Thoughts You Ought To Know

by Bishop Allen Shawcross, OSJ of Australia

(this piece appears in the text "Things You Ought To Know Series - Vol. 1" by members of the Australian Fellowship Of Seven Planes

There is this term 'spiritual healer'. This is an awful term, for it can be interpreted in so many different and incorrect ways. Healing is an individual art and like all artists, healers have their own unique style. No two artists paint alike, neither should they criticise those whose strokes of the brush are different from their own. Rather they should consider whether or not they could usefully learn something from another's technique.

My own philosophy is very much one of personal responsibility. I believe in a loving, creative Spirit who exists throughout the Universe, guiding and assisting - not controlling, his many creations towards a spiritual evolution which will ensure creativity and love in place of destruction and selfishness. I call this creative Spirit God. I believe I am nothing without that presence of guiding love and that the only purpose of my being on this planet is what I can do for others.

I do not believe that God heals through us. Why should he? He could heal directly without our help if he chooses to. Instead he has given us the power to help others if we choose. Should we use that great gift in the way intended, then his great love will guide us in what we do, enabling us to give another, what they need. But we must accept personal responsibility for giving, and the more totally we take upon ourselves that responsibility, the more of the gift, the love, there is available to give.

There is often a lot of confusion between the terms “spiritual” and “spiritualism”. Spiritual means 'from God', 'God-given”, 'with God's love'. Spiritual, as applied to healing, means 'with God's love' whereas spiritualism is a philosophy or belief that the spirits of the dead can and do communicate with the living.

However, Spiritualists and Spiritual Healers are not mutually exclusive terms. Many Spiritualists are very good healers.

Spiritualism can be traced back to 1848 and to an old cottage in Hydesville, New York and to a little girl who lived there, Katie Fox, who experienced various sounds and movements, particularly a banging noise during the night. Katie started playing a game with the bumps and sounds and she soon found that she was getting some sort of intelligent response and worked out a simple code to converse with the mysterious visitor.

Not long after this was reported, mediums began popping up all over America and there was never a shortage of departed spirits wanting to talk to them. The spiritualist movement had arrived, and a whole new philosophy about what happens to the spirit once it is free of the body. Of course none of this was new. The Egyptians were far more sophisticated in the way that they communicated with the dead and their high priests are said to have possessed knowledge, which allowed them to travel independently of their bodies.

Anyway, the revival of a belief in the supernatural was seen as a direct threat to orthodox religion, which is based mainly on creedal dogma. Over the years they desperately tried to suppress spiritualism.

Anyway to cut a long story short, when the Church realised that a lot of good was coming from spiritualists' healing, it began to accept and offer 'faith healing' as if alone had discovered it and it alone had the authority to use it, while at the same time opposing those who had reintroduced the idea.

Because of all this, we have the silly state of affairs whereby many orthodox religions are saying that all healing should be done under their supervision, and if practised by others, they say the healing may not be genuine and could even be dangerous.

Of course we have the situation where we have various Eastern and Oriental philosophies, as well as many evangelical organisations each believing that it alone holds God's confidence and loyalty; that all others are misleading in some way and probably doing their followers terrible spiritual harm.

My personal belief is that no two people are alike and each must choose the moral philosophy which best allows them to mature spiritually and help others, whenever requested to do so. I believe in a single God, as a creative, loving force. I believe he communicates with the world through the beauty of his creation, and that we communicate with him with the love we pass on through the lives of others.


Spiritual Healing

Many people begin to think about spiritual matters when they lose someone who is dear to them. Sometimes the physical act of grieving is not unlike depression. In no way should this be compared to the spiritual aspect of grieving which is on a totally different plane. When someone is alive in the flesh it is easy to use the physical senses to communicate love, but when that is withdrawn it becomes necessary to move to higher levels of awareness and become aware of a different kind of love, spiritual love. If you look for and experience spiritual love and spiritual awareness you will find again that love, which was thought gone forever.

Many people, who come to healers suffering from the grief of loss, are usually able to experience the presence of the love they had thought was gone because, through the healing experience, they are able to lift themselves into a new awareness of spiritual awareness. And this, in case you are thinking it, has nothing to do with Spiritualism.

Healing love causes a shift in consciousness by taking a person from physical perception into emotional perception and then as the healing intensifies it moves away from the emotional block of the subconscious and into truly spiritual awareness.

All earthly problems and bodily ailments are then viewed with true spiritual perception and dismissed for what they are, passing experiences.

This is spiritual healing which needs no explanation. This level of healing is not acquired with training or logic, but those who are capable of radiating such totally unselfish love are few in number. There can be no explanation for its success because spiritual love does not seek success or gain: it just is. Such people radiate love wherever they go. They are not necessarily the famous or the worldly, though this does exclude them; they can just as easily be unknown, except by those around them who are drawn to their peace and contentment.

Sometimes it is necessary to go to some length to describe physical healing, involving psychology and electromagnet fields as a kind of introduction to spiritual healing. Why would it be necessary to go to such lengths if spiritual healing can so easily bypass the physical and emotional elements to free the individual of trauma and pain? The reason is that not everybody is ready for a shift in consciousness. Many, do not believe, or their own spiritual love is not readily available to help them see beyond physical perception and its false reality.

For these the body and mind still need to be understood by the body and mind, and healing needs to be logically explained and administered. But, once the miracle of spiritual healing been experienced, even unwittingly, the shift in consciousness will begin.

Depth of awareness and purpose will increase as the spirit becomes responsible for expression and the emotions of fear are brought under control.

