The Ideal Healer
Ellen M. Dyer
The Spirit of The New Thought
Edited by Horatio W. Dresser
[Miss Dyer was for many years the leading metaphysical healer and teacher in Philadelphia.]
There are healers and healers in the New Thought today, and it is inevitable that the general public and those in special need should show a growing tendency to move carefully, discriminate and classify as experience brings wisdom.
A few years ago it was stated with unction by the eager promulgators of the movement that the consideration of personality must not enter into the question of who should heal, or to which of several available practitioners the one desiring help should apply. But after it had also been accepted, as a fact not to be questioned, that twelve lessons were the all-necessary equipment of the one who was to assume to guide living souls from bondage to freedom, the fruit began to give token of the manner of tree that produced it, and the first statement began to call for deeper soundings as to its basis in practical truth.
Some one has said that personality is “the divine thing in the world.” It is, indeed, when regenerated and emptied of human obstruction, the channel of divine and impersonal truth to man. But the all-important point is that it be thus cleared and purified; for every feature and force therein is called upon to render service in this highest of earthly ministry.
What constitutes the ideal and practical healer? He has been a deep student both in heart and head, but now he is more — he has passed beyond study, so far as the work now put into his hands is concerned. Ever looking with head and heart toward experience and revelation, in his march onward, he is, nevertheless, in relation to the patient at his side, a spontaneous, living force, ever seeing more than he presents, and realizing more than he affirms. Saturated with love unspeakable, he radiates therefrom; but the radiation is yet less than the abundant possession. The student is lost sight of in the disciple, the disciple is merged in the seer and lover.
He gives not only his faith, his word, his love, but himself; and the measure of good received, however great, holds a still larger value as suggestion of the possibilities that are unfathomable. The patient is helped, healed, and infinitely more — his feet are put into the path that leads to self-help. Through the healer’s recognition his own intuitions are aroused, and he is henceforth his own physician. The true and deepest healing, therefore, lies in the educative quality that it possesses rather than in the temporary cure.
No trick of method or intellectual acuteness makes the healer; it is his own intrinsic individuality, sincerely and unselfishly put forth. Nor is excess of phenomena needed to mark his steady progress from year to year; however, as flashlights of experience, these may here and there give glimpses of the background of power drawn upon. Nor is the healing a matter of occasional and spasmodic effort, but a largely unconscious and continuous progression in realization — an undeviating tendency in the direction of that habitual right thinking and loving that are to usher in the divine humanity. Hence it is never a task to be performed, but the impulsion of a great and inexhaustible love, that, having no burden of self to bear, knows no weariness of self.
Not an exclusive or personal love is this deep impulse, but a single pulse-beat from the Mother-Heart of God, conscious that it beats only in responsive unison with the All, eliminating all suggestion of personal desire, eagerness or comparison.
In Goldsmith’s Village Preacher of many years ago we read the prophecy of the Ideal Healer of today:
“Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
For other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.”
Yet to the healer’s view there are no wretched; he has already risen to the Mount of Beatitudes, where he sees that the greatest need is but the attractive point for the greatest blessedness.
“And as a bird each fond endearment tries,
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter fields, and led the way.”
Independent of the creed of stereotyped statements, the dogma of established methods, his one fixed point is his own interior touch with his divinity, whence he floods his patient with the overflow of his latest and purest revelation of the moment. His patient is to him, for the time, the one only soul to be lifted up and illumined, his present and best opportunity for giving forth the healing power that is filling him. So does he attain to the “Great Ideal,” and the world in its great need draws near to him because he has drawn near to God. Faith is a necessity of life. Life is impossible without it. And the very first thing we do is to believe. “Thought may shake or strengthen faith: it cannot produce it. Is its origin in the will? No; good-will may favor it, ill-will may hinder it, but no one believes by will, and faith is not a duty — it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction.” As Count Tolstoi says: “If a man lives, he believes in something. If he did not believe that there is something to live for, he would not live. If he does not see and understand the unreality of the finite, he believes in the finite. If he sees that unreality, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith there is no life.”
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The Spirit of The New Thought
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