Your Role as a Minister, Counselor, or Healer

Taking up the path of healing is a responsibility. It entails a willingness on the part of the practitioner to place one’s energy in service to another. The healing process can be facilitated in multitudes of ways. Many in our culture take the path of formal education that leads to one of the many careers available in the medical field. Others are called to help people find alternative conventions of healing. Either way, there are a myriad of ethical considerations that go with addressing the physical and spiritual needs of a person seeking that healing.

In order for the healer to facilitate a process that maintains integrity, the interaction between healer and client must focus on empowerment. This focus, and the rewarding connection it creates for all, will lead to addressing the client’s need to increase access to their own healing powers. This brings to bear the entire purpose of having a discussion concerning ethics in the healing arts, and what it is to have an integrated, balanced, safe structure in which one can learn about the transformative nature of body and spirit.

The Example

 To become a healer, whether through the modalities of touch healing, as a psychological counselor, or in the mainstream medical profession, one has to accept one’s own humanity. This involves acknowledging human foibles, shortcomings, and tendencies to react to certain circumstances in ways that have more to do with past experiences than with the intent to heal others. The therapeutic relationship creates powerful shared experiences that can bring to the surface compelling fears, needs, and longings in both the client and the healer. The key for the healer to be in the moment, focused, and mindful of the intent of the circumstance is to become self-aware. In this way, the healer provides a model for the client to be self-aware and, in the process, work these issues out in a way that allows one to let go of identification with past experiences. By learning to dis-identify with traumas and conditioning, the client can realize the goal of spiritual healing. Even more importantly, the client can learn how to use future experiences as learning opportunities rather than damaging traumas.

The example the healing practitioner sets in the context of the healing session is vital. For that example to be sincere, the individual with healing intent needs to maintain integrity outside of the professional context as well as within. There is a whole set of actions that must not take place in order for the healer to set an ethical example. It requires an emphasis on respectfulness for total strangers, casual acquaintances, and intimate friends, and an awareness of treating others like you would want to be treated. The pattern of this behavior will carry into the therapy session and serve the client as well as the development of the healer’s ability to facilitate healing.

Course Continued…

This is an excerpt from one of the 25 required master’s courses offered in the University of Metaphysical Sciences metaphysical degree program.

The course Practitioner Ethics is also available for individual purchase at our online store.

*Please note that courses purchased through metaphysicalsciencesstore.com are for personal interest only, and not as part of the degree program. If you are interested in pursuing your metaphysical degree, please fill out an enrollment form here.