Healing of the Heart
Healers are commonly ordinary people, being not the source of the healing power but its conduit or tool. This is a gift we give each other. If nothing else, as a healer in general, whatever you sing out to others, they may later sing it back to you. Hopeful or dismal, they'll come back with the same tune, because we learn from each other all the time, and because to say a thing is to mark it with your approval.
To be a healer is sometimes to be a locksmith. In such a case, you must be the right person at the right time, responding in the right way. This is not a one-time cure-all. It is a step, and you may even be only one of many different locksmiths needed over a long period of time. To turn the key, there must be something real, immediate, fresh, and genuinely you about your response. You must not add drama to the issue at hand. In fact, you must diffuse it if you can, even if there is also real energy, excitement, and other feeling generated by your interaction. You must also be ready, willing, and able to let go when the time comes. You must be patient through uncertainty or a long process, but you must also learn to know when you are not helping and when to change your approach or stop.
To be healed, you must be open to letting the right others, even those who are unexpected, turn your keys. Your part is just as active as theirs. But you must also accept that you cannot make an inappropriate person be your locksmith, no matter how you may feel. And, just as your healers, you must learn to let go when it is time.
Apart from being acknowledged and supported, what people often seem to need most is to be able to let go of endless judgment of themselves and others, both from themselves and others; to be met where they are and to know they are accepted as they are. It is one thing to try to secure the rights and freedoms of everyone by guarding against or dealing with harmful behavior and to acknowledge or, in some circumstances, even provide appropriate consequences for ill conduct. It is another to expect someone to be punished forever for an error, especially if it has been acknowledged and learned from and an effort is being made not to repeat it. And it is something else again to do nothing or, worse yet, contribute to suffering when someone experiences needless misery and distress over things about her or himself as a person and her or his past that are not actually wrong or that she or he is not responsible for.
There comes a time to simply tell the truth - or to let go of what cannot or will not be known - and let things be. Peace begins in this way. The heart heals when it is at peace. What a joyous and gracious gift to let others and yourself know that there is a limit to the drama of events and that we can relax and be ourselves, even as imperfect as we are. Let us be new together, even as we give our history its due. Our being human deserves no less.
If we know our values and value who we are, we need not sacrifice one for the other. We can face ourselves and meet each other with well founded optimism and pleasure. Be generous with your heart, and let healing happen where it may.
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