This is an exciting time in the life of this congregation, for you are about to expand your healing ministry and to reclaim a vital part of a Christian tradition virtually lost for centuries. Before looking at why it is now being revived, let’s listen to the story of Jesus’ healing of the man born blind in John’s gospel, for what it reveals not only about how Jesus healed but also how threatening that was to the religious establishment of his day. [John 9: 1-34].

In this text Jesus clearly attributes healing to the power and love of God made visible, literally, in the man born blind. The newly sighted man can’t explain what happened but knows that his extraordinary transformation can only be a gift from God through the agency of Jesus. Ironically, it is the religious leaders who can’t believe their eyes, judging Jesus and rejecting the truth and power of this amazing healing because it doesn’t fit within their narrow worldview. This passage is prophetic. By the fourth century, when Christianity became the state religion, church leaders had already begun to limit the understanding and practice of healing as a Christian ministry. Dogma and doctrine overcame the memory and experience of the early disciples who had learned from Jesus how to heal. There is considerable evidence that many in the early church were healers and that it was an accepted charism or gift of the Spirit. They established the healing practices of prayer, laying on of hands, and anointing with oil. Many of these healers were women, always a key part of Jesus’ ministry. Eventually, however, the church’s position became that Jesus was able to heal because he had special powers as the Son of God and that following Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles, the early church was given a dispensation to heal in his name that was no longer needed after the church became established. In the West, beginning with the Dark Ages and well into the Age of Enlightenment, those whose healing gifts became known were likely to be condemned as black magicians or witches. Healing became sacramental acts of the church through baptism, communion, and extreme unction, a form of exorcism within the Catholic Church.

The ancient arts of healing, which Jesus knew, remained hidden for centuries, passed along to those who were initiates in mystery schools that existed in Egypt, Greece, the British Isles, India, Tibet, and elsewhere. These schools evolved into initiatic orders such as the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and the Masons, which still exist today. Few in the Christian tradition are aware that there was always, even when Jesus was alive, an esoteric or hidden church, as well as an exoteric or visible one.

According to ancient preserved texts, Jesus created his own mystery school of 120, consisting of ten sections each captained by one of the twelve in the inner circle. There are clues to this even in the New Testament canon and strong evidence elsewhere as well. H. Spencer Lewis, head of the Rosicrucian order in the U.S. for many years, wrote two fascinating books, “Mystical Life of Jesus” and “The Secret Doctrines of Jesus.” These works drew upon ancient documents revealing that during the so-called “lost years,” from the time Jesus was twelve and taught in the temple in Jerusalem to when he appeared at around thirty to be baptized in the Jordan by his kinsman John, he was schooled first in the middle eastern Essene tradition into which he was born, then in India and Tibet, where he may have learned an early form of Reiki, then Persia, Greece, and finally Egypt, where inside the king’s chamber of the Great Pyramid, in a sarcophagus I personally have lain in, he received his final initiation into the inner mysteries of the greatest of all Mystery Schools. Jesus, Spencer claims, then became one of the Great White Brotherhood of Ascended Masters or Avatars, who come to earth to assist human spiritual evolution. Other sources state and the New Testament book of Hebrews confirms that Jesus was a high priest in the Order of Melchizedek, a band of spiritual and incarnated beings working to carry out God’s plan for the universe.
Jesus, in short, was and is a very high being. The conventional Christian understanding of him as the Son of God is, ironically, somewhat limited. That Jesus was Divinely sent and ordained is much less disputable than whether or not he was Divinely conceived, and far from spending his young adulthood as an itinerant carpenter, as often believed, he was taken under the wing of the highest initiates in the world’s mystery schools of the time and mastered all that all of them had to teach him. He earned the title of Master through working his way through the levels of knowledge and practice. Initiation confirmed his mastery.

Incidentally, the mysteries of the mystery schools weren’t so much mysterious as available only through initiation.  They taught spiritual science, such as sacred geometry, the mathematics of vibration, sound, and light, and the laws of the universe, such as the laws of attraction, karma, and correspondence. We find evidence even in the New Testament that Jesus knew these things.

For example, the Lord’s Prayer includes the phrase “on earth as it is in Heaven,” a reference to the Law of Correspondence: “As above, so below,” that is, that the earth plane is a microcosm of the universal macrocosm. The Golden Rule, doing to others as they do to you, is connected with karmic law, as is not judging so that you will not be judged.

About a year ago I was in Scotland visiting a friend, Barry Dunford, who wrote a fascinating book called The Holy Land of Scotland: Jesus in Scotland and the Gospel of the Grail, for which he conducted extensive research into old manuscripts. Barry states that Jesus’ grandmother, Anna, Mary’s mother, was from the town of Fortingall in the central highlands of Perthshire, the town from which the Pontius Pilate family also came. Jesus’ uncle or great-uncle was Joseph of Arimethea, whose wealth came from copper and iron mining in the British Isles, which he took Jesus to visit when he was a youth. This traditional belief is reflected in the well-known song, “The New Jerusalem,” based on a poem by mystic William Blake, which begins “And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green/ and was the Holy Lamb of God on England’s pleasant pastures seen/and did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills/and was Jerusalem builded here among the dark Satanic mills.” The fact that it was Joseph of Arimethea who went to Pontius Pilate to claim Jesus’ body only a few hours after he was crucified takes on new meaning in this context. Their families had been neighbors.
Barry Dunford also believes that Jesus studied with the Druids, another ancient group of priests and high initiates who practiced the ancient mysteries. He took me to a site known to locals that had been built centuries ago as a place of initiation. It had three round chambers, each leading to a central room where thirteen seats made of stone slabs were built into the sides of the walls—for twelve disciples and one teacher. Outside, a seven-layered waterfall could be construed as a place of baptism and multi-leveled initiation. The ancient masters knew so much more about the earth, the stars, the Divine Order and the spiritual hierarchies than we do today! They knew about the energy systems of the body and how they connected with Universal energy, something that quantum physics is beginning to confirm. The recent film, “What the Bleep Do We Know?,” helped move forward the coming new synthesis between science and spirituality that broke down in the Age of Reason. So much is now coming to light that has been hidden, because it is time for it to be revealed.

