On Reiki

On Reiki and other titles

Several years ago I took Reiki initiations. I had already become a healer and while I was still trying to figure out what to do with the skill, thought it would be good idea to get, well, credentials. Reiki was the first of a series of certifications that I would attain in order to make sense of my my spiritual life, mainly for others, as it has always made sense to me. By the end of my credential gathering, I had a few titles, and sometimes I still consider gathering a few more, but finally a title or certificate is only a peice of paper. It’s no free lunch, and one still has to prove oneself.

My Reiki initiation was a little different, in that I rejected my first Reiki teacher part way through the process. I just didn’t like her: she was a showboat and maybe a showoff. When she bragged about her past life memories of the city of Atlantis, I got upset. Why would anyone want to brag about that? Because it makes you an “old soul”? Speaking of credentials, is that one of them when you’re working in the field of New Age spirituality? A self professed claim to have been around a long time? Anyway, it had squat to do with Reiki. I got the hell out of there and so did another guy, who later called me to see how and where I had ended up.

I ended up in the hands of another Reiki Master whom I just liked better. Debby felt like a more kindred spirit, with an eclectic spirituality similar to mine and I didn’t mind ponying up about a thousand bucks for the series of initiations. Back in those days, there were numerous people who had paid about ten thousand for the same thing, again, so I am told. Nowadays it’s possible to get initiated pretty cheap, or free even. But regardless of the price, and even though I may still choose to use my title (after all I did pay for it) I wouldn’t take Reiki initiations again if I had it to do over. Here’s why:

“Reiki”, so I am told, means “life force”. I don’t think anybody holds a patent on that, and no matter what you call it, I don’t think any person has an inherently better method of utilizing it, just because they may have a title. The title “Reiki Master” is particularly ridiculous once you’ve been through the initiations because essentially it’s a religious ritual that you just sit through. At the end of it you’re a “master” even though you haven’t been trained to master anything. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of great healers who hold the title, but then there are plenty of great healers who don’t. Why is that?

Reiki has a mythology attached to it. Some say it has a lineage, there’s a controversy attached to that which is easy enough to find, but that’s a little on the soap opera side and I don’t want to recount it. Controversy aside, the Reiki story began when a guy named Usui apparently climbed a mountain and meditated/fasted in a cave until he had a vision and an epiphany. Upon returning from the cave he found that he could perform healings by using certain symbols, Reiki symbols, that he had been given in his vision. Later he discovered that he could give other people these symbols and that they could be healers too, but somehow just knowing the symbols wasn’t enough, he had to pass on, or “initiate” the student with these symbols energetically. That’s the ritual.

In theory there was an unbroken line of Reiki masters, starting with Mr. Usui, who passed these initiations from one person to the next so that every Reiki Master today could be traced back to him. There is some variation on that story that you’ll get from anybody giving Reki initiations. Is the story true? My teacher said to consider it a myth, and not to worry too much about the literal truth of it. In the end, who cares. It does not matter.

My Reiki teacher, Debby, the one I liked, right up front explained to me that she had traveled a bit in Asia, and discovered that aspects of the Reiki myth simply weren’t true. Names, dates, places appeared to be wrong, possibly nonexistent, perhaps fictional. One of the claims flying around is that Reiki healing is attached in some way to Tibetan Buddhist healing techniques. It’s in the literature.

Later I went so far as to ask more than one Tibetan Buddhist monk about Reiki, and none of them knew what I was talking about. I also paid for a healing once from a Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche: interesting techniques, familiar techniques for those who are students of Shamanic healing, and the “Medicine Buddha” of whom I was given an artist’s rendering and an incantation to memorize let me know that my Religious Studies degree had at least been accurate regarding some of the differences between Theravadan and Mahayana Buddhism. What was not validated was any connection whatsoever between Reiki and Tibetan Buddhist healing techniques.

Why would I even be so dumb as to ask: after all Usui lived in Japan, did his Spiritual Journey in Japan, a long way from Tibet. Also Usui was reportedly a Christian, so I would tend to find it far more likely that there be a connection between Jesus, a well known healer by reputation, and Reiki, than I would expect to find between Usui’s vision and Tibetan Buddhism. That is if Usui was not a Buddhist. But who cares? It does not matter.

Thinking about Reiki I got reminded of a story I had heard about Hopi boys-- between the ages of 8 and 13 they go through an initiation ritual into adulthood. Their whole lives they have been taught to interact with Kachina’s, both in doll form and in fullsized sentient form. They respect them, sometimes fear them, sometimes the Kachina spirits make them laugh but they are always teaching lessons and it is always understood that they are real supernatural beings with real powers, even though they appear to be men in costumes.

On the day of initiation the boys are led away from their homes by the Kachinas. Out in a field they are covered in blankets in a pile, basically being terrorized that the Kachinas are going to do something terrible to them. In the end the Kachina’s take off the masks and reveal themselves to be their parents and other familiar tribe members. At that point the boys are in on the secret, they’ll be taught to grow up and wear the masks of the Kachinas for the next generation. They are the spirits, they have the powers, just as their fathers and grandfathers before them.

So, is a Reiki Master wearing the mask of the Kachina and just doesn’t know it? Could be. I have little problem here in that I'm not Hopi and so I don't really understand what it means to be wearing a Kachina mask, I don't therefore understand what it means to take it off, nor do I understand the viewpoint of a child who sees his father appear from behind one for the first time in his life. So this is where I stand simultaneously: I'm a Reiki Master taking off my mask, I'm also the child observing the mask come off and seeing someone familiar behind it.

Reiki initiations give permission, to your average Joe or Jane, to be a healer, to posess supernatural powers and to perhaps be a miraculous healer. That does matter. But what are the consequences of this? What I find tragic, is that Reiki really caught on a while back and became so commonplace that it is now one of those certifications that every other massage therapist has added to their list of credentials.

