THE ART OF HEALING

The word “healing” can bring many images to mind – broken bones mending, a faith healer lifting someone from a wheelchair to walk, someone beating cancer, a counselor helping someone work through a problem, feeling better about yourself after a difficult divorce.

Healing is about making change – being able to move out of one space into another. Taking a risk and having faith that you are going to be okay. It’s letting go of what doesn’t work any more and moving into a place where you can start to create again.

To me, all healing is self-healing. Those of us who practice the art of healing know that change does not take place unless the person being healed is ready to let go – ready to take that next step, ready to release whatever blocks they may be holding unto. Sometimes having another person involved in that process (the healer) can give us a sense of safety and validation to make change.

In the energy healing work I do, I don’t “take away” blocks, but work with that person to start to release one layer at a time. I communicate with them as spirit, that infinite, divine part of them, and they really do most of the work. Sometimes just having someone recognize and validate where we are holding on can be enough to start getting the energies moving!

In other words, we don’t “need” a healer to heal ourselves, for we are our own best healers. We are the ones that know when we are ready to move on, when holding onto something is no longer healthy for us. We have all held onto things that others have viewed as bad for us – whether it was a relationship, or a job, a difficult situation. But, maybe, just maybe, we weren’t quite done learning the lesson we needed to learn.

One of the greatest lessons a healer can learn is to not judge what others have created for themselves.

Ó 2006 Jill Miller

BEING FEMALE

Year’s ago I wrote a catchy little country song entitled, “What Is A Woman?” I was going through a lot of transition at the time, including divorce. I was questioning who I was and, having gotten married as a “girl” still in high school, I was trying to figure out what it now meant to be a woman.

Like my song notes, as females we play many roles. We are mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts. We are nurses, managers, engineers, waitresses. We nurture, organize, teach, create.

And oh, how we create! As we are physically able to create a whole other body, our female bodies have an extra source of creative energy. This creativity shows up in the “glow” of a pregnant woman, for example. But we don’t have to be pregnant to tap into and use this source. We turn on and use this energy at different creative times – maybe while cooking, designing new flower beds, reorganizing files, or making a quilt.

We are creative creatures, and we are also healers. Most of us care for a lot of other people in our lives – our children, husbands, friends, co-workers, bosses, clients, and even our own parents (especially if you’re a baby boomer). Finding the balance between caring for ourselves and caring for others can sometimes be tricky. How many of us feel guilty when we take an hour for ourselves? We are trained at an early age to put others first. This can be fine some of the time - fine until we find ourselves at the “burn-out” stage, that is.

There are many ways we can care for, create for, and “heal” ourselves. It’s important to take time to go for a walk, read a good book, meditate, go shopping with a girlfriend, take a nap, or do something your really enjoy doing. So, try a little experiment – create something just for you at least once a week!

Ó 2005 Jill Miller

WHY MEDITATE?

Whether you are just starting to consider adding regular meditation to your life, or whether you’ve been meditating every day for years, it can be important to understand the significance it has for you. There are many different forms of meditation, but what they all have in common is taking time to shut out the outside world and focusing inward on oneself.

To me, meditation serves two purposes – to get to know yourself better by being more aware of your “spiritual self,” and to let go of energies that you take on throughout your day.

Let’s talk about the first one – getting to know yourself better. We are all spiritual beings, residing in bodies and lives that keep us busy, keep us moving, creating this and that, interacting with others. We have all had the experience of getting so wrapped up in something (whether it’s a project, a relationship, or a job) that we forget to stay in touch with who we are and what our real truths are. We may get caught up in someone else’s priority, temporarily forgetting our own.

When you find a quiet place, close your eyes and turn within, you can start to feel and hear yourself more clearly. Although it sounds cliché, you can start to get in touch with your authentic self – who you really are as spirit. This can develop into a very freeing experience, as you let go of who you think you “should” be and just let yourself “be.” A self appreciation can start to develop and it will carry through to your everyday life.

The other purpose of meditation is to cleanse your “space.” Throughout our day, we take on many energies, whether it’s other people’s ideas of who we should be, or their issues they want us to carry for them, or our own efforts, stresses or emotions. The good news is that we can release and let these things go. Through grounding and other meditation techniques, we can clear our energies and get more in touch with ourselves.

Ó 2004 Jill Miller

CREATING YOUR REALITY

If you are like me, this is the time of year that you do a review of the previous year and think about what you accomplished. You also start to set goals for yourself for the new year. I don’t personally make new year’s resolutions as such, but I do get out my paper and pen and set out some new goals for myself. It’s always a fun process – really thinking about what I want next in my life, and validating that I did indeed reach some goals that I had made for myself at the beginning of the previous year. This process, deciding what I want and then seeing it manifested, helps me validate the fact that we do indeed create our own reality.

