the three layers of healing: gross, sublte and causal body healing
In traditional therapy, it is not very common that a distinction is made between the different layers of healing. Even though, for example, cognitive therapy works with the mental body and its belief systems, and intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy with the emotional body and its unprocessed emotions, this is not often explained. But when deeper understanding, structure, and order are brought forward in comprehending how and where healing occurs within us, we can greatly support and stimulate our healing process.
Different teachings from both Eastern and Western philosophies can help us understand that there are several layers, or bodies, upon which healing occurs. These are the emotional body (gross body), the mental body (subtle body), and the causal body. Each body’s blockages will show up differently, and each body needs something different for a blockage to heal on that level. We will discuss this and more in detail below.
the auric field
Before discussing the different bodies and how they heal, let’s briefly discuss the bioenergetic field that each human being is born with. This bioenergetic field is often called the auric field or the energy body. This auric field is made up of different structures, or different bodies, that together form the entire energy field of an individual.
Throughout history, different philosophies have broken the structure of a human being’s entire body down into a structure of four bodies, five bodies, seven bodies, or even nine bodies, each highlighting a different aspect of our humanity, soul structure, and divinity.
For the purpose of this writing, we will move forward discussing the emotional, mental, and causal bodies as they relate to inner healing, looked at through the lens of yogic philosophy that provides a solid framework for deeper understanding.
healing the gross body
Physical/Emotional
The physical and emotional body can be described as part of the gross body in yogic philosophy. This is the densest, heaviest body of all. The healing that occurs on this level involves what is also called our pain body, which is the body that has stored all our trauma, hurts, and negative experiences that we have gone through in life.
Recognising that you are experiencing a blockage and pain on this level of healing can be relatively easy, but that also depends on how connected you are to your physical and emotional body in general.
You may literally feel heavy (gross/dense), you may feel physical discomfort or pain, knots in your body, a certain emotional intensity/overwhelm, and/or you may feel as though you are carrying around a heaviness that is looking to be lifted. Blockages in the gross body can also express in the form of depressive symptoms, panic attacks, and more.
Emotional blockages can also go unnoticed at first, until they flare up in respons to what occurs in your life. This can be experienced as a trigger: all of a sudden a blockage is highlighted and can no longer be unnoticed or ignored. It has now come to the surface needs something from you in response.
Healing on this layer is required first to move into more subtle layers of healing. By welcoming, accepting, and loving your feelings and emotions at the level of the gross body, you allow the blockage to untie and to be released on this level.
In an ideal situation, when we experience certain events or situations in our lives that make us feel a certain way, we allow the sensations that come along with these events to move through our circuitry without resistance on our end.
However, most of us did not have the guidance, abilities or circumstances earlier in life, to apply this. Therefore, these unprocessed experiences and emotions settled themselves in our bodies. They became blockages that got stuck in our inner structures. As we go through our life experiences, oftentimes these blockages will reveal themselves through what is known as “triggers”.
Now that you become aware of them and they rise to the surface either through triggers from life itself, therapy or otherwise, you are invited to complete the experiences that haven’t been completed before by experiencing and processing them physically and emotionally. It is an invitation to let the sensations run through your systems with love, compassion, and non-resistance.
Love, without pressure, can sooth, relax, untie and eventually dissolve an emotional blockage that got tied into our emotional body through shock, stress, and trauma (this is tied with our nervous system).
If love can meet an emotional blockage when it comes up, it will send a message of warmth and ease, signaling a message to the body that “it is safe” to release this trauma, and that it can let go of the fight-or-flight response as part of the sympathetic nervous system.
It will send a message to the body that all is well, activating the parasympathetic nervous system that controls the body’s ability to relax. Through meeting the energetic blockage with love and by allowing yourself to simply feel through all sensations, you allow the previously not-fully-processed emotional experience to complete itself in the body. This is how a blockage at the level of the gross body can be healed.
Signs of healing on the emotional level include the absence of triggers when the same or a similar situation occurs. Also, the charge around the situation, topic or theme is gone, or has at the very least decreased.
healing the SUBTLE body
Thoughts/Mental
After healing has occurred on the gross level, healing can begin at the level of the mental body or the subtle body. This represents the belief systems, thought patterns, stories, and identifications held in our minds. When we become aware of the thoughts that we think, the stories that we tell ourselves, and the identifications that we identify ourselves with, the process of dissolving these labels can begin.
Be aware that once you heal an emotional blockage at the gross body level (emotional body), you already take out the roots of the tree, together with a large amount of branches (that would represent belief systems, thoughts, etc. in this analogy).
Therefore, it is recommended to face a blockage at the gross body level first (if there is also an emotional charge) and then heal what has remained at the level of the mental body.
Subtly body blockages appear in the mental realm. By watching your thoughts and by listening carefully to what you hear yourself say, you can spot and investigate your mental blockages (although they are subtle!).
One simple way to spot these blockages is by paying attention to how you finish “I am….” sentences (whether in spoken word or in thought form). For example, I am a bad sister, I am useless, I am not good enough, etc.
Because these blockages are subtle and oftentimes stored in your subconscious mind, you may need to dedicate yourself to introspection via journaling, meditation or otherwise, to get them in plain sight. Analysing your life circumstances and external reality to understand what is projected outwardly from within your inner world, is also helpful in understanding your mental blockages.
