The Light That Knows Its Way Home

I met Dr. Joseph Murphy one night between sleep and sunrise, in that trembling space where dream and eternity hold hands. The air was thick with moonlight, and the silence seemed to hum with the pulse of unseen wings. He stood before me, calm and luminous, his eyes shimmering like twin seas of remembrance. “Tony,” he said, his voice carrying both warmth and authority, “the Divine healing does not live outside of you, waiting to be found. It breathes within you, patient and eternal. You awaken it not by pleading, but by speaking to it as you would a beloved—gently, confidently, with the knowledge that it already hears you.” His words sank into me like warm oil into cold skin, seeping into the places I hadn’t realized were starved for light. When I woke, the room was awash in the blue-gray light of dawn, and his message echoed in my heart like a low bell: Talk to the Divine within you—it is listening.

Later that morning, my first client arrived—a man named David, carrying the heavy silence of someone who has forgotten the sound of his own worth. His shoulders folded inward, his hands trembled slightly as he spoke. “I just don’t belong anywhere,” he said, his voice fragile, a reed bending under invisible wind. “I don’t think I’ll ever be loved.” There was something almost sacred in his despair, the way it revealed his longing to be seen, to be met. I thought of Dr. Murphy’s words, that quiet insistence that the Divine never leaves us, even when we’ve left ourselves. Perhaps this session, I thought, would not be about fixing—but about remembering.

We began with EMDR, the rhythmic dance of eye and mind, left and right, light and shadow. As his gaze followed the gentle motion of my hand, I asked him to let the image of unworthiness appear, not as truth but as an old photograph—faded, brittle, no longer alive. “Now,” I whispered, “imagine a current of light descending through the crown of your head—a golden river of intelligence and tenderness, flowing through your body, washing away the dust of years.” His breathing slowed; the edges of his tension softened. I could almost see it—the light weaving through him, a shimmer in the air, delicate as candle flame. “This,” I said softly, “is the Divine healing. It knows you better than your fear ever could.”

As the rhythm continued, I guided him deeper. “Call forth those who love you,” I said, “the protectors, the witnesses—your grandmother, that friend who once saw you without judgment, even the future you who has already forgiven himself.” His eyelids fluttered; tears began to gather, spilling quietly down his cheeks. “They’re here,” he whispered. “They’re telling me I’m not broken. They’re saying I just forgot.” In that moment, the entire room seemed to hum, a low vibration like the note beneath a choir—holy, invisible, certain. I could feel the Divine rising between us, ancient and alive.

When the light settled, I invited him into a gentler place, the grounded terrain of CBT. “Tell me,” I said, “do you still believe you are worthless?” He paused, eyes open now, the faintest smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “No,” he said slowly, as if tasting the word for the first time. “I feel... like I belong to something good. Like maybe I’ve been holding my breath for years, and I can finally exhale.” I nodded. “Then prove it. What’s one small thing you can do to honor that truth?” His eyes brightened. “There’s someone I’ve wanted to ask out,” he said. “Maybe it’s time.”

Weeks passed. When he returned, there was a quiet radiance about him, a soft glow not of triumph but of peace. “I did it,” he said, voice steady. “We went out. It was... easy. I didn’t have to perform. I just showed up.” I could see it in him—the integration, the remembering. The light had not entered him; it had awakened from him. The Divine, patient and infinite, had simply waited for permission to breathe.

That night, when the world grew still, I sat in my own small circle of candlelight and spoke inwardly, the way Dr. Murphy had taught me. Divine healing within me, radiant and knowing, I speak to you now. Move through my body, align me with love, let every cell remember its holiness. A warmth bloomed in my chest—soft, pulsing, ancient. I realized then that healing is not a miracle granted by the heavens, but a homecoming within the self—a returning to the original music we were born humming.

Perhaps that is what Dr. Murphy meant all along: that we are not seekers of light but its embodiment, not beggars at the temple door but the temple itself. When we speak to the Divine within us, it does not awaken because it was asleep—it awakens because we do. And when that happens, everything, even love, knows the way back home.

Tony Martello, LMFT is a Marriage & Family Therapist who practices in Central California.