The Feminine Soul in the Healing Arts

Unwinding the dogma of methods, techniques, and scripts for being.

Photo by Michael LaRosa

We have grown accustomed to asking others to tell us who we are because we lost the emblem of our soul when we were little.

I believe that what draws most of us into the healing arts is the desire to remember and feel the heartbeat of our soul. And yet, the healing arts generally don’t tend to attune to the soul. I find most healing arts to be a game, a circus, and a way of furthering people's hypnosis.

When we are suffering from soul loss, we will pay anyone to tell us who we are. We might go to bodyworkers, astrologers, psychic mediums, counselors, shamans, enneagram specialists, begging…

“Can you tell me how I am supposed to live? Can you tell me who I am?”

Another issue in the healing arts is the narcissistic need many healers have for their clients to be like them, social media is a great example of this. Instagram, Facebook, and social media influencers capitalize on making money off their personal journey, often inviting their followers to do exactly what they have done to become their best selves. For example, an influencer might say, to be healthy, I eat such and such, exercise this often, track my moon cycle this way, and have these kinds of sexual relationships, and implicitly or explicitly, they say, YOU SHOULD DO THIS TOO. LIVE LIKE ME TO HAVE YOUR BEST LIFE.

Much of what has been lost over the centuries in the human consciousness is the feminine soul and her intelligence, which moves from within out to meet the world. Our culture is obsessed with obtaining information from the outside. Our education systems are set up this way. We go to class, and the teacher tells us what the world is and how to think about it. It is a rare gem when an education system instead draws on our inner intelligence and intuition to explore and learn.

Those of us in the healing professions often capitalize on further hypnotizing people. It’s a lot easier to sell yourself to the general public when the premise is, “Hey, you don’t know who you are; you’re lost. I can tell you exactly who you are through this specific methodology, technique, and training. Or, by telling you to live exactly how I am living.”

Telling people who they are because you learned a methodology, or have the answers to how to live, saves you the vulnerability of building a real relationship with them. In a culture that is primarily schizoid, as Rollo May writes about in Love and Will, we can pretend we have a relationship when there are methodologies between us. But that’s all it is—pretending. Real relationships between two humans cannot exist when the foundation is based in methods, technique, or someone who is presumptuous enough to believe they know more about you than you do.

If you do not want to find yourself in the maze of charlatanry in the healing arts, find yourself in the care of people who are interested, first and foremost, in your humanity and their own. Those who truly listen, whose ears have become a doorway of worship to the unknown and unfolding mystery. Those whose hearts are receptive and open to you as an infinite possibility before them. Those who do not speak in vague cliches and categories. Those who live brave lives, who collide with their aliveness and yours. Those who want to witness you flower and shine and who take delight in you.

And here’s a beautiful talk given by John O’Donohue on this topic: