Finding Peace In Conflicted Situations

When I first walked into the Inner Focus Advanced Energy Healing School in 1995, I was looking for help. Past injuries were not healing well. I often felt ungrounded and emotionally buffeted. I had tried several different therapies and had been on anti-depressants, but nothing was “fixing the problem.”

At the time, I had a small legal practice which specialized in sexual harassment and assault cases. Although my work was time consuming and my clients were high maintenance, I was becoming well-trained in handling women who had post-traumatic stress. I effectively and aggressively settled all my cases in an attempt to help my clients heal and move on with their lives. When the sexual harassment cases occurred in employment situations, I became very skilled at finding common ground between employer and employee.

And yet, I couldn’t find that win/win situation for myself. Inner peace was elusive and fleeting at best. I was pregnant for the second time and knew, after my first pregnancy, that I was high risk. My first child had been 9 weeks premature and I was desperately trying to prevent the trauma of a second premature birth.

So there I was, in 1995, making a choice to try something different, to try some of this energy healing stuff. And it worked. I found a home and a way of being for the next three and a half years. I found an awareness that revealed itself as I peeled off layer after layer of protections and defenses. And I was (and still am) discovering ways to integrate energy healing processes into my day to day life, both personal and professional.

At first, though, I soon found it necessary to navigate between two worlds. While attending the energy healing school, it felt safe to feel and receive. I felt my heart opening. Physical and emotional pain was released. Support was received and given.

Then I would go back to what I thought was the “real” world, and having an open heart would hurt. I would yell at one of my kids to clean her room and feel nauseous. My husband and I would feel very open and then get scared and retreat from one another. I felt too emotionally vulnerable to do litigation (which irritated me greatly) and hired outside counsel to do some of the warrior-like things that needed to be done on my remaining cases.

It was an emotional roller coaster. Although I knew, deep down, there was a way to integrate all of this spiritual energy healing into my personal and professional life with the grace and beauty that I desired.

In 1996, I was representing “Monica” (a fake name) who had been harassed by and forced to have oral sex with her boss. She had been assaulted in many different ways and was exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress. I knew that Monica was not strong enough to endure aggressive litigation and called opposing counsel to see if a settlement could be reached.

My call to opposing counsel did not go well. The attorney naively thought that oral sex could never be forced and could never be a basis for sexual harassment. When I told him that oral sex was often the sex of choice in sexual harassment cases, he angrily refused to discuss the matter and hung up the phone after stating that he would not consider any settlement—ever.

I refused to believe what he said, however. Even though opposing counsel had hung up on me, I sensed that there was a part of him that did not want to hurt my client. There was gentleness in his voice that I could hear even when he was yelling. I was determined to reach and contact that part of him...but how could I proceed when opposing counsel had cut off all settlement discussions?

And so I decided to try energy healing techniques in this contentious litigation. I had nothing to lose. Based on my experience in the energy healing school, I knew that we all have energetic “essences” or higher selves, which have a consciousness far greater than that projected by our personalities. I knew how to connect to my own higher self and that of my energy healing clients. So, I then reasoned that if I could do this during individual healing sessions, then, theoretically, I should be able to do this with opposing counsel.

And so I experimented. A few hours after opposing counsel hung up the phone on me, I settled down for a "session" with the higher self of the contentious attorney. I connected to my higher self. I asked my higher self to connect with the higher self of opposing counsel and when I felt a connection, and felt that it was okay to proceed, I invoked the energy of truth and began to talk. But, to my surprise, I did not talk like an attorney. Instead of hiding my client's vulnerabilities, I talked about how Monica would be harmed by litigation. Instead of only talking about those aspects of Monica’s case which were favorable to her, I talked about everything that had happened and that Monica was telling the truth. Instead of talking about all the money my client could win, I talked about what Monica needed monetarily in order to heal, to start over and to find a new life. And I could feel the higher self of opposing counsel listening. My higher self continued to say whatever felt right at the moment and when I was done, I expressed gratitude and stopped the session.

Within a day or so of the session, I then received a phone message on my answering machine from opposing counsel on this case. Without hesitation, he asked if we could still settle the case and requested that I call him back. I was stunned. After blurting out “Holy Sh…t!”, I immediately proceeded to return his call. Within a short time, we then settled Monica’s case for exactly the amount of money I had asked him for—or rather, I had intuitively asked his higher self for—as a settlement.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. It doesn’t matter what legal, emotional or physical barriers are placed in your way. You can always communicate with someone energetically. You can always invoke truth and healing into any situation regardless of the antics of opposing counsel, a judge or the court.

From that point on I was hooked, excited, in disbelief and a little bit scared of our power to affect “reality.” I began to experiment with how I could apply energy healing processes to my other legal cases. I began to work at an energetic level on other cases for different attorneys and litigants. I began to integrate my spiritual being more consciously into my profession.

But this was not always an easy thing to do. Lawyers are trained to see conflict as something on the outside to fix, manipulate, resolve, litigate or mediate. We lawyers want skills and training that will teach us tactics and strategies that will be beneficial for our clients, win cases and give us a predictable profit.

However, energy healing and the deeper spiritual quality of peacemaking are not necessarily skills to learn. It is not a step-by-step tactic or thing that you “do” to someone else. Instead, it is more about going inside to connect with our own internal wisdom and peace. Only when we can tap into our own sense of peace can we really help others find theirs.

So what does this mean in practical terms? Going back to the Monica case—I am convinced that my efforts at energy healing would not have been as effective if I hadn’t first given myself the gift of time for self-reflection and self-healing. As I learned to see those parts of myself that were wise and gentle, I could see those qualities in opposing counsel. As I learned to listen to myself and hear a gentle quality in my voice, I could hear a peaceful quality in the voice of opposing counsel, even when he was yelling at me over the phone. In other words, true peacemaking started for me as I looked within; and as those qualities became more integrated into my own personal life, I found that I could help manifest that peace in the outside world. …even in the most conflicted of situations.

Today, as I continue on my path of self-reflection, healing and peacemaking, does this mean that I now live my life in a state of eternal bliss and happiness? No. I am still trying to learn how to integrate all this “energy healing stuff” into my personal and professional life. I still get frustrated and sometimes yell at my kids to clean their rooms. My husband and I still go on emotional roller coaster rides.

And so I laugh or cry at myself and go on. Because I know that I will continue to give myself that gift of self-reflection and healing. I know I can tap into that place of peace inside and experience it as fluid, deep and vast and I also realize that peace and peacemaking is not an end result, but a lifetime process.

Jill Dahlquist is a lawyer (UW-1980), a minister (BMS, 1998), a graduate of the Inner Focus School for Advanced Energy Healing (1998) and a published writer on various spiritual topics. She is the co-creator of the Grouppeace process and facilities energy healing sessions for individuals, couples, or organizations. Periodically, she leads workshops or guided meditations on how we can more consciously be aware of and integrate spirituality into our day to day lives for such organizations as the International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers, Renaissance Lawyer Society, and other meditation/study groups around the country. Jill is also the mother of two very intuitive children and is in the process of creating a school/curriculum to help gifted and special needs children be in our society while fully developing their talents. For more information on Jill’s work, her channeled writings or to share ideas/experiences about raising intuitive kids, see www.Grouppeace.com.