Rearranging the Deck Chairs

I had a dream a few days ago. It didn’t mean much at the time, it just seemed silly, but the meaning became clear yesterday. I had a lot of dreams that night, but this one is the only one I remember. That seems how dreams work for me. when I wake up, I can remember snatches of many different dreams but only one is clear enough and detailed enough to recall.

This dream is set in sunny California in the early 60’s. The whole thing looked like a 60’s glam movie, with long, low convertibles, beautiful people, and bright sunshine with saturated colors. It took place in a large parking lot, mostly full, that seemed to be at the beach. I watched it all in third person, the person I take to be me was driving this blue convertible. The “me” in this dream was a “Rock Hudson” type with a pretty girlfriend, at least that’s what she seemed, she came a went throughout the scene. Everyone seemed happy, almost movie musical happy. You’ll see why that’s weird in a minute.

The whole parking lot was flooded with water. Over the doorsills in some places, a little lower in other places. Nobody seemed to care. My car was full of water that sloshed around as I drove. I didn’t look like I cared, smiling and happy. I drove around the lot for a while then found a new parking space where the water was a little less deep, actually below the doorsills. Maybe I thought that the water in the care would drain out. After I parked, the girlfriend re-appeared and I sat there, with my arms wide open, face up to sky, eyes closed, smiling like this was the best day ever. I watched this from above, like it was the ending of a great movie. Roll credits.

Yesterday it hit me, what it means. The water is the “sludge” in our lives and we spend our lives “being happy” and trying to find a place where the “sludge” is, perhaps, just a little shallower. And we celebrate if we find such a place. 

I was struck by the superficiality of the whole thing. Beautiful people, fancy cars, beautiful location, nice clothes, but we all ignore the sludge, for the most part. But we do spend a lot of time “driving around the parking lot” looking for a place with less sludge. Nobody every tries to leave the parking lot. Funny, huh?

What is “sludge?” All the crap that weighs us down, fills our time, yet, ultimately, never adds anything to our lives. Worries: About money, about what people think, about things we can do nothing about. Fear and hate: About just about anything. Fear and hate are two sides of the same coin, you distrust what you fear, you’re fear what you don’t like. 

We are all afraid of stuff, whether we admit it or not. (Not afraid of anything? What about “uncomfortable?” Are you uncomfortable around certain people, in certain situations, with certain subjects? “Discomfort” is mild fear, it doesn’t take a whole lot to turn “discomfort” into something far stronger.) The common way you’re supposed to deal with fear, is that you find the source of your fear and remove it from your life. Then you will “feel safe,” right? Except that doesn’t actually work. No matter how hard or how far you push your fear and discomfort away, it always finds you. I know how that works. I’ve lived in “unsafe” areas, then I get a chance to move to something better, and, for a while, I feel much better. Then, I begin to notice things, and hear things, neighbors talk, incidents on the news, and before long I feel “unsafe” again.

What are you afraid of? People different from you? Be it appearance, income, education, age, beliefs, clothes? The government? Liberals? Conservatives? The rich? The poor? Climate change? Poison, in your food, water, medicines? Look around you and you’ll have no trouble finding people who want to stoke your fears, for their own ends, and once they’ve go you hooked, truth no longer matters, facts don’t matter, all that matters is the “it” that “they” want you to fear. And it’s so easy, because the fear is always there, inside you, just waiting to be pointed at someone or something. What fear? The fear that they will all find out those things we hate about ourselves.

Ever wonder what the fear-peddelers get out of it? Think about it, they all want something and are willing to scare you into giving it to them. They want your money, time, support, or just the attention. There’s always some hidden motive, because, if they were on the up-and-up, there’d be no reason to use fear to sell you their agenda. The thing is, the world has a lot of problems, but none of them are unsolvable! We have the knowledge and technology to solve or, at least, mitigate, everyone of the world problems, and the only reason we don’t is fear: Greed is fear of not having enough. Conservatism is the fear of change, or losing what you have. The need for power comes from fear of loss of control. Bigotry, of all kinds, religious and racial, including misogyny, is fear of anyone who is different. There is enough of everything for everyone, money, food, living space, if we could only get over all the fears. 

