manitou

in passing chew well but see the violence therein, find the gentle way

I've been chasing this dragon for years - developing the ability to heal others. If what don Juan Mateus, Castaneda's nagual, says, we also get the benefit of whatever we're able to do for others. This is such a controversial subject, I know - and there are so many naysayers out there, even on this forum. I can even be a naysayer to myself - sometimes it seems too hard to believe, that we can actually change the dynamic of any particular malady - and my first reaction, even to my own healing ceremonies, is that 'it's just a coincidence'. But the successes are starting to pile up, and it's getting harder for me to write this all off to coincidence. In my particular case, I was exposed to Christian Science by a great aunt who was a healing practitioner when I was a young girl - she would take me to her meetings. In later life, I read much of what Mary Baker Eddy wrote - her metaphysics are exquisite, although I don't feel the need to use the Nazarene as an intermediary, as she did. I suspect that by the time she reached the end of her life, she knew that as well, but because her writings and teaching were so well established, they remained intact without the modification of not requiring Jesus as an intermediary. Just my opinion from reading what she's written. Her method utilized deep personality dynamics, and it is this modality that we use in ceremony. To figure out "why someone is manifesting something', and this assumes that we are the Manifester. Once we can tap into that mindset and use it in ceremony, I am finding that healing does actually occur. Through the years I have intermingled shamanic ceremony with this metaphysical dynamic. Not that there is anything magic in shamanic ceremony per se (perhaps there is, but if so, I don't understand it), but we use it as a vehicle in which to couch the metaphysics. It keeps the mind of the person being healed confused, so that they're not running an internal dialogue of 'this is absolutely ridiculous'. The drums and rattles work as a transport, and it seems to keep their mind more open, receptive to suggestion and reverse imprint. What I have done over the years is to try and merge everything I've learned from every tradition and meld it into a garment of my own making. I believe that I am on to something. So if anybody would like to share their healing discoveries, the mindsets they use, the methods they use, and the mindset into which they place the person being healed, would you be willing to share it here? Can we learn from each other, developing and merging our modalities so that they are the most effective they can be? I know that there are plenty of qigong practitioners here who would have much to add, and might even become even more successful in their own healing practice. Any interest?

I think you're absolutely right. If the underlying dynamic is changed, the behavioral dynamic - it may take a while for the physical manifestation to follow suit, depending on what the physical manifestation is. and yes, it all works together - the coincidences, synchronicities - like someone discovering something right at the same time, even though she'd had the problem for a long time.

Pithy is Brian's middle name.

It is a dichotomy that can't be put into words. The ability to think like a child is a product of much elimination. Like walking backwards upstream in the middle of a stream going downstream.

Especially in the case of cancer, as it's a long term dynamic that's caused it - I think the person has to be willing to change the dynamic that caused it. Something has been 'eating at them' for a long time. Perhaps it's their own feeling of control about the situation that has caused it. They have to be willing to change the dynamic for the condition to change, to give up control. I think this has to be brought into the ceremony or healing event as well. Their willingness to change. Perhaps this can be done with prayer, if this is their proclivity. Perhaps burying something symbolic into the ground, signifying their willingness to bury this tendency. At any rate, this is part of the triangulation in this kind of healing I'm talking about. It takes long distance eyes and a bit of thought to see what's needed, and a willingness on the part of the other person to change that dynamic. And for the healer to physically do something to reverse the dynamic - in the case of ceremony, to do something of a reversal (walking the other way, etc) This is best done if the person is there, physically, IMO. But if the person is not there, the sense of Time and Space being an illusion, everything being Here and Now, will suffice. the reversal ceremony can be done remotely. I agree with your observations of cancer. There is a point of critical mass with cancer that cannot be reversed. At least that has been my experience. Then the gift becomes something altogether different - to help with the final outcome and alleviate their fear of death. I explained the bardos to Mo, close to his death, and he was very interested, and seemed comforted.

I selectively decide too. Maybe our heart draws us to things we can actually do something about. I don't look for it either - and I think there's really something to the karmic sense of all of it. If we approach it from the mindset that we are all A Manifester of our own conditions, then this would follow suit. When you said 'if a healer cannot heal, should they just give up?' I think I'm discovering that I wasn't very effective at the beginning of this, but that my nature kept me trying. Maybe because of an overabundance of pain I experienced in my younger years. I find that one little success breeds a little confidence that it actually may be working - although one never really knows if it actually is working or not. And the more confidence we have in ourself as a healer, maybe the more effective we become because doubt does not get in the way. I don't know. The kundalini coming out of the ground was a real affirmation for both Joe and I. After that happened (in the healing of Lorena described above) I knew there was truly something to the opening and closing of the fabric of time and dedicating a time and space to the event. The intent, and putting the intent into action through what I'm calling a child's mind. The nagual don Juan Mateus (Castaneda) would tell him 'sometimes you get to see the outcome, sometimes you don't' (referring to healing others). And who really knows what just our aura does for those around us, if we are in a balanced and joyful frame of mind? We really can't know that either, and yet I think we all agree that there are those who make you feel like you're being held to your mother's bosom just by their peaceful presence. The 'space' we speak of here, as Steve would say. Allowing others the space to heal. And perhaps the greatest form of healing, in the sense that Dawei speaks of, is the acceptance of the outcome, particularly if that outcome is death. To have the fortune of helping someone cross over into death is something not easily forgotten - and what a beautiful gift it is to both the person dying and the person sitting with them. To have helped my father cross over is one of the greatest gifts I could have received, and I know that it eased him greatly, particularly given the tough nature of our relationship over the years. The forgiveness was mutual, and all the stuff from all the years was just not important any more. And Joe was present when Mo, our friend with cancer all throughout his body, took his last breath. Joe was seated at Mo's head and talked Mo through the last breath - not to be afraid of it. That was an amazing set of circumstances having to do with timing, etc., which I won't go into here. But a true shamanic moment that Joe will never forget, and the greatest gift that he could have given his friend. Perhaps both are healed during moments like that. I just follow the desires of my heart in this stuff, that's all - and sort of make it up as I go along. I think the biggest point to be made in this whole thread is that with practice (and not being afraid to do it) we seem to get better at it. There's also nothing fixed in cement with any of this - just follow the dictates of the heart. Try to figure out what the body is trying to say with the malady - life seems to communicate in puns and riddles and turns of phrases. These can all be figured into the triangulation. And I've found that the answers to the riddle are most often in the forefront of my mind when I first wake up in the morning, if I've been thinking about why the illness is manifesting. It's happened almost every time, even if I can't remember the dream. Somehow it aligns during the night and presents the answer in the morning. Everything can be used in the triangulation. To see where a person's heart is is sometimes as simple as seeing what they have collected around them, what they treasure. I have another situation going right now where my cousin's heart is breaking because there have been two new grandparents that have 'moved into her turf' with the grandkids (her son recently remarried and his new wife's parents are over there all the time bringing the kids presents). These kids are the crown jewels of my cousins heart, and yet she feels like she's losing these kids to these new people. She is manifesting 'invasion' all over the place, duplicating the invasion of the new grandparents - from infection in the body, to actually being burglarized in her home. She sort of wants to die right now, she is so upset that she's being left out in the cold (in her mind). she is demonstrating a 'wasting syndrome' right now, mysteriously losing her appetite and losing much weight. Needless to say, I'm doing what I can there, but the jury is out on that one. Can't do much if the desire to live isn't there any more.