Not every Reiki Master performs “miraculous” healings, and I’d venture to say that most do not. Usui purportedly did. So what went wrong? Today, Reiki has garnered a reputation only as a “feel good” therapy, but back in the day-- Usui was putting broken bones together and healing them . Did the original energy get stretched too thin? Did somebody memorize their Reiki symbols incorrectly? I don't think so. Sheryl and I have written about the importance of the client being ready and willing to accept healing, and how sometimes it is not in the highest interests of the client to be "instantly" healed.

I’ve got no problem with “feel good” therapy, and anymore I don’t even have a problem with a couple of fairly useless certifications that I’ve collected. And even though I work in a field which some people would call “mumbo-jumbo” at best, I have a big problem with superstition, with misunderstood outcomes, and worst of all, with a massive short circuiting of human potential.

Aha, human potential. Maybe I’m being too anthropocentric, but I think that every human participates in a complex reality which includes so called miraculous events. No certification required. The sooner we realize that, the better. I think that we all have the potential then, to bring about miraculous events, once we understand how our conscioussness can connect with the world of matter.

More on meditation and some spiritual principles

Wrote that whole previous blog “what’s all this about meditation?” and neglected to say how to do it. Turns out my mom gets hit up for advice on the subject:

“The high school and jr. high students are always asking me how to meditate... 
I have often ended up telling them, "stare at a candle flame and relax and throw the thoughts that come to you into the flame."  Finally, one day, I said to keep repeating Ohhhhm and that will help other thoughts to stop, and , etc.....
 Only I think it's spelled "Aummm". Hmmmm.”
(Mom).

I don’t think the spelling matters that much. OM, It’s a word representing the primal sound, the first sound-- the sound, when uttered by God, which started all of existence. Spelling was invented later. I tell you what, it’s that kind of simplicity that I like, even though I enjoyed getting a religious studies degree, so often it’s the simple things which work best.

Why would a person want to throw their thoughts into a candle flame and utter OM? Because so often we confuse our thoughts with reality, or with our own identity. Conscious thoughts are so often verbal, an internal monologue, and you might want your consciousness to transcend language at least for a little while. OM is more sound than language, and what it represents, to me anyway, is an acknowledgment of something larger than personal consciousness, and an intention to return to that original, primal utterance that all possibilities derive from.

I wrote something back in June 2006 that Sheryl found while digging through her emails and deleting stuff. She thought I should share it.

Some spiritual principles and practices that I like:
Forgive absolutely everyone for absolutely everything, including yourself. There may well be people from your past who have done you wrong, never apologized or “repented”. Or there may be people who have done you wrong who have apologized, but you never really got over it. It’s not for them that you forgive, it’s for you. You have no choice other than to continue to suffer if you refuse to forgive. Any old unforgiven deeds, even small ones, they register in your consciousness and continue to trap you. So forgive others, and forgive yourself.

Life is full of mistakes and learning, and you are not the karma master of anyone, it’s out of your hands. Forgive and be glad that you can forgive, it’s a gift, It is grace, and we all deserve some grace.

If you're really stuck and can't forgive, try imagining that under the right circumstances, you could do the very thing that you currently find unforgiveable. Beleive it, and then forgive yourself.

Practice extending unconditional love outward from yourself--to everyone  and everything. Why not? Do you have something better to do than that? What could be better than pouring love from yourself without waiting for a reason to do so?

Try to be in the moment, always. Most instances of not being in the moment can be classified as “worrying.” This is not to say that you shouldn’t plan for the future, or never reflect on the past. Just know that you are constantly in the act of creation, as a participant. If you are actively thinking about the past or possible future, be aware of your own mind and cognizant of what you are doing right now. Write down your future plans if necessary, then let them slip away from your mind. Come to grips with your past, and then let that reflection on the past slip away quietly, come back to the now and be empty.

Sex is not something to feel guilty about, it’s not wrong , bad, dirty or forbidden nor is it separate from the spiritual, nothing is. It’s ok to be having sex, and it’s ok to abstain from it. We’re made to enjoy sex but we also are made to have our own selection process about who and what we do. Be OK with your own process and your choices.

Meditation is important to quiet the mind, but stimulating the mind is important too, and even sometimes overstimulating it. In fact some people find what they really need by overstimulating, over working and exhausting the conscious mind. Some spiritual practices are based upon pushing human endurance until the still point is acheived. The mind needs challenge, but it also needs to have the background information wiped away clean like a blackboard. That’s the most basic aspect of meditation. People need to understand that the quiet mind is not only possible, but actually easy, and takes no time to reach. The noise in the mind is due to attachments, and when the attachments are gone the natural state is silence.

Attachments are related to desire, and desires are always voluntary. Sometimes desire is manifested as a negative:” I don’t want this.” “I wish it weren’t so” or, “Man, I suck at meditating, and this is stupid anyway.” Quit if you want to, nobody is making you do this. But you do need to know that desires are like heavy weights that we pick up and carry of our own volition. Attachments are like chains.

The state of emptiness is very pleasant, persistent, good for your health. It’s a very beneficial place to be. It’s not emptiness like hunger, it’s more like total peace. It’s not boring, and there is a reason that meditative states of mind are called “ecstatic.” Nobody is making this stuff up, it’s real. Having an empty mind is not being an “air head” its’ about stillness when no activity is required, it’s about centeredness in the perpetual moment.

Judgment versus discrimination: Discriminating is a natural part of perception. Judgment is when values are overlaid onto perceived discriminating factors. Trust your senses and perceptions, but be aware of your judgments. In all these things, don’t force yourself to go against your nature, but be aware, and know that it is kinder to be understanding and accepting.

