Caroline Myss - Why People Dont Heal and How They Can

PART ONE:
WHY PEOPLE DONT HEAL

Chapter 1:
Woundology and the Healing Fire

Chapter 2:
The Five Myths About Healing

Chapter 3:
The Chakras, the Astrological Ages, and the Forms of Power

Chapter 4:
Beginning the Journey to Individual and Symbolic Power

PART TWO:
AND HOW THEY CAN

Chapter 5:
Finding the Right Path Through the Chaos of Healing

Chapter 6:
Igniting the Healing Fire Within

Chapter 7:
Visualizing the Chakras

Chapter 8:
Using the Chakras and the Sacraments for Healing

Epilogue:
Snow White and the Seven Chakras

M y intention in writing this book is to offer readers a new perspective on health, specifically on why we dont heal and how we can. I may seem to be entering the subject of healing through the back door, since I am giving so much attention to why we fail to heal, but I believe that many of us are almost as afraid of healing as we are of illness. By understanding how fear and other negative emotions adversely affect healing, you may more easily identify how you are interfering, consciously or unconsciously, with your own healing process.

It has become apparent to me that assuming that everyone wants to heal is both misleading and potentially dangerous. Illness can, for instance, become a powerful way to get attention you might not otherwise receiveas a form of leverage, illness can seem almost attractive. Illness may also convey the message that you have to change your life quite drastically. Because change is among the most frightening aspects of life, you may fear change more intensely than illness and enter into a pattern of postponing the changes you need to make.

A central misconception of todays holistic culture is the belief that all illness results from personal negativity, either from tragic past experiences, from negative attitudes that contaminate our minds and bodies, or from bad past-life karma. Yet negativity is not the only source of illness: It can also emerge as the answer to a prayer. It can physically guide us onto a path of insight and learning upon which we would otherwise never have set foot. It may be a catalyst for expanding personal consciousness as well as for understanding the greater meaning of life.

As terrifying as disease is, it is also an invitation to enter into the nature of mystery. Our lives are made up of a series of mysteries that we are meant to explore but that are meant to remain unsolved. We are meant to live with the questions we have about our lives, even use them as companions, and allow them to lead us into the deepest recesses of our nature, wherein we discover the Sacred. I hope that this book will help you find new ways of framing the meaning of illness and other life challenges and help you move deeper into your mysteries and further along your personal path toward spiritual mastery.

While illness can help you find your essential sacredness, your oneness with God, humanity, and all living creatures, you dont have to become ill in order to begin to understand your spirit and heal your life. I find that people begin to see and understand themselves as sacred through learning about what I call energy medicine. According to energy medicine, the human spirit is a manifestation of energy. We all have seven energy centers in our bodies, which in the Hindu system are called chakras. Each chakra roughly corresponds to a location in the physical body. I like to think of the chakras as energetic computer disks or data banks that collect information of all sorts. In my work I have discovered that these seven energy centers correspond to the various life issues and challenges with which the seven sacraments of Christianity and the ten sefirot of the Tree of Life in the Jewish Kabbalistic tradition are also meant to help us.

Our spirit grows into maturity and increasing self-understanding through seven stages of spiritual development. As we progress through these stages, we gain different kinds of personal power. The chakrasand their counterparts in the sacraments and the Tree of Lifemark an inner path of spiritual evolution. They form the steps on an unfolding of our personal path toward awakening a higher consciousness. Learning the language of the chakras and nurturing these spiritual qualities can simultaneously strengthen our physical bodies and help us heal illness or maintain health.

A man named Ben, who came to one of my workshops while dealing with prostate cancer, responded instantly when I explained the correspondences between the chakras, the sacraments, and the Tree of Life. For him, they formed a new language of healing. Ben went on to use the imagery from the workshop, which I also teach in this book, continually in his own healing. Whenever he visited his doctor for treatment, he said a prayer or mantra beforehand in which he invoked the power of the chakras, sacraments, and Tree of Life to activate his body. Within six months his cancer went into remission.

As a medical intuitive, I describe for people the nature of their physical diseases as well as the energetic dysfunctions that are present within their bodies. I read the energy field that permeates and surrounds the body, picking up information about dramatic childhood experiences, behavior patterns, even superstitious beliefs, all of which have bearing on the persons physical health. Based on the information I perceive intuitively in their energy fields, including the chakras, I can make recommendations for treating their condition on both a physical and spiritual level.