This is an excerpt from the book:
Thomson, C. M. (2025, September). Whispers of the Urban Healing Temple: Stories of
healing and becoming. Urban Healing Temple. http://www.urbanhealingrtemple.com
Introduction
At the Urban Healing Temple, we awaken the innate architecture of wholeness: body,
mind, and spirit, by guiding individuals to dissolve the barriers that hinder vitality,
purpose, and awareness. Through holistic practices, alternative medicine, and sacred
space, we empower people to reconnect with their inner wisdom and embody balance,
clarity, and spiritual fulfillment.
Our vision is to support individuals on a transformative journey of healing and
alignment, where every layer of being is nurtured and restored. As people reconnect
with their true essence, they unlock their highest potential and naturally extend healing,
compassion, and inspiration to others.
This book shares real stories of healing, individuals who received the teaching of the
parable of the Urban Healing Temple and applied its wisdom to their lives. Each story
reveals how healing can offer freedom from suffering, renewed direction, and guidance
toward the fulfillment of one’s full potential. The parable below conveys a universal
message, a whisper from our original essence.
Parable of the Urban Healing Temple
A child was born on the wide plains of the Midwest. From the start, the world around him felt not quite like home. While others played at belonging, he turned inward. His games were silence, reflection, and the invisible play of imagination. Books became companions; meditation, his language; philosophy, science, and prayer, his teachers.
He learned early that suffering is the great tutor. It shaped him. He endured family storms and the roughness of his environment with one quiet conviction: this, too, is not forever; a greater reality waits beyond what is seen.
At seventeen, he tested himself in the crucible of military training. Though he gained strength and discipline, the path of war was not his path. He turned to academia, ascending its ranks to become a scientist and healer. Alongside textbooks and laboratories, he sat with monks, absorbed the hidden disciplines of yoga and meditation, and glimpsed deeper freedom.
Life, however, is no straight road. Unrest in the wider world pulled him from university halls. He left his titles behind to stand with communities in need, teaching, healing, and serving. He married, raised a daughter, and learned through heartbreak, betrayal, and loss that true spiritual practice is not found in retreat alone, but in the weaves of human living.
At fifty-seven, yoga called him back. He simplified his life to near-emptiness, giving away possessions, even sleeping on the bare floor of a back room. A priest and a healer consecrated his dwelling; they said energy gathered where his head rested. From this still point, a vision arose: a temple not of stone, but of service, an Urban Healing Temple, where a few could be nourished to heal many.
He immersed himself in body, mind, and spirit practices, founded new circles of healers, and saw his life not as a line but an arc. The arc was like a waterfall: grace descending through every layer of his being. Healers and inner visions confirmed the shape. His journey mirrored the ancient map of the Koshas, from body, to breath, to mind, to wisdom, to essence. Then, just as his strength ripened, tragedy struck: a truck crushed his body, breaking his neck, stealing his breath. He could have departed this life. But he chose to remain. Others still needed him.
In a quiet town, in conversation with an old man, he recognized his story: the warrior returned home, the hermit who had tasted silence, the healer who now lived from essence. He no longer needed to prove, strive, or display his intellectual passion. His task was simpler, deeper: to guide, to mirror, to help others awaken to what they already are.
And so, the waterfall of spiritual energy flows still, unceasing, abundant, descending through body, breath, heart, mind, and spirit. His life is no longer about seeking, but about resting in original essence.
This is the teaching of the Urban Healing Temple: liberation is not elsewhere, but here, in the silent fullness of being.
His arc revealed:
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The Ground of Body: life as temple, abundance as choice.
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The Flow of Energy: breath as a channel of grace, not effort.
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The Mind as Mirror: emotions passing like clouds, no longer binding.
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The Wisdom Within: silence as teacher, intuition as guide.
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The Return to Essence: service without identity, presence without striving.
At last, the hero understood his journey. He had been a thinker, poet, warrior, healer. But beyond all roles, he was essence, original, untouched, whole. He walked homeward on a simple road. Along the way, he met his soul companion and listened to stories of his own life, reflected like the surface of a still pond.
In that reflection, the whisper of truth arose:
“The cycle is complete. Service remains. Rest in essence. Flow as the waterfall. Be the temple.”
Reflective Stories
Each story draws upon this universal message in a way that awakens healing across many dimensions of life. As people heal, they discover that their journey is not only about personal transformation but also about serving others. In offering compassion and guidance, they uncover deeper peace and bliss, one that allows them to remain grounded in their bodies while fully aligned with their spiritual essence.
Chapter 1: The Brother and the Lamp
A man once carried a heavy heart. His sister was ill with Alzheimer’s, and she would not listen. Her husband, exhausted by the weight of her illness, had surrendered to despair. Doors were closed. Help was refused. In his own suffering, the man felt powerless, unable to console his sister, unable to console himself.
In search of solace, he came to the Urban Healing Temple. There, he heard the story of a seeker whose life spanned war, study, service, and solitude, a life shaped by suffering, refined by practice, and illuminated by essence. The parable described a man who learned that true healing is not in control, nor in mastery, but in the faithful tending of one’s own life, the patient cultivation of awareness, and the quiet service of presence.
