Even though I think there’s value in the “healing” frame, I also liked this counterpoint to it:
“Healing” requires an ideal form to move towards
How is that form chosen?
For things like “I sprained my ankle” the obvious answer is to move towards the form of your able-bodied self, v familiar For things like “i have a disorganized soul and disregulated inner drives”
The form you choose to move towards can be much more arbitrary “No mark of health to be well adjusted to a sick society” and all that
Do you move towards a form that can function socially? Or a form that can meditate on a mountaintop? What are you aiming for? How did you choose the bullseye? This isn’t academic,
A lot of people take time away from their previous life “to heal”
And end up becoming something unrecognizable, strange, and let’s just be perfectly honest: it’s very often unclear if there’s much upside to the “healed” version of them “I undid all the conditioning society wounded and scarred me with. That’s why I now live under this tarp in the woods, drinking rain water and covering my head in sap to protect my thoughts from faerie sprites” “I spent my whole life under the thumb of authoritarian control freaks—my mother, my principal, my boss. Then I left and took time to heal; now I live how *I* want, scamming money off of older divorcees and travelling the world” “Healing” as a concept in spiritual/self-help/therapeutic circles is often colored with a lot of “awayness” and very little “towardness”
Intention is vague if present at all. Very often, the idea is “the important thing is following technique X—from there you’ll transform, and you can trust that transformation”
But that’s not enough. It’s clearly, obviously not enough. And the closer we get to an intention that makes real sense and has real telos,
The less sense it makes to refer to it as “healing” You want to infuse your soul with divine connection? Excellent, I love it. Why does the word “healing” apply to that?
You want to feel calm and comfortable and connected as a baseline state? Sounds great. Why is that “healed”? The answer seems fairly obvious,
If you can confidently assert that your preferred direction/intention is “healing”
That comes w a whole narrative-world that gives *your* intention precedence and primacy. It muddies the water, disguising how arbitrary your particular intention is.
If it’s “healing”, then it’s not uncertain and arbitrary—it’s a return to proper function. To original function. It’s what you (and everyone else) we’re always *supposed* to be like “Healing” provides a narrative that lets you brush off the need for narrative.
You don’t have to answer any questions about why you’re choosing the intention that you are—no more than someone w a broke arm needs to answer questions about why they want their bone to mend There’s a lot of sloppiness here.
When it’s normal to have zero need to even think about why you’re going in the direction you are, there’s a lot of ways to lie to yourself
There are many things in my life that I’ve chosen for shitty reasons.
But I was able to follow some of them longer than I should have, by not feeling any need to inquire into them
“Healing” is a non-answer, in most cases. It doesn’t make sense, outside of a few v limited contexts, as more than a rhetorical device for credibility-laundering.
If you can’t explain to yourself why the things you’re doing are “healing” rather than “exploring” or “floundering” or sth else, maybe don’t use the word or frame. It invites incoherence
Even though I think there’s value in the “healing” frame, I also liked this counterpoint to it: