Healing: A Return To Wholeness

True healing isn't a race to some elusive destination, but rather a journey back to the source of who we are. As we drop our concepts about what it's supposed to look like, we open to the beauty of what it is: a return to wholeness. Come explore the multidimensional nature of healing and meditate on Stephen Levine's moving words: "To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear."

This talk was recorded live in 2021, and includes a dharma talk - followed by a short meditation. Come nourish yourself and explore what healing means to you.

Transcript

Thanks so much for being here,

It's just so wonderful to have this time with you and to explore this session,

This theme,

Healing.

Healing is a word that we hear so much about.

There are so many different kinds of healing.

We think about physical healing.

If we have an illness or a bruise,

A sickness of some kind,

We want to be healed physically.

We want emotional healing if our heart hurts,

If we're heartbroken,

If we're grieving.

When our mind is hurting with anxiety or depression,

Heavy thoughts,

Limiting beliefs,

We want to heal that.

When we feel like we are experiencing a kind of soul loss or a disconnection from something that has meaning to us,

A sense of connection to nature or to the divine,

However you conceive of that,

Or to other people,

We want to feel that spiritual healing.

And it's just a very interesting question,

What this means for each one of us when we contemplate that word,

Healing.

For me,

When I feel that I want healing,

There's a sense of feeling incomplete,

Of feeling disconnected or feeling a lack of harmony.

And so the desire for healing is a desire to come back into right alignment or to come back into a sense of harmony.

I always think about it with music because music is the language of my life,

Really,

And the language of my heart.

And so to come back into that harmony where everything is working together—melody,

Harmony,

Rhythm,

Everything—is like a kind of healing when things are flowing harmoniously.

So the word healing or heal means to make whole.

And it's a very interesting thing because in all of the wisdom traditions or the mystical traditions,

We are told that we are whole,

That we are actually perfect in our essence.

We have an original goodness,

Which is a term that I really love that I first heard from Eknath Eswaran,

Who has written many translations of ancient texts like the Gita and the Upanishads.

He speaks about our original goodness.

In the Buddhist tradition,

They might speak about basic goodness or the Christ within,

Buddha nature.

Every tradition has a different way of talking about it,

But the idea is that we are whole and complete and we come into this world pure,

Innocent,

And undefiled.

And the irony is that that is true,

And yet we are here to heal our sense of amnesia about that.

Because even though that may be true,

Most of us don't live with that awareness alive within us.

We don't feel that we're whole or that we're complete.

We feel oftentimes broken or unworthy or disconnected or all of these different things that we human beings struggle with in our lives.

And there are so many reasons for that.

From the moment we're born,

As soon as we're incarnated,

There is suffering that comes with that,

Because we're in an impermanent form,

We're in an impermanent body.

So that means that the only thing that is guaranteed is that that body will one day pass.

So there's suffering that's inherent in that.

So we live identified with this impermanent sense of self,

And we live buying into these cultural messages that we're given from a very young age telling us that we're not good enough or that we need all these things from the outside to be happy,

We need to consume,

We need to buy,

We need to invest in all of these different things,

And we lose connection to our essence.

So in many ways,

Healing is like a return trip to remember that.

And I think the journey of healing is so much interwoven with the spiritual journey.

When we do any kind of self-inquiry or spiritual practice,

Often what happens is that the things that are hidden within us,

Or that we've pushed down,

Or that we've rejected,

Or that we don't like,

They begin to come up.

And it's an opportunity for healing.

This is one reason why sometimes doing spiritual practices like meditation or going on retreat can be uncomfortable,

Because it brings many things that are unresolved,

Many things that are weighing on our hearts to the surface.

But what's also fascinating to me is that there's always been a really strong interconnection between religion or spirituality and healing.

In ancient times,

Many priests were also the healers,

Like temple priests.

They did healings for people.

If we think about many indigenous traditions,

Medicine men and women are often healers who have a conduit or connection to the great spirit that they bring into that healing work,

Or shamans,

Or curanderos,

Or the mamos,

Who are the indigenous medicine men from the Sierra Nevada and Colombia,

Whom I've studied with for a while.

All of these different traditions,

These healers are connected in some way to the spirit realm,

Whatever that means to each lineage.

It's a different language.

But to me,

That says that there's a deep connection between the spiritual journey and our spiritual awakening and healing.

I happen to have seen my osteopath a couple of days ago,

And I asked him,

What do you think healing is?

And he said,

It's a reemergence of our originality,

Which I thought was beautiful.

