Moving Mountains Day #9

Where is my faith today?

My faith is in trusting my work today as I step more and more into my power and my truth. Having been drawn to this work by a once-self-professed skeptic of things unseen - David Elliott, the reluctant healer -- I am in the space now of myself being reluctant. I am not so much reluctant in my call to this work -- the more I do it, the more my faith is confirmed in its healing power. My reluctance is in calling myself a healer.

Recently I heard Obama say to a group of doctors, "You are not bean counters, you are healers!" I think it's pretty revolutionary for a world leader, much less after the last eight years, OUR world leader offering such a grounding message. Hearing Obama say, "You are healers," I felt a wave of joy and awareness as I imagined him speaking to all of us.

The word healer has had so many negative connotations for me in the past. I spent many years shunning people who call themselves healers. I associated a healer as one who GIVES their energy to you. I wanted nothing to do with that! That is the part I am reluctant about, that by calling myself a healer I am perceived as one who uses my ego to make people feel better. And there goes my ego right there worrying about perceptions of myself. It is common for people to use their energy to help others heal, it is a very draining practice for the healer, a practice that leads to burn out or even worse, a loss of faith. By using their own energy these healers also become invested in the outcome of their clients, the healer's ego wants their clients to rely on them, they want their client's situations to improve at the risk of their own health and boundaries.

I ascribe to David's use of the word "reluctance," as it is his initial reluctance that taught him to beware of getting too invested in the outcome of his client's own healing. That is in turn what David teaches: staying neutral with clients, in not being invested in their outcome. That concept is different from having compassion for other's situations. Neutrality requires humility, the healer must become the keen observer of what's going on, of the energy -- of it's swirling in a room full of partiers, or it's stillness in a sea of mediators. Compassion for another's healing allows the healer to hold the space for other people to experience their own path and their own healing. Compassion for others allows for patience, faith and a whole barrage of positive affects to come into play. The healer's job is not to CHANGE the energy. It is to shine some light on the darkness, to call it out of the shadows. From my perspective the healer's job is to be a teacher, to lead by example, to question what is considered real.

Jesus was this healer, sui generis. We are all very clear that his ability came THROUGH him from his father. He did say in the scriptures that we are capable of the same ability.

And don't even go there with the phrase "faith healer," that just opens a whole can of worms. I'm visualizing snakes biting people and trances, lots of fear mixed with seduction of power.

So back to the question, Am I a healer? Yes. I am. I have faith that God/Source Energy/Universal energy works THROUGH me. I still have to remind myself of the oneness of "I am that source and that source is me." Do I feel comfortable calling myself a healer? Not yet. When I don't have to remind myself of my oneness with source anymore, when I can remember what Jesus said about me being a child of God just like him, when I identify less with my ego about who I am, when I can tell you "I am a healer,"and see myself in you - then and only then will I be able to call myself a healer.

Moving Mountains Day #2

Two weeks ago a group of artists and writers arrived for their annual creative respite and social gathering here at the ranch. It's an event we have come to look forward to, people making time to enjoy and celebrate each other and their work. This year, Grayson (not her real name), a wonderful screen writer, arrived early. She looked thinner than last year - even a little bluish in the extremities and around the lips. Her husband rolled a large machine into the great room and set it next to a lounge chair.

Grayson plopped down in the chair and breathed many oxygen treatments each day. This year, she said, her trip was more about resting than writing her latest screen play. The time away from her busy schedule running a non-profit for disenfranchised women made her realize that she needed rest.

We talked of the healing power of the body. She was very interested in doing sessions of the healing breath meditation I teach. I led her in private sessions and in group sessions with the other artists throughout the week. Grayson had been born with a hole in her heart and had been in and out of hospitals her whole life to repair it. In the breathing meditation sessions she became aware of the chronic fear she held in her body from a lifetime of illness and was able to release some of it.

Before she left the ranch, Grayson felt revived. She made plans to come back next month and write for a few days and do some more of the healing breath meditation. In 1986 the doctors had given her a few months to live and she made it another twenty something years before leaving this earth last Friday, a week after she left the Ranch.

Last year another artist in the group began a painting on a 2'x20' canvass. This year the canvass came alive as she added familiar faces from the group. Grayson's right-side Florentine profile rests in the center at the bottom -- a fulcrum between the elderly intellectual gentleman on the left side of the painting and the younger middle-aged novelist on the right. The head of a horse is tatooed on Grayson's right shoulder. I remember having a conversation about what that was, why the horse? She told me it was from her loving husband's family crest. We laughed about having your man's tatoo on your arm. (I have six male dogs here at the ranch who are always marking their territory so the idea of your man's mark on your arm is especially funny to me.)

That memory of our conversation brought me back to the question of what's it all for? Things we talked about, like when Grayson spent 45 minutes telling me the story of her screen play which now will forever remain an ephemeral memory. A life, in her 40's, gone.

Experiencing faith is like putting on 3-D glasses - you have to change perspective. Faith is found in the spaces in between, we laughed at being tatooed with a man's mark while at the same time we had so much gratitude for our the love of our husbands. Those are the ingredients of faith -- laughter, gratitude, love, and perspective. Grayson's defiance of the doctors' 1986 diagnosis gave others faith as we watched her persist against the odds. By the sheer act of being alive she gave those around her faith to overcome everyday obstacles.

Creativity Oasis

Jill Allison Bryan came to the ranch last week for a weekend of creativity. What does a creative coach do? She has mnemonics and supportive perspectives on getting into the creativity groove. Things like, instead of "I have to work on my story," say, "I'm going to play with my characters."
That's just one example that I can think of off the top of my head. It was much more than that. Jill has a very nurturing and gentle spirit that invoked our imaginations to play and dream and write these experiences in songs or poems or express them visually. Jill provided a space where we could tap into that KID-thing-- of having fun and not judging the work, of remembering that we are here to have fun with this painting, gluing, sculpting, writing; our goal is not to enter it into the next Whitney Biennial. We all went into our own corners and created and played in whatever way we chose in the moment with no plans for progress or achievement.

The breathing meditation earlier that morning happened during savasana of our yoga practice. We gathered on the upstairs porch of the yoga studio overlooking the courtyard. The three birds that live in the nearby tree chirpped loudly in what seemed like a neighborhood quarrel over tree space. During the breathing we connected to the birds and the strength of their voices, especially one very loud bird (probably a Blue Jay), which could have been percieved as annoying considering this was the relaxing period of our session. I felt the energy intensify when the group accepted and even took on the power of the birds. When the session ended it left the group energized and more connected to the peaceful and non-judging part of us that enjoys creativity with the eyes of a child. We spent the rest of the day coming together for moments and then drifting off alone - the ebb and flow of a very generous weekend of love, laughter and play.