How to Heal Your Spirit

Part of my goal over the last few years has been to merge the many parts of myself. Some time ago, I realized I had compartmentalized so well that I had disassembled myself. The result was a one-dimensional woman. Logic and pragmatism ruled while the other parts of me were locked away. I was no longer in touch or comfortable with my emotions. My intuition was dulled, and my connection to God was threadbare.

The first mission was to resurrect my emotions. It felt a lot like opening a dam, too much too fast, with no language or skills to help me cope. I wanted to shut off again, but I knew my discomfort was the result of disuse, not an inability to emote or cope.

Even with all that, I still felt blocked and uprooted. It took way too much time for me to recognize the signs of a parched spirit. I was internally weary all the time. I was out of flow and ungrounded. More, I felt hopeless and disconnected. I tried to ease these symptoms with food, books, journaling, therapy, wine, happy TV shows, painting, coloring, etc. Then one day, I meditated while standing under the Cherry Blossom tree in my backyard. Listening to the ancient tree grounding meditation, I watched the sky and felt the tension melt away. Then I felt it. It was the same sense of rightness that came over me the first time I went to therapy, and when I published my first blog post.

Keep your connection to spirit current at all times.

I was raised a nondenominational Christian. My mom was raised Baptist but felt it was too rigid for her liking. She’d always had a connection to spirit, which was something she and I shared. Having a sensitive intuition meant we often did not fit in with normal Christian settings or share the beliefs. For one, I believe in magic. I believe that Christ was wholly tapped into the powers of the universe and used 100% of his brain. I believe man’s real punishment was not the loss of favor and being kicked out of Eden, but the loss of the connection and power. I also believe that some people are more tapped in and connected, and some are not.

As a child, I had premonitions, never good ones, which freaked me out. My mom worked the night shift when she needed overtime, and my sisters and I stayed with my grandmother. One of those nights, I was at my grandmother’s house getting ready for bed when suddenly I could not stop thinking about my mother. I started crying, saying I wanted her to come home. A little later, my mom called to say she’d hit a deer. It was late, but my grandmother insisted my mother talk to me. The car was wrecked, and she was sore but otherwise okay.  Like most children, I had a heightened discernment of people’s spirit and intentions. There were family members and family friends I would not even speak to. Being shy worked in my favor as an excellent excuse for not wanted to talk to folks with bad vibes. I also felt, and later, saw spirits. I clearly remember the day I saw the negative spirits that followed my father. He was drinking and was about to start one of his angry rants, and the spirits were elated. Terrified, I asked him to pray with me on the spot, and while he recited the Lord’s Prayer, I asked God to remove the bad spirits and make them leave my dad alone. I was 5.

Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.

Corrie Ten Boom

Sunday school teachers said prophets were divine, but magic and psychics were evil. All the things Jesus did were miracles, but no one could tell me the difference. What is the difference between miracles and magic? What’s the difference between prophets and psychics? Aren’t they most likely getting their information from the same source? Why are people so apt to believe text that was written thousands of years ago and translated nearly as many times, but they cannot believe the divine still thrives today? How can people believe in an afterlife but not in spirits? How can they believe in resurrection, but not reincarnation?

I was baffled and sometimes very vocal about it. Eventually, I was gently removed from Sunday School. My family and I figured out I was more comfortable listening to the sermons. What I learned in Sunday School, and most of my time in church, was that my connection to God was somehow weak and tainted. For one, I questioned God too much. Second, I believed in things like magic, aliens, and psychic powers. Third, I couldn’t speak in tongues, a special language with God, and I could not hear him in the way most other people described.

But I could feel God everywhere. I believed in fate and the connection of all things and beings…except spiders. I never got caught up in the differences between religions and deities. In my heart, I knew they were one and the same, each colored by the perspective and culture of the worshippers, but variations of the same guiding spirit. To me, it was as simple as, same power, different names. And Jesus? Well, he was the perfect manifestation of a pure soul, of what we all could be and could do had we not lost or watered down the connection to the universe. When I was young, I had unwavering faith and boundless hope.

The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.

Caroline Myss

Now, at 34, there is a thick, viscous layer of smog between me and my connection. The messages are garbled, or they come too fast or too hazy to understand. I question myself, and at one point, my own sanity. Fear and hopelessness have tainted my beliefs and my connection to spirit. Cynicism and anger at the human race have made me question… Well, everything. And as I work hard to clear the smog, I find that I am unnerved and terrified to be that open again. To feel what others feel, see the threads that connect people, and hear the messages from beyond with no proven method to protect myself is frightening. I am fearful of being unprotected while wide open to the world.