Austere measures are not necessary, and when the Buddha spoke of the middle way, he knew what he was talking about. It’s not necessary nor beneficial to deny yourself, food, sleep or any of life’s simple pleasures. It doesn’t make you a better person to deny yourself. As you progress along your path, you may discover that desires and attachments are diminishing, and you simply don’t need very much in order to experience real happiness. But you can be very spiritual and still enjoy a hot fudge sunday, these things are not mutually exclusive.

A few facts about Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan

The map above is in the public domain, click on it for a larger view.

The following is from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves

"Iran
Iran has the world's second largest reserves of conventional crude oil at 133 gigabarrels, according to the CIA World Factbook, although it should be noted that both Canada and Venezuela have larger reserves if Non-conventional oil is included. Iran is the second largest oil holder globally with approximately 10% of the world's oil.
Iran averages about 1.5 gigabarrels per year, which is a significant decline from the 6 gigabarrels per year it produced when the Shah of Iran was in power. The United States prohibits imports of oil from Iran, which limits its exposure to an Iranian oil cutoff, but does not reduce the likelihood that an interruption of Iranian oil would cause a spike in world oil prices. American pressure on Iran to renounce Iran's nuclear program makes the possibility of military confrontation quite high, and the political risks of Iranian oil far outweigh any geological ones.

Iraq
Iraq has the third largest reserves of conventional oil in the world at 112 gigabarrels. Despite its vast oil reserves and low costs, production has not recovered since the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Constant looting, insurgent attacks, and sabotage in the oil fields has limited production to around 0.5 gigabarrels per year at best. Political risk is thus the main constraint on Iraqi oil production and likely to remain so in the near future." (end Wikipedia quote)

Iraq used to be the second largest oil reserve, but since the war it dropped one place. Saudi Arabia is number one, they're friendly. So is Canada which falls in at around fourth place. The top ten world oil reserves is a list worth watching, you might want to know where your sons and daughters will kill or be killed. My older daughter spent months in a Naval hospital in Kuwait patching up American soldiers. She got deployed right after finishing her A-school training. Watch out Venezuela, you may be next.

If anybody you know might have a long term goal of invading Iran, they'd probably want secure military bases on it's borders-- like in Afghanistan and Iraq (see map). Afghanistan is also a really great place to build a pipeline, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline

There's a top ten worst dictators list, but we haven't been real hot to invade those countries. No "prize". North Korea is number one or two, with Kim Jong Il. They don't have oil, but back when their major export was conventional weapons to middle eastern countries (Iraq was one of them) we started seeing news bulletins about a Korean missile that might reach California. Funny how that "threat" just dried up and blew away. The day that I saw the news report on TV, I researched it and discovered that the story was well over a year old and not very credible. Breaking news or propaganda?

On the lighter side you might want to check out the video at:
http://www.glumbert.com/media/irack

I got set off a bit reading our president's remarks about Congress tightening up the purse strings on the war, basically they are trying to get a commitment to end it in the foreseeable future. Sounds like a good idea to me.

"Kundalini" Funny Shoes, funny words, things that fit and things that don't fit.

Somebody please send me an email and tell me why people from all over the world are looking at the photo above. Please?

What’s a Kundalini and where can I buy one? Well, if you’re my dad, you can’t sit through my twelve minute video:
http://www.healingcommunication.com/videos.html
to listen to me talk about my own experience with spontaneous Kundalini awakening. But then my dad wishes he didn’t have to tell people what I do for a living anyway, let alone having to add in strange sounding words like “Kundalini.” He’s still struggling with the word “Psychic.” Sheryl and I struggle with that word as a title too: we use psychic skills constantly but we call ourselves healers. My dad probably wouldn’t like that title either. Maybe we should call ourselves ministers, (we are both ordained in the ULC) but since we aren’t technically religious, that doesn’t feel right either. We work in the spiritual realm to improve people’s lives, one day we’ll get the language worked out.

So, lets just call it a “spiritual opening” in the interests of being plain spoken. If you have a “spiritual opening” which feels like a lightning bolt but goes on for several minutes or longer-- you’re glad to learn the terminology and to know that others have experienced it. The aftermath of a Kundalini awakening often includes the appearance of special powers like clairvoyance, healing or other enhanced manifesting abilities. It’s in my video because it’s in the “about Paul” section of our website and Sheryl wanted to ask me some questions about it on camera. I had no idea what she was going to ask me about before we started.

The funny part about that video is that Sheryl kept asking me leading questions and I kept answering them “wrong” which would then cause Sheryl to ask me other unexpected questions and so on. The whole thing got edited into two separate videos now and we don’t know if we’ll release the second one or not. Maybe we’ll re-shoot it. Why, why am I so difficult?

Because I don’t believe in limitations. If you get me talking about healing work, you’ll find that I believe anything is possible. As an educated man, as a thinking man, this can cause me some embarrassment, but there it is. Actually, with enough education one gets beyond the “standard wisdom” in any given field pretty fast, and off into the realm of the unbelievable to the layperson. In the interests of being unlimited I constantly check myself for pig-headed beliefs, preconceived notions, assumptions or dogmatic thinking.

So if Sheryl asks me, on camera no less, about the importance of spiritual healing, I might have talked to her the day before about compassion, about how much I love it when a client goes “wow, that’s exactly it” or about how much I love the work that we do in general, I may nonetheless answer: “Maybe we shouldn’t steal the suffering from a client: what if they need that for their highest growth and development as a sovereign being. What about the role of Karma?” Consider that a preview. I’m surprised Sheryl doesn’t throw things at me sometimes. If she asks me the same question a day later I’m going to say, “Consider the concept of divine Grace: forgiveness unearned and undeserved. Suffering can be washed away like so much dirt, and it a moment it’s just gone. That’s pretty important; it’s self evident that we should embrace joy replacing pain and accept it without question.” Both viewpoints are true aren’t they? The universe is that big and a whole lot bigger. Boundaries, but no limits.