The idea is that everybody has a healer within,

And everybody has that innate wisdom that we all inherently know how to return to homeostasis.

It may not look like what we think it's supposed to look like,

But that's innate within us.

And so,

So many spiritual traditions and healing traditions are here to help us awaken that.

So it's an interesting paradox,

Because on the one hand,

We can say,

No,

I'm whole,

I'm complete.

But on the other hand,

Most of us,

That's not our lived experience,

It's just kind of an intellectual thing.

And so,

How do we live in this world,

And how do we walk the path and hold both of these things?

I think that's the paradox,

And the fascinating thing about the journey in general is that we really have to try to hold all of these things together,

Because they're all true.

The mind doesn't like that very much,

But the heart has no problem with it.

The heart is a unifier,

It can hold all of those things.

So we can be whole and broken at the same time.

I think of healing as a very sacred journey.

And we,

In our modern culture,

Where everything is so fast,

And everything is just,

It's constantly the instant gratification of this,

The instant that,

And quick fix,

And all of these things,

I think in many ways we've lost a connection to the sacredness of healing in general.

And there is,

I think,

A very big difference between healing and curing,

Which I'm sure some of you have thought about before,

But curing,

In many ways,

Is what the Western medical model often thinks of as healing.

And I don't like absolute,

So I don't believe that there's anything bad or wrong with Western medicine or anything.

I think everything is needed.

Everything goes together.

Everything has a place.

Everything has something to offer.

But in general,

When we see the body as a machine,

As just something to fix,

And just give medicine to,

And put a bandage on,

And we don't see a person as an entire universe,

As a whole,

Then we're missing some things.

So,

The idea of curing is more like finding something from the outside to fix us.

But it's possible to cure something and not actually feel healed,

Not actually be healed.

On the flip side,

It's possible to heal but not be cured.

Maybe some of you have heard stories of people who've experienced terminal illnesses,

Who touched a place of really deep peace and acceptance and liberation within themselves.

So maybe their symptoms didn't go away,

Or maybe the illness didn't just vanish,

But there was a healing that happened.

So I think it's really interesting just to think about that.

Is healing the same as curing?

Curing is something that is a destination,

Whereas healing doesn't necessarily have a destination.

It's a journey.

I think some of you know that I experienced a strange illness for a few years before I discovered music and singing,

And that was a really hard time for me.

Just a very difficult time,

Not only physically,

But emotionally and mentally,

I just really at times felt like I couldn't go on.

I had no energy to live my life,

And it was just a time of really deep despair and darkness.

And interestingly enough,

During that time was when I discovered my music.

And when I look back on that time,

I often say,

Well,

I was sick for these years.

But in looking deeply,

I think it's important to ask the question,

Maybe that sickness was the healing.

Maybe when I was ill,

I was healing,

And it looked like sickness,

But maybe actually healing was taking place during that time.

We don't always know,

Because we can't always see through something in the moment.

It's so close,

Like trying to see our own eyeball.

We can't see it.

So sometimes we go through these very difficult periods where we need healing and it feels absent.

We can't find it.

But I just invite you to hold that as a question,

That maybe some part of us knows deep inside that even in those times,

Maybe those difficult moments are a healing in themselves.

I don't know that healing always looks the way we imagine that it should.

A few years ago,

When I first met the Mamos,

Who were teachers of mine that I mentioned before from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta,

They're really quite amazing beings whose lives are completely devoted to serving Mother Earth.

Everything they do is about Mother Earth,

And they really believe when we heal ourselves,

We heal the earth.

When we heal the earth,

We heal ourselves.

When I very first met them,

They were offering healing sessions to people,

And they had everybody who wanted a healing in a room,

And we were all just kind of sitting there waiting for the healing to happen.

Then one of the Mamos came in,

And the Mamos,

By the way,

Are really fascinating,

Unique individuals.

They're chosen through divination before birth,

Usually,

Or at birth,

And many of them spend nine to 18 years in the darkness to attune their consciousness to what's called a luna,

Or to the consciousness of nature,

Of everything.

So they have very unique gifts in being able to understand and read nature like a library.

It's incredible to witness it.

But anyway,

One of them Mamos came in,

And he asked everybody there,

Are you willing to accept your healing in whatever form it comes?

And everybody raised their hand,

And I hesitated for a minute,

Because I knew what he meant by that,

Which was really that we ask for healing,

And sometimes we have an expectation about what that is going to look like or what that means.

