Growth Towards Ideals.  I consider that much of what healing should be is helping someone to move towards being/living their own ideals.  Though it seems, as much as some people might want it otherwise, these ideals need to not be hypocritical in order for them to actually get "healing" assistance that will succeed very much.

Trying to discern another's ideals when assisting their healing can be quite challenging.

Something that can prove to be alarming about far too many people's ideals is how often they aspire to goals that are based on premises that they can have things, attributes, abilities or whatevers that no one else should have.  Nor do they seem to be concerned about things like their own moral capabilities to make non-hypocritical use of these things they aspire to.

These sorts of ideals are almost certainly hypocritical.

I consider it important for someone to be striving and/or working for their ideals in order to communicate what they consider to be "healthy".  "Physician heal thy self" should be in the mind and on the lips of everyone seeking assistance with their own healing.  As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the most basic difficulties in so many healing efforts.  People seeking assistance should be able to determine who they want to interact with for healing assistance in very real ways based on their attractions to what they find as healthiness in others. 

It seems that in order to be ethical, all healers should also be quite open about what sorts of things they have successes with and what they've experienced as their limitations.

Diagnosis.  Without getting into the much more complex discussion I think this topic deserves, I am sort of amused when people claim that western medicine is scientific.  Possibly, one of the easiest ways to refute such a claim is to really think about the "science" of diagnosis.  I have quite frequently people that assisted people that were seeing several physicians that were giving inconsistent diagnoses.  Oftentimes, they actually give diagnoses that don't really fit the evidence. 

Another way is to start correlating and trying to find agreement among "scientific" claims from "scientific" sources, particularly when money and power have clear impact on the claims.  But, I digress.  I get frustrated, irritated and alarmed to see how much I've been able to help people and realize that the existing scientific medical system almost entirely refuses to interact.  I also notice that they get paid usually regardless of their results.  I also notice that they can get reimbursed by certain support systems such as health insurance with disturbing regularity.

I think that diagnosis has to be one of the most difficult aspects of developing one's abilities to render healing assistance.  Hopefully, diagnoses can be improved by trying to make use of "scientific" approaches.

I get very concerned when listening to far too many people when they diagnose other people's ailments and struggles.  I far too often find them to be very dismissive of other people's struggles and efforts.

I have been struggling to come up with an accurate statement that will eventually go something like ...

If you can't heal it then you aren't really able to diagnose it.

I think there is a lot of truth in the statement, though there are lots of ways that I still want to quibble with it.  Hopefully it gives a realistic caveat to a certain willingness to presume.

I am reminded of the Christian Saint Francis of Assisi who was one of the few who would go to help lepers.  It seems that people of the day thought that people who contracted leprosy were the recipients of God's justice and that somehow people who didn't contract leprosy were somehow truly "cleaner".  I think that if they truly thought they were not catching leprosy due to their stated reasons they wouldn't have needed to separate themselves and should have been willing to help the lepers.  I will adamantly disagree with these sorts of overly simplistic self-serving diagnoses/judgments and provide a lot of evidence particularly when the holy start to interact in ways that even come close to resembling what they expect from others.

Is It Karmic?  Even if these sorts of ailments are somehow even purely karmic, I want to be contributing to ending debilitating cycles of karma.

Let's assume that someone who has just been raped is actually being raped by someone they have raped in a previous lifetime.  While this may not be as rare as one might think, how can we know?  I want to work to try and prevent rape and help others become attracted to far more fruitful approaches to life.  Is it actually any sort of desirable justice to have these sorts of karmic cycles develop and endure?

Maybe there are exceedingly rich and powerful people who enslave others in varying ways and then find themselves born into slavery in subsequent lifetimes.  I'd expect that one hopes they will learn from such things without inflicting so much pain on themselves and others.  But what kind of evidence is there for such things?  If we sit back and do little or nothing aren't we actually assisting enslavement?

Unfortunately, we seldom can do all that much.

Can we really assume that an abused child was abusive in their past exactly in the same way they have been abused?  It seems this has to almost certainly be a false assumption.  What do you think we should do even if we believe such exactness exists in karmic quid pro quo?

I really do believe there is a lot of choice that impacts our lives, particularly when it comes to human, or maybe inhuman, interactions/non-interactions.  It is very likely that beings who start on one of these cycles either chose to start without having been on the receiving end and/or are on the receiving end without having done it themselves.

Do you feel that injustices happen to you?  How do you know when something that happens to you is due to "bad" karma?

Why continue approaches to "living" that keep one in such realms in the first place?

What Should We Control/What Should God Control?  Being interested in healing and getting more out of life for myself and others I find that I ask myself this question in a lot of different ways.  While I don't necessarily use these words, I think they represent an important dimension worth investigating.

At a very basic level, does a healer defy the will of God when they help an other heal?  Maybe, to be more spiritual or Godly, they should just leave all things in God's hands, including healing.  Or maybe to be more spiritual  or Godly, they should let go of any sort of attachments to this world and leave the person wanting assistance to fend for their self.  Or maybe they should observe that much is well in their own life and assume that another's struggle is due to God's justice working in the universe and therefore do little or nothing to help.

Interesting views.  I do not concur with them.

I think it is important to remember that those that live through tomorrow retain the chance to increase their faith and character!  To reiterate, I definitely want to contribute what I realistically can.  Even if such things are karmic, I want to help others grow beyond such karmic cycles.

Just for starters I like to distinguish between what occurs by the hands of God and what occurs by the hands of humanity/inhumanity.

Getting Paid.  How well should someone be paid for helping another heal?  How well should someone be paid if they can't really help them heal to any great extent?

I try to be very up front about the amounts of money I expect to get.  If I am going to be able to provide significant assistance fairly quickly I expect payment in the range of a few hundred dollars for a few sessions.  Otherwise I am quite quick to describe and discuss my limitations.

I seem to repeatedly have the experience of helping others who were paying way way more money using other systems of healing with very frustrating results.  I like to encourage people to set about 20% of the money they are quite suddenly saving aside.  Then I hope they will give a reasonable percentage of the money they are saving to causes that will help others in nihypocritical ways.

Though, I do not care to have them give money to exclusivistic causes or those that do things like take advantage of otherishes of lesser defenses such as in animal testing.

Who Should Get Healing Assistance?  I think this is quite a burning question, particularly in the US and likely many other places.

It seems to me, that way way too much of western medicine is based on premises that

• people with the most money are the most deserving of the best healing assistance
• people should be able to do just about anything they want and then expect "medicine" to provide almost magic pills to bring them to the health they desire

I am very concerned about this sort of value system.

I will get into this much more later.