Dan Brown’s hugely successful novel, The DaVinci Code, soon to be released as a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, has captured the imagination of the world and is playing a key role in shedding light in dark places. I have visited virtually all the places mentioned in the novel and felt their energy. You can’t stand in front of the Black Madonnas in Chartres Cathedral or Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and not feel the power and compassion of the Divine Feminine, and you cannot miss the devotion of the people to these manifestations of the Divine Mother.

I’ve taught classes on Mary Magdalene in local congregations in which I’ve asked the participants whether it would make any difference to their faith if Jesus had been married and fathered a child with Mary Magdalene. Most answered no. That’s encouraging. Our minds and hearts are opening and being prepared for many changes and transformations. One of these is preparing the way for the ascendance of the Divine Feminine.
The church that made a virgin of Jesus’ mother and a prostitute of the woman who may have been his wife or at the very least a spiritual leader and high initiate in her own right is going to have to reckon with the popular swell of support for the feminine, intuitive, heart-centered, inclusive Divinity whose power is love rather than the male, mind-dominated, hierarchical God whose power is control. The Yin is needed to balance the Yang, and it is already happening. I truly believe that the resurgence of spiritual energy healing is a significant way of expanding and shifting the consciousness of our time, to creating Oneness where there is separation, and wholeness where there is pain and suffering. As Jesus knew, healing is both a science and an art.

The science is in understanding energy systems. In Norma Milanovich’s book, The Light Shall Set You Free, an Ascended Master says that only the ancient Egyptians understood the entire auric energy field with its nine bodies or levels that connect the human with universal Source energy. “It was the Essene,” he says, “who came out of Egypt, Jesus the Christ, who was able to rediscover the secret of this ancient, lost mystery. It was because he was able to master this information that he was able to obtain control over his electron body in the physical world.”

Jesus was a master of the science of healing. He likely was a medical intuitive who could scan the physical body and its energy fields and know what needed healing. He could probably see and read auras and chakras for areas of disease.

He could draw into himself the pure spiritual energy needed to cleanse the body, mind, and spirit of dark, negative energies that imprisoned people, and his own energetic field was so pure and clear that someone could be healed simply by being in his presence. Jesus also mastered the art of healing, intuiting the deep needs of the human heart, connecting at the heart level with compassionate, healing love.
It is the Jesus of the Sacred Heart that I greet every morning when I come downstairs, the statue rescued from a decommissioned Catholic church, standing in his niche in the hallway of our home, pointing at his heart filled with love and compassion for humanity, not judging, just offering acceptance. “Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,” he invites, “and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” [Matthew 11:28-30]. It is this Jesus I turned to when my mother transitioned three weeks ago, this Jesus whom I trust and call upon when I offer healing to those who seek help, this Jesus and his mother and his bride, and the whole Unified Field of Love available to assist us. Practitioners of spiritual energy healing know that it is not we who heal: it is Source energy. We have learned to open ourselves more and more fully to the love and light that surrounds us. We have learned to clear away our own stuff, to get our egos out of the way, to become vessels of Source energy. My own mantra is this: “I am an open, clear, loving channel of Divine healing love and light.”
How did Jesus heal? He aligned himself with the Source, the love and light he knew, and offered it in its purist human form to those who asked for it or who he knew needed it. He worked with this Divine energy until it became so much a part of him that his radiance became a magnet for people seeking compassion, hope, and love. They were drawn to him like moths to a flame, but they had to choose to be healed, for he knew that their free will was a precious, God-given gift. Those who did choose, like the man born blind, were not only cured but truly healed of fear, anger, depression, the whole array of dark human emotions manifesting as physical ailments and demon possession. They were restored to wholeness, the mind-body-spirit wholeness that Jesus saw in them to begin with, the wholeness that God created in each of us.
The question remains: are those who now practice healing able to heal as Jesus did? To the extent that they can draw on Source energy, the power and love of God, the answer is yes. I have seen and experienced myself the work of many gifted healers all around the world, and there are some here in this community. They use a wide variety of modalities—you’ve heard of some of them: Reiki, Healing Touch, Acupressure, Trager, LaHo Chi, Arcing Light, the one I use most that is guided by the Divine Feminine, and there are many others, any of which can assist healing. As I’ve suggested, healing is not necessarily the same thing as curing. Some physical ailments may remain, although in most cases their effects can be lessened. In my experience, most energy healing is about releasing stuck energy and the stress we hold within our bodies, minds, and emotions. To the extent that we can open our minds and hearts and our energy channels to the Source and release what no longer serves us, we can both give and receive healing at many levels. Practicing forgiveness, self-love, and gratitude are healing in themselves. The numbers of exceptional healers are growing, and more and more people are discovering their own capacity to heal through the Divine assistance that is always available.
As you expand your healing ministry here, from the wonderful prayer ministry that you have been offering in the Unity tradition, to include energy healing through a weekly healing circle led by your own congregation’s gifted practitioners, Jesus is the perfect model and guide. As you reclaim the church’s heritage of healing and offer it to your community, may you be graced with wholeness and may Divine love and light shine like a beacon from this place. And so it is.