CHAPTER 21

Your Personal Path to Growth and Healing

By the time we reach adulthood, we’re all but numbed to the mystery of life. The one bright spot in this is that when people feel their soul is empty, they often go looking for ways to fill it. As a seeker who has found crystals, you’ve surely discovered by now that they give something back. The very energy of crystals reconnects you to the earth, your spiritual home. Your energy has become revitalized and your subconscious awakened. Your healing abilities have become activated. Your spiritual development has become a natural truth to live by.

Now that you’ve started, your journey with crystals is endless and can continuously aid your self-transformation. Once you are comfortable working with crystal energy, don’t be afraid to start looking at yourself as a healer and share your gift with others.

Learn How to …

Commitment to Working with Crystals

When you make a commitment to working with crystals, they make a commitment to you, too! The beauty of working with crystals is that they are always there for you—anytime, anywhere, and under any circumstances. They will comfort your emotions when you feel raw and exposed, and they will open your eyes to what you are missing in life.

We all fall into ruts from time to time, and your crystals are like a rescue rope pulling you out. Think of it this way: if someone told you he could give you a pill that would help you meditate more deeply and be more at peace with yourself, would you take it? A lot of people would, and yet they think twice about working with a natural source of the same sort of relief. If someone handed you a crystal and said, “Here you go. Hold this sodalite crystal every night before bedtime and you will sleep better, and wear it during the day and you will feel calmer,” wouldn’t that be a better option than taking a pill?

It’s really a shame that so many people end up with closed minds when it comes to exploring new areas of the mind and soul. After all, when we were children, exploring new things was not only encouraged, but was necessary and meaningful for development on physical, psychological, spiritual, and emotional levels. People have frowned on new age ideals. However, there isn’t a “new age” because we have been blending new ideas into mainstream thinking forever. It really is the now age. So, why should we believe that limiting growth as adults is a positive step?

Crystal Comments

Here are some comments I’ve received from people new to crystals whose belief in them seems strong, if not a little humorous!

You can see that people just like you reach out for crystals and that for many the experience is intuitive. None of these people had crystal healing training, yet each one found his or her way to a healing experience because of crystals.

Imagine the Possibilities!

Because crystals provide mental clarity, I’d really like to see our aging population take advantage of crystal therapy. Crystals such as tourmaline could specifically be used to offset Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and other geriatric diseases.

As previously mentioned, crystals are also helpful to increase awareness and consciousness. The development of psychic abilities is cumulative, meaning the abilities build slowly over time. Let’s say you’ve been wearing crystals and your extrasensory perception has become razor sharp. If you remove the gemstones from daily wear, these powers won’t disappear, but your awareness of them might diminish. Starting back again with crystals will reactivate your power, and you will continue to build on top of what you already started.

Due to stress, our emotions and thinking are sometimes in jeopardy. Using the various crystal-healing techniques discussed throughout this book can actually transform negative emotional states and help us to become happier people. Now that’s a convincing crystal argument if I ever heard one!

Working with Crystals Every Day

If you have a crystal collection, don’t let it sit there gathering dust—use it! And if you can’t think of any good reason to pull those gemstones out, look back through this book. If you are not personally experiencing physical or emotional difficulties, perhaps someone you know could benefit from some healing.

If you don’t already have a crystal collection, I hope by now you’ve read and learned enough about the healing power of crystals that you’ll be inspired to go out and bring some home!

Go ahead and add to your collection as you find it necessary. But remember that a balanced crystal collection isn’t just about having a range of different colored stones. It’s about having a range of power, including the different-shaped crystals I talked about in Chapter 15 and 20. That way, you’ll have some that gently release their energy and some that are more active with their power.

Ideally, when a new crystal comes into your life, you want to spend some time with it and learn about what it has to offer. The crystal, in turn, will help to attune you to a new higher frequency. Sometimes you have to let go of old energies to bring in the new. That’s how crystal transformation happens!

Gaining Confidence as a Healer

In Chapter 17, I went over the guidelines for a crystal healing session. Don’t forget what they say: practice makes perfect! How do you practice becoming a crystal healer? With a little help from your friends. Some of my students have volunteered to act as guinea pigs when I’m conducting a private healing class. In this way, we can learn from each other, both as a healer and as a client. But I also use new crystals on myself. If we do not know the effects a crystal has on our own bodies and minds, we can’t recommend it to others.

