Sparks from the Fire

If there was ever a confusion of concepts, it’s this one.  It’s been in the high 90s here in NYC for the past week and it seems like everybody I’m running into lately is struggling with a summer cold.  The whole concept, or should I say ‘miss-concept’, is so proliferate that I guess I decided to join the party – or should I say ‘got duped into’ joining the party.

Fly Fishing - What's wrong with this picture?

I mean really, what a weird thing to begin with – get a cold when it’s hot.  Shows how mental these things are in the first place.  To begin with, the expression, “in the first place” is the operative word here in my experience.  I decided to join the party because I didn’t protect my thought as I usually do when I started being bombarded with all the bad news.

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Need a healing?  Start with forgiveness.

We all carry the need to forgive somebody around with us through life.  If you can’t think of anyone you need to forgive, try forgiving yourself.  Once you clean up that dark spot in your life, you’ll see healing demonstrated by the endeavor – often in physical terms.

But what really is forgiveness?  I think forgiveness comes when we truly clean up the mess.  We forgive and are forgiven when we no longer have anything to forgive.  It’s not, as some think, an act that somehow prefaces the solution of the original crime.  It only comes when the crime is solved and rectified.

The most prescient statement I’ve ever heard on the subject of forgiveness is found in the Lord’s Prayer.  Forgive us our debts (our trespasses) as we forgive our debtors (those who trespass against us).

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I read these truths yesterday morning.  This morning I woke up very early from an end-of-the-world dream where I was stuck in LA after a massive world earthquake and a resulting war with deranged people.  I couldn’t get home.  I couldn’t find anyone I knew.

I woke up in a sweat.  Disturbed deeply.  Frightened by the seeming reality that had just engulfed my life.  Wondering immediately what that was all about.  Carrying forward the feelings of the dream into my waking consciousness.  As I crawled out of bed, the Missus moaned and thrashed about lost in the throes of her own nightmare… (more…)

As a teenager I discovered the cure for car-sickness.  Just drive.

I would drive down through the Ozark Mountains in Missouri to our lake cottage each weekend from St. Louis where I grew up.  I’d sit in the back seat and be fine until we got into the mountain curves and then that life-long problem would come rushing on.  Yuck.

I’d ask my dad to pull over and let me drive.  The minute I’d get my hands on the wheel sitting in the driver’s seat, my illness would clear up and immediately disappear.  I’d be fine from then on as long as I drove.

It got so that whenever we got to a certain little town, Dad would just automatically pull over and I would take over the driving.  I don’t remember the name of the town, but I do know that it was just before we got to the mountains.

Years later, when I was in my 30s, I found myself one afternoon on a mini vacation out at sea with some friends standing out on the bow of a pontoon sail boat hanging on to the mast enjoying the salt spray and the afternoon breeze.

We had gone pretty far out into the ocean and we could no longer see the land.  The boat was small and the swells were large; it was not at all a storm, but out little craft was kind of going up the side of one swell and down the other.

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The Art of Healing – Steps 2-4

Note: This is a 2- part series. If you are interested, but haven’t read Gift from Mom – The Art of Healing – Step 1, I suggest, for coherence purposes, that you read it first.

The Art of Healing is based on certain principles or laws of existence that exist today and are shared truths between most of the world’s major religions from Christianity to Buddhism to Hinduism to Islam. In most circumstances I find that it is language that separates us, and the truths of existence that unify.

There are a few simple premises that this Art is based upon. If you do not accept these premises, this post will not make much sense to you. If you do, the post simply serves as a reminder of what you already know. I believe that the fact of the matter is that we all know these truths anyway. Some of us just don’t know that we know it.

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The Art of Healing – Step 1

At a young age I was taught the art of healing by my mother. She taught me to use basically four steps. The first was a protective or preventative measure and 2-4 were the steps I should take if I were to fail to practice the first.

Because of step one I rarely get sick or have physical problems. If I, for whatever reason, get lazy, forgetful, confused or even afraid, and have to move to steps 2-4, I at least have a plan to follow. When I’m smart or prescient enough to follow that plan to a ‘T’, I have always been a successful healer.

What proof do I have of this? I’ve never taken any medicine, I’ve only had one short visit with a doctor in my life, I’ve never felt the need to carry medical insurance and never been admitted to a hospital.

This, by the way, does not make me special. It is not really what some would deem as a ‘gift’, it’s really just normal practice. If your mom taught you to look both ways before crossing the street, you got a gift from mom. I got many gifts from my mom. Healing was one of them. Besides the fact that she gave birth to me, it was probably the best one.

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Turn Around Time
We’re going to be all right. I can feel it in the air. The air is still not the normal air of security because we’re still in the woods, but it’s a good clean air of promise and hope.

We’re turning it around. Not only the economy, but the plight of nature, the sad problem of national obesity and even the wreck of the music business. I’ve always heard that the first step of healing is to recognize the problem. If that is so, and my many experiences with healings do prove that out, then we, as a nation, are beginning to turn it around.

It’s a turnaround time.

And what is it that we’re turning around from? It’s simple really. Look at the four major problems above and one concept, one word jumps off the page. Greed. Good ol’ American greed.

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So many of you have written in about or mentioned to me the posting I wrote June 18th called A Child Healed.  Some have expressed wonder, some gratitude, still others a deep appreciation for the spiritual understanding of my mother.

I was a most fortunate child.  I never went to a doctor.  I never took any medicine.  I never had to.  My mother’s ability to use the power of God’s love made the necessity of these material remedies unnecessary.  She was always quick to heal my older brother and me.

My father did not share our belief system, but he recognized my mom’s abilities to heal and let her do it her way.  He stayed out of the way and let her do God’s work.  Some of you will call these miracles.  Some of you know that these experiences of healing were just everyday natural occurrences for my mom.

At the age of around 12, I came down with a wicked case of swimmer’s ear.  We lived a block from the country club, and in the summer, my brother, Jim, and I spent just about 24/7 in the pool.  We got out of the water for a few meals and a little sleep, but that was about it.

To this day I’m not really sure what swimmer’s ear is (probably some sort of inner ear infection), but I know I had it, having gotten it before.  It wasn’t fun and this particular time was the worst.  It felt like someone had taken a 6” long needle and run it through my ear into my brain and just left it there.

I was miserable, lying in Mom’s bed moaning and crying and sometimes screaming from the pain.  Mom had moved me into her bed where she could better watch over me.  She sat at the side of the bed and read the truths from the Bible to me over and over as I carried on.  I waited for the pain to go away, but it would not cease, driving me to exhaustion.

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