By remembering the truth of who we are, beyond our physical bodies, identities, and stories, a light can shine through that depotentiates the firm realities that we once believed about ourselves. This is the level of healing on the mental body.
The easiest and most effective way to healing mental blockages (in my opinion and experience) is written about by David Hawkins, inside his book The Map of Consciousness Explained (Chapter: Health & Happiness, Steps for Self-Healing).
When you have become aware of your mental label, thought form or belief system, say: I no longer believe in that. I am an infinite being, and I am not subject to that. I am only subject to what I hold in mind.
Signs that you have healed a blockage on the mental layer include that you can no longer find the previous beliefs, thought patterns and stories in your mind. It is as though you think differently about the situation/topic now. Mental suffering has eased and you think about yourself and/or the situation with more compassion or positivity.
healing the causal body
Actions
The last level of healing occurs at the layer of the causal body. This is healing at the level of spirit. It is also called the karmic body. Where the gross body is concerned with emotions, and the subtle body is concerned with thoughts, the causal body is concerned with actions. We could also say that this layer of healing involves deep soul lessons.
Karmic imprints are created through action. By witnessing and analyzing our life experiences, we can come to understand that life is offering a certain teaching or lesson, that wants to be taught. What these specific lessons are will vary from person to person as each individual has their own set of lessons they choose to overcome and learn in this lifetime, including their own karma that they bring into this incarnation.
Karmic imprints are created through action. By witnessing and analyzing our life experiences, we can come to understand that life is offering a certain teaching or lesson, that wants to be taught. What these specific lessons are will vary from person to person as each individual has their own set of lessons they choose to overcome and learn in this lifetime, including their own karma that they bring into this incarnation.
Healing on the causal body can occur through conscious awareness first, that there is lesson that is being offered. You may notice some karmic determination in your life, for example, by the fact that the same theme or topic is coming back to you again and again. But really any challenging life experience, even though it is only consciously coming around for the first time, can catalyze growth, helping to heal a karmic lesson at the level of the causal body.
As explained by Ra in the Law of One Material (session 93 and 66), healing at the causal body can only occur through conscious processing and understanding. So on a conscious level, you must “get it”. This is why for this layer of healing, you want to analyze your life experience and then sit in quiet stillness to allow your higher self to speak to you, making you aware in your conscious mind what lesson is being offered.
Karma can also be seen as a default setting. Now that you have become aware of the lesson that is offered, and healing occurs through this awareness, you can choose to solidify your healing by choosing different actions and responses.
Signs of healing on the causal level includes witnessing yourself acting and responding differently.
In general, you will notice that once healing has occurred on one, two or all three of these layers, you will feel increasing lighter about a subject/theme and your energy field will become wider in regards to the matter. At some point, you will feel as though any restriction is completely gone.
An Example: Gross, Subtle & Causal Healing
To give an example of what healing on these three layers can look like, let’s use the example of a woman called Emma.
Emma grew up with a depressed father. As a sensitive little girl, she could feel his sadness and tried to cheer him up by being entertaining and funny. Now she is an adult woman, and out of (unconscious) loyalty and guilt, she doesn’t allow herself to fully feel happy, knowing that her father is sad. In her behaviour, she takes on the responsibility to make him happy by pleasing him and by not saying certain things that would be authentic to her, in order not to upset him. Now, let’s look at Emma’s healing on all three layers:
GROSS BODY (emotional): She is invited to process her sadness for having/witnessing a father who does not enjoy life and all the emotional pain that is connected to that (including guilt, grief, and more).
SUBTLE BODY (mental): She is becoming aware of her belief that “I am a bad person/daughter if I am happy while my father is not”. She looks at this mental conviction from a zoomed-out perspective of who she is in truth, which helps her to de-identify with this statement.
CAUSAL BODY (action): Through her life experiences she notices a pattern in more relationships (for example, in her romantic relationship), where she tends to either co-carry the pain of another (funded by unconscious/now made conscious loyalty and guilt), go into problem-solving or therapist mode, or move away from her center to acommodate the other as best as she can to make them feel better. It is as though she needs to safe another.
In her quiet space, on a deeper soul level, she is open to receiving the higher wisdom that she is not in control of her father’s (or anyone else’s) earthly experience, but God is. Her father’s experience is her father’s experience, and it is not up to her to label this as good or bad, or better or worse. It is perfect as it is.
Now, in connection with her father, she speaks from her heart what is truly authentic for her to say in each moment. And when it comes to making plans, she checks in with herself as well, instead of the default setting to automatically accommodate another person’s needs.
in summary
At the gross layer, we can heal our emotional body through accepting, loving, and welcoming our feelings and emotions. At the subtle layer, we can heal our mental body by becoming aware of our belief systems, stories, and identifications and by changing our perception (of ourselves) in alignment with who we are in truth. At the causal layer, we can learn our life lessons by becoming aware of our life catalysts (challenging life experiences) and being open to consciously understanding and integrating what it is trying to teach us on a deeper soul level. We can then align with different actions next time.
You may have noticed that certain topics/themes in your life come back around again (and again). One reason for this can now be explained through what is outlined above, as you meet blockages at different layers of your experience until they are healed. But also, one subject may touch on a plethora of emotional healing at the gross body layer first, or multiple beliefs, thought patterns, and stories that want to be canceled and deactivated through de-identification at the mental layer. Therefore, we can best look at healing as something that occurs in a circular and spiraling way, instead of in a cut-and-dry linear fashion.
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