Modern Order of Essenes Course: Healer – Intro and Unit 13

A very heartfelt welcome to the Healer grade of this Modern Order of Essenes course!

It’s a pleasure for me to undertake this journey with you folks, and I hope you will enjoy the Healer grade and get a lot out of it (and then consider taking the Master afterwards – but we’ll cross that bridge towards the end of the year… 😉 ).

Before we dive in, a quick reminder:

The Apprentice attunements for the course will take place on Sunday, August 31st, 2025. You can find all the relevant information here.

And now, without further ado, let’s move straight on to the Healer grade:

Introduction to the MOE Healer Grade

Since you’re all old-timers with regards to this course, there isn’t that much to say in terms of an introduction. Basically, the course will continue just as before, with a new unit being posted every other Sunday.

(If you’d like to be notified about upcoming MOE-related posts, you can sign up to the mailing list below each post. Make sure to check the “Modern Order of Essenes” option!)

The coursework will be structured in the same way as before.

Overall, the Healer units contain somewhat less coursework than the Apprentice units did. This has the practical background that you will continue to practice what you’ve learned so far, in particular the Blessing Walk, Healing Hands, meditation (more on that in a second), foot reflexology and muscle testing.

The first four practices should ideally be done daily, but we all know how life is. Just do your best, ok? 🙂

Muscle testing should be used as often as possible. The more you do it, the more experience you’ll gain.

During the course of this grade, you’ll notice that the work of the Healer grade is somewhat different from the Apprentice. The existing work continues, and there will also be some more practical things to learn and practice. But mostly, the Healer grade contains a lot of theoretical material.

This material is deep, and is worth pondering and contemplating. If you should do regular discursive meditation, it’s well worth meditating about.

It should be noted, though, that one of the two new practices in the Healer grade is Phase 3 of the Healing Breath meditation. I presume that to practice two different kinds of meditation (i.e. discursive and Healing Breath) on top of everything else will be too much for most people – and you really shouldn’t overdo things anyway.

Thus I’m leaving it to you whether you want to continue with the Healing Breath and learn Phase 3 of it, or whether you’d rather switch to discursive meditation, meditate about the theoretical material of the Healer grade, and thus get more out of that side of the course.

Both will work fine, and thus this is a personal decision, and you should go with whatever works better for you.

(Although I have to admit I might mainly think so because the Healing Breath meditation never hit home for me, and I was more than relieved to switch back to discursive meditation at the earliest point possible… 😉 )

But please feel free to discuss your choice in the comments if you aren’t sure how to proceed. The one thing I would recommend against is flip-flopping back and forth. Instead, pick one meditation style and stick with it throughout the Healer grade. If nothing else, it’ll build your ability to pull through with a decision… 😉

If you don’t do discursive meditation, the theoretical texts of the Healer grade should still be studied closely, contemplated, and reflected upon.

As before, you are not required to take them as gospel! Instead, grapple and spar with them until you come up with your own insights, ideas and point of view!

(That’s not to say you aren’t allowed to agree with them, though! Of course you are – but only once you’ve poked and prodded at them from all sides…)

Also, and just as an aside, while a lot of the work of the Healer grade is more theoretical in nature, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any practical applications… 😉

So a lot of the regular practice in the Healer grade is familiar stuff. The one new addition is hand reflexology, which we’ll get to in Unit 14.

Overall, I’ve deliberately set up the Healer grade with a slow pace. There is enough time for you to study the material in depth, potentially meditate about it, and to let it sink in. There really is no point in rushing through this, and sometimes insights will take a while.

This should also give you some leeway in case life happens and you can’t do as much as usual in some week…

Generally, the Healer grade material comprises eight units, i.e. Unit 13 – 20, and it will run through the rest of this year (2025).

Per my current plan, the last unit (Unit 20) of this grade will go live on Sunday 23rd of November, 2025. This will leave us one more Sunday in December to discuss the details of the upcoming Healer attunement, before I’ll see myself off for my “between the years” break from the winter solstice to Jan 6th.

(Which will either offer you a holiday break as well, or will give you additional time to catch up with the course or re-visit certain elements as needed.)

The Healer attunements themselves will then probably happen in January, although we’ll figure out the details as we get closer. Just like this time, I’m sure we’ll find ways to accommodate everybody.

I think that’s all there is to say about the Healer grade before we start – so let’s dive right in, shall we? 🙂

Unit 13

Coursework

1. To Practice – Blessing Walk, Healing Hands, Foot Reflexology, Muscle Testing

   Continue with the practices you’ve learned in the Candidate and Apprentice grades, ideally daily.

2. To Study – “Law of Contagion”

   Study the text “Law of Contagion”, as explained in the Intro to the Healer grade, and/or use it as basis for your discursive meditation. As always, you are not supposed to blindly believe this text as gospel, but instead to study it thoroughly, contemplate it, and to come up with your own ideas and thoughts about it.

   Online Version (only the section “The Law Of Contagion”. Note that “Concerning Decisions” marks the beginning of the next section, which will be covered in a later unit.)
   PDF Version (only page 5)

3. To Read – Essene Healing Breath: Phase 3 Overview

   Read the Overview section of Phase 3 of the Healing Breath meditation, to give you an idea what Phase 3 is about.

   Online Version (Section “Phase Three: Overview”)
   PDF Version (Section “Phase Three: Overview” on page 20; note that Phase 3 of the Healing Breath is covered in the Apprentice pdf and not in the Healer pdf!)

