The Seven Tools of Healing

Or “How do we effect lasting authentic change?”

Most of us have some things about our selves or about our lives that we would like to change.  We read books, go to workshops, listen to tape sets, take classes, talk to therapists, take medications, go on diets, follow gurus and do all sorts of other things to help ourselves change.  Occasionally we do change and this modicum of success keeps us hopeful and keeps us searching.  But, unfortunately, most of our efforts to change bear fruit only so long as we continue to effort.

As soon as we get frustrated with our lack of progress and conclude that one technique doesn’t work, another more promising technique catches our attention.  There are more ways available to work on our self-growth than we can explore in several lifetimes.  We find that the years roll by and we’re still dealing with the same issues, the same inadequacies, stuck in the same repeating patterns.

Freud once quipped, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  How long do we need to pursue the same process, albeit with different-looking techniques, before we see that we are actually making very little lasting progress?  As we tire, often after decades of efforts, and the reality of our stuckness dawns on us, we are prone to feeling trapped, hopeless and helpless.  We get anxious and depressed.  (Recent surveys suggest that over 20% of the adult U.S. population is depressed.  Depression is epidemic.)  We get short-tempered with our children, spouses and co-workers.  Everyday tasks start to feel overwhelming.  Our lives feel empty and meaningless. 

We resist admitting to ourselves that our lifetime of trying our best as we were taught and following the well-meaning advice from “out there” isn’t bringing us the life that we feel inwardly determined to have.  We fear this admission would throw us into despair…a despair some people call “the dark night of the soul” or “an existential crisis” or even a “midlife crisis.”  We will often do everything in our power to avoid that despair.

But that despair can be a powerful catalyst.      It can burn away the conditioning of our social domestication, freeing our true selves to come forth in our lives.  So, if you have touched into that despair, or if you are deeply entrenched in it, it is exquisitely painful, but do not worry.  There is hope.  If you are somewhere on the treadmill of endless effort (often called your twenties and thirties) en-route to that despair but haven’t gotten there yet and you’d like to find your freedom and true self before you get to that despair, there is also hope.  You just need a path, a process, a skill set that allows you to take yourself and your life, just as it is, and learn the real lessons being offered.  The Seven Tools of Healing are just such a skill set.

Where do the Seven Tools of Healing come from?  Part of the work that I do with people in my office puts them in communication with an aspect of themselves that I call their Inner Knower.  We all have this part.  It is the part of us that tells us we are thirsty when our body needs water.  It is the part of us that knows what is right for us and what is not.  It knows who we are and what we came into this life to experience.  This wise part goes by many names around the world.  It is called your “higher self”, your “soul”, your “Buddha nature”, “Christ consciousness”, “higher consciousness”, “Atman”, and the like.  It is the source of our intuition and creativity, the source of our body’s wisdom, of our “Spiritual guidance”.  The important point is that we all have this wise aspect and we can learn to consult with it.

For years now, I’ve been helping people contact and consult with their Inner Knower.  People are able to ask the questions in their lives that have them the most puzzled, such as “what am I really supposed to be doing with my life?” or “what is this illness asking of me?  How can I heal it and move forward in my life?”  I then watch as people’s Inner Knowers walk them through their own process of change and I see how those changes manifest in their lives.  Everybody has their own issues, their own challenges to face, but I’ve noticed a remarkably similar pattern to how the Inner Knower guides a person through their own personal growth and/or healing process.  I’ve come to have a tremendous amount of trust and respect for our Inner Knower.  

This pattern seems to have seven major components, so I call it “The Seven Tools of Healing”.  The Seven Tools are very simple, you won’t find anything in them you haven’t seen before, yet they are incredibly versatile: applicable to virtually any problem we face.  The genius of the Seven Tools lies in how the Inner Knower combines these familiar concepts into a gentle yet powerful practice that, when done properly, consistently leads to lasting, authentic change.  They are simultaneously the journey and the destination; simultaneously practical, down-to-earth skills and a process of awakening.  They have all the earmarks of a Spiritual path, yet you can practice them whenever and wherever you are, each and every moment of an ordinary day.  They are non-denominational and compatible with any religious practice I’ve seen so far in my patients.

So let’s run through a brief summary of the Seven Tools.  These are skills and skills generally require actual practice to develop fully.  You can read about hitting a golf ball or riding a surfboard or baking a cake, but to actually become adept at those activities, the reading does not take the place of actually getting out there and practicing them.  The same holds true for the Seven Tools.  I strongly encourage you to keep practicing these tools, individually or in groups, until you just naturally apply them to the challenges that come your way.  Please keep in mind that the Seven Tools are all part of one process.  I speak of them separately and linearly because that is how our language works, but, as we go through them, and as you practice them, I think you’ll see how they start to come together.