So, in my dream we were all perfectly happy, walking and driving around shin deep in sludge. We enjoyed the sunshine and our fancy cars while carefully ignoring the mess and the reality that the sludge was rotting out the cars, inside and out. We cope by vying for better parking spots, with less sludge, but nobody considers leaving the parking lot. That would require leaving behind your car, your status and the “parking place” that you have worked so hard to secure. In the real world, things aren’t so cut and dried. Getting rid of all your material things, and walking away from you responsibilities and obligations doesn’t free you from the sludge, It’s not even a necessary step. The sludge is inside and, once you start cleaning that up, what you manifest on the outside will naturally follow as a natural consequence of your new values. In all things, it doesn’t matter what you have, or what you do, it’s why you have it or do it. Intension is everything. 

In my journey of a thousand miles, I have faced and expunged many hidden fears, small and large. They are usually linked to traumas, so the fears vanish when the traumatic emotions are acknowledged and released. This is difficult for us Westerners, we are taught to “forget about it,” and suppress any hurt, “get over it, nobody wants to know.” We are so uncomfortable with feelings. Or we dwell endlessly on how we feel about what happened, which just reinforces the trauma. Neither of these is helpful. It always comes out and haunts us, making us easy prey for any fear monger that comes along. It doesn’t matter how smart and logical we think we are, or how confident we are that our religious or other beliefs protect us, our sludge is there, effecting every decision and coloring every opinion.

The solution that I teach is to use a combination of tools and practices, including hypnosis, with meditation, shamanistic and other traditional and new-age concepts to discover, uncover and release the trapped emotions that keep us stuck in past events. This removes the “scales from our eyes” and allow us to see the world as it is, not as we feared it was, and the fears begin to melt away. This process takes time, and that’s good thing, for having too much change all at once would be a tremendous shock to our system, but it’s not so bad because it pays dividends all along the way. The slow progress allows you to adapt your lifestyle and values as your inner landscape changes. Many people want a new life, without, you know, actually, changing their life. They want to world to treat them differently without changing the way they view and treat the world. That, of course, never works. The simple and powerful fact is, you change yourself, you change the world. Anything else you do, from success seminars to positive affirmations, is no more that driving around the parking lot, or, as some say, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Maybe it looks good, and may even make you feel like your acomplishing something, but it's untimately fultile if you're expecting any real change in your life.

Now I Get It

Sometimes it takes me awhile to really understand what I’m been hearing. For years I have been processing out beliefs by following phrases, or feelings and memories that leads to phrases, that I can then use to release the emotions associated with them. I have been doing that for so long that I seem to have virtually every last one. That’s what it feels like sometimes. The other day it finally hit me that the energy that can set up residence in my body doesn’t necessarily have any words attached to it!

This came up around discomfort in my neck. What I always thought was funny about it was that it only bothered me when I was meditating. For may years, it was there all the time, worse when I was under stress, but for the past several years it had almost completely disappeared. Yes, I had used all the tools I had on it, but nothing would make it stay away. It was a slippery beast until the lightbulb went on and I tried processing it as pure feeling. Then I made real progress.

When you get into habits, it hard to break them, and this was no different. I was difficult to process, I kept, instinctively “reaching” for some words to invoke the feeling, rather than just letting the feeling invoke itself. That sounds odd. It was like diving into a pool of pure experience where I had to resist the impulse to let the voice in my head talk about and describe what was happening. That pulled me out of the experience.

I’m just realizing now that I probably couldn’t have done this process before. It’s taken me this long to be able to quiet my mind, to a sufficient degree for this idea to work. You get what you get when you’re ready to get it, not before.

My life has been tough lately, and sleep doesn’t always come easy. I’ve been using specific meditation techniques to turn off the jabbering in my head and allow me to sleep. It helps a lot, but there is still something going on inside my head that I don’t understand, so I have to use it over and over each night. I have realized that when I thought that I wasn’t sleeping, I was actually falling asleep and waking up, over and over each night, and, each time I had to go through the whole process all over again. When I didn’t realize that, it seemed like the whole exercise was pointless. The question now is, why do I keep waking up anxious, over and over again? Is there something going on in my dreams that brings it all back up? I was thinking about this last night and early this morning, and I noticed that something did seem to be going on, on a deeper level that I could only just get a peek at.

