Wholeness/Healing:
Awakening Our Memory of Wholeness
By Patricia Corbett
"The privelege of a lifetime is being who you are."
-Joseph Campbell
It is my belief that the more we know our real selves, the easier it is to tap into our own inherent wisdom. When we have not been explorers of our own inner territories, we tend to live in reaction to the world around us. We are then guided unconsciously by our ingrained cultural and family upbringing, as well as other outside influences, and not by our natural ways of knowing. The journey within is a labor of love…love for what we instinctively sense is waiting to be uncovered, and what we know, perhaps unconsciously, will help us to develop the life we want to live, rather than the life we somehow have drifted into.
Wholeness/Healing is an approach that incorporates a number of effective methods that augment one’s health, balance and well-being. These methods can be used alone or in combination. The course of our lives throws us out of balance. The secret of wholeness and healing is to recover that balance. This approach increases the conscious connection with the higher, truer self within; helps clarify where an individual currently is in his or her own personal evolution; and enhances the perception of behavior patterns, unhealthy beliefs and other ways a person may block energy. The methods employed in Wholeness/Healing help with decision-making and sharpen the focus on what a person’s priorities are.
One way to get a jump-start on this path of discovery is a process whereby one understands the meaning of his or her Life Time Symbol. This system, as well as Signs of Life, was discovered by cross-cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien, PhD. Through this approach, an individual can develop new clarity about what his or her natural gifts actually are. Life Time Symbols provide grounding, effective information which is helpful as a basis for increased self-knowledge. This process is, in fact, an empowering lens through which to look at your life. Most people recognize themselves in the information they receive. Yet, they also learn about other aspects of themselves that they did not previously understand or did not recognize as strengths. Life Time Symbols is a method that can be used either by itself or as a beginning to further self-knowledge.
Wholeness/Healing incorporates other useful practices. One is a preferential shape test called Signs of Life. This technique helps bring people many important insights, one of which is the ability to identify their core work. Wholeness/Healing also offers Energy Balancing, a healing technique that encourages the body’s energy to flow, opening blocks which can restore and promote physical or emotional balance. Another aid to finding balance is through the use of Flower Essences. They are made co-creatively from the healing patterns of plants. Through the use of these safe and effective remedies, an individual is helped to find balance on all levels—physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
What Are Life Time Symbols?
Life Time Symbols are a modern technique using ancient symbols and their meanings to help you gain insight about that timeless dictum to "know thyself." Symbols help make the invisible visible. Based upon your Birthday, your symbols will give you important information about yourself which can guide you in your life. Life Time Symbols show you areas of natural strength and help you to focus on them.
Life Time Symbols consist of the Personality Symbol, the Soul Symbol and the Growth Symbol.
The Personality Symbol helps you develop clarity about your individual expression in the world. It includes some of your natural talents and suggests how others may see you. The Soul Symbol represents an internal base of energy for you to draw upon for your life. These symbols confirm and support your own natural talents.
The Growth Symbol changes annually, extending from birthday to birthday. Each of us, and everything in nature, operates in a cycle of progression distinctively its own. During the present year, you will have experiences which create possibilities for growth and expansion. Becoming aware of the energy of your current growth year allows you to notice situations and to better understand certain feelings that may come up for you during the year. You can, therefore, tap into this new energy and use it effectively for whatever is important to you.
In the days of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, people employed a wide range of esoteric disciplines, some of which used Universal symbols to access the Unconscious. In the 20th century, a number of techniques have been developed to explore the human psyche. As we enter the 21st century, modern physics offers new insight into the fascinating symbolic patterns of the Universe and the nature of the Unconscious. Life Time Symbols uses classical interpretations of archetypes which have been passed down over the centuries.
Your Life Time Symbol* correlates in a strikingly consistent way with that part of your personality that is not influenced by beliefs and fears developed in childhood. This empowering information helps you to further understand your own talents and see how to use them to enhance your life now.
(*Compiled by Patricia Corbett based on the development of Life Time Symbols by Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., as well as work by Rachel Pollack, Mary Greer and Twainhart Hill.)
Signs of Life
Five basic shapes appear in all cultures. Researchers have found that these shapes represent processes of human change and growth. Making a simple preferential choice identifies:
- What inherent strength is predominant in an individual at a given time
- Where a person thinks he or she is at present
- The work that is really going on at the core of one’s being
- What process a person is resisting, judging, dislikes or has outgrown
- What the motivation is that has gotten a person ready for the current process of change
This information is useful in making a serious assessment of where one is in life. When an awareness of one’s core work is fully supported, it can be a source of great creativity and healing.
Energy Balancing
As practiced in Wholeness/Healing, hands-on Energy Balancing is an invitation for the body to remember its own wholeness and to heal itself. It restores or promotes physical and emotional balance in a safe, heart-based environment. As a result of our conflicts with the outer world, most human beings have places in the body where their bioenergy is blocked. When the natural movement of this energy is interfered with, an approach such as energy balancing can help the bioenergy flow through the body’s many systems and organs. When the energy can flow, one tends to be more willing to look at old patterns. Under these conditions, and with guidance, it is easier to take a more objective look at where one is starting from, what one needs and how one separates from one’s own natural wisdom. Energy balancing usually leaves a person feeling relaxed and more grounded with a sense of physical well-being.
Perelandra Flower Essences
Flower essences are a safe and effective way to use the healing power of plants. They help secure balance on all levels:
Physical: essences reconnect and adjust the electrical system and stabilize the central nervous system
Emotional/Mental: essences help you to identify and alter mental and emotional patterns that challenge overall balance
Spiritual: essences help you to connect to and better understand the many levels of self in order to operate in life from a broader perspective.
The flower essences used in Wholeness/Healing come from a nature research center in Virginia called Perelandra. They are the product of a co-creative garden which has been operating in this manner for over 25 years. Flower essences differ from essential oils, homeopathic remedies, herbal remedies and other formulations using plants. Essences were brought into public awareness in the 1930s by a physician in London, Dr. Edward Bach. Flower essences are made from the healing patterns of plants, not from the chemistry of the plants.
(More information on flower essences can be found on the Perelandra website, which is listed here on the Links page at the Mindshift Institute. The book, Flower Essences: Re-Ordering Our Understanding and Approach to Illness and Health, has an excellent definition of flower essences on pages 3-14.)
Conclusion
The goal of Wholeness/Healing is to help people recognize anew the empowering truth of their own infinite worth and to awaken the body’s memory of balance and wholeness. One of the most ancient questions human beings have asked is “Who am I?” This work helps people to answer this question from a deeper perspective and to experience more of the joy of their own spirit. Wholeness/Healing is an invitation to remember and respect one’s own inner wisdom and to open to one’s own divine nature.
Patricia Corbett is a graduate of the IM School of Healing Arts and co-founder of The Mindshift Institute. She is also on the board of the Anomalous Phenomena Research Center. For five years, she was Vice-President of the Board of Directors, Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in New York City. Previously, for 16 years, she was the owner and president of a successful U.S. distribution corporation serving clients worldwide. As her interest in the noetic sciences took on deeper and more personal significance, she made the decision to leave the corporate world in 1992 to focus her efforts on assisting those who are interested in developing their own inner wisdom to improve their lives.