The fact that we create our own reality is sometimes a hard thing to hear – that we have created the messes we may find ourselves in, or that we have created an illness, for example. When we are feeling stuck, the last thing we want is a friend telling us that we did this to ourselves. The good news is though – if you created the blocks in your life, you can also create change and healing.

I heard Dolly Parton interviewed once and she said that as a young girl she “expected” to be a star when she grew up. I loved that, because it is true that we create our reality through our beliefs and our expectations.

Do you know someone who always seems to be “lucky” in life, where things just seem to fall into their laps with no effort at all? And do you know someone who is always struggling with life, where life always seems to be dealing them an unfair hand? Why is that? It’s not that the lucky one was born more “blessed” than the other one. But there probably is a big difference in how they view life…how they believe life should treat them. The so-called lucky one believes that life is full of opportunity, ready for the taking. And the other one believes that if something is going to go wrong, it will - with them!

What are your beliefs? If there are things you are wanting to create in your life, but you just don’t seem to be doing it, you may want to examine your belief systems. Some of those beliefs may have been with you for a long time. There may be a part of you that doesn’t think you deserve it, or are not worthy of it, or that you are not capable enough to create it. You can change that.

We all have the ability to alter our inner belief systems – to start to create change in our lives. It sometimes takes an act of faith and courage to really look at our own blocks and believe that we can let them go – but believe it, you can!

Ó 2005 Jill Miller

COLORS OF THE AURA

Scientists tell us that all matter is made up of energy, and this isn't too hard for most of us to believe. So it surprises me, when I tell people I'm an aura reader, that I still get the disbelievers who look at me like I'm nuts. And then there's those who believe, but feel a little nervous about what their aura might be showing me. Of course, more often than not, people get very excited and say, "Can you see mine right now? What color is it?"

And they are right, auras do come in many colors…and those colors are changing all the time. As we experience growth, the state of our energy field reflects that - in the color, movement, and even "texture" of the energy of the aura. For example, a person may have just changed jobs and moved to a new location. The part of their aura that represents their sense of safety and survival (tied to the root chakra) most likely shines a bright green – green often being a color of change and transition. I recently read someone who was working through the "empty nest" syndrome, dealing with her daughter going off to college. She realized she had more time and energy to give to herself, and that she had become unbalanced in how much she gave to others versus how much she gave to herself. The part of her aura that is connected to her heart chakra was a very gentle, soft blue, which she was using to bring harmony and balance to her ability to give.

If you want to get a sense of what colors your aura may be reflecting, look around you. What colors do you feel the most affinity with? For example, what colors do you like to wear, or paint the walls of your home? One person may love lavender, while another may feel very uncomfortable around it (maybe it clashes with the colors of their aura!). Ever woken up in the morning in the mood to wear red? I say go for it…may be that your aura is vibrating that very same feisty color!

Ó 2005 Jill Miller

WHAT IS CLAIRVOYANCE?

Clairvoyance is the ability to see that which is not visible to the physical eye. As everything is energy, your clairvoyance is the ability to perceive and “read” energy patterns and pictures. Clairvoyance literally translates as “clear seeing” and is associated with the sixth chakra, or Third Eye.

You are using your clairvoyance all the time, even if you are not consciously aware of it - just like you are not always 100 percent consciously aware of what sensations you are picking up with your other senses. For example, if you close your eyes and tune into the sounds around you, suddenly you hear things you haven’t noticed before, like a lawn mower a block away, the hum of your computer, the sound of your breath. Clairvoyance is similar to that – you are picking up sensations/ information clairvoyantly all the time but may not be consciously aware of it. When you perceive something about another person, you may chalk it up to something else - like coincidence or body language. But we are all clairvoyant, and we are all using it daily to read people and situations. For example, someone may smile and give you a compliment, but you “see” that they don’t really mean it. Someone may be looking brave in a bad situation, but you “see” that they are a little scared.

In a clairvoyant reading, the reader becomes quiet and tunes into his or her inner sight. They then put their attention specifically on the energy of the person in front of them.

Every person has his or her own unique energy patterns - made up of their past experiences, their beliefs systems, and their intentions. The reader sees these as images - or energy pictures, patterns, or symbols. When I read someone’s aura, I’m simply “seeing” the images that they already have and that they are showing to me.

So start to pay attention to what you are “seeing” and validate your own inner sight!

Ó 2004 Jill Miller