Damned and saved

I’m sure his opinion of me didn’t change very much and he remained entirely unconscious of my being, as well as largely delusional about his own, but my new found confidence in myself, and my egoless respect for his right to simply be did bring about an unexpected change and, crucially, an easing in the anxiety I had always felt in my dealings with him.

From The Rivendale Review. I find the story inspiring and illuminating, but how many of us, do you think, are like that? Delusional, or aware?

I have been conscious of healing and maturing since February 1999. “Spiritual journey” and “spiritual growth” are other useful metaphors. Around that time I read Scott Peck’s work, who posited four stages: selfish and amoral; rule-observing; intellectual- working things out for onesself; and spiritual. The first time I read of his stage four, I did not

understand it at all; the second time, I thought I did, and decided that meant I had progressed, though Peck says that his “stage four” is only the beginning. I also read “Awareness” by Anthony de Mello, and got the idea of becoming awake, which at the time I linked to being aware of the spiritual journey and now link to Brené Brown’s “Vulnerability”. The “Saved” might be the people on the journey, or might be all of us: we heal and grow whether we are aware of it or not.

And yet, I am still groping towards seeing other people rather than projecting onto them. Perhaps this is impossible, perhaps one can only see in another what one can admit in onesself; so it helps to be able to admit the diversity and variety in onesself, in order to see others better. And I think that I do react badly to that in other people which I deny in myself- in any case it is all about me, but insofar as I can accept myself, I can see and accept others better.

Such a long path, this healing. How many are on the path? How many are further on it than I am?

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Within the process of living, we are meant to heal our energies, to make them more strong and more expansive.

From Omni Vision. So much mysticism on the web! Ordinary blogs which I happen across teach me. I almost see things as Omni Vision does: my difference remains my agnosticism of spiritual reality. My perceptions are valid, but I distrust any doctrine or dogma explaining them. And so I could follow OV’s prescriptions as valuable, even if convinced of Atheistic materialism.

Trust the Spirits

It does not matter whether Spirit and Spirits are objective reality on a different plane, underpinning, suffusing and enveloping visible material reality; or stories, ideas and archetypes, helping human beings understand their material universe. Spirits are real. Actually, I tend to the materialist perspective: my inspiration comes from my unconscious mind, it does not mean that it is not in my brain just because I am not consciously aware of it; physically, perhaps it comes across the corpus callosum into the dominant hemisphere of the brain. (One Hundred subscribers! Does any of you know whether that has any basis in known physiology?)

Um. A materialist spiritual healer. Well, who am I to presume to understand? I know that two women have told me they felt heat, when I was not touching them but felt heat in my hands, and held the intention to heal. If I tell a story about that, what good does it do me? Harm, rather, if the story is wrong. Trust in unknowing, this is enough to make me want to take the next step.

So, spirits, either brain-phenomena, or ancestors, or angels, or independent beings, or for all I know Ainur singing the creation of Iluvatar. Should I trust them?

The story which bids me not trust all spirits, which looms largest in my own mind, is that of the Farmington Prophecy.  No, Jesus was not prophesying through Licia, and the spirit that did wasted her time and energy and money. Perhaps this had to do with her use of LSD. I do not know.

The tale of the Witch of Endor, who calls forth the dead prophet Samuel at the request of King Saul, and completes his tragedy, only tells me to treat spirit or spirits with respect: not that they are malicious, but that what they say may be too much in that moment to bear.

Right now, I want to respond to spirits as I might going out on the town for a night, in a place I do not know. If I trust the spirits, I may meet interesting people, and go to interesting places. If I fear, and hold myself aloof, I may be missing something. I trust in my own purity to keep me safe, enough.

Healing

Can I heal people, by laying on hands or channelling spirit?

I know that this will do people good. If I pay someone my full attention, express that I wish her well, and do something through which I communicate my intention to do her well, it will do good, by the placebo effect, which is scientifically proven and demonstrated and explicable. It feels to me that there is something more, that the action and intention taps into the Life Force, or Holy Spirit, or Love, or something beyond both of us which works healing. There are many people who believe in such healing, and practise various styles of Reiki, or with the Friends’ Fellowship of Healing or the Healing Trust. I could find numerous Bible passages saying this is a gift Christians share, and it is a Shamanic practice. Hippocrates felt his hands grow warm as he came to touch a patient.

It is what I want to do, and I feel enmeshed in the paradox- “There is no God. God exists.” Could I do it if I doubted it? Could I bring myself to say things, unless I believed the Something, greater than us both, was moving as It willed for our good?

Trying to live male, I was enmeshed in lies and evasions which I took into my heart, lies which I told myself and thought were true. Transitioning, I asserted my own Truth, that I am female, which I had experienced being repeatedly and utterly denied throughout my childhood, which denials still hurt me a little, especially when I perceive denials from other people (though eleven years on this hurts much less). Truth is the most important thing to me. Something that I can know and cling to as True.

So, could I practise some form of spiritual healing, even while harbouring some doubt that it was more than a placebo? Should I learn one or more of the plethora of complementary therapies which are not, all, proven by rational double-blind peer reviewed studies reported in reputable journals?

My attachment is to knowing, rather than to Truth per se, and- to having an understanding, to holding a Position. What can I do when half of me says, “Yes, this is true and beautiful and Right and my Calling” and half says, “No, sorry. It’s placebo.” Please tell me what you think.

Rilke, from letters to a young poet:

 I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

 And- my questing intelligence and wise friends may help me with the questions.