August 2009

So you want to be a better healer

by Dr. Stephen Lewis

So often I meet people who want to help others and believe they're being selfless by not considering what they must do to heal themselves. That is not selfless. It is simply naïve. It demonstrates a basic inability to understand what healing demands of a healer. You may be a master builder and yet live in a hovel. Beethoven was deaf but could still compose magnificently. But healers are useless to others if they can't heal themselves.

Healing is probably the profession that best combines selfishness and selflessness. You will be chosen and you will inspire confidence by virtue of how you live and what you are, rather than what you say. Anyone can say the right words or at least read them from one of so many inspirational books. Fortunately, people have some divinely inspired insight to distinguish between "reading" and "being." For healers, and for all who would be healers, most importantly your life is your resume, and it must always be up to date.

The degree to which you help people raise their consciousness is the degree to which you have an elevated consciousness. If you are restricted then how much help can you be to anyone? What is consciousness? It is the degree to which you perceive your interaction with everyone and everything in the universe. Everything you exclude, everything you choose not to choose, diminishes both your consciousness and consequently your ability to elevate someone else's consciousness.

You cannot set your sights on something outside of your belief system. On a more pragmatic level, if we look at the spiritual masters and their ability to heal, we find statements like, "What you do to the least of mine you do to me." I don't know about "physician heal thyself" but it is axiomatic to say "healer heal thyself." We heal through inclusion, not exclusion. Healers are simply facilitators. They facilitate the entire universe entering your consciousness. Some may do it with hands, some with words, others may use technology. They're still bounded by the degree of their own consciousness.

What is the separation? It's in not allowing me or him or her into your life. It's denying that we are in this together. In that denial we not only exclude others, we exclude our own creation and we exclude our Creator.

It's most important to understand that you don't exclude me because of me, but because of you. Any other reason is a weak excuse. Basically, whatever it is you need to heal, you need to heal for your own sake.

So what is it? What are you avoiding and how can you transcend it? Again, the answer is to include everything and everyone. Every healer is simply a conduit between the person needing to be healed and all of life. Recognize that your limitation comes from your unwillingness to be part of everything. That is the process of a healer healing himself or herself. As we help others, we help ourselves. So become a better healer for selfish reasons. It's in your best interest -- and theirs.

I have found in my work I'm best able to help people heal themselves when I can perceive or have perceived my need for the same healing. That's not remarkable, however. We basically feel the same things -- guilt, fear, shame, etc. Furthermore, they manifest in pretty much the same ways, whether it's cancer, heart disease, a metabolic disorder or whatever. I think healing is most rapid when we perceive it as a need to resolve that in us which we have previously chosen to keep unresolved.

Remember, treatment may be without emotion, but all healing is emotional.

If you want to be a better healer, you must understand the mutuality of need between you and your patient or client. You came to each other and if you're honest in your work, you will travel together or you'll face whatever issue is at hand some time again in the future along with your other failures as a healer. You have chosen honorable work but it's work in which you can never be separated from anyone or anything if you would be all you can be.

You must have an ego to live in our society but you cannot have egotism if you would be a healer. Your ego may define you but your egotism will separate you from all the healing power in the universe. And that power is collective. A true healer is simply a spokesperson for everything and everyone. As such, we believe a true healer is an extension of God. Sickness is a blockage in consciousness that impedes the flow of life force.

You as a healer need to know what's available for you to heal yourself, so that you may help others in that same process. What technology, what spiritual technology, can help you perceive that which you've avoided in the past and are sill hanging on to? What person can help you open your eyes?

(Stephen Lewis has earned degrees in homeopathy and acupuncture, both forms of energetic healing. The founder of EMC² along with Roberta Hladek and Evan Slawson, Lewis is also the developer of The AIM Program of Energetic Balancing, a spiritual technology that has helped nearly 50,000 people worldwide to heal themselves. Neither EMC² nor AIM diagnose, treat, cure or prevent disease. Energetic imbalances exist first in consciousness. It is the belief of EMC² that if energetic imbalances are removed from consciousness, they can neither manifest nor be sustained in the physical body. To learn more visit stephenlewis.org or aimprogram.com )