Poem: These Bees

These Bees

If these bees could talk
they would probably say
Buzz,
Which is what most of us say
Most of the time.

Communicating
To the hive by--
Dancing, touching,
Pheromones and telepathy.

Bees, they can’t fly,
By our understanding:
Too fat and
Wings too small,

If these bees could talk
They’d probably say,
Yes.

That’s how it’s done,
say it: Yes,
Know the air
more
Intimately
yes.

Light or heavy at will,
they are
Lifting tiny wings
Vibrating
into space.

This field of clover calls to them,
busy, listening,
They come.

What Feeds You?

http://www.themastersofthesecret.com/letter/

"Dear Paul
I am the one who left a comment on your blog recently :)  yup!

A friend of mine sent me the link above. Its an interesting letter.  I thought you might like to read it also!

In my opinion (humble or not) there is really no magic "pill" to situations.  Doesn't mean that a solution cannot happen quickly, what we sometimes call a miracle.  But to me, what I have discovered is that some "cherished belief" that you are clinging too, that is creating your current situation has to be released.  When released -- the "miracle" happens.  Sometimes we release quickly, sometimes there is a bit of a fight, because after all its a "cherished belief"!  Its hard to give up something that we "cherish" -- I've found.  Anyhoo, I thought the link to the website with the additional info would be of interest.”

(Betsy Baumgardner)

and my reply:

“Hi Betsy,
Yup, we're definitely on the same page. Sheryl even used that same wording "letting go of a cherished belief" somewhere in her blog or on our web page.
I'm glad to see also that somebody involved with "The Secret" is addressing directly some of it's shortcomings, such as the steps of taking action (instead of just wishing for results) and also that the intention behind the action is important; namely that of providing something of value to others!

I notice that Anne Albers is also addressing the concept of aligning one's will with God's will-- and then the "law of attraction" is more powerfully aligned, not just with the selfish desires of an individual, but with the good of all.

Sheryl and I start every session by speaking aloud that it be "for the highest benefit of all concerned." Also that is our daily prayer and intention. It's simple and direct, we like it. "Thy will be done" is another wording of that. Some of us have discovered that there's no real conflict in purposefully aligning ones will with the will of God. Some call that "cleaving" to God, wherein there is no longer a "thy" separate from the "thee". Sheryl and Sheryl's guides are goading me to write more. . . “ (end of email, more or less)

. . . Of course, it might be important to understand that the will of God really isn’t incompatable with what you might choose for yourself anyway-- only better. Makes it a lot easier to trust the process. It could take a long time to explain that, why a person would go from “I want the red sports-car” to “I want what is best for me-- and for everyone else in the universe.” Or, one could just imagine why it’s better not to go from one little desire to the next and the next and the next. (See “impermanence” in the context of Buddhism for one explanation). And yes, I AM mixing apples and oranges when I talk in one sentence about cleaving to God, and about Buddhism in the next sentence; and the associated process of seeing through the illusion of desire. I mix apples and oranges when I talk about religious concepts because there are human and spiritual truths which get addressed from different angles by different religions. No, not all religions are saying the same thing (sorry Joseph Campbell) But it is my personal opinion that non-dualistic states of conscioussness are pretty much the same no matter what path got you there.

Sheryl’s guides have goaded me into writing, again, about the nuts and bolts of spiritual healing work.

Yes, God does the healing, not the healer, the client either allows it or they don’t allow it.
What if you don’t believe in God? Can you get spiritual healing anyway? Sure, if you can integrate it into your life, in other words-- let’s say you’ve got a skin growth on your arm. You’re an atheist, but a friend of yours is a spiritual healer and they ask your permission to heal that thing cuz they’re sick of looking at it. You go, “OK, have at it.” So they go to work on it and either it heals or it doesn’t. Let’s say that it does, (because this is a real story which I heard about second hand). Now your friend doesn’t have to look at that growth on your arm and neither do you-- but you still don’t have to believe in God, you could explain it in any number of ways and still “handle it” and not get too terribly freaked out. After all, it’s just a little skin growth which “spontaneously” disappeared. People deal with things all the time which seem odd or unexplainable, we’re resilient creatures, stubborn, even. It’s the sovereign right of an individual to make sense of their own reality in their own way. On the other hand that skin growth might stay there despite the best efforts of your friend, even though she just had success twelve times that very week with other clients. If she’s like Sheryl and I, she’ll probably get obsessed with the “one that got away.” You, on the other hand, who didn’t really believe in spiritual healing in the first place, can just shrug your shoulders and go “Oh well.” Also you or your friend can spend a little money at the doctors office and have the growth removed if it bothers you that much. Your friend can add her spiritual healing abilities to the mix and maybe that surgery will go incredibly well and heal many times faster than usual.

Plenty of people have tried to take spiritual healing out of the contect of the spiritual: Reiki, High Touch, Matrix Energetics--
for a lot of reasons. One reason is to get beneficial healing work into secular contexts, to get insurance plans to cover it, or just to avoid ridiculous religious conflicts with something that works and is good for people. Another good reason: some folks can have a beneficial healing experience if they understand, for example, the physics of it, but if you say "God" you may as well tell them that Mickey Mouse is going to remove their pain. (Actually, cartoons ARE good for your health, but that's another story.)

I got accused recently of being a “psychic healer” not a “spiritual healer” and was told that “psychic healing” has associated problems related to the ego. First off, egos are like a__holes, everybody’s got one. I don’t care how spiritual a person is, they’ve got an ego as a necessary part of their psyche; it allows a person to function on a “normal” day to day basis as a human. Egos are very useful, but they can get in the way of the most “spiritual” of healings. Egos hold our sense of personal (individual) identity, and that created persona holds all beliefs about how everything works in the world.

