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Healing or Curing?
Healing is often confused with curing. But although there are similarities, they’re not the same thing.
The word healing actually comes from the old English ‘hal,’ which means whole, and it’s also the root of the word ‘holy’. The effect of healing is to make whole the parts of us which have become fragmented. Where we feel the pain of brokenness.
So what’s the difference between healing and curing? Healing may result in us having the strength to cope with situations and conditions that would otherwise be unbearable. But it doesn’t necessarily make them go away.
Curing implies that the condition is dealt with, so that it no longer troubles us, at least superficially. We search for cures for all kinds of common and rare diseases, but with healing it’s often the other way round. In our deepest distress, we are also at our most open, and then it’s healing that finds us.
Earlier this year, I was asked if I would see an elderly man who was in the final stages of cancer. We met regularly over a period of a few months. Sometimes he would be brought to me by his daughter, other times I would visit him in his home. He was charming, and a great character, and he bore his illness with fortitude and dignity. Would it seem strange if I were to say that they were joyful meetings? Yet they were!
We called them healing sessions, and he found them very soothing and comforting. Our final meeting, he was very weak, very frail. I sat by his bed, and we talked a little, and when talking became no longer necessary, we listened to the silence. When I left him, he was sleeping, and I knew I wouldn’t see him again. He died two days later. Afterwards, his daughter told me these sessions had made all the difference, not just to her father, but to the whole family.
The healing process brings a sense of deep inner peace. It releases energy that has become blocked by old hurts and fears that are nevertheless difficult to let go of, and which sometimes manifest as physical illnesses. It can allow us to come to terms with and accept things in our lives that are difficult and that require real courage and honesty to face up to. That require forgiveness.
It can allow us to see aspects of ourselves we are not so comfortable with, that we’ve rejected, and to acknowledge ownership of them. To do this is psychologically and physically extremely healthy, and indeed a vital step on the path to healing.
Curing and healing both imply the relief of pain. But healing is deeper. It results in an inner shift, and the benefits are felt like the ripples in a pool, improving the life of the person who has experienced the healing and, in all kinds of ways, the lives of the people closest to them.
Healing, wholeness, and holiness are all related through that little word ‘hal’. Which indicates that healing is much more than a relief of certain symptoms. It’s a deep and sacred process that brings us to fullfilment and completion, and in doing so empowers us to find the happiness we all seek.
Be here now
Are you looking for wholeness in your life? Is achieving wholeness your goal, your aim? People talk about wholeness, but what do they actually mean by it? What is it we seem to be lacking, or sense is broken in us? What is it that needs to be made whole?
Recently I’ve been reflecting on the concept of wholeness in connection with the practice of mindfulness, which is – very basically – about being more present to ourselves and to the way we live our lives. It’s about being more fully conscious of what’s happening in and around us, more fully aware.
Mindfulness and consciousness are not exactly the same thing, but they’re close. You could say, mindfulness is the awareness of being conscious. And you could also say that the complete awareness of consciousness equals wholeness.
So there you are: a series of little metaphysical equations, leading to completeness. Something we may be looking for but rarely seem to find. Or if we do, not for long. Just brief moments. Gazing at a perfect sunset, experiencing the stillness and silence of a forest glade, filling our senses with the scent and sound of the sea – these kind of moments, when we’re suddenly made aware of the sheer power and beauty of nature, can call us vividly into the present.
And when we’re present like this, with our entire attention, our entire being, you could say that’s an experience of wholeness. We experience it in ourselves and at the same time we’re connected to a greater cosmic wholeness. It feels almost supernaturally good, but actually it’s our normal existence that’s out of sync with this ever-present, healing connection to nature, and to a more natural and wholesome way of being.
We search for wholeness because we feel fragmented. Because our attention is scattered, our minds bombarded with thought upon thought. Lost in thinking and busyness, we lose conscious awareness of the reality of our lives. Living in our heads, our actual living becomes mindless. It’s as if we ourselves have become scattered, broken into pieces. We become prone to anxiety, to depression, to addictions. We need to make the pieces fit together again.
Living mindfully, we find that the brokenness was an illusion. We were complete and whole all along! And the more moments of mindful integration we experience, the more aware of our unbroken – unbreakable – wholeness we become.
Try it. Still your mind for a few minutes. Be here now.