In re-examining our understanding of what it means to truly heal, we may find that some of the answers toward a renewed approach for our healthcare systems lie within this simple word, applied in truth.
The use of the word heal today has come to refer to the resolution of a wound, a surgical scar, perhaps even to a tragic circumstance one has seemingly overcome. Either that or it is used with reference to the backyard faith healer, meaning it is relegated to the domain of the charlatan. But is this all there is to it, or have these meanings been adopted as part of a dramatically reduced version of what healing actually entails, shaping our approach such that we do not truly heal to a point that is otherwise available to us, and nor do we appear to stop and register the fact?
How unwell are we to become, how congested our hospital wards and doctors’ surgeries, how dysfunctional our relationships, how absent our self-care, let alone self-nurturing, how unloving our communications and relations at work and at home, how many suicides, cases of self-harm, of alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, absenteeism, and so on, before we stop to consider whether our current approach is in fact working?
In light of this as a reality check, one thing we must stop to examine before finding our way forward, is a clear view of what it is we are to restore when it comes to our health. Toward that end, we must re-acquaint ourselves with what our true state of health ought to be. We can then begin to be responsive and take steps toward what supports us to restore this state.
In this context, to understand what healing is, it is necessary to examine the origin and meaning of the word. Truth in word is lost when we adapt and adjust its meaning to suit the current way things are, rather than retaining the true meaning, ensuring that we sustain a standard that encompasses what the word was intended to mean.
Our everyday use of the word healing in today’s language is for most synonymous with the current dictionary meaning… to alleviate, palliate, ease, help, soften, lessen, mitigate, attenuate or to allay. These words however, while helpful to a point in an everyday sense, do not convey or encapsulate the true origins of the word, which in application, would see us seeking to restore something that is considerably more encompassing than the alleviation of just what physically or emotionally ails us.
The origin of the word Healing and Health
The root of both words – heal and health – comes from the Proto-Germanic word hailjan (1), which simply means ‘to make whole’. From there the German Heilen and Dutch Helen From these origins comes the old English word Haelen (2), which in its original meaning was: to cure, save, make whole, sound and well.
If we consider from the depth of what makes us who and what we are, then to make whole suggests an all-encompassing and embodied state of being, well beyond that of our physicality and bodily function. With respect to this, healing must represent a definable phenomenon, inclusive of this awareness of who and what we are, in our entirety.
Hence and therefore, it is easy to see our current state of ill-health as the natural consequence of losing sight of this all-encompassing state.
Disregard the fact we are so much more than our ability to function, as we have currently deemed healing to represent, and it is guaranteed that we will not seek beyond amelioration of what ails us.
So, what might it mean to ‘Make Whole’?
This is a vast question, with an answer that is simple yet multi-faceted and unavoidably interwoven throughout the writings of this site.
To encapsulate the answer succinctly requires us to draw on science (E=mc2), religion (Spirit and Soul), and philosophy (the translation of wisdom into our everyday lives). When we marry each of these with the innate intelligence of the physical body – it being the inescapable recipient and hence communicator of the sum quality of our (energetic) choices – we have the formations of an answer to this age-old question, who am I?
What Science Says
E= mc2 tells us that everything is energy, which naturally means that we, and all of what makes us what we are, is also energy. So, first and foremost, it must therefore be agreed that we are energetic beings, living in a world that is also energetic, before it can be said to be physical – physicality being simply reflective of a density of energy particles that produces form that the bodily senses can see, hear, touch, smell and taste.
Anger has no such visible form, beyond the contortions of the human body in its expression, and yet without sight or words we can know in an instant if we or another around us is angry, or that anger has recently been expressed in a space we enter. We know the moment another has reacted, however subtly and internally – we sense the instant shift that occurs in the room, energetically. We can know in an instant when we meet another whether we will like them or not, if they are ‘on our wavelength’, whether we trust them or not, whether something is shifty, dodgy, manipulative and so on.
In other words, we know energy as something innately felt and recognised, we have just grown up in a world that asks us to keep our focus with the more tangible outplays, losing our focus on the energetic subtleties of life within, and the natural communication that follows of what it is we feel and know from deep within… ‘out of the mouths of babes’ as we say, comes plain truth, as it is felt from within, before we learn to censure and meet the approval of those around.
And what of Religion?
If we extend the understanding that we are energetic beings and consider the fact that we have ended up in significant states of disharmony in every aspect of our lives, not least our health, we could say this speaks loudly to the possibility, if not the fact, that in light of everything being energetic, there is therefore an energy we must consider to be causative of this disharmony.
What might become the swollen big toe of the man who over-consumes red wine and steak, is first the energy of what impulses him to consume such foods, followed by the energy of the substances. What becomes a diagnosis of Diabetes must first be a long dance with energetic changes impacting the pancreas to such an extent as to disrupt its naturally harmonious and health-promoting state.
Conversely, if such a disharmonious energy exists, it must follow that a diametrically opposed harmonious energy must likewise exist – one which allows the body to remain in its naturally vital and well state. As is documented throughout the ages, and from what is illustrated extensively throughout this site, it can be said that there is an energy the body registers as one that is, at its very least, congruous with the healthy function of the body in every way, and at its most powerfully tangible, as the source of oneness, a connection to a sense of ourselves as multi-dimensional beings, deeply wise, still, harmonious and loving.
