Medicine Buddha

My patient and friend Dawn studied Buddhism in Nepal many years ago and has practiced diligently ever since. One of her teachers from there, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, does a great deal of traveling and was recently in Santa Fe, where she was able to see him. At her next appointment, she brought me a card depicting the Medicine Buddha, which he had blessed. She said that she knew it was supposed to be for me.

 Here is a similar depiction:

When Dawn put the card into my hands, it seemed to be vibrating, as if it were alive. Lama Zopa’s blessing and intentions seemed to be totally, intensely present still. I had been having an extremely hard time that day, and nearly burst into tears at the generosity and kindness of this gift, which came to me precisely when I needed it most.

But strangely, despite having heard of him many times, and despite the obvious connection to my line of work, I knew nothing of the Medicine Buddha. Those of you who are familiar with my business name or have been to my office know of my love for the image of Kuan Yin and my aspiration to bring some particle of her vast compassion to my work with my patients. I had been content with her, and perhaps it hadn’t yet been time for me to confront this colleague of hers in the cosmic healing arts. Yet it feels now as if he may have always been there in the background.

As soon as I got home, I began reading about this Buddha, Bhaisajya in Sanskrit. I learned that he is the original doctor, the archetype of doctors I would say, though Buddhism does not use that term. I saw that in his left hand he holds a bowl like those used to mix medicines since ancient times, containing the healing he offers to all those who need it.

The article that made the most connection for me was this, though it unfortunately contains a tangle of confused symbols where diacritical marks didn’t make it onto the website properly:
https://www.wildmind.org/mantras/figures/bhaishajyaguru-medicine-buddha-mantra
An essay included in this article touched me profoundly. The author, Srivandana, has struggled all her life with poor health, but she perseveres in her practice and her faith that she can transcend the ills of her body. “I have raged against the certain knowledge that there is no physical healing for me in this lifetime,” she wrote, bringing me again to tears.

Srivandana wrote about the myrobalan fruit that Medicine Buddha holds in his right hand. Used commonly in Ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine, it is called He Zi in the Chinese pharmacopeia, where I learned it as a relatively minor herb. Bitter and sour, it can stop dysentery and cough and restore the voice. What Srivandana described was a terrible tasting medicine, so bitter that one recoils from swallowing it. Yet once one faces the need for it and gulps it down, it brings ease, joy and understanding.

This is the medicine, as Srivandana experiences it:
  “The law of impermanence is the most beautiful thing I can possibly imagine. I have made a practice of contemplating impermanence and recognizing that everything is insubstantial and therefore painful and unsatisfactory. Reflecting on impermanence, allowing it to permeate every pore, every particle of my consciousness, rocks me to the core of my being. I feel as though I have been turned inside-out. Yet the law of impermanence is full of potential and is permeated by the beauty of change. The knowledge that this change lies in my hands, and that I can take responsibility for its coming into being, is hugely empowering.

“The medicine of the Dharma has to be drunk by the gallon, bathed in, fully absorbed. The vast sea of Dharma stretches into the distance, but a single drop can go a long way. Bhaisajyaguru also points out the danger of finding oneself in a void of impermanence, without beauty and without sustenance. I need the beauty that I touch through making art and listening to music, through communicating with spiritual friends; as well as the sustenance gained from meditation, in particular meditation on the sublime abodes of positive emotion, or brahmaviharas.”

Soon I had my own experience of this medicine and the challenge of drinking it. It was the morning after I had a lengthy late-night counseling session with my mentor Mendy Lou Blackburn, the day after a day of unusual depression and anxiety. As I came to consciousness, still half-dreaming, I was contemplating a mental image of Bhaisajyaguru, thinking about what I had read and heard. The image seemed to come alive, and the kindly being held out the bowl toward me, asking me to drink. I took the bowl into my own hands and put it to my lips, but could not make myself take the liquid. After some struggle and some encouragement from him, at last I drank.

