Self-Healing; World-Healing
One lazy Sunday afternoon a businessman was hard at work entertaining a potential client at his home. The businessman had a young son of about six years old, called David, who would occasionally run in, full of energy, and inadvertently disturb the proceedings.
David was bored. It was raining. Mum was out. His best friend had flu again. He expected Daddy and his friend might like to play a game of something either now, soon, or some time later (like in five minutes or so).
Each time David came into the room his father gave him something from the table to go away and play with: first a pen, then a calculator, then a paperweight and then the Financial Times. Finally, David was reprimanded.
A little while later David was back again, but this time his father was well prepared. On the table was an A4 full-colour picture of the world which he had deliberately torn into a hundred small pieces so that the world was a complete mess and barely recognisable. He then gave David a roll of sticky tape and asked him to play with the world until he had stuck it all back together again. That, surely, was the end of David!
Much to his father’s astonishment, David returned after about five minutes with the picture of the world complete again. "How on earth did you manage that so quickly, and so well?" asked his father. David smiled, "On the back of the picture of the world I had already drawn a big picture of myself, and when I put myself together the world came together also."
True healing begins with an awareness that the world is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind - a four dimensional representation of your current thinking. Therefore, the greatest contribution you can make to world peace is to restore personal peace of mind, and the greatest act of healing you can perform for another is to forgive and heal yourself. We are never healed alone.
With sensory perception, it appears the world is infinite and we are small, the world is eternal and we are temporal, the world is strong and we are weak. With spiritual insight, we begin to understand that the world merely "mirrors" our mind - it is a mirror, and in truth it is us that is infinite, eternal, strong. We can train the world, moment by moment, to reflect for us our Loving Presence, by being loving, giving love, receiving love.
The world says to us in each moment, "Here is your state of mind - Have a nice day!" We are witnessing either love, or, a call for love. In the moments when we experience pain, hurt, separation, fear, we can attempt either, 1) to fix the mirror, or, 2) forgive ourselves, love ourselves, pray for a new perception. Self-healing is world-healing.
First published in "The Miracle Worker" 1996, article by Robert Holden