To be made whole is to have healing. This is Shalom teaching - wellness, joy, blessedness - Jesus received from his Jewish heritage.
Jesus' physical healings, a mission of Shalom, indicates Spirit's potency to put back together the pieces of our lives. "You leave," writes Caroline Myss, "fragments of your spirit here and there over the years" (Entering the Castle). This is one way of saying life has a way of eating away at us, or eating us away. We become, in a sense, part of ourselves.
What fragments persons? We could list many things, among them trauma, loss of trust, abuse - physical or emotional-, loss of loved ones, involvement in a cult, being sexually violated, loss of a career or job, neglect, betrayal by a religious leader or faith community, a mental breakdown, drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, unresolved resentment, unforgiveness, harming others, neglecting one's well-being - physically, mentally, spiritually, ... This loss of wholeness can be transgenerational as a genetic, energetic currency from ancestors.
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Myss compares the detached fragments to barnacles on a ship. She writes that the "barnacles" are "glued ... to various places, objects, people, memories, and unfinished business." About our past, these fragments manifest as a "dead zone." A person can, at times, recall an incident and place, remembering the moment they lost part of themself. They were, as we say, never the same after that. This process may be intimated in such a saying after a loss, too, as, "I've got to pick up the pieces and move on."
Attachments form, and we cling to these losses. We come to see ourselves as less than whole, as unhealed. We may not feel okay about that, but that is the self we become, oddly, comfortable with. We can resist healing, fleeing the wholeness offered to us.
As many counselors know, most persons go to counseling for symptom relief, not healing, not wholeness - they see healing as too demanding. I conclude many go to religion with the same mindset - not for transformation, but for lesser motivations. For example, Christians may say of Jesus, "He did it for me, so I don't have to."
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If you have ever been freed from an old barnacle, you may know how scary and unfamiliar wholeness can be. In being made whole, suddenly, things are different, and a door opens for you to be and act differently. There is a loosening of the potency of the past. I have known this more than once and become aware of it happening, not knowing how to relate to the new freedom. This transformation can be like going to bed a citizen of one country and waking up a citizen in another.
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So, oddly, we can perpetuate our suffering, our un-whole-ness. We can keep falling into unhealthy ways. We can use our suffering to gain attention and pity, to control those around us, and to have an excuse not to take responsibility for ourselves. We get stuck and, at some level, choose to remain stuck, possibly while complaining about the stuckness.
This dead zone can come from our familial upbringing. If a parental system does not demonstrate permission for wholeness, the child often internalizes the message, "I can't be whole. Wellness is not for me. I don't deserve it." Or, "To be whole would be betraying my parents."
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This woman in the Scripture for today wanted to be free from her bleeding (Note: blood was seen as containing the life-force, so this may clue us into a more subtle meaning, such as we see Myss speaking of; that is, energetic loss). She wanted the newness of wholeness. She reached out for it. She received - not got - it.
And notice Jesus did not say, "I made you whole." He spoke, "Your trust has made you whole." Her will, issued in faith, created the conditions for wholeness to emerge. Wholeness was already present even before she met Jesus. It only needed the right conditions to manifest. And so with us. The condition of trust opened to receive the energetic potency which flowed from Jesus; yet, "Jesus" signifies presence already with us, that we are in our oneness with Presence, the One.
We, like the woman, reach out to touch Spirit - however we understand that. The reaching out can be out or in, within or outside the physical body. The meeting of Love and our will to enjoy wholeness coalesces for lost completeness to emerge. This loss of completeness, also, can be transgenerational as a genetic, energetic currency from ancestors.
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How do we reach out to touch the Presence-of-wholeness? We can in many ways. This can include counseling, medication, and medical assistance. Receiving the Spirit-of-wholeness can entail religious and spiritual practices of devotion that express and grow a desire for Spirit and to be more whole persons. Devotional acts include service to others in God's name - not to get credit. Many persons find wellness to be facilitated through meditation or mindfulness.
For spiritual healing, we need to do some things that help us get out of the center of our lives. Indeed, our lack of wholeness spiritually is often a manifestation of self-centeredness. In being wounded, we tend to curl up into ourselves, perpetuating the woundedness.
Notice the woman did not go to Jesus to complain of her illness or to blame anyone else for lack of cure. She simply, without speaking anything, reached out to know wholeness again. Her reaching out was prayer in action. We "reach out" for wholeness, for we remember wholeness. Our bodies remember wholeness.
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Last, "healing" does not always entail a resolution of suffering but a new relationship to suffering. Sometimes, we live gracefully and without attachment to hurt or loss. And healing can come in wisdom to understand its benefit to others or ourselves and in strength to live gracefully with the injury or loss. Hence, wholeness can be received without a cure, for wholeness is first a spiritual relationship to our Source and, through the Source, to ourselves in community with other beings, seen and unseen, human and otherwise.
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Note: I see Myss's comments as a metaphor of a loss of presence and energy through attachment, as noted above, to past experiences. Not noted above, attachments can appear positive; that is, we can be tied to past positive experiences which hinder our being fully present in the present. Awareness is diluted. This presents as a loss in the present - of self, energy, presence - there are diverse ways of speaking of this. Also, essentially - true self, spirit, Self - cannot be other than whole, while practically - self, person, ego - can. At the "meeting-point" of your oneness with its participation with the oneness of Spirit, absolute wholeness cannot not be regardless of forfeiture of wholeness in the relative realms. God is Wholeness.
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2023
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