The first tool is Faith.  I know that “faith” is a loaded word now days, having been co-opted by one segment of society and saddled with that segment’s one definition.  But the Inner Knower uses “faith” more like Webster did: 1. confidence or trust.  2. belief that is not based on proof.  I think that the Inner Knower is also okay with Faith having a religious or spiritual connotation.  I see the Inner Knower using Faith as a foundation.  All else is built upon it.  Everything we think we know as facts are, if followed back far enough, seated on a foundation of faith.

Faith is particularly helpful with the process of change.   We can have faith that our lives can indeed improve.  We can have faith that we, as our true essential selves, are enough.  The first step in changing long-held beliefs often requires a leap of faith in order to adopt new beliefs.  A simultaneous advantage and disadvantage of faith is that it requires no facts or data to support it.  While some people use this quality of faith to adopt some pretty outlandish beliefs, we can use it to believe in whatever is in our highest good, whatever helps us the most in our search for truth and growth, even if we do not have any personal proof of it yet.  The proof of a belief often comes after we adopt that belief.

Coming from a background of science and conventional medicine, where I was trained to require verifiable, empirical evidence for everything, I had to do several years of soul-searching before I could start to comprehend how the Inner Knower utilized faith.  Faith is an antidote to fear.  We were not put on this planet to live in fear.  When we have painful, scary or limiting experiences, we are often being asked to explore and, hopefully re-think, our fear-based beliefs and choices.  Doubt is the test of faith.  Everything we learn about ourselves and how we fit in with our surroundings will be tested.  If doubt wins, we didn’t really learn it, at least not well enough to continue to build upon that learning.  I can’t fully explain it, but there seems to be something very powerful about knowledge that comes from faith, about having faith and sticking with it through thick and thin.  Scientific knowing doesn’t seem to hold that power unless, of course, we have faith in science.

Please, don’t take my word for any of this.  Explore faith in your own life.  How does it work?  What does it do?  What do you have faith in?  What happens when your faith is challenged? 

The second tool is Awareness.  Awareness is the process of moving things from the non-conscious into the conscious.  For some reason, we have an easier time working on an issue, belief or feeling if we know it is there.  We practice awareness of our physical feelings-what information is our body sending us now?  Of our emotional feelings-how am I feeling, what belief is behind it, what is a healthy response to it?  Of our thoughts and mental activity-are my thoughts in alignment with what I want to achieve?  Of our relationships-the eye (I) cannot see itself, what sides of me are being revealed in this symbolic “mirror”?  Of our surroundings-how am I affected by the people around me, by the environment?  All of the tools are skills that improve with practice.  The practice of awareness helps keep us grounded in the present moment and helps insure that we’re getting the information that the Inner Knower wants us to have.

So now we’re aware of some aspect of ourselves — for example, about how judgmental we are toward ourselves, or how hurt we are by what someone said or did, or that a conclusion we drew when we were five no longer fits our life. What does the Inner Knower guide us to do with that information? Surrender to it. That’s the third tool; Surrender. It could also be thought of as acceptance, but the word “surrender” is stronger, and can actually give us an initial resistant reaction to it: “I’m not going to surrender. I’m not going to give up.” Then we pause and remember that this kind of surrender is not quitting, it is stopping the war waged inside us; stopping the resistance to what really is. The constant reminder helps us stay aware of how easily we tend to deny and repress.

Have you ever used Mapquest^TM? What information do you need to enter into the program in order get your route? Where you’re going, right, but also where you’re starting. Without the starting coordinates, there is no way for the computer to pick the best route from the infinite possibilities. The same goes for your own inner navigation computer that is trying to get you from where you are now to where you want to be. There is an old adage that states, “Know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free.” Well, how can you know the Truth if you’re constantly telling it what it can or cannot be? Surrender is admitting to yourself the truth of your present situation; it is allowing yourself to lay back and bask in the waters of reality. It counters any attempts at denial or repression. 

We’re moving now. We’re riding on a foundation of Faith in the process, we’re aware of an aspect of ourselves — an issue, belief or feeling — and we’ve accepted the truth of what we are experiencing in this moment. What does the Inner Knower recommend next? Over and over, it says things like, “Just be kinder to yourself about that.” Or, “Give yourself a hug; hold yourself in your arms.” Or, “Let yourself know that you’re all right, that you’re not alone.” This is the fourth tool — Compassion. We are constantly guided by our Inner Knower to just have compassion for whatever is. Compassion is the “The Alchemist” because it can literally take this lump of lead in your life and convert it into a lump of gold. Often the practice of Compassion is all that is needed to start the process of change. It is as if once we open-heartedly accept a part of ourselves, and stop pushing against it, the love steps in and finishes up what else needs to happen. We often have to start by practicing compassion for ourselves for having control issues and how difficult it is for us to get out of the driver’s seat and trust that a loving, wise part will take over and steer us in the right direction.

