Malcolm S. Southwood reports 

There is comprehensive literature providing direct or indirect »evidence« that we are spirit and able to live on after death. I have heard about spiritual healers and seen a film which showed how people were operated on with bare hands, how blood flowed and people were healed from their diseases. On television I saw a report about a shaman who had his tongue cut off in front of the camera. And afterwards he had enough spiritual power to join the piece that had been cut off to his tongue again and make the two pieces grow together in such a way that no scars were to be seen. I found a book by the English physician Laurence J. Bendit and his clairvoyant wife and nurse Phoebe D. Bendit. They reported about spiritual processes from birth to death.

    I could still observe powers in myself which had to be of a spiritual nature. I only lost them gradually when my job increasingly consumed me. What really made me think a lot were certain instructive dreams. Totally involved in seeking the truth as I was, I was often faced with many unanswered questions, and I felt restlessness deep inside of me. Sometimes it happened to me that I dreamed the answer to my questions, and I awoke at a specific time, usually to the minute! What was even more amazing was that sometimes I was woken up at the right time, but by some other noise, such as a crying child. One day – I was about 35 years old – I dreamed again, but this time with the message that from now on I would no longer dream (such enlightening dreams). From that day I have been totally on my own and had to go my own way without receiving any visible assistance.

    Years later I found a book by the professional English healer and therapist Malcom S. Southwood, whom an inner voice had guided for a long time until one evening it said to him that the time for him had come to assume responsibility. This voice told him that from now on he would be on his own and that he had to learn to understand what he did and how he could use his own spiritual power and love.

I am a professional healing therapist who for over ten years has been helping people from all over the world. What follows in these pages has been learnt through the experience of treating several thousand people and keeping an open mind. It has always been my aim to cut through the dogma and the clouds of superstitious nonsense which surround much of the healing world.

    I am what is termed a »spiritual healer«. This is an awful term, for it can be interpreted in so many different and often incorrect ways. I can only write about my own experiences and beliefs and I make no claims for other healers. Healing is an individual art and like artists, healers have their own unique style. No two artists paint alike, neither should they criticise those whose strokes of the brush are different from their own. Rather they should consider whether they could usefully learn something from another's technique.

    So how did I get started? How does a businessman become involved in such things? At the time I was managing my own international agricultural marketing company. I also had contracts with one of the big American oil companies to manage some of their agricultural business. This work took me all over the world.

    On one particular day, on my way back from London, I was held up in a line of rush hour traffic and happened to see a notice in a window which read »Spiritualist Church«. At the time I thought no more about it, but as the week wore on the words »Spiritualist Church« began to haunt me. I kept asking questions about it, pestering anyone who might know what the term Spiritualist meant. I suppose I must have become quite a bore because my wife finally suggested that I go to one of their services. As she put it, "No one here is going to get any peace until you go and find out what it's all about for yourself!" So the next weekend I attended one of their services.

    I must admit that at first I thought they were all mad, especially when the minister taking the service pointed to me and said, "You are going to be a healer for God, you are sitting in a big white aura. The work you have to do is just beginning." Believe me, I couldn't get out of the hall fast enough. Me, a healer? Absolutely absurd. I had a wife and four children to care for, a company to run. I must have been mad even to go near the place! However, for some reason that I couldn't explain, I just couldn't stay away and each time I went I was given the same message until eventually people began to ask me to heal their headaches, knee pains and other small ailments. What was even more astonishing was the fact that I could and people began to come to me for help.

    After a while that same voice inside which had insisted on my visiting the Spiritualist Church in the first place now told me not to visit any more. The church had served its purpose in getting me started, it said, and from now I was on my own. It might seem strange to talk about having a voice somewhere inside oneself, giving instructions, but this wasn't the first time I had had this experience. Even as a child I had heard this voice guiding, instructing and directing me and I had never had reason to think that this was anything but normal. As far as I was concerned, everyone had this protective and guiding voice. In fact there had been times in my life when it had actually spoken for me and I had listened to my own voice speaking the thoughts of another. It had got me out of more than one tricky situation. When I couldn't think of an answer I had just let this »voice inside« speak for me.

