The Intersection of Healing and Spirituality
The Australian National University defines Spiritual Health as “not referring to any particular religious or spiritual practice or ideology but to the human need of meaning, purpose, and connection to something greater than ourselves. It is a very diverse and often individualised aspect to health, giving context and meaning to all other parts of ourselves and our life experiences.”
For most of my life I didn’t identify as particularly, “spiritual.” My family attended a Unitarian Universalist church for a brief part of my childhood. I didn’t absorb much from this experience other than the witnessing of a religion that believes all the others can exist in harmony. This made intuitive sense to me, but I preferred to dedicate my time to understanding the quantifiable sciences, nonetheless.
Leaning into existential questions and a more mindful awareness has happened both organically and gradually as I navigate my own healing journey. From deep pain comes raw vulnerability and from this vulnerable state, I started to be able to surrender and release. I’ve since realized that challenging life circumstances and the pain we experience as humans can and often does act as a catalyst for people to start living a more grateful and authentic life. By authentic, I mean living from a heart-centered reality. To treat our own being and others with unconditional love is an act of reverence for life. We have the unique power as humans to intentionally create a life that is beautifully connected to the rhythms of Nature and in harmony with our environment. When we live with intention, we live with meaning - regardless of our external circumstance(s).
Real, deep healing is painful and there is no quick fix. Ironically, for pain to go away, we often must sit with it. We don’t free ourselves from difficult emotions by resisting them. This reluctance to face difficult emotions is why so many grown adults are still reactive like small children today. They are stuck in a mentally painful place and have never spent time with parts of themselves that feel unsafe, so these parts come out reflexively when their minds feel threatened.
Sitting with pain is tremendously difficult. Therefore, it is easiest for us to (perhaps subconsciously) react in ways that keep us feeling safe. The nervous system is always trying to keep us safe. From an evolutionary perspective, it was advantageous to occasionally turn on a mode of hypervigilance and defensiveness to avoid harm and survive. The problem is now that many of us remain in this state of arousal, maybe even all the time.
From a scientific perspective, pain is processed in both the logical centers in our brain (prefrontal cortex) and the lower, more survival-oriented centers (like the amygdala). A pain state (whether it be physical, mental, or emotional pain) is often one of sympathetic activation, also known as the fight or flight response, in the nervous system. So, if you are in a state of pain, your body cannot regenerate. You physically cannot heal while you are stuck in state of feeling like a victim because the biology associated with this nervous system state contradicts that process.
We are often told by well-meaning professionals still indoctrinated by a failing, profit-driven system that we will “have this ____ condition for life.” The conventional mentality is that we are victims of circumstance. We have “bad genes.” NOTE: The study of epigenetics helps us understand why this is not the full story.
What healing has taught me is to take my illness and related pain, into my own hands. It’s forced me into health agency. And in doing so, I was able to recognize and honor the innate healing capacity of the human body. And when you accept that your body is infinitely wise, you start to believe in a power surrounding us that is greater than what we typically acknowledge. When you believe that you can heal, you are no longer a victim of circumstance. You become greater than a condition that you previously identified with.
When you are in the throes of chronic disease, you may experience pain daily in various forms. Underneath these healing pains are opportunities to sit with what aches. When we acknowledge these raw places, we can begin the process of soothing them; we stop controlling them or wishing them away and instead sit with the emotions of what is currently present. For me, this process has looked like reminding those physically (and often intimately connected emotionally) hurt parts of myself that I am also well under this pain. Life is a strange paradox of living while dying. Many truths all simultaneously exist at one time, depending on where your focus is. Where do you really want your focus to be if you had a choice? Because you do.
The belief that unfathomable pain holds the potential gift of living life more deeply helps transition my own perspective to one that feels more peaceful, grateful even. Contemplating the ways in which me witnessing these extremely tough, painful experiences might serve my soul’s greater purpose is enough to alchemize my mindset. What if the worst thing to ever happen to you ended up being the best thing that has ever happened to you? Have you heard this before? How does me saying this make you feel? Pay attention to those feelings. Our emotions are great guides into our internal belief systems that absolutely influence our external world, even if mostly on a subconscious level.
Could you shift your mindset from one of suffering from a chronic disease to a narrative where you are powerful and deeply intentional with your thoughts, words, and actions? What if you carefully and diligently curated that mindset ahead of the actual experience? This conscious shift in mental-emotional terrain is the basis of the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, who leads retreats all over the world where people experience seemingly miraculous healings and reclaim their lives.
The self-work of reconnecting to meaning and purpose is a consistent, daily practice. When we make consistent, conscious choices repeatedly, we can change our lives. Luckily, there are poets and ancient texts that have speculated on the deeper meaning of life for thousands of years if we want to enrichen our understanding with this ancestral wisdom. But as the Australian National University stated above, assigning belief to a particular ideology is not necessary to have a spiritual experience. To have a spiritual practice is to deepen our internal experience to one that feels aligned, worthy, and connected to ourselves and others. It is to attach significance and meaning to your pain in order to grow and expand around it. To experience profound healing is to experience a life lesson in profound trust.
One of the most prominent teachings from my own healing journey is that when you believe pain is a sacred portal, you deepen your experience of life. And to live more deeply is what we could all hope for while residents on a tiny blip in the cosmos that is life right now on planet Earth.
A great resource to learn more about the power of your thoughts is the book Biology of belief by Bruce Lipton, PhD. I also recommend all of Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work.
Interested in seeing how your mindset could be channeled to augment your healing process? See link below to set up a free discovery call - I would love to support you.