Inner healing is about returning to our souls so that we can live as the beautiful, peaceful, powerful beings that we really are.
To achieve this, we must dissolve the painful emotions that remain lodged in our minds and our bodies, in our tissues and cells. We must also let go of fear and guilt. If we don’t, we will remain stuck in our minds and continue to suffer.
We do this work by facing our pain, our fear, and our guilt in their fullness and intensity so that they lose their power and the grip that they have on us. By doing so, we will come to see our pain for what it really is – a normal response to situations that have been difficult for us to deal with. Only then will we be whole. Only then will we be free.
During the healing process, we might be afraid, but that’s normal. We don’t know what we might be faced with. But rest assured, whatever we are confronted with will be an important part of our healing; it will have its rightful place. There is nothing about ourselves that we can’t face. We are the ones initiating the process. We are the ones guiding ourselves through it. Deep inside, we know what we are doing.
In order to heal, we must have a genuine, heartfelt desire to return to our essence as soul and free ourselves from everything that holds us back. We must also be willing to do what we need to do and go where we need to go to heal.
Inner healing is the most important work we will ever do. It takes time; it requires commitment; it requires patience. There is no hurry. It will take the time it needs to take, and that is perfectly fine.
The rewards of undertaking this work are priceless and include the freedom to be our real selves, profound peace, crystal-clear vision, unlimited access to our soul knowledge, and living as the divine expression of love.
Healing from the Soul
When doing inner work, it’s important to know that it is our souls that guide us back to the light. So, in order to heal, we must put our souls first. We do this by seeking the beauty and peace of pure awareness as an ongoing practice. By doing so, we are making a declaration: we are saying that our souls are where we want to be.
Spending time looking at the sky, watching the sun rise or set, or walking in the mountains, in a forest or by the sea are all powerful ways of accessing the soul. When we spend time in natural surroundings, free of the distractions of the external world and with a quiet mind, our experience of the world around us is immediate. It brings beauty. It brings peace. It serves as a constant reminder of what we want most of all – to return to the beauty and peace of our souls.
Meditation, practising yoga, listening to relaxing music, reading books or poetry that move us or having a deep conversation with someone we feel a connection to can also put us in touch with inner beauty and peace.
We need to cultivate the experience of our souls in order to heal because it is from the soul that we see clearly; it is from the soul that we know what is true as opposed to thinking or believing that we know. It is also from the soul that we know what to do and when to do it. During the healing process, we will need to trust what feels right for us and follow it, for it is our souls that are showing us the way.
The Aim of Inner Healing
- to gain a new perspective on ourselves
- to see that there´s nothing wrong with us
- to discover that we´re not the bad human beings that we believe we are
- to discover that the negative beliefs that we have about ourselves aren´t true
- to understand that the negative beliefs that we have about ourselves arise because of external conditioning as well as negative experiences that we have in relation to others
When healing unresolved pain, we must have a genuine desire to get to know ourselves, for inner healing is also about knowing ourselves.
And we must be brave. We have to be willing to take a good look at our wounds and `feel´ the pain again because relieving the pain will help to heal it.
During the healing process, it’s important to reflect and ask ourselves questions:
For example, we can reflect on the context of our painful experiences, on what was going on at the time, on how we were feeling, on what we were wanting or hoping for.
We can also ask ourselves why we reacted the way we did, why we said what we said, why we did what we did. The act of reflecting and asking questions helps us to get to know our beliefs and intentions and also to understand our feelings and reactions at the time.
We´re wanting to see ourselves in a new light, in the light of what we really are instead of what we think or believe we are. We need to keep looking, reflecting, asking questions, and relieving our pain until we´re finished and the pain is gone. We will know when that is.
Most often, the pain we carry is the pain of not having been seen as the person we really are in situations where we were simply being ourselves and our intentions were good but others reacted negatively towards us, brushed us aside, or ignored us. Not being seen by others is painful; it affects how we see ourselves. We believe there´s something wrong with us, that it´s our fault. But there´s nothing wrong with us; it´s not our fault.
When others don´t see us, it´s imperative that we know the truth about ourselves and that we acknowledge that truth. When we do so, we are free. No one can hurt us.
What I’m sharing here is only a small part of the chapter on inner healing in The Art of Enlightenment. I have a lot more to write and will add more text as I work on the chapter, but I’m sharing this now in the hope that it might be of help to you.