All in all these are more questions for another time. Every time I figure something out, it leads to more questions and more things to deal with. It seems endless, but when I find myself talking to someone and realize where they are and notice how far I’ve come, it makes it somewhat better.

Antidepressants, Hoax or Opportunity?

It’s been Fifteen years after Dr Irving Kirsch published his landmark study that showed that, in cases of mild to moderate depression, antidepressants are no more effective that a sugar pills. Yet, as of 2013, these drugs are still prescribed at a rate of 270 million prescriptions per year, costing $9.4 billion. Over the years Dr Kirsch has had to fend off numerous challenges to his results, but he has continued his research, and continues to publish with his book “The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth,” reviewed here. Other studies have supported his results. In this article, Antidepressants a Complicated Picture, published on the National Institute of Mental Health web site, Dr Thomas Insel says “Mild depression tends to improve on placebo so that the difference between antidepressant use and placebo effect is very small, or at times, absent.” The entire controversy is summarized in this 60 Minutes segment: Treating Depression is There a Placebo Effect?  (These finding relate to people with mild to moderate depression, antidepressants are shown to have greater efficacy in cases of severe depression)

The main resistance to these results seems to come from the medical community (Once you get away from the drug companies with their vested interests), and it is two fold: On one hand, the doctors see their patients get better on the drug, and on the other, doctors worry that “If that doesn’t work, what do we give them?” The answers to both concerns is actually the same, and revolve around the placebo effect, what it is and how it works.

It is a common misconception that placebos do nothing, and that is simply not true. While it is true that placebo drugs have no active ingredients, and placebo operations are only pretend, the effects they have are very real. The 60 Minutes segment above described an study where patients were given real and placebo knee operations, and the results, two years down the road, were exactly the same for real and placebo treatments. This is not say there was no significant improvements, but that the improvement were same whether the patient had the operation, or only believed they had the operation. The point is that most people given antidepressants get better, but people given placebos also improve, at exactly the same rate. But since antidepressants cost many times more than the sugar pills and can have serious side effects, are we really doing no harm by pretending they work?

Now we come to the other objection, that we have to give them something to make them feel better. Therein lies the conundrum. You see, giving a patient a placebo and calling it a drug, is unethical, by today’s standards, because you a lying to the patent. But it is apparently perfectly ethical to prescribe a placebo, if the doctor doesn’t know it’s a placebo. Which is, in effect, the situation we have now, where we spend billions of dollars a year on drugs with no more potency than sugar, and nasty side effects, but that's ok because we believe they work.

What, exactly, is the placebo effect and how does it work, and why aren't we throwing the full power of our medical system behind using it to improve patient health? You can find lots of definitions of placebo on the web, but the fact is that nobody knows how it works. But the stone cold fact is, it does, being demonstrated by the examples above.

So, why isn’t the medical establishment standing up and taking notice? I think there are a couple of reasons, the first one is that we still hang onto ideas of the nineteenth century that say that mental problems are a moral failing, that things like depression are symptoms of a “weak mind.” While we say we are more enlightened today, the perception persists is that a disease isn’t “real” unless there is a measurable, objective, biochemical basis for it. There is still a real stigma attached to mental health issues and treatment.

The other reason that we don’t exploit the placebo effect is the materialist mindset of our scientific community. Our Western mindset insists that all phenomena relating to consciousness arise from the physical brain, and, therefor, all emotional and mental issues must be curable by manipulation of that physical brain. In this model, the mind is completely separate from the body, and, despite the huge body of evidence, we still find the idea of involving the mind in treating mental and physical problems distasteful. We are so much more comfortable taking a pill, or having an operation, because that is a “real” treatment.

