By Celia Coates

At the end of last week’s post, Love, Healing, and Dr. Gladys, I said I’d publish a post about how to send healing love to another person. Then, as I sat down to write, the title quickly changed to include receiving as well as sending love. They are two sides of the same process.

I learned this many years ago after my older daughter was born and I was handed a packet of information for new mothers put together by the hospital. It included a statement that troubled me. It said that the best mothers, the ones who are really good at taking care of their babies, are also the women who are good at being taken care of themselves. This was startling because I’d been taught, as had most of my generation, that the central task for women was to take care of other people and forget about themselves. (I wasn’t good at being taken care of, but I did my quite imperfect best with my two daughters. And I am still learning about love….) It is also true in healing that good senders are good receivers: they are both part of the whole flow, the whole circle of loving and being loved.

So, let’s explore this “whole flow.” For me, we have to start with what we think is real. In our culture reality is what is concrete – measurable or quantifiable, provable, repeatable, and predictable. But that is only half of reality. There are many people who also know the other side, the subtle one. It involves a variety and range of experiences of the non-concrete dimensions and can be found in psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, intuition, and healing. The physical and the subtle worlds exist on a kind of continuum and they interact with each other when, for example, love is sent. This complex view of the nature of reality is what WINN is designed to present. Sadly, this is not the view of the majority who call this stuff “woo woo” and question the sanity of people who talk about sending love.

So, the place to begin is by trusting that something like sending and receiving love is possible. We have both physical and subtle bodies and we live both in a material world and in a realm of spiritual (or subtle) energies that surround and support us. Sending love involves our individual physical and subtle bodies as well as the measurable and subtle worlds beyond us. We are in the habit of thinking that there is a physical lower level with a spiritual one somewhere up there above us. To be part of the flow of love, we have to begin with trusting that we can open our awareness and somehow join in this full  reality that includes both levels. And we have to begin with ourselves.

I asked some friends for their thoughts about this and Bernice Hill wrote,
“First, one needs to check with the inner Self. What is the state of one’s own overall wellbeing? What do you, yourself need most to open to in steadiness, peace and equanimity? Then one just rests for a time in that way of being, letting those feelings wash over you and through you.”

It is not about making an effort or doing something difficult and trying hard to get it right. To describe, very simply, how to send love: start with yourself, relax and feel what you are feeling, trust the possibility that you can join something larger than yourself, make a good wish for someone else, and send it out.
There’s a gospel song with this chorus,
Call Him up,
Call Him up,
Tell Him what you want.
That, in a very direct way, says what’s involved – establish a connection and present what’s wanted.

There is no one way to do this. This is how another friend described her practice,
“I send love and healing energy most often by thinking of Light being directed. There is no specificity for me. But there is a focusing. It’s like becoming an empty vessel that Light flows through.”

Although someone, a physical/subtle being, is the center of this process, it is not about ego, it’s not about the ordinary self, and it is not about using force. It’s about using our individual body and consciousness as the channel for something that is better and stronger than we are to come through and out to others.

A third friend wrote about the flow of love this way,
“When I send love my heart and face and all my inward body energies expand and feel warm and full, ready to burst with happiness and joy for the recipient. It wells up within and wants to burst into the ethers. When I receive love my heart and face and all my inward body energies open wide and want to absorb all of the wonderful feeling and be surrounded with it, cradled in my heart forever.”

 In these times it’s important to let go of as much fear as you can because fear blocks the flow of love. You may need to begin by sending acceptance to your own anxious body. I am not an expert, and certainly not a trained teacher in any of this. I’ve just collected my own experiences and what I’ve learned from others. I have learned not to worry if I’m not feeling open or particularly loving. I just begin with noticing whatever I am feeling and then take some time to become quiet. When I receive/send love, I become aware of the top of my head – the area above the crown chakra – and the energies that come in and spread down through my heart, and then out from my body. Sometimes images appear on my mental screen, images that take me further into this process and are often useful in becoming aware of the other person. Find what works for you and allow yourself to learn more, to grow, each time you join in.

Sometimes I turn to Metta meditation, the Buddhist practice of paying compassionate attention. The simplest version of this is,
“May you be happy
May you be healthy
May you be safe
May you be at ease”

 Vipassana meditation teacher Jack Kornfield’s uses this version, one that wisely begins with requesting loving kindness for the self,
“May I be filled with loving kindness
May I be safe from inner and outer dangers
May I be well in body and mind
May I be at ease and happy
These words are repeated two more times, first substituting “you” and then “all beings” for “I” – May you be filled… and, May all beings be filled….

 Often there are instructions that say we have to set an “intention” for what we want for the other person. I prefer to think in terms of wishing rather than intending because I get caught in the seriousness and heaviness of intentions.

Also, the usual guidelines say we have to ask the other person’s permission before sending love or healing. But I think we can instead begin our wish with words like, “if this is welcome,” or that this wish be “for the highest good.” We can send out a request at the subtle level of reality and if the other being needs to reject it, they will. Also, there’s “evidence” that the best prayer or wish is something like “Thy will be done.”

And, one more thing – Elmer Green taught us that it is very important after sending such a wish to detach from the process, to let go and allow the energies to do what is needed. I also learned from him that it’s important that individuals participate in the flow of love – it grounds subtle reality in the physical realm. We, as physical beings, act like a grounding device that brings heaven to earth and connects us to each other. This is where “we are all one,“ becomes what we live.

Our great need now is to be in loving touch with others.

*     *     *     *     *
Bernice Hill was trained as a Jungian analyst and she is the author several books among them – EMERGENCE OF THE COSMIC PSYCHE and SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVES ON DEATH AND DYING.

For information on Jack Kornfield:
https://jackkornfield.com/meditation-loving kindness

The image that leads this post (www.WINNpost.org) is one I particularly enjoy. It is from Pixabay: Hans 22 828 images

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