Is there a power in the universe that can do anything through us? Even heal our bodies? I think there is. Many people I know agree with me. But what are the limits of this power? Am I supposed to avoid doctors and just go to spiritual healers? The answer is no, but it is worth sorting through the complexities:
While Spirit is all of medicine, medicine is not all of Spirit. Spirit/love/life/energy/light makes up everything there is in the cosmos. Therefore, everything that exists, including medicine and doctors, is part of made up of Spirit. It is impossible to be outside of Spirit. But the converse is not true: modern medicine does not equal God. So if I want to bring the full power of all of creation to bear on my healing (and why wouldn’t I?), I might have to venture outside of modern medicine (do both rather than just one or the other).
When we use medicine to treat symptoms, we may miss an opportunity for total healing. If a little red light on our car dashboard appears that says “check engine,” we take the car to the mechanic to see what is happening. If there is a problem with the engine, we generally do not ask the mechanic to turn off the “check engine” light. Unless we know that the light is wrong or unfixable (or we just can’t afford it), we ask them to fix the cause. Are those symptoms uncomfortable? Do we ever treat symptoms to relieve ourselves from that discomfort? Absolutely we do (I know I do). Absolutely doctors do. However, we may want to be aware that if we are getting a pill to treat symptoms without following these symptoms as arrows pointing in the direction of our healing, we may miss an opportunity to experience real healing. It also, I hasten to add, may be completely necessary and rational for us to choose to take pills to have a semblance of a normal life. I want to clarify that I have no judgment whatsoever for this choice that millions make, I’m just raising questions.
Symptom bypass can be as damaging as “spiritual bypass.” As spiritual scientists, we are increasingly wary of “spiritual bypass,” which is going straight to spiritual truth without first taking an opportunity to feel feelings and be with what is coming up for us. Taking pills regularly so that we will not feel symptoms may be another form of bypass whereby we skip a chance to learn what we have to learn.
Our body is an intelligent system designed to restore us to wholeness. My favorite kind of physicians are osteopaths (DOs) rather than allopaths (MDs) because while MDs are trained to look for disease, DOs are trained to look for wholeness. While both kinds of doctors can write prescriptions and do surgery and everything that modern Western doctors do, DOs function from an assumption that is aligned with my spiritual truth: our natural state is wholeness. Our resting state is health. Our bodies are intelligent all the way down to the cellular level and so every symptom in our bodies is there to point us to wholeness, to health.
If we combine a visit to a doctor who is trained to support wellness and wholeness with the practice of prayer, meditation, or spiritual mind treatment, we may be more likely to be restored to perfect health rather than to paper over symptoms.
Medicine does not even have symptom treatment for many troubling physical conditions. There are millions of people in the US and the world who are in chronic physical pain without a real treatment plan that could effectuate cure and without even real symptom alleviation. Many are dependent on opioids which they need to be able to function at all but which give at best a kind of half life. There are also a stunning number of diseases or “syndromes” (which is what doctors call a cluster of symptoms that they don’t fully understand and don’t have a cure for) like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, lupus and more where millions of people, predominantly women, are in massive debilitating discomfort for years without any real hope of cure or change.
When we go to a doctor without combining it with spiritual support, we miss an opportunity for total healing, or at least sweeter, easier, better healing. In the Centers for Spiritual Living, licensed spiritual practitioners (including ministers) are trained to know the truth for us when we cannot know it for ourselves. If we go to a spiritual practitioner before or in conjunction with surgery, chemotherapy or other radical procedures, that spiritual element can help us follow the arrows of my symptoms to wholeness. A spiritual practitioner can know wholeness for us and bring the unlimited power of the one even into the operating room. If we must choose to cut, burn, or poison ourselves for health, the addition of this consciousness can bring us the most competent, loving, short, and effective experience of those choices.
If Divine Intelligence is all-powerful, why wouldn’t we consult that Intelligence in conjunction with consulting a doctor? Since I believe that there is a single power that has formed itself into every single thing in the known and unknown world, including doctors and medicine, that means that Divine Intelligence knows the cure to all diseases and all symptoms long before the doctors and the scientists do. Long before scientists discovered antibiotics, it was known in Divine Intelligence. It was equally true that it would work 1000s of years ago. Long before scientists discovered the microbiome, we had billions of bacteria in our gut that could affect our health. What else is possible? What else does Divine Intelligence know that is not known yet by our doctors or medicine? What might my cells or microbiome know that I don’t know? What might they be able to tell me?
Can we be open to all that is available to us for complete healing? I have used spiritual tools to restore the ability of my knee to walk miles and carry a backpack. I have also had surgery on both my knee (I now feel that was unnecessary) and my wrist (apparently very necessary). I do it all with the help of the all-powerful, all-knowing force that I call Consciousness.