Not long ago, something very interesting was shown to me during meditation regarding not only my own personal healing journey, but healing journeys in general. In the mediation, I was in a beautiful, dense forest, walking along a path.
As I walked, I could see a version of my current self not far ahead of me on the path. The version of me appeared the same as I currently look and I had a very clear knowing that “she” was my higher self, which means that “she” was my soul, or the true definition of me and who I am. She was standing next to a bench along the forest path, waiting for me.
As I approached the bench and her, I noticed that there were a few low-hanging tree branches above the forest path with low-hanging leaves, low enough that I could raise my arm up just slightly and touch some of the leaves easily with my fingertips.
I did so several times with several leaves as I approached the bench, but was intensely drawn to one particular leaf. I honed in on its texture, the shape and size of its protruding portions, and the way its edges felt. I rubbed my fingertips against it tenderly, innately ‘knowing’ that the leaf itself was quite fragile and that I needed to be gentle with it.
Then I sat down on the bench and “I”, or a.k.a. my higher self, sat down next to me. The following was exchanged between us telepathically without actual words:
When we are healing, it is easy to feel like we aren’t going anywhere – as if no progress is being made. But the truth is, each and every leaf needs to be tenderly addressed. Each and every leaf on the healing journey carries incredible truths and opportunities within it. Each leaf leads to another, and then another. Healing begins to occur when we reach for the low-hanging leaves and nourish them one-by-one. Each leaf is unique and delicate in its own right and needs to be treated tenderly and with care. In combination, those leaves comprise a very dense forest that can be tough to see through sometimes, while trying to wrap our arms around the entire forest of our healing all at once is impossible. There are far too many leaves for one lifetime. But if a soft breeze begins to blow in the right direction, all of the leaves can begin to whisper to one another softly. Your soul healing journey is the same premise. Just start the breeze….just start the breeze.
So, what exactly does this mean? And why is it important?
It means that it’s easy for us to become discouraged in our day-to-day lives by feeling as if we are not going anywhere, as if we are not growing, learning, or making progress in our healing. This is especially true because the term “healing journey” has gone so mainstream and become such a buzzword term the last several years, which has actually been sort of great but done a disservice to the term and concept at the same time.
Healing doesn’t refer to this big, huge, wonderous grand event that you can pinpoint. Healing doesn’t even necessarily refer to having the ability to look back on your life or a singular period of time and say, “Hey look at that leap of progress. I did that! I’m done now!” It’s not, “I spent all of April and May of 2022 meditating and working on myself, and I’m so different now!” Rather, the majority of healing is so subtle, that we don’t realize it’s even happened until various portions of it have compounded upon themselves so sneakily, quietly, and exponentially, that we look back at the five-year-ago version of us and don’t recognize the general decision maker we were, or the general reactor we were, for example. We personally can compare a point A to a point B, yes, but it is multiple factors and multiple efforts that got us there, ranging from highly conscious to highly subtle. Further, we can understand why we were the person we were at point A and why we are the person we are at point B without judgement, guilt, or shame.
That’s not something that happens overnight. That’s not something that happens by running through the forest and ripping down as many leaves as you can carry in your arms at one time, such as the example of above of concentrating on April and May of 2022.
It’s something that happens slowly, through observation, consciousness, mindfulness, choice-by-choice, and with a lot of deep dives into your past to explore who you were and why, to get to who you are and why. Those deep dives are where the ah-ha moments happen, but the observation, consciousness, mindfulness, and choice are where the day-by-day happens.
Healing can be as simple as, “I took the baby step today of not allowing the comments of [insert person here] to flip an immediate reaction switch in me of [insert your usual strong emotion/behavior here].” Maybe next, you’ll be drawn to examine things within that person that you never were drawn to examine before in order to better understand them from a macro level, and so on and so forth. And maybe after that, maybe you’ll remember an incident that triggered you with that person from seven years ago that you had buried, which needs to be revisited deeply, internally. Step-by-step. All leading to a higher understanding of the bigger picture of the how and why, a more regulated nervous system response, and ultimately greater peace and joy in that relationship, and within that slice of you.
This is important for two main reasons, in my eyes (I’m sure there are more). But here are my two at the time of writing this particular blog post.
1) Too many people want to rush the processes. And then they judge themselves afterward for what they call or view as “messing up”. For example, a person may have taken the first step mentioned above of not allowing the other person’s comments to flip an immediate reaction switch on one day. Maybe they’ve even done it a couple times. They feel pride in that moment, as they should, but many people also think, “Wow, look what I did today! I didn’t react! I’m over it! I’m healed from that relationship.” (This is partially thanks to the buzzword utilization of ‘healing’ and the many misconstructions thrown around about it.) Meanwhile, they’ve just barely scratched the surface of the issues. That becomes problematic for many people, because the next time they do become triggered, they get incredibly down on themselves, beat themselves up, and backpedal further than they had been to begin with out of anger, frustration, guilt, shame, or all of them. It’s a vicious cycle.
You can’t rush healing. You have to be gracious, gentle, and patient with yourself, and part of that is realizing that healing is far more than one good day. You have a forest of healing. We all do. But it IS worth it to realize that. It truly, truly is. You can experience immediate shifts in your outlook towards yourself if you shift your mindset around the healing journey itself.
2) People come for intuitive readings and they’ll say things like, “Yeah, but I already know my dad/ex-husband/self-esteem/need for external validation/etc is an issue for me (after information comes in from their higher self and I say it). I came because I need to know how to move forward.” So, then information will come in with a bit more detail about maybe why they react a certain way, why they got in the relationship to begin with, what sorts of emotions/situations have come up in the past around the issue, or whatever other tidbits may be relevant at this moment in their healing journey with the scenario.
Too many people want to be told HOW to heal. They want to be told exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to do it all. They want the entire forest handed to them by somebody else. But that’s not how healing works. As an intuitive reader, I work with your higher self, and information needed for healing ourselves trickles out over time from our higher selves in the order it needs to trickle out in. Thus, you may know you need to heal from the way your dad raised you, for example, and as an intuitive, I may be able to tell you some of the parts of your dad that hurt you and why they hurt you, but I can’t tell you WHAT to do to heal those parts of you that were affected. You have to feel to heal. “YOU” are the key component of the sentence, and too many people run from intuitive reader to intuitive reader wanting to be told what they want to hear. It doesn’t work that way – an intuitive reader can help you clarify what you need to heal and why. They can validate and maybe even clarify, but they can’t feel for you. And they certainly can’t rush you through the forest or rip down any of your leaves.
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