Visualization News, December 2004
The Twenty-Six Healing Keys (Part V and VI of IX)
Hello and welcome back! Today I will be continuing with part five of a nine-part series on the theme of internal healing. I have to admit that I generated this material as part of my attempt to heal myself of a chronic health condition. Although these techniques have been very valuable to me, they haven�t healed me physically, so at this point you should think of them as purely healing to the psyche. There are twenty-six �healing keys� in all, but we will only be discussing the twelfth through fourteenth keys in this edition, which is plenty to work with over several sittings. In fact, I would recommend breaking it up over at least three sessions if possible. For January 2004, I will roll out numbers fifteen through seventeen of the �Healing Keys.�
Before I discuss the twelfth healing key, I want to explain the meditation that you will use with all the healing keys. The meditation is specific to this exercise, although it could be used in other contexts. We will call it the �healing lock� meditation. This meditation will specifically work with each �healing key� in the best possible way to release its maximum positive impact on you. Begin by getting relaxed and have a notebook and pen handy.
Visualize a gold or copper circle with a black (old fashioned) keyhole design in the middle (see above). As you breath in, say internally, �I am in healing lock meditation on�,� here you breath out slowly, saying internally, ��the healing key of ____healing____ .� You will fill those spaces in with the name of the healing key, which is always described in the form �x healing y.� Conceptualize this meditation as being the perfect lock for the key to operate in, the perfect means to achieve the healing. Simply plug in the name of the healing key after reading the description and memorizing its basic meaning. If you have insights during your meditation, you can jot them down at the end of the meditation period.
We will begin today by discussing the twelfth healing key, which is harmony with fate healing perspectives. For the sake of this particular discussion, we are using the word perspectives to mean your ability to take in the full view of your life and all the information coming to you, at all levels of the spectrum. The key to healing disassociated perspectives, which are perspectives that are temporarily lost to us, is in seeing that all perspectives are one and the same. All perspectives are part of one perspective and they are in harmony rather than conflict.
To bring all perspectives together in harmony, you simply need to focus on the affect of having it all together. The affect is the perception of fate and being in harmony with one�s fate. By focusing on this affect of harmony with one�s fate, the perceptions are healed and maximum information and perception is achieved. This in turn allows you to take the maximum advantage of opportunities as well as enjoying the maximum appreciation for beauty in your life.
Let us step back a moment and ask why we are asserting this. First of all we need to understand how our perceptual process gets lost in the shuffle. First it becomes fragmented, as our mind is stressed by harsh physical circumstances. This in turn leads us to develop coping mechanisms that are essentially fantasies that cover up and conceal reality by shutting down our own perceptual processes. As a result of this we develop an ego that has the purpose of negotiating the endless conflict we have with our own circumstances.
The ideal situation is for us to acknowledge that we are who we are, not a fantasy of what we are. The reality of who we are contains the most information. However, to get to that reality we have to regain those lost elements of perception that we rejected as we came into conflict with out circumstances. We can heal our circumstances by reversing the process.
For every situation where we feel frustrated, we are asserting that we are in conflict with the circumstances of our life. It can be our own addictions, our relationships, our physical appearances or our financial circumstances, to name a few. In each situation, we need to make peace with our fate. This means that we must try to feel ok about something that we fundamentally hate. We have to understand that in doing this that we are not loving the thing we hate, but accepting that our circumstances will repair as we make peace with reality.
Our existence is not physical but mental. So, it is impossible for us to look at our �circumstances� and say that they are external to us and that our internal experiences are our only truly internal experiences. Circumstances are internal to us to the same degree. However, we have disowned these feelings, which express themselves in a self-harming way. The ego and the physical body are essentially symbolically the same. As the ego is diminished and we make peace with our fate, by degrees we increasingly trust the process and our circumstances heal.
What does it mean to make peace with one�s fate? It is essentially to acknowledge that as a being made entirely of consciousness in an environment made of one�s desires, you are constantly in a state of complete fulfillment. When you are the waking dreamer, you dream the dream that perfectly fulfills your desires. In unhindered and complete consciousness, the moment that one conceives of a desire is the same moment that it can be potentially fulfilled.