I really hope to see this change in my lifetime. I expect spiraling health care costs will force a shift in attitudes, if only to save money. Think about it: We are spending over $9 billion a year on the myth that depression can be treated chemically. And that is just one treatment. How many other pills, treatments, operations out there are equally expensive and also no better than a placebo. Can we really afford to keep going down this path? The biggest obstacle here, is that all the large players in the medical system have strong interests in keeping things just as they are, since introducing any new alternative treatment methods will, inevitably, take money and business from the current players.

I am seeing these attitudes shifting, slowly, and I hope we see some significant progress on this before the our health system implodes.

Afternoon Encounter

A fellow QHT practitioner posted this video on the practitioner forum: Mary Rodwell about Starchildren & Starseeds. I thought it was interesting and listened to it before bed. I was interested enough that I looked around a bit for a some more stuff from May Rodwell before I went to sleep.

That night I had a long series of dreams, and didn’t get much rest. The dreams were about seeing hyper-realistic pictures in my mind and being able to control them. The first one I remember is I was looking down at my hand that was holding a large check. I mean physically large. Not the small ones that like you have in your checkbook, but the large ones that companies use. I don’t remember the amount of the check, but it was significant. Behind my hand was a cluttered desk that I don’t recognize. I remember having plenty of time to study the image. I noted that I could see it in my usual fuzzy way, or have it snap into sharp focus where I could study each detail.

It seemed to me that the rest of the night was spent seeing different pictures. I could call to mind whatever I wanted to see. Create whatever reality I wanted. It was exciting and I was trying and creating everything I could think of. A lot of the time I was focused on creating a new reality for myself, seeing my future where I was doing all the cool stuff I dream of: writing, giving lectures, speaking at events, working with people and groups, and traveling.

The next morning, I didn’t remember any of this when I woke up, but the entire day I felt jittery and anxious, like I was afraid that I was forgetting something important. I couldn’t really focus on anything, I couldn’t relax and my head felt weird.

In the afternoon, I recalled an incident from the day before where I offered my services to a prospective client, without prompting, for only $20. It hit he really hard that I was sabotaging myself. I felt really bad and wanted to cry. Later, in meditation, “They don’t love me!” came up very strongly. I took me a while to process that through.

While I was meditating, I was playing another Mary Rodwell video: Mary Rodwell Part 1 Bases Conference Lecture, more or less chosen randomly because I wanted to hear more Mary Rodwell and this one was long.

After I had processed off the emotional edge to the “They don’t love me!” phrase, things took an unusual turn, I started feeling a strong pain in my chest. It was not quite centered, but a little to the left. This pain was dynamic. I came and went, got stronger and weaker, changed shape and moved around. While I was puzzling about the pain, some of the words from the video caught my attention, about alien encounters, and drawings people had made. I glanced at the screen and one of the faces caught my eye. A short while later I was seeing it in my minds eye, as if a person was standing at the foot of my bed, looking at me.

I got, “I am your father,” and “the other guy didn’t know anything.” Then I saw a bunch of little round heads running back and forth in front of him. Whatever they were, they were so short that I could only see the top part of their bald heads. Seeing them caused me chills and shakes for a while, then I calmed down.

Next, my perspective changed, like I was lying on a bed that had been tilted up, and now was laying down flat. The pain in my chest kept morphing and at different points pains ran up to my shoulders. First the left, then a while later, the right. I repeatedly heard “it’s damaged, ” “he’s damaged.” At no time was I afraid or nervous.

After a while, the face moved around to my right side, a little past my head, and there was more than one of them. Then my right arm and hand raised. It was like someone was examining it. Pulling it this way and that, testing all the joints, looking at the fingers and both sides of my hand. This was done gently, pretty much like any doctor would to it. At this time I again heard “Damaged,” and “Repair.” Then I felt heat and other sensations moving throughout my forearm, palm and fingers, like they were doing some kind of energetic healing. After a while, my arm moved down to my side and there was an impression of it being wrapped, like in a bandage or cast. At this point I got the distinct feeling that this was happening right now! It wasn’t some kind of memory but a real-time experience on some parallel level.