This is why self-realization is such an important part of healing. The more self-aware we are as to Who we actually are, and the more we have cleared our inner awareness passageways, the better we become at healing ourselves and others. Ego is the big one, IMO. To not be a victim is another big one. To have a mindset of being a victim and thinking that life is attacking us in some way is to miss the ultimately responsibility for our own lives and our own karmic actions. Very recently, I've had the opportunity to attempt a healing on another; my brother. Ceremony for Steve This was done remotely, as he lives in California. As I had previously mentioned on another thread, he was recently diagnosed with stage 3b melanoma skin cancer. Luckily, in this case, the diagnosis was early; the early testing showed that the cancer cells hadn't lodged in any of the nodes or organs yet, that it was still 'in transit' in the blood. My brother is unaware that this ceremony took place, at least in the beginning. I did tell him about it later. Stage 3b melanoma skin cancer means that the spot of cancer has broken through the underlying skin and is now circulating in the body. It's a serious condition. I don't know how the conclusion was made, whether by blood test or by some other means. I know that slides were submitted, so it must have been blood test. When the diagnosis was first received, he was immediately referred to one of the most foremost experts in melanoma skin cancer in the country, located in Los Angeles. My first thought, as in all the others, was to try and figure out what the body was trying to say to him. What the higher self inside of him was trying to bring to his attention. I tried a combination of words and phrases - something 'getting under his skin' - that didn't quite ring a bell. I tried a few other twists of phrase, tried aligning the circumstances with what I knew to be going on in his life (I was at a disadvantage because we live so far apart and aren't really that close, emotionally) I woke up with the answer on my mind first thing next morning. What the manifestation of the skin breaking and going into the bloodstream meant, was 'Bad Blood'. This is a recurrent theme in my brother's relationships with others. He is an unforgiving man, he holds grudges forever. This tendency has caught up with him, in that the melanoma has caused Bad Blood, i.e. blood that is ridden with cancer cells. Again, it's necessary to recall that cancer is a long term dynamic, and his unforgiving dynamic has been with him since childhood. If you cross him, he ignores you forever, it seems. I've been at the receiving end of that more than once. So; the first question is always what is the body trying to say? I tried to figure out a way to counteract this bad blood dynamic with an opposite imprint. As luck would have it, Joe had placed a bottle of weed killer in the gazebo when he was working in the yard. That seemed perfect to replicate the cancer in the blood. I mixed a little weed killer in with a glass of water and set it on the table in the gazebo. Next to it, I had a glass of clear water with some petals in it (from a Dogwood tree I have named Flower Glow, after my favorite boddhisatva). during the ceremony, I had pictures of Steve on the table, a garden statue of Flower Glow, a picture of our ancestors (among which was great Aunt Esther, the Christian Science practitioner), and our deceased father and living mother. This is all done in the awareness that everything is Here and Now, so all entities were present. I also had a strainer from my kitchen in the gazebo. The ceremony was like most of the others. Native American music, circling the gazebo and beating the staff to the beat of the music, sageing the area first, singing a short chant (which is from a native American CD I own which I memorized, I have no idea what it means), lighting candles. Something to indicate an 'opening' in the fabric of time and space, and something to wind it down afterwards by blowing out the candles, etc. Walking around the gazebo in one direction, then reversing the direction with intent and stating that intention to the ceremonial entities present. The dynamic that seemed to be the most important was the concept of straining the blood and removing the cancer cells (weed killer). I did this with the weed killer water, straining it with the strainer into a bowl. The child's mind. I set that bowl off to the side. (I had also pricked my own finger with a pin and placed a drop in the bad water and the good water first, I neglected to mention, seeing as Steve and I are of the same blood). This just sort of triangulated the ceremony and brought it all together. I then placed the good water with the Flower Glow petals to replace the bad blood, right in front of Steve's picture. I rubbed a little of the water onto his picture, and drank a little of it myself. We closed down the ceremony with an Aho! after this was all done, thanking all spirits and ancestors present. We ceremonially walked up to the top of the property and buried the weed killer water in a hole, relegating it back to the Mother. Again, I wasn't going to mention this to Steve because he thinks I'm nuts anyway. But I did talk to him a few days later and he was awaiting testing from the specialist, and he did say 'say a chant for me'. So I did tell him about the ceremony. He laughed and said 'that would explain why the dandelions in my yard have suddenly died', lol. I have to tell you that the outcome is magnificent. The new testing came back, and it has been downgraded from a Stage 3b melanoma (for which he would have required much treatment) to a Stage 1 melanoma (for which no treatment is required at all, just periodic monitoring). I'm hoping it just goes away with a little more time for the reversed dynamic. Bad initial diagnosis? Maybe. Coincidence? Maybe But maybe not. They're piling up. I did mention as nicely as possible in an email to him, a few days later, to make sure he kept his relationships open, to make sure there was no bad blood involved, or there was the possibility of reactivating the dynamic. I explained the dynamic to him and what the body has been trying to say to him. It's up to him as to whether he wants to give this any credence or not.