Obviously, this is not the world most of us are aware of living in. We live in a world of challenges and troubles. However, the truth is that this world is a result of thought processes that are in conflict with this state of total fulfillment and freedom. So, we must consciously regain our minds through self-examination. At first, we will catch only a glimmer, then later a glimpse. Through practice we will start to live in the world of our mind again, and we will recapture that happiness. But, we will still be struggling in the world.
Ultimately, our identities will shift to our fulfilled self, living in Spirit. Our physical consciousness will simply be the undigested remnants of resistance to our fate. We can work through these to total liberation. If we focus on understanding what fate really is, we will see that fate and our true self are inseparable. It is in total peace with fate that we have finally accepted ourselves as well.
So, for each element in our life that is unsatisfactory, we have a message that we are at war with our fate. Our meditation for this healing key can be applied to individual problems as areas that we can make peace with our fate. You will begin to really understand once you do this meditation repeatedly over an extended period of time.
The thirteenth healing key is healing the gut by aligning need and nourishment into one. The gut is the center of being. Here the emotional states of a feeling of need and an experience of fulfillment come together. The healing of this area depends on opening up from an imprisoned outlook on life to a spacious, ethereal quality that is like open sky, but not a physical sky. It is a quality of freedom and lightness. This affect should dwell at the center of your being for the best possible quality of nourishment.
Nourishment is generated by the transformation of substance into lighter and lighter degrees of feeling until that feeling becomes a kind of freedom for you to use to explore life at a different angle, rather than a limiting thing. So, the things we take literally as being physical needs are transformed into metaphoric emotional needs and are lightened in the process. The change is in what we think things are.
Heavy feelings and depression that weigh down this area can be limiting. They lead to a greater materialism in your nourishment. This translates as starvation, gluttony (to fill the void) and unfulfilled feelings. The roots of these feelings are depression itself, which seeks to kill the self in an attempt to end all pain. The depression attempts to use every stress and every pain to convince the self to die. This painful process makes every moment of life into an attack, especially any moments involving other people. Depression is a subverted expression of anger.
The actual solution is the exact opposite of the suicide plan of depression. As we move into and embrace life as a Spiritual process, we transform our pain through transforming our self-definition. Even though that process is gradual, the ultimate gains don�t come until you reach the liberating moment when you identify with that Spirit self once and for all. You realize that this mental being is what you have always been.
In order to break through your depression you must learn why the approach of suicide is wrong. To do this means unraveling the untruths that finally lead to seeing through materiality itself. Through practice you will recognize that your own thought processes are distorted by your own desire to create pain in yourself and thus kill yourself. It is helpful to write out your thoughts and see how they are untrue. It is the ultimate untruth of depression that reveals that it can�t be trusted.
The truth is that every situation can bring you closer to the truth and the truth is not pain. If you have been lying to yourself and living off of fantasies to protect yourself from emotional pain, then part of the process of getting to truth will be painful as you strip away each lie. However, past such pain you will find a new and completely uninjured identity in Spirit, living beyond pain.
You will continue to be confused and lost until you reach that critical point where you are able to see that the Spirit self that you have only visited like a friend is now who you are, and always was who you were. Wiping away the last remnants of physical attachment, you learn to live in peace and love in Spirit and the pain dissolves at last. You will learn to distinguish what desires draw you back into physicality and to replace them with Spirit fulfillments until that is all you desire.
The gut process is one of learning what true nourishment is. In the physical world, the attraction of money and pleasure to nourish is obvious. But, the obvious pleasure and power covers a more sinister issue. In reality, nothing can replace anything else. Everything has its �spot� in time and space and that is what it is. To try to make money into nourishment or power into nourishment is an attempt to replace reality with something else. What about the things that fall outside money and physical pleasure? You think they don�t matter, but they will be reflected in hundreds of other more physically substantial deprivations.
Spirit aligns need into nourishment because in pure consciousness the awareness of a need is immediately imagined, and in that imagining the desire is fulfilled because it is also imagined. Suffering is only created within the confines of a desire. In consciousness there is nothing that is a thing, and therefore no �thing� can stop you from imagining the fulfillment of any desire. Our physical world artificially wrenches desire and fulfillment apart from each other by wedging time, space and matter between them. Remove this artificial condition from your identity and you remove the fundamental problem itself.