I felt a rush through my body and wondered if it was the transformation I was asking for. Something did feel different and better. I asked exactly what the medicine was, what it was meant to do, and I received an answer that was broad and deep. I was planning to write about it right away, as it seemed clear at the time, but I can’t remember what I was told. I know something got into my head that made perfect sense, but then it sank out of my conscious sight. I’ve been told that Medicine Buddha’s teaching is like that, that it acts at a deeper level than the objective mind and can be hard to describe. As far as I can recall it was along the lines of what Srivandana wrote, about change lying in my hands and taking responsibility for my reality coming into being, and the wondrous knowledge that this is possible.

Mendy Lou said that the illness is resistance and the cure is letting go, knowing that all is provided. Or something like that. Part of the little I recall had to do with acceptance of what is, at the same time that one realizes the power to create and transform.

And on so many levels I have been needing a medicine to restore my voice, so greatly needing that.  At the time I didn’t realize that this is a major function of the herb Bhaisajya carries.

I didn’t “believe in” the Medicine Buddha any more than before. I didn’t feel that I had been in contact with a “real” entity in real time, but rather that I was in a dream sort of state and my own mind entirely constructed the encounter with Bhaisajya. But a couple of weeks later I was treating another patient who keeps up her Buddhist practice, and I put on the recording of the Medicine Buddha mantra in Tibetan that I’ve linked below. Mendy Lou came in near the end of the treatment and was sitting in the waiting room, also listening to the chanting. When she and I are in the same space, it seems, it’s easy for all sorts of things to manifest, and I suspect her influence had something to do with what I saw. As I sat with my hands near my patient’s head, lapis blue arms appeared just outside mine, cradling me and adding their own nurturing energy. I felt Bhaisajya’s strength and gentleness, and he seemed at least as real as I.

As usual, I don’t know what this means, but I accept it gratefully.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUJucA-mrgE
Medicine Buddha Mantra:
 I came across this accidentally, but at just the right time, and I have drunk it in as if it were critically needed nourishment, listening over and over, singing and playing it. I don’t know why it has such a deep effect. When I’ve played it during treatments my patients have reported a profound experience.

Here is a rather technical article about Medicine Buddha and his relationship to other celestial beings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhaisajyaguru


Myrobalan/He Zi: http://www.chineseherbshealing.com/terminalia-chebula/

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Inedia, Molecules, and What Are We Made Of?

While working on something else, I came across this page I’d written in 2008 while in the midst of taking a seminar in Richard Bartlett’s “Matrix Energetics.”  It explores some ideas I want to develop soon in these posts, so I think I’ll just submit it in its original form for the moment and whet your appetite.

Yesterday, before the intro to the Matrix seminar, I was reading an article on “breatharianism” or “inedia,” in which people go for very long periods of time without taking in physical nourishment and yet stay alive and healthy. The article, written by psychologist Jon Klimo, did not say that this is necessarily possible or true, but since there are recorded cases that are well studied and seem convincing, it asks whether there might be some kind of theoretical framework that could allow for this phenomenon. Klimo uses zero point energy, among other concepts, to offer possibilities.

(Seems like Chopin was attempting inedia at times, but I think being able to breathe well is a prerequisite if you are planning to live on air….)

I was thinking, “This sounds a lot like what we’ll be talking about in the seminar.” And right then I saw the Matrix Energetics book listed near the top of the bibliography. I’ve had the article for a couple of months, but didn’t read it till now, a time when it fits right in with the rest of what I’m thinking about. This is always happening to me. Sometimes the universe is so nice and convenient.

The inedia article, in part, concerned what humans are made of and what really happens when we take substances and energies into our bodies. This led me to ask a question I hadn’t thought about in a long time: What is Fryderyk made of? He doesn’t have molecules these days—or does he have them, but in a different form? (Just bear with me for a minute here.)

