Green Heart Guidance
  • Home
  • About Elizabeth
  • Specialties
    • Healing Trauma, Abuse and Loss
    • Health Challenges and Chronic Illness
    • Pregnancy and Infant Loss
    • Healing Messages
    • Pet Services
    • Remote Home Viewings
    • Green Living
    • Organic Eating and Food Sensitivities
  • Guidance
    • Consultation Fees
    • Classes
    • CEU Seminars
    • Client Forms >
      • Liability Form
      • Policies and Procedures Agreement
      • New Client Information
      • New Pet Client Information
      • Bereavement Questionnaire
    • Payment Options
  • Blog
  • Contact Me

Interfaith Healing

7/20/2017

0 Comments

 
Interfaith Healing by Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.St. Cecilia window by Sir Edward Burne-Jones in Second Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL, installed 1903. By Prairieavenue [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
I’ve been having neck pain in the past few weeks that I knew was of an emotional, metaphysical or spiritual origin. I’ve been trying to figure out what is causing it so that I can heal the problem and relieve the pain. When I began meditating on it a few weeks ago, the first word I heard was “Cecilia.” I assumed this meant Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians, because there is no one named Cecilia currently in my life. I remember this tidbit of Catholic school information because there was a nun at my school who was Sister Cecilia. She had been given the name Cecilia when she entered the convent because she was a musician. (However, as an aside, everyone called her Sister Bonjour because she was French and greeted all the toddlers she was in charge of in the morning before school with a beautiful “bonjour.”)
 
I was initially very puzzled as to why I should call on St. Cecilia for help with my neck pain. I’m not a musician. I can’t sing. I can’t play an instrument. I am even terrible at remembering the names of songs or bands. St. Cecilia just isn’t someone I would think would be too relevant to me. I decided to break from my meditation and Google what else St. Cecilia was the patroness of. Some saints are patron saints of many people, places and things. St. Anne, the grandmother of Jesus, for example, is known as the patron saint of “Brittany, Canada, Detroit, carpenters, childless people, equestrians, grandparents, homemakers/housewives, lace makers, lost articles, Fasnia (Tenerife), Mainar, miners, mothers, moving house, old-clothes dealers, poverty, pregnancy, seamstresses, stablemen, sterility, and children.” But St. Cecilia? She’s just the patron saint of musicians and other music related things. That idea hit a rapid dead end, so I went back to meditating on my neck pain.
 
I continued seeing other symbols in my meditation that weren’t too helpful in understanding why I should call on St. Cecilia for help, but eventually it came to me. The neck is part of the fifth chakra. The fifth chakra is about communication and being heard. Music is often vocal and is a way of communicating. Hence, St. Cecilia suddenly made a lot more sense.

Interfaith Healing by Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.Statue of Saint Cecilia, Saint Cecilia Cathedral, Albi, Tarn, France. Photo by MAMJODH and used under Creative Commons licensing.
In order to help me understand this, my spirit guides relied on my combined knowledge of Catholicism and Hinduism. For my spirit guides, they don’t see any problem with mixing faiths together in a fusion spirituality. What matters to them is healing and serving the highest good. There is no one faith that has the market cornered on those things. The Other Side doesn’t care what religion claims what. In my visions, I see Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Pagan, and Native American symbols. The healing work I do integrates all of them without judgment or prejudice. Some aspects of spirituality, such as holy water, mystics, pyramids, labyrinths, and animal guides, are found in different religious and spiritual traditions in very diverse cultures around the world.
 
When it all boils down, the phenomenon humans label as “God” is too intense, too immense, too pervasive, too all-powerful and too all-consuming to be contained by any one religious tradition. The Spirit of pure love, energy and light pervades all attempts to find it, and as humans, it is our job to access this Spirit however we can encounter it in our lives. Spirituality belongs to no one group, and we all have access to its gifts. We should actively use these gifts to help heal ourselves and our world.
 
As I was Googling for Creative Commons or public domain artworks of St. Cecilia for this blog post, I came upon the statue showing St. Cecilia’s three neck wounds. Further research found that, “The legend about Cecilia’s death says that after being struck three times on the neck with a sword, she lived for three days, and asked the pope to convert her home into a church.” Suddenly I had an additional understanding of why St. Cecilia might be able to help me with releasing the trauma in my neck that was causing me pain. The sword marks on the neck of this statue of St. Cecilia are fairly accurate for where my neck pain is. While many saints were beheaded over the centuries, I suspect that it is the combination of her fatal neck trauma and her work with the fifth chakra that led my spirit guides to instruct me to ask for St. Cecilia’s help with my healing. As I continue working on healing the emotional traumas and past-life traumas that created the metaphysically rooted pain in my neck, I ask for Saint Cecilia’s assistance in my efforts.
 
