This piece of writing is specifically presented as the product of critical thought and is not being offered as a series of facts. It is merely offered as an invitation to consider the insights that have arrived as a result of the use of my personal time exploring the subjects herein. I hope that you enjoy it.
The storm on the horizon,
May come…and it may not.
Either way,
It is there.
Healing is a process that is occurring at this very moment. It is occurring within you, around you and in the details of every perspective that you’ve built. It is also occurring within me and everyone else to the same degree. It is a completely unstoppable force. I often liken the power of healing to the potency that is inferred by the Nordic Rune called Hagalaz. Hagalaz carries a very deep frequency with multiple threads of fate interwoven between cultures, spiritualities and practices, but it is commonly representative of the hailstone; the power of transformative storms and the sound that is created through efforts to push an “h” through your airway and past your lips. This sound often comes forward as a deep and guttural “hah” and reminds us of a prototypically strong breathing sound. Go ahead and try pushing an “h” sound out of your mouth for yourself.
By associating the process of healing with a symbolic reference to a hailstorm, I seek to propose a visualization that resembles both the impending destruction of a particularly imposing force as well as the amplified stillness that succeeds in its wake. Healing is not one of these things…
In one core practice associated with Qi Gong, the sound “haaaaah”, like a relieving sigh, is the sound that soothes the heart and its meridians. This sound serves to generate a sense of impassioned safety around the necessity of making boundaries in order to ‘put our heart out there’. In bringing up this idea alongside the visualization of the storm, a comprehensive depiction of healing can be addressed, dissected and elaborated upon. Let’s chat a little bit about this powerful word, process and idea that we call [h]ealing.
Creative or Destructive? The Duality of Healing
Sometimes we conjure up images of angels wings, enormous bright white lights and happy gatherings of open and vulnerable souls and we feel as though we have found the authentic signature of healing, finally! Other times, we are confronted by ambiguous shadows, immovable threats and demonic suppositions and our reserved beliefs about what they must indicate come flooding over the dam of our fears like a crashing tsunami, drowning us most certainly within our misappropriated understanding of death. In the end, a revelation dawns and exposes a notoriously human style of bias that tends towards the light at the expense of the darkness’ authentic voice. When a human being lends their power of choice towards this bias, it suffocates the healing power of the “darkness” and disintegrates the healing power of the “light”. Neither polarity serves to instrument any holistic and enduring change that could be retrospectively admired as authentic healing.
I would like to stake an argument for the viability of creative destruction or destructive creation as perhaps the closest depictions of what healing truly is. Before I make this case, I would like to first present some relatable examples of modern healing across multiple broad perspectives so that we can more adequately discuss any gaps or common grounds found in this exploration.
What Does Healing Look Like?
In one particularly strong ideology around healing, the primary means of discerning success is based on surgical reparations, appropriate administration of medicines and readouts on computer devices that match desired expectations. In this system of thought and function, healing is a process where [heal]th is measured, quantified, observed and responded to in order to achieve a specified arrangement of data points that corresponds with an established standard. In other words, healing is a mechanical process whereby we achieve our predetermined goal of harmonization between expectation and tangible outcome. “The EEG is reading steady now. You are good to go!”
Through this approach to healing, there is an enormous gap that is becoming increasingly obvious in our modern world. There is a massive emphasis on the tools, policies and measurements of the institution of healing and an equally massive ignorance paid towards the experiential and subjective quality of the relationship between ‘healer’ and ‘healing’; the one who experiences the healing and the healing itself. This system has created an ineptitude in addressing the holistic being of an entity and an adeptness in isolating individuated patterns and particles. The gap (or separation) between the holistic being and the individuated particles is an extraordinarily vibrant and exciting place to look at the true nature of healing. It is in this gap that we can see the truest reflection of the healing that is actually and undeniably taking place in this system. This is where we have an opportunity to observe without judgement, the hidden nuance of the life of the doctor who has spent enormous amounts of resources to become a healer and yet has failed to recognize their own needs in the process. This is the place where we can observe without judgement, the purpose behind the drug-addicted homeless person’s actions, who can’t seem to adhere to the unsolicited advice of their caregivers even after countless moments of crisis. This gap and these perspectives are ones that remove the conditions of belief that sustain a particular system of healing in such a way that we can grow to understand the human experience of healing in a much broader capacity.
