2016-06-30
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.
-Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

From "Choices in Healing," by Michael Lerner, Ph.D., in "Breast Cancer: Beyond Convention," edited by Mary Tagliaferri, Isaac Cohen and Debu Tripathy:

Healing is fundamentally distinct from cure, but it is also deeply connected to achieving a cure. Healing comes from within ourselves. It is the process by which we become whole again. It can take place physically, as when a bone knits together or a wound heals. It can take place emotionally, as when we overcome old or recent emotional wounds. Healing can take place mentally, as when we are able to replace destructive or outgrown ways of seeing ourselves and the world with wiser and more useful ways of understanding life. And healing can take place spiritually-if that word has meaning for you-as when we evolve in some meaningful way in relation to whatever guides us in life, to whatever we hold sacred.

Since healing can take place at all these different levels-physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual-that also means that healing can take place in both living and in dying. Some of the most powerful healing experiences I have ever witnessed have taken place in people who were losing ground to a difficult disease, or who were actually dying.

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