever degree they now show it.
What of the great healings? Are we all to be healed of leprosy fever, as was Peter’s mother-in-law; paralysis; palsy; a withered hand; an issue of blood; deafness and dumbness; or to have demons cast out and be raised from the dead? Yes, we are.
Leprosy is our unclean lusts and desires; our thoughts are often full of dirt. Such dirt and lusts are only misplaced life energies. Earth from which wholesome food grows, is called dirt when it gets in a wound. So, our emotions and thoughts, when used in the wrong way, or out of harmony, can give us an inner uncleanness. The Christ in us heals by denying nothing but giving each its place.
A fever is our emotions when we live at ‘fever pitch’. It is the inner heat of passion and feelings when these are self-centred rather than self-giving; when we are impatient and judging. They are the great burning emotions we have blown into a furnace from an ember by nursing our wrath; grieving an injury; magnifying a slight. These are healed by bringing a wider view to our life and showing us the result of our actions.
To be paralysed is to be unable to act or move in life because we have a guilt, shame or conscience which paralyses. Not realising or wanting to accept how we relate to the Life force, our actions against others, in word or deed, literally wound ourselves. The attitude of mind we use to hurt or speak ill of someone acts as a block to the flow of our own life stream, paralysing many of our functions. ‘For whatsoever ye do unto one of these, ye do unto me!’ The emotion we wield to injure another, turns in on our own life-giving stream and likewise wounds it. Thus, we are healed by saying, ‘Your sins are forgiven you – or – take up thy bed and walk,’ from the inner Christ. Life itself is the only thing that can forgive us the injury we have done it – and such forgiveness in us is the mouthpiece for its love and forgiveness of others.
Palsy is a symbol for a disturbance of the natural function of the life stream in us. Such movements occur sometimes when a past event has shocked or hurt our nervous system; or when we have held on to a grievance from being deeply hurt or shocked physically and emotionally. The act of holding on to our hate, malice, or judgement of someone who has caused the injury or was not there to comfort us when we needed them, cause the pain itself to become built into our soul. This pain disturbs the action of the life stream in its normal expression as love, sensation of wellbeing, physical strength, creativeness and spontaneous inner wisdom. Similarly, with a withered hand, for this represents our inability to act creatively, or to give and share ourselves with others – to give others a ‘hand’ that supports,
encourages or carries their load. Maybe our physical hands are fine, but how are the hands of our soul?
The damage such in-turned or negative emotions can do is enormous. Many years ago, a woman who could hardly walk came to stay with my wife and I. She hobbled along using two sticks. Within a week, without any treatment, she could walk normally. She told us with great enthusiasm that she now knew what had caused her illness. Three years previously her son had married and had asked if he and his new wife could lodge in his parent’s house for a few weeks while they looked for a house of their own. His mother felt resentful that he and his wife had stayed for years and made no effort to move out. But being a Christian woman, she kept her feelings to herself. She ended the story by saying, “Being on holiday away from the situation has allowed me to be free of the resentment, and this has healed my legs. So, I know what I am going to do when I get home. I am going to tell my son and his wife to pack their things and move out.”
Many of us may also have, within our soul, an issue of blood. To bleed is to lose our life fluid, our physical energy. To bleed from our soul is to lose our life force, in this case from the genitals, through misuse of sexual feelings, or of the creative function of childbirth. To give ourselves sexually when our inner feelings tell us to refrain; or to use a means of killing Life in us, is to wound our soul and cause it to bleed. But Christ comes, as he says, not to condemn but to redeem. Not for the saved, but the sinners.
Most of us too, are deaf and dumb. For though Life speaks to us in our dreams, through our sense of beauty, through our love, the seasons, plants, and all visible creation; and if we are unwilling to hear it calling us through these, it yet speaks to us through men who witness its presence in their own experience; through books, music, poetry and all our devices, yet we shut our ears. And if we do hear, we often choose not to act as yet another voice through which Life can sing and talk.
A woman, told that God speaks to us through our moments of uplift or beauty said, ‘But I never feel that way.’ When streams of living laughter, wisdom, beauty and creativeness flow through us, our soul is alive. Lacking these, our soul is indeed dead, and Christ can raise it from this death even as was done with Lazarus.