    Shortly after that, in 1979, I became very ill and spent time in the local general hospital. I remember very little about this period except that I left my body. The memory is now very vague, but I do remember going somewhere for instruction. It was like a cramming school. I suppose the medical profession would say I was hallucinating, but I wasn't. In all it lasted no more than about five days. During this time I was in an isolation ward, had two lumbar punctures and lots of tests. In the end no one ever did positively diagnose why I had suddenly collapsed in agonising pain and then drifted into some sort of semi-consciousness, but one thing was certain. The man who had gone into hospital was not the man who came out. It must have been a full twelve months before I was fully fit again and during that time I began to lose interest in my business. My whole appreciation of life and death, and all my emotional value, had changed. So had something else: my healing gift. It was now really beginning to take off and the variety of complaints which I was being asked to treat continued to increase.

    Eventually I closed what was left of my agricultural business and I began to concentrate entirely on healing. I suppose I reacted in a similar way to most people when they suddenly realise they have something of value to offer. I wanted the whole world to know. My enthusiasm ran riot. The first thing I would do, I thought, would be to place adverts in the press to attract attention. At this point that little voice inside got in the way "Don't advertise," it said. What rubbish, I thought. What's the point of having a gift and not using it to the full? So for the first time I ignored my guiding voice and began to work on an advertising plan.

    The day after the voice had said, "No advertising", and I had quietly, but firmly said, "Get lost", I received a second warning not to advertise. I was expecting someone to arrive during the morning for an appointment. At the appointed time there was a knock on the door but it was not the person I was expecting. Instead there stood a vicar. I didn't know him and I must have looked surprised because he began by apologising for being there and in a somewhat embarrassed way explained that he didn't know why he had come. He had been driving along the road to an appointment when quite suddenly he had an irresistible urge to turn into our gateway and drive down our private lane to the house.

    "I don't know what I'm doing here," he said rather lamely, 'can I come in?"

    He entered the room which I use for healing. I explained that unfortunately he wouldn't be able to stay for long as someone was expected. But he wasn't listening.

    "What a magnificent view," he said, looking through the bay window and across the pool immediately below it. "What do you do?"

    So I explained about my healing gift and gave him some of my inspirational prose to read. After he had been with me about half an hour, neither of us talking, he quietly said, "This is a beautiful place and you are not alone in it. I don't know why but I'm being forced to tell you, and I don't understand it, but under no circumstances must you advertise your gift."

    With that he got up and left and I never saw him again. Neither did I ever see the people who had booked the appointments the vicar had taken. I don't know what happened to them. This put me in a spot. I had let my company go and with it my income, and now I couldn't advertise to attract business. But all was not lost. It wouldn't be advertising if the local doctor, with whom I was very friendly, would send me those patients that the NHS couldn't help. I went and saw him and told him what I was doing. He said he had heard and also that I had helped some of his patients already. He would suggest to those of his patients who might be interested that they also see me. I didn't see that as advertising but apparently the voice inside did. I wasn't able to help a single one of the ten or twelve clients who came to me from the doctor. In fact I found that my healing gift had completely gone. I wasn't able to help anyone. So I had blown it. A chance in a lifetime to have a wonderful gift and I had thrown it way just because I thought I knew best. There was nothing for it now but to start my agricultural business up again.

    About six months later, when I had given up all thoughts of healing, a lady called and asked if I would help her. She had a lot of pain from arthritis. I explained that I didn't practise healing any more, but she looked so disappointed and begged me to try just once, so how could I refuse? She came in, I put my hands over her, and »Wow« it was back. I could feel the power surging through again and I heard a little voice inside say, "Next time do as you are told."

