DEEPENING YOUR SPIRITUAL CONNECTION
A Chapter from the book: ‘Radical Remission’
By Kelly A.Turner Ph.D.
The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated. – PLATO
Spirituality is a delicate subject, mostly because contradictory religious beliefs have led to so many wars and atrocities throughout the centuries. Therefore, it is with great sensitivity that I broach this topic and its potential relationship with physical healing. The mere mention of “spiritual healing” often polarizes a room – those with a strong spiritual practice will perk up immediately, while those without spiritual beliefs or practices will abruptly shut down. My hope is that you will read this chapter somewhere in between, with an openness to accept other people’s experiences while also knowing that some or all of it may not ring true for you
In its simplest form, this chapter discusses the idea of physical healing due to one’s connection to a deeper (or higher) energy, which some people personalize as “God”, some call “the soul,” and others generalize as an ubiquitous life force, calling it “energy”, chi” or “prana”. For the sake of this chapter, I will refer to it as “spiritual energy”, but if you are a person who cringes at the word “spiritual”, you can just mentally replace the words “spiritual energy” with “deep, peaceful energy.”
There are five aspects of spiritual energy that radical Remission survivors and alternative Healers describe frequently. After exploring them in depth, we will dive into a Radical Remission healing story about a young man with brain cancer who used spiritual energy for healing, and finally we’ll conclude with some simple action steps you can take to start developing your own spiritual connection practice.
SPIRITUALITY AS AN EXPERIMENT
‘It is with great sensitivity that I broach this topic and its potential relationship with physical healing. The mere mention of “spiritual healing” often polarizes a room – those with a strong spiritual practice will perk up immediately, while those without spiritual beliefs or practices will abruptly shut down’
The Radical Remission survivors and alternative healers I study, describe spiritual energy as something they feel simultaneously as both a physical sensation and an intense emotion. It is typically described as a feeling of warm, peaceful energy that flows downward, from head to toe, coating both the physical and emotional bodies with a blanket of deep peace and unconditional love. Many people assume that feeling spiritual energy requires you to have spiritual or religious beliefs. This is simply not true. This feeling of blissful, spiritual energy is not the result of a belief but rather a mental and/or physical practice that produces an intense experience of spiritual energy.
For example, someone may experience spiritual energy to varying degrees after a good yoga class, a long run, a relaxing massage, or an afternoon nap. There are also spiritual practices designed specifically to elicit this experience, such as deep prayer, meditation, or chanting. As with most things in life, everyone responds to things differently. For some people, they may never feel a spiritual “buzz” after a yoga class, but feel it intensely at their weekly prayer circle.
Others may have difficulty feeling spiritual energy while meditating, yet feel it easily when they are walking in nature. According to the people I study, the method of connecting to this spiritual energy does not matter; it only matters that you do connect, daily if possible, in order to receive its healing benefits. Sister Jayanti is an expert at introducing newcomers to the spiritual connection practice of meditation. Jayanti is a leader of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization, a primarily women-led spiritual group dedicated to teaching non-denominational spirituality and meditation. She describes meditation as one way to have an experience of spiritual energy:
Where you’re in deep communion, in deep conversation, or even in deep silence, but just in the presence of the divine – that’s meditation……So, in that state of union, what happens is you’re drawing that light, that energy, not just into the soul but alsofrom the soul, and the rays extend out into the body also. It’s like the warmth of the sun. You can feel that energy, not just on a superficial level on your skin but you can feel your body absorbing that warmth and that energy within itself….It actually is a process of healing. It actually helps the body heal….The primary advice given to persons with a physical illness therefore, is to practice meditation and to be mindful of every thought and action. These practices help to connect the person back to the divine energy source, which is the primary aspect of their being.
Radical Remission survivor Bridget Dinsmore also describes connecting to spiritual energy as being key to her healing. Bridget was diagnosed with uterine cancer and given five years to live, as long as she agreed to receive an immediate hysterectomy followed by intensive chemotherapy and radiation. However, she had just finished reading Louise Hay’s book Heal Your Body and was inspired by the author’s description of the body’s ability to self-heal. Therefore, Bridget decided to postpone any medical treatment for a few months so she could try what she calls “spiritual healing”, which, among other things, included practicing guided imagery and Reiki regularly in order to go inward. She describes her journey as follows:
At first, I had no clue what spiritual healing was all about. Although I was brought up in a very strict religious faith (Catholicism), I hadn’t been practicing it, so I was off on an adventure of my own. Little did I know that the spiritual healer was myself! I found that out after I had been diagnosed as cancer-free the following year, and most of my healing was just looking at and connecting with my inner self.
Even though Bridge had been raised in a particular faith, her exact spiritual beliefs did not matter as much as the spiritual practices she learned in order to experience that peaceful, spiritual energy on a daily basis. I find that many people today are disillusioned with weekly religious services that feel rote and outdated, yet they attend them out of obligation; meanwhile, experience based, that is having spiritual energy actually course through our bodies and minds, nourishes us more than having spiritual beliefs that live only in our heads.
A passage from Radical Remission by Kelly A Turner. PhD (see book review) Page 12