The brother listened, and in the silence that followed, he spoke of what he had learned: the dangers of spiritual indifference, the traps of attachment, and the deepest question of all, “Why is being alive so important to me, here, in this moment, in this suffering?” To help him understand, the practitioner told another story, one within the parable: the Parable of the Lamp in the Window.
There was a man who lived in a village darkened by endless storms. His sister grew ill, and her house was swallowed in shadow. He carried a small lamp and walked to her door. “Let me in,” he said. “I bring you light.” She refused. He turned to her husband, exhausted, and asked him to place the lamp upon the table. He refused as well.
The man returned home, lamp in hand, heart heavy. At last, he placed the lamp upon his own window, saying, “If they will not receive it, let it at least shine into the storm.”
The lamp could not save his sister, nor her husband, yet over time it became a beacon for others, travelers lost in the storm, seekers in darkness, guiding them to shelter, warmth, and hope. The man realized, finally, that the lamp was never his to place in another’s home. It was his to tend, faithfully, where he stood.
This simple truth carries profound wisdom: life cannot be imposed upon others, yet it can be offered, illuminated, and tended with care. We cannot force change or lift the burdens of others, but we can cultivate presence, maintain our inner light, and allow it to ripple outward, often in ways we cannot predict.
The brother understood that his suffering was not meaningless. Spiritual indifference could transform into mindful presence. Attachment could become a generous offering. Despair could become purpose. Most importantly, the question of why life matters, his own life, here and now, became a gateway to awakening. Life itself, in its simplest form, is a lamp to be tended. To shine faithfully, even in darkness, is to honor the gift of existence.
Reflection
We are all, in a sense, the brother and the lamp. We encounter suffering we cannot fix, people we cannot save, and circumstances beyond our control. And yet the measure of a life is not in what we can force, but in how we tend our own light, how we bear witness to the storm, and how we let our lamp shine, however quietly, in the world.
To live fully is to nurture this light. To serve without demanding response, to be present without expectation, to love without attachment, these are the acts that transform suffering into grace. The lamp burns, and through its steady flame, hope, clarity, and healing touch lives far beyond the window it occupies.
Chapter 2: Embracing Community as Family
A man came to us carrying a heavy burden of fear. Recently diagnosed with colon cancer, he worried that the disease had already spread before the doctors could intervene. With no family to lean on, he felt utterly alone, haunted by thoughts of his own mortality. In this solitude, he reached out to the Urban Healing Temple, not knowing what he would find, but hoping that someone, somewhere, might help him quiet the storm within.
He was introduced to the Parable of the Urban Healing Temple, a story of suffering transmuted into wisdom, of struggle giving way to service. The parable spoke to him of resilience, of a life tested by trials yet guided always by a greater reality. He realized that just as the hero in the parable discovered strength in silence and purpose in hardship, his own journey through fear could open a doorway to deeper healing.
The Temple community did not leave him to face his fears alone. We gathered in vigil, lighting candles, burning incense, chanting, and holding meditation for his healing. Night after night, the space was filled with intention, silence, and prayer. Though his blood family was absent, he was astonished to find himself surrounded by a family of spirit, strangers whose compassion dissolved the walls of his isolation.
He later told us that the simple act of knowing he was being held in love gave him peace no medicine could provide. His body responded. His recovery was swifter than expected. And when the shadow of cancer began to fade, something else emerged: he no longer saw himself as a man without family. The Urban Healing Temple had shown him that community can arise wherever love is practiced, and that kinship can be chosen, not only inherited.
Reflection
The Parable of the Urban Healing Temple teaches us that suffering is not the end but the threshold to transformation. The man feared death and abandonment, yet in reaching out he discovered the essence of the Temple: that healing is both personal and collective. Just as the hero of the parable learned that true practice is not in retreat but in the weave of human living, so too this man learned that healing is not found in isolation but in connection.
His story whispers a truth: when fear threatens to close us in, the courage to open ourselves allows love to enter. Community becomes family, and healing flows where compassion is shared.
Chapter 3: Returning to Balance
In her youth, she had been a healer, a woman others turned to for strength, wisdom, and care. But life tested her in ways she could never have prepared for. After thirty years of marriage, her husband left her for a younger woman. The betrayal tore open not only her heart but her very sense of self.
Though her mind could reason through the loss, telling herself to let go, to release him, to move forward, her body would not forget. Her grief lived in her muscles, her breath, her bones. She felt caught in an endless cycle of fight, flight, and freeze, unable to rest in her own being. The loneliness was unbearable, and she turned to alcohol to dull the ache of despair.
When she came to the Urban Healing Temple, her suffering was written not just in her words, but in the way her body carried her pain. We listened, not only to her voice, but also to the whisper of her ancestors and guides, who revealed that her strength had not vanished, only hidden beneath her grief. She was offered the Parable of the Urban Healing Temple, a story of trials that do not end a life but deepen its purpose.
