The Healing Goes on

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The debate about the validity of faith healing will continue, as will the battle between scientific empiricism and age-old mysticism. It may be fatuous to argue the case for a subject that is dimly understood and of which, moreover, there can be no one authoritative definition.

It does, however, seem churlish to question the validity of anything that eases suffering, even if that relief is branded as imaginary. Are we really so confused and deluded that we do not know how we feel, and, if so, is it really so bad to make someone believe that they feel better?

At a recent alternative health exhibition in Glasgow, a woman had a stall covering the subject of 'spiritual healing'. This was no crank, but an ordinary human being with an open mind and a curiosity into the faith healing phenomenon.

What was especially heartening was her willingness to express her doubts and worries about the subject; some of the religious groups that she had had attachments with had been too doctrinal, too intent upon making every one of their followers think the same. She confessed that she did not truly understand what powers were at work when her healer colleagues used their skills, but that the results spoke for themselves.

And there it is; however mired in quackery we may believe it to be, and however contrary to our beliefs, we have to accept faith healing if it can relieve just one ounce of pain in one individual.

Indeed, the one thing that we can be emphatic about is the imperative of healing. Perhaps the question should not be 'Does faith healing exist?' but 'Why do we need faith healing?' It does not take long to figure out. We live in an instant culture that is fragmented and self-absorbed. Saturated with cynicism, we have declared ideology dead.

We get our reality second-hand from a flickering box, waste our faith on Saturday night lottery draws, and pay strangers to listen to our fears. Gone are the days when you went to your minister or priest for spiritual guidance. People have lost faith in the church and never had faith in the government, which is why they are turning inwards to find faith in themselves.

If, as many religions espouse, God is indeed inside every one of us, churchmen all over the world must be laughing into their cassocks. It would appear that what we thought we had rejected, we have simply re-invented and accepted in a different form.

It seems ironic that from such cultural rubble, such a bright hope has emerged. Perhaps our high-rise existence has brought us closer to God. Or perhaps the higher power that we long for, and sometimes feel we can sense, is in fact the sum total of our projected individual faiths. Perhaps this is the force that heals, and all healing is faith healing. Still, that's a lot of maybes.

One thing that is certain is that we are a sick society, and it is not hard to see that our world is itself wracked with disease and in desperate need of healing. War, poverty and pollution are the earth's equivalent of anger, despair and anxiety, and are ravaging the planet in the same devastating ways in which these emotions affect our bodies. Indeed, perhaps these global 'illnesses' are manifestations of our own sickness as we project our accumulated rage and fear out into the wider environment.

Each individual is a microcosm of the universe, and the way towards a healthy planet lies in healing ourselves and each other. Through healing ourselves we heal the world, and vice-versa, and the first step towards self-healing is self-love.

So as we limp into the next millennium, a message has to be sent around the world-a message of positivity and love. Love that has the power to heal.