This is very Mary Baker Eddy-ish. Although not a Christian Scientist, I have utmost respect for their healing work. I wish I had been a little older when my great aunt was alive. I have a book down in Florida I will be reading this winter, really going into the nuts and bolts of the Christian Science modality. But the 3 points you listed above are the very essence of all of it. It's how it's put into practice that intrigues me.

to this vale of tears I come in silent anguish regretting wrong form

I have tried to triangulate what the body is really saying to get our attention when we manifest a common cold. This is so elusive. As the common cold involves mucus (thinking from the inside of the body) what does mucus do? It serves as a lubricant, or it serves as a protection against infection. infection equals invasion, metaphysically. As above, so below. Is there a possibility that the body is warning of an upcoming 'invasion' of some sort (remembering that all time is Here and Now). Something coming into our life that it's trying to give us a heads up about? Something that's already invading us that we're not aware of? An invasive situation of some sort? Or, in the lubricant aspect, a cold is an overproduction of mucus. Is the body trying to tell us that we're overlubricating something in our lives? Trying to ease a situation that is better off left alone? Meddling? Kind of like putting too much oil into a car? I don't know. I've given this particular ailment much thought over the past year or so. I've not seen a solution on the common cold. Wish I could, maybe it'll come. Maybe it means different things in different circumstances. But coming from the perspective that we are The Manifester and we are manifesting our colds, it must mean something - even if we caught it from somebody else. Surely there's a karmic component to a common cold as well. It balances out something. Food for thought. Nice physical remedy, Lerner! I've found that just hanging my head over the bed for a few minutes relieves stuffiness that lasts for an hour or so. The stuffiness magically goes away. Come to think of it, maybe there's something to that - looking at the world upside down, something like that. Changing the way we're seeing things, exactly to the opposite. Doing something opposite to how we're doing it.

thank you! This is wonderful, and I'm going to mingle this in at a deeper level. A call for love - I like that!

