“The only moment we can touch life, is in this moment.”
-Thich Nhat Hanh
In your essential state, you are a whole being. Lifeforce energy courses through every cell of your body. But through the years, you may have learned habitual ways of being in your body, in your mind, or in relationship that limit or get in the way of your direct experience of that aliveness.
Open yourself to the gift of healing into life. To be fully alive, to love and receive love, to manifest your potential in your life-work, to be open to the profound human experience of countless joys and sorrows.
Healing into life involves working with all that is in the way of remembering and reconnecting your inherent wholeness. The word “healing” has to do with wholeness, holy, health – all of which comes from the root meaning “whole, complete.” Healing is different from “curing” or “fixing.” Some diseases or life circumstances will continue: the body ages, you lose people close to you, life changes, and if you live long enough you will develop illness and disability. The human condition involves suffering, loss, and change, as well as fulfillment and delight.
Healing is a process that embraces all of you. You can experience wholeness and aliveness even if you are missing a body part, in chronic pain, have experienced great loss, and even as death approaches. It is an inner orientation to your essential state of being that resists the temptation to identify with your body, mind, or life circumstance.
Healing is participatory. It is not something someone does to you or for you. It is a process that asks nothing less than the truth of your experience. It requires an attunement to yourself – learning to listen to the messages of your body, heart, and soul, and a willingness to act in alignment with that truth without being attached to the outcome.
Healing requires self care. Learning to care enough about yourself to mobilize your will to change your lifestyle or life circumstance if necessary, to seek guidance and assistance, to be an active partner in attempts to understand what might be involved in moving toward greater levels of health, joy, and well being. It requires learning clear boundaries to provide the space and time necessary for self care, conscious choices, and caring for yourself and others in healthy ways.
Healing requires opening to the ever-changing and unfolding nature of your body, relationships, work, and life. It asks you to open your eyes and heart to what it is to be fully human. To open to the broad spectrum of your humanness – experiencing great beauty, friendship, simple kindness, and joy, as well as great grief, pain, and suffering. It requires honoring your feelings – fear, anger, doubt, sadness, vulnerability. As you open to the truth that underlies your feelings and begin to heal emotionally, you have more energy to heal physically. And as you open to the truth that underlies the dis-ease of your body, you have more energy to heal emotionally.
You are whole – body, mind, and spirit. Each moment invites you to open to and live your wholeness. Choose and enjoy your full aliveness, as long as you have this precious gift of life.
By Marilynne Chophel