If you want to heal the world, start by healing yourself

You already have what it takes to help heal the world you live in.

You can create healing on this planet. The trick is to begin with yourself, and do your own healing from within. You are not responsible for healing the rest of us, and you don’t have the power to decide for others.

All healing is self healing, which means that others heal from within themselves too. You can never do someone else’s healing for them, because it's not your job. However, you have an important effect on how and whether others choose to heal themselves. You might be unaware of the power you possess to do this.

We help each other’s healing process in numerous ways. Thankfully, we have brilliant healers and teachers and doctors who know how to facilitate healing, who know how to help us, body and spirit, to heal ourselves.

There isn’t one correct way to create healing.

For one person, better nutrition changes everything; for another, meditation is the ticket; while a third may need a particular medication, or a combination of all of these. Someone else miraculously heals from a difficult illness after changing his life around to be more true and happy for him. It happens every day.

Every honest healer will tell you that it is the patient who decides to heal. Healing isn’t bestowed upon anyone. You decide, I decide. This is your spirit, and the truth of healing is that all healing begins in your spirit. Your healing may not look like a conventional healing to someone who can only see conventionally, so don't get stuck on trying to prove anything to anyone else either. Learn to listen to yourself and do it your way.

It’s important to remember that you are already a healer, and that it’s not your job to go around giving away your healing energy to anyone else, because it won’t help them.

Here are a few ways you can help others to heal.

Take responsibility for your own energy. You’re the one who gets to decide what energy you cart around with you all day long, and therefore, all lifetime long. When you consciously carry a happy positive vibration of energy with you, and are aware of what you’re running throughout your day, you become a true healing to anyone you come across.

That hello you give to the cashier, the smile to that old woman on the street, your patience with your fellow commuters – all of this contributes to bringing healing and kindness wherever you go. You are a healer.

If, on the other hand, you are unconsciously carrying your unhappy mood around with you all day, if you blame your woes on other people, events or situations that ‘happened’ to you, or it’s the fault of the economy, or your parents, or your boss, you are not doing your own work.

This is the energy you are leaving behind you everywhere you go, and it is toxic. You will create more problems for yourself, because you are being unconscious. You can change this for yourself, anytime.

You can decide to shake yourself awake and begin to heal yourself. You are the only one who can do this. Nobody out there bestows healing on you, and they can’t magically make all your problems go away either. If you are waiting for permission to heal yourself, remember that it’s you who gives yourself that permission. Doctors, the medical establishment, your teachers, family, and friends, are not in charge of your healing. You are. No excuses.

Stop trying to ‘fix’ others.

You might have the best of intentions. Your brother/nephew/mother/friend/partner … is stuck. You can see his suffering, you feel her pain. It’s driving you crazy, because you know that if she just does this thing or that, her life will improve. And so you tell her what she should do, repeatedly. It’s frustrating, because she doesn’t seem to understand the wisdom of your words.

In fact, it seems to you that she’s deliberately making bad choices that only seem to make her situation worse. Yet, you keep trying to fix her, you get angry at her for screwing up her life this way, you judge her. And - she’s going to change exactly when she decides to do so, anyway, and despite your well meaning intervention.

If you stop judging others, you’re gifting them with the greatest gift you can give. If you mind your own business, offer to help and do what you can to give without insisting that your way is the right way, you may be surprised by how much of a healing you bring.

Your relationship with yourself matters, a lot.

Do your own work: your emotional work, spiritual work, and the work of being present in your life. Make no mistake about it, this is work. Once you step up and say ‘yes, I’m ready to take responsibility for myself’, you are doing your own work. Some of the challenges you’ll run into as you step into your own work include: loving and forgiving yourself, letting go of the past, forgiving others who hurt you, and then doing it all over again later today, and tomorrow, and every day after that.

It’s not easy, but it’s your work, and only you can do it. Nobody else can do it for you, though many can help facilitate your healing, can make it safer for you to do your work. That is why there are so many of us here. The biggest battlefield you may encounter in your life is in your own head, or within your body. Sometimes we wage war on ourselves, unconsciously. When you declare a ceasefire within yourself, your outside world will reflect that.

Do you know a couple who always seems at odds, who can’t seem to say one civil word to each other? They might be married or not, and it seems so odd that they stick together. Maybe there is such a couple in your family, or among your friends. It’s really uncomfortable to be around them, isn’t it, even painful? They are always in a battle of some kind.

When you have a difficult relationship with yourself, you’re acting like that unhappy couple, except it’s just you. If you can’t say a civil word to yourself, or to your body, you have a battle going on within yourself. And only you can end the fighting.

Everything changes when you turn back to yourself, in a friendly way, and begin to say hello to you, without judgment.

Do your work and allow others to do theirs. You can encourage, help, listen, and allow them to be where they need to be. When you choose to do this, you are bringing healing to the rest of the world.

• ©Kris Cahill
  ‘Plant on the Brick Wall’ ©George Hodan