Healing is ultimately a quality of the heart - Quotes from - "Healing into Life and Death" by Stephen Levine

p.48
“the path of healing is a process of opening our heart to the holdings of the past while maintaining a keen awarenss of the present.  It is acoming home, a return to the living moment.  But becayse there is so much more to us than just bid/body, because our original nature is without boundary, its edgelessness cannot be describnved. It can only be participiated in.”

p. 28
“We saw so many bodies reestablished a certain degree of wellness. We saw so many as they cleared their heart and resolved loose ends, discover a feeling of being “more alive than ever” sometimes with a considerable diminshment of pain and symptoms. Though their body did not reflect this extra wellness something had healed so deeply into life that death was no longer a problem.”

p.33
There is the story of the chiropractor who goes to the spiritual teacher and asks how to rid his body of cancer and the teacher says “Just love yourself.”

Tomas Merton “True love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become impossivle and the heart has turned to stone.”

p.71

“In taking the path of healing that leads to the heart, previous conflicts are seen as rich and fertile ground for insight into that which causes suffering and that which allows us to go beyond siffering.  Our investigation of the mind, of those qualities that block the heart, become a deeper deconditioning of old holding, a demagnetizing of our incessant and mechanical identification with all that passes through the mind/body In watching the mind we see who we aren’t and enter the new territory of the heart. For it is in the heart that, with a deep sign, conflict comes to peace and the illnesses and pains of a lifetime may be dispersed in the soft receptiveness of unlimited being.”

“Crossing the bridges, having gone beyond the blockages and armoring, the self-hatred and judgement whch have for so long delayed our final healing, we sink into the heart, and the question of “Life or death?” disappears .  All is experienced as life, including death. All dualities are seen as just, overdefinied points in a spiraling process."

P,77
“In ancient Chinese calligraphy, the symbol for the mind and the symbol for the heart are the same: hsin.  For when the mind is clouded only the heart is experienced, just as when the heart is exposed there are no obstacles to the mind. The heart and mind only seem separate to the mind.  To the heart all things are one.”

p.79
“In sending love to ourselves we send love to all. In sending healing we are healed. In letting go of that which blocks the heart, the confusions and old encrustations of the mind, we open into the heart of the world.  As the sensations and thoughts and feelings that often surround illness become more audible, something within begins to melt in mercy for the pain we cause ourselves and the ways in which we have held so assiduously to our suffering. As the armoring mels, we experience our vastness, and the heart expands to fill the whole body with a sense of balance and wellness.”

p.109
“By making room in our heart for the lesser holdings, we cultivate the strength and presence for the greater.”

p.113
“When the mind sinks into the heart, we no longer feel so separate but recognize how connected we have always been and always will be.”

p.205
Taos Pueblo Shamans concept of “All Same” is when heart and mind our seen as one

Awareness is the foundation of healing - Journaling on "Healing into Life and Death" by Stephen Levine

In the book a story is recalled of the woman who went to the Zen master and asked him if she needed to take on a specific spiritual path to be healed. The Zen master answered “you are the path.”

On p.37 the author talks about the woman who says “as I started to say goodbye to life, I was kind of shocked at how little I had ever lived. . . It was only when I saw how much I had put on hold that I was pulled back into life. . . I was so asleep that I guess it took something big as death to wake me up. But I will never make that mistake again.”

I have been that woman.  I feel like I missed all of my 30s working so hard. I don't really remember much about them: getting married, my father dying, a few long trips my husband and I took everything else is a blur.  I have missed a lot.

p.42 “Much of our life is an afterthought, a dreamy mist which obscures the moment just passed.  So much of our life is a reflection of what has occurred rather than a direct participation in the unfolding 

moment.”

With the Yoga Therapy training I hope my life will change and become more full.  I won;t have to work 80 or 100 hours a week but could pull back to a reasonable 40 and have some time to be alive.

I have suffered from back pain, shoulder pain, foot pain.  Lots of injuries in my adult life. 

p. 71

“Someone once asked, ‘What is the toll for crossing this bridge?’  The toll for crossing to the other shore of wholeness is the relinquishment of our suffering. This crossing over is what is called healing: it costs each of us identification with ‘my pain’ It may even mean that our lives will never be the same.”