Not that we understand what molecules are made of. They certainly aren’t made of anything solid; if you cut them into smaller and smaller pieces, you find that there aren’t any pieces. There’s just something that could perhaps be called energy, though that’s not a particularly good term for it. I’m not sure what the fashionable term is for the fundamental Stuff at the moment. We could call it Qi, which would be fine with me; Oriental medicine says that everything is made of Qi, and that concept fits my experience. When I was a Rosicrucian, I learned to call it Nous. Whatever. Now we know that what we always called “vacuum” and thought was empty is actually seething with activity, serving up particles of all sorts at every instant and destroying them just as quickly, so that we don’t notice unless we look for them in the right way. “Solid” matter appears and disappears effortlessly and instantaneously, matter and energy transform into one another, and everything seems to do whatever it damn well pleases.

One of the first things Richard Bartlett told us in the seminar was, “You think you matter, but you don’t, ‘cause you aren’t!”

I always thought of Fryderyk and his ilk as being made of Qi, like the rest of us, but missing that one layer that appears to us as matter. In terms of energetic perception, a “dead” person feels very much like a “live” person to me—indistinguishable, in fact, if I am not in direct contact with the Earth-plane person’s skin or clothing.  (One of the entertaining aspects of being in a room containing 560-plus individual humans is noticing the different flavors of their personal fields—otherwise, I pretty much hate it. Some people I would like to have sitting next to me all the time, others I want to get away from as soon as possible, and most, strangely, I don’t notice at all unless I put forth some special effort. The field of the group as a whole, as you can imagine, is pretty overwhelming.)

But we don’t know what Qi is either. Some of the people writing on healing, Qi Gong, etc. talk about electromagnetic energy, but Qi can’t be electromagnetic. I wish it were, since that is something we sorta kinda understand, but it it’s not. It can’t be, because the strength of electromagnetic fields falls off rapidly with distance, but Qi can be shown to act at seemingly impossible distances. These effects are measurable. While there are models within physics that involve action at a distance, the EPR paradox and Bell’s theorem, as far as I know they do little or nothing to explain phenomena like remote healing. They also don’t explain the observed effects, also at a distance, of purely mental interventions like prayer or positive intentions. So saying that everything is made of Qi doesn’t resolve the mystery.

This matter (no pun intended) of Qi-at-a-distance is bothering me increasingly. It’s an obvious reality that can’t be avoided, yet it doesn’t fit known physical laws. Which has to mean we don’t know all the laws yet, because everything is ultimately physics. I don’t know what kind of research strategy could deal with it, and I don’t have the math(s) to even begin to think about this like a physicist might. If physicists were thinking about it, which only a few of them are willing to do. (David Bohm and Nick Herbert deserve mention.)

Metaphysics is physics too, just physics we don’t understand so well yet. I don’t think there’s really a “meta” anything, except maybe metaphor. And whatever Fryderyk is made of, it has to be physics.

One way, one fruitful way, to look at reality is that it is made up of interacting fields. Unfortunately, that is likely to bring us back to electromagnetism, but for a moment let’s postulate that everything is information. Dr. Bartlett said that we were working with fields of information, that that is what we are. Ah, I thought, Fryderyk is a field of information. I think that’s probably the closest I’ve gotten to the truth of the situation. But what is information made of? I have no idea.

Parallel in No Time

Eckhart Tolle declared, “Suffering needs time.”  This pithy statement implies that any event in time is subject to suffering, because time is an illusion and we are bigger than it.  He goes on to say, “it [suffering] cannot survive in the now.”  Tolle has mined gold here.  Why make a big deal about events in time?  Why not dive into the eternal now moment and let time take care of itself?  As Ram Dass said in his classic book Be Here Now, “If you can be here now, when ‘then’ becomes ‘now,’ you will have superconsciousness and superawareness and know exactly what to do.”  – Alan Cohen, in his December 2012 newsletter

Christine visited the other day, and at one point she tried to help me get unstuck from a vexing issue by means of the Matrix Energetics techniques she’d been practicing.  She simply sat drumming her fingers on the table and doing apparently nothing else.  A wave of warmth washed over me, and suddenly the air began to shimmer and appear to move.  It was as if the very molecules were trying to shift.  And yes, my problem shifted too.