Section 8 - The ceremonies and the ceremonial dynamics LOL. First of all, it's not lost on me that this falls under Section 8. I know it sounds that way anyway. but I'm going to lay them out here. First, let me say that I started doing these ceremonies several years ago after reading Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health. I hadn't been doing ceremony prior to that, only running of energy through my hands for minor aches and pains, things like that. Sometimes that works out well, sometimes it doesn't - depending, I think, on the mindset of both the person doing the energy run and the person receiving. If there is too much going on mentally, or too much tension in the body, i think there are blockages. But after reading Ms. Baker Eddy's incredibly metaphysical healing book, I went over to ceremony, minus the reliance on Jesus. Actually, there wasn't much Christianity to sidestep in the book anyway, very little mention. It was mainly metaphysical dynamics, much in the manner of Helena Blavatsky, Manley Hall, or other great metaphysicians. The first couple times I tried produced no results. It hadn't occurred to me yet to do the 'pretending aspect, the Mind of a child aspect' yet. My first exposure was with a little boy named JoJo who had very late stage bone cancer. I came into the scene very late indeed, probably even too late to do anything even if I knew what I was doing. I had read about him in the local paper and started sending money monthly to his family to help with medical expenses. His mom called to introduce herself one day and thank me for the money, and we became friends from that point on. We did talk about a healing ceremony, and she asked me if I would try one, although she was ultra Christian. She was desperate. I did try, using my staff and all the accoutrements, but it was unproductive. What I did miss during that first ceremony was the fact that the son was taking on his father's excruciating back pain, which I knew nothing about. It caused his father to keep working in a lumberyard, very heavy labor, and his complaints of pain would come home with him every night. I think JoJo felt bad because he felt that he was the cause of his father's pain, in that JoJo required so much medical treatment. I say this only in retrospect. I really don't think there was any time to change any dynamic at all. The second time was with a close friend of ours with cancer, named Mo. It ravaged his entire body. I knew enough by then to realize that the cancer dynamic that was 'eating him up' was his unwillingness to forgive his wife for a decision she made about how to raise their kids years back. He put his foot down at the time, said he was going to move out if she didn't do it his way (I can't remember what the family dynamic was that they were at odds about). At any rate, he did move out, they didn't get divorced but continued to live separately, and spoke to each other very seldom. He missed his children terribly, but he was too proud to renege on his original statement about moving out. That lasted for years, and it was during those years that the cancer appeared. Again, Joe and I tried several ceremonies and Mo always felt better when we laid hands on him, but he too died from the disease. We came into the game very late on that one as well. The following ceremonies are the ones that we have had success with, two are still up in the air. I have mentioned one or two of these on other threads in the past, so please excuse me if this is redundant because you read one of them somewhere else. But I'll reiterate in more detail here. Lorena's ceremony The first success we actually had with cancer was with a woman I knew from Alcoholics Anonymous, a very Catholic believer. Her name was Lorena, and she was 82 years old. Out of the blue, she developed breast cancer at that very late age, which seemed very odd to me. I decided to talk to her to see what was going on in her life, I didn't know her all that well, only from the periodic meeting I would see her at. The first thing that occurred to me was that breast cancer was most likely a motherhood issue, particularly for it to develop so suddenly in someone of that age. Motherhood, or something like motherhood, seeing as it developed in the breast. In talking to her, sure enough, her 56 year old son and his wife had recently moved in with her because he had lost his job. they had been living with her for several months, were not being terribly kind to her, and were eating her out of house and home. She was very worried about money and how she was going to support all of them, plus the fact that he had a foul temper and she was walking on eggs around him. It wasn't a good situation at all. We gave it some thought, and having recently read Mary Baker Eddy's book, we decided to try and reverse the dynamic. Lorena was amenable to a ceremony. I asked her to provide a picture of her son and his wife. I ran a picture of Jesus off the internet, as I knew that that's where her heart was. I found a pretty little wooden box and we decided to have Lorena bury the picture of her son and his wife, with Jesus' picture on top of them in the ground. Joe dug a hole toward the back of her property under a beautiful oak tree with a shovel, as the 82 year old Lorena wouldn't be able to do that. This was the first time we drew the circle with our staffs and designated a sacred area. We had Lorena step into 'her' sacred area, and asked her to invite us in, after we circled her and reversed direction.. We had brought a CD player and were playing some Native American music, as a transport. Joe did much of the ceremony, as it just sort of channeled out of him; something about having her face to the north, to the south, to the east, to the west; he's an Apache man and I don't know if this was something already inside him or not, but it was beautiful. We all took a drag from a peace pipe we had brought, and we had Lorena hold the box, gaze at the picture of her son and his wife, and ask Jesus to take care of them. She told Jesus that she was no longer capable of taking care of them. Tears came to her eyes as she placed the box in the ground and covered it with dirt. When she straightened back up, she sort of hollered in surprise, said she felt this strange jagged energy running up her legs. This was the first (and only) time I have actually had the confirmation of kundalini energy coming up out of the ground and attending a ceremony. But it certainly was a confirmation of the effectiveness of the reversal. After the jagged energy stopped going up her legs, we concluded the ceremony - can't remember how we did, but it was something simple. We had her sit down on a nearby bench, she was sort of exhausted after that. Joe, for some reason, decided to double check the appearance of the kundalini energy, and he circled one of her feet with the strap on the peace pipe. Sure enough, the kundalini energy started up her leg again. Double confirmation. She phoned us a few days after the ceremony, said she'd been to the oncologist, and that the cancer had disappeared. As this was our first success with anything of this nature, we were dumbfounded. Our first instinct was to write it off as coincidence, but the appearance of the kundalini energy kept niggling at my brain and I knew that there was something more at work here. The Mind of the Child aspect of this was in re-enacting the burying of the pictures in the box, along with the picture of Jesus, and have a childlike faith (in her mind) that Jesus was going to take care of them, and that they would be okay without her help. This seemed to be all it took in this particular case - plus, we were lucky to have caught the cancer in an early stage. Joshua's ceremony This one defies belief even more than the above one. Joshua is a 15 year old boy that we'd never met. I was taking a belly dance class with his aunt, Chrissy, who turned into a good friend of mine. She told me about the horrible thing that had happened to her nephew. Joshua had a dirt bike and was just learning to ride it. He also had a father that was a very overbearing and macho