I travelled to Bristol to hear Caroline Myss deliver the Christopher Pilkington Memorial Lecture on ‘Why and How we Heal’. I’m glad I made the journey as she speaks so much spiritual sense about healing. Here I distil some of her key messages for you.

Caroline takes a challenging, no holds barred approach to healing. Personally I like that and sense that her stance of ‘tough love’ really makes a difference to people’s lives. This is an attitude to healing that can haul a disease out by its roots. It takes courage and self discipline to follow her guidance, but as she says, “One needs a backbone in life, not a wishbone.”

It’s a shame that Caroline made occasional disparaging comments about the New Age. I think she equates the term with the ‘fluff talk’ that gets banded around. However I do believe we really are entering a New Age for the inhabitants of Planet Earth. The world is changing rapidly and Caroline herself began the lecture by pointing out the way the boundaries of time and space have been collapsing over the last decade. Now what happens in one country is instantly transmitted across the Globe and impacts upon us all. Truly the world is becoming One. Dare I say Caroline is one of the people that is leading us into the New Age whether she likes the term or not?

This was such a wide ranging lecture that I can’t possibly condense it into one article. My aim is to convey Caroline’s key messages about why people don’t heal and how they can. Each point holds a lot within it. Sit with each one and be honest about how it applies to you.

Why People Don’t Heal

• Westerners want one reason to explain what has happened to them. The truth is that there is a complexity of choices you made that brought you to this point. You have been ‘weaving your life’. People go looking for someone to blame, but finding out who hurt you won’t heal you. Look at your shadow appetites. Most people won’t go deep enough to know what is really motivating them. People forget that the laws of the universe are in operation constantly, not just when it is convenient for us. Bitterness and hatred will undermine any spiritual practice.

• People keep their ‘soul crooked’ and they stay incongruent. The ego has to be brought into alignment with the soul. The gap between ego and soul causes us to be psychically toxic. People get stuck trying to heal at the level of the body-mind and don’t get to the level of the spirit.

• People self sabotage because they are scared of healing and the transformation it entails. Healing requires tough decisions. People back off and just do the little stuff, the convenient stuff. Healing is not about having it all on your terms. We fight against change but change is constant.

• Everyone is intuitive but most don’t act on it. People hold back and don’t follow their intuitive urges. This is self betrayal, limiting the extent of your intuition and what you allow it to show you. Don’t try to reason it out and make intuition rational- that’s like 'trying to make a pig a fish’.

• Your regrets are when you heard what God asked you to do, but you said no. People often put a foot on the spiritual path, then find they are then in a worse state than before because they are stuck, “In a state of spiritual constipation.” Her advice is, “Don’t hover that the level of the occult, go higher into the sacred.” It is a mistake to think that God is logical and reasonable from a human perspective. Miracles are things that by definition don’t make sense, aren’t explicable.

• The soul is a vessel of truth. You cannot heal if you are a liar to yourself. How serious are you really about healing, can you take the journey right the way through?


How People Can Heal

• Caroline maintains that total honesty is needed, “The truth will set you free.” Especially be true to yourself. You need self knowledge and to be prepared to completely surrender whatever is not in harmony with your personal truth. Your soul loves the truth. Integrity, honesty & grace allow us to thrive.

• Become congruent with your soul and be prepared to do whatever it takes to get well. Know that everything you think, do, or say is either empowering or not empowering. Realise nobody is responsible for your life journey but you. Recognise that you are creating your life all the time, so you need to take responsibility for your creations. You have choices. You either breathe love and blessing into everything or you breathe shadow energy, either way the wheels are set in motion.

• Connect with that part of yourself that is sacred. You need prayer, illumination & surrender. You must ask, “What is my inner spiritual life?” Hear your purpose.

• Have no attachment. Don’t buy into the illusion of material objects or people having authority over you.

• Ask yourself, “Where am I right now?” Notice where you are sending your energy. Bring your energy into present time.

• You have to surrender, have grace and humbleness. Healing is about the whole of you.

• The dark night of the soul is an opportunity to ‘dissolve into holiness’. If it happens allow yourself to withdraw and become like a chrysalis. Lose the shape of your life so that you can know yourself more deeply than the false shell you loved. Know that when you are in your essence you can channel graces.

I'm passing on a very simple exercise that Caroline recommended to the audience:

Be still and sit daily with some questions-

Where was my soul today?

What choices did I make?

What was my agenda?

Simple maybe, but a good way to Know Thyself.

Caroline's latest book Defy Gravity is out now. I still treasure Caroline Myss, Ph. D.: The Energetics of Healing in which she takes you through the functions of the chakras in her characteristic no-nonsense style. My copy is on VHS which tells you how long I've had it!


The Christopher Pilkington Memorial Lecture was given in support of Penny Brohn Cancer Care based in Bristol, England, providing complementary therapies for people living with cancer and their loved ones.