Everybody wants to have a Jedi Power

In the last Star Wars film, I saw the heroine lay her hand on a wounded creature and healed it. It was an a-ha moment. “That’s what everybody wants to. They wants to have a Jedi power,” I said to my friend.

I often spend time with those who are in hands-on “healing professions.” I am also a licensed massage therapist, because I had this urge to lay hands on people who were suffering. When somebody is hurting, I wanted to stop it, heal them, and make them feel better. I felt my hands aching, desperately craving to touch the hurt, eager to give “healing energy.”

Then I got a chronic “incurable” illness. For about a year, I suffered from debilitating symptoms. Fortunately, currently I am in a remission. And I stopped offering an unsolicited healing works to people who suffer from other chronic “incurable” condition.

If you have a cluster headache, I know I can’t help you. I’m happy to give you a foot massage if it will help you to relax. But I can’t heal a cluster headache.

And “healers” would still offer to lay their hands on you, as if they couldn’t accept their own powerlessness. It is difficult to be present in the face of pain and suffering without being able to do anything.

During the period I suffered from severe symptoms of Meniere’s disease, many people laid hands on me, trying to heal. None of them stopped or eased my suffering. I just had to endure and wait for the Meniere’s attacks subside. People who had never treated Meniere’s disease offered one kind or another treatments. People gave me pieces of unsolicited advice as if I didn’t know how to google. When people offered energetic healing of one kind of another, I felt obligated to tell them it made a difference. I didn’t feel better. Meniere’s is a bitch from the hell. Only the sufferer knows how bad it could be.

I believe they had good intentions. However, I am not sure if it is for the sufferer or for my own being a Jedi fantasy when I offer a “healing” touch.

So I stop and think if I really know how to help the person feel better, even by my mere presence to witness the suffering, before offering to lay hands.

I don’t have a Jedi power and I don’t have to have a Jedi power to be compassionate.