You Can't Rush Your Healing (and why you don't want to) - by Chris West

We often feel this urge to rush our healing. We want to mend our hearts and minds as quickly as possible, maybe in a week, a month, or some short, tidy timeline.

I get it. When I was 21, grappling with intense anxiety and depression, I thought six to eight sessions of therapy, like the NHS often suggests, would fix me.

I figured I’d be healed in less than six months. But here I am, now 34, and it’s been a long, winding road, 13 years of unraveling.

So much has healed, more than I ever imagined possible, more than I even knew I held inside. Yet, I’m still healing. Pain and trauma are still unwinding from my heart, my body, my mind.

Today, I want to talk about why rushing to heal, or expecting to heal quickly, might not always be the best thing. And if your healing is taking time, why that slow, steady journey might be a profound gift for your life and your spiritual growth.I see two distinct approaches to spirituality.

The first is the healing path. It’s about clearing out the pain layered within us, emptying our nervous system, our chakra system, so we become a clear vessel for who we truly are.

A vessel for love to shine through into this world. As I speak now, perhaps because so much pain has emptied from me, I feel this love pouring through me, radiant and alive.

This healing aspect addresses the traumas, conditioning, and experiences we carry, not just from this life, but from our parents, our grandparents, maybe even past lives.

Then there’s the second approach: the awakening path.

This is about discovering something within us that doesn’t need healing. A place where the concept of healing is almost absurd because it’s already whole.

Our essence, our pristine beingness, is as perfect as it was when we emerged from the womb, as it was when we were children, and as it still is now. But it can be obscured, covered by a conditioned mind, buried under traumas, patterns, and habits.

So why might healing slowly be a good thing? Why might a prolonged journey hold spiritual benefits?

The pain in our hearts, the struggles within us, they’re what drive us to seek something deeper. That conditioned pain, the very thing we’re working to heal, is what motivates us to inquire into and discover what’s already free.

Our pristine essence, the light that shines no matter what’s happening in our human body or mind.

Here’s a thought: what if our healing journey and the journey of awakening to our essence are intertwined? If all your suffering vanished overnight, where would your motivation be to uncover what’s always free?

If your experience suddenly became perfectly lovely, why would you feel the need to seek your deeper nature? It’s the struggle, the pain, the very things we long to heal, that provide the fire, the motivating force, to look within and discover what’s already whole.