Many years ago on my journey to healing my wounds, my life, and face the shadows within me, I found it very hard to love myself. I was also ashamed about how much effort, focus, and time it took. Yet another reason to judge myself.
One day, I said something like this to a healer I was working with. She paused and replied: “Your commitment to your healing is a powerful act of self-love.” It was as if she had turned on a light in my head and heart. I recognized the truth of what she said and began to accept myself a bit more deeply as I navigated the process of seeking that golden goal of finding peace and happiness. I also understood how important my personal healing journey was to the world.
At the age of 60, I have become a deeply, happy person. I love myself (most of the time) and have a place of inner peace to come home to—even amid challenges that arise from time to time.
As a result of all that hard work, I have been able to help thousands of others heal and aspire to step into their highest destiny to take all they have learned, the wisdom gained, and tools and practices to be in service of others. This makes me abundantly joyful as my life has purpose and meaning. I am making the world a better place.
As we enter the New Year of 2022, we are about to turn the corner on two years of living with COVID. The world seems to be in greater chaos. The deepest shadows of Mind of Domination are expressed in the rising tide of authoritarianism, violent rhetoric, and actions towards others who are misperceived as threats or as less than human. Then there are all the fires, floods, winds, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other signs of climate change. From one day to the next, it can feel very hard.
But even more than that, it is hard at times to remember how to love this world, how to love humanity, and even how to love being alive—how to love ourselves. Healing may seem far away—or even unrealistic.
My experience of transmuting the suffering within my body, mind, and emotions showed me that healing is a powerful expression of love of self and others. It is natural to us. It is natural energy available to us from Mother Earth.
When we make the choice every day to courageously face our personal and the world’s shadows by reaching for the spiritual tools of insight and transformation, we are motivated by love and, as such, are spreading the miracle of love into the world. This is the essence of Sacred Activism for Peacemaking and Ending Violence.
Therefore, for the New Year, I call upon all of us, with our great hearts and open minds, to continue to work of personal and planetary healing. Feel the love and spread the love. Speak to others about the power of healing. No one needs to live in the despair and darkness of untransmuted wounds of trauma. Nor does the world. A time is coming when the shadows will pass and be a thing of the past.
2022 is one more year that we can continue to build the fires of compassion, kindness, and caring. Here at the New Year, recommit yourself every day, with every breath you take, to loving yourself generously and to loving the world abundantly. Love is a force of healing that cannot be stopped by any shadow, any conflict, any disease.
Love is now and it is the future. Healing is the pathway.
May it be so. Aho.
Rachel Mann, PhD is a sacred activist, social scientist, healer, and spiritual mentor. She provides shamanic energy healings, an intensive 1-1 Mentoring Program, and offers courses and retreats supporting passionate individuals with a vision to integrate the wisdom gained through their own healing and spiritual study into creative service to others as a healer/therapist, minister. spiritual teacher, writer, artist, and/or socially conscious and spiritually awake entrepreneur. Through consulting and programs, she also provides businesses, NGOs, and nonprofits wishing to expand and anchor into the sacred values of positive inclusion, compassion, and a renewed, spiritual ethics with consulting and programs. Find out more at rachelmannphd.com.
