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Three possible meanings come to mind when I hear the phrase, “the heart of healing.” It might mean the core principle—the most fundamental aspect of healing as in “the heart of the matter.” It might refer to the compassion expressed in the act of healing. And, it might refer to the unique place the heart chakra holds in the human energy field, especially as it refers to healing. I think that healing doesn’t occur without all three of these meanings coming into play. When I use the term “healing,” I mean a bringing to wholeness. As a spiritual healer, my primary focus is in creating the conditions that help my client, my student, and myself rediscover their and my own wholeness—in energetically rejoining the bits and pieces of ourselves that we’ve lost along the way……..and sometimes, removing bits and pieces of others that we no longer need to carry. Let’s start with the most fundamental aspect of healing………that’s a concept that each one of you could take in your own unique direction. Even though we all have our own ideas about the most fundamental aspects of healing, we also likely share some of the most basic concepts—even if those concepts are expressed in very different ways. I believe that bringing awareness to that which causes us pain is perhaps the most basic of all healing practices, from traditional Western medicine to even more traditional esoteric practices. A diagnosis brings awareness to a condition. And at an even more basic level, pain brings awareness to a condition. I believe that the function of pain is to do just that—to focus our awareness on what isn’t working. In Healing Back Pain, John Sarno, M.D. explains that for many back pain sufferers, he is the doctor of last resort. His methods are a bit……… unconventional. The patient becomes an active participant in his or her own healing. Sarno is a doctor of last resort because most of us—especially when we’re in pain—want to remain passive and have somebody else fix us, rather than actively participate in our own healing. In a nutshell, Doctor Sarno asks his patients to feel their pain without resistance and then to ask the pain what changes need to happen to heal. He’s helping his patient to bring a deeper awareness to the pain and to engage the pain in meaningful dialogue. I’ve used this technique and I’ve recommended it to others. When done well, it’s startling how well the technique works—if you’re interested in the technique, please read the book. When I work with a client, I bring my awareness to the energetic structures that support the painful condition. I witness the condition and the energetic structures beneath the condition directly and without judgment. I become a conduit, bringing awareness to the “dark places” within my client. Healers often talk about bringing “light” into the dark places. But, we don’t mean “light” literally. We don’t use physical flashlights. When we say “light,” we’re speaking metaphorically. We mean awareness. And, like Doctor Sarno’s techniques, a healer bring awareness to a painful condition brings surprisingly effective relief. When I witness the condition and the energetic structures beneath the condition directly and without judgment, I enter into a deep state of rapport with my client. In that state of rapport, I observe my own being directly and without judgment at the same time that I experience a deep empathetic connection with the client. Sometimes, we feel the client’s pain as physical pain in our own bodies. Many healers get confused at this point. We wonder, “Is this my pain, or my client’s pain that I am feeling?” Reliable answers come through practicing deep states of awareness of my own body. And, through the experience of deep body awareness, I understand my client’s pain—whether or not I experience that pain in the moment. Many great healers teach that we can only heal others to the degree that we’ve healed ourselves. There are many reasons that this is true. One of those reasons is that we can only have compassion for others to the degree that we acknowledge and hold compassion for the spiritual and physical pain within ourselves. Without compassion, healing is shallow and temporary. My training is based, in part, on the ancient system of chakras—or energy centers—within the body. There are seven major chakras within the body. The heart chakra, located on the center line of the body in the area of the heart, is the forth chakra. The lower three chakras most strongly relate to the physical world. The upper three chakras most strongly relate to spirit. The heart is the bridge within the body, joining spirit and matter. While many spiritual disciplines teach that one must cut the connections we have with the physical world before we can reach the divine (either in this life or the next), my training and experience both argue otherwise. I believe that the path to wholeness—to healing—lies through strengthening all of the energy centers within the body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; King James Version. (emphasis added) God, Goddess, Unity, The One that is All: metaphors for the Intelligence of the universe and all that it contains—a concept far to grand to be comprehended or bound by any name. Glorify God in your body. Your body is a physical manifestation of the divine. Glorify God in your spirit. Your spirit is part of the fabric of the divine. Glorify God in your heart. Your heart is the bridge that the Divine Being created to join the two realms. Your heart is the place where the split between the two realms may heal. © Erik Laurentz, 2006 All rights reserved
