PBP: Week 15- Helping and Healing

Spend any amount of time in a Pagan forum or Facebook group and you will see people asking for healing energy to be sent to them or their family or loved ones. This is one of those requests that I feel somewhat awkward about. If it is a personal friend of mine, that is different, I think because I know the person (even if I may not know the actual person for whom the energy is being sent). Combine this with the pure amount of energy requests that I see in any given day, and if I were inclined to spend time with them all, I would literally wear myself out.

I have heard of a lovely way of handling this though. If you keep a list of people who have asked for energy, and then once a week do a ritual to send healing energy to the people who need it. This helps keep you from getting overworked (especially with the vast number of online requests). I also spend a moment saying a prayer for the person anytime I type a response that I will keep them in mind or send energy. This way I have set the intention in my head from the start.

I also sort of have a thing about healing. I remember, a long time ago, being introduced to the concept that healing someone should never be done without their permission. And I stopped to think about this. On the surface, if you are trying to heal someone, you are trying to make their life better, which is a good thing isn't it? But the argument was that it falls under the free will category, and that person might not want to be healed (especially in the case of someone who is terminal or elderly, where a period of 'feeling better' might just draw things out and actually make them more miserable).

But this puts many of us in a tricky situation. If we can't heal people without asking their permission, how do you ask someone (especially someone devoted to another religion that doesn't accept things like personal healing or sending energy) if you can 'work' on them? Sometimes you can get around this by asking if you can pray for them, but depending on how you send energy this may feel false to you.

The more I thought about it the more I just didn't like the concept that it would be bad for me to try to help someone. In my mind, it would kind of be like if someone was in a car wreck, horribly injured and unconscious, but the hospital couldn't do anything to help them until the person woke up and said it was okay. The hospital would treat the person until the person told them to stop.

I do think though that sometimes things are meant to be and no matter how hard we fight them, bad things happen. There are many people struggling with serious life threatening conditions, and I know that many of them very much want to live. It isn't a matter of believing in healing power, or having something to live for. Sometimes we are trying to pour water into a leaking bucket and no matter how much water we pour in, it will eventually all drain away. And sometimes, if we put too much water in, the bucket will just break.

When I look at healing work, I look at is as an offering, like holding a door open for someone. I have made the option open to them, but it is up to them to walk through the door or not. I often do healing work with two caveats: I send energy for the person to use in the way that is most needed by their Self, and I ask that if recovery is not an option that their way be smooth and that they may find their own peace.

I think a great part of love is setting our own needs aside and listening to what other people are really needing. Sometimes the temptation is there to try to push our loved ones to recover because we can not bear to think about life without them. We need to be mindful that we are acting from a place of love and not from a place of fear. I strive to always give support to my loved ones, in whatever form they need. I know quite a few, very stubborn, people that I care about, who struggle with ongoing illness, some quite serious. And for most, it is not my place to tell them they should or shouldn't be doing certain things. It is extremely hard sometimes, to watch someone you care about make bad choices.

I also think it is somewhat interesting that the community seems to have decided that everyone is a healer. I rarely see requests for other types of energy, though sometimes when people have big life changes coming about, they will ask for good wishes or energy. Most of the time though, it is healing requests (or bereavement, which is sort of like healing for the family of the deceased). And the assumption is that everyone can send healing energy or works with a deity they can pray to and ask for healing energy to be sent. I sometimes wonder how true this is.

I don't really consider myself a healer per say. In fact I more consider myself a caregiver (as strange as that sounds to me), probably much closer to a server. I do things for people. I care through service. I have never made it a big part of my practice to study healing. I tend to forget to approach ills or hurts on my self in a magical way, until after the fact, then I wonder why I didn't! I have sought out particular deities that have affiliations with healing, so that when people I care about need help I am not trying to approach a deity I have never worked with asking for help. That just feels rude to me.