You’ve been reading my blog and similar stuff, so you know, don’t you.  You know that the world we perceive is only that, the world we perceive.  No more, no less.

One of the most obvious and all-encompassing features of this world is linear time.  The cusp of the new year, right now as I write, is one of the moments in which time, marking its passage, putting a dot at a certain spot, seems particularly significant.  But there is no absolute, one-way time that is running at the same rate and in the same order for all observers, no matter what we think we see from our limited vantage point.

Recently, in his blog at White Crow Books, Michael Tymn presented an interview with Julia Assante, PhD, author of The Last Frontier.  Dr. Assante made this striking comment:  “Individual reincarnations co-exist in the afterlife.  And they can co-exist in this life too.  I know a woman who is a reincarnation of me.  We both have the same past-life memories and share one future-life memory, even the name of the man we are going to be, a man named Bernerd, who lives about 200 years from now.*  Our other-life memories were already known to us before we ever met.  She and I simply split up into two bodies.”

Dr. Assante answered another question with this:  “You might already have guessed that I’m not much of a supporter of spiritual evolution in which we progress sequentially.  I know I have had past incarnations in which I was more advanced than I am now.  And nearly everyone is more ‘spiritually evolved’ as children than as adults.”

And the audience went nuts.  Even some folks who have read and written extremely widely on spiritual matters got quite upset at the idea that the spirit might not develop steadily in a forward direction through linear time.

All I can figure is that although they might have read spiritual classics, they’ve completely ignored the past century of physics. I don’t think they’ve consumed a lot of science fiction, either; if they had, time travel, realistic or not, would be part of their normal mental wallpaper.  I don’t mean to be too hard on these folks.  This is difficult stuff, and our brains are not built well for contemplating it.

Why is it that the illusion of linear time keeps us so entirely in its thrall, even though it’s a partial truth at best?  The best explanation I’ve seen is in Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.  It is simply that the apparent arrow of time exists because of entropy.  Spilled coffee doesn’t jump back into the cup.  Rocks don’t fall upward.  Disorder inevitably increases.  Our physical brains follow this law, so our thoughts go along.

On the other hand, I can play pieces that I couldn’t in the past, implying some sort of progress through time.  On the third hand (which sure would be useful at the keyboard), if what appear to be past-life memories really are, “I” used to play far better than I do now.  But if we can add a fourth hand (and now try duets), that doesn’t matter because the larger entity can push itself into any part of the time/space continuum, so that a “more advanced” model could appear in an earlier era.

A terrific pop-physics program on PBS, The Elegant Universe, hosted by physicist Brian Greene, used the metaphor of a gigantic loaf of bread to represent an Einsteinian view of spacetime.  The angle at which you slice across the loaf determines whether a given event appears to happen before or after another.  Cause and effect goes out the window.  All of the bread is “already” there, waiting for the observer to taste one slice or another.  (You should watch that series.  Seriously.  Even if you aren’t into the science, the visuals are trippy and incredible.)

And as if that weren’t enough, there may be infinitely many other loaves.  In the views of not only Hugh Everett’s venerable Many-Worlds Interpretation but also some modern formulations of string theory, everything that can happen does, somewhere or somewhen.  Some physicists postulate that there could be infinitely many of each of us, almost the same but just slightly different, because in an infinite number of universes, there are infinite possibilities for similar events and beings to be repeated.

The trouble is that even if this is true we can never test for it or prove it; all those universes are hopelessly divided and closed off from each other, forever and ever.  But that hasn’t stopped some mystics from exploiting the idea– mere physical characteristics of the universe(s) are no barrier to the mind.  As Lucy Gillis put it, “The laboratory of parallel universe experimentation may not lie in a mechanical time machine, à la Jules Verne, but could exist between our ears.”  She quoted physicist Fred Alan Wolf: “. . . the possibility exists that parallel universes may be extremely close to us, perhaps only atomic dimensions away but perhaps in a higher dimension of space – an extension into what physicists call superspace. Modern neuroscience, through the study of altered states of awareness, schizophrenia, and lucid dreaming, could be indicating the closeness of parallel worlds to our own.”