We all have moments where we glimpse enlightenment. From that perspective, enlightenment is nothing special. When enlightenment is experienced more directly, the experience changes a person forever. The change is similar to the way that a near-death experience changes a person—only the change is deeper. Anything that I say about enlightenment will be inadequate, because we don’t possess the vocabulary to express the experience accurately. No culture does. It’s easier to say what enlightenment is not, than to describe what it is. The Eastern traditions typically take this path, which is misinterpreted by Westerners as a form of nihilism. Enlightenment can only be described in a positive sense through metaphor. Enlightenment occurs when a person experiences reality from the perspective of the divine. If it’s too big a blaspheme to say that enlightenment is seeing the world from God’s perspective, at least we can say that it’s seeing the world through the eyes of an angel. In the clarity of that perspective, we know with absolute certainty that every molecule of existence is part of the fabric of the divine. Every molecule owes its existence to the mind/body of God flowing through it. Of course, “mind/body of God” is a metaphor. I don’t mean a literal mind or body and I don’t mean to imply a gender. It’s more like having the ability to see electricity, only it’s not electricity in the ordinary sense. It is a divine energy that flows through everything and in doing so, gives rise to everything. A scientist might say that it’s seeing the quantum nature of reality. But, it’s even more than that, because it’s common to see structures of reality that aren’t predicted by quantum physics. Having been there, I believe that I saw into other dimensions. One of the core assumptions that people in Western traditions make is that the world is separated into a duality: good and evil; masculine and feminine; the classical physics of matter and energy; or the classic philosophical division of mind (or spirit) and matter (or body). Einstein proved that classical physics viewed reality from a flawed perspective and proved that matter and energy are different forms of the same thing. Quantum physics gets a little spooky in teaching that existence and non-existence are different forms of the same thing. The classical world of religion, science and philosophy described a “static” duality; and a duality created through the artifact of the perspective of the dimension that we live in. Einstein’s theory of relativity is based on the fact that we don’t actually live in a three dimensional world. Einstein proved that we live in four dimensions. One branch of quantum physics (string theory) teaches that equations describing the very existence of the universe can only be balanced if one assumes that there are nine (some say up to eleven) dimensions. Einstein and the school of quantum physics assume that the world is a dynamic duality, a balanced flow or exchange of energy through different states of being. The Taoist of ancient China captured this dynamic duality in the Yin-Yang symbol. In reaction to the classical error of describing the world as a static duality, modern spiritual leaders frequently condemn all duality as bad. These well-meaning people don’t realize that it’s not duality that is bad, it’s the stagnant energy created by the misperception that dualities are static that is “bad” (because stagnant energy blocks spiritual growth). To avoid duality all together, new age thinkers talk about “body-mind-spirit.” If this trisecting of reality creates a new static model, then the new model will become a vehicle for passing on the same old stagnant energy. If the model creates a dynamic “triality” to replace the current dynamic duality, then I think that it’s kind of interesting. And, I’m scientific enough to think that Ockham’s (or, Occam’s) razor usually provides the right answer to most inquiries: that if two explanations equally answer the same problem, the simplest answer is probably the correct one. For the moment, I’m betting on a dynamic duality. So, what does all of this have to do with enlightenment? Enlightenment is merely a shift of perspective. The shift is similar to the way that Einstein shifted scientific perspective and created the nuclear age. I now see no static split between spirit and body. Spirit and body are exchanging so much information so much of the time that it’s impossible to talk about either in the classical static model. This means that anything one says about the body must apply to spirit and visa versa. The body is not something evil. It is not the temptation that God created to sort out the worthy from the unworthy. Our bodies are the most incredible divine instruments. I believe that our bodies are meant to serve as the bridge between the mostly spiritual and the mostly physical. [Again, in a dynamic duality, the concepts of purely spiritual and purely physical don’t exist.] The trouble with our current culture is that the Western version of the owner’s manual for these