Healing the Healer Within (part two of two)

...A healer must harness this power in order to be truly effective. A dedicated healer must give themselves time and space for contemplation of their own affairs and of their healing practice, i.e. their patients. When a healer refrains from pursuing exhausting unnecessary activities they can use their leisure time to rest, sit, rejuvenate, and contemplate the state of their various patients. It is in these moments of concerned contemplation that the proper way may present itself. Even if no answers are found at this time, the practice of sitting and waiting is fruitful so that we can live wholesome, healthy lives building energy, accumulating insight, until solutions do present themselves. When we practice this wholesome waiting we can enjoy our lives soaking up our leisure time most efficiently.
Perhaps we will use this healthy sitting, this true leisure, this healthy waiting as chance to unburden ourselves, allowing our minds to settle, listening to the world around us and the connecting with the rejuvenating silence beneath the every day sounds. Perhaps we will allow our eyes to scan freely around our surroundings, without desire. Taking this time, settling our minds and purifying our desires, gives us a foundation for beneficial action. From this equanimity we can avoid acting in ways that are harmful. We can become a settling force in the world, a force of peace and healing, avoiding the subtle, unconscious, harm we might cause when we act without mindfulness. When we have this equanimity, when we are mindful of how our actions will take root in the world, we can truly heal. Cultivating this equanimity through our practice of wholesome waiting, we can become effective healers. When we learn to sit and wait with ourselves, allowing impermanent thoughts and desires to pass without grasping at them, then we can learn to sit with those we wish to benefit without projecting our own preconceptions upon them. Furthermore, we can be with them in an effective way avoiding becoming preoccupied, or entangled with others in detrimental ways. We can sit and wait using each interaction as a potential nexus of transformation.
Sometimes we can foresee our interactions and anticipate what will be expected of us. We can prepare to enter these endeavors with a certain amount of energy. However, sometimes we are surprised how much energy our routine endeavors cost us. Sometimes unforeseen factors demand more from us. Other times we are called upon to undertake endeavors that are entirely unexpected. If we have utilized our rest time well we will be more than able to act correctly, with clarity and energy. None of us can foresee all that the future will demand of us. Therefore we must utilize our rest time as efficiently as possible. Life will provide us with the time to cultivate energy we need. If we find ourselves acting well, seeing clearly, healing, we will know that we have taken advantage of our time. We can avoid becoming disgruntled, whiney, or bitter because we will have the energy and equanimity to endure hardship. When we can avoid wasting our time or expending our energy in unwholesome endeavors, we can avoid danger in life. We can meet the challenges we must meet, and avoid unnecessary trouble.
We all know that when we are rested we perform well. Yet few of us avoid the exhausting pursuit of desire. If we can simple avoid this by resting well (sitting, exercising, meditating, emptying our minds, cultivating, nourishing virtue) we will build a foundation for right understanding and right action. We must make this ongoing practice of returning to ourselves a top priority. Cultivation in this way can lead to true empathy. This is necessary for becoming a true healer.
A true healer has deepened this practice to such an extent that it is second nature, each breath is an effortless return to oneself. A true healer constantly reinvents themselves in each moment to maintain loyalty to their true self and thus empathy with others. The practical cycles of rest and action, both great and small, are mastered by the true healer so that they can continually heal themselves and others. The greater the healer, the deeper the practice. Great healers must renew themselves in such a way, emptying their minds, returning to their true nature, maintaining their simple lives, in order to tap into the vast energy live gives them for fulfilling their duties. It is when we can begin to see our duties and daily activities as heaven sees them in our lives, that we can glimpse the value of our lives. When we glimpse this we will begin to reverence our actions and diligently attend to ourselves during periods of rest.