It is here we borrow from the wisdom of the ages and enter the realms of true religion, as these two types of energies are distinctly understood and outlined. Our ‘beingness’, in the view of some of our wisest known ancients, is made up of two aspects, that of a spirit and a Soul, both distinct from the body. We are in that case, a 3-part being. From this we can already begin to see the significance of ‘to make whole’, and the inevitable failure of our current functional approach to be able to restore any semblance of true health and wellbeing.
The Spirit and Soul
The spirit and Soul have long been distinguished as vastly differing parts of our being, with the spirit attributed to the wilful character that is ultimately self-serving, however overt or covertly so. It is the aspect that is responsible for our sabotaging, our unloving, harmful choices, for the capacity to self-abuse, or be abusive of others, to act without love or regard for the all we live in. It is however also the part that can subscribe to the highest forms of good, with all the appearance of virtue, but silently (energetically) self-serving all the same.
The Soul on the other hand, is attributed the energetic quality of true love, something known as a state of being and not its usual emotional association with an object or person onto which it is projected. In other words, we cannot ‘love another’ because we ‘are love’, and hence can only ‘be love’ with another, and cannot send, give, take or seek love, in truth. This in itself is a massive revelation with ramifications when applied individually and within a community, evident in the microcosm of those who already live the truth of this energetic understanding.
Energetically, love itself is made up of five distinctive energetic qualities; love itself, truth, harmony, joy and stillness. Each quality is registered and recognised instantly by the particles of the physical body as energy that belongs, that is congruent with those same qualities intrinsic to the particles themselves, and therefore to which the body (at the energetic level) is drawn, responsive, resonant and obedient.
The Soul is our connection to the oneness, which can be said to be the essence of who we are as a being, the source from which we originate, known also as divinity, or as God. And because the Soul is from the source of energy from which we originate, we can say that this energy is who we truly are.
It is proposed that the body thrives on this source of energy derived from the Soul, and not so that from the spirit, in the same way that a Ferrari car will not travel well on the wrong source of fuel, running roughly and needing repair more frequently, eventually breaking down altogether.
This brings into sharper focus what it might mean ‘to make whole’ and brings greater understanding to why it is that keeping our focus on the outplay of what we have used to ‘run’ our bodies would appear to have failed us dismally.
Philosophy and ‘healing’
So where does philosophy come into play? It is all well and good to understand the above energetic laws, to recognise the reality of having two energies that potentially run the human being to live as it does, or even have a sense of one’s own living way within what has been set out, even if only to some small degree, but the application of this wisdom into our everyday lives IS the mechanism by which we bring the Soul’s immense love and intelligence into life, and allow it to provide the impress or blueprint from which we then live our lives.
It is in fact this way – as you will read extensively across this site – that all aspects of our lives are to be re-imprinted from a platform determined by the energetic source we choose to align ourselves to, the Soul in this case, and not from the calculation of a strategy or planned manoeuvre as has been the way for eons now, via the human spirit, with little if not any true success. The latter if prolonged, being to continue in alignment to and under the dominion of the spirit, in all its inherent unrest and dis-ease, as humanity on the whole has always been and remains to this point, will simply bring us more of the same calamity.
Putting it all together in the Body
This understanding requires considerable words for the human mind to begin to comprehend, but for the body, it is a simple equation as it cannot avoid receiving the energetic imprint of the quality of every choice we make, every breath, word, movement, thought, even every blink we make. Hence, if we want to know which source of energy we have utilised to run the body in life, or even from one moment to the next, simply feel with deep honesty the current state of being within the body. Is it still, harmonious, joyous, enveloped in love, with clarity, vitality, wisdom and a sense of connectedness and hence responsibility for the all we are part of?
Or is there agitation, tension, emotion, turmoil, raciness, worry, sadness, depression, numbness, disregard of others, concern for oneself and one’s immediate loved ones at best but not beyond, and so on?
In the Ageless Wisdom, the body in this sense is referred to as the marker of all truth, for however effective we have become at masking, numbing and distracting ourselves from its messages, they remain loud and clear, continuing to outplay within our frames until such time as the body’s function is so compromised that our attention is forced. Is it only at this point of crisis that we ever seek to know What is Healing… truly?
Is it to ameliorate or ease, or is it to restore in full perhaps the connection to one’s Soul, and hence to the source of energy that runs the body in such a way as to support extraordinary vitality and a deep sense of purpose to contribute to the all, and not just to the trappings and enthrallment of one’s individual self and circumstance?
So, what then is the Process of Healing?
Seen from this perspective, disease and illness become simply the inevitable outplay of a body that can no longer function optimally under the load of an energy that has polluted it and will continue to do so.
If this is the case, then an aspect of healing, therefore, must entail a process of discarding, of clearing out what doesn’t belong to the vehicle the being inhabits. In this sense, we can see illness and disease as a necessary part of the discarding process, and the necessity to support the body medically in every way possible, as well as by way of our lifestyle choices around nutrition, our food, drink, the quality of our sleep and whatever other adjunctive care that is appropriate.
If true health and vitality is sought, then in this sense to heal means we must restore the being within to ensure its fuel is one that is conducive to the body’s harmonious function – just as a Ferrari can only run optimally on premium fuel.
(1) Etymonline.com. 2020. Heal | Search Online Etymology Dictionary. [online] Available at: <https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=heal> [Accessed 11 March 2020]
(2) Etymonline.com. 2020. Healing | Origin And Meaning Of Healing By Online Etymology Dictionary. [online] Available at: <https://www.etymonline.com/word/healing> [Accessed 11 March 2020]