The fourteen healing key is positive common ground healing communication. Identity is essentially a block to communication. Reality is essentially ideas presented as information and identity blocks or denies certain ideas that are part of the whole idea (the truth).
So, in order to heal communication you must give up identity or the other person must give it up. Otherwise there is no potential for healing. Traditionally the approach in these situations is to attack the other person and attempt to hurt their ego so that in the subsequent loss of ego they will �lose� the argument or admit that they were �wrong.� This approach completely misses the point.
First of all, the ego is just part of the identity and attack another person�s identity is really a meaningless way to resolve an argument. Ultimately, the person will go back to their old way of doing things. Even if you don�t attack by assaulting the ego, you may do it indirectly by giving the person information that they didn�t have to make them feel guilty or �enlighten� them. This approach assaults the ego by bringing in new information. The improvement brought about in the other person depends on various factors as to whether believes the new information and how they process it. It is a hit or miss affair.
The second approach is to attempt to change one�s self by various means. You might try to improve your communication skills, bring in a mediator to show you what you are doing wrong or use guilt or fear into punishing yourself into changing. This approach is hit or miss as well. You might try to educate yourself or gain empathy of the other person, or study up on the issues being argued. But, throughout all of this you are essentially in conflict with the other person.
To heal communication you must see, first and foremost, that you and the other person are not and could never be in conflict. You both wish to be in conflict over an issue and so you are. You may hate the process and fear it and want it to end, but there is a stronger desire behind your mind driving you into the conflict. The assurance you give yourself is that if you win it will ultimately be worth it. The truth is that if you are experiencing conflict you are in pain and have already lost.
The rush and pleasure of combat covers a deeper pain, even if that combat is only verbal. The stakes are the same, ego victory through the destruction of others. Ego finds a million ways to stay in the game and gives birth to a million justifications. The truth is that the conflict itself is not the problem so much as the perception that you can �win� and someone else can �lose.� That is logically impossible as we are each part of wholeness and our combined well-being is tied to one future together.
Think of it this way; we will form this idea into a story. A man and a woman are in a car arguing about where to send their son to college. Both feel justified and the argument rages on and on. In their distraction they both die and go to Hell. God appears and tells them that they can leave Hell when they are ready to forgive each other and everyone they have ever known. But, consumed by anger and fear of losing they put up with the pain of Hell and continue their argument unabated.
Throughout history people have been winning and losing fights, but in a world where no one can truly win and everyone loses in some ways the suffering speaks for itself. Being in a kind of Hell where our suffering is unrelenting, we try to turn Hell into Paradise. We feel we could transform it if only we could use our ego successfully, crush all opposition and force people to do the �right thing.�
This is just our attempt to push a fantasy onto physical reality for the sake of denying what it is. People are what they are and physical life is what it is. The basis of the argument is the idea that what we want is in conflict with what others (who are misguided) want. Crush them and take over power and the problem is solved. Ego sits on its throne and all is well. That is until the next battle.
Hell is Hell and Hell is what we want. In Spirit we experience no conflict with others. We are never blocked or stopped from having any kind of experience, and all experiences are consensual. That is Hell for the ego that wants power and control. Ironically it gives you infinite power and control over your own life and what you experience. It is death to the ego, however, who is no longer needed for fulfillment.
If the man and the woman in our story forgave each other and left, they would see that the argument is about a world that does not really exist. The whole frame of the argument is fantasy and thus the argument is moot. In a place beyond suffering we would find peace and see the bigger picture and overcome the smaller issues as well.
Imagine that you and the other person with whom you are in conflict are in a circular area raised up from the floor. Facing each other, you sit and state your respective positions. Then, you redefine the circular area in which you sit as being a place in which you could not possibly be denied anything you want. You therefore cannot be in conflict with the person unless you choose to continue to be. Restate your argument and listen to the other person�s side again. This time, see what it is you really want, knowing you will get it. How does this transform the argument for you?
In this meditation, focus on replacing the desire to win with the desire to get back to a place where everyone wins and no one loses. That doesn�t involve dying and getting to a �better place.� In fact, it is very much doable while alive within one�s own mind. It just requires the desire to do so and the means will appear spontaneously at the rate you can use them. Replace winning with �omniwinning,� which is winning for everyone and at all levels, in Spirit.
