Defining Healing

By Dave Markowitz

Crickets.

Internal crickets.

I had to laugh, and say, “Thank you, that’s a brilliant question!”

This was my response at a lecture on medical intuition and healing where I’d used all the typical buzzwords— vibration, healing, clearing, etc., —when someone raised his hand and asked, “What is healing?”

It was a rare instance where I not only couldn’t think for myself, but I also couldn’t hear the mind of Source giving me an answer.

How ironic it was that at a lecture on healing, I was stumped by a question that asked me to define my topic. After a few moments of awkwardness, I gave the more typical response of “having no pain or illness”, only to have that definition turned almost upside down a few weeks ago via an interaction with someone I’ve never met!

“The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise.
It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.”
~Ashley Montagu, British-American anthropologist and humanist

John of God is the name used by João Teixeira de Faria, an internationally known spiritual healer who resides in Brazil and sees sometimes thousands per week. A friend, Johanna Courtleigh, visited the Casa for a few weeks and emailed updates about her experiences. One of which changed my mind about the definition of healing from “having no pain or illness” to…

She wrote:

“Friday evening, ‘Thom’ joins us for dinner. An Australian, who’s one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever met. Radiant would be a word. Infused with the Divine would be another few.
He has been here, off and on, for ten years now.  Mostly on, now, for the last couple of years.
He is in a wheelchair, and can’t much use his right arm anymore. MS. But he is far from ‘disabled’. 

Gorgeous, and so connected with Spirit.  He engages everyone from an incredibly pure place of love.   I learn the town takes care of him.  And that he pays no rent for his room at his Posada.  Food is handled.  His importance in the community is acknowledged by this generosity. He greets me with a hug, and I wonder, how do eyes get that gentle, welcoming, sweet?  My first words to him are, ‘You are so beautiful!’  And I know there’s nothing strange about saying that.  No shame or shyness about being in love at first sight.

Why is Thom still in his chair?  Why can he hardly use one arm?  What do we consider health, healing? While he would certainly prefer an able body, he would tell you he feels beyond blessed. Perhaps it is not the state of our bodies that determines quality of life, health, happiness. But the quality of spirit, living from a place of knowing Divine Love.  Grace.

I spend much of Saturday with Thom.  I ask him if he feels disappointment or resentment that his body is not ‘healed’.  The radiance that pours from him is amazing.  He said he was told that his body and spirit were ‘in equilibrium’.  It doesn’t ‘appear’ that way, but I think he is one of the happiest, most peaceful people I’ve ever met...I notice Thom’s feet. They are swollen with edema, like large purple mangos. Both horrific, and the heart is invited to extend beyond appearances, to meet the beauty of the soul that embodies the cells that contain this being.”

So maybe healing is way beyond the physical. Most people come to me for physical problems, and the underlying causes are quickly identified, usually in the emotional body. We then work with that layer for clarity, forgiveness, and healing. Most of the time—probably over 90% of the time—symptoms vanish, and most of those symptoms are gone permanently. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m blessed to be part of the triune of my client, Source and myself for such profound physical transformations in such short periods of time. Yet Johanna’s description really got me thinking, “Someone can consider himself or herself healed while still having physical pain or limitations, such as being confined to a wheelchair.”

So, is that really a limited existence? Would Stephen Hawking call his life limited? Does he or others regularly travel outside their bodies and experience other realms? Is that limited or just the opposite? And who are we, or shall I say, who am I, to think that life should follow a certain set of rules for everyone: Deal with the causative levels of pains or illness, and they’ll vanish. While often true, it’s time to expand my own definitions. We have soul contracts to fill and maybe in a past life Thom(above) was an Olympic athlete! Or maybe he needed a lifetime like this, with circumstances that allowed him to experience what it’s like to receive—to be physically limited to focus on other aspects of his life.

This showed me what I’d read so often: that it’s not what we do or say, but what we do or become with what’s been given that can make or break one’s level of happiness. And after all, isn’t that we really wish for, happiness?

It is said that peasants in India are among the happiest people on the planet because they believe that they’re filling their karmic roles, even while ‘having’ one thousandth of what most of us have and sometimes even take for granted. So maybe happiness really is a state of mind. And maybe healing is really happiness. And maybe it’s okay to have pain or illness here and there. Maybe it really is an opportunity to focus on something else.

These days we’re so out of alignment with what’s natural and healthy: We work indoors all day, pay to go to a gym, look forward to vacations to get some sun, and most have a rather insular social network beyond social media. Whereas not too long ago, we got our exercise and sunlight tilling fields and growing vegetables and having more time for what really matters—quality social time with others. So what would happen if every pain or illness were reminders to get back to basics; co-creating quality social time with others, and slowing down to not only smell the roses, but plant a few as well. This mindset has deepened my capacity to accept what is, and as any spiritual journey-person would spew, that type of mindfulness can only be healthy. And now I’m seeing that ‘healthy’ includes way more than what it used to.

 

Dave Markowitz is a Medical Intuitive, Author/Humorist, and conduit of Source energy and information. Order his groundbreaking book, Healing with Source: A Spiritual Guide to Mind-Body Medicine at www.DaveMarkowitz.com and sign up for his free newsletter!