As I begin to work on her, I see another pair of hands extending beyond my own and I hear the voice of Jesus instructing me to stay where I am, that he will be working over her solar plexus. The spiritual formation for my work as a healer came out of the Quaker tradition, out of repeatedly hearing the call in Meeting for Worship and testing it against ego's desire to speak. The body of Christ, old Quakers say, is not a metaphor. It is a living climate, an organism in which we function. They dwell together in a pool of divine presence, which blends all souls into unity.
Any person dwelling in such a body is changed.
Sometimes gradually, sometimes instantaneously, perceptions of the world and people widen. Life moves far beyond the simplification of outward affairs into a higher responsibility to Love. One of the outcomes can be a sensitizing of gifts for discernment or sensing of states. Repeatedly Quaker ministers, practicing surrender to the call to speak in meeting, learn the difference between having a sense of a person or a meeting's state and being told by the Light to speak. Corporate discernment is a practice that aids the whole community in deepening.