The pain I have experienced has made me sad, given me at times a poor me attitude on life. But on the positive side this pain has kept me in yoga and yoga has one of the most beautiful parts of my life.

p. 104

May find correlation between the pain in the body and the holdings in the mind which block entry into the heart.”

I like the idea of Speaking Gently to the Pain.  I gave me knee pain a name: Sophia Rekneeta. I am tell her sometimes - "it will be ok.  it's fine."

p.104-105“So each morning, at whatever time she awoke, she would whisper into her pain, “Good morning, sweetie, how are you today?” She talked to it with loving kindness, recognizing the necessary balance that did not invite it to stay but no longer pushed it awat. She greeted it as one would a colleague at a breakfast table.”

I have often felt like I have been a terrible wife always working too many hours and then running to yoga or running to this lecture or that. Never giving myself and my husband the time we deserve.  

p.115 “Perhaps a greater tragedy than the loss of a child or the death of a dear friend is how often we feel this communion missing from those with whom we share our life. “

P,174 Introduces the concept of the difference between energy and effort.  I need to move out of effort and into energy,

“When we have tasted the crystalline waters of our true nature, our life becomes effortless. There is no need to push the river. But one of the ironies of healing is that it takes effort to become effortless.”

p.175

“Indeed, when we start to see energy in the mind, we begin to see process, watching each state of mind dissolve one into the next: the same energy which propels thought moves the stars across the sky. In focusing on the quality of energy in the mind/body, we enter the realms of creation constantly unfolding.”

p.177

“If we always met life as a struggle, thinking ourselves as warriors in a battle instead of pilgrims a path, healing will continue to make life an emergency. But when we soften to healing, when we let the mind/body float in the heart, the potential fro reestablishing balance in the body greatly intensifies.”

I have very much identified with being black and jewish calling myself a product of 3,500 years of oppression. I want to now let that go.  I especially like the concept of a soft belly.

p.209

Many paths say “Watch breath, soften belly, open heart.”

p.210-11

I always am intrigued by the Concept of Just this much

“If you can see “just this much” you can see everything .. But if “just this much” is not enough, life will be insufficient and old dreams of death will beckon.”

p.226

“To discover the true nature of love and the wholeness; the complete spaciousness, of an unhindered awareness, to receive life directly, as it is, with no filters or unfinished business. Just things as they are, just being itself.”

The healing journey and the life journey are one integrated process: Journaling - Healing into Life and Death by Stephen Levine

I realized in the book we are all suffering, feeling pain, feeling pain, experiencing joy, dying and being reborn,  I like the idea of Life and Death being just this much.  I had a client the other day who had a many many physical and emotional problems.  So many and he physically was deformed and I thought what can I do for him.  Maybe I can do a body scan, a little breath work, joint freeing series. And now I can do "Just this Much" or maybe I can just listen. It's all valid.  My conscious mind wanted to come out with elaborate routines and prescriptions by the superconscious will what to see what God-dess has to say and do the little things,

These quotes spoke to me

p.29
“This work of opening to ourselves is taken a step at a time.  It is begun with a heartful openness and investigative awareness which gently explores the physical/mental pains and holdings which become so noticeable around illness. It is an ongoing process of meeting our fear with forgiveness and healing awareness, meeting our doubt with a new confidence which develops in each unknown step as the ground comes up to meet and support our progress.”

p.35
“Healing, like grace, always takes us toward our true nature. Indeed healing is not somewhere we are going but a discovery of where we already are-a participation in the process unfolding moment to moment.”

p.54
“Nothing has to be different for us to be whole. It is not  a mtter of change as much as merciful acceptance. We don’t even have to be less angry or less frightened or less doubtful. We  don’t have to be more loving or more compassionate, or more wise.  To be whole is just to take ourselves within wholeheartedly to meet even our lovelessness, our mercilessness with a deeper “Ahhhhhhhhhh”

I am very interesting in the topic of APPEARING WELL VS. BEING WELL and also the converse
APPEARING SICK vs BEING SICK

p.103
“One fellow with terminal cancer noticed that in trying to heal himself he learned to appear well but never how to be well. He said he had been pretending his whole life that he wasn’t sick. He spoke of notiing an ache in his chest just over the heart, which was becoming more intense as he worked with the grief meditation and he exploration of his stomach tumor. One day, when the pain in his heart was particularly apparent, he decided to address it directly. He spoke to it, asked how long it had been there. To his surprise the ace responded saying, “I have been here all your life.  But this is just the first time you ever noticed me.”

