Notes from Caroline Myss' Essential Guide for Healers

"Get a back bone, not a wish bone." Caroline Myss

Myss explores the healer archetype, and breaks through the myths that have clustered around it. All the literature she found for healers talked about how to heal others, and here she wants to instruct us about healing ourselves.

Her intention is that healers see and evaluate themselves realistically. Further, she wants healers to benefit from their own compassion, the very healing energy they share so freely with others and often fail to lavish upon themselves.

Luminaries as diverse as Shakespeare and the Oracle at Delphi commanded us to "Know thyself." Myss asserts that the healer must know the who what and why of herself in order to become and remain a powerful vessel.

We cannot respect our limits or work faithfully through our limitations if we are blind to them. We will be unable or unwilling to set boundaries for ourselves and inevitably overstep the boundaries of others.

You need to know yourself well enough to know what you can and cannot do. Therefore, you have the ability to say no to situations and people that are inappropriate for you. For instance, she will not heal children, though she doesn't tell us why.

There is a myth, she says, that healers are mystics. Her years of study and years in the field tell her this is untrue. However, she believes all mystics are healers and she cites biblical passages to support her contention.

You can be a 9-5 healer, i.e., someone who practices a skill, such as massage, and goes home at the end of the day feeling you have helped clients without having gone core deep.

She calls this the "eau de toilette" version and considers it completely legitimate.

Her definition of healer extends past the healing practitioner. If you are a healer you will transform your environment whether you're flipping burgers, or teaching school. It's simply who you are.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a profound healer for our country, and a role model for women. Her courage and her ability to contribute made a difference in the world.

Healers are expected to be all things to all people all the time. If you, as a healer, do not know yourself as a flawed person who has particular talents, you will be taken by the ego.

You can be a flawed person, she tells us, and a fully empowered healer. "I specialize in it," she says, in one of her few revelatory remarks.

What I don't like about her style is the angry, arrogant tone. She doesn't say we are this or that; it's always you. And her assumptions about you aren't good.

You aren't doing your inner work, eating right, exercising. And if you neglect your inner voice, why should anyone else trust you?

She abhors the burned out healer. In what other profession, she asks, do you find such a massive burn-out from what is considered someone's goodness?

Being a healer does not make you inherently good. Everyone has a shadow and it's the healer's job to integrate her own.

Otherwise, you will have a private agenda, such as being needed, or being superior; and your private agenda will compromise your work and cross everyone's boundaries.

Don't get too full of yourself, she instructs. If the gods want someone to be healed, they can send them to the corner store for a can of cat food and that cat food will heal them.

You are merely a channel. Strengthen yourself so you can be a clear channel and ready to take on what's given to you.

The Wounded Healer:

Can one be an elegant healer without experiencing a call? Can you provide a healing presence without seeking credit?

The psychic wound will bring you to your knees. It will convince you that you are completely alone, causing everything you depended on to fail you. This "gutting," as she calls it, removes all the old perceptual wiring.

The up side: once you've surrendered and let go your attachments, you can become a sturdy vessel. You will trust inner guidance over the chatter from the world.

You will not compromise what you know in order to win temporary favor or companionship. If you endure this kind of wound, you will have the capacity to maintain your center no matter what temptations arise.

The pain of the wound has to be so great that you would willingly let your old world dissolve. And with it dissolves all the beliefs about what can and cannot be healed.

This journey, she tells us, will require you to tolerate a light that would implode a body that was unprepared. Mystics have always had experiences of seeing the light before transformation, even at times being blinded by it.

Myth of the Wounded Healer:

Myss makes a distinction I hadn't heard in this way before:

All wounds are not the psychic wounds of the healer. Some are simply the lessons of earth school. From our earthly perspective, life's issues look insoluble. From the soul's perspective, we are simply learning and growing.

For instance, a divorce can be traumatic, but it doesn't necessarily gut one to the core and demand complete rewiring of perceptions.

Feeling lonely is different from feeling as if you have no place in this world. The psychic wound convinces you that your world is gone and no amount of tinkering could restore it.

Self-Esteem is the Access to Love:

Here she makes another unique distinction. Self-esteem is more powerful than love. Without self-esteem all you have is connivance to get somewhere.

You can only reach love through self-esteem. Everything else is ego and agenda.

She defines self-esteem as the ability to hold yourself in enough respect not to compromise who you are for affection or survival.

(End of Part 1. More to follow...)