Healing
Presence
“Like
all the shamans who sing in the dark, I believe that somewhere beneath my personality,
beneath my good will, somewhere in the chemistry of spirit that enables flesh
to heal, I can close my eyes and exhale the world, doing my small part to blunt
the edges.”
Mark
Nepo (Finding Inner Courage, p.250)
Mark
Nepo is a shaman with words. He writes and speaks in such a way that the poetry
of what he says echoes around inside you. In this little book, Finding Inner
Courage, he makes the statement, “It seems we have always had two
choices: to run from pain or to be a healer.” (p.246) He knows something of
pain, of the closeness of death from cancer, and like all shaman, he survived
what he shouldn’t have, or at least, what no one expected him to survive. There
is always a passage through which any shaman must travel before the gift of healing
is given—and that is usually surviving a near-death experience.
In this
chapter, Nepo tells of the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Tonglen, which is
offered to help someone else heal. In this meditation, the practitioner breathes
in the pain of another, transforms it in the heart/lungs, and breathes out
compassion and healing. It requires a commitment to not run from pain but to be
a healer. Tonglen can be done not only for another person, but for a
community, or for the planet.
The
decision to be a healing influence in the world does not require special
training, but it does require special self-knowledge—deep understanding and
compassion for the human condition, beginning with one’s own. Understanding one’s
own flaws, one’s true motivation, one’s triggers, is imperative. We will never
be perfect, but to be a healing influence, we must be conscious and self-aware so
that we recognize what is our “stuff” and what belongs to someone else.
Another
way of being a healing presence in someone’s life is to touch them—we have
forgotten the healing power of simple touch. Remember some of the New Testament
stories of Jesus healing people who came to him—he touched them, he breathed on
them, he made paste from his own spit and the soil to open blind eyes. The
laying on of hands is still a practice—in massage, in Reiki, in the anointing
rituals of baptism, confirmation and extreme unction. In fact, as Nepo points
out, “The word ‘Christ’ itself comes from the Greek chriein, meaning ‘to
anoint’.” Anointing is an ancient practice that still works. Human touch is
probably the most powerful tool we have for healing.
It is
my hope that 2023 brings a resurgent interest in being a healing presence in
the world. We have gone through such a dark passage of hateful recrimination;
one which can only be transformed by lots and lots of love and compassion. May
that be our only New Year’s resolution—to open ourselves to healing and to express
compassion through our words and deeds. As Mark Nepo suggests, we can all do
our small part to blunt life's sharp edges.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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