After that I kept listening to the video, while certain things she said kept triggering reactions and feelings from my mind and body. Eventually I decided that I needed to get up and get on with my day. And then the first thing I did was to write this down.

Healing and Being a Healer

Today’s meditation had two interesting things in it.

The first was that I found myself looking in on people I know. I used to think that was cool, way back in the beginning, but now I feel it’s more like an invasion of privacy and I avoid it. However, this time it was insistent. I Ended up throwing comfort at them, not knowing what else to do. Perhaps they were in a sad way.

I one particular case, I kept seeing more details about their life. Difficulties and other things I really don’t want to know about. But it was insistent and, apparently, there is some reason that I need to know it. I tried but could not get a reason why. Perhaps I just need to understand them better.

At times, I think that being a healer means “keeper of secrets.” I just get so much information that I really can’t share, but I need to hear it to do my job. in some ways it would be nice if I could forget everything I hear. But the experience I gain does help other people. So I suppose that’s part of the price I pay for doing what I do.

The other thing that I experienced revolved around healing. At one point, I started feeling warmth in parts of my torso. I normally just go with these things and don’t ask questions. Not today. Today I asked. I was told that I was feeling energy, and it was uneven because of my blocks. If I let the block go, then the energy would be able to flow to all parts of my body, especially my hands and feet. They have not been getting their fail share of energy so far. The lightbulb went on: I’ve been have a problem with cold hands and especially feet since the weather turned.

Next I asked about the blocks. I got that I needed to release my hate. My hate for my body. I had always undervalued my body, and, despite the fact that it has served me very well for many years, it was never good enough for me. All this came from someplace so deep that I wasn’t really aware of it at the conscious level at all. But once I started thinking about it, it did make sense. Over the last couple of years I have begun to notice, accept and acknowledge how well my body has served me and how well it has held up. It has useful attributes that I did my best to ignore. But now I am starting to use them rather than deny them.

This litany went on for a while, covering the many ways I thought poorly of my physical being. I don’t remember most of it now, which I think is a good thing, but afterwards things must have cleared, because energy tingling and heat began to flow wider and more evenly throughout my upper body. It slowly spread up and down my right side and worked it’s way down my right arm into my hand. After a while it was throughout my right side and somewhat over to my left.

When it reached my left shoulder, it felt hot and cold at the same time. Finally it got to the point where all my bones above the hips felt incandescent white and glowing. The message was that it was rebuilding and restructuring my bones to be stronger and healthier and with advanced functions (whatever that means). It eventually did reach all my bones, but the ones below my hips seemed dimmer.

Then the focus moved to my teeth. There was a long monologue about how the fillings in my teeth needed to be restructured and their energy re-aligned. That the materials had been removed from their place and their energy had be twisted and distorted by being mined, refined and turned into fillings. So all of that needed to be sorted out and harmonized. I felt a lot of heat and pressure around my back teeth at this time. This went on for quite some time. Other things began to happen after that, but it was clearly time to wrap up and get on with my day.

I seem to be having a lot of focus on healing right now. Getting myself ready for what’s to come, I suppose.

Bedtime Reading

He knelt beside the bed to read. He didn't have time much for reading anymore. Funny, he though, how voraciously he had read as a child, carting basketfuls of books back and forth to the library each week during the summer and as often as he could during the school year. Reading every spare moment, before school and after, even between classes when he could. He had lived in other people's stories. In later years the habit waned until he only read books occasionally when he had the time or was especially depressed or lonely.

Tonight was unusual in that he wasn't either depressed or lonely, he just had this book. He'd acquired it a while back, stumbled across it really, and thought it looked interesting. Still, it was several weeks before he actually got around to opening the cover.

How quickly the old habits come back, he thought as he settled in, once he starts reading he can't stop and other obligations go begging. In the back of his mind he notes that this is why he doesn't read much anymore-it's just too addicting.

Tonight he has other things to do, but the book calls to him to get lost in its pages and let the world slip away. The house is quiet. It's still early but the late autumn sun has already slipped away and the windows are black. As he settles down to read, the light directly above the bed shines down on the yellowing pages of the old paperback. One of the things that make him feel old is seeing the books from his youth looking like ancient parchment. No matter. He starts to read and the room fades away.