Even if your inner voice shouts within you that Love, Light and Life can transform and heal your being you may prefer to believe otherwise. Yet you do so despite the failure which the worldly life demonstrates every day with its criminality, wars, dissatisfaction, meaninglessness and destruction. You are truly, like so many of us, deaf, dumb and blind to the proof Life gives us every day. As soon as you allow the inner Light to illuminate you, all this can be changed, sometimes in the twinkling of an eye.
Starr Daily, a convict who discovered this for himself, the hard way, says. “I recall a time when I was being held in jail on suspicion of burglary. For two days and nights I had been subjected to ‘third degree’ police methods to torture a confession out of me. My head had been beaten with a rubber hose until it resembled a huge stone bruise, swollen beyond human shape, my face black from the congealed blood beneath the surface. Lighted cigars had been pressed against my flesh. I had hung for three hours with my wrists handcuffed over a hot steam pipe. My arms had been twisted behind me and my elbows beaten with black jacks until the bones felt crunchy. Heavy heels had ground my bare feet against a concrete floor.
On the third night of this I was at the end of my endurance. “Again, I was dragged into the torture room and sat down within the semi-circle of twelve big detectives. My previous sustaining energy of hate and anger had dwindled into a dull sense of indifference. I was alarmed at this new state of affairs. For I had learned that pain could easily be assimilated if sufficient hatred could be thrown against it. I did not want to weaken. Death was preferable. But could I stand the pain without the sustaining force of hate?
‘You’d better open up and come clean,’ the Chief informed me. ‘If you don’t you’re gonna get the works. Y’understand?’
“I continued to sit in stoic silence, expecting the worst, and wondering if I would be able to take it. It was the show-down. Unless I broke, my life was not worth a dime. I knew this as two of the detectives stepped toward me. Then a strange thing took place in my consciousness. All hate and anger were gone. The vague sense of indifference vanished. And in an unbidden instant, there welled up within me an overwhelming compassion for these men, for their pathetic ignorance, their undeveloped souls, for the pitiful condition of their minds and hearts. And as this strange sentiment reached a high peak of intensity within me the Chief spoke, and what he said constituted a minor miracle.
‘Don’t hit him again’, he barked, ‘take him back.’ I was returned to my cell, and for the remainder of the night was under the care of a doctor. The next morning, I was transferred to a private hospital, where I lived for three weeks. Every day a number of women came to see me, bringing flowers and other gifts. It was all quite mystifying, and the nurses’ guarded explanations did not clarify the mystery. These women were the wives of city detectives. I could not figure the thing out. I was only a friendless, unprotected criminal. They had no reason to placate me with gifts and attention because they feared what I might reveal. I was told not to worry about anything, that all bills would be paid. Nor was I returned to jail on being discharged from the hospital. Instead I was given an envelope and told that I was free to go. In the envelope was no word of explanation. Only five crisp, ten-dollar bills.
“It was not until twenty years later, twenty years filled with crime and punishment, that I was able to see through this mystery, and to know the power, because of which my life had been spared and this odd consideration shown me.”
What was it that finally showed Starr Daily the power of Love? It was Jesus! He says: “I re-entered prison for the third time with sinister ideas. Three times I tried to fight my way to freedom. The first two times were of the ‘Lone wolf’ variety; the third involved group action, destruction and physical violence. Our plan was to cause a mob riot and during its height to seize the deputy warden as a shield and hostage, then under threats of death force him to give the order that would open the gates.
“The plot was discovered, and I was sentenced to the dungeon. The average time for a strong man in ‘the hole’ is fifteen days, at the end of which time the doctor ends the sentence. This time came and went. Finally, I collapsed. I seemed to be sustained by hate alone as I lay inured in the lowest hell earth had to offer.
“Yet as I lay near death on the icy floor of the cell, a strange new thought came to me. I realised that I had been a dynamo of energy in everything I had done. I began to wonder what would have happened if I had used my powers for something other than destruction. It was to me a completely revolutionary thought!
“What then followed is difficult to describe. I first began to dream disconnected dreams, then they took on meaning. These dreams were the same I had as a child – beautiful dreams of Jesus Christ, the man I had tried to avoid for many years. He paused near my side and looked down deep into my eyes as though he were trying to penetrate my soul. In all my life I had never seen or felt such love.
“Then I seemed to see all the people I had ever injured directly or indirectly, or who had injured me. I poured out love to them which seemed to heal their hurts. Then we were in a great auditorium and I spoke of love to all the people. I seemed to be assuring myself while I was awake and that I would never forget these words flowing over my lips.
