Guidance on Healing - Physical and Spiritual

Here's a question about the teachings of a spiritual teacher called Joel Goldsmith, who taught in the 50s and 60s. He wrote books like the Infinite Way and other books using Christian terminology, but going far deeper than the kind of Christianity you would encounter in most churches. So he's taken Christian terminology and use it in a deeper sense. I studied Goldsmith's teachings for many years before I came to your teachings. He was very much a healer, a spiritual healer. This is true. Now I'm in a healing field, massage therapy, and would like to hear you talk about healing, physical and spiritual. I can get involved in trying to fix my clients aches and pains and need guidance. Yes, that's interesting. Healing. Physical healing. Physical healing, not infrequently comes naturally with the arising of presence. And not only physical healing. Also the likelihood of being ill diminishes as presence grows because many illnesses are actually caused by dysfunctional states of consciousness, which are egoic and dysfunctional states of consciousness affect the body in a negative way and decrease the body's ability to fight disease, the immune system. So not all illnesses. Of course, there are other reasons why people become ill. But very often a dysfunctional state of consciousness makes you generally a dysfunctional state of consciousness makes you much more susceptible to disease. It does not mean that when you are present there is a guarantee that you will never become ill. As the body grows old, at some point it is in the nature of things. At some point something will fail. At least so far it's happened to humans. I'll let you know if it doesn't happen to me. And healing also, as I mentioned the other day, healing is often experienced, that kind of spontaneous healing. When people surrender, they no longer not surrender to the idea of illness, surrender simply to the present moment, to what is in the present moment. Then something is generated that is very healing. Peace itself is healing. To be in a state of a peaceful state of consciousness is healing. So that is all true. So some of you may have heard me telling the story that for, I think, hard to remember for how long. For a couple of years or so. I was a spiritual healer for a while. And the reason was that a few years after the awakening, people started coming to me. And one lady who used to come once a week to sit with me, she was sensitive to energy. And as she was talking about her problems, I was in that state of blissful, intense presence listening to her with a smile on my face, which she didn't mind, but other people minded because I always had this smile on my face when I was Listening to people, people's problems. Not because I was thinking that the problems were funny. I could just sense that at a deeper level, the problem didn't actually exist. And so some people got angry, said, why are you smiling at me? I'm telling you about my sufferings. And why are you smiling? What's going on in your mind? And I said, there's nothing going on in my mind. That's not. And that's why I'm smiling. So I was sitting with her, and she was talking, and suddenly she stopped talking and said, oh, you're doing healing on me. I said, am I? And she said, yes, I can feel it. It's just wonderful. And she didn't talk for a while. And then she felt so much better. And then she said, you're a healer. I said, oh, I didn't know that. And then she recommended that certain people should come to me by word of mouth. It started with her, you must go to this spiritual healer. He will free you of your pain, your illness, whatever it is. And more and more people came to me who said, oh, I've got this pain here. Can you take that away? I've got migraine headache. Please help me. I've got a lump on my foot. Please remove it. And for a while, I did it. I kind of was present. That's the only way I could do. And then a few people experienced healing, some didn't. And then more and more, I realized most people that were coming now just wanted to be relieved of certain symptoms, illnesses. They didn't seem that interested in awakening anymore because they wanted to be free of their pains, physical pains, which is fine too. But I realized that that was not my function in this world. And so I said, I'm no longer a spiritual healer. And I know that healing still sometimes happens to people naturally. To focus on that so much, I believe, is not my function. It may be somebody else's function. Joel Goldsmith is a great teacher. Was a great teacher. One thing where his teaching was perhaps slightly unbalanced is there was an excessive emphasis on physical healing. And that was always regarded as a criterion for how successful you are. And apart from that, his teaching is great, but because of the excessive emphasis on physical healing. So his teaching was associated very strongly with that. One reason being that he came out of. For several years, he was a practitioner of Christian Science, and his teaching still has certain similarities with Christian Science. So that's some balance. Something a little bit unbalanced, excessive, in my view. Emphasis on spiritual healing, which resulted, for example, in strange Things like when he had a heart attack, it had to be kept secret from the followers because they would have been disappointed. And so you can see the loss of balance. Too much emphasis on physical healing. But of course, when finally he had another heart attack and died, they had to finally say he died. But if you disregard that, then it might help you. You might read Joel Goldsmith and become suddenly, physically healed. So that's great. There are many people. The book. I don't know how many people are familiar with Christian Science. I don't think I'm familiar with it. But the foundational book for Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddie, was kind of channeled and you can read it. And quite a few people have claimed, may still claim that just by reading some chapters in the book, they suddenly became healed. The book stresses, as Joel Goldsmith does, that basically illness is an illusion. And ultimately, even having a physical body is an illusion. On the deepest level, that is true. But you don't even. I don't usually approach it from that angle. The rising of presence is enough. And where the identification with the body ceases. I'm not trying to convince anybody that the physical body is an illusion. And then we go really feel so real to me, especially the aches and pains.