Probably the most desirable spiritual skill is the ability to heal. It’s also the easiest to do. Just focus your attention on the part of the body or person you wish to heal and visualize healing life force flowing from you to what needs healing. Unfortunately, to make this work, you have to have life force energy available to send, and most of us are using all the energy we have on ourselves. We are reinforcing our own Ego, our self-concept that wants to see ourselves in a particular way. Our Ego is under constant assault by a world that is trying to show us that we are not the way we think we are. We are always focusing our energy on repairing our Egos from damage caused by others and encounters with reality, leaving little energy for healing.
So step one in acquiring healing power is to free up enough life force energy to do the work. That means accepting life’s hits to your Ego, your life plan and the way you see yourself. When you are wronged or your life plans go awry, just let it be. Save your energy for other uses.
Step two in learning to heal is to allay fears that you will deplete yourself if you send your energy to others. According to Western Tantric philosophy, we are immersed in a universe filled with energy. This universe is conscious and cares about us. You can verify this for yourself by using the methods described in Western Tantra, the White Path of Ethics in the chapter on Karma. Basically, if you consistently help others and pay attention to the results, you will see the universe helping you do that. So what healers typically experience is not depleting themselves, but rather letting the vast stores of energy in the universe flow through them.
How do we tap into universal energy? One way is finding your Heart of Love and connecting it to the loving universe that cares for all of us. Using the Tantric technique of visualization, see yourself as immersed in this Universe of Love, imagine dropping the boundary between yourself and the Universe, open your heart and become one with the loving power of the Universe, then let Love flow through you to whatever needs healing, without any discriminating thoughts. If you wonder if they deserve to be healed, that is Ego thinking, and energy will flow to the Ego, not the target of healing. That is why most healers cannot heal themselves. You can check with healers to verify this for yourself.
After you have closed the door to Ego’s energy appetite and opened the door to the Universe of healing energy, touch the target for healing and visualize Love energy flowing from your heart center to the point of touch and from there to that which needs healing. Wish that the target be healed. If not able to touch the target, visualize healing energy flowing from your heart center to the target’s heart or bursting over their head and bathing them in healing energy. I’ve seen remote healing work, though I can’t verify that it works when I do it, because I have no continuing contact with the target. I do have considerable evidence that touch healing actually heals and that altruistic healing does not deplete me. This method is safe.
A less safe method for healing is the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. Tong means giving or sending. Len means receiving or taking. So this is the practice of visualizing giving benefits and taking difficulties from others. In the traditional method, the practitioner visualizes taking problems from a person, group, or everyone, and giving the problems to their Ego to gradually wear it down. Then they imagine generating an opposing benefit in their heart center and sending the benefit to the target.
For example, if you are already suffering from an affliction like an addiction, you may as well take on the suffering of everyone in the world with that affliction. If your suffering is already intense, the suffering of all will not make it feel worse. Wish to yourself that by your suffering, may all the others be free of that affliction. Then visualize sending the joy of that freedom to those you chose to heal from that suffering. The idea here is to weaken the cause of suffering (the second noble truth) which is the self-cherishing thought that wants only for itself. Then strengthen your divine heart of compassion by wishing for cessation of suffering for others. Perhaps this should be called Lentong, taking and giving. Tantra always seems to do things backwards.
A Western Tantric variation on Tonglen is discouraged by professional healers. This variation is to first take the affliction of the target sufferer into your heart center that is connected to the infinitely wise Universe. Then your heart center will know what specific form of healing energy the sufferer needs. That way, when you visualize sending healing energy to the sufferer, it is exactly the energy needed. When I do this, I do experience the sufferer’s affliction, but it is in attenuated form, barely perceptible. This gives me not only a flavor of their suffering, but also what Ego affliction is maintaining it. For example, the person’s suffering may be intense and real, but because of their affliction, they get attention from their loved ones that they would not otherwise receive. As intense as the suffering is, sadly it is worth it in order to receive the loving care and attention their Ego needs.
Note that because both suffering and the need for attention are generated by the Ego, knowing the cause of the suffering may allow helping the sufferer in other ways. You might say for example, “You know, if you stop taking that drug, maybe you won’t end up in the hospital again, and maybe your family will still love you, even if they aren’t showing it the way they are now. In fact, if you keep testing their love the way you do now, they may tire of the drama and leave you, despite their love for you.”
If you fear taking on the afflictions of others, start with loved ones. I don’t know any parent of a sick child who wouldn’t willingly take their illness onto themselves if they could. So start small, and cautiously try this Tonglen method on loved ones. If you can handle it okay, and if you can see results (or at least it does no harm), continue and expand your healing practice and see for yourself what happens. I dedicate this practice to the late Venerable Yangchen Gyalten who wished only to heal others.