Finding Your "Shool"

 

Those of us who deal with pain on a daily basis, I believe are greatly hampered by language when it comes to incorporating well-being into our lives. I have noticed over the years that there is actually no word that describes a non-pain state, without using the word pain: PAIN-less, no pain, pain free, pain relief, etc., etc.

When we are in the throes of pain, the immediate cessation of it becomes all-absorbing, with our attention focused--stuck, really--on the experience of the pain. There is no "go to" concept we can focus on that is "not pain", other than focusing on what doesn't hurt, which, again, includes pain in the desire of it. It's no wonder it is so easy to get caught up in the "pain cycle'--the more it hurts, the more it traps your attention, which then leads to more of it.

Last week, I got into a fascinating discussion with a local Native American "medicine man", Jake, who asked me, "How is your 'shool'?"

After observing the blank look on my face, he continued. "Have you ever heard of the idea of 'loosh'?" Yes, I had, actually. Loosh is the energy of suffering--the low frequency energy of pain and agony, and it is said that it's an energy that vampiristic beings feed off of to increase their own energy.

"Yes," Jake continued. "We just turn that concept around, and what you have is a word for your sense of well-being. We like to use it to describe a spectrum, where low shool is where it is difficult to spot anywhere on your body or your life where something feels good; and then high shool, is where you feel fantastically alive and high vibe."

I nodded, suddenly realizing he was answering this question I'd had for years.

"When there is pervasive pain, usually the first thing we do is try to get rid of it, when the healing thing to do is to acknowledge with gratitude where in your body there is no pain. We call it 'finding your shool," he gazed at me and I realized that although my shoulders were aching and my knees hurt, my lower back felt really good.

"Yes, concentrate on that. Give that your energy and attention, and it will expand," he added right after my thoughts.

As Jake left the room, I was elated to have a wonderful tool with this shool thing. In Manifestation 101, we learn that what we put our attention on expands. This is the problem with pain, so we turn to external chemical means--analgesics, NSAIDs, and such nostrums, to just get our attention off of it. This is why the shool concept is so valuable. We can now rest our attention on those areas of the body that feel good, or at the very least, don't hurt, and by turning our attention thus, those good feelings can expand.

Jake also advised that we can increase our shool where there is pain, by noticing that there is some part of that painful area that feels okay, or even feels good. He said that in order for pain to exist, there has to be its opposite present--and that's shool.

Our sense of proprioception is greatly affected by pain. Limping is a good example. We change how we feel movement in our body by avoiding the movements that trigger pain. In the Feldenkrais Method, the practitioner slowly and gently moves the body into those areas where there has been a proprioceptive avoidance of pain, demonstrating that either there is greater range of motion than was thought, or that the proprioceptive reaction is no longer necessary--basically allowing shool to expand in the area.

This goes much deeper into what it means to hurt, to suffer, and to eventually start defining ourselves by our state of pain--changing our social behaviors, altering our physical movements, and justifying the pain by accepting it as a part of who we are in the world. This is all a result of pain fixation, and not realizing that there is shool within the pain that is the gateway to healing.

Again, back to Manifestation 101, Joe Dispenza said it well: "You have to feel whole before your healing; you would have to feel abundance before your wealth; you would have to feel awe before the mystical moment; you would have to feel love before your new relationship; and you would have to feel empowered before your success." So, I would add you would need to feel shool before your healing.

What Healing Really Means

I woke up suddenly the other night--it might have been the thunder of a Kansas spring, or a nearby train whistle in this railroad town--with a distinct voice in my head. Actually, a loud voice in my head: "There is no 'out there'!", it seemed to rant, then a short pause, and, "External, internal--it's all eternal."

I turned over in bed onto my back, staring at the ceiling slowly being illuminated by the early morning light, with a faint patter of raindrops, and comforting far-off thunder. I found myself reflecting back on a conversation I had with my younger brother, where we had both concluded that we had "not signed up for this"--meaning human physical life. He was bemoaning making certain choices that he felt powerless to change, and I was offering up what seemed like lame platitudes about the perfection of the moment and the "master class" of three-dimensional living. We both realized we were referring to opposite ends of the same spectrum.

The loud voice continued: "You are the eternal. You are life." At this point, I really wanted to fully wake up and track where this commentary was coming from. So as I looked around, I realized I had said these things to someone, and now they were echoing back to me.

