I didn’t grow up as a spiritual person. In fact, I wasn’t familiar with spiritual matters outside of the context of religion. Sure, I was dragged to church when I was little and went on Christmas and Easter. But it was more of a social gathering than anything else. I wasn’t concerned with my soul or the afterlife until my father was diagnosed with cancer (just a few years after his brother died from cancer the day before my last college final exam). That was when I found my first book about a near-death experience.
Reading about the incredible NDE calmed my nerves about an afterlife but being in my early twenties, I was more concerned with finding a career and my love life than anything else.
I still didn’t know about spirituality when, in my mid-thirties, my very first hypnotherapist asked me to connect to my higher self. Having no clue what she was talking about (because I was seeing her to help with weight loss), I had to ask what a higher self was. In the middle of her explanation, I had what I can only call “an experience”.
Suddenly I was no longer imagining this or that. It was like I’d entered a movie, but it was live. I was watching a scene while I was living it. I felt emotions ranging from power to humor to joy to compassion and unconditional love and received knowledge as the scene morphed and evolved. Afterward, I kept thinking that this must be what a psychedelic trip feels like.
Because I wasn’t interested in spirituality, I had the experience and tucked it away. I wouldn’t have a larger context for it to have real meaning for more than a decade.
I had a few more wild and crazy experiences during hypnosis sessions that were very healing – like being healed of all shame by an angel and seeing prebirth planning – and I still wasn’t interested in spirituality.
But I was interested in psychic phenomena and after meeting my first intuitive energy healer, I became very interested in energy healing. After taking my first Reiki class and becoming attuned, something changed and I was set on what I’d only later realize was my spiritual path.
Within a few weeks of my Reiki attunement, I had an experience that let me know proof positive that there’s more to life than what my five senses detect or can be measured by science (although science is catching up). Full disclosure: I love science. The awakening also activated my soul’s deepest desire and passion for healing. I had to know everything about energy healing, and I had to know it yesterday.
The beauty of energy healing is how it sees the body and mind not as separate but as an extension of or a manifestation of our soul’s energy. Modern medicine treats the physical aspect of a body and behavioral medicine treats the mind. Energy medicine is a wonderful compliment, taking things a step further.
Instead of treating someone by listening to a cluster of symptoms and addressing only a physical diagnosis (which was just the ticket when I needed my very hot gallbladder removed), energy healing looks for blockages within a person’s energy field and seeks to release them. Think of a river becoming dammed, thus creating a blockage, and then removing the dam. The dam can be chronic disease or physical pain, and it can also cause chronic anger, anxiety, or depression.
As an energy healer, I know that my physical structure is held in place by an energetic blueprint that’s somewhat malleable. When I heal things in my energy field, it can affect my body and/or my mind.
While I learned about energy healing, I learned about things like angels and ascended masters, like how they can sometimes intercede and create healing with the soul’s agreement. I learned to ask for their help when I wanted to heal something and one day received it, creating what felt like a miracle at the time.
Along the way I studied all sorts of modalities, keeping what worked and what resonated with me and letting go of what didn’t. Only months after my initial awakening (I still didn’t consider myself a spiritual seeker), deeply into energy healing classes and workshops, my parents’ health began to fail and I took point overseeing the administration of their care.
Going through a few of the toughest years of my life, when first Dad and then Mom got sick and died, being able to continue learning about and experiencing energy healing was a huge gift.
Being Daddy’s little girl, shortly after his death I tried out some of the new skills I’d learned in class about communicating with spirit. Much to my surprise, I made contact! I heard (in my mind) and felt my dad’s joy and relief about being free from his body. It was so unbelievable that I shared what happened with a few psychic women I knew who validated that I hadn’t made it up. It was real.
The miracle I referred to earlier happened after Dad died and my mother’s mental health went completely off the rails into mania. I finally realized that it was only when my mother became manic that she became a danger and could attack (usually verbally) if she felt provoked by me. Although she’d talk shit about other people when she was manic, it was only me she eviscerated with her tongue. Long story short, I was advised to look at something in meditation, and when I did, I saw that the dynamic between Mom and I had been passed down for generations in my maternal lineage.
Using the skills I had at the time, I focused deeply into my heart and asked God, Jesus, and Archangel Raphael (the angel of healing) to heal the pain. It didn’t take long for me to become very emotional and feel like something had changed. Several days later when I talked to my very manic mother, I said something I knew would push a button, waiting for her to attack. Instead, I heard nothing. There was dead silence on the phone. From that day on, she never attacked me again. Not only that, but a chronic health issue she’d had for a decade – something with no discernable physical cause – suddenly and inexplicably began to heal.
Remember how I love science? I love proof positive. With practice and experiences like this, I had proof that things like angels and ascended masters and our spirits actually exist.
One more quick story.
When I took a class in energy healing, one of the things we did was meet our healing guides and I learned that one of my guides was called John the Baptist. I’m not religious, so I don’t know him from the Bible, but I’d heard the name. Not really concerned with finding out anything about him, I just worked with him.
A few years later when I began to work with a spiritually-based hypnotherapist, she began our sessions by relaxing me and guiding me to imagine a white light above my head that was healing and intelligent. She’d also ask me to look toward the light and ask for a guide to come forward. I never knew who was going to show up, but John the Baptist arrived several times. And every time he came, he always told me the same thing: this is going to be easy peasy. He was my cheerleader. He kept the faith for me. And if I became stuck, all I had to do was turn to him and suddenly I was unstuck. When I mentioned this to my first spiritual mentor (who was very knowledgeable about the Bible), she told me that I truly knew John the Baptist and what he represents: keeping the faith. It’s an inner sense of unshakable faith. For me, it’s simply knowing I’ve got it. And even when I’m not sure how I’ll get from point A to point B, it’s knowing I will get there.
Working with spiritual beings in the realm of energy healing has helped me heal my body and my mind, changing from the inside out. Although I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a spiritual seeker, spirituality came in through the back door, wrapped its loving arms around me, and breathed divinity into me.