Smith A Introduction to Spiritual healing

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-906658-21-2
Verlag: M-Y Books ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 145 Seiten

This book aims to answer the question How do I become a healer? It is a comprehensive explanation of spiritual healing, the aim being to inform, encourage and enlighten the reader. In easily understandable terms, the book describes the background of healing, how to tap into the universal energy and how to protect oneself. Spiritual healing is traditional in its origins and there continues to be an urgent need for it today. The complex and seemingly strange energies which spiritual healing involves are explained and terms such as energy , spirit and protection are demystified. Pat Smith, believes that anybody who wants to help others can become a healer and within this book she shows how.

Pat the Smith is a successful full time healer with a Practice in Central London and many teaching appointments for the National Society of healers through out the Uk .

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Pat

Leseproben

HISTORY OF SPIRITUAL HEALING

TRIBAL HEALERS AND PRE-HISTORY
Wild animals preserve their fitness instinctively. All creatures can tell which foods contain the minerals essential for their health. Very early on, we lost this ability and began to rely on memory to tell us what was safe to eat rather than relying upon instinct.

Premature death and disease have been man's lot throughout recorded history. There have also always been healers using whatever methods they have found that worked.

Early tribal healers were usually the oldest men or women in the tribe who, having survived all the perils of life, were assumed to be the best able to pass opinion on these matters.

Healing is an ancient therapy that has its roots in India, China, Egypt and Greece.

Shamanism is probably the world's oldest religious tradition spanning many thousands of years and is still found today in Siberia, North and South America and Australia.

In Shamanism sickness is attributed to a loss of soul power. It is considered that the spirits are taking the sick person's soul. It was the shaman or witch doctor's job to go into a trance state to find the lost soul and arrange for it to be returned.

By 3000 BC Sumerian medicine had discovered the healing qualities of mineral springs.

EARLY RECORDED MEDICINE AND SURGERY
By 2000 BC the Code of Hammurabi included guidelines for medical practice, including eye surgery, and quotes permissible fees that could be charged. The Edwin Smith papyrus of the same time describes medical and surgical practices.

The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus is, without a doubt, one if the most important documents pertaining to medicine in the ancient Nile Valley.

It was written around 1700 BC but most of the information is based on texts written around 2640 BC -Imhotep's time.

The papyrus appears to talk mainly about wounds and how to treat them and surprisingly little about diseases.

Placed on sale by Mustafa Agha in 1862, the papyrus was purchased by Edwin Smith. An American residing in Cairo, Smith has been described as an adventurer, a moneylender and a dealer in antiquities. Smith has also been reputed to advise upon and even practice the forgery of antiquities. Whatever his personal background, it is to his credit that he immediately recognized the text for what it was and later carried out a tentative translation. Upon his death in 1906, his daughter donated the papyrus in its entirety to the New York Historical Society

The early civilisations of Egypt and Babylon recognised the herbalist as a master of medicine, while the shaman's functions were considered to be divided between the magicians and the priests.

Healer Priests used Spiritual Healing as part of the service available in temples of worship in Egypt, Greece and the Orient.

At the same time, in China, acupuncture was being used by priests to facilitate the flow of life-giving Chi.

By 1000 BC the Egyptian, Imhotep, the Court Architect and Magician to King Zoser of the third Egyptian dynasty, was the first known example of the healer priest. On his death he was deified as the Egyptian God of Healing. The snake symbolism that appears in the temples of Imhotep, reoccurs in the Greek caduceus, the symbol of healing showing snakes entwined around a staff, which is still used to the present day.

In India, Yogis have practiced a psychosomatic therapy based on knowledge since the dawn of time.

In both India and Egypt the priest and doctor were one, as indeed were science and religion. The medical temple schools of Egypt were famous all through antiquity.

Although healing was referred to by some as magic, the word magic was known to mean "hidden wisdom."

