I’ve been confused by the expression “spiritual healing” for some time now. At first I thought it meant to heal one’s spirit. But over the past few years of spiritual exploration and practice, I’ve come to recognize that spirit can never be damaged or broken. It remains as it was created: perfect, whole, and complete. No healing needed. Ever!

Well then, what the heck is spiritual healing if not healing of the spirit?

I now realize that spiritual healing is about reconnecting with spirit and reclaiming our essential nature of wholeness, worthiness, and innocence. It’s about remembering that we are one with spirit, life, love, the universe, the divine; whatever words you use to describe the eternal source of all that is. Spiritual healing is about removing the blockages that prevent us from experiencing ourselves as spiritual beings.

The blockages come from traumatic experiences, cultural conditioning, and ancestral beliefs; as well as unprocessed feelings of shame, fear, anger, and sadness. They get installed every time we shut down a part of ourselves to escape or prevent pain or to please others. They are absorbed from a society that promotes superficial values. They are presented in messages about not being good enough; being too needed, too sensitive, too whatever; or having too much or too little of some arbitrary trait that the media currently idolizes or abhors.

The blockages arise from not having basic needs met and not knowing how to handle the resulting pain; and the subsequent use of self-medicating behaviors or substances; and the emerging shame, guilt, humiliation, or despair experienced from falling into this destructive pattern yet again. This is a vicious cycle that contributes to separation from spirit almost as much as experiencing violence, neglect, or abuse.

The blockages are ubiquitous. We all have them to varying degrees.

And yet we all have access to the underlying perfection of spirit that is waiting patiently to be unveiled. This is the gift that spiritual healing provides. Reiki is one of the many paths that can lead us on this journey back to our True Selves, our essential natures, our invincible spirits. It’s a journey of remembering who we really are by allowing healing life-force energy to remove all that we are not.