“When I consciously returned to my dungeon environment, the state of my mind had completely changed. The cell was illuminated with a new kind of light – the light of my own redeemed eye. Before that experience, I was a callused criminal; after it I was completely healed of my criminal tendencies! As a result, the prison doors swung open five years in advance of the time set for my release.” (8)
“This Light, Life and Love that heals us, is everything that sentimentalism is not. In its practical application love is as precise and scientific as mathematics. Without it there could be no universe, no cellular structure, no organisation of any kind. Because love is the only integrating power in existence. It is all that can establish order out of chaos – or maintain order in chaos.
Love is to grow into oneness with God. “With the light of Love to guide us, the idea of seeking God fades on the film of our consciousness, and we know, then, that this idea, long held and fostered by men, is as false as the beard of Hercules. It is God who is doing the seeking. It is God who stands at our door and knocks. When we consciously and deliberately set out to seek God, we are simply being annoyed by God’s seeking us. His incessant pounding on our door irritates us, we try to escape from this friction and annoyance, and we call this ‘seeking God.’ We go to church or a lecture hall, or we drop a coin in the hand of a beggar, or we join a charitable organisation. And the more we seek the further we drift from the real consciousness of God’s presence, for we stifle His voice and dull the sound of His knocking. God is the Supreme Shepherd and it must forever be the logical procedure for the shepherd to seek his lost sheep, and not for his lost sheep to seek him.” (7)
Besides starting the process of healing in us; besides leading us beyond national prejudices, beyond any one religion or viewpoint, the Light leads us now beyond the limitations of our own individual consciousness. Gradually, and in a meaningful way, God shares with us the souls of others, when we are in a position to help. In our times of quiet, we are shown the inner thoughts or conditions of those we are in contact with, but only when helpful to us or to them. Or else our presence or consciousness travels to them to support, comfort, heal or teach.
Talking of his wife, who was dying of cancer, a man told me: “I had risen several times that night to watch over my wife and attend to her needs. I did so again, and saw to my astonishment, the form of a friend, kneeling beside the bed. Gradually it faded; but later I learnt that this woman had been kneeling at prayer, just at that time, asking God’s help for my wife.”
Another man says, “In my periods of quiet, when I sit silently, not reaching out or trying to get anywhere, but simply being open to anything God may wish to have me know or experience, there occasionally arise distinct impressions. Sometimes these are symbolic images, such as when I saw a friend mending an undergarment, and knew it meant she was mending an inner injury to her emotion. Or when I saw an acquaintance banging on a brick wall of her house, when a little to the left was a doorway she could walk through, and knew a difficulty had arisen in her life, but before her was an open way to walk through this problem. Other times there comes a feeling of being in contact with the person and his mood. Then God and I take up the person’s burden and help him. In other words, I do with another’s burden what I do with my own, I hold it out to my Father who strengthens me and tells me what is best to be done.”
Occasionally we may be blessed with a visit from visitor not of this earth, as this man describes – “Suddenly there were two beings with me in my room. I could not see them with my eyes, but they were standing in my awareness, to my left, suspended above the bed where I lay musing. Surprising, because I had not sought them. Frightening, because they were the living dead. Radiant, because they were angels. Inspiring, because they shone with wonderful life. Uplifting, because of the gift they brought.
The living dead! Yes. That I knew of them. It was everywhere about them, communicating itself to me, telling me the majesty of death. Speaking to me without words they led knowing in me, as you might lead a friend through your new house, revealing its secrets. Thereby I knew, all that I considered human, in them had died. Desire, longing to possess, sex, ambition, all had melted away.
And I understood in their presence, if I surrendered to the Highest, this was my path. My own person would melt away, my desires fade like shadows in the sun. Fear – Yes – in the loss of myself. In the sense of my own futility. In the knowledge of my littleness. In the confrontation of majesty. At the loss of what I thought my wisdom.
n them I saw beyond myself. Through their emptiness of all that I so valued. I saw shimmering light, cosmic in its vastness. Their death allowed, shining through them, dimensions of a life beyond the very best of all my mind, or love, or art. Radiant they were with all the mystery of life itself. Suns shone through them; not just with light, but with ungrasped joy and love. Inspiring me by showing me the possibility of my life, and all the lives of those myriads around me.
Uplifting too, by unveiling to me the meaning of the story He told, where, having lost one’s cloak, you offer your coat also. Not, as I had thought, an act of selfless generosity. They said it was a statement. “How strange. You want this old coat, when you could have the life unbounded?”
