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Ingrid Oliphant

Belief in Healing, Part II

When I put out there on Facebook that I was inspired to write about faith & belief in healing, I asked for folks to share their questions about the same.

Here’s one I received.  “How to have faith in healing when you don’t believe…How to open and feel the healing and let it in, rather than an attempt at manufacturing it yourself (ie, making it up)”.    So, with a little editing it looks a little like this:   “Can you talk about how to have faith in healing when you don’t believe?  How does one open and feel the healing, and let it in instead of making it up?”

So, yesterday I shared that the healing I bring doesn’t require belief.  All one need do is ask and be willing to receive.  That’s it.  The changes within are going to happen whether on believes or not.  And, will continue no matter how you define the experience or to what you may attribute it.

The mind is a many splendor’d thing and absolutely plays a role in how healing or personal transformation evolves.  For instance, if you show up for a healing but, say, don’t really want it (it happens), one of two things may occur:  it may not work in the fashion you thought it should or it might and send you on a roller coaster ride you think you’re not be prepared for.  Because you will have crossed my path for a reason.  Just not one you originally ‘thought’.

Ya know that old axiom, “Be careful for what you wish?”   That’s not just a cliche.  It’s grounded in our power.  In the power we each have to create and shape our world.  So, when it gets right down to the very nitty-gritty, you can ‘manufacture it’ yourself.   You can ‘heal’ yourself.   In the same manner, though, that I can theoretically, say, do plumbing.  It can be done with patience, trial and error, and, what we don’t do so well: honesty with ourselves. For me the latter is the kicker, that stupid human trick that can foil us every time.

Ya know this one:  “Fake it ’til you make it”?  It works, too, to a certain degree.  We can make ourselves feel and be better by changing our mindset.  On of my favorite quotes from Thích Nhất Hạnh is:

 I always say that a smile can be a practice, a kind of yoga practice. Yoga of the mouth: you just smile even if you don’t feel joy and you’ll see after you smile that you’ll feel differently. Sometimes the mind takes the initiative and sometimes you have to allow the body to take the initiative.Sometimes the spirit leads, and sometimes the body can lead.”

Try it.  Right now. Smile.  Even a fake one, without a smiley feeling behind it.  What happened within?  Remember that.  Did you need to have faith in that?  Or, did something ‘just happen’. The smile, the physical action, changes our mindset.  And, one doesn’t operate without the other.  The mind and body are not separate.  The smile is an example about how we can transform and, yes, heal ourselves. Think that’s cool?  Try laughing.  Even a fake one!   Sometimes it really is that fucking simple.  You can change your mind in the same way you can turn that frown upside down.  Patience and practice retrain the brain and the body.  This, too, requires that pesky thing called honesty.  Getting to the gritty bit of ‘it’, ourselves.

It’s also that simple to keep ourselves, well, un-healed, un-whole, unhealthy. We can fake ourselves into that, too.  Another not-so-brilliant stupid human trick.  I know lots of people who do just that for any number of reasons:  they are comfortable in their discomfort–it’s what they know & how they identify themselves and are afraid to try living otherwise;  they are certain that something must be ‘wrong’ with them because they’ve bought into the ‘something’ just ain’t right with them (that’s another dialogue); or the ‘something’ that is wrong with them ain’t the something they think is wrong; they are seeking an expected outcome and can’t see what’s really going on internally & externally because that desired outcome hasn’t shown up in the way they thought it should.

It boils down to a few simple things for me:

First, you don’t need to have ‘faith in’ it.  All you need to do is want it, to ask for it and have the willingness to receive without attachment to an expected outcome.  Your ‘ask’ is as simple as showing up.  The ask is the ‘opening’ to the healing.  Feeling it and letting it in are merely receiving.  Putting yourself in the hands of another without an attachment to an expected outcome is the feeling and letting it in. And, receiving can be as simple as someone telling you there is nothing wrong with you and that you need to move beyond that notion.

Second, we need others.  There’s no fucking way I’m going to do the plumbing or pull my own teeth (just saw a movie trailer with a similar scene–ew). That doesn’t mean I can’t.  It just means engaging with another is probably easier, quicker, safer, more productive & effective.  There is a reason we have specialists in this world.  Be they house cleaners, physicians, garbage collectors, diesel engine mechanics, police officers, astronauts or healers, artists or horsemen.   Sure, we can do it all ourselves but to steal a line from Dr. Phil (sorry), “So, how’s that working for you?”  Seriously, though, we’re not meant to do it all ourselves.  There’s a reason every level of Maslow’s hierarchy contains an element of connection to others. Others bring us clarity, help us be honest with ourselves, hold our hands, share the lub and kick our ass when needed.

Third,  we are complex organisms.  Our processes, healing and otherwise, are more than simply ‘mind over matter’.  Mind and matter (think body & otherwise ‘external’ energies here) work together, in tandem, but not always in an orderly fashion we think they should.    ‘Healing’ doesn’t happen the same way for everybody, doesn’t mean the same thing to everybody.  Some folks who ‘believe’ with every fiber of their being travel to Lourdes and don’t experience the change they want.  Some don’t believe in Santa, but write the list anyway and get what they want.  Life is funny like that.  Sometimes physical change happens first to open us up to other changes.  Sometimes, healing the heart & powerful emotional trauma comes first to create space for physical manifestations of wholeness.  Sometimes, the transformation is spontaneous; sometimes part of a process of which I merely play one role–whether it is momentary or a little longer. Again, life is puzzling like that.

And, yes, sometimes I’m just fucking superfluous, an unfuckingnecessary redundancy in this whole healing thing because, well, sometimes, we can ‘manufacture it ourselves’ by making it up.  And, sometimes, that is merely changing our mind (over and over again) by redefining how we identify or see ourselves.

And, sometimes, it’s just merely my job to tell you that you don’t need ‘healing’ or that there is nothing wrong with you.  That you’ve long grown past ‘wounded’, ‘dis-eased’, ‘dis-ordered’, into all that is whole and holy.

And, even that, doesn’t require belief.   You don’t have to see yourself as I do.  Although your world might be fantastically different if you did.

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