I've been going through some uncomfortable shifting physically. I wouldn't go so far to say it was a healing "crisis", but it is a healing, and it has been painful. I was on a "Zoom" conference call last night with three shamans, and had related this bit to them, and one of them said, "You are releasing your unconscious into the eternal, and your body is resisting it." They all nodded, and I remembered that loud voice. What if what we call "healing" is more a matter of bringing what is internal and external into the Eternal?

The most basic of bottom lines is that we are all eternal consciousness that has simply agreed to muck about in this thick earthbound density for a period of time, and after we're done "mucking around", we release whatever grasp we have on physicality, and retreat once again into the Universal Field of Consciousness.

I think that because I have been characterizing my stint here on Planet Rock as "mucking about", that is probably what I'm here to heal. All the resistances I have about it, and the resistances I have to what happens as a result of it, is really what I have been called upon (by myself) to re-contextualize.

When you're a rebellious renegade like me, after 60-some years of pain, suffering, and observing the transitory nature of it all, it ends up seeming like a joke. But I'm coming around to the Truth of it: I'm here to make the internal and external eternal. I'm here to live my life to reflect back to me the eternal, infinite nature of what and who I am. And if I can do it HERE--of all places--then I've really DONE something for the Universe at large. I've contributed to a morphogenetic field that bridges the duality of life and death. A field that says I am love, and that I am always here, and I have never been anything other than that, and never will be anything other than that.

So what "healing" really means is to heal the lie of death that would have us believe we are not eternal, victimized by the false construct of "in here" vs. "out there"--the death we create by not believing that love is all there is, and not understanding that creation and destruction are the same thing.

Hence, by claiming that "I didn't sign up for this," it is a direct denial of the eternal love that could potentially transform the Universe. Rather jaded of me, don't you think?

Let's transform all the little, petty complaints--deaths, really--into grand commitments to and expressions of the infinite and eternal love we all truly, and most basically, are.

Healing You

I've commented before in previous writings that I have a semantic aversion to the concept of "healing". From a non-dualistic point of view, "healing" becomes a matter of judgement about how we feel about our bodies and lives, and has little to do with the reality that how we express in our given incarnation is perfectly who we are being. No harm, no foul.

That said, from a day-to-day experience of life in linear time, we most certainly become aware of dysfunction and pain leading us to look for a way to "heal". At the core of these dysfunctions, pains, and unwanted conditions, are inevitably unconscious patterns we've created in response to experiences--usually traumatic or extreme in some way, either physically, mentally or emotionally.

The deep-down reality of the situation with disease and dysfunction is that we created or adopted--many times unwittingly--negative experiences that, because they were negative, we decided to block them, or denied them, or shoved them down into a dark hole of forgetfulness. The problem with doing this, is that the energies of the experience are still active and reactive in the present moment, even though we've quite thoroughly forgotten their origin or intensity.

Complicating matters is that every time these reactive experiences are activated, it affects the entire field of consciousness, and this is what I am addressing in this essay.

The harsh or ecstatic quantum truth is that we are all connected as conscious and unconscious energy vortexes. All of our perceptions and experiences, whether conscious or unconscious, affect the entire quantum field of life. On the day to day, we don't really observe this directly due to social mores, cultural memes and contrivances, yet we are all affecting each other with every thought we experience, every intent we create, and every action we take. And, this includes all that previously created and sequestered reactive energy we've placed in the denial box of the "unconscious", waiting to be triggered at any moment.

The important thing to realize here is that for every unwanted condition, denied energy, and latent trigger, lies the opposite, that when addressed and brought to present attention, causes a discharge, and so is no longer unconsciously reactive. What initiates this process of mindful attention can exist anywhere in the quantum field of life. Meaning that your "healing" is inevitable due to the increasing and expanding conscious present awareness of all sentient life in the universe. This is why it is possible to "be healed" by another person, animal, or entity.

Often it is just a matter of asking for the healing, and in the asking, the "field of sentience" sends back the resolving energies causing the disease or dysfunction in the first place. Of course, if we believe this can't happen, or "know" this "isn't the way it works", that serves as a barrier and further isolates the unwanted energy within the dark cauldron of our Unconscious. On the other hand, to become aware and in allowance of the reality that our unconsciousness is waiting to discharge upon our request or demand, then healing occurs.

Nothing happens without our permission. My favorite book on this subject is Alice Bailey's Esoteric Healing, wherein she makes this exact point. As a healer, without the full consent and trust of the client or patient, no amount of moving energy or discharging it is going to have an effect.