What’s ironic is that the person accusing me doesn’t know me and knows even less about my work, and the really ironic part is that the judgment DID bruise my ego! Why? Well, Sheryl and I care about what we do and we always want to be providing the best service-- even if that service is, in essence, doing by not doing. In other words what if our job as healers is to be a simple and clear conduit, or, a wire?

Too boring for Sheryl and I to be human conductors? Just a big chunk of copper? In all honesty, yeah, it's too boring. Especially if that's all we do. What about the client? Is it really that useful to have a person be so disassociated from their own healing? is that disempowering? I think about the parable “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” And it reminds me how much i want to teach, and not just be a healer.

In some sense this is how Sheryl’s guides have been goading me to write more. They know that the minute I became a healer I knew in my heart that it wasn’t “the end” for me. I knew that getting some tangible evidence of the reality of the spiritual world was a really nice pat on the back, mainly as encouragement for me to keep going. It's OK to directly channel healing to a client without really involving them all that consciously in the process, but it's not all there is to do in every case. It’s a person we’re dealing with, not a tractor that needs a new carburetor. That’s why we say we do spiritual counseling and not just healing work.

On another note:

http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Ratings.htm

The guru rating service (above) and why I like it:

Last night my partner and I happened to be near a bookstore
here in Santa Cruz, California and we stopped in to see what was going on. Turns out a local “Guru” was giving a talk and promoting a new book. Sheryl and I knew nothing about him but his book title sounded good. I read some of it while waiting, didn't like it much, but we stuck around for the talk anyway.

Well, we sat through the rather pompous introduction, describing how wonderful it is to host an "awakened master", and then watched, somewhat in horror, as this old guy dressed in shiny white satin robes walked out from behind the stacks, making his entrance, as it were. He sat down and affixed his microphone to his clothing, gave a really superior look out over the "crowd" of about a dozen folks, held that gaze for an agonizingly pregnant pause, and then finally asked in a very accusing tone, "What are you doing?"

"Leaving!" I thought, and unfortunately didn't speak it out loud. Sheryl and I stuck around for a whole 60 seconds or more before we actually did go. I could tell from Sheryl's sighs that she was getting ready to unleash. . . something on this guy. He was into the rap of some fairly typical buddhist concepts but somehow it wasn't ringing true at all. We had to get out of there fast. If I remember to, maybe I'll write a blog about the human instinct to surrender spiritually getting mixed up with um, hero worship?

It's rare for Sheryl and I to have such a visceral reaction to anybody, let alone a spiritual teacher. After we left I told Sheryl that I thought this was exactly what I had talked about in a previous post of the ego becoming attached to the enlightening experience. Or something. . .

It’s also funny because I had just tracked down an Alan Watts lecture on the internet, and he began his lecture with the words, “I am not a guru.” Alan Watts was an early childhood influence on me, and I'm glad to discover that his lectures are still available on the web and also are still being played on the radio today (we found them on KKUP in the bay area).

http://www.alanwattspodcast.com/

Psychoanalysis of the Miracle

A good friend just asked me,

“Have you "investigated" miracles? Seems we've talked about that before. Where do they REALLY come from? Are they ever part of our subconscious at work, I wonder.”

Have I investigated miracles: Yes, in some ways. I don't know that you can subject them to the laboratory. They're generally considered "anecdotal" which means they can't be reliably repeated under laboratory conditions, therefore they tend to fall outside the realm of scientific investigation. Other phenomena seems to hold up pretty well in the lab, including Psi experiences which some people think are miraculous, not scientific or explainable in normal terms.

But the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming, miracles happen all the time. Just not to everybody and not in every situation. I'm not saying miracles couldn’t happen to anyone at any time, just that sometimes they don’t happen when you think they should, and sometimes they do happen when you think they shouldn’t.

Something else happens too; bad luck. You could think of it as the flip side of a miracle. Sometimes it hits the same person again and again. Sheryl and I just got a call from a young woman who thought she was cursed. We determined that we weren't the best people to work with her (I still don't know exactly why), but I did talk to her for a long time on the phone about keeping positive intentions and avoiding setting up a downward spiral of belief/manifestation. We often participate in our own miracles, maybe we do create them. The "law of attraction" says we do all the time, that we're constantly creating our own reality by what we hold in our minds and hearts, for good or ill. Makes sense that we could create our own bad luck, but why does a miracle, or conversely a run of bad luck sometimes seem to come right out of the blue for no rhyme or reason? It's not always so simple, we live in a consensus reality which we all create together. The company you keep is important too. As is how you choose to live your life and how you describe it. However, everyone experiences some suffering in their lives and I don't know that anyone can avoid that forever. "Investigating" miracles opens up a whole can of worms, so to speak, it goes to the heart of our lives if you take it very far at all, raising a lot of questions, maybe more than I can answer in a single article. One person who contacted Sheryl and I pointed out how sometimes terrible events in a person's life can lead to a complete and miraculous transformation-- that we should be just as thankful for our suffering as we are for all the good things that we recieve.

Yesterday I got another healer all upset with me, just for asking a few questions about this very subject. Sheryl and I both tend to analyze and theorize, it's how we were raised etc. But I think that for the purposes of manifesting a miracle, unshakable belief is far more useful. If you don't ask questions, you don't raise doubts. For fairly obvious reasons I would say too that most people have an easier time believing that miracles arise from some omnipotent power larger and greater than themselves, rather than believing that they somehow have the innate ability to significantly alter reality like that. That connection may be more prevalent in the subconscious, I sometimes refer to it as a feedback loop, that intimate connection between ones conscioussness and their environment. The following is what I wrote to another healer which appeared to make her want to sever contact with me:

"What's up for Sheryl and I lately has to do with what I'd call "instant miracle" healing. Sheryl, I think, would actually prefer to be a counselor and to basically talk her clients into their own healing. She uses psychic skills in her work, but doesn't want clients to come to us to "know the future" for example. It's a pitfall: if you predict the future accurately, then the client may come back and want you to start making decisions for them.

