Spiritually Healing Abuse

In early 2000, I was experiencing turmoil with my family and trying to deal with old issues of sexual abuse that I hadn’t fully worked through since childhood. I was tired of carrying guilt and shame, and I desperately wanted to heal my life, my heart, my mind, and my spirit. I was running into a brick wall during my conscious waking hours in resolving the effects of abuse on my life, so during meditation I prayed to God for help.

Turning to God was a new thing for me. I was raised a Catholic, but I never felt like God truly cared for me. From about age three to seven, I was sexually abused by my grandfather, which left me feeling like I couldn’t trust others. Because of the abuse, I felt like my record with God was spotty, and I feared that I was not acceptable or worthy of his love. I felt about as close to God as a fish does to a fisherman: he may catch a glimpse of me, but I would keep swimming down stream.

Like me, you may have tried many ways to work through abuse issues. I went to therapy for many years to work through the pain of the abuse and its effects on my life. I believe in the power of therapy, but at a certain point, I was still unable to move past the pain. I was talking about the past, processing it, even trying to rewrite it with new behaviors, but ultimately my continued focus on the past only kept it alive. I could always come back and process more and review more, but then I would still feel the past bite me again in other situations. Through meditation and prayer, I finally realized that the missing step I needed to take was to heal these issues spiritually by using the wisdom of my inner healer.

Healing on the Energetic Level

For me, spiritual healing meant looking at my body in a whole new way. You hold within you an inner healing network that connects directly with divine healing energy. Beyond your physical consciousness exists four oval-shaped energy fields or bodies that surround your human self, providing this healing link.

The first energy field directly outside of your human self is the physical energy body, which contains coding for the shape and functioning of your human body. One step above that energy field is your emotional body, which reacts to situations and processes them to relate to you personally. Above that is your mental body, which holds your intelligence and past knowledge, which are used to tune into experiences and pull out what you need to know at any given time. One step above that is your spiritual body, which holds your link to the divine and acts as an overall envelope around the other bodies, giving meaning to your everyday life.

Some people may favor one body over another, such as the mental body like I did. Others may be a flush of emotions and live mainly within their emotional bodies. Think of each body as a ribbed pantsuit. Ribbed material stretches easily and sometimes doesn’t return to its original shape after washing (I speak from personal experience). If you favor one pantsuit over another, it can get pretty big and sometimes hang on you funny. When you try to put on another pantsuit, it might feel too tight, or just not like something you want to wear. This is also true of your different energy bodies. Favoring one state of being over another can lead to instability within your energy structure, which is what holds these bodies together. Spiritual healing involves aligning these bodies and accepting all levels of your being.

Your human body and physical energy field are like a public relations team who represent you to the outside world. Your emotional, mental and spiritual bodies are what make up your soul or spirit. These energy fields don’t actually reside within the human body, but are energetically linked around your body. You pull from these energy fields to react and feel, intellectually process material and feel the presence of God in the room.

It may sound like the human body is just a shell, a puppet acting out the intentions of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies. Actually the human body is a living, breathing expression of all the bodies, and as energy is passed through the other bodies to the human body for expression, residual energies can come to reside within the flesh and blood form. The term cellular memory often refers to energy stored within the body from a feeling, thought, intention or action. Upon death, all of this stored energy in the human body retracts into its respective energy body and the spirit leaves with all memory of this life.

What does metaphysics have to do with spiritually healing abuse? Spiritual healing is very much like going through a living death of old energy to connect with your higher spirit-self. When I began meditating and letting go of past pain, I followed a divine process of releasing old, stuck energy from my human body and accepting healing energy in the form of divine grace, love and guidance.

Energy work is a part of spiritual healing because this process is done one step above your everyday consciousness. Spiritual healing is about tapping into your energetic source and releasing old patterns from your energy bodies. By releasing this stuck energy, you free up space within your energy bodies so that divine healing guidance can filter down to your human consciousness. In turn, you also raise your consciousness to meet your inner healing wisdom. The divine assists in this journey because by doing the energy work of healing, you are consciously saying to the divine that you are ready and willing to know your higher spirit-self, the heart of God and your divine purpose in this world.

You may not believe in God, a higher spirit-self, angels, heaven or a world beyond our own. That’s okay. Belief is not required to begin this healing journey—only a willingness to try new things in order to release old things.

Healing Through Releasing Labels

Because I experienced sexual abuse at such a young age, I never developed a healthy sense of power over my body, my surroundings and my interactions with others. During my chaotic childhood, I could not use my personal power to stop the abuse.

During my spiritual healing process, I realized that the labels of victim and survivor affected how I viewed myself and my personal power. Labeling myself as a victim meant that I had no personal power, not then and not now. Seeing myself as a survivor meant that I was able to endure the abuse but I wasn’t able to use my personal power to stop it. But with the survivor label, I was not assured of having personal power today because I would have to continually reinvest energy to make the concept of “self as survivor” true. On a bad day, I would relive the experience from a victim’s perspective, and need to reinvest energy so that I could feel like a survivor again. Keeping either the victim or survivor labels also meant that the issue of abuse could exist in conflict in my consciousness, and arise in other situations that triggered old emotions.

