The Hibernia Times Article

by Monica Walsh

Direct experience of the divine is not easy to talk about, and I certainly never expected to find myself joining the ranks of those who do. But today it is getting slightly easier as twenty years have now passed since such experiences changed the course of my life, giving me the faith and trust to abandon in due course a twin-track career with its accompanying material security and social acceptance, and to accept the new uncharted path unfolding before me.

I was never religious, and despite those experiences falling into the classic Christian mystical tradition, nor am I now. I believe they were intended to point the way to a higher truth — our spiritual nature, the divine spark at our very core and our connection to the source of all creation, regardless of what we do or do not know, believe or do not believe.

I believe that what was communicated to me came in the Christian framework simply because that is my cultural environment, and that had I been born in a different part of the world it would have come in the predominant mystical tradition of that country. In my case those experiences were also intended to leave me in no doubt as to the divine source of the healing gift which was to manifest totally unsolicited just a couple of weeks later.

For three whole years I did not speak of those experiences — by which time I had become a busy healer through word-of-mouth referral alone — and then only on a few occasions when asked by clients how I was so sure of my source. It took me myself a full year to understand it all and to come to terms with being an instrument of healing for a higher power in which I had not till then believed.

This happened suddenly in the winter of 1990, when I was in a state of total collapse and had just been driven by increasingly debilitating illness, chronic fatigue and burn-out to cash in my chips — sell my home and resign from a secure and highly desirable job — to go freelance. I had learned at last of the direct connection between prolonged acute stress and the development of physical illness, and knew that in order to heal myself I needed to be in control of my working life rather than have it continue to be in control of me.

When the healing gift manifested it did so simply yet dramatically, through direct touch — I knew nothing of the human energy system or how people can learn to work with it. The results stunned me, and as the weeks passed and more amazing things happened, I was given enormous food for thought. This was not my energy:  I had none to give away.   This was not a learned technique; I had not studied healing — until just a short time previously the only healers I knew of were seventh sons and bone-setters and women who “had the cure” in a mysterious herbal concoction. While exploring it on someone close, I myself experienced an extraordinary inner peace, something I had longed for all my turbulent life. Bit by bit the penny dropped. Those mystical experiences and this physical manifestation were connected. I had been told “You Will Know,” in answer to my question: “Why am I seeing You?” And at last I did.

Regardless of my personal beliefs, the work I do today is carried out neutrally, without any religious overtones, so that the services I provide can be availed of by believers of any creed as well as atheists, agnostics and sceptics. Some people need to be comfortable about my source; others couldn’t care less as long as the work helps. No one has to embrace any belief system in order to receive.

People sometimes ask: “Do you feel blessed to have been given the gift of healing?” My answer can surprise. “No. I feel I was given a job to do, and I try to do it well. It is others who receive the gift of healing through it. The gift I myself received was the gift of faith.”  I had not had any, ever.  But I longed for understanding.

By the end of my first year, constant feedback on the great benefits people were experiencing through my sessions had proven to me beyond all doubt that a Higher Power existed. Physically and objectively measurable results were, for me, the evidence.  I realised, too, of course, that everyone has that direct spiritual connection with a higher power, though — like me till then — they may not yet have consciously awakened to it. On countless occasions clients, including many who were not consciously searching, found their experience was not just of a physical or emotional healing but a spiritual awakening and consequent personal transformation.

Spiritual awakening is the first step on the path of lasting healing. It has nothing to do with religion, but for some it may come within a religious framework. Often today it comes independently of organised religion. When we connect at last with the reality that we are not our thoughts, we are not our emotions, we are not other people’s perceptions of us and we ask, “Who is thinking these thoughts? Who is feeling these feelings?” we can begin to discern our spiritual core, our essence, that divine spark within us which is eternal, which lives on when all else falls away and which is directly connected with the Source of all creation.

Even one transcendent experience of connection with this eternal light which animates our human journey and a fusion with the greater light from which we spring transforms everything. As one client commented: “It is as if a switch was flicked in my life and the lights came on!”   Life does not necessarily get easier, but we begin to see more clearly and it definitely becomes less painful.

This article was first published in Monica’s “Healing Hands” column at www.thehiberniatimes.com