Healing & Devotion
Healing is a devotional process, not the finish line.
Healing is different from cure. “Cure” is a prevalent idea in our culture, a goal that we hear
about every day as pink ribbons display themselves on plastic yogurt containers in the name of a cure for breast cancer, as we cover our wrists in plastic bands with colors symbolizing particular illnesses we hope may vanish from Earth in our lifetime, and as researchers toil in search of cures for all manner of diseases.
Whenever we take a painkiller, receive antibiotics, or go in for a surgical procedure the underlying wish is to be cured. Cure implies a finish line, a time when the particular suffering or struggle of illness is entirely removed from the bodymind.
The idea of a cure fits in with the prevailing mechanistic paradigm that defines so much of our collective thinking about health; we think of our bodies like machines.
If something goes wrong we imagine that we must replace or correct the offending part with
chemical agents or surgical intervention. Sometimes this works. When it does, it is like a miracle.
I think this phenomenon of cure is what we speak of when we talk about the “miracle of
modern medicine.” It is astonishing to be cured. It is astonishing because it is not the normal
turn of events nor the way that our psyches are built to interact with pain and suffering. The
natural way for human beings to interact with pain and suffering is to seek healing. Healing is
our birthright. Cure is an exception.
Healing is about the soul and about connection. It is an ongoing process that may or may not
include the removal of symptoms. We can think of healing as a cyclical journey like the moon’s
path around the Earth, the Earth’s path around the sun, or the migration of creatures with the
seasons. When we seek healing our wounds and illnesses become our teachers, requiring us to
develop strength, compassion, and insight that we may never have found otherwise. Healing is
something to which a person devotes him-or-herself like a garden, or a friend, or a spiritual
practice. Healing is possible even while symptoms remain. That may be the hardest part for
people like me who grew up in mainstream American culture to accept. Healing acknowledges
our human vulnerability and ultimate mortality and does not seek to cheat death or erect
psychological defenses against its inevitability. It is the process of navigating our vulnerability
through our connection to Self and to one-another.
Sometimes, healing is accompanied by the relief of certain symptoms or even a complete cure. It is always marked by deepening of the connection to Self and the rest of the web of life, and by the sense that it is a continual process, like breathing.
