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[hiker]

I took the liberty to bold one item that spoke to me...this is merely the end of a 90-minute interview, some of which is available at this link:

http://www.thinking-...com/levine.html



MISHLOVE: Do you have an opinion about people who are healing practitioners who attempt to do healing not for themselves necessarily, but for other people -- say, spiritual healers?

LEVINE: If we are all doing it as work on ourselves, that's wonderful. But if we're healing someone else, and we're not trying to heal ourselves at the same time, that person is in trouble that you're trying to heal, because then you've set up the separation of I and other, and I and other is the basis of all fear, all doubt, and all the cruelty and confusion in the world.

If you come to me and say, "I'm depressed," and I touch your pain, your depression, with fear, that's pity, and it's a very self-oriented state, pity. I want you out of that state, because I don't want to be in that state. But if I can touch your pain with love, that's compassion. And then even if you're in pain and I've done everything I can to get you out of your pain, if I'm not so hung up on some model of myself as a healer, but just here we are, then you can be in pain and I don't close my heart to you.

A lot of healers, if they can't "heal" you, they have no business with you anymore. But when our work is on ourself, then even the teaching of helplessness is honored. Sometimes you can't help everybody, but that doesn't mean anything has to come out of you that limits their access to who you are, to your heart, to your connection with them. If it's work on yourself, they're in the presence of good healing. But all the healers I know who are really phenomenal, who are some of the phenomenal healers, they all say God does it. I'll tell you a story. A woman had a very advanced cancer. Her doctor told me this story. The cancer really fulminated; it was really metastasized in many parts of her body.

MISHLOVE: Stephen, we're going to have to end quickly. We've got only a minute to go.

LEVINE: OK. Her doctor said, "Well, it doesn't look like you have long to go." She went to the West Coast. She thought she'd have a couple of days on the beach, a couple of weeks, before she died. She met a healer. The healer lay his hands on her. She was well. A week later she committed suicide. She said, "Well, if it was that easy to heal me, I don't deserve to live." Because that healer forgot to say to her, "I didn't heal you. You healed you; God healed you. You've done so much work, look how easy it was for you to heal." When the healer takes possession of healing, he actually injures that person instead of helps them.

MISHLOVE: You seem to be suggesting that ultimately the basis of healing is self acceptance and acceptance of others, and that they're linked ultimately.

LEVINE: When the mind sinks into the heart, and vice versa, there's healing. When we become one with ourselves, there's healing.

MISHLOVE: Stephen Levine, thank you very much for being with me.

LEVINE: Thanks, Jeffrey. END