exquisite spiritual engines was literally thrown out with the garbage by people who didn’t appreciate what it was. These owner’s manuals were declared heretical and deliberately destroyed about eighteen centuries ago. Fragments of the Gnostic gospels discovered in the last century are all that remains of the Christian branch of that tradition. Versions of the owner’s manual were preserved by a more tolerant Judaism in the Kabala and in the Islamic Sufi traditions. Within the Christian West, the knowledge was also preserved in secret societies known as mystery schools. In the gift of religious tolerance that American society offers, especially in the past fifty years, mystery schools have begun to step out of hiding. These schools offer a Western path to enlightenment. Dynamic Duality Center for Energy Healing, is one such school. © Erik Laurentz, 2008 All rights reserved
Folklore identifies the saying, “May you live in interesting times,” as an old Chinese curse. To be sure, we all live in interesting times. Like a lot of folks, all of my retirement is in a 401k, so I’ve recently lost almost one third of my life savings. That was money for the future. I saved at the highest rate that my employer would allow and I was proud of my nest egg, so saving is important to me. And, I’m alive right now. When I really think about it, there was nothing that that money could have bought when I put it away in savings that would make me any happier right now. My wife and I have a small home. We have a cat and a dog. She and I love and respect each other more deeply than most couples seem to. She is dearer than my closest friend and, to me, more beautiful than sunshine. We are slowly building gardens out of the untamed earth that surrounds our home. Some of the things that we planted in the past few years are beginning to bear fruit. Do you know how utterly delicious the first grape is, from a vine that you’ve tended for three years, or the first mulberry from a tree that you planted before you ever tasted a tree-ripened mulberry? Have you ever sprinkled a few out of date zinnia seeds on a patch of soil that had been thick with weeds……………….watered them with hope and love, and watched as they sprouted and grew and filled the patch with a delight of color? I love zinnias. They’re almost weedy in their enthusiasm for life. We heat with solar and with wood. I just went out for a load of wood. Did you happen to look up at the sky that I just saw? Did you notice how bright and how pale the evening sky is right now? Did you feel the chill of autumn air on your face………..did you see those few clouds set ablaze by a setting sun? It reminded me of my last summer at home, between high school and going into the military. My family spent two weeks at the beach. I’d hike off away from the crowds to be alone; to think; to be. I remember watching the clouds turning gold in extravagant sunsets. I knew that most people were busy doing other things and not watching. I knew that if I retained my ability to really see…….. to really see a sunset, to really see the trees and the sand and the waves, then I’d be richer than if I owned all the gold that I saw in the clouds that evening. As my twenties melted into my thirties, I began to take less and less time away from “important” things to watch the sun set, or to thrill at a passing thunderstorm. By the time that I was in my forties, I could hold the sadness of having once seen a sunset, but I could not do so any longer. I had become very busy and very important in the story of my life. In my mid-forties, I became a practitioner of traditional Usui Reiki. I knew a Reiki master who could make the most intense pain melt away in seconds. I was impressed………and it seemed like such a practical thing to be able to do. I was completely unprepared for the mystery that becoming a healer would hold for me. The neat little confines of my rational mind were about to unravel. Some people called me “gifted.” I never really knew what that meant. “I” didn’t do anything. “I” was merely the channel for Reiki energy. I can tell you that I got to witness the most amazing transformations using Reiki. Little did I know that I’d only just entered the rabbit hole. A few years later, I entered a four-year healer training program that taught me how to fine-tune my physical body into a spiritual instrument. Along the way, I learned how to perceive into deeper dimensions of human existence. I directly experienced the spark of the divine within myself. From that experience I know for a certainty that I am not special; that every living being contains a spark of the divine that is so pure that it is not unique to anybody. It can’t be hurt. It can’t die. The you that can be hurt isn’t the real you. You are a divine cell in the body of the most Holy Divine. You have no soul to lose. Your soul is already home in the place where it was before the beginning and will be after all that is ends. This is not to say that the laws of cause and effect don’t operate in the dimension that we experience as physical beings. I’m only saying that those effects don’t penetrate down through the dimensional barriers to your divine core. Perhaps you have not utterly forgotten who you are. Perhaps you recognize the truth of who you are. I look up at the sky and I see. I see with a rawness and an intimacy that brings me more pleasure than all of the treasure that my 401k lost. I am alive………………right now……………I am alive. © Erik Laurentz, 2008 All rights reserved