sort of man. Joshua's dad insisted that Joshua enter a motocross race in West Virginia, although Joshua didn't feel that he was ready for anything like that. He pleaded with his dad not to make him enter, but his dad made him enter the race. During the race, Joshua crashed and burned on his bike. He landed on his head, and from that point on he was quadriplegic, unable to move anything below the neck. At the time I heard about this in September, Joshua had been languishing in a full care facility since the accident in May, nearly 5 months. He was even unable to move his bowels, and his mother would have to digitally stimulate his rectum to get the peristalsis to move the matter down. It was bad. I told Chrissy about the one ceremony that Joe and I had done for Lorena, and asked her if she wanted to try one for Joshua. She immediately said yes, although she never told anyone else, even Joshua or his parents, that we did this ceremony. They are uber-Christian and would consider something like this devilish, most likely. I told her to come over to our house on a particular day, and bring a picture of Joshua. There are two components to this. One is the physical, where we had to physically bring the electrical energy or qi down his spine and into the limbs. The other component was the dynamic of resentment that Joshua must certainly have felt for his father after his dad making him enter this race and have this happen as a result. There was also the dynamic to take into consideration how very guilty his dad must have felt about all this too. Certainly that must figure into all of it as well. We did this one in the gazebo out back, a perfect setting for ceremonies. When Chrissy came over and brought the picture, I taped the picture to the gazebo so we could look at it during the ceremony. I brought out a floor lamp from inside the house and plugged it in, which symbolized Joshua's body. The lamp had a large bulb at the top, which had its own switch, and symbolized his working brain. That light would be on throughout the duration of the ceremony. The lower aspect of the light, the arms, symbolized Joshua's arms and legs, and they would remain off until such time that Chrissy switched them on. We used Chrissy as the healer here, because I figured that she is the one with love in her heart for Joshua, and that would only magnify any healing that was going to take place, if any. First, before the ceremony, I sat down with Chrissy in the gazebo and explained how this would work; that Time and Space were an illusion and that in reality Joshua was right there with us, although miles away. That we would go back in time and turn on the electricity to his limbs. That she was to stare at the picture of Joshua and when she felt the love welling in her heart for him, to turn the lower switch on. In addition to the lamp, I had placed some rice (which conducts electricity because of the silicon) in small cotton wads, one for Chrissy, Joe, and I - and after she turned on the lower lamp, we would physically rub the electricity down from the top of the lamp to the bottom, the feet. The mind of a Child. Pretending. We started the ceremony as usual, with the music and circling the gazebo, pounding our staffs on the ground and jingling the bells. I had given Chrissy a medicine bag as well, my dad's dog tags. We reversed direction, talking to 'spirit' and asking for the reversal of the dynamic. We had Chrissy step into the sacred circle, and she invited us in. As we had planned, she stared at Joshua's picture, and when she really felt the love in her heart, she turned on the lower part of the lamp. We followed up with the rice drawing the electrical energy down. I can't remember how we closed the ceremony, but we did close it in some symbolic fashion. About 5 days later I got a call from Chrissy who told me that Joshua had started to move his arms, and in fact was just beginning to be able to feed himself. I gasped at the news, one more time thinking that certainly this had to be coincidence. No way was this actually working. I began to get concerned after a few more weeks, when there was no energy getting down into Joshua's legs. I thought that maybe we needed to do a further ceremony. I had decided on one particular day to call Chrissy the next day and have her come over again for another one. This next part is what convinces me that there really is something to this. That night, before calling Chrissy the next day, I had a dream involving Lance Armstrong. I'm not a great dreamer, so to have a dream that I can recall and with this much detail is unusual. I dreamed that Lance was standing at one end of a deep swimming pool with a doctor's bag on the floor next to his feet. At the other end of the swimming pool was a young girl in a wheelchair, on a diving board. Her mission was to roll off the end of the diving board into the pool, (in her chair) and swim across the length of the pool to Lance. (I was seated off to the side of the pool in a chair, I recall, watching this scenario). She did just that - she rolled off the end of the board and was able to swim about halfway across, just using her arms. But as she approached Lance, the chair dragged her under the water. She went down to the bottom. I recall being horrified in my dream, and I was amazed that Lance didn't do anything to help her. He just stood there for a moment, then picked up his doctor's bag and walked out of the pool area. I remember saying something to the person next to me, like 'What an A-hole!', but I immediately corrected myself in my dream and said to myself, 'No! Maybe that's just what he's supposed to do!' And sure enough, the little girl bobbed up to the top of the water finally, her wheelchair left on the bottom of the pool. When I woke up, the dream was vivid, and I didn't see the significance of Lance Armstrong for a few minutes until it hit me like a pile of bricks. He was a biker, albeit a different kind of bike. Joshua was a biker. Of course the dream pertained to Joshua, although I don't know why he came across as a little girl. I realized that what the dream was telling me, was to Do Nothing. Don't do the second ceremony. Let the rest of it work itself out. Which is exactly what happened. It turns out that the balance of the healing had to do with the dynamic between Joshua and his dad. When Joshua regained movement in his arms, his father started massaging his legs with oil every day - his legs, his feet, his back. He did this fervently for about a month, and then finally, the electricity made its way down to his legs and feet! It was the very dynamic that caused this problem in the first place that needed to complete the healing of Joshua. Joshua must certainly have let go of much of his resentment toward his father, and his father no doubt was able to alleviate much of the guilt he felt about how he had made Joshua enter the race. Joshua is now back to his old self, for about a year now. With one exception. He still has a little bit of a frozen grasp in his fingers. It's difficult for him to pick things up. What this tells me is that he is still grasping onto a little resentment toward his father for all this. How could he not, particularly at such a young age? The last time I saw Chrissy, about a month ago, I told her the significance of the grasp and the non-forgiveness aspect of it, that for full healing the best thing for Joshua to do would be to start praying for his dad. Not that this would do anything for his dad, but it would soften Joshua's heart toward his dad so his hands would unfreeze. Since Chrissy hasn't told anyone at all about the healing ceremony, due to their Christian beliefs, I don't know if she's said anything to Joshua about the prayer thing. I sort of doubt that she has. Maybe Joshua will have to figure this out on his own. If that first ceremony didn't convince me that there was something to 'bringing the metaphysical into the physical by pretending like a child', this one sure did. I have a few more to mention, probably in a couple days. We're going to Pittsburgh for a few days and I may not finish this up until I get back.

