Healing and Curing: What’s the difference?

Yesterday, at divine service at our local spiritual centre, the serving medium, John F. Doherty, addressed us about the difference between healing someone and curing them. For him, there is a clear difference, although some people often use the terms interchangeably. Any cure is man made, or facilitated by humans, whereas healing comes from God, or Spirit, or the Universe, however you may se it. I’ve been pondering this ever since, and here are my thoughts.

You see, you can’t always be cured, as most of us can testify through personal experience or from standing by helplessly as their loved ones pass from cancer or other conditions. While there may be cures for things that once would kill you, not everything or everyone can be cured. However, everyone can be healed, because healing is holistic, and isn’t solely dependent on outside influences. In fact, when it comes to healing, even if you’re not a healer yourself, you can still take an active part in your own healing.

You can take a tablet to bring down your blood pressure, or you can prostrate yourself on the operating table to get a faulty bit repaired or removed, but you’re not active in your cure, you’re entrusting your wellbeing to someone else. Whereas if you change your thinking and/or your lifestyle to lessen the stress that drives up your blood pressure, you’re participating in your own healing, even though you might not be curing yourself.

The fact of the matter is anyone can be healed, but not everyone can be cured. I absolutely agree with John that healing comes from outside of us and runs through us, brought to us by a higher power. I’m a healer myself, and I channel healing through Archangel Raphael when I’m guided to do it. Like the world famous healer Matthew Manning, I’ve never received any training in healing. What I do is purely intuitive, and guided by Spirit, but people benefit from it, and that’s all that really matters.

I also receive visualisations from the Angels to use with others so they can manage their own energy and help to heal themselves. One of the visualisations I often use is for Cutting Energetic Cords with Archangel Michael. It was channelled to me during the first Covid lockdown in 2020, and it’s helped lots of people to release what no longer serves them, those things that keep pulling them back to the past and preventing them from enjoying the present moment and moving on with their lives. It helps them accept what they can’t change, and heal from past traumas, so what I’m really saying is healing is about acceptance, and it doesn’t have to be purely physical.

We also heal on emotional and spiritual levels, and we change as we heal. Curing is more about removing what isn’t working, whereas healing depends on working with what you already have to improve things. You can’t learn to live with infection, or a broken limb, for example, because that could be dangerous, so you take the cure, but you can adapt to life after rejection or trauma, and that’s healing in action.

Sometimes, when a cure fails, such as in terminal cancer or chronic heart disease, it’s still possible to heal, because healing is about the whole person, body and soul, while curing is about the bits that are malfunctioning. So there’s never a time when further treatment is not an option with healing. It’s always possible to work with energy, and with healers, to come to acceptance and live well for the remaining time. Healing isn’t a definitive course of treatment or action, it’s an ever changing journey, and it’s open to each and every one of us.