And Sometimes We Take A Boat
Before you get all out of sorts about my blogpost from last week, let me continue the story. As you may know, I recently completed the credentialing to be a Professional Licensed Practitioner. My intention for getting the Practitioner's License, besides the fact that it is really cool to begin to figure out how to work 'This Stuff', was so that I may enroll in the Holmes Institute as a Ministerial Student. I don't know what that means, exactly. I don't see myself in a pulpit, I see myself at the Holmes Institute taking classes. I've known that, somewhat reluctantly at times, since the fifth week of Foundations.
In these past several weeks, I have become aware that I have a lot of history vigorously explaining to me why I can't do something as brazen as register as a ministerial student at the Holmes Institute. Last time I checked, I'm female and in my personal history, females aren't supposed to be ministers. There's also the potential conflict of being raised as a fundamentalist Christian. So I wasn't really all that surprised when I pulled a deep calf muscle and found walking, moving forward in any way, at any speed, to be difficult, painful and downright challenging.
I proceeded to look online at rehabilitation for deep calf muscle sprains and realized that most sports medicine didn't offer much hope about healing this type of injury. A long and slow (prognosis: months and months) rehab process was the best they offered. OK. I started praying about it, asked other Practitioners to pray about it, knowing my calf was healing, healthy and whole, even though my experience was most definitely to the contrary. I remembered a quote of Holmes, "Since our spiritual understanding is not sufficient to enable us to mentally set bones, we call in a surgeon; since we cannot walk on water, we take a boat. We can go only as far as our spiritual knowledge takes us." (The Science of Mind, 219.2)
Ah, yes. A boat. Adding to the mental work of prayer, clearing out history, doubt and limiting thought, I also called in many physical resources, sports massage, myo-fascial release, stretching, rest, ice, accupuncture. Within a few days I was able to walk without pain and within 8 days, I was ready to gently get back to the gym. This is a considerably different story than the long and slow purely physical process, which might have also ultimately insisted that I must wear orthotics the rest of my life.
The take away from this lesson for me was that in addition to continuing the mental work, I did use the assistance of many healers in my rehabilitation (sometimes we do take a boat), and will continue to work with some of them to ensure my physical body does what I need it to do (which will allow different layers of story to be released and heal), but there was never a time when I gave over my wellbeing to another, looking for them to 'fix me'. I ain't broke, I just got confused. And I have a telling story for my Entrance Panel into the Holmes Institute later this month.
Oh, and by the way, it's seldom just one thing or just one layer, there's almost always more depth to the story than anyone can see at first glimpse....
--Janis
“Either This Stuff Works, or It Doesn’t” — Rev Donald
I had an acquaintance contact me through Facebook the other week because she believed I could help her find a healer who could heal her of a physical illness that she was experiencing. I asked her how involved she wished to be in her own healing. When she asked what I meant by that, I explained to her how affirmative prayer works and how it worked more effectively if she was willing to participate in her own wholeness, wellness and health. Eventually the conversation circled back, with her expressing that she didn't want to have to do anything, that she wanted a faith healer to do it for her and to her. Exasperated (yes, I know its hard to believe I got exasperated, but I did), I reminded her how Jesus worked with the people who came to him for healing.
"Consider how Jesus healed the people in the Bible. It was their faith in him that did the work, the blind man, the lame, the leper, the woman with incessant bleeding, all of them. He routinely said some variation of 'your faith has healed you' and he sometimes gave them a task, to have them participate in their own wholeness. Even with Lazarus, his sisters' faith was what raised him from the dead. You get to decide where to put your faith. If it's in a faith healer, and that works for you, fabulous" (You can tell I was exasperated).
After I asked her if she was willing to work with an affirmation declaring her wholeness, she reaffirmed her desire to have someone else do the work for her. She asked if I would do it for her. I replied that I would not, that I would say an affirmative prayer for and about her health, wholeness and wellbeing, and, as she had originally requested, pointed her in the direction of several different healers who worked with different modalities. I figured that was the end of the conversation.
On p. 128 of the Science of Mind, Holmes reminds us that, "we may change the trend of causation which has been set in motion at any time we decide to do so. Everything comes from Intelligence. There is nothing but Unity; there is nothing but freedom; there is nothing but completeness; there is nothing but Totality. Begin at the beginning and reason this out, time after time, until all doubt disappears. It is necessary that each one do this for himself. Such is the power of right thinking that it cancels and erases everything unlike itself. It answers every question, solves all problems, is the solution to all difficulty...."
Two days later, she messages me back, saying she had contacted some of those healers but none had responded and that she was feeling better. She asked if I was doing distance-healing work on her. "No", I replied, "not in the way you mean". And I asked her, again, if she was willing to allow wholeness and health to be her new reality. The next day I received another message of a similar sort, which included a statement about her willingness to accept health and healing in her own language.
It's going to be fun to watch her embody her own wellness, wholeness and health.
-- Janis
“I Love The Now”
Every time I hear Jimmy Buffett sing "I Love the Now" I remember that I always live in choice. I, like everyone else, have the perpetual opportunity to live in this present moment, this right now, or to live in the past and operate as though the experience I am in the middle of right this minute is exactly the same as something that happened before. Its easy to relive a memory and say "this is the same as that" because our minds like to pigeonhole events, circumstances and occurrences. It's easy to do that. Some would say it is even natural and appropriate. If you are trying to avoid getting eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, or stomped by a Brontosaurus, it makes some sense to remember how one set of circumstances seems very similar to a previous set of circumstances. In fact, even subconsciously translating or projecting from someone else's story might save your life if you are operating in survival mode.
Our bodies react to our memories exactly as though they are actual real-in-the-moment events. There's no difference. In the Spiritual Thought from this past Sunday, Ernest Holmes (from A New Design for Living, p. 130) says "In whatever aspect of living we desire a betterment - be it in respect to health, abundance, or happiness - we have to know that it is ours now. We establish the pattern now, we accept what it is now, we know that it is our experience now. There is no difference between thought and thing. There is no time element in Mind, nor need there be in out mind. Whatever good we desire must be accepted as the present reality of our experience. Only now can it exist."
If I create a fear situation in my mind, my body acts fearful, releasing adrenaline and cortisol, and my body gets ready to fight, flee or freeze. Basic physiology again. The bad news, according to the physicians and psychologists who study such things is that this internalized fear state, which may have been created by something completely imaginary, causes an internal physical-chemical stress on the body, and has a long lag time before the body can even begin to come back to its own balance, equilibrium and well being.
What if "this is not that"? What if this apparently threatening situation isn't really inherently threatening? What if the Universe is predominantly a safe place and that all the events in my present experience can be viewed from a positive and supportive perspective? This doesn't mean I'm going to be stupid and step out in front of a bus to see what happens, but it can mean that I don't automatically interpret a conversation, and impression, or a look as antagonistic from the start.
Feels like a happier way to live to me. How about you?
-- Janis