A self-improvement teacher in his 80s, Burt Goldman, has based his entire system on this concept.  When he wants to learn to do something new, he imagines a parallel self that already has that skill.  In his mind, he goes to visit that self and minutely observes how he does what he does, then returns to normal reality able to do the same.  In this way he has taught himself to paint in various styles, to play the piano, and more.  He just immediately knows how to do it.  I’m afraid that so far I haven’t had any success trying this.  I’m intrigued, though, and willing to believe that all human capabilities are somehow “out there” in the Field and that we can capture them if we understand how.

I was introduced to the concept of parallel lives many years ago in the Seth material, so it’s been part of my mental background for much of my life.  Seth postulates something very much like Everett’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, that whenever there is more than one possible way an event can to occur (as when a particle “decides” to go through one slit or another during an experiment), all the possible outcomes do in fact occur.  The difference with Seth’s way of looking at things is that he says we choose, consciously or unconsciously, which reality is going to manifest for us, rather than the whole thing being random and all options being equal.  “You create your reality” in this view means that you pick out what you want from among all the probable realities.  Other versions of you are doing the same, making different choices.  It’s an empowering, liberating way of seeing your life, and I think it’s very likely to be the literal truth, but it can make you a bit dizzy and perhaps distressed if you think about it for very long.  All That Is, as Seth calls it, the multiverse, is awfully large.

Seth also concurs that there is no linear time, that everything happens “all at once.”  He says that events are organized in our larger consciousness according to their intensities rather than according to which happened when.  I think we can get a taste of this even in our mundane minds, when we say we remember some long-past but crucial event “as if it was yesterday.”

Most of this discussion has been about advancement in skills and knowledge rather than about fundamental spiritual development.  I am willing to accept Dr. Assante’s assertion that we may be more spiritually evolved as children than as adults, because as we go through our temporal lives more and more junk gets into our heads and obscures what’s important.  But I also would like to think that many people transcend that accretion of junk and come to greater awareness as they age.  At any rate, it seems to me that spiritual development, whatever we may make of that term, is more a matter of opening to the awareness of what we already are than about adding anything new to ourselves.  We can forget temporal things we’ve learned– for example, a couple of years ago I could speak a little Polish, and now I can’t– but I would like to think that what we gain in awareness and understanding in the core or our being stays with us, even if we lose aspects of brain function.

When I described this post-in-progress to my mentor Mendy Lou Blackburn on New Year’s Eve, she said that what the spirit does in its “evolution” is to expand, rather than to progress in linear time.  That matches what I’ve been shown in my own visions.  The concept of expansion still implies a movement through time, but it also suggests a constantly growing network of connections, like a fractal tree in multiple dimensions, ramifying into more and more strands throughout the universe as entities become more aware and more complex and richer with experience.  Not a line, but a web, no beginning or end.

Is that woman who shared memories and future impressions with Julia Assante truly the other half of her, housed in another body?  I don’t know.  There are so many ways two human beings could conceivably share such connections.  Since all of us are essentially the same Mind manifesting in multiple bodies, the question may be moot, and I’m not worrying too much about the exact answer.

*It’s comforting to think that humans may still be here in 200 years!

Mike Tymn’s post:  http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/entry/the_last_frontier_an_interview_with_author_julia_assante_ph.d/

Lucy Gillis, who I found while looking for Seth references, is at www.dreaminglucid.com

NOVA’s The Elegant Universe:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/elegant-universe.html

Burt Goldman’s website:  http://www.quantumjumping.com/articles/parallel-universe/parallel-universes-theory/

Jane Roberts’ Seth material fills a number of worthwhile books.  I reread parts of  The Nature of Personal Reality while preparing to write this post.  Nowadays “you create your reality” is old hat, but when this was written it was fresh, even shocking, and it’s still great food for thought today.