    That voice guided me for a long time. Then one memorable evening, when I was giving a talk about spiritual matters to some friends, I heard my little voice say, "It's time you began to take responsibility for these matters yourself. From now on you are on your own, learn what it is you are doing and use your own spiritual strength and love. It's been fun, but now you take over.'" At this I began to realise that there is more to healing than just putting your hands over somebody and letting another be responsible. 

Then Southwood explains: "There is nothing special about healers. They have not been specially chosen by God, or anybody else, because of some supernatural trait or belief. Unlike a lot of senior medical practitioners who would have us believe that they are on a plane above the common man, healers are generally ordinary people with a genuine desire to help others. Healing is a gift, though it is not granted because of a particular philosophy or to a particular individual for services rendered. It is an innate ability which many possess, though some have more ability than others. Like painting (which most of us can do to some extent), some are better at healing than others, some are better at particular aspects of healing and we all improve dramatically the more we practise.

    Some healers choose to work in groups, others singly. Some prefer to close their eyes and meditate as they heal, while others play background music. There are those who work within organised groups, such as religious organisations, while others work entirely alone. There are also a number of specialist healing groups. Some believe that you can only heal if you have completed a training course and undergone some form of initiation service or ceremony in front of your peers to prove yourself worthy of their acceptance and thereby support. Others believe you need to have acquired belief, understanding and instruction in a particular religion or moral philosophy so that you are acceptable to God in a manner similar to themselves. At the end of the day it doesn't matter a jot what you believe, or where you go for healing instruction. An individual either does possess that extra factor which makes him a healer or he doesn't.

    So what does a healer do? Basically very little that you can see or judge. He stands behind or in front of the client, on his own or with a colleague, and passes spiritual or physical energy from or through himself to the one offering himself for treatment. As these energies flow into the client so normal health is partially or wholly restored. I say partially because healing often takes more than one treatment.

    So just what do I do when someone comes to me for healing? We are three entities, the body, the mind and the spirit. The decision I take concerning the client depends upon whether it's a physical problem, an emotional one or a spiritual one. Basically very little can go wrong with the physical. The body is a perfectly designed piece of equipment. It is totally self-regulating and self-maintaining, and only requires fuel, in the form of energy, which we get from the food we eat. Apart from genetic defects, accidents, poisoning and disease, nothing can go wrong with our machine. Some would claim that even these four exceptions we bring upon ourselves through our attitudes and personalities. But there is a fifth area of concern, trauma.

    I believe that most disorders are emotionally created. Healing therefore generally means helping the spirits come to terms with some situation which is troubling it so that it can work in harmony with its body, then the physical begins to break down.

    By the time a client arrives at my door he has usually tried all the orthodox methods and reached a point where he has been told to learn to live with his problem. If any client coming for treatment has not previously seen a doctor or obviously has a medical problem then I will, of course, refuse to offer treatment unless the client first agrees to take orthodox medical advice." 

Malcolm S. Southwood describes his methods of healing and his contribution to healing. He finally concludes as follows:

    "As long as healers persist in believing that because healing is a gift no further effort is necessary to improve or influence that gift, they will remain as amateurs outside the mainstream of health care. It is true that healing is a gift, but it is arrant nonsense for healers to suggest that they don't need to provide proof of minimum standards of excellence before declaring themselves proficient in the art of caring for the welfare of others.

    Healers also need training and education to fully develop, use and understand their gifts. Basic instruction in counselling, psychotherapy, physiology, biology, religions, metaphysics and any other subject directly or indirectly involved with their work is a necessity if healers are going to forward their cause.

    When healers begin to take themselves seriously, so will the medical profession. Healing therapy is desperately needed to cure the causes of many of the nation's health problems because drug therapy is not the whole answer. I believe that the medical profession has lost its way in a jungle of medical technology. It has been reduced to treating symptoms which the subconscious will go on producing irrespective of medical treatment until someone goes beyond the symptoms and identifies the cause. This is true healing."   

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