I recently watched a wonderful movie about a healing journey taken by a Japanese man to a remote area of China. It illustrated how each healing journey is a personal process that we do by, for, and from, ourself. We can only go on it when we are ready and willing to show up for it.
The gentleman in the movie is, after many years, wanting to heal his relationship with his son, who is now very ill. He goes on a trip that is in many ways a pilgrimage determined by his son’s own efforts to understand related wounds and heal himself. So from the beginning there is a link, between the father, the son, and their relationship. All three are being healed.
Throughout the journey various other people are also woven into this web of healing. Some of them come forward to assist, moved by the power of the father’s sincere search for redemption and connection with, and love for, his son. Others are themselves healed in parallel processes instigated by the father as he begins to realize the greater symbolic nature of his trip.
The story shows the power of the healing process, the spiritual quest, as each of us strives to heal our own wounds, reclaim our souls and our place in the web of love and life. When we are ready to own our life, our wounds, and our healing; we are never really alone, when we sincerely ask we receive. If we hold fast improbable assistance shows up.
It is said: God helps those who help themselves.
It is also important that we be ready to understand that healing may take other forms than we had envisioned. It may involve helping others to heal similar wounds, or our journey may inspire others to have the courage to begin a parallel process. We must be willing to follow the flow of the process wherever it leads us.
In the end we are responsible for our healing, our journey to wholeness, and our commitment to this in the face of obstacles is important. No one can do it for us, and we have to do it for and from ourselves. But we are less alone than we sometimes feel, spirit is always ready to help us. And as we heal it often affects others in deep ways, seen and unseen.
Life is a web, of which we are all parts. Each of our wounds is reflected throughout this web, and each healing journey is as well. So thank you all for the courage and determination to walk your own path. It lightens my world as well as yours.
(© 9/2008)
