AUSTIN WORKSHOP:
A Workshop For Healing - Overview
| Dates: | Location: |
| • March 12-15, 2009 |
Austin, Texas |
It takes great courage to dialog with your soul. ENTERING THE CASTLE is a workshop that represents a journey into your soul, for your soul is your CASTLE. This is a workshop for people who are in need of healing and who are interested - and determined - to work "through their soul" to set in motion forces of healing that are held within the many "mansions of their soul". This is not a workshop about healing; this is a workshop for healing. The methods that will be used at this workshop are rooted in the healing practices of mysticism, such as the power of channeling grace and the practice of contemplation, prayer. I will also be offering extensive instruction on working with the interior mansions of your soul/CASTLE, taking you on several inner journeys exploring the rooms of your mansions where you have hidden the many healing resources of your soul. I encourage people to come to this workshop who are ready to engage in deeply powerful dialog with their soul in order to release burdensome psychic, emotional, mental, and physical blockages to regaining their health. This workshop is being held at THE CROSSINGS in Austin, Texas, which is a wonderful healing center that allows for this workshop group to create a private atmosphere supportive of the goal of "entering one's CASTLE".
A BIT OF BACKGOUND ON THIS WORKSHOP
ENTERING THE CASTLE The research into this book has taken me down roads I never thought I would travel - one of these roads is the practice of healing. I can clearly see how my involvement with healing was inevitable when I now look back at these past 4 years, beginning with writing INVISIBLE ACTS OF POWER, as the book re-awakened in me my deep passion for the study, and now the practice, of mysticism. The art and the practice of healing is a natural extension of channeling grace, and grace is the oxygen of the mystic.
One moves cautiously when entering into the energy field of healing. During my years of working as a medical intuitive, I avoided any involvement in healing whatsoever although I recognized that my skill belonged under the umbrella of "the healing arts". I certainly learned about the vulnerability of people who are coping with disease and/or facing their death. I also encountered more people than I can count who had the unfortunate experience of going to "healers" who carelessly and recklessly told them useless things like, "Your body is just cleansing itself of negative energy." One woman went to a "healer" after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was trying to decide whether to undergo chemotherapy or heal through only alternative methods. This "healer" told her that the breast cancer was healing and that she was going to be "just fine" - that woman almost died in my arms - literally. I also have stories of people who were aided and assisted by healers, of course, but it was the combination of the positive and the negative, the successes and the failures, that eventually inspired me to write, WHY PEOPLE DON'T HEAL. I felt that healing had to be possible, that there had to be a way to activate the energetics or life force on the higher domain of life - but how? And what was expected of the individual striving to heal? What was his or her part in the healing process? A person in need of healing who pursues energy medicine techniques - including prayer and the healing use of grace - cannot approach it as one does bottled medicine, which is just let someone "work on you" and then go back to your ordinary world. Very little improvement will come of that.
Energy medicine - and now what I think of as "sacred medicine/sacred healing", which is the conscious directing of grace through prayer into the soul of a person - requires that the person "keep the fire of grace alive within". This requires instruction and guidance, either to the person him/herself, or to those who are "maintaining the fire of grace" for their beloved family member, mate, or friend - or even our beloved human community. This instruction includes learning about the nature of grace, how to channel grace, deeper soul guidance, the practice of contemplation, and other practices that are basic to the mystic. My book, ENTERING THE CASTLE, and my CMED program on mysticism entitled, ENTERING THE CASTLE, was inspired by the writings of the 16th century mystic, Teresa of Avila, who wrote extensively about the soul in her classic text, THE INTERIOR CASTLE. During the writing of INVISIBLE ACTS OF POWER, I referred to her work for prayer references, and noted - with great delight and awe - that Teresa said that the soul " is like a crystal that has many mansions and each mansion has many rooms." She then noted that the soul - specifically - had seven mansions. My previous book, ANATOMY OF THE SPIRIT, immediately came to mind as I realized that Teresa's work was my porthole into the soul in the same way that the seven Christian Sacraments, the Jewish Tree of Life, and the Buddhist/Hindu Chakras, wove together a new template of body/mind/spirit unity for me ten years ago. (Could it really be that long?).
Once I was "in the CASTLE" - inside the soul - I had a feeling, a sense, a guiding perspective that was as crystal clear as the guidance that directed me through learning medical intuitive and energy anatomy. I knew that I had to pursue the excavation of the CASTLE in contemporary language so that this template that Teresa described could now be used for use outside the monastery (as she wrote the text for 16th century cloistered nuns), and for healing, and deep interior work. That's when I knew, also, that I had found the "container" I needed to direct grace into another person's energy field for personal healing.
Simultaneously - as these circumstances always go - I was invited to join a small healing/prayer group here in my neighborhood that gathers at a local church on a regular basis. I agreed after entering my own CASTLE, having avoided their invitations for almost a year. I am the new member of this deeply devoted group of healers who have gathered together for a long time and I am very, very grateful to be in their company. Healing is about practice and silent dedication - always practice and dedication and no attachment to the outcome. For many reasons, I realized I had to be a part of this small and well-seasoned healing group. Reports of healing came back to our little group, some extraordinary, some quite simple. But healing is never to be measured by how much, how big, how obvious, how dramatic. Every healing is extraordinary.
For me, the mystery that began years ago as to "why people don't heal", has lifted like a fog. Healing is possible for every one, but we cannot hold the agenda for what that healing should look like. That is common knowledge; that is not, however, what a person really believes or desires. A person wants to be healed, repaired, put back together again. They want their cancer healed, they want their eyesight back, they want to walk again. Can such illnesses as these be healed? I think anything is possible now - anything. And, part two of that is healing outcomes are not in our hands, but what is in our "hands" is the capacity to channel grace through our bodies as vessels to someone in need and to one another. Whether that channeling takes place in person or "at a distance" does not matter in the least. Most of the healing work we do, in fact, is "distant" healing.
All of this work, although it isn't really "work" at all - it's just the texture of my life now - but all of it together, plus teaching and writing, has convinced all the more that there is a new soul-calling, which is to be a "mystic without a monastery". I think many people are "called" to that role in this world now, although most have no idea that the source of their soul-distress is that they have not yet identified the presence of this calling in their soul. People think it is their external life that needs to change, when it's their internal life that is changing. Working and guiding these contemporary mystics who are called to be a source of mystical service in this world is why I re-shaped CMED's Mysticism class to, ENTERING THE CASTLE. The soul-calling people are feeling - and maybe you are - is to learn the "skills of the soul", to be able to make a difference your world, whatever that world is - however big or small - because you know how to channel grace into it. It is quite a gift to know how to use the power of prayer and silence to heal at a distance, or to receive deeply profound guidance for yourself through prayerful contemplation.
A PRAYER THOUGHT
...many remain at the foot of the
mount who could ascent to the top...
I repeat and ask that you always have courageous thoughts.
As a result of them, God will give you grace for courageous deeds.
Teresa of Avila