Therefore, the seeking of healing requires that the seeker be fundamentally willing to re-perceive what energies lurk in the dark cave of unconsciousness, and to reach out to the Sentient Whole to find and remind how, why and where we blocked or denied the energies of an unwanted experience. And in so doing, let go of these blocked or previously unseen energies, so they may contribute once again to our life and to the expansion of general universal sentience.

Healing has always been an inside job, and in acknowledging that reality we not only open the flood gates of our own healing potential, we also open the possibilities for others to be healed, ultimately serving the entire conscious collective. And by reaching out with intent and purpose, we call in the keys to unlocking the prison of unconscious energies, and free ourselves as well as our beloved fellow beings into infinite possibilities.

Healers and the Inner Light

I got into a friendly debate this past week about what healers actually do when they are healing someone. My friend insisted that healers have the ability to "send energy" to others, and that energy from the healer is what causes healing in another. Although I'm sure this happens in some cases, my contention was that, if the energy sent by the healer was not recognized by the "healee", then the effect would be temporary, or non-existant. My friend said, "Well, how do you explain Reiki, or Qigong?"

I said, "These energies are recognizable as being a part of the subject's own energy field, so they have an effect. There can be no healing from an external source unless the individual being healed is accessing their own Reiki or Qigong energies. The healer merely acts as a resonant reminder." He nodded blankly, so I figured he either hadn't thought about it in this way, or disagreed. We just left it at that.

We all have access to our own inner light, that if acknowledged and directed, is the true source of any healing. From a non-dualistic perspective, if there is something to be healed, that requires a pre-existing means to heal it from the same agency noticing the need for healing. It's simply the dualistic nature of disease--the disease and the cure exist together, just as within every problem is the solution.

In Alice Bailey's classic manual, Esoteric Healing, she makes the point that unless the patient desires healing at a soul level, no matter what the healer does, it will have little or no effect. This is because no outside agency can "force" energy on another unless they accept or desire it, either consciously or unconsciously.

The only truly active principal in a healer's work is the ability to simply BE, and by BEING, the healer activates or stimulates the beingness of their client. That beingness is the healing inner light.

Because basically everything we perceive (and beyond) is energy, or different frequencies and/or densities of light, then by observing our own inner light, right there we have the means to heal any aspect of our lives. There are any number of ways to "shut off" or deflect our own inner light. Things do get stuck, go unconscious, get ignored, or we go into denial about them.

The most effective way to turn away from the light is to assign external causation. It is simple to be victimized by an assumed attack against us. The ego cries out in accusations, as feelings of hurt, rebellion, and revenge wash over us, darkening our light.

By simply allowing these attacks, or distortions, or incoming darknesses--like clouds in the sky--they can then float by as we remain unaffected, shining in our own inner light.

In my case, what has tripped me up repeatedly is the sheer volume of unconscious, habitual, monkey-minded shenanigans incessantly poured out by my ego. There isn't a day (or hour) that goes by where I don't catch myself feeling deflated, attacked, frustrated or victimized by my own interpretations of what is going on around me. This is the sneaky ego busy at work, making sure it's the only thing in the universe that has a right to exist.

After years and years of buying into these ego shenanigans, the negative energies begin to be embodied and reflected in the physical body as ailments, discomforts, and dis-ease. From there it is easy to eventually become desperate to find something "out there" that will bring some modicum of relief. This leads to popping painkillers, herbs and elixirs in the futile hope of a pain-free body. Our attention gets fixated on "finding the cure" out there, and the instant gratification of relief, rather than simply sending in the light, brightly, persistently and consistently.

Not that I have anything against these nostrums--I sell them, fergawdsakes. What I do have against these things is using them to replace my own healing light. I have found over the years that these healers--plant, mineral, animal, extraterrestrial, spiritual, energetic, or human--can have no real or lasting effect on my pain and suffering without the parallel application of my own healing light. By using these nostrums with the light, you have two quantum points that will then collapse the wave of dis-ease over time.

A healer is only effective as their ability to stir or invoke the acknowledgement of inner light in their clients, and a remedy, elixir, herb or potion only works when the consumer of it can access the pre-existing light the remedies are designed to summon.

In the spirit of this article, try this short meditation:

• Take a deep breath and clear the mind of chatter.
• Move the attention to the heart area of the body.
• Notice light emanating from this energy center.
• Notice light shining out from all the organs and joints of the body.
• Notice light dancing and circulating throughout the body.
• Direct the light to any area of your life in need of repair.

Make the light your most intimate and dearest friend. After all, it is YOU, and just like you, is infinite and invincible.