two times aren't enough can't disregard the future; the unborn are here

Section 7 - What to have in your medicine bag(s) These things I put around my neck are representations to me that I am a healer. They are small tokens of important things that have happened related to healing, or related to an unusual synchronicity. I'll describe a few. One small straw bag has my father's dog tags from World War II. I use this because our relationship was so horrible over the years, and yet we were both able to come together right before he died of a stroke. This was a huge event in both of our lives, and if that relationship was healed, anything can be healed. I helped him cross over, gave him permission. My gratitude for those moments will last forever. I wear this one under my shirt close to my heart, for my own protection from all this oddness. Sometimes I will opt to place this around the neck of the person being healed instead - it brings them further into the ceremony, in their own mind. There is a hawk's feather hanging from the bottom of the bag. It just brings up a certain feeling or receptiveness to the person's mind, they often get a strange little smile on their lips as I place it around their neck in a ceremonious fashion. I wear another tiny little leather bag with a long strap around my neck as well. This one contains a gold earring from my great Aunt Esther, who was the Christian Science practitioner (healer) I spoke of earlier. She is the one that introduced me to the deep personality dynamics of healing and how to use them when I was real young. Another thing in that pouch is part of an avocado rind, in which a little mouse I had named Houdini ate a segment of a piece of avocado I had left out for him. He ate the segment out in the perfect shape of a heart. This was about 10 years ago, and the segment and the heart remain in my bag. Unfortunately, Houdini went back on his promise and ultimately did tell all his cousins that I was feeding him in a drawer, so I had to stop the practice. I'm afraid his whole family came to an unfortunate end, compliments of Joe. But it was magic while it lasted. Another thing I keep in there is a little silver bell that an old woman gave to me when I was at a yard sale at the Santa Ynez Mission in California. The place was jammed, we were walking through the parking lot, and this very old woman came through the crowd, walked right up to me, and said, 'This is for you'. The bell looked like it had been run over by a car, but I kept it just the same. It was just a strange event. Another thing I keep in my bag is a bone carving of a heron, small, maybe 3" tall, that also belonged to my great Aunt Esther, the practitioner. I keep this because herons have excellent 'vision'. Have you ever seen one of these birds fish? they will stare into the water (metaphor: the subconscious) and find what they are looking for, then stab it with their beaks. I depend on the heron to help me with seeing into the subconscious and helping me find the dynamic. In shamanic terms, this would be a power animal. So, that's the gist of the types of things in the bags. I have a few other symbolic things I've picked up over the years, having to do with synchronicities, etc - but that's the idea. It's more for me, as part of the ceremonial process, to change in beingness into a mode of being a healer at the moment.

Section 6 - Triangulating the dynamics This is where it's really helpful for the clarity of your own inner work. There are a couple components to this. The first dynamic is to figure out what the body is trying to say to the person who needs the healing. One almost has to put ones' self into the other person's body and listen to it. We have to look at the disease carefully and figure out what it is shouting out. My brother, (who will be talked about more at the end of this) recently manifested melanoma skin cancer. I had to do a little internet research on what melanoma skin cancer was really all about. His was stage 3B, and that meant that the cancer cells had broken through his layer of skin and had made their way into his blood, in transit to his nodes and organs. It's at that point, once you really understand the disease, that the triangulation occurs. You start looking for play on words, for clues, looking at other things that he is manifesting currently in his life. It all comes together in puns and riddles sometimes. I was looking at different plays on words re: the cancer breaking through to his blood. Things like...'Breaking through something?' 'Something getting under his skin?' Looking at all those little puns. And then it came to me first thing in the morning when I woke up, it must have worked out in a dream I don't remember. 'Bad Blood'. This is the second dynamic of the triangulation. A strain in his character that is longstanding and a very deep part of him. This is what he tends to manifest in his relationship with others. Longstanding bad blood, labeling people as his 'enemies' and then never forgiving them for whatever he perceived that they did to him. Cancer is a disease that is a result of a longstanding dynamic, it doesn't develop overnight to my knowledge. I knew immediately that this was the connection. The cancer cells circulating within his vessels is definitely Bad Blood. So this is the dynamic that we (Joe and I) had to work with in ceremony. I will go into the actual ceremony later and how we attempted to reverse the imprint. Just a word about cancer, as part of the triangulation. I view a cancer as the body 'eating itself alive'. If we can find the thing in life that is a longstanding thing 'eating at them', then usually we've found the dynamic to tweak. I am sorry to say that I didn't tell my brother that we were performing this ceremony. Some would call this black magic. I call it love in this particular case, maybe I'm wrong. I know how he feels about my dabblings in this area - he feels that I am a clown, he has told me so. I no longer talk to him about these things. So those two dynamics hook up, and the trick then becomes to join the metaphysical to the physical, bring As Above, So Below into alignment. And this is where the Mind of a Child becomes important. That's when the pretend tea party happens. As I mentioned, I will describe the actual ceremony at the end of this series of posts. Section 7 - Why ceremony is important In my experience, it gives a beginning and an end to the intent for healing. it gives us a window in which to have the pretend tea party. It aligns and opens the mind of the person being healed, if they are there. If they are not there (as my brother was not there), the ceremony is used to bring Here and Now together. I do it with a picture of the person, so my brother was actually at the ceremony, only photographically. It gives us a Present into which to bring the Past and the Future. It gives the Kundalini energy a time and place to manifest, which I have seen done (although not in this particular ceremony). It gives a place to bring any deity you have affinity with to the occasion. If the person being healed is a Jesus person, or a Buddhist - do have a representation of their deity there, so the strength of their belief can be included in the ceremony - otherwise it will scare them. My brother has no belief at all in anything of this nature, so I had a statue of a boddhisatva I'm close to, Flower Glow from the Sutras, on the 'altar' (which is actually a cafe table in my gazebo out back) I like to have Native American music playing at the ceremonies. Music acts as a transport, brings a certain other-worldliness to the event. Sage the air around the ceremony first. Honor the space. I always draw a circle around the gazebo first with the tip of my ceremonial staff; the space within the space is holy, I ask Flower Glow (or Jesus, if he is represented there, depending on the person's beliefs) for permission to enter the space before I enter. This is the beginning of making an imprint on the person's mind who is being healed. I always sing a chant before entering the circle; I walk around the gazebo with my staff and rattle first in one direction; I am chanting as I do this. Then I change direction and walk around the gazebo the other way, as a representation of the fact that I am reversing a dynamic. Bringing the metaphysical into the physical. The mind of a child. The pretend tea party. I think that the content of the chant or incantation doesn't matter, it's the intent. If one even makes up a song or a chant to use in ceremony, this would work as well. It's all in the mind of the beholder. We are the Manifester, so is the person being healed.

Not quite getting you here. You are talking about laissez faire? Pay no attention to the dualistic malady and let it take its own journey? Are we wrong to heal another when asked? Are we interfering in some way with the natural order of things? These are serious questions, I respect your answers.

