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Look out for Howard's most recent articles in:
Kindred Spirit, Spring 2008 - A World Without Music.
Healing Today (NFSH magazine), Issue 112, May-July 2008 - Why Healing Isn't Superstition.
Network Review (Scientific & Medical Network journal), Issue 96, Spring 2008 - The God Confusion. (The publication of this article coincided with a lecture Howard gave at The University of Wales in Lampeter on 28 May 2008).
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Dying, Death and Bereavement |
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Written by Jenny Jones
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Wednesday, 28 May 2008 09:56 |
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There are no limits to how spiritual healing can help us. We do not have to have a specific illness or condition that we wish to have resolved; experience has shown that healing works equally well on emotional challenges and indeed this is the origin of many of our health challenges.
Healing into death
You may have read in other places on this website and elsewhere that the healing energies help to calm our emotions and to give us greater clarity to deal with whatever health or other challenge comes our way. When a healer is asked to channel healing to someone with a terminal illness, the benefit of the healing lies in the effect it has on our ability to accept our illness, to make our final years, months, weeks or days more serene and calm and to ease our passing, or death as many people prefer to call it.
Many people who receive healing just before their passing make peace with themselves and those around them, often after years of turmoil, discontent and disharmony. So it is never a waste of time to request healing at this time - distant or hands on. The healing can also help to ease the pain that some suffer at the end of their lives because of their illness. Loved ones and others who are left behind find it much easier to accept a passing that is accomplished without torment.
Our beliefs about what happens after our physical body wears out and gives up can be crucial in how well we cope with our own passing and that of someone close to us. My personal belief is that our soul does go on and that dying is a great deal easier than being born, from a physical and emotional point of view. Birth is a very traumatic event for both infant and mother - this trauma can be reduced by the environment in which it happens and the support mother and baby receive from others but it is nevertheless a dramatic event.
When we pass over, I believe we simply drift back easily to the source from which we originated, and reports of 'near-death experiences' support this view. I believe that returning to Spirit is a homecoming to our true home, having lived a life of learning lessons that encourage our personal spiritual and emotional growth, which serves to support all other souls, incarnate and disincarnate.
This may not help some of us who cannot accept that this could be the case - and they are entitled to their opinion, which I respect. However, the following poem was sent to Sheila Hancock after John Thaw's death and it was reproduced in her book about him. I think that it could be a great comfort to many in their grief after the loss of someone close to them.
You can shed tears that he is gone
Or you can smile because he has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that he’ll come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that he’s left.
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see him
Or you can be full of the love you shared.
Or you can be happy for tomorrow and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
Or you can do what he’d want.
Smile, open your eyes, love and go on.
Back to the top
Healing for the bereaved
Healing can, of course, also be of great benefit to the bereaved, whether it's the loss of another soul, a much-loved animal, a job, during divorce, a home, a limb, an ability, or anything else. We grieve over the loss of many things other than those we love because we give of ourselves in many different ways so that any loss will be distressing to us.
 Grieving for anything is a natural process and one that we have to go through but it is our choice as to how we respond to it, like any other situation. It cannot be rushed; there are no shortcuts. We have to allow ourselves to feel the emotions that naturally arise one by one until we reach a point where we have not forgotten our loss but we remember them (or it) with affection and gratitude for what they brought to our lives and the lessons they helped us to learn.
This acceptance of our loss often happens without our awareness - we just realise one day, perhaps on waking in the morning or when we're doing something totally unrelated to our loss, that we have accepted it and moved on.
Spiritual healing can often help to ease the pain of loss and gives us greater clarity about our relationships, both with those who have passed over and those who are still with us. It allows us space to grieve in a constructive and creative way, making it another experience that we learn from. We can keep the soul who has disincarnated close to our hearts so that we can add to our emotional foundations and use this strength to help us to live our lives from that point in a slightly (or perhaps radically) different way.
This doesn't mean that, during the healing session, we become very emotional, although that can happen with many people and it is often a relief to be able to release those emotions with someone unconnected with our family and friends. Frequently, however, people find that the release comes later when they are alone - and this release can often have a different 'feel' to it than any emotion they have felt before. It can be like a cleansing that helps us to release the deepest emotions that we have not been able to let go of up to that point.
Spiritual healing can offer great calmness and serenity in dying, death and bereavement. It is a natural way of dealing with natural situations so that our loss does not become a focus for our lives for longer than it has to.
 I believe we are here to enjoy our short stay here on the Earth plane with the tragedy, loss and disappointment being the dark side that helps us to appreciate the light. We are not here to wallow in destruction, pain, anger and self-pity - what would be the point? When we focus on our serenity and contentment we are much more open to the joyous part of life, the creative side of our lives, and the love and acceptance that we can have for ourselves and others.
For many people, this can translate into setting up trusts and charities in the name of the person they have lost to try and improve the lives of others, and this is a wonderfully creative way of dealing with loss. But it's not for everyone; others need to come to terms with their grief in a quieter, less public way. But healing can help, whichever route we choose to experiencing all that life has to offer once again.
This poem is from the book, ‘The Smoke Jumper’ by Nicholas Evans, and it gives a really creative view of loss.
If I be the first of us to die,
Let grief not blacken long your sky.
Be bold yet modest in your grieving.
There is change but not a leaving.
For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
For all the gathered riches of our journey,
The moments shared, the mysteries explored,
The steady layer of intimacy stored,
The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,
The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,
The wordless language of look and touch,
The knowing.
Each giving and each taking,
These are not flowers that fade,
Nor trees that fall and crumble,
Nor are they stone
For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand
And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.
What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A conjoined past imperishably present.
So when you walk the woods where once we walked together
And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,
Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,
And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,
And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you.
Be still.
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you.
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