I think that I did more dramatic physical healing work years before I met Sheryl, but I had poor boundaries about it and some people tended not to integrate the healing: Either they would go out and re-injure themselves, get sick again, or otherwise undo the healing work in some way. On a couple of occasions since working with Sheryl, we've had clients who reacted very strongly in particular to my energy healing work. By strongly I mean they got shaky, panicky, or otherwise seemed to reject it. What at first looked like hypersensitivity, I have since learned to recognize as a resistance to healing work.

And then there are the "tanks", people with really thick armor who don't seem to respond at all to energy work, even though they consciously seem to want to be healed.

In between are those whom we generally get good results with. I've been wondering if it's a cultural bias, because as I recall you told of some pretty convincing instances wherein you witnessed some really amazing psychic surgery overseas. I think that in my own case, I might have difficulty performing healings wherein the results are visible to the eye, oddly enough, that's my bias.

Sheryl and I have belief biases too, about healing work in general, having to do with our own thoughts about health and healing. I could conversely see individuals or even whole cultures holding a belief that all suffering is caused by "the devil" and all good things are of God. In that case it's potentially much easier for a person with a bum leg to go see the local priest and sincerely ask God to fix it. If it heals; no conflict, God intervened. In Sheryl's and my case-- we don't see it as being that simple.

In essence I think that Sheryl and I agree that when the conditions are right, miracles do occur. We are always working under own conditional agreement that what we do be '"for the highest benefit of all concerned." I know that this is a limitation, but the integrity of the work is more important to me than the literal outcome. When I first woke up to my own healing abilities, I think I was most concerned with proving it as a reality to myself and to others: I had not matured yet, but with the maturing has come some frustration."

That was the end of the email. The frustration is that you can't heal all of the people all of the time. I next had to explain that I don't own the energy which heals ( I think everybody in this line of work knows that) if you attempt to own it, you limit it, and the whole idea is to be as perfect a conduit as you can be. My answer was, "I happen to be there, the doer is spirit." I took it a step further and asked, "Why would a "healer" need to be present at all in order for spiritual healing to occur?" Too much analysis and you can talk yourself into or out of anything. My correspondent interpreted my analysis thusly, "indicates the differences between psychic and spiritual healing, with problems of ego present in psychic healing." I've already written more than one blog about the ego dissolving and allowing a greater experience of existence. We all have work to do and we do it in the best way that we know how. When I do set about investigating, or analysing miracles it's not because I want to deconstruct faith down to a heap of slag, it's because I want miracles to become as common as baking a loaf of bread. Maybe they already are and we just don't recognize it. Below is an example of a mixed set of life circumstances and the associated hindsight interpretation:

Let's say that you and two other friends decide to meet at a restaurant, you all converge there at exactly the same time as it turns out. Just before you go in a thought passes through your mind about bumping into another particular old friend whom you lost touch with years before. As the three of you walk in, your eyes immediately go to one table in the crowded restaurant: and there he is, the old friend you were just thinking of. Through another odd series of events, in the next day or two, some would say "bad luck" and also involving your choices and the choices of yet another person, you end up spending the week with that old friend, and it's a truly transformative experience. In order for the whole thing to occur, four people had to choose the right restaurant at the right time, then, later, the "bad luck" had to go down, then you had to react in the correct way to the "bad luck", etc. If anything was very far out of place, like if the old friend had gone to the restaurant, sooner, later, or to a different restaurant, then what? Maybe you'd have bumped into him somewhere else-- maybe not. Maybe you’d have just said ‘hello” and that small miracle of connection would have walked away, making room for some different reality to occur. Was the bad luck part of the small miracle? Was the whole thing the best possible reality-- bad or good, miracle or bad luck, those are all human judgements of somewhat limitless possibilities.

Here's a scenario where the "miracle" is in the ability of the individual to drop the ego boundaries between themselves and all the available power for good in the universe (lets call that God). There are plenty of people who do their best to practice this. The advantage for that individual is that they have now tapped into the collective mass consciousness of the cosmos, and to the extent that they are able to surrender the individual self to this essentially unlimited SELF, that is the extent to which they may be a walking miracle every moment of their lives. But a miracle for whom? If the boundaries of the limited self have dissolved into the infinite consciousness, then there is no longer an individual. Under these circumstances, where every moment is a miracle, timing isn't so critical for things like meeting old friends at just the right time. Constant spiritual bliss of experiencing the oneness of all things makes everybody your old friend. Ever meet an earth Angel? Often it's a total stranger who arrives at just the right moment and says or does exactly the right thing. Sometimes it's us, we're the Angel. An Angel is said to have no will but the will of God. That’s a whole other discussion. Undifferentiated conscioussness, boundary-less existence, is it possible to be that and still be human? In the truly numinous experience of conscioussness, there is no longer an experience of selfish or individual ego-based existence, no difference between giving and recieving, and all of creation is the miracle.

So, my off the cuff explanation for miracles is that they are a natural result of this tapping into the ultimate source. Sometimes it's conscious and deliberate, sometimes it's just a result of relaxing and letting down one's guard, letting go and surrendering. Sometimes the surrender occurs at times of great peace, joy and acceptance, other times spiritual surrender comes in the middle of torturous times. But don't let my limited explanation hold you back.

Back to your original question: maybe the subconscious more easily connects to the collective unconscious, but those are Freudian/Jungian terms, and miraculous or unexplained events would be called synchronistic events-- connected by interpreted meaning but not causally connectible. Again, that's a whole other discussion.

Knitting the Mystery

I so like this comment from Betsy ( www.betsybaumgardner.com ) that I’m reposting it below. Check out her website for some nice classical music/chorale clips: she sings and plays the Organ, graduated from Juilliard and teaches music etc.