That was their promise. If I dared lose my self, let that coat be taken from me, my being too would shine as theirs shone on me that day.”
And to add to that, here is a report in Dr. Morse’s book Closer to the Light.
“Let me give you an example of medicine and faith working together. I don’t quite know what to make of this story, which was told to me by a doctor who witnessed it from beginning to end in the small Idaho hospital where it happened.
A woman was having severe complications during the delivery of her child. Not only was the placenta separating from the lining of the uterus (a pediatric emergency), but the obtuse angle of the child’s head in the birth canal was making delivery very difficult. When the child was finally delivered, he was found to have a severe brain hemorrhage.
The child spent several months in the intensive care unit of this small town because the mother did not want to transfer him to a large city where she would not be allowed to spend full time with him. Doctors decided not to encourage her to move the child since they felt the injuries were so massive that no treatment would be possible.
The child had severe cerebral palsy secondary to brain damage and a seizure disorder that had shown up on an abnormal EEG. These are afflictions from which children simply don’t recover. If they survive infancy, they spend their lives severely retarded.
The doctors told her their prognosis, but still the mother stayed with her child. By all accounts she was with the boy almost twenty-four hours a day for several months. Perhaps it was the strain of the ordeal or sleep deprivation that led to what happened next.
Late one night, she said, a Being of Light came into her hospital room. Later she described it as having the shape of a person, but not the features of either a male or a female. It glowed with a cold, gray light as though light were being beamed through an ice cube.
“Your son will be all right,” the being said.
The woman said that she felt as though love were being poured into her body. “It was marvelous.”
The next day she shared this vision with her medical team. She was especially excited because the being had assured her that her son was going to be normal. Could they please do another EEG to see if anything had happened? They repeated the brain-wave test and came up with the startling results: normal. The child had made a full recovery.”
At times we can receive the gift of insight, like Jesus at the well, we are given an understanding of a person’s whole life, in order to help them more fully. But none of this comes through attempting to force its development, nor does it come to him who has not learnt how to use it wisely.
For apart from knowing the soul of another, each of us in some measure has contact with the mind of God, which holds in it memory of all things. Thus, it is that Jesus talks with Moses and Elias on the Mountain, for they represent all that has been learnt and accomplished by the soul of man in the past, in all ages. In this way, such men as Cayce and Steiner were able to diagnose sickness in people they never met – from afar. Or unravel their past. Or tell of previous sojourns in the body. Or talk of history through seeing it in the Universal mind of God.
No baby can reach adulthood by seeking it, only by going along with the inner processes of growth, in patience and harmony. So too – we cannot claim these abilities harmoniously except by going along with Life’s activity upon us and growing in spiritual stature. Then there is no seeking, there is only becoming. There is no grasping, only having. For this thing is grasped only with open hands.
Then “I saw before me a low mountain overlooking the plains of Syria. Shepherds were herding their flocks on its slopes. Near the summit, Christ stood with His disciples gathered around him. As He spoke, I listened as intently as did they. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ The meaning suddenly became obvious for the first time. The sad, depressed, and despondent would, in their misery, seek God; urged on by sorrow within themselves, they would continue seeking Him until their lives were indeed made rich and their souls filled with joy; thus would theirs be the kingdom of heaven within, where Christ had repeatedly told us it would be found.
“Now He was saying, ‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.’ I realised that He was not referring to milk-sops or self-imposed martyrs or masochists, but that the only way one could be truly meek was by first accepting oneself as a marvellous part of God. Once the God-self was recognised and appreciated, all need for arrogance and egotism was gone. It was the necessary acceptance of our God-selves which allowed both meekness and inheritance of the earth, meaning the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven within ourselves while we are still on earth.
“As Christ continued speaking, I realised that in one way or another we were all blessed, and many times blessed, and that if we failed to recognise our blessedness, the problem lay in our selves. When I looked up again, Christ was saying, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth . . . . Ye are the light of the world.’ It seemed to me that Christ was saying a part of God was in each of us.” (9)
I want to say to you that even if you consider yourself to be a weak person or someone who is not clever and could never be a healer or could speak wisdom, you have misunderstood the message of what has been written. How can you be weak or ignorant when you open yourself to that Mystery that created you? You are only weak and ignorant when you keep depending on your own little self. For goodness sake open to the MORE that you have within you, for in it is wisdom and strength beyond measure.
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