The more I work with Compassion, the more in awe I stand before it. Currently I believe that Compassion is our true authentic self and the practice of compassion is the bringing forth and expressing of our true authentic self (which, by definition, is also healing.) The practice of compassion naturally invokes our deepest wisdom to call forth and create for us the best possible solution to our problem. We do not need to use our cognitive minds to create this solution for us. In fact, our propensity to use our cognitive minds for this process can be thought of metaphorically as a direct result of eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. And that got us kicked out of Paradise. Having faith in the power of Compassion and applying our will toward its practice is the surest path we’ve found so far back to our inner peace, happiness and fulfillment 

The first four tools are the workhorses for the process of lasting, authentic, supportive change. They are skills that improve with practice. On a foundation of faith that the Universe really does say “Yes,” we practice awareness, acceptance and compassion for what is, then we become aware of the next thought, feeling or issue, accept the truth of it and put it in our hearts and so the spiral goes … deeper and deeper into the understanding of who we are and how we work. The practice of the first four tools is an excellent way to generate the thoughts, beliefs and feelings that free us from bondage. (Again, we do not have to effort to come up with these thoughts.) The last three tools follow naturally from this practice.

When we bring enough compassion to a situation, forgiveness just naturally happens. Forgiveness is the fifth tool. It is truly a letting go. That issue or experience is no longer a “button,” there is no emotional rise or charge. Forgiveness greatly decreases the likelihood that we will continue to create and occupy our minds and life with cycles of painful and unsupportive thoughts, beliefs and feelings. Again, we do not have to effort to repress, deny or ignore painful, angry or unsupportive thoughts and feelings. That these naturally cease is a clue that real forgiveness has happened. Real forgiveness has the power to actually change our physiology. I feel this all the time while doing bodywork on people when they reach that moment of forgiveness.

There is much confusion in our society about forgiveness. Forgiveness does not mean that you condone what was done; it does not mean that you forget what was done. Forgiveness is for you, for your own growth. How else do we get around the tar pits of anger and resentment? Many people practice forgiveness as part of their religion and that is because forgiveness is essential for our moving forward, for the healing of life’s inevitable hurts and injustices. But forced forgiveness does not have the same power to change as forgiveness arrived at through the practice of compassion. Just as the Inner Knower encourages us to practice compassion for all of creation (including ourselves), it also says to practice forgiveness for all of creation (including ourselves). Another way of viewing forgiveness struck me one day: forgiveness is finally relinquishing all hope that the past will ever be any different.

Once enough forgiveness happens, the sixth tool shows itself - a growing sense of gratitude.  I’ve had hundreds of people come into the office and say things like, “I wouldn’t choose to go through that again, but I’m glad I did for all that I’ve learned and gained from it.”  People have said that about car accidents, cancer, being raped or having any number of serious illnesses.  This world really is an incredible place, and Spirit works through amazing ways and the Human spirit is so beautiful and resilient…this gratitude is a recognition of all these things.  Again, we can practice gratitude directly or let it grow from a practice of compassion.  The latter leads to gratitude that has deep knowing and conviction behind it, not just a façade supported by efforting. 

We do live in a world that requires that we get up off the couch and do things once in a while.  This brings us back to one of the original questions-how do we know that our actions will bring about the desired results?  Such action is called Right Action in many world traditions; I call it the seventh tool.  Right Action is based upon Right Understanding.  I’ve witnessed that the practice of the first six tools leads to a Right Understanding and that the person then just knows how to act-what to do, what to say-in the moment.  Our doing comes from being.  As we uncover and bring forth more of our true essential selves, our actions stem from that.  They just naturally become an expression of who we are and attract to us the experiences we are “supposed” to have.  

You don’t have to try to be yourself.  You already are yourself.  There is just a lot of learned “stuff” in the way.  The changes that you make that represent your real self coming forth in your life require no effort on your part to maintain.  That is why we say that real change is effortless.  You may have to work hard to recognize your limiting beliefs, but once those beliefs change, you come more into your own, your “real self” expresses itself that much more in your life and no one can take that away from you.  The Seven Tools of Healing are the skills that allow you to effectively work the process of uncovering and changing limiting beliefs, attitudes and perceptions.

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