Healing, Meditation and Spirituality are Linked and Work Together

Healing, meditation and spirituality are linked and work together.  Meditation heals, and healing improves meditation. Spirituality is what bonds healing and meditation together.

If you’re having trouble in meditation you may need to receive healing to clear the way. Similarly, meditation will improve your healing ability by raising your consciousness.

The convergence of healing, meditation and spirituality is easily missed. Healing and meditation are foundational  practices of spirituality. The end state of these practices is spirituality itself, with a caveat: Spirituality is an inborn, natural state, and practices aren’t there to get to any state. Although spirituality is already  a part of human makeup, it tends to be left uncovered, unclaimed and unacknowledged. (What is ‘Spiritual’ Practice?)

Often life circumstances are sequenced in a specific pattern that leads to a spiritual ‘awakening,’ or sometimes there’s an affinity to spirituality from early on.

Spirituality is the embodiment of the truth that the way we know ourselves as bodies and individual egos is a very limited self-identity, one that traps us in many other erroneous identities and mistaken notions about life.

Go back to that state of pure being, where the ‘I am’ is still in its purity before it gets contaminated with ‘this I am’ or ‘that I am.’ Your burden is of false self-identification — abandon them all.

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

Just as spirituality is built-in at our origin, so is the impulse to know it. We obscure this impulse in a myriad of ways, yet it never ceases to make itself known. It’s the impulse to know our true selves.

In this quest (it’s a quest whether one thinks they are actively engaged in it or not) healing and  meditation are trusty companions, guides and deep inner resources. Without them we can’t see past our body and ego, and when the body or ego is in trouble we can’t get ourselves out of it.

In meditation, we train the mind to wake up. First we train it to focus on what is happening in the moment, underneath our habitual self-absorption.

— Sakyong Mipham

Unless our mind and heart wake up, we’re stuck in a dualistic mode which separates our experiences and the world into me/other, either/or, good/bad, and so on. This creates a fragmented and separate life experience which keeps us small and disconnected.

You want to be happy, healthy, safe and loved. The only real way that can happen is if you get to know your true self. You can still have a career, family, and good retirement, but unless your true nature is known to you, fulfillment remains elusive and distant.

— Pamir Kiciman (Healing Up and Healing Down)

Our true self is knowable. There are 1000s of years of teachings that tell us so. What’s consistent in all of them is meditation and healing.

Meditation is the way of enlightenment. Enlightenment may be big or small, but it always points to our true nature. Enlightenment doesn’t have to be fully ripened to receive its tremendous benefits. Meditation also works out many knots in the psyche. It’s a steady and patient path. Many resist meditation because it’s so unlike all the modes of being that they have bought into, whereas meditation is in fact natural and comfortable.

On the other hand, healing the dramas and pains of our life leads to awakening to our true self which is abiding. Various dramas and pains obscure the true self. These occupy our time and awareness. They also create misidentification. We start to feel we are the current drama or suffering in our life. We treat these as permanent states of being, whereas in fact they are merely occurring. A painful situation or physical condition is something that happens, it’s not where we reside. (Video: Does Your Diagnosis Define You?)

We identify with the body because it’s visible and tangible, and constantly gives us biofeedback. We identify with the mind because our thoughts are relentless. We identify with emotions because they’re a huge part of our subjective experience. And these are the things that preoccupy us most of the time. Sometimes we question our place in the grand scheme of things, our purpose, the meaning of life, and the nature of the universe.

We contemplate these questions in short bursts; they seem impenetrable. So we go about the business of being a man or woman, a dad or mom, a son or daughter, as husband or wife. It gives us an anchor. Yet life in its mystery often unmoors us in unexpected ways.

We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a meaning or power beyond our visible world. An idea or practice is “spiritual” when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.

— Robert C. Fuller

We also encounter the spiritual when something is broken outside or inside and we need healing. Healing is an inherently spiritual experience even if it’s the healing of body parts. When our attention is drawn by a healing crises, there’s a tremendous opportunity for awakening. Do we have to awaken? No. But usually suffering continues if we don’t.

What are we waking up to? It can be as simple as:

To be spiritual means to be solid, calm, and peaceful, and to be able to look deeply inside and around us.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

Surely everyone can benefit from this. It’s curious why there’s a lot of resistance to our spirituality. All the teachings say that spirituality gives us untold gifts. There’s a very practical side to it too:

Spirituality concerns our own motivation, while secular activity implies working in the world. Because motivation pervades all action, it is important that we have a positive motivation. Whatever we are involved in, whether it’s politics, education, medicine, law, engineering, science, business or industry, the nature of our motivation determines the character of our work.

— Dalai Lama

That’s true intelligence. It’s an intelligent and fulfilling way to live and work. If we don’t live with spirituality enhanced by meditation and healing, we live with greed and aggression. We live with fear and restlessness. Illness has its way with us and our emotional life becomes difficult. We also become less discerning and mental fogginess sets in.

Since systems are only as functional as their parts, society too suffers the ill-effects of individual troubles. (Earth and Humanity’s New Narrative)

Spirituality is not a luxury anymore; we need to be spiritual in order to overcome the difficulties of our time.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

What would the world be like if more of its citizens practiced meditation and self-healing, and helped others heal?

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