No practitioner can channel anything that has more integrity than they do. There is nothing “out there” that is in any way separate from our own degree of division. Even when transmitting non-dual higher states we will also be transmitting our authentic relationship to what we have discovered that is of a higher nature. And, to whatever degree we might be divided in relationship to what is higher, we will transmit our division.
There is a superstitious, new age, premise that many practitioners seem to hold. This notion is that the practitioner act as “channel” for some sort of cosmic “energy” or “divine force” that comes through him or her to promote healing. Forget it. There is nothing that a person can transmit that is going to be anymore pure than his or her own integrity. Whatever comes through a practitioner will be tainted by his or her own cynicism, ambivalence, and self concern. This fact puts the burden for development for the sake of our patients squarely on the shoulders of us practitioners. Regardless of a practitioner’s technical skill or knowledge base, any fundamental lack of integrity will be transmitted to a patient right along with any qi derived from any source real or imagined. To the exact degree that a practitioner lets himself off the hook he will let that patient off the hook. Any back door we leave ourselves that demands less than absolute integrity will constitute a hole a mile wide for the patient to back away from facing him or herself when the going gets tough in treatment. Under such circumstances the best any treatment can do is provide comfort and collusion but never meaningful, vertical, change predicated upon an authentic therapeutic relationship.
There is no source of qi in this universe that is in anyway separate from the patient or from ourselves as practitioners. Personal integrity, and absolute conviction in the positivity of life, is a more important asset to a healer than any amount of knowledge or technical expertise that has been attained. Conviction in simply doing what is right, and following through on that motivation in the face of resistance is the most direct route to the wellspring of vitality that lies within and without. In fact, taking the right action in the face of resistance is the very engine that drives the cultivation of virtue that is a foundation of the five-element tradition of Chinese medicine. Truly, the responsibility we humans take for our own clarity of discernment in making choices is the unifying force of heaven and earth.
It is who we are as human beings as defined by the choices we make that imposes the greatest limitation on our potency as “healers”. Resistance to this fact on the part of “holistic healers” always amazes me. On the one hand a practitioner will acknowledge the efficacy of a medical practice like homeopathy premised on the notion that a 1/250,000 dilution of a substance has enough of an “energetic resonance” to substantially effect the patient ingesting it. On the other hand, that very same practitioner will take the position that, and act as if, his own state of division is irrelevant in the treatment room. Nothing could be further from the truth.