“Hello -- I found your website through a mention on a newsletter I receive from Ann Albers every week. I have enjoyed reading your site and looking at the photos! Amazing photography. I love the way you capture the spiritual essence and beauty of your "client" be it animal, human or nature. Your comments on wanting to help the suffering, but not being able to for various reasons or situations does strike a chord in my heart too. Being an ex-New Yorker I found myself constantly immersed in the extremes of human existence. Its one of the reasons I left NYC -- my heart was becoming calloused and hard -- something I did not want. I also smiled at your comments regarding "The Secret"!. Yes, the truths presented are ancient -- but the focus on just simply getting a better material life leaves out a lot of depth. There is nothing wrong with having a comfortable living and roof over one's head etc. There is nothing wrong with abundance either. But in my opinion the real goal is to get to the point where you can see the Divine Presence in everything. And this "seeing" blesses one and all. I remember walking past a woman on the street who had been injured (NYC) there were folks around assisting her, so she didn't need my human assistance. But I felt this call "for help", and I didn't know what to do. Pray - was what came to me. A passage by Mary Baker Eddy came to thought: "there is no lapse from, nor return to, harmony..." Science & Health... I just prayed with that thought until I felt a sense of peace. I don't know if it blessed the woman on the street, because I kept on my journey as I prayed. But it certainly has blessed me many times over the years, just recalling that "prayer work". So oftentimes we think that we are not "doing something" for someone and well, maybe we really are!” (Betsy Baumgardner)

Betsy mentions Anne Albers-- a really sweet lady whom Sheryl and I got in touch with online after seeing her one and only video post on You Tube. Here’s how we happened across her: On Valentines day a friend sent us a link to the “Free Hugs” campaign video. I watched it and then visited the website. There were a dozen or so video clips there-- I only clicked on one and it was this charming woman who starts out saying “I have an unusual Job, I talk to Angels.” Of course! So I went and found her website http://www.visionsofheaven.com/

There I discovered a really extensive web page and noticed that Anne is so busy doing Angel communicating that she has a waiting list at least six months long for an appointment. Holy crap! So we sent her an email and asked her how she got so successful. She wrote back immediately with some helpful tips, mostly having to do with gratitude and praying that the people you can help the most find you. She’s right too. We had been asking to see some examples of other spiritual practitioners who were professional, successful yet sincere and accessible (that’s what we strive to be). Our prayers got answered. That’s happening a lot these days.

Thanks for the compliments about my photos, Betsy. I’m glad that the way I feel about my subjects shows in the work.

On the issue of helping those in need, I totally agree with you-- you do what you can and what you feel called to do. It varies a great deal depending on the circumstance. I won’t say that I was “in need” exactly, but I did just say to Sheryl how nice it would be to get a comment or two on our Blogs, and kazaam, here’s Betsy, same day.

“The Secret” video keeps coming up in our lives, people mention it to us. We just heard that Oprah featured it on her show, and she’s got a huge viewing audience. I’m really glad that it’s introducing people to the reality of the “Law of attraction” (it’s no “secret,” just Google it) but I concur with Betsy that there’s more to it than the simple, often materialistic examples given in the video. We’re hearing however, that this film is convincing people to turn their lives around for the better though, so Sheryl and I aren’t knocking it.
Craig Ferguson on the Late Late show had a pretty funny take about the kid in the Vid who “manifests” himself a new bike, apparently by staring at a picture of it until it magically appears. Yeah, well, mom and dad bought it didn’t they? Little Jimmy had them all creeped out, wouldn’t stop staring at that picture.

Sometimes what you need to manifest is to know what to manifest. Sheryl and I have a favorite manifesting prayer, “For the highest benefit of all concerned.” We pretty much stick to that one every day. Sheryl introduced me to that particular wording of the intention because that’s what she uses in every session. It’s helpful because it acknowledges possibilities beyond what our conscious minds can envision in the moment. Why not open the door to some truly astounding miracles? A new bike is chump change. Transform yourself.

Unraveling the Mysteries

The article in the Good Times came out today. We got a preview of it last night and it’s a pretty damn good representation of us. There’s a different photo online than the one in the paper. I think we like them both, but the one in the print edition is a bit better, also it’s huge! All things considered it’s even flattering. I had been worried that the photographer wanted to shoot us from below, but it came out fine. The only real error is a quote attributed to Sheryl stating that we strictly work with health issues. In fact we work with many different issues. Chris Magyar did a good job on the article and he strikes me as a really nice guy too. Jen Walters took the photo and she may have photoshopped the background in as well, really nice work.

here’s a link to the article:
http://www.gtweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=194&Itemid=1

There are several other alternative health people featured in related articles. We know one of the acupuncturists, we even had dinner with her once to discuss marketing several months back. It’s funny, we’d seen her ad drop out of the GT section called “mind body spirit” and she had claimed that it wasn’t working very well for her. Since then she teamed up with three other acupuncturists and opened a “clinic” working for a very low sliding scale fee. I’d like to check in with her and see how this new arrangement works out.

In another part of the same issue, there’s this thing called the “Vibe Machine”. I have to admit that I’m assuming that it doesn’t work, doesn’t really do anything. As a former electronics tech I have to say; these electronic healing devices have been coming and going since the turn of the century. What’s my problem, why am I being such a humbug about it-- because for years I had to hear all about EMF pollution and endure seeing numerous devices flooding the market claiming to protect you from it: mostly these are copper bracelets or the like. Now somebody has invented a device which purposefully radiates people with EMF. I just read the “white paper” on the device, such as it is, and discussed it with Sheryl, and Sheryl brought her guides in on it. So, let me just say this. No matter what the secondary value, let us not bring people downward into ignorance. Sheryl tells me that it's easier for some people to have faith in an electrical device than something else. I don't know, I used to design and build loudspeakers to some pretty exacting specifications: they did what I said they'd do. There's just something about a device which includes a tesla coil and claims to be a cure which bugs me. Tesla coils make really pretty sparks. Even Nikola Tesla didn't claim his device would cure your cancer.