© 2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

0 Comments

​Gold-Filled Cracks

7/6/2017

0 Comments

 
Perfect in Our Imperfection by Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.Lotte Dekker, "Bison Kintsugi," Ars Electronica Festival Linz. Photo by Tine Nowak. Shared through Creative Commons Licensing.
The Japanese art of Kintsugi (also known as Kintsukuroi) involves the repair of broken pottery. Rather than discarding broken pieces, as most of us would probably do in our disposable culture, the pottery is repaired using a gold filling. The object is then regarded as perfect in its imperfection. The filled cracks give character to the pieces that they previously did not have.
 
The idea of people as objects of Kintsugi has been in my head a lot lately. I recently attended a continuing education seminar on trauma. During her presentation, the speaker gave the statistic that around 50% of people have faced trauma in their lives. She asked the group of predominantly psychotherapists, “Doesn’t that seem high to you?” Actually, to me, it seemed low.
 
In my opinion, by the time we reach midlife, almost all of us have faced trauma. Official statistics say one in four women have been sexually abused; I suspect that statistic is closer to one in two. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. Car accidents happen on a daily basis leading to the deaths of 1.3 million deaths globally each year. Natural disasters kill tens of thousands (and some years, hundreds of thousands) each year. Then there is war, one of the most horrific human-made events that also kills thousands each year and leaves millions more scarred for life.
 
Those who survive these tragedies are left to face the trauma of having lost loved ones and having endured horrific events. It’s very rare for a person not to have been affected by one of these by the time they reach 40. By old age, the statistic has to be close to 100% of us. Every one of us has “baggage.” For some, the baggage can be stowed in the overhead bin and/or under the seat in front of us. For others, the baggage overflows into neighboring seats and clogs the aisle. It’s rare, though, that we travel through life without any baggage along the ride.
 
Yet despite all of these traumas, each of us is an amazing human being. Each of us is lovable, even if we are a person who has done atrocious things. It may be harder to find those redeeming qualities in some of the most damaged members of society, but they are there, buried under the trauma and injury that we both create and sustain from others.
 
All of these traumas we face break us into pieces just as the pottery cracks when it hits the floor. So, too, are we works of Kintsugi if we choose to be. We all have been broken, but we can be repaired. If we chose to work on our traumas and we chose to move forward in life, we can heal. We will never be the same as the innocent child who was born into the world so many years ago. However, we can fill our cracks with gold to create a new and beautiful person. While the process is slow and difficult, we can attain a new state of beauty. Our repaired damage can make us even more beautiful than we were before we faced the most difficult challenges of our lives.
 
© 2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

0 Comments
    Join our newsletter list

    Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.

    Holistic Life Coach and
    Intuitive Energy Healer

    Categories

    All
    Abuse
    Announcements
    Body
    Body Mind Spirit
    Chronic Illness
    Crystals
    Death
    Disabilities
    Family
    Gender
    General Guidance
    Green Living
    Helping Others
    Holidays
    Infant Loss
    Inspirational Mantras
    Lyme
    Marriage And Divorce
    Meditation
    Metaphysical Gifts
    Mind
    Multiple Chemical Sensitivities
    Narcissism
    Natural Healing
    Nutrition
    Parenting
    Past Lives
    Personal Growth
    Pets
    Popular Culture
    Pregnancy And Childbirth
    Product Recommendations
    Reviews
    Sexuality
    Spirit
    Spirituality And Religion
    Stress Release
    Subsequent Pregnancy After A Loss
    The Other Side
    The Single Life
    Trauma
    World Events

    Archives

    January 2023
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    May 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    November 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    January 2018
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013

    RSS Feed

Services

Green Living
Healing Messages and Intuitive Energy Work
Health Challenges and Chronic Illness
Organic Eating and Food Sensitivities
Pet Psychic Services
Pregnancy and Infant Loss
Remote Home Viewing

About Green Heart Guidance

About Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D.
Contact Elizabeth
Consultation Fees
Client Forms

Social Media

​Facebook
Flickr
Goodreads
Instagram

LinkedIn
Pinterest
Spotify
Twitter
Youtube
Subscribe to GHG's Newsletter