GREECE - HEALING FOUNDATIONS
The Greek healer Asclepius was said to occasionally be able to bring back life to the dead. People were encouraged to go and sleep in the Greek temples and their subsequent dreams were interpreted by the healer priest. These experiences were often followed by recorded healings, many of which were miracles by modern standards.1 The priest understood that each person held within himself the elements of the cure and it was the function of the priest to help the patient discover these. This vitalist belief, like Shamanism, held that the psychological, psychic or spirit forces responsible for making people ill had to be invoked in order to make them recover.

NATIVE AMERICAN SHAMEN
It is unclear when the first Native American medicine men first appeared but they were certainly healing disease for at least 2000 years before outsiders invaded their shores. They used spiritual healing, believing in one god, the Great Spirit (also referred to as the great mystery). They used the power of prayer for guidance and they too took note of dreams and visions, interpreting them as messages from the Great Spirit. The tribal herbalists knew which of nature's offerings would best relieve an ailment. Shamen were holy seers, not exclusively healers; they developed psychic gifts of precognition, telepathy and inner vision. Today, the Shamanism of the American Indians is seeing a popular revival, its close relationship with the seasons and the earth appealing to many people who are disenchanted with the approaches of modern medicine.

THE KAHUNAS: "KEEPERS OF THE SECRET"
Thousands of years before Hawaii was discovered by outsiders, the Polynesians had knowledge of Spiritual Healing and, reputedly, of the raising of the dead. Healers known as Kahunas, or Keepers of the Secret, were trained for this service. They became so successful that missionaries, being unable to heal the sick as successfully or as effectively, accused the Kahunas of Black Magic. When the outsiders gained control, the Kahunas were outlawed, and the use of their skills was forbidden. There are still some who practice remnants of their art in secret. The Kahunas recognised the difference between the conscious and subconscious mind long before Freud. They also identified the idea of a "Higher Self, which could be called upon for healing and help and which acted as an intermediary between the divine and the conscious self.2

Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and doctor, was born in 570 BC. He was one of the great psychics and healers of both mind and body.

Hippocrates was born in the Island of Kos about 460 BC and was possibly the most celebrated physician of antiquity.

Aesculepius was famed for his powers of healing and was deified as the Greek God of medicine.

All ancient medicine shared the one conviction that healing cannot be tackled on the physical level alone and that it was not possible to separate the mind and spirit from the physical body.

Most of these ancient understandings were aware of how to use the natural earth energies in order to restore the natural healing forces of the body.

EARLY JUDAISM
Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, healing was considered to be the gift of kings and healing their subjects was one of a king's responsibilities. It was believed that the healing gift they held was founded on a direct input from God.

The Hebrew belief that their God was the only true God created an ambiguous attitude to disease, which has influenced medicine to this day. The prophets did not rely on either induced or spontaneous spirit prompting to tell them what to do for the sick, believing that as the Lord was in control, sickness could only be his intent. So, they claimed there was no point in trying to cure illness. Illness was seen as a punishment that could only be lifted by the grace of God.

EARLY ALLOPATHIC MEDICINE

By the fifth century BC, the Greek healer priests had established themselves as medical practitioners or physicians. The most famous of them was Hippocrates of Kos. He was known as the "Father of Medicine" and his ethical principles underpin the Hippocratic Oath formally taken by all doctors to this day. The Hippocratic School concentrated on dealing with disease as it arose, which prompted speculation as to how and why it arose. There began the search for a specific cure and so, the beginning of mechanistic, allopathic medicine, as we know it today, i.e. "This part of the body (machine) is not working properly; this product (drug) will solve the problem."

Galen was probably the most famous follower of Hippocrates and his ideas were to dominate Western medicine for almost 2,500 years. He was the most prolific of the ancient writers on medicine with some 130 books, of which 83 still survive. For 1500 years his works formed the foundation for anatomy and physiology.

HIPPOCRATIC OATH - CLASSICAL VERSION

I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfil according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:

To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art - if they desire to learn it - without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.

I will...