Great response, Orion. It is for this very reason that I don't go out looking to fix anyone any more. There was a time when the desire was a product of ego. This has gone now. I do what is in front of me only, I do not charge anything for it, and I follow the desires of my heart. If something tells me strongly to do it, I do it. Many things I let pass by, unless I am asked. Then I will always try. Not all are successful if the exact dynamic isn't calculated. That's what i'll be writing about tomorrow. How to triangulate and see the dynamic. This is crucial.

Yes, deep down I am still skeptical, my mind immediately telling me that it is just strange coincidence. But isn't there a deeper part of you, even below the skepticism, that just knows that you can do it? that's it's not unattainable at all? that's what has lead me on. It is a 'gnowing' that has just been slightly out of reach until recently, maybe the past several years. I started some years ago just running energy, like the qigong sword fingers, or even the laying on of hands, synchronizing my breath with theirs, emptying my mind, trying to get them to empty theirs. I found this to work for minor things, aches and pains mostly. A great pain reliever, especially if Love is in the forefront of the mind when the energy is flowing. And the energy must be 'allowed' to flow, not 'made' to flow. Making it flow seems to involve ego and desire. Allowing the flow is something altogether different. But this is slightly off track, it's really not what I'm talking about here. I think most of us know how to allow energy to flow. Dynamic tweaking takes some figuring and developing very distant vision into another's character. This I'll write more about tomorrow.

Section 3 - There is a 'pretend' aspect to this. The Nazarene said it - that one must develop the mind of a child. Not being a Christian scholar, I'm not sure exactly what he was talking about, but I think it can definitely be applied to a healing setting. These ceremonies are similar in nature to what a child would do if they were pretending to do something. Like pretending to have a tea party, or pretending to be a cowboy roping a horse. This is what tricks the brain and changes the dynamic. The soul (or maybe even subconscious brain) doesn't seem to know the difference as to whether something is happening for real (what is real, anyway? It's all just stories!) or whether we're duplicating it in a 'pretending' sense. Either way, we get the benefit. It sounds incredible, but I've been doing this for a few years now and just starting to get some results. And this goes back to being willing to look like a fool and diminishing ego to the point where we can do that. One more word on pretending. I think if the Nazarene was anything, he was a great healer. I recall from my old Christianity days where there was one healing occasion where he stooped down and drew something in the earth. It doesn't say, if I recall, what specifically he was doing. But I'll bet he was doing something with Pretending, drawing a picture, something to bring it from the Metaphysical to the Physical. I'm just guessing, but there had to be a reason for doing that. Section 4 - As Above, So Below As above, meaning the realm of the metaphysical. This is the realm beyond religious thought, thought of any path in particular. It is the dynamics of Truth contained inherent within all paths, but without the distinctions and separation. Below, in this context, is what we observe here in the physical realm. 'So Below' refers to the manifestation of the malady the person (or the Manifester) is exhibiting. By Pretending and changing the dynamic in the metaphysical realm (the pretending part is dabbling in the metaphysical, as I see it for the purposes here) we are changing a corresponding dynamic in the physical arena, thereby changing the dynamic of the disease, or the manifestation. Section 5 - We usually have to go backward in Time with this In fact, that's the essence of it. We often speak on this forum, particularly in a Buddhist sense, of the illusion of time being linear. This is how we put our money where our mouth is, in healing. When you are performing a ceremony, make sure you are in awareness of this point. There is not really any yesterday, today, or tomorrow. Those who have lived and died are here with us Now. Those who are here Now, are here Now, regardless of distance. Those who are yet to be born are here Now. We must bring this awareness into the ceremony, in my way of thinking, for this to be effective. If you are dealing with cancer, for example, we have to go back in time to change the dynamic of the cancer manifestation. Cancer doesn't develop overnight - it's a product of time, and it's Time we must work with to reverse the disease. So make sure you are in Awareness of the flexibility of Time as you form your Intent for the healing, and as you perform the actual ceremony. Time is a tool to be held in awareness. Awareness, aligned with pretending actions, seems to be the key.