Getting More Training in Crystal Healing

Feeling the subtle energy of crystals interacting with your own energy is not easy to do on your own unless you are already fairly sensitive, so attending a class is a great idea. Formal crystal training is available to anyone who wants to advance and perhaps become a healer. For example, a consortium called the Affiliation of Crystal Healing Organisations (ACHO) in England provides accreditation to crystal healing schools teaching a core crystal curriculum. (Some of the information provided in this book probably qualifies under such a program.) In countries where complementary therapies are formalized, certification from a holistic arts institution is often a requirement before treating clients.

If you are interested in learning more about crystals and you live in a remote area, you might have to travel to find a good class or instructor. However, there are also many online courses available, but you really can’t learn about healing crystals unless you have a willing partner for hands-on experiences. Plus, it’s difficult to get feedback from an online instructor because often there isn’t one. Of course, the internet is a great resource to find an in-the-flesh instructor or school and to get a lot of information about individual crystals. Also remember that crystal devas will teach you what you need to know if you just ask. (And this requires no travel at all!)

Community colleges often provide courses in crystals, usually through health and wellness programs that offer other practices such as Reiki, reflexology, and aromatherapy.

Although some municipalities in North America require certification to acquire a special annual licensing for holistic practices, private crystal training courses are unregulated and are dependent on the instructor being knowledgeable about the topic. Many people who use crystals know quite a lot about them—but that won’t necessarily make them good teachers. A good teacher not only knows about the crystals and how to use them but also is quite intuitive. Seek out an empath, a person with psychic abilities and emotional intelligence that allows him or her to remotely sense or feel what another person feels. As an empath, they can sense how a crystal is interacting with another person’s energy and can guide that person in the healing experience.

Word of mouth is still the best way to find a great teacher. If you don’t know anyone in the crystal community, ask holistic healers or the proprietors of metaphysical or gem shops if they can recommend someone.

Signs of Progress

Continual handling of crystals has its benefits, one of which is having a brighter complexion. Skin seems to clear up first, followed by increasing good luck, enjoying feelings of happiness, and noticing that other people want to be around you.

Not only will you develop greater sensitivity to the energy of crystals, but you’ll also inherit some of their powers. You’ll be full of energy and may even literally shock people, similar to when you rub your feet over a rug and then get an energy discharge when you touch metal. People will feel your expansion of energy. They might say that they feel your power. (Try to react modestly when this happens!)

You might find that if you meditate frequently with crystals, some interesting extrasensory perceptions develop, such as clairvoyance, precognition, or heightened sensory abilities like acute sense of smell or hearing. Your eyesight might become sharper, and you may be able to see and be more aware of things. Your intellect and memory will be clearer, especially if you remember to do your grounding exercises. You’ll feel that you know things for which you have no prior knowledge or education. This is impressive, but not really surprising—this is a spiritual opening, after all! The natural gifts we are all born with will break through the barriers we place there. And yes, crystals can help in breaking through those barriers to a new level of awareness.

Compassion for All

Perhaps you picked up this book because you heard crystals can help with meditation and relaxation. But now you know that there is a huge component to using crystals for actual physical healing as well as emotional clearing and spiritual development.

Crystals in the form of silicon dioxide are everywhere—we even breathe in the dust of crystals! So doesn’t that mean we are all living, moving crystals? Maybe it means we need crystals to help align ourselves with a bigger consciousness to find cures for what ails us. Those big crystals in the earth are holding us together. The closer we are to the universal vibration, the more aligned we are to our own oneness of being—our source energy.

You don’t need to be shy about wearing or using crystals. Crystals are not associated with any religion or faith. They grow naturally in the earth and are already used in many industries, including pharmaceuticals, computer technology, and manufacturing. You are just using an aspect of their power for working on the subtle energies of your body—the human aura, the chakra system, the nadis, your internal organs and external body, your mind and emotions, and of course your own spirituality.

You are part of the twenty-first century with hope for emerging technologies that will provide a greater quality of life for all. You understand that science, medicine, and psychology are blending and a whole new sacred science is being born. Medicine will work alongside spirituality where the goal is compassion for all human life.

Please experiment with crystals because each one has a different purpose for each type of person. Let your intuition guide you to select the right one. Remember to periodically cleanse your crystals and to recharge them in the sun. May you enjoy the healing benefits of all crystals!

CARVED IN STONE

Why not have a crystal party where you get all your crystals together with like-minded friends and create a sacred space for meditation, music, chanting, drumming, and spiritual connection. Share your knowledge about crystal healing with each other, and celebrate your journey of self-transformation.