Healing Presence: Opening to the Sacred Within

You Are A Healing Presence

What does it mean to be a Healing Presence?

We are each created as unique individuals. Just like the snowflakes, no two people are exactly alike. To be born means that you are filled with a life-giving force. To have breath, means that we are full of life, and life itself is a treasure beyond imagining. When we share this life-giving force with another, we share the gift of life itself. When we are present, we have the opportunity to help others just by our being there.
The traits and gifts that make you unique give us hints into what healing presence is. What we all have in common is the ability to be a healing presence. What makes us unique is the individual ways in which we show up and how we allow the life-giving force, which I will call Spirit, to move through us and into others. Indeed, our very presence can change the atmosphere and energy in a room.

Healing versus Curing 

When faced with a difficulty or an illness, what we most often desire is a cure from what we are challenged with. If we are facing financial difficulties, we generally desire to have a greater source of revenue. If we are facing a terminal illness, we long for the disease to go away. To be cured is to have something resolve or be removed from our lives.

What do we live for
if not to make the world less difficult

for each other? 

MARY ANN EVANS

Healing, on the other hand, tends to go deeper than curing. Healing is about removing the source of anxiety, pain, and suffering that underlies the presenting problem. Although a large influx of cash when we are facing financial difficulties may give us some temporary relief from our anxiety and concerns, what we need at a deeper level is often a change in the way we respond to our financial challenges. Gaining an inner sense of abundance and changing our relationship with the universe represents a deeper level of healing. Where as more money may cure our problems temporarily, a sense of abundance brings a sense of well-being at a much deeper level.

When facing a terminal illness where no cure is possible, we search for healing at deeper levels. Where a cure may not be possible on a physical level, there is much healing available in the emotional, mental, and spiritual realms. Facing a terminal diagnosis is often the first time that people seriously look at these levels of their lives. It is an opportunity for huge growth. 

Making Space for the Healer Within to Emerge 

It All Begins with You

Although being a healing presence is not so much about something that we do, rather it is more about our Being present, there are things that we can do that help us to deepen into this work in ways that will make us more effective. To be a healing presence to others, we must first learn how to create healing in our own lives. If you are interested in being a healing presence to others, chances are you have already done much healing work in your own life. Perhaps, you are beginning on this journey. Reaching out and serving others is a powerful and effective way to help open our hearts and help us with our own healing work.

Part of how we begin to heal is by accepting our humanity, our strengths, our weaknesses, and our vulnerabilities. Without an accepting and open attitude towards ourselves, it is difficult to be open and accepting of others. Unconditional love and self-regard are foundational pieces. It is easy to see how this is necessary in being a healing presence for others, and yet, it is sometimes very difficult to extend these gifts to ourselves. Unless we can forgive ourselves for our mistakes, lovingly accept who we are and where we have traveled, it is difficult to truly lay down our judgments and be loving and accepting of others. We will eventually be triggered by some situation or attitude that we see in others that we have not come to terms with in ourselves.

Spiritual Practice

Having some form of a spiritual practice is the fastest way to open yourself to become more of a healing presence with others. Anything that connects you with a sense of oneness with the universe, with Source, with God, with your Higher Self, whatever you want to call it, is a form of spiritual practice. Meditation, prayer, reading inspired works, serving others, being out in nature, walking, and music are some examples of spiritual practice. Think of spiritual practice in the same way that you think of eating. We rarely go a day without eating or we soon become weak. Developing a regular practice that nurtures our spirit everyday, is just as essential to eating food everyday. However, we often find it more of a challenge to find time for it.

We live in a world that emphasizes and rewards our doing. There is little to encourage us to reward our Being. We emphasize the mental and downplay the emotional. Reason is valued over the intuitive. Yet, to be a balanced human being means that we need to develop all of our senses. We need to nurture our spiritual selves as well as our physical selves. Daily spiritual practice provides the food for our spirit and opens and strengthens our spiritual and intuitive gifts. Without this, we can still do the work, but we run the danger of burn out. We also simply do not have as powerful a presence. Spiritual practice fills us with the life-giving force that then overflows to others. 

 

The greatest thing in the world 
is for one to know how to be oneself 

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

We can literally become a fountain of life-giving waters to others. Having drunk at the well ourselves, so to speak, there is more than enough to nurture others with.

To be a healing presence often requires that we are able to hear the soft, unspoken messages of our intuition. When a person cannot speak to us with words, we are left with only the subtle messages to guide us. A strong spiritual practice helps to open the subtle channels within us and allows us to be more present with others.

Sacred Work

How do you define sacred? When we are faced with this word, we often think of a church. I was raised looking at religious objects as sacred. As a musician, I learned sacred works, and found that there were ‘sacred’ cantatas and profane ones. The sacred were the ones where the music was related to the church and the profane ones were related to ordinary life. It is somewhat bizarre that we have separated the spiritual from the ordinary. Many things are sacred; indeed, I have come to suspect that all things are sacred. To be alive is sacred. To be a part of the universe is sacred. All of life dances together in a sacred dance. The fact that we see so much suffering around us is a testament to the fact that we fail to view everything as sacred and thus we profane creation and each other. 