But often,

In order to experience healing,

We might need to change our life or change our thinking,

And that is not always easy.

I've had experiences in my life of having a prayer for something,

And the prayer maybe was answered,

But in a way that was not what I imagined I signed up for.

I think healing in general is something that requires patience,

And maybe it's no coincidence that the word patient has multiple meanings,

A patient who's ill and a patient who needs to be patient.

Patience is not the easiest quality to learn and to practice,

At least in my experience.

But I think,

Like anything,

A sacred process like healing,

Whatever it may be,

Really needs that,

That care,

That continued care and continued patience and trust in oneself and trust in life.

So I think that our culture in general has lost a little bit of sight of these sacred healing processes that happen.

We go through so many things in this human life—physical pain,

Illnesses,

Divorce,

Loss,

Miscarriages,

Changes in our lives,

Like deep changes,

You know,

Deep rites of passage that completely transform us.

And we go through these periods where our identity is kind of dismantled in a way,

And our ideas of ourselves come undone when we're in these periods.

And I think that those are times that are very ripe for healing.

But because our culture doesn't honor or value that often,

We feel we have to rush through.

I'm sure some of you have had the experience of grieving and somebody saying,

You know,

Oh,

You're still upset about that?

It's a shaming culture.

Shaming culture that makes us feel that if something is wrong,

If we are not perfect,

If we don't look like our Instagram or something,

If we don't feel well,

If we feel depressed or anxious or heavy or unwell or we're grieving or whatever it may be,

That something's wrong,

That we've somehow failed at life.

And I think that is deeply,

Deeply wrong.

I just don't think that's true.

And I don't believe in that kind of shaming culture,

That kind of shaming message.

I don't think that leads to healing at all.

In fact,

I think that kind of shaming,

Punitive attitude about life and the things that we go through as human beings,

It hurts our hearts when what we need is care.

And so I think that there's a need to reinstate an understanding of the sacredness of the healing journey in whatever area of our life this may be happening,

And to recognize that it's not linear.

What we're moving towards in healing,

In our healing,

We already are.

We're not getting something from outside.

We're moving closer towards the truth that is already here.

We just forgot.

Maybe some of you have heard of Angelus Arrien.

She was a cultural anthropologist.

And years ago,

I read something of hers that really struck me.

She did a lot of study of different Indigenous traditions and shamanic societies,

And she found that oftentimes in these cultures,

When people would feel depressed or disheartened,

That they would go to the medicine person,

And they would ask for help or whatever.

And the medicine person would ask four questions.

When did you stop dancing?

When did you stop singing?

When did you stop being enchanted by stories?

And when did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

It's really powerful contemplation.

I think in many ways,

These aspects of healing,

Where parts of ourselves kind of fall away and we lose our connection to life,

We lose that aliveness within us.

In a culture that is often externally focused,

Where we're always on machines and not really feeling connected to nature or to other people,

It can kind of deaden our souls.

We have to really work to come alive over and over again.

And so I think those questions are really powerful.

I want to,

Before we go into the practice,

Just share this quote that feels so significant to me,

And I really,

Really relate to it.

It's a quote by Stephen Levine,

And he said,

To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear.

To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear.

That just touched my heart so much when I read that,

It actually made me cry.

It almost makes me want to cry,

Just because I think so often,

When we suffer with something physical or mental or emotional or whatever,

That the tendency is that we want to just push that away and just reject that.

Even if a part of our body is hurting,

So often we want to scorn that part of our body.

We just think,

Stop,

I don't like you,

You're hurting me.

When really,

That part of us needs that love,

And it doesn't want us to be afraid,

It wants our attention,

It wants our love.

Those hurt places,

They need our love.

So it's very moving to me personally,

Just thinking about my own path,

And it's a good one to meditate on.

So I'd like to bring that consciousness and the love in that passage and what that means into our practice,

And hopefully bring love to the places that we previously touched with fear,

And allow healing to happen.

Because healing isn't linear,

There's no reason why it can't happen in any moment in time.

It's a lot of ways has to do with our own openness and suspension of judgment about what it should look like or how it should happen.

So I want to offer whatever we're going to do now,

For all of our highs good,

Whatever each of us may need,

That it may be given.

So,

That's my prayer.

So let us invite in and open up to healing.

Just find yourself wherever you may be.

Whatever may be happening in your body,

In your mind,

Or your heart right now,

There's nothing to change about it.

Things change on their own when they're given space to be.

