From Health and Healing — School Talk #40
But nevertheless, this is the greatest healing there is, is that you can put people at ease. Now if you go back and read the literature through the ages of the great healers that have existed–the mystical healers or the mental healers–you will have to see that the major thing they did was they put people at ease.
Now that’s something that any one of us can do when we are around people. We can put them at ease. When people go into a place of business that they’ve never been before, they’re not quite at ease. They go into a hotel they haven’t been in before; they’re not quite at ease. They go to apply for a job; they’re not quite at ease. They go to buy something, and they’re not quite at ease, especially if it is a major expenditure of some sort. They’re not quite at ease, is that right Mary? You didn’t want to go buy a car by yourself because you needed an expert along or at least somebody you felt knew more about it than you did. So with someone along, you felt a little more at ease, is that right?
So when we want to do something that is a healing to anybody or everybody around—let’s say we want to be a healing influence wherever we are—we can put everybody around us at ease. I discovered that quite by accident. I used to be very ill at ease, and I thought that I was the only person in the world like that.
I got to noticing one day, in spite of myself, that most everybody was ill at ease. I thought, “Well, I’m hopeless, I’ve been working on me for years, and I didn’t get anywhere–but I can put other people at ease—at least for a few minutes”. So I forgot about me and began to put other people at ease; and the by-product was that I forgot about me being ill-at-ease; and I haven’t been that way anymore. So it has a reverse affect on you. So how about taking on as our little activity for this week that we will put anybody and everybody we come in contact with at ease.
If we go in a restaurant and the waitress is in a terrible state–we can put her at ease or at least ignore her, or we can crack a joke. You can hold back and let a guy get in a slot on the street when it’s closing to one lane. You can wait back and let them all get in—it puts him at ease to a degree. It’s so simple that probably we could say that “simple good manners” is probably the best technique of putting people at ease.
So, let’s take on as our little chore this week of putting people at ease, and forget about being at ease for ourselves. Let’s just work at putting other people at ease. You might find that it has a decided healing affect all around you. They’re might be some very sick or ill people (that you didn’t recognize or know about) that begin to feel much better by the simple fact that you put them at ease. By the same token, I’m sure it can also have a very healing affect on us when we use it.