Sacred Power: Medical Intuition and Why People Don’t Heal
Humans are blessed with an innate potential, or “sacred power,” the highest aspect of our being and living. However, many of us don’t access this power and instead, live below our potential, spiritually, health-wise and in many other ways. The good news is that Caroline Myss, a leading expert in medical intuition, energy medicine, human consciousness, and higher living, in partnership with Gaia, has created an engaging online series entitled “Sacred Power,” designed to inspire, teach, and gently challenge us to live wholly and with the power of our mystical inheritance.
Caroline Myss is recognized for her many accomplishments, including developing the field of Energy Anatomy, as well as her educational institute, CMED (Caroline Myss Education), offering a wide range of online, on-demand, and in-person programs. Caroline is the author of five New York Times bestselling books including Anatomy of the Spirit, The Creation of Health, Why People Don’t Heal and How the Can, Sacred Contracts, Invisible Acts of Power, Entering the Castle, and Defy Gravity. In addition to her books, Caroline is the host of a weekly Hay House radio show and maintains an energetic international workshop and lecture schedule.
The series begins with exploring Medical Intuition, an emerging field of science that develops the critical role that inner, or soul healing, has on one’s well-being. It involves the stories we tell ourselves and others about our individual suffering and how it negatively impacts our health. In Myss’s words, “Your biography becomes your biology” — our body’s emotional field interacts with our cells and tissues; our internal and external experiences, positive and negative can be transformed into a source of power and healing.
According to Myss, every human being is the owner of an intuitive intelligence or sacred power: “99 percent of the time, you are listening to this intuition, responding to it, and never even notice it.“ Myss doesn’t consider medical intuition a gift that is simply dropped into our laps. She believes it is a skill that needs to be developed and fostered so that we are able to notice, pay attention to, and act upon the “energetic signals” that come our way, every day. But what exactly is “medical intuition” and how do we develop it?
Medical Intuition: Our Body’s Energetic Data Bank
Myss herself would be the first to say that she was an unlikely candidate for the medical intuitive field she helped to create. Despite being a co-founder of Stillpoint Publishing, which was dedicated to books on consciousness and personal development, she had little interest in the subject of the books:
“I wasn’t the least bit interested in them. I had no desire to meet any healers myself. I refused to meditate. I developed an absolute aversion to wind chimes, New Age music, and conversations on the benefits of organic gardening. I smoked while drinking coffee by the gallon, still fashioning myself after an image of a hard-boiled newspaper reporter. I was not at all primed for a mystical experience.”
What changed for Myss? She could no longer ignore the deeply profound messages and insights she was receiving about other people’s health. She began exploring her capacity as a medical intuitive and sought out the guidance of C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D., a Harvard-trained neurosurgeon. In 1996, they opened the Institute for the Science of Medical Intuition, a research establishment dedicated to funding medical intuitive training for medical practitioners.
More than two decades later, thousands of medical intuitive have changed the way we view and receive medical treatment. In addition to this impact, Myss has worked to empower regular people to learn how to access their own medical intuitive skills. In fact, she believes we are living in a highly energetically charged time in which we are capable of intense transformation, a period she refers to an “Energetic Renaissance” in which the choices we make are drawing more power for ourselves and the world. What does this translate into as far as personal empowerment?
Sacred Power and Healing Tools
Myss defines intuition as the “natural ability to not just sense energetic data that fills this dimension of the invisible world, but to interpret it, to understand energetic data.” She teaches that this ability is ever present; however, obstacles to wholeness and health occur when the data is ignored because we are resistant to the messages. If the obstacles are removed, we have access to a mystical ability, an inner voice which Myss defines as our “cosmic guidance system” whose purpose is the overall management of our well being and optimum health. Below are aspects of our mystical ability to note:
- Every person lives in an energy field
- We leak energy, or power, when we are scared, threatened, or stressed
- Energy is never contained; our bodies share stress with our entire being and others
- Our energy field holds “anchors,” energy that targets our cravings, trauma, and wounds and creates psychic weight
Central to the cosmic guidance system and healing tools is the seven chakra system, which Myss divides into two channels: the lower three being our physical world, the one of survival; the upper four, our emotional world with the heart chakra identified as the turning point to the divine energy system. The chakra system contains the sacred energy that is inside all of us, and when we embrace the divine design, we allow those energies to speak through what Myss calls our “bio-spiritual ecology.”
However, despite the availability of this energetic toolkit, Myss recognizes that many people choose to stay in their wounded state, asserting that this state provides a level of social collateral, as well as an accepted form of intimacy. She calls the resistance to healing “woundology” and can be the impediment to transforming one’s personal state of suffering into a font of power.
