awakening healing

My bad! Actually I did, (well at least in passing, it’s in the Reiki article) so my apologies for the confusion. But allow me to go into that in more detail here.

Now when I talk about ‘great awakenings’ I speak of pivotal moments in my life, pulses, if you like, where an event became the catalyst for further change, which then usually comes about gradually. I don’t mean to speak of awakenings as if they were some kind of road to Damascus, hit by lightening and, wham! instant illumination. Rather these pulses became the point where new and life-altering phenomena began to flow into my life. Mind you, some of these awakenings did seem instantaneous at the time, even miraculous!

My first great awakening began one dark wet evening in March in 2003 when I went along to a talk on Reiki. (Well, it actually happened about a month later after I completed the Reiki 1 course.) But even that first night a little light inside went on that made me say, hey, this is interesting, I think I’ll explore some more.


Quick background info to healing

Reiki, as I explained in that article is a hands-on healing technique. You don’t have to study it to experience it, you can go along to a Reiki practitioner and see for yourself. But when someone wants to practice Reiki, what happens is they first receive an “attunement”, where, to be really succinct, a portal is opened and divine energy flows into the body. When this happened to me a load of old stuff seemed to fall away almost instantly. I quit smoking within two days, I stopped biting my nails, I’ve never had a cold since, and there were a lot of other minor things.

At that time I was a very different person. I’d get anxiety attacks for no reason. I would make plans but never start anything. I was fastidious, but at the same time rarely finished things I did start. I used to worry about what people thought of me (daw!) I thought others had more of a claim to be alive than I had (if that makes sense).

Emotionally, at the time, I was alive from the neck up. My thought patterns were very linear, I don’t mean rigid, I was always very open minded, and imaginative. But I looked to the intellect to explain everything. At the same time I had an attraction to the unknown, the illogical, the irrational even. I could never trust in myself. I had this view that things always go wrong for me, for me, I believed I was special although I didn’t know it then. I definitely saw life as a struggle. The evidence for that was all around. I believed in the evidence. I believed if you struggled hard enough at anything you could succeed, while holding a coexisting counter belief that ‘no matter how hard I tried I wouldn’t succeed’. (see birth trauma ) This really fucked me up! I had a huge problem with trust.

Now the crazy thing is that a part of me knew all this was bull. Sadly, though, it was as if that part was locked away somewhere, and couldn’t get out. I could remember a time when I was very young and I was able to see angels and beings of light, and when I knew instinctively that none of what we see around us was real. But the adult mind, not being awake, of course rejected that. It doubted it (while a part of it still believed it). Every child comes into this world knowing the truth about the real nature of reality. I firmly believe that. The child is the closest thing to God.

But as we become adults we diffuse this knowledge, we allow scripts that the world gives us to run us, to tell us that the child mind is just fantasy and that we must believe in ‘hard facts’. In the beginning we think these scripts are making sense, that’s because they explain the world around us. They do make sense for a while because they inaugurate us into the group mind. The mind that believes in separation. In time they fossilize the brain. They take us over.


Awakening healing diffuses anger

I also had huge anger issues although I wasn’t always aware of them, because at that level we are so ‘unconscious’ that we’re not really aware what state we’re in. We think it’s normal to feel angry most of the time. That’s why I speak of this as ‘awakening’. I use the term ‘spiritual awakening’ too although one has to be careful as spiritual is such an abused word. It derives from the Latin spiritus, meaning to breathe. Poignant I think? When we speak of spirit we speak of the divine breath, the prana, of Ki. All these words basically mean the same thing, the very living universal life substance that runs through each and every one of us. But it is your conscious awareness of it that activates it in your live. Receiving Reiki, getting an attunement is one way of making that connection. There are others.

Now on the smoking side, the funny thing is I wasn’t trying to quit. I wasn’t bothered with a cough or those other tell tale signs so many have. I loved cigarettes and had no intention of giving them up. That’s why I was kind of surprised (you bet!) when it happened. And, of course, there were no withdrawal symptoms, no need for patches, gum, or any of the myriad devices that people resort to when trying to kick the habit. No pain. Only gain!


It gets crazier!

Now I’ll tell you something even stranger, I actually tried to smoke again and couldn’t! Not because I had any cravings. Had I, I would have just gone back to smpking! but a couple of times my mind would take over, ‘how come this happened to me and no one else, it can’t be natural’. And then I’d get to thinking this is just some trick of the mind and one of these days it will wear off! So I bummed a cigarette of someone and it was like, urggh! My body just could not take it. I was like a person who had never smoked, like someone trying cigarettes for the first time. Now this is highly unusual as anyone who quit smoking, and then, for whatever reason started again, can tell you. Not only is the addiction instantly reactivated, but often they end up smoking more than they did before they quit. Everyone will tell you, it was that ‘one’ cigarette that got them back to being a smoker again.

But with me, I just couldn’t go there again. My body and my mind had returned to the state they were in before I started smoking. It can happen too with some people after a sudden shock or trauma, something in the brain short circuits and they return to the natural state.