.p. 127
“Most importantly I have come to accept myself exactly as I am.  This is the greatest gift of all… Soon my body will drop away from me like a cocoon and my spirit will fly like a butterfly – beautiful and perfect.”

I love this quote because it relates to me as a Yoga therapist who always wants to take another course and another training.  I need to find self-acceptance of where I am right now.

Healing is not always about physical curing - Journaling Questions "Healing Into Life and Death" by Stephen Levine

I am presently trying to develop a spiritual guidance and training program at The Yogi Tree and at the beginning of the week I was meeting with Joseph a pastor who will be part of the program and he said healing and curing are not the same thing.  I replied oh yes I have been reading about that for school.

I wished I had had this information when my father was dying of cancer.  I was so mad at the doctors for convincing to be part of these insane trials.  But I do remember before he became to sick he scanned many family photographs and made some peace with his brother. I realize he was healing the wounds of family.

p.3 “If healing was as it seemed, the harmonizing of the disquieted, a balancing of energies to bring about peace where before there had been war, then healing clearly was not limited to the body, or even the visible.” It includes the possibility of quieting even the deepest, unseen wounds-the discomforts which make death seem respite."

My father spent much of his child being passed from family member to family member. Even spent some years in an orphanage.  I know he was deeply wounded.  My mother thought he may have even been raped.

p.4
“healing as it seems (is) the integration of the mind and body into the heart. Healing is the growth that each person seeks. . . Healing is discovery. Healing occurs not in the tiny thoughts of who we think we are and what we known but in the vast undefinable spaciousness of being – of what we essentially are-not whom we imagined we shall become.”

He loved putting all the photographs together in files on the computer.  Maybe he was was revisiting his childhood, his family and making peace with it.

p.4
“Our work seems to be an encouragement to focus on the moment. To heal into the present and to allow the future to arise naturally out of that opening.  If the moment holds pain, awareness is bought to pain. If the moment holds grief, then grief is the focus. If the moment holds illness, then illness is the teaching to which awareness is directed.”

My father loved science so it was natural that he would do everything in sciences power to be cured.

p,5
“There seemed no bodily healing technique that worked for everyone, no one method held in common by all those who seemed healed.”

But, science in my opinion didn't have cures it had large tortures - itching, nausea, hiccuping, exhaustion, diarrhea, loss of appetite, etc.

He would have continued to do more cancer trials but he died.

I remember one of his last statements was

"way too much"

I thought he was referring to us fussing over him so much.  But now I am not sure if it was deeper than that.

p.6 “. . . our path becomes a letting go of that which blocks the path.”

When I went to take Nischala Joy Devi's Cancer Training - Yoga of the Heart this April was mainly because I knew I was in need of healing from the trauma of watching my father die.  I felt the hospital was too aggressive to violent with their treatments.  But now I realize it was my father's life and my father's death it was all up to him.

p.6 “healing is not forcing the sun to shine but letting go of the personal separatism, the self-images, the resistance to change the fear and anger, the confusion that form the opaque armoring around the heart. This process begins with the dissolution of the dense clouds of our forgetfulness and unkindness. It opens the way to reveal the ever-healed within.”

I was not always at peace with my father. I consider him a difficult man and very troubled and troublesome at times. But I did feel loved by him.  And I miss his very much.  I have no question about the integrity of his heart.

p.82
“His healing was no less than any of those we have seen who survive in the body. Though his cancer did not desist, his heart became as light as “the feather of truth.” Indeed, the ancient Egyptians beloved that after death the heart was placed on the scales of truth to be balanced against a feather to conclude if the life just passed was lived in healing or forgetfulness.”

For me healing would have been seeing people, meditating and doing yoga, making beautiful dinners, traveling, planting and tending a garden..  But for my father it of course looked different.

P, 162
“Among the first steps of healing is to let go of our definition of what we imagined healing might be.”

My father's cancer was a teaching for him and I teaching for me.  What I can do now is "Take the teaching."

I see myself as a yoga therapist helping others to find their own healing and helping myself to find mine.  My name means guide in Sanskrit, it doesn't mean teacher, guru, leader . . . I want to be a guide. . but to guide people back to their true self, intuition and inner nature.

p..167
“By breaking our addiction to automatic action, a desire of the superficial to be healed from outside itself, we enter into the direct participation in our healing from within.”