Sometime later he is slowly drawn back by the growing awareness that he is not alone. He has no idea how much time has passed, the night is still dark and still. As he slowly disengages from the book, he suddenly realizes who it is and he snaps back to the world with an almost physical thunk.

He feels a momentary flash of annoyance. She is there, kneeling by the bed next to him. He didn't move. He didn't take his eyes off the pages, not even for a moment. There is no need, he can see her clearly in his minds eye: head propped on one hand, her face in three-quarters profile as she peers impishly at him with her hair falling halfway across her face. He can feel the warmth of her presence along his side, on his cheek, his arm. But he can not look. He knows he must not, no matter how much longs to. For he knows she isn't there, and attempting to see her would only break the spell that much sooner. So he keeps his eyes on the pages, seeing words but not reading.

"It's been a while," he though.

She shrugged. "Perhaps you don't need me much anymore."

"Perhaps." The old feelings returned. Never really gone, they had nonetheless faded over the past months. Memories fade no matter how tightly we hang on to them.

She continued to watch him, eyes fixed on his face, waiting.

"Odd," he thought, "your hair seems longer than I remember." He didn't want to follow that thought any farther.

Her smile quickly grew into a silent laugh. Then she brushed her hair out of her face with that gesture he knew so well that it hurt to watch it. Her eyes dropped to the book and returned to his face with a question.

"Ah well," he thought, "you know me and books."

Her smile momentarily broadened, then a look of concern crossed her face.

"No," he replied, "not so much anymore." She seemed reassured.

For a while, he had retreated from the world into books, just as he had in his youth. It had not been pretty. But that period was now over and he had put his life back together. Her visits had seemed to help, but once he was back in the world she came less and less often. He had missed her.

Her eyes left his face and wandered around the room.

"Yes, there have been a lot of changes since you were last here," he thought. "Somewhat cleaner, some new furniture. I just couldn't take looking at some of the old stuff any more." She nodded in agreement. He chuckled a bit, it felt so good to talk to her again, then he stopped.

"It's still just me though." He waited.

Her eyes completed their scan of the room and returned to him. She appraised him with a mixture of disappointment and rebuke. That gaze made him feel like a child, one that didn't quite measure up. He began to squirm under her gaze, discomfort growing. Finally he couldn't stand it anymore.

"Hey," the thought came before he could stop it, "I don't need anyone, I have you..." The moment the words formed in his mind, he knew. The expression on her face slid from disappointment to sadness. His discomfort was instantly replaced by a pain in his chest, growing until he almost couldn't breathe.

"No!" Her eyes dropped. He couldn't stand it.

"Please...?" She still didn't look at him.

He desperately wanted to grab that thought and stuff it back where it came from. To seal it up so tight and bury it so deep that it would be as if it had never happened. But he knew it was no use.

He'd known this hour would come. The thought had been growing slowly, insistently, in the back of his mind. It would have to come, sooner or later. But he had tried so hard not to think about it, to push it away. But it had remained, a dark cloud hovering in the distance, looming over everything he had accomplished, everything he was.

Slowly her gaze returned to him. Her eyes studied him for a long time, the sadness on her face slowly fading. He waited, afraid to breathe, for what seemed a very long time. Eventually her eyes dropped again.

"Is it time?"

She gave a quick nod, still looking down. After a moment she looked up and, with a look of profound tenderness, raised her arm as if to touch his hair. But then she stopped and let her arm drop with a rueful smile. She sighed. Then she seemed to come to a decision and, with a mixture of affection and determination, leaned over as to kiss his hair or whisper something in his ear. But before she could be either, she was gone.

He continued to stare at the book for a long time, trying to read. But the words would not hold still. The world seemed so much more empty now than it was just a short while ago. Finally he closed the book with a sigh and set it aside. He closed his eyes, laid his head upon the covers and finally, at long last, began to weep.