One more particularly strong system or approach to healing is similar but with a remarkably different aesthetic and style. In the widely self-appointed “spiritual” lifestyle system, healing is a process that is contingent only on one’s continual and entirely mutable connection with their “true self”. No measure of medicines, drugs, tests or therapies can be concretely related to the efficacy of one’s healing and instead, a nebulous and generally adjustable strategy of momentary analysis serves to indicate “how one is doing”. There is a great deal of liberty that is afforded to this healing process as there is no ultimate or hierarchical standard by which healing can be measured. It allows for one to identify their own success based on their own standards at any given time. The great risk (and possibly the great futility) of this system is that it is heavily prone to untraceable delusion.
If ones [heal]th is measured only by their inherent sense of undisturbed connection with their truest self, then one has very subliminally (but completely literally) created a divisional system of hierarchy in their own perspectives of healing. Should one even have the notion to connect to a truest self, then this truest self can only be discerned through comparison with however many lesser true (false) selves exist. When one identifies actions, thoughts and emotions as being “in alignment” with a true self or “out of alignment” with a true self, they are unrecognizably complicating the very simple process of agreement and disagreement. It is absolutely no different than being caught in a light/pleasure-based bias. As soon as a “true” self has been identified, or even sought after for that matter, a door is opened for all manners of untruth to sweep in and represent the “self” in myriad situations with authority. Not only this but due to the creation of a “split-self”, the one whole (healed) self is now existing predominantly in the ignorance gap of its own creation.
There is an exquisite kind of irony that exists within this system that places the one who is seeking to be joined together of all of their separateness directly into the experience of separateness itself. This is the story of the charismatic preacher who can’t seem to find their own faith or the deeply philosophical astrologer who “doesn’t buy-in to all of that ‘woo-woo’ garbage”. The fulfilment of this irony and the greatest potential for healing to be acknowledged in this system arrives as the one who originally was seeking wholeness ultimately realizes that there is nothing else that exists other than wholeness.
Back to the Point
In this significantly brief exploration of a rather large subject that is relevant to all sentient creatures to some degree, and especially so to those creatures who desire to understand why and how, I have arrived at a place where I would like to state my argument for authentic healing and perhaps its most benevolent relationship with our humanness. In returning to the notion of creative destruction and destructive creation, I seek to illuminate the relational bond between the two forces. Nothing can be created or destroyed, only transformed. In this space, it eventually becomes strikingly clear that in order to heal the injured shoulder that one sustained through consistent and ignorant abuse of one's own body, endorsed and permitted only due to the inherited behavioural sequencing that one was helplessly exposed to as the child that had absolutely no control over a situation with parents that they arguably did not choose to adopt as their own, one must make many sacrifices. The creation of this healed shoulder is synonymous with the destruction of whatever potential(s) were laid to waste at the onset of the injury. Experience (and healing) now reflects the necessary creation and destruction. The devastated parent who has suffered the tragic and spiritually unexplainable loss of their beloved child now must create their own healed state and destroy the states that are no longer viable. These are linked by the power of karma; by the law of action. This, dear readers, is my point; healing is not optional. It is an unstoppable force. It is happening right in this very moment and it is happening in every direction. Every. Direction. You do not get to choose whether to heal or not. You do get to choose how to perceive of the process and how to respond to the manifestations of those perceptions. Like karma (action), there are very specific consequences to the consequences of your life. Whatever you choose to engage with, you will be provided with the conditions of what must be transformed through creative power and what must be transformed through destructive power. It’s all healing. All of the time. Be wise to this as you make choices about how you respond to the perceptions that you have about the world you live in and why you’re here. If you intend to become a healed person of great strength, it will require you to create strength and destroy everything that is not strength. If you intend to become a healed person of great fame…same, same.
Happy rowing beloved friends,
Yogiji
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