I haven’t been keeping up on this blog, and things have been piling up. A little bit ago I wrote about what can happen when the ego, having been subdued (usually through meditation but sometimes through illness, injury or other extreme stress) allows an enlightening experience to occur: one of expanded consciousness. I believe that the ego tends to snap back into place and can tend to identify itself with the experience of the numinous. I didn’t say so in the article, but it did come up in a recent video interview, that in extreme cases the ego decides “I am God” or depending on your religious background it may be, “I am Jesus.”

Well, in a certain sense, that’s good, especially if you then recognize the divine spark in every other person, in plants, animals, inanimate objects, in space etc. It’s a problem if you go around telling everybody that you’re Jesus and they need to get on board with you. I mean, it’s your choice, but like any unlikely claim, you may be asked to prove your case. Bear in mind that I am treading on dangerous ground here whenever I get skeptical of others: I’m a spiritual counselor and healer with my partner, Sheryl, who is a conscious channel. Plenty of people may be skeptical of us. What I’m trying to do is explain that there are quite a few reasons why person might think they’re Jesus, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, a whole lot of reasons why you’re not. Guess who wins? Sometimes the measure of whether a person is considered delusional, or simply religious, in the eyes of society is only a matter of the vocabulary used. You can tell people that you’re “embodying Christ consciousness” and they won’t lock you up. If you’re Jesus, you’d already know that and I wouldn’t have to tell you. Jesus, by reputation was a miraculous healer, so maybe we'd be better off if more people were Jesus and were willing to prove it:

John 14:10 - "Dost thou not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you I speak not on my own authority. But the Father dwelling in me, it is he who does the works. 11 - Do you believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? 12 - Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves. Amen, Amen, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do he also shall do, and greater than these shall do, because I am going to the Father. 13 - And whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, in order that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 - And if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it."

Wow, and I'm not even Christian. But I've always liked that quote. I'm not even going to put my metaphysical stamp on it either. Lest anyone get confused: I don't validate any one religion over any other. Oh, I am so tempted to interpret the above quote, but no. I like it because it's empowering, and it's about recognizing the divinity in all of us. It's more inspiring to me than sparky devices, much as I love things that go "zap".

On another note I’m getting my heart broken lately by the guy on the street who told me he just got out of jail, spent two weeks there just for having an open container of beer. I don’t know the whole story, maybe he was driving at the time and maybe I’d better keep my compassion in check. More heartbreak by another person who called and Sheryl and I just didn’t have answers for him on the spot, and we couldn’t do what he wanted us to do. It wouldn’t have been appropriate for us to book an appointment with him, and also we just aren’t a referral service for other agencies who might be able to help. Still, we’re going to try to have a few phone numbers handy if we get another call that we need to refer out. It haunts me when somebody calls and I can’t help them, but there is something I need to learn there and it seems I haven’t got it yet.

I know damn well that I can’t do it all, and I’m not responsible for everybody who comes along. But I’m not over wanting to help anybody and everybody who comes along. I’m just not over that, nor have I entirely come to grips with the disparity of suffering in the world. You don’t talk to somebody about Karma when they just discovered that their child has a serious impairment which medical science can’t address. From a metaphysical point of view, it’s useful to assume that all of our life challenges are chosen by us, if not individually, then at least collectively as part of the human experience. In truth it’s better to assume responsibility for all of your life than to assume a “poor me” attitude (victimhood can be a miserable, yet addictive way of life). But sometimes the bigger truth is to keep your mouth shut, make a cup of tea and bring a blanket for some one who is suffering. Cry with them and hold them, sort out the metaphysics later.

Peace on Earth

Ok, so “Pan’s Labyrinth” is not the movie to see if you think you’re getting “fantasy.” It’s an intensely violent film. It got great reviews. I wish I hadn’t seen it, but I do know that I had concerns about putting out some really light hearted stuff in a recent article. As a healer I do take the suffering in the world seriously-- but that’s not all there is to see. We watched “The Secret” recently, and I thought it was too simplistic. Positive, yes, but not to be subjected to much critical thinking.

Got a call tonight from a person we probably can’t help, we’ll be offering referrals out. And an incoming email referral regarding another person we may not be able to help, but then again we may. We’ll see how it turns out. We’re very careful with our ethics, and also if a person is saying “I won’t do this” or “I won’t give up that”, we’re blocked. We don’t have permission to help. I have to learn to draw the line better between caring and letting go.

On another front we got our materials in to the Good Times for an ad next week. Also we were interviewed a couple days ago by GT and we went in for a photo shoot. One of the most unflattering ways to shoot a human is from a low angle with a wide angle lens at close range. That’s all the photographer seemed to want to do today, so Yikes! We’re letting go of the idea that we might look good in the photo, but on the bright side there may be an interesting and artistic shot of us in the GT next week. Our photographer was an artist and that counts. Also we felt really good about the interview and the guy who did the interview. Not to mention the fact that Rya Holloway at the ad desk definitely went the extra mile to make our ad look good.

We were able to make a suggestion so that future customers can avoid “pixelated text”. Another publication, The Connection, had detailed notes online about how to make your ad come out well, so we referred the GT to that web page. Lots of referrals today. Sheryl and I truly co-wrote the 200 word ad for the GT and I feel really really good about that: it’s got earmarks of both of us in the ad and I believe it’s OUR voice this time. I’m simply amazed that we can co-author something and have it work. We do joint counseling with no problems at all. So I shouldn’t be surprised. Maybe we’ll co author an actual article next.

Pan’s Labyrinth does one thing well; makes you really want peace.