The 'miracles' worked by healers are not so incredible if we begin by considering the ongoing miracle of life. Intuition tells me the force behind healing directs us along an inner path where patterns of wellness can be felt every day. Insofar as we have experienced the impact of positive feedback in one way or another, we are never far from healing. We can magnify the impact of every healing word or action by recalling positive responses of people, memories, dreams, imagination, prayers. The effects are enhanced exponentially with every instance we hold in our conscious awareness, something like multiplying voices using an internal feedback loop.

I remember one winter, I was walking a large dog for a friend when it suddenly took off at a run, dragging me down the street by its leash. It wasn't 10 yards before I fell on the ice-covered pebbles and tore a gash in the palm of my right hand. A snowstorm prevented me from going to the hospital until two days later, where I was told by an unsympathetic nurse that it was too late for stitches. She assured me, however, that it would eventually heal on its own. Concerned about my livelihood, as a pianist, I hovered over my hand as it healed. As the body performed the small wonder, I witnessed new skin growing, fresh and pink. The knowledge of that bit of new skin growing in secret became a defining kind of truth. Magic could not have had a greater impact on my psyche. I would sneak a look under the bandage several times a week trying to discern a purpose I could only sense. It seemed inexplicable, even though I rationally understood. The tiny laboratory of my hand convinced me healing is an overriding function of any human being expecting and wanting to be healthy.

Our expectations and desires have shaped a society prone to managing external symptoms. This has resulted in a life that exists in reaction to fear and blame, growing more like cancer than a culture. We let personal reality be obscured by current practices or fads, until we truly sicken and even die. Values have changed to encourage promiscuity, and disregard for health, family and well being, except where economic productivity is affected. It has become a sign of merit, if not integrity, to overwork personnel until a breakdown requires re-tooling of policies. We have played at re-defining success by assuming an attitude opposite from the mores we once valued. The pursuit of happiness has been usurped by a disjointed and narrowly focused fleeting exuberance. This substitution means, in essence, choosing illness.

At some point, the value of human life became secondary to the search for pleasure, success, and a myriad of other things. We now have learned to suppress what our hearts tell us. That causes us to begin the search for protection from ongoing pain by living a sort of 'half-life'. When in this state of semi-awareness, we can see, and therefore treat, only the symptoms. To begin healing at the source, we must give up external controls, retreating, and re-focusing on wholistic awareness of the sources of 'dis-ease'. As adults, we stifle these energies and filter out feedback from the healing muse. To put it frankly and simply, the truth is, we are afraid to depend on inner resources for guidance.

What of childhood when the inner source of well-being was close to the surface and flowed throughout activities and thoughts? Notice how children move through the days, humming, swinging on bars, listening to certain music, repeated over and over. Children and healthy adults create environments of personal design that nourish them until satisfied. They don't separate spirit, mind and body, but tend to the bridge of healing, leaving it in tact to traverse when needed.

An example of a typical childlike response to pain came to my attention when my son smashed into a tree with his bike. He ensconced himself in an overstuffed chair for close to two hours., silently, watching ice-skating on TV. Finally he said, "I think we have two hearts; one that pumps blood through arteries and veins and another one that loves. Look, see? He is skating with the heart that loves. If he falls down, it hurts, but it doesn't matter, because he is using the other heart."

The feeling of 'dis-ease' is insidious when out of touch with the 'heart that heals'. When felt, that 'heart', that receptor, responds to almost any method of healing, if it subscribes to the natural tendency toward wellness. The vibrant medium of our own perceived need re-connects us to the whole. Once we are connected, the re-integration of life energies can happen if we can maintain the will to cooperate with the muse that lies within.

A pre-requisite is to accept and give priority to the essential goodness of who we have always been inside, as we did when we were children. When we consciously open doors to the whole range of human experience, the impact of sound, image, movement, all serve to break down barriers we've spent a lifetime erecting. The effect of expression and response allows feedback to surface naturally during the flow of creative processes. Inner resonance indicates what is out of sync, contributing to our 'dis-ease' and reinforces what sustains us.

Having come full circle, we can put into childlike practice, what we know to be helpful as adults. That means participating in a larger understanding and closer apprehension of what sustains life. We must experience ourselves as children by re-integrating body, mind and spirit. Our peculiar life energies are informed by the richness of the arts, prayer, work with energy fields, playfulness, distance healing, meditation, and other input. Such resonance alters and re-invigorates our physical and mental condition, just as playing a violin well, realigns the grain of the wood causing a good violin to become priceless. Recalling story, engaging each other and responding through whatever means serves the purpose of exchanging small-minded projections of need for real abundance.

A few years ago my mother showed me something I had never seen; it was a proof she saved showing how a natural tendency toward life can will a healthy outcome, against all odds. Of her four pregnancies at the times, two miscarried and one infant died shortly after birth. There is documentation of blood type problems in the medical records. Her body continually rejected the blood of the growing fetuses. All the evidence was against another pregnancy growing to term. Early when she was carrying me, the doctor presented my mother with a remarkable report. Her blood type had changed and a healthy fetus was growing in her womb.

Whether the body was informed of a simple conflict of interest or a miracle occurred, I believe a small wound healing itself is of the same fabric as the larger life around us that flourishes in innumerable ways. Wholeness rests in participating as full members in that realm. If we listen to the voice of our healing muse, we will hear it waking us from the 'half-life' we've lived to the miracles all around.

Paradoxically, we remain spectators, until we learn to trust what we cannot prove by seeing, but only by participation in the profound goodness of life.

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