Communication and Healing

I came across this video the others day: KRYON "Cellullar Comunication" - Lee Carroll

This talk is about communicating with your own body. I seemed to come to me at just the right time, I am so ready for a message like this. I meditated while listening to this and followed along, trying what he said, combined with QHHT, and got very cool results.

He talked about was the inability of the body, of the cells in your body, to communicate with the conscious mind. This is where I made a major change. I used my techniques from QHHT to call in the subconscious mind so I could actually have a dialogue. And it worked. One thing I learned, for instance, was that my problems with my left leg and foot were caused by bad shoes. Actually, they were worn out and needed replacement. Yesterday I got new running shoes and today I tried running a few miles. No problems! The first time in at least a year that I haven’t had pain either during or after a run. Yes!

It’s clear to me that I must have worked through some blocks about healing myself. I’ve tried things like this before with indifferent results, and my expectations this time weren’t real high, but I had a feeling that this time the results would be different. And they were.

He also said that once you entered into communication with your cells, you would feel tingling or chills, That would be your cells rejoicing because they were so happy that you were finally talking to them. Well, I tried it and he was right. When I addressed them, I felt warmth and tingling up and down my back and upper body. Then I went through a process of acknowledging my body for what it does for me and how well it does it. Then came the part that was most difficult for me, offering my body the sincere gratitude and love that it is due for being part of me. That took some time and effort since I have always found acknowledging and expressing love difficult, even if it’s just to myself. Reflecting on that now, I think it reveals the remnants of “I’m worthless” which still haunt random nooks and crannies of my psyche.

Then the conversation turned to the physical. I started with my back, mostly out of habit. I don’t currently have back problems, but I did for a long while and it now seems to be my go-to spot when I think about healing. At least that’s what I thought. What I learned, when I started listening and feeling, was somewhat different. My body showed me that the bones of my back and ribs needed healing, due to osteoporosis, perhaps caused by unneeded thyroid medication, or just age. I had the conversation about whether the problem could be healed, whether the subconscious was willing to heal it and whether it would heal it. I’m not sure if this conversation is strictly necessary, but it doesn’t hurt to treat the various parts of yourself with some respect.

All that said, I requested that the bones be rebuilt and felt the work starting in on my spine and some of my ribs. (It looks like work needs to be done on my hips as well, I didn’t think to ask at the time.) That whole process took some time. (I don’t think everything was complete in that time, but I think that perhaps some extra attention and focus is required to get things started, and then the process can continue in the background.) While that was going on, I asked the subconscious to tell me what it was doing (“filling them with white light”) and looked around for other issues.

The other thing that came up was a tiny infection at the root of one of my teeth. I’d had a root canal thirty years ago, and a repeat, on the same tooth, twenty years later, but they’d only been able to find one of the three roots. And now, the dentist always points out a small dark spot, at the tip of one of the roots, when he show me x-rays. He thinks that is an infection. But, it’s at a place that is very hard to get to, so, as long as it doesn’t give any trouble, he wants to leave it alone. So now it came up and I proposed it be healed. In fact, I thought, why not deal with all the problems in my gums, teeth and jaws while your at it?

So, off it went. I quickly felt heat, fleeting pains and other feelings in my upper and lower jaws. I can’t remember exactly where the infected root is, so I didn’t know were to expect stuff to happen. What did happen was that things got intense around my upper left jaw, then spread upward towards my left eye and over to my nose and sinuses. That’s when a lightbulb went on about some sinus issues I’d been wondering about. This process continued for a good fifteen minutes before I had to get up and get on with my day. I put in the suggestion that the work would continue, in the background, as long as needed, and got up.

Today, I still notice some warmth and other feelings in my jaw and surrounding areas, so it looks like the work is continuing. I wonder if the dentist is in for a surprise the next time I get x-rays?

"Things I don’t want to remember" in review

This is a follow-up to my post “Things I don’t want to remember.”

I’ve realized that I shouldn’t take that whole story as a literal past-life, but as a wakeup call, a gentle reminder to get off my high horse. I feel that, while the actual events may or may not have happened, the emotions and the motivations were very intense, immediate and powerful. So intense that it’s hard to imagine that I haven’t been is some situation like that, somewhere, sometime, and succumbed to the temptation.

