MARK L LOCKWOOD

Journey from Healing to Life Transform

HEALING

Healing is one thing. Depression, or anxiety for example. Going beyond physiology and even above thinking and feeling can, and are probably necessary sometimes to really get the miracle of lasting life change to happen. Especially when there is a chronic or long history of suffering, sickness or disorder that we need to heal from.

What does it mean to actually heal and does it work, or last, or is it just a temporary cure for ailments that we encounter? When we re-named our center after much deep thought and inquiry, a center that we opened in 2012 to help people heal addictions, depression and other diseases and disorders, we called it Center for Healing and Life Transformation we really had to go into these things and what we found was incredibly profound and even mind blowing on many levels.

What we discovered is that to heal is simply to change a normally physiological or biological pattern. To bring new energy and towards creating a positive paradigm shift. It is to move from disease, injury what is unwanted and ugly, bad or unwelcome in our lives to the opposite. Now notice here, very importantly, that this is the opposite of addiction or any stuckness. It is doing the same old things that don’t work, even though we may be trying to get good results and heal ourselves and others.

We learn as children to grow up with negative aspects of ourselves, they may develop codependence or personality disorders for example. But that is almost inevitable in our society. Trauma as such is unavoidable. So healing from what doesn’t work, we can now see, is essential work that we will do when we are older. When each of us are ready, then we can see that healing, what is unwanted is eventually necessary. So understanding We must Heal AND Transform is the premise of our existence, it always has been. It is inevitable and is possibly a great part of why we are here living life. To learn to grow and shift and expand beyond the old into the new.

Healing really isn’t the finishing line, even though it restores balance, but more of the start of a spiritual journey for most people. The sky is not the limit! That’s as far as healing can take us, but transformation literally means to go above yourself. It really expresses the essence of the spiritual journey which is where we focus most of our work.

THE PARADIGM SHIFT

Life Transformation is about quantum and metaphysics. It’s about going above the physical aspects of self, of what we can heal and why we must Heal AND Transform. Life is different from non-life because it is a growth process that uses energy for conscious development. We can in fact see that healing, life and transformation are all growth processes that we go through towards something greater, which for me is the Imago Dei – Self Actualization and God Realization.

Why we must Heal AND Transform is about giving birth to something that doesn’t exist. It is not healing that changes things from bad to better. It is about the journey of the worm to the butterfly which is a metamorphosis which is derived from the Greek words for transformation, really meaning after form. And what we as human beings having a spiritual experience believe is that this refers to the spiritual side of ourselves that is beyond form, the side we are really trying to get to attain  fulfillment, joy and peace. So it is this process of transformation from an immature form to an adult form in two or more distinct stages. These stages I refer to as the two halves of life. The before and after that we see in summer, then winter, day and then night and cold and then warm.

In the second letter of Corinthians in the New Testament it says we are being unveiled transformed into the image of God, the Imago Dei with more and more intensity. And of course later in Romans the infamous text that urges to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing or of course by experiencing Life you may discern what is Good and acceptable and perfect. We must Heal AND Transform to live a high quality life, albeit subjectively or objectively.

REAL LIFE TRANSFORMATION

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.” henry david Thoreau. This desperation is really prevalent in people today. There is a yearning for meaning and purpose and a transformation to a much more fulfilling acceptance. Knowing that this change or transformation is necessary is half the battle. People who don’t know there is meaning to the madness find themselves hopeless. They feel like they are the caterpillar that is dying, not knowing they will be transformed into the proverbial butterfly and not die at all. The story from the ancient text of Chuang Tzu puts it so beautifully. He said, “Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”‘

So nothing short of life transformation is necessary to a fulfilling life experience, healed emotionally, mentally and physiologically through these two energies. If we try and avoid the inevitable transformation we get stuck into more of what will need to be healed, more of what doesn’t work. Most of us avoid change as long as we can and this is where obsession, compulsion and dis-ease start and then flourish. So we named our Center a Center for Healing AND Life Transformation, which really bring together the two halves of life as Carl Jung suggested. He said “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”

FROM NECESSARY HEALING TO LIFE TRANSFORMATION

First we heal and then we need to go on a journey of life transformation, changing our very nature, that once defined our personalities and what we thought, felt and did. So a life transformation is a complete and dramatic change where our very appearance and even our shadows are transformed to the reality of the Imago Dei or the image of God. This is what most people would understand as seeing reality and the nature of being, other people and the world, without the veils and without the projection, to see it exactly as it is. To see others and God the way they are and importantly to now see our transformed selves as the way we really are.

So Carl Jung, who wrote the second step of Alcoholics Anonymous by the way, a favourite psychologist and teacher of mine outs it this way. “Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. … But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.”

So healing is the start of the process of change from our first half of life, and this metamorphosises into the spiritual transformation to the second stage is very much what we all seem to seek. And it is that healing and life transformation that we have devoted our life’s work to at the Center where people become butterflies so to speak by changing themselves first and then the Universe itself.

Benedizioni and Namskarm

Mark L Lockwood

For more information on why we must Heal AND Transform, please do message us on +27824424779 or email marklockwoodscloud@icloud.com