Every case of spiritual healing is unique, and unlike any other individual's experience, the emotions it causes are always the same. These are spiritual emotions that can be experienced by everyone who has a problem, be it physical, emotional or spiritual, if only they learn to accept the truth of spiritual love and experience it through spiritual healing.


Spiritual Love

Spiritual healing means constantly making available the love, which is our awareness to help another if they should have need of it. And what do we do with this love? Nothing. The love, which we are, is for others to make use of. It is not for us to limit or share what we are. Love just is. Love has no function, no purpose in itself; unless it is shared it has no value. It has to be shared! And those who accept without fear will become free of pain and disease and it will rekindle the flame of their own love. As love increases, so the emotions of peace, happiness and contentment will grow in all who come into its sphere. But we can never know our own love until it is reflected back to us.

I am reminded of a woman who had a most difficult life. She had no husband, she had a child with terrible deformities, and had no source of income except that which she received by way of pensions. She was shunned by most people because she smoked like a chimney, swore like a trouper, and once a week while a friend looked after this pitiful child, she went out and got drunk. People avoided her because they felt she was socially unacceptable, but to me she is an absolute angel.

I know of no other who would love her poor deformed child as she did. Her love poured out for her child and she gave everything she possessed to ensure that the child was loved and knew that it was loved. So much love poured out of this woman that other children were drawn to her. You could see the love shine brightly in their eyes for this woman who had nothing except 'love'. Many people avoided or criticised, but she stands head and shoulders above them all - a bright beacon of love in a loveless society. It isn't what we do that is important; like drinking and smoking and swearing - although I am not suggesting these are necessary paths to enlightenment - it is what we are.

In the same way spiritual love is not something we do; it is something we are. This is probably the most important sentence in this talk, so take a few seconds to think about it. Spiritual love is not something we do; it is something we are. There is no single act that demonstrates spiritual love. Love is intangible; those who are love will not be aware of it but others will. We can never know our own spirit, for love is like the light of a candle. It shines away from the centre and the one or the thing that is the cause of that light will never be aware of the love they radiate. So, what does light do? Nothing it just is. But, like love, we can use it if we wish.

There are many who spend their lives doing wonderful unselfish acts of kindness, but even this isn't the love I speak of. The love I mean is not kindness but the essence of life itself, which calls forth kindness in others. This love is the soul or spirit; it is God's expression on earth. To know and experience love requires a change of perception for many people. It needs a shift in consciousness. It doesn't mean seeing, or hearing, or touching, or smelling or tasting; it means becoming one with. To experience through the body is to experience life through the limits of mind and body. To experience through the spirit means becoming one with life itself.

Love is not something you can give to another. Love is not something you can own or cultivate. Love is the essence of spiritual existence. Our fulfilment comes from others, from their joy and happiness. And although we cannot give our love others can partake of it and become one with it. Spiritual love as spiritual awareness is a total experience.

To become one with nature means experiencing it and it is one of the greatest experiences.

Spiritual love, like spiritual healing, is something that can only be known by experiencing it. There are some for whom it is out of reach because they are not prepared to open themselves to a shift in consciousness or because they have a feeling of superiority. People such a this are unable to experience spiritual love, and will be inclined to ridicule, scoff and criticise, as a defence or even a way of overcoming their spiritual inadequacies.

To really experience and appreciate life, one needs to blend all the perceptions of pictures, sounds, smells touches, and tastes into one.

To achieve a shift in consciousness and know spiritual awareness is to become one with everything that is, and experience it. Then one's perception changes from watching to experiencing. One's ideas of God change from theories and philosophies to awareness. One becomes one with God, and one with every flowing thought, all at the same time. It is this totally loving awareness, which is the basis of spiritual healing. To know God is to abandon one's 'self' to become part of the totality of creative awareness. To know God is to realise that we are not separated but an integral part of the totality of everything that is.

People without spiritual awareness try to define God but how can you define that which you have not seen or experienced? Trying to define something with our current vocabulary is only using meaningless words to create the image of our own thoughts. The only way to know God is to become one with the experience of God. The moment you stop to explain the emotions of that experience to another, you lose spiritual awareness and are once again limited by words.

It is impossible to give someone the emotional experience of spiritual awareness by explaining it. Spiritual healing means helping another to reach their own spiritual awareness so that they can themselves, become one with the wind, the river, the light and the unlimited love which is God.

To ask God to cure you of this or that is completely to miss the point. God doesn't do anything. God is. God doesn't heal you, any more than he causes pain or despair. By opening yourself to a shift in consciousness, you heal yourself. God does not heal you. God is not here for this or that, God is total awareness, a spiritual experience. God is what you become when you learn how to give and move from what you believe you are.

The mountain cannot become one with a grain of sand but a grain of sand can become one with the mountain. And God does not become one with us but we can become one with God.


Spiritual Purpose

The only value any of us have is what we can do for others. This is spiritual healing, using living thoughts to benefit those around us. Negative individuals will take your energy away. Try to stop them and see what happens. You will become weaker as they take from you and, because you are deliberately not giving, you will not be creating more to replace that which is being taken.

To use the forces of the spirit and nature, or God if you prefer, one needs to be totally free of the limitations of 'self-awareness'.

One needs to move beyond ordinary human experience or personality and become one with that greater awareness of Divine spiritual love. In this state there is no judgment, and there is no emotion other than the creative force of love. When one moves, free of the body and into the ecstasy of unbounded love, one opens up oneself so as to be able to reach into the thoughts of another. Then if they choose, and only if they choose, they can use whatever love they possess to act as a link and replenish themselves from the energy you are making available.

There can never be any doubt when the healing is spiritual but unless you have experienced it one cannot comprehend the majesty of it.