"Spiritual healing is a process of becoming whole or holy; of becoming increasingly conscious... We cannot save our skins without saving our souls. We cannot heal the mess we have made of the world without undergoing some kind of spiritual healing."
- M Scott Peck, A Different Drum

There is a subtle healing power that is yet beyond human understanding. We know this in the depths of our hearts. We know that healing, even in the absence of miraculous events, is usually much more than medical science can yet understand or explain.

The human body is remarkable. It possesses a built-in system of healing that allows it to replace portions that are destroyed by injury or disease, that prevents the invasion of infectious organisms and rejects the ingrowth of foreign tissue.

There is also a remarkable order that regulates the healing processes of the body. There is a regulated outpouring of the cells and fluids necessary for healing both from the blood and the nearby healthy area, and when the end of healing has been achieved the flow of fluid and the migration of cells ceases forthwith.

Order and rhythm are features of the healthy body's functioning, we are told by the experts. Once order is disrupted and disorder predominates the disease becomes more serious, with the most sinister being the unrestrained abnormal growth of cells that characterise a tumour.

This follows its own rules of growth, whatever they may be, and if it is malignant it will tend to destroy the whole organism in its relentless spread. That which is true of the body is true for all systems dependent on order and rhythm for effective functioning.

In his book, Healing As Sacrament, Martin Israel tells us that the human personality functions at four levels - the physical body, the emotions that influence its actions, the rational mind that investigates and controls the environment on which life depends, and a deeper centre of moral decision which is traditionally called the soul, but is also called the true self or the spiritual self.

The basis of effective healing is integration. The centre of integration is the spirit of the soul/spiritual self/true self, which informs the rational mind, cleanses and purifies the emotions, and renews the body with strength and vitality. Conversely, the state that precedes disease is disorganisation of the body that is secondary to disintegration of the personality.

He concludes that the criterion for effective healing is a harmonious balance of the personality, which in turn is an image of a balanced world in which people of different backgrounds, temperaments and insights can work together as effective limbs and organs of one fully integrated body of mankind.

A Quiet Heart
Meditation for Your Quiet Time. Those Quiet Moments in Your Special Silent Place

"Out of a clean heart comes a clean life and a clean body. Out of a defiled mind proceeds a defiled and a corrupt body. Thought is the font of action, life and manifestation; make the fountain pure and all will be pure...

If you would perfect your body, guard your mind. If you would renew your body, beautify your mind...

There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body; there is no comforter to compare with good will for dispersing the shadows of grief and sorrow.

To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion, and envy, is to be confined in a self-made prison hole. But to think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all - such unselfish thoughts are the very portals of heaven; and to dwell day by day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their possessor."
- James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

Marjorie Stair is an agriculture and rural development specialist. She hosts the programme Country Road on Power 106 Fridays at 6:30 am. Email her at loyal@cwjamaica.com.

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