The following topic is not something we seek of very much but is a very important part of the sound community which many have not actually come in contact with or have had the experience of. The topic being the difference between healing and curing. As practitioners and facilitators, many will show a clip they found online to some obscure website perpetuating their beliefs that sound can kill cancer or can heal chronic disease. Though I believe sound truly does have the ability to assist in the process of healing, it is much deeper than that. For what is sound healing when you are working with someone who is dying?
Healing to me is the journey. You can be healed and still die of that which is being treated. For the soul’s journey to liberation is not something that must be cured. There is no cure for death. As we move forward in a world where people make substantial claims regarding the effects of sound, we must look at the reality and truth of what this practice entails. That being devotional support for those whom we are working with.
My gong teacher, Richard Rudis, recently passed with cancer. This is a man who played gong his entire life but still succumbed to cancer. This does not prove anything. It doesn’t prove that sound doesn’t heal or possibly have the capacity to heal cancer, but rather the infinite possibilities of the human condition. It may have kept it at bay for many years, who knows? But he was a kind-hearted Buddhist that I learned so much from. We met years ago and eventually started doing business together as well as he supplied many wonderful tools for my company Brooklyn Healing Arts. We lost a great soul on April 2nd.
Many years ago, I was working with a friend who also had cancer. She had a slow-moving liver cancer that I helped treat symptoms for about two years. When she reached hospice and in her final couple months on the earth, I would perform digestive protocols with singing bowls and tuning forks. At this point, her large intestines were solidifying, and passing stool became almost impossible. My job was simply to help her move her bowels every couple of days, and sound was the only thing that helped her. It worked very well and after the session, she would evacuate. In the end, I remember watching her slowly die as her jaw would drop every session while dropping into the sound space. After she passed, her family asked me to play gong at her funeral, as it was something that helped her endure.
The role of a sound practitioner is not to heal or cure someone, but to lessen the suffering on their journey to God. Sometimes it is healing their disease. But other times it is holding their hand as they are dying. We are to give people exactly what they need in their journey. It is to assist them as well as understand that you are a piece of the puzzle for their journey, not the entirety. Most likely, you cannot give them what they need. For expectations of healing cancer is a forward-thinking thought that does not exist yet. It is living in the future when the people who are suffering need the relief now. To project healing is to abandon the present moment. For it is this moment that matters, not what may become. Sometimes all you are there to do is be the piece of the puzzle that allows someone to go to the bathroom. Which may not seem glamorous, but without it that person would have to commit to suffering through it.
We cling to life, as it is the nature of the living to hold on. In so much, we are drawn into not only our own fear of death but the persons as well. That being to avoid death at all costs. Though we should fight for our lives when we can, we should understand the full spectrum of possibilities when not only working with people but expressing the capacity for the modality itself. If you are someone who believes sound can physically heal, understand that it also may not. It is the journey of each individual and how sound fills the gap in their healing is the question at hand. The staunch amount of ego carrying overzealous claims of the capacity of sound dilutes the truth and reality as we offer exuberant expectations that will conflict with outcomes. We need to learn to give people what they need today, rather than what they want tomorrow.