We Are the 100%

“We are the 100 percent, performing our unique roles in some cosmic, karmic drama whose outcome and purpose lie forever beyond our understanding. In other words, we’re all in this together….
    “…The Hindu master Ramana Maharshi put it even more starkly. When asked how one ought to treat others, he replied, ‘There are no others.’”
  –Darrin Drda at RealitySandwich.com

“Pray as if all depends on God and act as if all depends on you.”  –as quoted by Alan Cohen in his newsletter

“As a cautious optimystic, I say that contrary to the way things appear, the sky is not falling. It only looks that way because we are ascending. Yes, thanks to the evolutionary upwising and the recently declared state of emerge ‘n see (where we emerge from fear and separation and see how we are connected), we humans are better able to rise to the occasion than ever before.“
“May we cohere as a species around uncommon common sense and the virtues and values the vast majority of us hold in common.  May we use our polarities as a dynamo to evolve in a spiral instead of going around in circles.” –Swami Beyondananda

“If you come from a negative place, you’ll never accomplish very much, but if you start out positive, you will see the possibilities.” –Rey Garduno, Albuquerque city councilor, at a recent “Rebuild the Dream” meeting

[11/15/11  Since I wrote this, we’ve had an intense couple of days of protesters being arrested in cities around the country.   In New York City, members of the press were prevented from reporting on the fray, and some were even roughed up and/or arrested themselves.  It ain’t easy taking action at the moment, at least this kind of action.  But if you mess with reporters, they immediately go off and report on it.  There is pushback from the protesters and at least one judge, too.  Interesting times.  Stay tuned.]

Recently I found myself in the midst of a controversy between some friends about how best to respond to all the evils in the world.  One side held that God has everything under control and everything is already perfect, and all we need is to realize that– we don’t need to do anything.  The other felt that we should be doing everything we can with our own thoughts and intentions to make positive change.  I often find myself focused on actions in the physical realm, despite my spiritual bent.  What path should we choose among those options?

I’ve touched on these issues in my previous posts “How I Know the Material World Isn’t” and “Everything is OK. No, Really.”  I know that the “real” world of matter is largely (if not entirely) illusory and that what is actually going on is behind or beneath what we normally perceive.  That’s been more than adequately proven to me.  Everything is ultimately in the mind, or rather, in Mind, which is fundamental.  Yet, the suffering that exists here on the Earth plane is real indeed, and by failing to act appropriately, we may contribute to that suffering.  We are here on this planet for some reason; this reality cannot be completely unimportant or irrelevant.  Even if Earth is only a school, as is so often said, it behooves us to do well in our classes.

Regarding the issue of God having everything in hand, I always come back to the saying, “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”  Again, I don’t see a point in our being in this world if we do not take any action.

Some people’s version of taking action is to pray and meditate unceasingly, in a monastic setting or otherwise.  I can’t argue with that, and it seems quite possible that their mental energy is providing some kind of fuel or support for the rest of us.  Still, I’m not sure why one would want to waste the opportunity of living and acting in this world, during the brief span that one spends here in each lifetime.  There is plenty of time for contemplation outside of Earth life, isn’t there?

A couple of people wiser than I have helped me begin to find my way through these questions.  One was my daughter, Lenore, who pointed out that when people take visible actions, as she has with the Occupy movement, that provides an example of what can be accomplished, and gives our intentions a focus.  If nothing public was done, those ideas might never appear in other people’s minds for their thoughts to work with.

The other smart apple was someone a bit more remote.  As I was beginning to outline this post, I received an e-mail about a new book by Michael Cocks, an Anglican clergyman in New Zealand.  During the 1970s, Rev. Cocks was part of a group that received communications from an entity who claimed to be St. Stephen the Martyr.  Stephen’s eloquent teachings happened to touch directly upon the paradox I was trying to write about:

“We have talked of self-determination, perfection and of the acceptance of all things as they are.  It could be interpreted, were we not careful, that on one hand we may have foolhardy activity and, upon the other, negligent apathy.  We should follow the middle path and that is the acceptance of our experience and what we ask for in our prayers.”

