How We Heal

Being intimate with death for the past twenty years increasingly has forced me to find ways to heal the aspects of myself that feel separate from God, from my own nature, from others. What follows is a short description of what I have learned. This simple paradigm of the healing path is as practical and as accessible as I can make it. When one finally wants healing from the very depths of one’s ability to want, the path to healing appears.

We all seek healing, healing from illness, from emotional pain, from addiction, from our disconnection with the sacred in our lives. Religions, psychotherapy, twelve-step programs, all affirm that a path to healing does exist. Going beyond differences in language and culture, there are specific essential qualities that all true healing paths include. In fact, true and lasting healing cannot occur without awakening and stabilizing these qualities in our lives. These qualities are invocation, compassion/devotion and empowerment.

We first must invoke that which heals, the spirit of healing that transcends that which we can know and understand, the Presence of the Divine. We invoke the name of Christ. We invoke the healing power of bringing elements of our unconscious to consciousness. We invoke the truth of the existence of an immediately available path to healing. To the depth to which we invoke, the depth to which we know that God’s Name is God, to which we know that contact with the sacred brings healing, to this extent and only to this extent do we enter the path to healing. Invocation awakens awareness–moment-to-moment awareness of the presence and the absence of the spirit of healing in our lives. When we deeply invoke, awareness is strong. When our invocation is timid, our awareness is weak and fragile. The entire path of our healing directly follows from that which we invoke and from how deep our faith is as we invoke. As you admit what most deeply asks for healing in your life, in what do you have faith?

Invocation awakens awareness of Presence in our lives and devotion is aroused. Invocation awakens awareness of absence of Presence, of suffering in ourselves and in others, and compassion is aroused. The heart fills with devotion and compassion. No longer are we preoccupied with healing only ourselves. Our motivation for continuing our journey is now our wish for the happiness and the healing of all beings (including ourselves) and our yearning to deepen our devotion. We feel a slight sadness whenever we notice that we have temporarily lost this connection of the heart. First we learn compassion for ourselves, then feel our connection to others and finally realize that self and other are actually one, that devotee and the object of devotion are one.

When compassion transcends the dualistic sense that I am feeling compassion for myself or someone else and when devotion transcends the sense that I am feeling devotion to the external sacred, then empowerment is awakened. That which we initially invoked is no longer separate from the one who invoked. The power of the spirit of healing, of the deity invoked, is now fully awakened. Not me healing, but surrender to the power which heals. Devotion and compassion have deepened to finally allow this surrender, this empowerment

Resting in the invoked Presence with devotion and compassion, empowered in harmony with divine will, healing then naturally unfolds.

– Dale Borglum