Saying “Yes” to Jesus

This past weekend I took Tony George’s Singing as a Spiritual Practice for the second time. We were asked to bring in a song and I brought in a song that I think is the hardest song in the world to sing because you cannot sing it, you must feel it, channel it and let God sing through you.

The song is called “Yes” from Shekina Glory Ministry’s CD. The Gospel choir I sing in does it every year and only the singers with this ability to “channel” God’s voice sing it. Usually someone who is a pro with a CD or two out there.

The original song is sung from Jesus, asking us “If you really knew what I want of you, would you say, ‘Yes’?

When I hear the song I weep. I always have wept through it, even now as I write, the question makes me weep with longing for Jesus. This weeping is called Shekina, holy spirit moving through me.

So I took the song to the workshop and Tony works with the whole class privately with your song to help you connect to the words on a deeper level.

We first talked about why I chose the song. It is because I have been longing to connect to Jesus all my life but probably something called Post Traumatic Catholic Syndrome blocks me. I long to say Yes to a deep connection to him and to God through him.

So Tony, a master teacher on a soul level, suggested that I am relating to the crucified Christ, not the resurrected one. This is the Jesus I must connect to. I must connect to my own resurrection. We talked about how when Jesus resurrected he asked Mary not to touch him because he was not fully himself and that I am also in a process of becoming fully myself in God. I have the desire and I am saying “Yes” to the process.

He suggested I not sing the lyrics of the song but only the refrain, the word “Yes,” which is repeated numerous times.  As I sang it, the thing that happens when those great singers sing the song happened to me. Spirit took over and rewrote the song. I’ve heard it said that singing is praying twice.

And so I prayed on the deepest soul level, I said “Yes”

So each morning this will be my practice, to meditate and sing this song.

Here is a video of our choir doing the song.

Im Not Alone Today

My niece had a very bad day yesterday and tried to kill herself, though halfheartedly, so today I’ve been sitting in the psychiatric emergency waiting room with my sister for several hours trying to get her admitted.

While I was here I got a call from my wife. She said her dad was moved into hospice. We just saw him last week at the nursing home. He’s there from a stroke and looked fine so we’re shocked.

My life has been so filled with crisis I wondered when it would end.

So I went to the chapel to pray and meditate. I took a few breaths, each one deeper and slower and I heard the word “ruach” which means breath, or spirit. I consciously inhaled spirit and felt Jesus breathe peace into me. I felt both Mary and Jesus at my side and after so many fearful hours between my niece and my sister’s serious illnesses and time in hospitals, I realized I was no longer afraid.

For some reason God has given our family a heavy burden but i’m not alone.

Each Meal as Communion

I have a lot of resistance to Christian concepts so I often spend some time thinking about them and reading the bible to try to understand them.

I especially had a problem with the concepts of sin and punishment. Today, the day after Thanksgiving where I often took license to eat lots of foods that might not be good for me,  I read that the greek translation of Communion is “thanksgiving.”

I grew up in a Catholic family and have an Episcopal wife so I’ve been to a lot of them.  I’m kind of a confused agnostic longing to believe in Jesus so when I went to communion with my family or my wife it meant nothing to me. I sometimes joined my wife in it hoping I’d feel something, but I never did.

A few months ago I had a private communion where a priest from an order of Christian Mysticism explained the symbolic and energetic power of the ceremony and I was deeply moved.

So recently I made a commitment to try to bring spirituality into my meals. I want to do it because I have Adrenal Fatigue and the only real treatment is diet and I’m not on my food plan. Thus I’m not feeling great. Really all I’ve done is talking to a friend about the spirituality idea regularly but not doing anything during meals.

This morning in my prayer time I thought about the two commandments Jesus said to obey: Love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. I’ve always hated the word “sinner” but today I saw I was  “sinning” against myself when I eat harmful foods. I am not loving myself.

In each meal I am conceptually taking in the body and blood of the Creator, the food and liquids that nourish me. And in a way my “punishment” has been fatigue, moodiness and weight gain.

It is a powerful concept to think that with each bite or sip I am bringing God into my body and each meal can be a communion, a thankfulness for the food that nourishes me.

When I did this private communion there was an altar with candles and a feeling of sacredness. Sometimes as a child at Thanksgiving we used to set a table and light candles.  I eat on the run most of the time. To be more mindful today I can set the altar of the table, light a candle and say a prayer before I eat.

Miracle Movie Manifestation

My wife and I went to Boston for Thanksgiving and stayed in our favorite hotel. We saw that the movie Eat, Pray & Love was on but we feel that $15 for on-demand movies is a huge rip off and we refuse to pay it. But I really wanted to see the movie so we affirmed we can easily afford it.

When we left, we told the clerk about some problems with the room like hard mattresses, holes in the bedspread, some ants and a leaky handicap tub.

She apologized profusely and took the movie off the bill.

Am I a Sinner?

I’ve had a psychologically and spiritually intense day. In therapy I explored deep feelings of having no one to go to for help brought up by the fact that my niece who is in the hospital is getting worse and so many doctors and hospitals cannot help her.

This feeling of not having anyone to go to for guidance has been the strongest in my spiritual life until I went to the Centers of Light School of Christian Mysticism where I felt there were some real answers.