Without claiming to be personally in control of the world, we can take responsibility for the part we play in it.  To say that we are the 100% (which I wish I’d thought of myself!) is not to excuse wrongdoers or to blame victims, but to recognize that we are all cells in the body politic, neurons in the brain of all humanity, and we have all had a hand in the creation of the present reality.  When we take responsibility, we take back our power.

I’m impressed with St. Stephen, but the person I’m choosing as my main guide through the current “shift hitting the fan” is Swami Beyondananda, who recommends that we all gather under one big intent for a general upwising.  I’ll be there.

Some sources for further contemplation:

Darrin Drda’s blog:  http://www.realitysandwich.com/we_are_100_percent_mettatation_masses_1

St. Stephen:  http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaelcocks/entry/what_could_be_queerer_than_talking_with_the_spirit_of_stephen_the_martyr/

Swami Beyondananda’s Om Page:  www.wakeuplaughing.com.

The Swami’s alter ego, Steve Bhaerman, co-authored Spontaneous Evolution with Bruce Lipton, and Reuniting America with Joseph McCormick.

Lynn McTaggart’s blog, with a list of sensible suggestions: http://www.lynnemctaggart.com/blog/144-my-wish-list-for-main-street

Here are some books recommended by the Economic Reform Advocacy Group at Albuquerque’s First Unitarian Church.  I haven’t read them, but they sound potentially useful, so I’m going to include them:

After Capitalism by David Schweickart

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future by Robert Reich

Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth by David C. Korten

Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible by John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander [hey, is that his real name?]

Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country by Thom Hartmann

More Disappearances

Right after I wrote the last post about Beth’s success with her thyroid, I heard from someone who had rid herself of uterine tumors in a similar way, without having any training in visualization.  I don’t have any experiences quite like that to report about myself, but I have had the good fortune to participate in a few with my patients.  Here are some cases I’ve written about in the past couple of years:

It’s always good to have objective, immediate proof that a treatment is working.  When there are physical lumps, cysts, or tumors, and they disappear completely, that’s about as objective as it can get.  I have had three cases of patients who requested treatment for large, palpable, uncomfortable lumps in their breasts.  In one case, no change occurred after a long series of sessions with me.  In another, the patient went home after a treatment and cried inconsolably for a few days, during which time the lump gradually dissolved.  There was nothing left of it, and it never came back.

The third case was more complicated, and had an interesting conclusion.  A few years ago,  L. was having this kind of problem in both breasts.  I treated her a number of times, and the lumps in the left breast resolved well.   However, a significant one remained in the right breast, and the pain was persistent.  Her MD had recommended a biopsy, but both the history of the condition and L.’s intuition said that would be senseless and would only cause needless damage.  I concurred.

I had done everything I could think of, both in the way of needles and in hands-on work, and we didn’t seem to be making any progress.  L. had done everything she could think of from her end, too.  She told me that both she and a friend had had a sense of a spirit guide, one who was already known to her, trying to get involved.  In their perceptions, he looked like an old-fashioned Bedouin dressed in desert robes, and he was poking at the side of L.’s chest with the tip of a sword.  It didn’t appear that he was trying to hurt her, or to directly destroy the lump, but simply to bring her attention to the area.

I never saw the Arab-looking guy, but at her next appointment I was very much aware of an extra personage in the room, and L. told me that it was him.  The being conveyed to me that I should put my hands on both sides of L.’s chest and direct the Qi straight through her body, rather than concentrating directly on the lump the way I had been doing.  I was certainly open to suggestions by that time, and I did as he asked.  I didn’t feel that the “Arab” was helping me do the actual work, only that he was staying close by and observing.  I tried to stay open to anything else he might want me to know, but there didn’t seem to be anything more.  I held that hand position for a while, until there was a feeling that nothing further needed to be done.  Suddenly I had a clear vision of a beautiful, many-petaled yellow flower opening over L.’s body in the area of the lump.  It’s usual for me to perceive a burst of light or energy as a blockage dissipates, but this was unique in my experience, and made a memorable impression.

I don’t know why this method worked better than what I had done before, but the lump quickly disappeared.  As of this writing, L. has never had any more trouble in that area.

