Dear loved ones,
The truth about healing is that not everyone wants to heal. The truth about healing is that not everyone is ready.
It takes a super courageous soul to look within and say “Maybe the way I’ve been doing it is not the best way.” It takes a humble soul to accept an extended hand and say, “Please guide me; I’m lost.” It takes a person of the most radical nature to say, “I’m ready for a change.”
Change is hard; change is difficult. Many people you know, including many people on spiritual paths, have reached a certain level of evolvement and then stopped. They are content to stay at that level. For them, they believe that where they are at is the highest they can go. For them, there is no higher wisdom possible—they have closed themselves off to the possibility of more.
If someone has stopped, and they don’t even realize that they’ve stopped (this is called “denial”), then they will not want your healing assistance. They will not desire your encouragement to go further.
This is a hard lesson, I know! I’ve been learning it lately, and it is perhaps the most challenging lesson I’ve ever encountered. There is someone in my life whom I love dearly who has been stuck in a plateau of cynicism, isolation, and frustration for many years, but who refuses to accept my sincere offers of help. I offer her free Reiki sessions, hugs, and words of guidance—yet she is not truly open to any of them. She does not want the wisdom I have to share. She does not want healing. She does not want to see within herself all the ways she could grow. She is not ready.
Dear healer friends, you cannot force someone to heal. You may love someone with every ounce of your being, and put tremendous efforts into offering assistance, but that person may refuse every moment of it.
Yet, know this: You are not a failure! What is happening is that you are learning a deep lesson. The lesson of acceptance. Every human being is on their own journey. It may not be in this lifetime that they are ready to do the deep healing work that you yourself have done. For the path of a healer, a guide, a lightworker and wayshower of humanity, is not an easy path! It is perhaps the most challenging of all—because we have to face our “yucky stuff” in the process, head-on. What courage! What intensity! Not every soul is meant for this.
My friends, the truth about healing is that not everyone is ready to heal. Not everyone wants your help.
The truth is, the best way to help someone you love who is resistant to your efforts is by respecting their choice to be exactly where they are. Even if your heart is breaking by watching someone you love refuse the healing support you offer, allow your heart to break. Feel it break and feel it break and feel it break some more.
Through the pain of your broken heart, your ego dissolves further, and then, paradoxically, more love can shine through.
Through the pain, you find redemption in the light. You leave all projections of how things “should be” and you enter the present moment of now…where everyone you love, and every single being that exists, is absolutely perfect. Right now. Now. Now…
Loving All of You Forever,
Anya Light ♥
anyalight.com 
Anya, so beautiful and something I so needed to hear. I, also, have someone very dear to me, and she just doesn’t get it. She insists on staying exactly where she is, and I can see her going further and further down, and I’m not even a healer. (Not yet anyway!!!) I just want her to stop all her negative thinking, being so hard on herself, and try to pull herself up above feeling that she is never good enough for something nice and wonderful to happen to her and for her.
I see, by reading this, I just have to accept her as her journey seems for her, and that is so hard to do. I know there is better, but that may not be her journey yet, and that really sucks to me, but it is what it is – her journey, not mine. I will continue to love and help her, and continue to try to teach her about positive thinking and good thoughts about herself. She can see how much I have changed, but she is bound and determined to stay where she is. OK, maybe in another lifetime for her.
As for me, I cannot learn enough; I want to know it all and I want to do it all, and so very much enjoying all that process of delving into the spiritual aspect of everything. I know I have a ways to go, also, but I am so willing and wanting to work on it, and welcome it. Life is so good and exciting to and for me; God is so good!
Love and hugs to you!
Bev Bigley
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Dearest Bev, your words bring a smile into my heart. I feel such a deep earnestness emanating from you. You are a rose, opening petal by sweet petal, into the light of God. May you be blessed in all that you do, and may you have courage to love your friend unconditionally.
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well done and congratulations on navigating another curve on your path. It is hard, but the best way to Love someone is to release them into the wisdom and flow of a Divine plan. Be blessed!
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Thank you, Laura! 🙂
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Absolutely beautiful!!
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As are you!!
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Thank you so much – God bless!
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I think it is one thing for us to be there for loved ones and friends, encouraging them to take care of themselves. In this role we offer moral support and uplift someone so that way they have more energy and vitality to heal themselves. While you haven’t gone into the specifics with this, so I don’t know the circumstances, your approach isn’t one I would use or suggest to care providers. Our place isn’t to tell someone they are unhealthy, and that we can fix them. A person comes to us with concerns and we offer the tools for them to understand themselves and process their own experience. We work as a mirror, because if the person is not invested in their own healing it doesn’t matter what tools we can offer, the person will not engage themselves to heal. Even worse, a person may come to think that we are the source of their healing. A doctor doesn’t heal a broken bone, they set the conditions so the body can heal itself.