The Temple held her through presence and compassion, surrounding her with support as she sought healing. Slowly, she released her dependence on alcohol and returned to practices that nurtured her body and spirit. In time, she found balance, not by clinging to what had been lost, but by loosening her grip on the attachments that had kept her bound to suffering. What remained was something freer, quieter, and more luminous: a soul preparing to rest in its original essence.
Reflection
The Parable of the Urban Healing Temple reminds us that suffering is not a sign of weakness but a threshold to wisdom. This woman’s grief was real, her trauma embodied, her despair consuming. Yet, like the healer in the parable who endured storms and loss, she too discovered that within the pain lay the seeds of transformation.
Her story reveals a simple truth: healing is not the absence of loss, but the freedom from clinging to it. When we release the attachments that bind us, we return to balance, to presence, and to the essence that is untouched by betrayal or sorrow.
Chapter 5: Freedom Beyond the Past
A woman had always been drawn to spirit, a woman of deep intuition and quiet strength. Yet her life had been marked by pain. Again and again, she found herself in relationships shadowed by abuse. Though she fought heroically to shield her children and ultimately broke free from violence, the scars remained.
Her heart longed to let go of the past and embrace her full potential, but her body remembered every blow, every betrayal. Fear built a wall around her spirit, a wall that refused to trust, even when safety finally surrounded her. In moments of solitude, she carried both her victories and her wounds, unsure if healing was truly possible.
For a year, she worked closely with a facilitator at the Urban Healing Temple. With patience and tenderness, she was invited to revisit the Parable of the Urban Healing Temple, a story where suffering does not end the journey but transforms it. Slowly, she began to see her own reflection in the hero of the parable: one who had endured storms, betrayals, and losses, yet discovered wisdom and service on the other side.
Through steady practice, community support, and her willingness to face the wounds that lingered in her body and mind, she learned to trust again. The wall of fear softened. Her children saw her change and began to heal with her. Eventually, she stepped into a new calling, using her story and her strength to guide others on their paths of recovery. Love, once distorted by pain, returned to her in its truest form, through a kind and compassionate partner who met her heart with respect.
Reflection
The Parable of the Urban Healing Temple reminds us that the past is not a prison but a teacher. This woman’s journey reveals that healing is not about erasing what has happened but about transforming it into wisdom and strength. Her suffering became the soil from which compassion and service could grow.
Her story offers a healing message: when fear builds walls, trust and practice become the keys to freedom. By releasing the weight of the past, we not only reclaim our own wholeness but also open the way for others to heal beside us.
Chapter 6: The Altar of Awakening: Where Silence Meets Love
When members of the Urban Healing Temple moved the statue of Jesus out of sight, it was not a rejection of Christ but a shield from the pain of past wounds, memories of confusion, misuse, and misunderstanding around Christ Consciousness. Jesus sat quietly in the back room, unseen by the eyes, but never absent from the heart. His presence lingered, like a flame burning steadily in silence.
And then, one day, today, the group agreed to move him into the Buddha room, a space of openness and shared reverence. There, on the altar, among sacred texts, Benito’s book, Cybernetics of consciousness, surfaced unexpectedly, and as its pages fell open to 114–115, it was as if his words were alive, speaking directly into the moment. He wrote of sati, the practice of bare attention: the refusal to react, the willingness to simply be. In the silence of non-reaction, anger and fear dissolve, and in their place, something greater emerges: peace, compassion, tenderness. This is not an escape but a transformation.
Benito calls this awakening the next stage of sati, a consciousness free from the conditioned mind, suffused with love, compassion, and intuitive awareness. And here, East meets West. What the East names vipassana or buddhi, Christianity recognizes as Christ Consciousness, a love that forgives even while being crucified, a peace that holds steady in the face of insult, a truth that needs no defense.
For the Urban Healing Temple, this recognition becomes a bridge of healing. The Buddha room is now also the Christ room, not through theology, but through shared presence: the same light of awareness expressed in different forms. In practicing sati, the community learns not to relive the old wounds of judgment or betrayal, but to dwell in the silence that heals them. In this silence, Jesus is no longer hidden in the back room, nor is the pain of the past in control. Instead, both Buddha and Christ radiate the same invitation: to rest in awareness, to forgive, to be reborn into love.
Thus, the group’s journey mirrors the teaching: from silence, to peace, to compassion, to awakening. Sati becomes Christ Consciousness; Christ Consciousness becomes healing awareness. And the altar, once fragmented, now holds unity.
Reflection
In moving Jesus from the shadows to the altar of shared reverence, the Urban Healing Temple did more than rearrange a statue; it reclaimed the presence of love that had always been quietly enduring. Here, East meets West, Buddha meets Christ, and the distinctions of form dissolve into the unity of awareness. In the practice of bare attention, in the stillness of sati, old wounds lose their power, and hearts open to the gentle clarity of compassion. The altar no longer divides; it illuminates. And in this illumination, we learn that healing is not a matter of belief or dogma, but of presence, of resting fully in awareness, forgiving what cannot be changed, and allowing love, steady and unbounded, to awaken within us all.
Special Thanks to Benito F. Reyes from Urban Healing Temple 8-24-25. Also, thank you, Thor Reyes. This sits next to Christ to remind us to rest in awareness, to forgive, to be reborn into love.