Rarely do I pray for myself beyond those for safety and guidance because God has better things to do than fix the messes I make in the world. More, I knew that God knew my heart. As clumsy and squishy as it is, it is usually in the right place, so I felt we were in agreement. Yet, slowly, so slowly I didn’t notice, the prayers stopped entirely. Now, let me be clear. I have never been a formal or daily prayer. Even as a child, I disliked the Lord’s Prayer. It always felt off to me, too rigid and impersonal, and I never got into the habit of saying it nightly. However, I prayed a lot. I communicated with my higher power all the time until I didn’t. By the time I noticed, my only form of prayer was touching my mother’s necklace that hangs in my car, which only happened on the difficult mornings. And while my spirit knows that was enough, because God knows my heart, it really wasn’t.

The universe had been tapping me on the shoulder about my lack of spiritual practice for a good while. I’d meditate now and then, do a little EAM, listen to a sermon, or blast some old school gospel, but I didn’t have a practice. I had a first aid kit.

If we do not fill our mind with prayer, it will fill itself with anxieties, worries, temptations, resentments, and unwelcome memories.

Scott Hahn

We enrolled our son in a private, Christian based preschool. It was small, affordable, and flexible with skill levels. However, every now and then, I was concerned about what he was learning because I did not attend the church and couldn’t attend the chapel most Fridays. Keep in mind that my husband is a nonpracticing Muslim, and weddings and funerals aside, I have not attended an in-person service since I was 21 years old. When I asked Monster what he thought of chapel services at school, he said he hated when it was his class’s turn to lead because he had to do things in front of people. Okay, he’s introverted, so that makes sense. Then I asked what he thought about the bible lessons, he shrugged and said, “All I really know is God is love.” And about Jesus, he said, “Yup, him too.” It was a huge relief to know he wasn’t talking fire, brimstone, and condemnation. More than that, it felt like a call to come home.

I have 34 years of angst and pent-up fear, rejection, and frustration with the institution of religion. Yet, until I turned 30, I unerringly believed the universal truth that it is all love. That is the point of everything. The rest is irrelevant, and so is the past. Not only had I stopped believing it, but I also stopped living it as well.

When I’m dense, the universe speaks my favorite language, books! For the last few months, all these books about spirituality and spiritual practices have practically thrown themselves at me. I’m starting to feel like the prince from Cinderella, trying to find the owner of a tiny little glass slipper. Still, the information flow has been enlightening and entertaining. One book was incredibly healing. It made me realize that I had let shame and isolation become stronger than my faith. In my dark moments, I stopped believing in unconditional love and light; I stopped believing I deserve it. I cannot say what was different about this time than all the others. I only know that this time I lost my connection and my beliefs that all things are ordered, and love and light reign.

So now I’m faced with trying to locate Cinderella, aka a spiritual practice that fits and nourishes me. I love to pray and meditate, but they tend to my now, present day. There is an ever-present sensation of feeling stuck in or between the past and some version of the present. There is an almost physical internal block that I can feel inside me that feels like a locked seat beat, protective, but too tight, restricting, and almost painful. More than anything else, that feeling has led me on the hunt for other spiritual practices in hopes that one day I can merge the compartmentalized parts of me and remove the blocks that lock me in place. This time, I pray I do not make the mistake of only having a surface healing. I need to heal the limiting beliefs and make peace with the past.

When there is an incident in your life that has caused you pain, and you hold it in memory in service to protect you from future pain, you have aligned to pain.

Paul Selig, The Book of Knowing and Worth: A Channeled Text

You know you’ve only had a surface healing when the lesson or issue keeps showing up in different ways. The problem will resurface in new manifestations like Whack-A-Mole. You’ll feel like you’ve taken steps backward, which can be disheartening and frustrating. Don’t fret. The problem doesn’t recur to hurt or torture you. It is the exact opposite. You’ve been given another opportunity to be set free once and for all. However, that will require you to dig deep and almost literally scoop out all the icky parts. Have you ever had to clean mold? If so, you know you cannot leave even a trace, or it will regrow. You also have to change the conditions that contributed to the growth.

True healing, I’m finding, is exactly like eradicating mold. Sometimes a good deep cleaning is necessary, and sometimes a complete renovation is the only solution. Either way, it will take persistence and vigilance. You will also need to find ways to heal your mind, body, and soul as the body and soul will retain memories and trauma long after the mind has mended. No matter which treatment your soul requires, may you find the strength to complete the journey and the peace that comes with a full spectrum healing.

I break the cycles and patterns of behavior that bind me and no longer serve me. I make space for new patterns that will heal and elevate my life.

Cece V

Image by John Hain from Pixabay