We can make our minds so like still water 

that beings gather around us to see their own images, 

and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even a

fiercer life because of our silence. 

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Creating Sacred Space at Home  

There are several books that have been written on creating sacred space. For me, my home is a sacred place. It is a place where I can be myself and where I can be the most open and honest. Besides offering an emotional tone that provides me with safety and support, my home needs to be a beautiful place. I need to be surrounded with things that are comforting and beautiful and that nurture my soul and spirit. I also need a place where I can read, write, pray, and meditate without interruption and that holds space for those activities. What sacred space looks like for you may be different, but the point is that we first learn how to create sacred space around us in our own environments and then we carry that sacred space with us wherever we go. 

You can search the ten-fold universe

 and not find a single being 

more worthy of loving kindness

than yourself. 

BUDDHA

Creating Sacred Space Within

To carry our sacred space within us, we have to learn to find that quiet space within. You might picture having a sacred temple within yourself that you can visit to find peace and quiet. Building out an inner temple is not difficult, but it does take some consistent effort. To begin, go to a place in your home or out in nature where you will be uninterrupted. Become quiet and focus your attention within. Now imagine the most beautiful place where you would like to meet with your own soul and Spirit. This could be a garden, a crystal cathedral, a library, beside a river, it does not matter. Just pick something that speaks to you and calms and relaxes you. Stay in this space until you can clearly picture it. Then invite your Higher Self, your Source to meet with you here. Don’t worry if you don’t ‘see’ anything, just stay with the sense of a sanctuary of calm and peace that resides within you. When you are done, slowly return to a normal state and become aware of what is around you.

This very simple practice is a very powerful way of creating a sacred space within you. If you do this regularly, you will soon be able to access this space anywhere, when sitting with a patient, while at work, or at any other time. What you will notice with repeated practice, is that you can more quickly find the center of your own calm and wisdom. When you listen to another person from this quiet, collected space, you are much more present and able to truly hear what is being said. 

Be at peace with yourself first 

and then you will be able 

to bring peace to others. 

THOMAS A KEMPIS

Creating Sacred Space Wherever You Go

To be a healing presence with others, we need to be able to find that calm, centered place within us. To do this, it is helpful to take a few minutes before you know you will be with someone that you want to bless with healing presence. Take a moment to release the day’s activities, letting go of expectations about what may happen, and releasing all the busyness and worries within. From your inner temple, ask that you may be guided and have the wisdom to be with the person you are about to see so that you may be a blessing and a healing presence to them. Take a few moments to be perfectly still. By doing this, you are creating the necessary conditions to be open and available to others.  Often times it is necessary when visiting with people to take a few moments to create a sacred space that allows for healing to take place. 

 

The only gift is a portion of thyself 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

When the TV is on, it is difficult to do this. If possible, request that the TV be turned off during your visits. Clear away any clutter that stands between you and the other person, and imagine that you are both sit- ting in your inner temple together.

Honor the Sacred in the Other

We are, each one, created unique and sacred. In spite of another person's  life path, their highest aspect is beautiful beyond belief. When we sit with another, we are sitting in the presence of the Divine. Because of our own limited vision, we often see brokenness and misery. If we had eyes that could see, we would see a Child of God struggling to unfold and evolve on a planet that is filled with challenges and difficulties. The end of life is one of the most powerful times for the dying to see themselves in a greater light. By holding space for others, we help them to recognize the Divine within. The veils between worlds begin to thin at this time and often the dying are filled with remorse, struggle with the past, and at the same time, either look forward to death or fear it.

To be a healing presence is not about ‘fixing’ another, or solving their problems, or having the answers. To be a healing presence is to be a witness to the process of another whether that involves being a witness to their suffering or a witness to their triumphs. We are fellow travelers. A healing presence says, “I will walk with you for a while.” Companionship is one of the most powerful forms of healing presence. It says, “Although I can’t change the out- come, I will journey with you. I will bring my own peace and tranquility and share it with you.”

Summary

To be a healing presence is to not only be a healing presence for others, but to heal yourself as well. The only danger of burn out that exists in serving others is if we do not first take care of and honor the sacred within ourselves. As the old admonition from the airline folks goes, “Put on your own mask first before assisting another”. Ironically, care- givers seem to be the worst at following this advice! To fail to attend to the needs of your own soul makes it virtually impossible that you will be able to adequately attend to the needs of another.

In summary, being a healing presence is an art that we can all develop. It begins at home within our own sacred selves and flows out into the world to others. We can be a healing presence wherever we are--at the grocery store, the gas station, or at work. Healing presence is a way of being in the world and its source is a connection to Source, a connection to the Divine within, and a connection to the life-giving force that keeps the universe alive. It’s only limitation is our own connection and imagination. Like the old African Proverb reminds us: Let your love be like the misty rain; gentle in coming but flooding the river.