by Leigh Tremaine
It can sometimes appear to us, in our personal lives and in the world at large, that life is fraught with suffering and difficulty, and that there is little we can do about this, despite our trying. What is happening here is that we are identifying with the victim archetype, and are judging the world from our own perspective of powerlessness. The more we believe that we are powerless, the more our expectation of powerlessness shapes our reality so that it appears to confirm our beliefs. We then move into a state of depression and eventually resign ourselves to our perceived powerlessness. We choose to label events in the world and in our personal lives as 'disasters', as if life is somehow cruel to us, and conspiring against us and the ideals we hold.
While there is indeed a lot of pain and suffering in the world, this is just a response to how people create their reality. The cause of suffering is always rooted in misperception, when we choose to perceive life in an incomplete way as a result of the unprocessed beliefs and emotional trauma that distort our vision.
Life gives us everything we need to grow, for we exist as part of a vast, multi-layered network of interconnections, that operates as a self-organising system, seeking greater degrees of wholeness through its organisation. Since the source of our being is one with the source of all that is, life always responds to us, for we are not separate from it. We have never been deserted or let down by life, even in our darkest hour. When we think this has happened, we are choosing to isolate ourselves from the flow of life because we have identified with the victim and are feeling sorry for ourselves. In short, we have a poor self-image and with it low self-esteem.
When we develop a fuller perspective of life, no longer distorted by limiting beliefs and emotional trauma, we realise that life is actually conspiring to give us what we need in order to grow and become self-realised. This fuller perspective of life also enables our self-image and self-esteem to rocket. We will experience the joy of being back in the flow of life, and will regain the integrity of our soul and the creative power and magic this gives us.
When we are working on world healing, we therefore need to be working on our own personal healing. Otherwise our own judgements about the world can get in the way of the healing, and even reinforce patterns of suffering in the world. When the media presents an image of the world to us, and when our friends and contacts present a similar image of the world to us, we should not assume that we are getting the full picture or interpretation, and remember that the original experience has been filtered through the mindset of those who are commentating on that experience. So focusing love and healing on a particular image of a world situation is not enough, and may even be dishonest. Planetary healing is not simply about changing how we react to world events by developing love towards those involved: it is about changing how we perceive world events.
In the world healing community, people have been caught up in a debate over whether it is beneficial to focus on the negative as well as the positive, or whether we should be focusing on the positive only. The argument to focus on the negative as well as the positive is based on an unwillingness to deny suffering. The argument to focus on the positive only is based on the principle that what we focus on expands, and the conclusion then formed is that if we focus on the negative we will somehow give it more power or energy. However, neither argument is focusing on the real issue of healing, and so the debate is to some extent an unnecessary diversion that will create conflict amongst healers and even break up healing groups.
Successful healing is about identifying the false image that is held of a situation and seeing past the veils of illusion or misperception that are at the root of all suffering in our world. When the whole world can see past the illusion that separates us from unity-consciousness and the experience of love that goes with it, the world will be healed very quickly.
In terms of energy dynamics, if we reveal to ourselves the illusion behind a situation in the world that is giving us despair, we will not give the illusion power, precisely because we have recognised it as an illusion; but if we do not recognise the illusion behind the situation, we still give the illusion power, and are actually conspiring with it, even if we send all the positive thoughts in the world to the situation.
To finish I would like to suggest that the focus of any directed healing be based on the prayerful and loving intention to facilitate an end to the illusion behind the suffering that holds people in conflict with each other and all that is, and that we are never so arrogant or self-denying to leave ourselves out of this healing too.