When I look at the world today I see religious sects at war with each other, countries invading each other, Christian extremists preaching hate for pretty much everybody, unarmed black men being gunned down by whites with no apparent consequences, institutionalized greed run amok and political parties who can’t agree on anything, even among themselves. I see a world that has decided that the solution to every problem is rampant slaughter of anyone you don’t like, or gets in your way, or you might not like, or who could get in your way. How could I possibly not slide into despair and cynicism?

There lies the danger. Being holier that thou, better than that. How could those people possibility be so cruel and heartless? Why can’t everyone just get along, like me? Oops. There it is. I’m so much better than them. I wouldn’t get pulled into that cycle of hate, fear and violence. Yah, sure, maybe. Watch out, set yourself on a pedestal and it only takes one misstep for you to fall off.

So, the message is to have compassion. In deed, I am no different than the worst of them, so don’t assign myself any moral superiority. The footing on that moral high ground can be extremely precarious. Can I decry their actions without denouncing their being, while I attempt to understand the forces that put them where they are. Ultimately, we are all responsible for our own actions, and violence for violence and killing for killing solves nothing.

The Dalai Lama meets the genocide of his people and destruction of his culture with love and compassion, while working for peace and reconciliation. People are and will continue to be. We must allow them dignity and self respect, if we are going to heal the planet. To heal the planet, we must heal fear.

Everyone is afraid. Average Joe is afraid of losing his job. The CEO is afraid of the next quarterly report. The 1% are afraid of the stock market. Christians are afraid of God, Muslims are afraid of Jews, Jews are afraid of pretty much everybody. Everyone is afraid of change and the possibility of losing what they have. It all boils down to “stuff.”

Perhaps the Dalai Lama takes the long view. When you’ve lived fourteen lifetimes, all the “stuff” we fight about, money, resources, land, power, faith, “honor,” don’t mean a whole lot. Nothing, really. Spirit is the only thing that survives. As monuments crumple, empires disintegrate, wealth disperses, deeds are forgotten and faiths fade, all that remains is spirit. The only constructions that can survive are those built of love and community. Spiritual growth bridges the gaps between generations, and is the only thing that will, ultimately, heal the planet and ourselves.

I am not above the system. I am not better than the system. I am within the system. I am the system. We must use the tools of the system, flawed as they are, to heal the system. Our flaws make it possible to understand and relate to the difficulties we face. We must use them without being used by them.

Thank you for listening.

Love and Healing

Dusty, the cat, is a little hoarse. My daughter pointed out to me the other night that cries sounded weak and scratchy, that you could hear congestion when she breathed, and seemed sluggish and bleary-eyed. The next day Dusty stayed inside the whole day, not usual for her at all, and slept.

In the late afternoon I was writing and she was sleeping on a chair near me, doing the curl-into-a-ball thing. She seemed peaceful enough. But I noticed, after a while, that about every five to ten minutes she would get up and lay back down on the opposite side, as though she couldn’t get comfortable. So, once I finished writing, I carefully scooped her up and carried her to the family room where my wife was watching something. There I settled her on my lap and did my healing thing. She protested, weakly, when I picked her up, but otherwise seemed content. I did my “laying on of hands” thing for about 20 minutes when she suddenly perked up, hopped down to go eat, and shortly thereafter went outside. Noticeably perkier.

The next day, I was writing in the living room when Dusty decided to move in on my lap. She seemed better, but still somewhat sluggish. As she was doing her walk-back-and-forth-across-my-lap-sticking-her-tail-in-my-face thing, I was running my hands over her, as I usually do, and noticed two distinct hot spots, one right behind the right shoulder and the other at the right hip. I put my hands on those places and did the energy thing. She immediately stopped moving, then, after a short time, squatted down and held that position for several minutes while I kept my hands in place. When she’d apparently had enough, she unceremoniously got up, walked to another part of the couch and squatted down, purring loudly.

After that she seems much better. Still hoarse, but otherwise acting like her normal self. I like to think I had something to do with that.