A tumor or cyst can be an accretion of emotional or psychological gunk that the person’s system couldn’t process, which seemed to be the case with the woman who cried for days while hers was dissolving.  A physical mass may also symbolize the psychological issue.  In the next story, the symbolic mass had already been removed, but the issue was still present in the patient’s body, and it expressed itself in an amazing way.

Many years ago, A. had had surgery for a large cyst in her left ovary.  This had left her with scar tissue and damage to the left side of her colon, which has bothered her ever since.  We’d been working on that area for a while, with some improvement, and with all the types of healing she had been trying, she was getting down to some deep and nasty emotional layers.  Here’s what happened at one appointment.  It was unusually vivid, almost palpable as well as visual, very dramatic, like a little movie.

A. asked me to look specifically at the area of the left ovary.  She was remembering an emotional trauma that took place around the time of the surgery, and she wanted to see what I could do with that fact.  I started doing energy work as I usually do, concentrating on the ovary.  After a few minutes a round object a couple of inches in diameter took shape before my eyes, floating over A.’s body at the surgical site.  I couldn’t figure out why I was seeing the cyst, when obviously it had been surgically removed.  Soon the cyst appeared to move toward the midline, then settled into A.’s uterus.  ???  I watched with great curiosity.  Suddenly a shadowy sort of swelling grew above A.’s abdomen.  It got bigger and bigger, ending up at the size of a full-term pregnancy.  Now I was really getting confused.  I knew that A. had a couple of grown children, and during her initial intake, she hadn’t told me about any other pregnancies.  The image I saw was telling me that the cyst had represented another child who had never come into being– the best A.’s body could do to symbolize a lost pregnancy, as if she had desired a child but had never had one.  This didn’t make much sense to me in terms of A.’s history, and besides, my interpretation of the symbolism was trite and obvious, something I might have made up.  I kept looking away and looking back, but the vision remained just the same.  It was time to report it to the patient.

It happens rather often these days that I see something quite unexpected, something that I think can’t possibly be right, and I screw up my courage and tell the patient about it, and the patient tells me why it really makes perfect sense after all.  You may have guessed what had happened in this case.  All those years ago, A. had had an abortion.  Because this lady is so thoroughly Catholic, I would never have expected that.  When I told A. that I was seeing a pregnancy and that the cyst related to that, she told me all about her situation at the time of the abortion.  There were a lot of tears; it was hard for me to deal with too.  We opened a door to healing that hadn’t been possible before.  For whatever reason, her body’s own agenda had not allowed this to come up earlier.  Now it was time.

MACROPHAGES!

 

Beth recently had a cancer scare.  She went for an ultrasound of the lumps she’d noticed in her thyroid, and one area looked quite suspicious.  The technician gave her a good look at it, greatly enlarged on the screen, and she was pretty freaked out.  It reminded her of the irregular, mottled appearance of a skin cancer lesion, and although there was no diagnosis as yet, she felt sure those cells were malignant.  A biopsy was scheduled for two weeks later, leaving her to stew in the meantime.

Early in her career as a psychologist, Beth had done training in biofeedback and visualization at a psychiatric hospital.  She’d never had such a strong reason to use those skills for herself before, but she remembered everything about how to do it.  Holding the ultrasound image in her mind, she visualized macrophages (a kind of white blood cell that engulfs invaders) flooding the area and eating up the errant cells.  She kept this up persistently through the next two weeks.

When the time came for the biopsy, the doctor kept painfully stabbing Beth’s throat, ultimately taking five samples, guided by another ultrasound scan.  He explained that he had to keep at it because he couldn’t find any of the questionable cells.  He couldn’t find anything but…

 

 

(Have you guessed yet?)

 

 

…MACROPHAGES!

According to both the biopsy and the new ultrasound image, the lesion had disappeared.  Beth sat there, a little nonplussed but pleased with herself, as various personnel peeked into the room to see the miracle patient.  She not only allowed but encouraged me to tell this story.  What else can we accomplish?