4. To Practice – Essene Healing Breath: Phase 3, Step 7

   Practice Step 7 of the Healing Breath meditation (unless you practice another form of meditation, e.g. discursive meditation which you could use to meditate on the theoretical study texts of the Healer grade).

   Online Version (Section “Stage Three: Step Seven – Establish your window of opportunity”)
   PDF Version (Section “Stage Three: Step Seven – Establish your window of opportunity” on page 21; note that Phase 3 of the Healing Breath is covered in the Apprentice pdf and not in the Healer pdf!)

Reflection Question

While you do the work of Unit 13, take some time to reflect on the following question:

Why do you continue with the Healer grade?

Meditation Topics

Note that for the Healer grade, there is a lot of meditation fodder in the study texts. I’m not going to pull these topics out of the study texts for you, though – that’s up to you to chew on for yourself!

But if you should need fodder for your discursive meditations beyond what you have found in this unit’s texts, the following topics should give you something to work with:

• What purpose do grades or levels have in spiritual work?
• What does it mean to enter a new grade?
• What does it mean to finish a grade?
• Why and how does it make sense to follow a set course of work?
• Why and how does it make sense to not follow a set course of work?
• What or who is a Healer?
• What or who is an Apprentice?
• What is a window of opportunity?
• How can you use windows of opportunity?
• How can you establish windows of opportunity?
• Is the MOE work contagious?

And if you have enough ideas on your own and don’t need any from this list, that’s even better!

Commentary

Some General Notes

A lot of what I have to say at this stage has already been covered in the Intro above (I trust you’ve read that, and not skipped straight ahead to the Coursework! 😛 )

The true depth of the Healer grade is somewhat hidden in the theoretical texts. It can be tempting to just skim them or skip past them in order to get to the “real stuff” sooner – but they are the real stuff.

Please take your time to get acquainted with them, to wrangle with their ideas, to build your own opinion, to compare them to your own experience, and so on. Doing so is a very worthwhile thing, and will greatly further your path of spiritual healing.

If this means you’ll need more than two weeks per unit, btw, that’s perfectly fine. Rushing won’t get you to the finish line any earlier… Thus please take the time you need.

Practices from the Apprentice Grade

By now, I hope you’ve established a solid rythm and structure for these practices, something which fits your personal everyday life. If not, it’d be high time to work towards that. Just sayin’… 😉

Anyway, I’ll continue to mention these practices in the Coursework section as a reminder, but I’m not going to discuss them any further unless there is new material related to them.

If you should have any questions about them now or in the future, though, please do feel free to post a comment at any stage. Same if you want to share any experiences, discuss ideas, … Just because I won’t comment on them anymore doesn’t make mentioning them a no-no!

And of course, you can always check back and review older units for information about these practices.

Healing Breath Meditation, Phase 3

As explained in the Intro, if you should decide to switch to discursive meditation instead, that’s fine, too (and makes just as much sense for the Healer). It really depends on what works best for you – and by now, you should have a good enough idea of the Healing Breath meditation to know if you want to continue or not. Thus the following is for the folks who do practice the Healing Breath in the Healer grade… 🙂

I think the explanation in the text is pretty clear and imo doesn’t require any additional commentary.

The instructions assume that you’re already pretty fluent in Phase 1 and also Phase 2, which most of you probably will be by now. But if you feel you’ll need more time to practice the earlier phases, and to make them go more smoothly and faster, you can certainly take this time.

Simply bookmark the relevant instructions for later, and level up to Step 7 whenever you feel ready for it.

One final comment for those of you who have at some point practiced a threefold or fourfold breath e.g. before discursive meditation: Step 7 of the Healing Breath is not the same as the three-/fourfold breath!

In the Healing Breath, your breath is supposed to flow naturally and relaxedly. When the instructions say “rythmically”, they mean with roughly equal length over subsequent breaths, i.e. not sometimes fast and sometimes slow. But for the Healing Breath, your inhalation, exhalation and the two windows of opportunity are not timed against each other. While you should focus on your breath (as per the instructions in Phase 2), you shouldn’t count along with it.

Further Resources

There are by far not as many resources (in the form of video or audio files) available for the Healer material as there were for the Candidate and Apprentice material, thus this section will be noticeably shorter in the upcoming units.

Always worth a read are the comment sections to JMG’s posts, accessible via the “Online Version” links in the Coursework section.

Back when he first posted the MOE material, JMG also offered an MOE Open Post to ask questions of any sort about the MOE at the end of the Healer grade material. Its comment section might be worth a read, too.

Our own prior comment sections are also worth a read, especially as comments continue to trickle in over time. Here’s the link to the comment section of Unit 12.

(In case you shouldn’t have noticed yet, all my posts have at least one “category” assigned to them, and most also have “topics” assigned. Categories and topics are listed below the actual post text, i.e. you’ll see them if you scroll just a wee bit further down from here. Clicking on the topic “MOE Course” will get you straight to a list of all course posts.)

Finally, there is one audio file of John Gilbert specifically for Phase 3 of the Healing Breath meditation:

In the zip file which contains John Gilbert’s audio files, there is a file called meditation.mp3. It covers Phase 3 of the Healing Breath.

For Step 7, only the first about 1:55 minutes are relevant. The rest of the file covers the following steps, and we’ll get back to it later. (Depending on how your practice goes, you might want to combine it with the earlier file breath.mp3 which covers Phases 1 and 2.)

Outlook

In two weeks (on Sunday August 31st, 2025) we will not only perform (or receive, in your case) the Apprentice attunements, but we’ll also continue with Unit 14 on this day.

Until then, I’m looking forward to your comments and your feedback, and I hope you enjoy this first unit of the Healer grade. 🙂