If you are a healer, this may be something you ask yourself and others frequently. Watching the continual and increasing conflict between different nations, religions and races is difficult for a healer. Even conflict within a community, workplace, family or group of friends is hard to deal with. The desire to heal and make everything OK can become overwhelming.

Why is it that some of us on this earth are interested in cooperation, cohesion and tolerance, while others seem to be interested in the complete opposite – antagonism, intolerance, division, separatism, etc.

In truth, if we all just got along and everything was hunky dory, life would be pretty boring. Without problems to solve and conflict to overcome, there would be little opportunity for learning, growth and change. Adversity stimulates the creativity of the human spirit and forces us to use all of our collective abilities to confront challenges head on.

Advances we have made over the centuries have all come about as the result of problems encountered along the way, or obstacles that had to be overcome.

So, perhaps it can be said that adversity indirectly creates healing.

We live in a world of polar opposites: north/south, dark/light, hot/cold, male/female, spirit/body and so on. We are continuously finding, adjusting, shifting and fine-tuning our place between those opposites.

It can take a lot of energy to withstand the pull of opposing forces of energy, not unlike attempting to stand your ground in gale force winds, or not being swept away by a tidal wave. In some ways, it is easier and, at times, safer to be at one end of the spectrum or the other. Remaining balanced in the middle is a challenge.

In the Intuitive Touch Healing program, I teach the students about finding balance and being neutral when they are giving a healing. This is a difficult concept for many healers, particularly if the person they are healing is suffering in some way.

Pain and/or suffering will almost always invoke an emotional response, and it is precisely this emotional response that will tend to polarize us in one direction or another.

Another reason it is difficult for a healer to be neutral is because it can be perceived that they don’t care, and if you are a healer you must surely care. We are programmed to engage, to get involved even if that means losing our balance or middle ground. More on neutrality in a future blog……

So rather than ask “Why can’t we all just get along?”, ask yourself how can we create space for opposing energies, beliefs and forces to co-exist in tolerance, understanding and mutual respect?

If everyone were to work on finding and maintaining balance, perhaps the force exerted by those polar opposites would lose power and strength, and maybe the destructive vice-like grip on the people currently being held in those opposite ends of the spectrum would weaken.