Our Wounds: Breaking Through the Patterns of Woundology
Myss acknowledges that healing is intimidating, that it can change relationships, and literally shake up one’s world. Moving past our wounds into wholeness is not only an act of bravery but is in direct opposition to our accepted social language in which, as Myss says, “pain has privileges…we expect to be rewarded or compensated for our suffering.” Despite this, Myss asserts that we’re not destined to stay wounded; we’re meant to move past the “consciousness of our wounds.”
When we heal from our wounds, we move into wholeness and our full health and life potential. One of the challenges is that we have close to no positive role models, or iconic whole people to emulate. Another challenge is that wholeness is often viewed as being an unapproachable, solitary state which can make us feel we will not be able to be in a relationship as wholly healed beings.
In the face of the social acceptance of wound intimacy, how do we move past our wounds? Myss counsels that in order to heal our wounds, we must learn the “vocabulary of healing,” moving past words such as “blame” and “deserve” as they represent powerless strategies.
She says that forgiveness is the key to healing and is a “mystical act of the soul.” Our wounds are meant to be healed and while they do happen to all of us, we can choose to view them as critical soul challenges provided to “enhance and build our character” and once healed, we’re able to empower others to do the same.
Myss advises that the next time a friend or loved one begins to speak the language of wounding, instead of adding to that vocabulary of woundology, to make the choice to focus the conversation on a positive and empowering experience. She shares that one of the most difficult choices we can make is the day we stop responding to the power of other’s wounds. Yet, this choice is also liberating and life-affirming.
The path to healing requires courage, but it is one that allows us to live in our sacred power, which is our birthright. Thankfully, that birthright is not a solitary quest; it is a shared birthright and Myss believes that all of us are meant to heal and that in the grand cosmic scheme, “we’re all in this together.”
Caroline Myss is coming to the GaiaSphere event center for an exclusive weekend-long seminar“Revolutionizing Spirituality,” on August 16-18, 2019. The unique event will explore “the next wave of expanded consciousness” and provide an intimate and immersive experience for participants. Learn more about this event here.
About the Author
The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell Now More Relevant Than Ever
Making sense of our consciousness can be difficult, and in our materialist, western world we try endlessly to objectify that experience. But over the course of the past century, there have been a number of intermediaries reminding us to reconnect with elements of the spiritual journey.
Names like Alan Watts, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Deepak Chopra have sparked a renaissance of interest in the nature of consciousness, meditation, and mindfulness. They remind us of stories and lessons learned over the course of our history, and within these, we find recurring themes of transcendent truth.
But there is one liaison between the old world and the new, who bridged these philosophies and connected the ancient esotericism of the east to the pragmatism of the scientific west, through archetypes and allegory.
Joseph Campbell defined this thirst for truth over a lifetime by examining artists, psychologists, writers, and philosophers. He referred to the lessons in their mythos as the Masks of God, and the protagonists within those stories as the Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Campbell consumed as much of their wisdom as possible, voraciously reading nine hours a day for years at a time. He absorbed the work of great western minds like Carl Jung, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, and Sinclair Lewis. Through these lessons, he connected the dots of contemporary consciousness with the timeless teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, Greek mythology, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
In those years of study, he found lessons that applied to man and society at large – overarching narratives that struck a universal chord, particularly the sense that at some point in our lives, we find there is a call unanswered, a void in the spirit that must be fulfilled.
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls. The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
– Joseph Campbell
The Hero’s Journey
Campbell said you can never be at peace with yourself if you do not answer that call. The call to adventure that forces the hero to remove himself from the ordinary world and face whatever it is that threatens his safety, comfort, and way of life.
At first, the call is refused when fears and second thoughts arise, or the comforts of the home seem too difficult to abandon. But eventually, the hero finds a mentor who pushes them and provides the tools needed to confront their tribulation.
When one considers the “Hero’s Journey,” Luke Skywalker, Arjuna, or even Hamlet could fit the role, but these stereotypes are meant to convey a general truth about finding the fulfillment we all seek. The personal ordeals that confront us can be difficult to face, causing us to relinquish a part of ourselves and take solace in a place that feels safe, while we remain oblivious to what could be learned by challenging those fears.
For some, it may be a vice; an addiction that keeps us trapped in some behavior or lifestyle. Campbell looked to the Tibetan Book of the Dead to confront this type of ordeal, learning that the scripture taught one to strive for the opposing virtue of whatever your vice may be; to overcome what he called the “inmost cave.” By cultivating the antithesis of your vice, you will find the self-actualization that defines your being.
This sentiment has been echoed many times over the ages, and Campbell summed it up when he said, “Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward.”