To finally release myself from the chains of the abuse and the links of related behavior it created in my life, I chose not to label myself as anything other than a human being experiencing all that life has to offer, including pain and joy, suffering and salvation, and distrust and truth. With the label of human being, my life is devoted to wholeness, growth and discovery. In releasing attachments to the labels of victim and survivor, my potential as a human being is free to flourish.

As a human being reconnecting with my healing wisdom, I now know that it’s safe to bring my personal power out of hiding. For years I hid it and felt like I had no power to say no to others, essentially making myself a walking doormat. In reclaiming my power as a human being, I recognized that I was born a powerful being, but I could not use my personal power to stop the abuse with my grandfather. I kept my power hidden in a safe place, but it has always been within me. My personal power has begun to flow through me again since releasing the energy of the abuse.

Healing Through Spiritual Tools

You hold inner healing wisdom within you right now, and you have the power to access it for healing. The spiritual tools provided here act as catalysts, encouraging you to go deeper in discovering and exploring your own inner healing wisdom. The spiritual tools I used to heal abuse issues are included on Journey with Spirit, a 4-CD workshop program. Included below is the negative pattern release process, a powerful tool from the CD, which you can use to focus your awareness on spiritually healing abuse.

Use other powerful spiritual healing tools at JourneywithSpirit.com by following the spirit guides on this page to specific affirmations, meditations, and prayers for healing abuse. You can take these tools and use them in different combinations to release your issues. For example, try the negative pattern release process and then affirm your power by using The Power to Heal affirmation. On another day, you may wish to try the Four Powerful Spiritual Tools for Resolving Conflict tool kit, which offers an integrated process for working through painful issues. If you find a tool that works well for you, use it during the day. For example, using step four of the negative pattern release process, you may feel relief when you say the release statement, I willingly release this energy. It is not my own. Use this statement throughout the day to release painful energy. You may then wish to visualize white light filling your body and four energy fields, soothing and healing you.

When you use a spiritual tool, be aware of how it makes you feel. Do you feel empowered or scared? Do you feel relief or disconcerted? Accessing your inner wisdom means delving into your inner heart, and you may encounter pain from the past. Breathe deeply, discerning if you have connected with wisdom or pain. If it feels judgmental or fearful, you have connected with pain. If it feels loving and healing, you have connected with your wisdom. When you step into moments of pain, breathe through it. Know that you are safe, and that you are not alone.

You also may wish to connect with your spiritual guides to help with the healing process. When I began my spiritual healing journey, I asked that my guardian angel assist me with these spiritual processes. You may call upon your angel or guide through prayer, asking for this being to make its presence known, providing guidance, love and power for your healing.

Negative Pattern Release Tool

We all have experienced painful situations and feelings in our lives. Sometimes we keep those feelings alive by storing them within our energy fields so that we can relive them over and over again. Awful scenarios that you create in your mind are a way of tapping into that old stored energy. I was the queen of terrible scenarios, and I could create scenes with great detail. As I began my journey, I realized that I would feel great anxiety over something that wasn’t real. By getting rid of old negative-charged energy, I am able to attract more positive-charged energy and experiences into my life.

1.  Take an inventory of negative energy. Start by taking an inventory of personal insults, painful situations, pet peeves, things that anger or annoy you, and any other negative energy that has come into your life. Be honest with yourself and write down anything that comes to mind during the exercise. It’s important to be thorough because you are doing a big house cleaning of your energy fields.

My partial list includes the following:

• Rude people

• Bad service

• Painful childhood with mother

• Sexual abuse by grandfather

• Fights with family members

• Being told that I’m not good enough

• Being blamed for something that is not my responsibility

• Carrying guilt over not being able to stop abuse by  grandfather

• Being a second-class citizen in my family

• Not being accepted for who I am

2.  Identify categories of negative thoughts and feelings. Look down your list and begin grouping items by theme or category. You may find that you get angry when you feel like a victim or you tend to criticize others. Put these like energies together. You may find that the categories apply to you as well as the situation or person. “Rude people” would be categorized under judgment because these people treated me in a judgmental way and I judged them back as rude. Rude people also is listed under criticism because we are criticizing each other in the situation. The abuse from my grandfather also reaches across the categories of abuse, judgment and victim because of the many layers it touched in my life.

I categorized my partial list in the following way:

3.  Release the categorized energy. Releasing each item on your list would be time-consuming and somewhat tiring. Luckily, most of us have themes of negative energy that we feed into, so we can release that energy simultaneously. Use this statement of intention to release the energy: I willingly release this (insert category name) energy. It is not my own.

Repeat the statement of intention for each category. After each release, take a moment to sense the difference in your body, emotions or thoughts. I usually feel lighter, like a burden has been lifted from my shoulders. I feel a sense of peace and a belief that all is well in the world.

4.  Repeat the process as needed. As you begin this process, you’ll find that deep down layers of pain and hurt will resurface. You can continue categorizing and releasing your lists, or you can identify the negative energies and release them mentally as they occur. For example, after releasing my list categories, I still encounter feelings of being blamed. I recognize that I am feeding these feelings and need to let go of the blame by stating, I willingly release these judgment and victim energies. They are not my own.

Healing Power from Within

You are a powerful human being of light and love. You hold the power of love to heal the past and live joyfully in the present. You have the power to choose who will be in your life. You have the power to set boundaries and say no to others. You have the power to let go of the past, forgive yourself and others, and move forward in peace.

You have the power to heal.

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