Although there aren't any actual responses to my question, I can see from the spiritual heft of the people who liked my original post that it's worth continuing the conversation, and that there is interest from serious practitioners. So I'll just continue - and please - anybody - please jump in and share your own experiences and/or opinions. i'll do this in segments, sort of. A few a day. First off, I have to say that in my opinion, that anybody can be a healer. I don't think it takes special properties or attunement at all. I think it takes using a little intuition and common sense. And as I said before, I've come to the conclusion that these healings I'll be talking about are not merely coincidence. I believe they have really happened as a result of our tweaking the dynamic within the people involved. I'll include specific cases toward the end of this for purposes of illustration and explanation of the dynamics found, and dynamics tweaked. I know there are many energy workers out there that do particular things. I have a lady friend who considers herself an energy worker and a master at Reiki and such things, and I don't understand at all what she does. I've not seen results with what she does, but on the other hand, I've never really had her work on me, other than for a headache that she wasn't able to do anything about. This isn't the sort of dynamic I'm talking about. Nor am I talking about qigong per se - I imagine that there are many modalities used on our forum that are just as effective as mine, probably more so. The kind of healing Joe and I do is a ceremonial healing, but as I said in the OP, the ceremony is really only used to give the healing a beginning and an ending, and it helps to keep the healee's mind in a state of confusion - if confused, there is not the built-in resistance to believing that anything is possible. Anything is possible. Today's segment: Section I - We are the Manifester. My whole understanding of healing is just that. That there is no separate entity to which to appeal to intermediate. This is just my approach. If that is the case, then it stands to reason that we manifest that which happens to us, and those maladies that we develop. We are 'God', in essence. We are The Thinker. This sort of takes the 'fate' aspect out of it, or a 'god's will' aspect out of it. It's all in our hands. If it's in our hands, then we have ultimate control over what happens to us. As I see it, this squares with the fact that the Sage is not bothered by wild beasts or misfortune in life. That things leave him alone. To put this in a more Buddhist concept, he is not creating new karma for himself because he has transcended himself, his reactions, his emotions, in a sense. Even his dreams are no longer reacting to karmic influence incurred during the day or the night, as explained more fully within the concept of Dream Yoga. I don't know whether kundalini activity has anything to do with the things I will write about here. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I tend to think it doesn't. I think we're all 'god', and as such, can do such things. Maybe a K-active person will find it easier to triangulate the offending dynamic inside the person, but I don't really think there's any K-magic that attends every ceremony. I've seen the K-energy attend, I've seen it not attend. Both times were successful. Both Joe and I are K-active, but I'm not sure that matters. I could be wrong. Section 2 - There is a self-realization component to this A self realization component, in that the better we know ourselves, the better we know the one we're healing. if we are all One, as a god-entity, then we are all the same inside. We all have the same primal attributes prior to the conditioning. The only thing that separates us is our conditioning, the fact that we were raised through different lenses, by different parents, with different hardships, in different points in the world and in time. much of determining why somebody is manifesting a particular condition, is to ask ourselves 'how would I feel, or what would I do in similar circumstances?' This helps us triangulate the origin of the imprint that is causing the sick manifestation and see the direction of it. It also enables us to tweak or even reverse the dynamic so that a different result is obtained. What is self-realization, as I speak of it here? It is peeling the onion of personality, going In. Trying the best we can to get back to our Original Nature. Being aware of the part we play in every circumstance in our lives. Knowing what our shortcomings are, and doing what we can to change them. Being honest with ourselves. In my particular case, what started this peeling process was the steps of recovery, wherein I had to change my personality 180 degree from the negative side to the positive side in order to get and stay comfortable as a sober person. That has been a 34 year process and continues to this day. But anybody who has remained on this forum and treasures walking their path, and particularly those few who are reading this, have certainly done their own form of self-discovery, have stopped blaming everybody else for their misfortune, and are not afraid to apologize when they mess up. It is this process alone that ultimately will enable us to transcend the ego, which is necessary for two reasons in this type of healing: 1) it allows us to risk looking like a total fool. Becoming a healer involves just that. We have to be unafraid to fail. We have to develop the mindset that we are not the egoic entity succeeding or failing; rather, we are coming from a place of Oneness with the person we are seeking to make well, and we are working in concert and Oneness. We have to be unafraid of what others think; that they will think us crazy. We have to become unafraid of being mocked, or being accused of seeming egotistical because we think we can heal. We can heal. We all can. We just don't know it. 2) The other reason, is that the ability to transcend or sidestep ego enables us to See. I mean 'See' in a Seer context. If we can see clearly our own personality plusses and minuses without placing a Good or Bad label on them, then we're unafraid to see ourselves as we actually are. If we can do that, we can see another as they actually are. Again, it goes back to the fact that we are all primally the Same, the One. We all have different ego buttons, and the trick is to file the buttons down so they don't impede the vision. That's it for today. More later. Please, I invite any comments or suggestions.

Isn't that the truth? Sometimes it's nice to reread a particularly good book because your eyes are higher than when you read it the first time. It's as though you see things when you're ready to see things. When the pupil is ready the teacher will appear.

Just for the 'woooooo' factor, my brother's melanoma cancer was just downgraded today in scope from stage 3b to stage 1, which only requires periodic monitoring. No treatment required. A far cry from what he was looking at. Waiting for more serious wisdom here....

I too think the operative word is discipline. Self discipline. It seems like any and all disciplines have their payoff, depending on what we're looking for at any given time. Need help with the body? There's the discipline of working out. Need help with internal dialogue in the head? There's the discipline of meditation, in one form. But it seems to me that they all point ultimately to the same place - the discipline of remaining vigilant over our thoughts, actions, and deeds - not in a pugilistic, self-flagellating way - but rather in a gentle discipline of awareness, the awareness that leads us from the creation of new karmic seeds. The discipline of non-judgment, which in itself is a great challenge, it is so subtle in its many forms. The discipline of staying on top of our thoughts - we can, you know - if we turn ourselves inward and stay in that awareness. The discipline of not being a reactive slave to our egos, the discipline of looking with our eyes wide open at the part we play in every exchange or disagreement. The discipline of seeing ourselves as we really are, what some would call the Christ consciousness, an observation without angst, self loathing, or pride. The discipline of service, wherein we do not put ourselves first, and we maintain an attitude instead of service to others. The discipline to love the earth, to attend it as a steward and pick up someone else's trash without resentment, but with love. This is the ultimate discipline of life - the mere living day to day - not because we're doing it because someone is watching, but the discipline of doing it while no one is watching. The discipline of being impeccable in our words and actions to the best of our abilities. My discipline was to meditate for 20 minutes a day over a 30 year period of time. I no longer feel the need to do this, I meditate instead when I have the desire to. My discipline has evolved into being an observer of my own thoughts and actions. The payoff, however, has been as a result of the development of the strength to be disciplined, as difficult as it was in the beginning. It almost doesn't matter what the particular discipline is. It's just the repetitive stick to it-iveness that develops the reward. It's so much easier to just shine it on. But if you're here, it's because your higher self has brought you here, it knows what it needs. It needs a like minded community of friends to prod you along, to urge you to stick to your intent, to develop that intent into something that will be really useful down the road. My very best wishes to you. it gets a lot easier as a little time goes on.

Jim, I was just kidding about the tuba, lol. I tried belly dancing to that song once and nearly flogged myself to death with cellulite.