Notes on becoming a conscious healer

There are many ways of being a healer, some of them conscious, and some not.

You can be the healer in your family, job, or group of friends, without being aware of your role.

What does this mean exactly? Well, you could be the peacemaker, or the one who keeps it together for the others. You might soak up everyone’s troubles, maybe you are the sounding board for your friends’ problems.

Ever had anyone say to you, “wow, I feel so much better every time I see you!”? While meanwhile you feel worse, and are wondering why. Perhaps you are the one at your job who acts like the grown up, surrounded by a bunch of unruly kids.

You may already be a healer.

You might even be an out of control healer – without getting validated for it, or being able to use your healing ability for yourself. But that can all change, and it’s up to you to change it.

If you are waiting for the others to suddenly wake up and start taking care of themselves, don’t hold your breath. It starts with you becoming aware of what it is you are using your energy for. You are the one who gets to create this change for yourself, by being the one who decides to wake up.

What is it you are waking up to? Well, for starters, an awareness of your value, perhaps an understanding of your own energy, as well as your many abilities.

What and who are you spending your valuable energy on, and why? Are you healing someone else because you feel obligated, guilty, or are you trying to be accepted? Guilt is one of the worst here. One way you might heal others is by not having the kind of life you truly want, because you feel guilty that they don’t have it.

Perhaps you want to help everyone be well, thinking that if you just heal them enough they will begin to do this for themselves. Why should they, when you are doing such a good job?

Maybe you take care of others because it gives you the perfect excuse to avoid dealing with your own life, unfulfilled dreams, and problems. “They really needed me, I felt bad” is a common picture out of control healers will use to stay stuck.

All of this amounts to you giving away your own energy, sometimes to people who have no gratitude or awareness of what it is you are doing.

Some of them might know they feel better when you’re around. That can be the reason you keep doing it - others tell you how great you are. Your value becomes based on what you are doing for others, instead of being for yourself. An added bonus is that if you stop healing everyone, they may learn to do this for themselves.

I am not suggesting that it is bad to help people in need.

In fact, I advocate giving to others, but from a conscious, clear place. You can give without giving away. People become depleted of their energy from giving it away without replenishing themselves. You can reverse this process, and by doing so become the healing.

What do I mean by this? By becoming responsible for your own energy instead of everyone else’s, by letting go of control you really don’t have anyway, by giving to yourself, you can begin the process of recovering your own energy. It makes it easier to see clearly, and to find your own answers about what it is you truly want.

By doing this for yourself, you actually become healing to be around. Without having to Do, and just by Being, you create healing in the world. Others may try to match you, to follow your lead. What a wonderful healing for the world, a planet filled with conscious healers!

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

- Audre Lorde

• ©Kris Cahill
  ''Blue Morpho Butterfly' ©Vera Kratochvil on PublicDomainPictures.net