Nothing that needs to be forced,

Changed,

Improved,

Or manufactured in any way.

What we need is to bring our own loving awareness and attention and tenderness to the places within us that feel rejected,

That want to recoil or retract,

That burn or that close down.

We can't approach these parts of ourselves as if they're broken or wrong.

We need to approach them as if they have their own intelligence.

So if you like,

If there's a place in your body that is causing you discomfort,

That feels like a wound,

A tender place,

You can bring your attention to that or you can place your hand on it.

Then just be with this part of you that is hurting,

Whatever it may be.

See if you can touch this place that once felt like fear,

If you can touch that place with love.

Our own attention is the greatest healer.

Our own attention is love itself,

Just presence.

And as you sit and feel your presence with this place,

See if in your own imagination,

Whether visually or as a felt sense in some way,

You can imagine that there's more space being created around this.

More space.

And in that space,

You can sense or feel or see a light emerging.

Filling this place that hurts with light,

Whether in your body,

Whether in your heart,

Mind.

And let the light in.

Just let the light come in.

This part that hurts,

Whatever it may be.

Maybe a messenger or a mindfulness bell in disguise.

We don't know.

But we know that when we reject any part of us,

We cut that part off.

It hurts us somehow.

So we need to embrace and welcome and hold a place for everything.

Let that contraction soften and just let the light come in.

And you can feel and affirm to yourself,

I allow myself to heal.

I allow myself to remember my innate wholeness.

Imagine that the love in your heart,

The peace,

The healing may extend out from you and fill the whole world.

The whole creation lit up by the love and the healing that we're all experiencing.

See our earth surrounded by a beautiful golden light like a golden aura.

Knowing that our own healing and the healing of this planet are interconnected.

We wish that all beings may be peaceful.

We wish that all beings may be happy,

May be well,

May be safe,

May love,

Accept,

And forgive themselves.

We ask that we may have trust in our own inner healing process,

Not compare it to anyone's,

Not abandon our own inner wisdom as we seek the cures and honor the sacred journey of healing.

Thank you.

Reviews

Thank you for your vulnerability. Music heals. When did WE stop singing? I will always hold you in my thoughts as a I warm up on my instrument, as I get into flow with the Metta Sutra. Pura Vida🤍

That was so incredible. Your genuineness shined through and touched me deeply. I have a different perspective on healing now. Thank you so much for showing me a new way to see my path.

Grateful for the thoughts around "healing" and "curing" and how their energies may run concurrent or absent of each other. And the quote by Stephen Levine...so beautiful.
Thank you.

Thank you for sharing this talk and practice with us. Namaste

Thank you 🙏🏼🦋🫶🏼

Thanks Carrie. I have listened to this a few times as I face some needed physical healing. It also brings home the multiple layers of healing present in myself.

I love everything Carrie does! I'm in a health/pain crisis situation right now and searched on pain and found this perfect talk & meditation! Just what I needed to hear. Thank you Carrie for shining your wise and loving light to guide the way for others.💙

Love the distinction between cure and healing and how healing may show up in many forms… and to see healing as touching the places of fear with touches of love… self-compassion in finding your authentic being on the journey is so important. Thank you Carrie- as always this was truly beautiful.

Thank you ! I learned something about respecting my healing that often isn’t what I wanted or expected !

Thank you Carrie 💫 ✨

This is exactly what I needed today. 🙏🏽

🙏🥰

Dearest Carrie, your words, your voice, your reflections are in and of itself such a beautifully powerful healing conduit. So So grateful for your presence and the open invitation to gently walk the healing journey back into our rememberance and to owning or own wholeness.♥️

Carrie, This resonated so much with me. I’ve had uncomfortable physical symptoms for the last five years and along this journey I have come to understand that they are messages from my inner knowing. Thank you for sharing your insights, which helped put a deeper lense on this journey for me. I will listen to this often as there are so many gems to help me. Your vulnerability is beautiful and contagious and I am so grateful for your gifts. ⭕️

Thank you

Oh my! This is so full of compassion, generosity, courage, faith, patience. You,once again, embody loving kindness. Thank you Beautiful one. My cup truly is overflowing now. Namaste

Such a deep and wise reflection on the powerful healing that resides within us. Thank you Carrie for this beautiful talk and practice which honors our own healing potential and power within 🙏🏻❤️‍🩹🙏🏻❤️‍🩹🙏🏻

💓🙏

Thank you for this beautiful healing

Thank you so much for this. It touched my heart and I healed a little more ❤️‍🩹