Initial excitement of being a healer can make us excited about the tools we have available, and we think about how great it would be for everyone to engage something so helpful. Ultimately though, we have to step out of the way, or we may get in the way, or worse mislead. Titles, names, branding, these are trappings. We aren’t gurus. We don’t give enlightenment. We have tools that people can use if they decide to engage them. Well practiced healers are clear and luminous mirrors that people can use to see and tend to themselves. This means we have to step out of the way.
You touch on the themes I am pointing to. Though, the way you talk about yourself gives a different message.
“She does not want the wisdom I have to share.” This is the attitude I am pointing to. Be very careful of this.
“Not every soul is meant for this.” It may just mean that we aren’t the right one to serve them.
When you start an article talking about how much it requires to take healing, and then go on and talk about how this person isn’t ready, and how you have what it takes, but they don’t want it, it is a very different message you are sending. You are essentially casting the person as a lesser person. Be very careful of this.
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Dear Kyle, thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback on my post. I enjoy the chance to ponder more deeply what I have written. I agree that one must be careful about not being judgmental against others and allowing them to do their own thing. You’re right in that healers need to be careful not to cast others as lesser. Totally agreed. For me, what I was trying to convey was a message of encouragement to healers who are dealing with friends and family members (or those who they interact with often) who are dealing with intense suffering but who reject offers of support. My own situation is that I am watching someone I love daily commit acts of self-harm. It is so difficult to watch! When I reach out with a hug or a suggestion, “Would you like to talk?” and then receive only a turning away, I am left feeling so helpless and sad. Kyle, as a fellow boddhisatva, I think we may agree that relieving suffering is our number one priority, and so it may be challenging to watch those we love suffer. What I hope my post did was to help bring relief to those who may be going through similar situations. As healers, we may be particularly vulnerable to despair when those we love reject offers of support from us–or anyone else. In my case, the person I mentioned will not receive support from anyone. This person has isolated, almost completely. It is so sad to watch the bitterness and anger. Anyway, thanks again. I appreciate this thoughtful dialogue, as it helps me delve further into the nuances of what I communicated–or apparently failed to fully communicate! lol
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The practice of the Bodhisattva is one that I am not qualified to expound on. Though, I think some words that have been shared with me may relate to what you are experiencing. They are just a crude summary, but if the themes register with you I can help you find the resources to learn more.
Bodhicitta is instrumental in the practice, it is the wish that all beings be freed from suffering and the aspiration that we may become enlightened that we may be of benefit to them. There is wishing Bodhicitta and actualizing Bodhicitta, both are important. Bodhicitta is cultivated along with devotion, refuge, joy, appreciation and respect as the foundation of meditation practice. So this aspiration is central to the practice of meditation.
Though, we at the same time need to be able to recognize that we may not be able to help someone, but we cultivate the aspiration that at some point we will be able to serve them. We pursue enlightenment so we will have the capability to help. So in these times, even when someone is hurting, if we can’t be of help to them, we have to have the courage to understand our limits, and pursue this aspiration that all beings be free of suffering, and that we will awaken to be able to serve them.
When we are focusing on the suffering of others, if we are cultivating empathy we will copy their suffering, which helps neither. Cultivating compassion, that active wish and aspiration that they be free of suffering allows us to not get burnt out. In fact we are becoming more courageous and strong. Though, this courage and strength isn’t just for us, this serves others as well. Practitioners who are really good at this by the sturdiness of their meditation, and the vastness of their hearts and realization, are able to uplift others just by their presence. So, there is a lot of incentive to connect with a qualified teacher, and put their wisdom into practice.
In these times that we see our limits and see the overwhelming suffering of the world, we touch back to this aspiration, this light of our heart, which is boundless, which cannot be overwhelmed. That is the source of courage.
If you want to learn more about Bodhicitta, I strongly recommend “Enlightened Courage” by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one of the great beings of the last century.
I hope my blathering is helpful, or at least doesn’t distract you. If every word I uttered is trash, at least just read Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s words, it will be of tremendous benefit.
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Thank you, Kyle. It’s fascinating you should say what you said…because I have found an enlightened teacher, and have begun working one-on-one with her. I have definitely reached the limits of what I can do on my own through books and meditation. I needed a teacher and I have found one, by the grace of God. It is my hope that through my connection with her that I may be able to cultivate more and more compassion, and light the fire of joy within my own heart, so that my simple presence can be a comfort to others. Blessings to you, Kyle:) Namaste
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