himself walking down a country lane on a summer’s day. To encourage him to experience all his senses, I asked him to feel the road underfoot, smell the flowers, hear the sounds of nature and observe the surroundings and the sky above him. In this manner he became more involved with his inner world which, in turn, loosened the hold of his rational mind. I continued to guide him on his journey in nature, sometimes stopping to enable him to study some object of interest.
The goal of this journey was to connect John with some symbolic form of his inner wisdom or higher self — what the Course calls the Holy Spirit. However, this guided journey was soon to come to an abrupt end. I had thought that I was leading him through a forest when he stated, with some irritation, that he had tried four times to enter this forest without success. Each time he tried, the trees would turn into a white mist and the forest would disappear.
One of the maxims I work with in healing is: "Anything you resist persists — anything you accept can heal." I told John to accept this mist, ask for help and continue to walk through it. As he continued, a human cell appeared in the mist surrounded by violet light. His scientific training enabled him to recognise it as a human cell and, further, to know that it was cancerous. Suddenly, the memory of his dying mother returned to him accompanied by strong feelings of guilt and shame. He told me he had felt unable to cope with the situation at the time and had given the care of his mother to his aunt. This was the same aunt who had appeared at the start of the healing session.
John began to cry tears he had been unable to shed at the time of his mother’s illness. He realised he had repressed all his guilt and shame around this issue and now needed to obtain forgiveness. I encouraged him to ‘invite’ his mother into this session and express to her all the things he needed to say. I told John to imagine that his mother was really here in the room and to speak out loud to her. When he had finished, I asked him to listen to anything his mother wanted to say to him and to speak out loud what she said. In this way John was given an opportunity to share his buried feelings with his mother and forgive himself for his past actions.
I then asked John if he felt complete with his experience and to return his awareness to the room we were in. He told me that the pain in his neck felt much better and he now understood the significance of his aunt’s remarks at the start of the session. His mother had died of 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