Now I can’t guarantee this will happen to you. Because a lot of it does entail the individual and what they are ready for. But I know awakening and healing are really the same thing. If you’re trying desperately to quit smoking that could actually be a block. The harder you try the harder you resist. However, I do recommend that you give Reiki a try if you haven’t done so. Don’t do it with the intention to gain something or cure an ailment, just try it for the beautiful relaxation feeling you will get. Try it with no expectations. Like I did. Try it even if you’re skeptical. Believe me I was more than a little skeptical, after all I was an intellectual cynic at the time with a reputation for sarcasm to maintain!

People receive Reiki in different ways. Most people experience a lovely warm feeling, some people feel nothing, many sense a deep calm and peace. Others have a delayed reaction and some days or even weeks later suddenly realize that something in their life has changed. I experienced myself going to a very deep place the first time, an inner awakening,and an inner healing. But actual change, as I said, came days later.

So, after my ‘Reiki awakening’ I immersed myself in the study of energy and such like. I went on to do advanced Reiki levels, as well as other courses. About a year later I started meditating. I came across a system of meditation which takes you very deep into lower brain wave levels, very quickly, known as Holosync. You can check it out at www.centerpoint.com in my mind it’s the best thing on the market. It is expensive, and it's not a 30 day wonder fix-all like so many other products out there, but if you stick with it, it really works.


How do we really heal?

I understand now that when awakening healing takes place on an energetic level, we go back to our original state, where we were before we got the disease, addiction, ailment or whatever you want to call it. A Course in Miracles would say, we never left that original state. And this is true, but not always easy to grasp at the human level. It’s not some kind of ‘magic’ either. The Course explains the difference between ‘magic’ and a ‘miracle’. Magic is what we do when we try to ‘fix’ things, as in the case of medicine. A miracle is understanding that there is nothing to fix. The real miracle is getting our minds to accept a miracle! And we do this by understanding that the miracle is the natural state, the real awakening, and what came instead of it, i.e. disease, death, misery, is the extraneous matter, the wonder, the unnatural state.

Of course, when the Course speaks of our perfection it refers to weightier content than we can go into here, but, it specifically applies this to the human form as well:

“What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain, in every form, wherever it occurs, but disappear as mists before the sun”.

Our true state while we are in this human form, is one of health, well being, and abundance.

If you’re still puzzled about healing and energy, and all this stuff, think of it in terms of computers, it’s like we return to the default system and start all over again. The default system, as you probably know, is where your computer goes to “by default” , that is unless a person ‘programs’ it to a new setting. So with humans, when we get an addiction or disease our brain receives some kind of chemical instruction that allows us experience that state. In other words it’s the programs and scripts that set up the diseases to begin with. We do this ourselves (but we do it at a very high level which we’re not aware of) and so we end up sick! Its amazing how similar humans are to computers, except ten thousand times more sophisticated. We get bugs, and until we’re “debugged” we don’t work very well.


In order to awake and heal you must understand your mind

When you’re wishing to have something you’re holding on to what you have. When you’re grateful for what you have you start getting more of the things you want. When you grumble about what you have and don’t like, you create more of it. Sadly all too often this is confused with morality, a man-made invention. It’s too easy to think that it’s all about having positive or negative thoughts, which is just a new version of good and bad thoughts. These are misleading terms. They presuppose that if you think one way good things will happen to you, and if you think another, bad results will follow. Then some kind of crap happens and people go, ‘I obviously haven’t been thinking enough of the ‘right’ thoughts. Bad me. Must try harder.’

I think this is because of a mindset that has been ingrained in western culture for over two thousand years, beginning with the Greek philosophers and picked up by Christian apologists, that suggests things need to be controlled, and that we can do this with the will. But the will is very poor in the area of control. (For example, since we’re on the subject, how many people manage to give up smoking through will power alone? Yes it’s possible, but it takes a huge effort, and it always feels like pushing against something.) However, if we can surrender to a power that’s deep within us, a higher power if you like, and let it do the work, let it awaken us, then change can be effortless. This power is with everyone, there is not one of you reading this that cannot tap into this power right now, if you so wish. That’s because the energy, the substance you’re made of, is this power. The only thing that is preventing anyone from accessing it is their mind. It is the mind and what’s in it that stops you from achieving what you want right now. Reiki is one way around this, it's one way to experience awakening healing, it’s not the only way.

In conclusion, to speak in such terms as ‘first’ and ‘second’ awakening, is probably not strictly accurate, but it’s a convenient moniker on which to hang all this nonetheless. Really there is only one awakening, but it appears to be a gradual thing, that’s because we’re looking at life from one point in the human mind. A bit like if you had a camera trained on a fish tank from the front and another from the side. Viewing them on separate screens you might think they were they were two different fish, and you might observe that when one moved its tail the other one seemed to make a corresponding movements seconds later. Of course the movement happened at once. There is only one fish. And this is equally true for the human condition and self growth. We think there is change, an awakening, then another awakening, then enlightenment. But in fact it all happens at once. And, just as we think we’re watching two fish, so it is with all the billions of people walking around. There really is only one.

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