This is What Healing Looks Like

One of my spiritual teachers used to caution that when we set intentions, the Universe will often respond by bringing up whatever is in the way of manifesting our desires. An example: If you desire a new home, your current home may burn down. The destruction of your current home will certainly catalyze you to your new home, even though you might have envisioned a different way of getting there.

The Point: To get what you want, you often have to go through something that is not what you want.

As the Buddhists say: No mud, no lotus.

Consider the biology of human beings. When infection invades the body, we spike a fever. The body heats up to “burn out” the intrusive agent. In an ideal world, we might not choose to spike a fever to heal, but this is the body’s mechanism.

This is the oldest cycle in history; employed since the creation of the world, before humans existed: destroy to create. New things, new ideas, new eras, new opportunities, new ways of living, new awareness, new paradigms, new muscles — new life — do not just arise from nowhere. They are born from the emptiness of the void that was created by destruction.

Burn it down to build it up.

The Myth of Healing

The big myth about the healing journey is that “healing” feels good, while “sickness” feels bad.

To the contrary, our “sickness” might feel good because it’s what we know; we have habituated to this way of being. When we mistake the sore muscles and fever for “illness” or interpret these signs and symptoms as “something is wrong that needs to be fixed” we miss the point: the fever is the healing.

Here’s the truth: Healing hurts.

Healing often looks and feels like things are getting worse, like we are getting more sick.

The mistake we often make is to assume that the “cure” isn’t working and change course or take more medicine. But medicine suppresses the progress of healing. When you take an aspirin to relieve your fever you might feel better for a moment, but you prevent the body from employing its natural form of healing.

The feeling of bliss and wholeness we desire comes after we have been through the process of healing. It’s on the other side of the discomfort.

The actual process of healing can be painful and ugly. Especially if your illness or disease has been especially severe or deeply embedded in your system. Your system needs to get all of the junk out. You’ve got to go through the muck.

It’s uncomfortable, disjarring, and scary. It often looks and feels worse than the sickness itself.

As an example, look at anyone battling cancer. The “cure” for cancer is to give patients poison, which makes them even more sick, until they are better.

Healing can be a messy process.

The World Right Now

The world right now, and especially the United States, looks like it is in a severe state of crisis. All the muck is coming up to the surface.

We are living through a painful and scary time. The fever is raging; streets are literally burning.

This is what healing looks like.