What keeps us from living more fully in a state of grace? One problem is the proverbial “other shoe”, as in, “waiting for the other shoe to drop”. This is typically not a conscious waiting, no fingernails drumming, no ‘hurry up, will ‘ya?’ fluttering around in our brains searching for an audience. But nonetheless there is waiting, tensing and bracing against the anticipated impact from the dropping of the “other shoe”. Most everyone we know and come in contact with, day in and day out, has this unconscious waiting, resulting in varying states of tensing, of protecting, of guarding, of bracing in the body. We normalize this tension, this guarding, this place next to the edge of fight/flight/freeze. We barely notice until our body begin to turn up the volume on the dialogue it has been having with us all along, so that we begin to hear and understand its message that, “enough is enough”. What dialogue? It is as if the chronic bracing generates fault lines through which flow the messages our body most needs us to hear. Whether in a whisper or a shout, the body lets us know via pain, metabolic and digestive disruptions and assorted syndromes that the excess tension, the bracing, is overtaxing our systems. Indeed, one way to view many of our ailments is as the language of last resort of our bodies. Wilhelm Reich, among others, studied the phenomena of bracing and identified five primary patterns of how the body holds tension. These patterns of bracing are reflected in the physical body as well as in the aura, or subtle body. Developing an understanding of these patterns can provide an additional perspective in working with illness, dis-ease and aging, as symptoms are most likely to manifest in relation to these patterns. In other words, there is a subtle energy relationship between the patterns of bracing in our physical body and aura and the types and locations of injuries, illnesses and syndromes we experience. I’ve created a photo-essay of these holding or bracing patterns, which I invite you to view online at http://www.dynamicduality.com/workingwithlight.htm Click on the line, “Click here for pictorial insights into the healing process”, for more detailed information on and examples of the five primary bracing patterns. (NOTE - this is currently offline as I turn this into a video...in the meantime, enjoy the video, "Working with Light"! But where does all this bracing come from? If we are bracing against the “other shoe”, what was the “first shoe”? The answers to this question are multi-layered and lie within the physical, emotional, energetic and spiritual aspects of our being. The short answer has to do with trauma, whether birth-related trauma, accidents, falls, abuse (physical/emotional/psychic), invasive medical or dental procedures, or witnessing natural disasters or the abuse of others. When we experience a trauma, the energy of that trauma can get trapped in our body. Like the clam that responds to the irritation of a grain of sand by coating the irritant to protect itself, our bodies experience the trapped trauma energy as a foreign element and build protection via bracing and guarding. This held trauma energy will seek release: the pressure, the drive for this release is like a pressure cooker or a chemical reaction reaching critical mass. The held energy will find its “out”; the bracing will be resolved. Repetitive injuries and illness itself can be seen as ways the body seeks to release the held trauma energy. As the body weakens from illness or injury, and bracing gives way to relaxation borne of exhaustion, the held energy releases. This, of course, is not the ideal means for release! The good news is that our bodies know how to release the energy of the trauma. This knowing is not at the intellectual-consciousness level, but at a cellular-consciousness level. This cellular knowing translates in to “pearls of wisdom” which offer us keys to releasing the trauma and to healing. While healing can takes many forms and be realized with the aid of a variety of modalities, one commonality of healing is the organic release of bracing patterns, and underlying this, the organic release of held trauma energy. With this in mind, I have suggestions on ways in which you can gently begin to release bracing against held trauma energy: Steps for mindfully allowing the organic release of bracing patterns:
Welcome grace in to your life. As held trauma energy and bracing patterns begin to release, clients I work with often report greater body awareness and being more in the moment, as well as enhanced sensory experience (greater capacity to see, smell, taste, hear and tactile sensing). Body movement is more fluid and expansive; there is a greater sense of “effortless effort”. There is less sense of guarding and protecting and less hyper-vigilance. Rigidity in thoughts, emotions and movements give way to greater spontaneity, joy and freedom. There is a greater internal sense of control along with a paradoxically lessened need or desire for control. And there is greater capacity for connecting with others and living with an open heart. © Maggie Laurentz, 2009 All rights reserved
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