But today I was reading the Poem of the Man God ( a channeled story of the life of Jesus) which is the book used in services at Centers of Light. I got to page 30 which somehow goes from a loving discussion of Mary Queen of Paradise to a harsh rant against non-procreating sex and talks about how we are corrupted by Satan.

I thought, “Here we go, the same old Catholic ‘I’m a sinner’ bullshit dogma every Christian church hands you”. I expected more from C of L. I slammed the book closed. To make it worse, I used kinesiology to test if God feels this way and did not like the answers I got. It was the first time in my life I felt like a “sinner.”

I could no longer hear the clear voice of God that I have heard since a night I got a blessing in one of the classes. After dinner I sat in the tub and wept, feeling so alone again.

I was screaming out for God and Jesus and Mary to come back to me, to help me understand what was happening. Was this God in this book? Because if it was, it is not a God who loves me, not one I can love. I prayed and cried.

Then I sat for a while to listen and suddenly my arms floated up weightless in the water and a voice said, “These books are not for you. In time you will write your own book and it too will upset someone.  I am not in these books but here in your heart, your thoughts and in every word you speak. I will not leave you.”

The voice explained that even with channeled works, Exegesis must used. “They are all colored by the time, culture and the writer’s personal experiences and belief systems. No channel is pure but the one that comes through you, to you.”

This kind of direct contact from Spirit is frightening to me. I keep my deeper, “mystical” experiences to myself because I fear that line between mystical experience and psychosis. I need to share my whole experience and know they won’t lock me up because I hear voices. I used to share the messages and intuitions with people but they always seemed to get mad at me.

My wife used to say to me, “Don’t worry honey, it is hard being a prophet, people don’t like you, you upset them when you tell the truth.” So I did 6 months of ADD coaching to learn social skills so I could at least speak my views and not clear the room.

 

A Day of Miracles and a Goat

I’m still upstate and though I always feel happy here I was feeling very sad today, mourning the loss of beginning of my studies with Centers of Light and a friend who died, and worried about my niece. I was feeling lonely and lost.

I was rushing to see a client and whizzed past my favorite vista, a view of surrounding farms. I decided to stop and meditate a moment and ask Mary and Jesus to guide me. I got the message that I’m on the right path but maybe it was the wrong time for deeper studies but to continue to ask for guidance, which I did.

I went to HomeDepot and asked for help with some things. A man was sent to me who looked like I’d imagine John the Baptist to look and sure enough his name was John. He was scruffy with a big salt and pepper beard and he loped along from department to department “guiding the way” and giving me great advice on sustainable living.

I didn’t think much about it until later when I went to a feed store to ask if anyone knew where there was a lumberyard where I could get sawdust for my compost toilets. A man was there preparing a lecture on the nesting habits of birds. He said he had plenty of sawdust and he had an hour before the presentation and lived nearby.

His name was Joseph. I followed him to his house where he had a small horse stall in back. He uses the sawdust for bedding for his three horses and filled two 30 gallon bags for me. It was not until Joseph introduced me to his wife Mary that I realized I was in Joseph and Mary’s  ”manger.”

Later I had a wonderful manifestation. When we bought our land, my wife jokingly asked if we could get a goat for Christmas. She never asks for anything, especially something as impractical as a goat. If course she knew we were not going to be up here often enough to care for an animal. And we laughed about how silly an idea it was.

My client was a farm and they had a very pregnant Dwarf Goat. I asked what they do with the babies and she said basically nothing. I told her about my wife’s wish and she said we could have one of the goats when they are born. She said we could keep it on the farm and she’d care for it. So we’re getting a goat for Christmas!

Rev. Kit Kat’s Glutten Free Adrenal Booster Muffins

Take a large bowl and mix in oatmeal as a carbohydrate and grain.

Add sesame, sunflower or flax seeds with sesame or sunflower oil with 1/4 cup flax meal for essential fatty acids

For protein add your favorite nuts crumbled or chopped (I like pecans). Add in 3 eggs mush with your hands until you get a gooey crumbly mix.

For sweetness I add 2 stevia then mix and experiment with unsweetened carob ships, organic dried coconut, Polanders 100% jelly (I like strawberry or orange) or bananas or blueberries. Carob coconut or carob banana is a nice rich mix with pecans or walnuts. For a lighter muffin add more flax meal and almonds with orange or strawberry jam.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Sometimes I take a 1/2 muffin and with tofutti or nut butter to bed. Even 1/2 of one of these killer muffins is an excellent adrenal and blood sugar booster between meals and they require no refrigeration and last FOREVER!

 

Pork Lover’s Gluten-free Waldorf Cabbage Delight

I use oils that are solid at room temperature so they do not become rancid when cooked. This helps with ph balance if you are a meat eater.

Melt some Ghee (clarified butter) in a saute pan and lightly saute some coleslaw, chopped gala apples or green and crumbled walnuts. I’d say a 50/25/25 ratio. Set aside.

Cut lean pork into 1″ cubes and fry in ghee or palm oil until brown and cooked well.

Mix the cabbage into the pork and sprinkle on 1 pack of Stevia.

Toss and serve hot.

Add a green salad for additional ph balancing.

Yum yum delish!

A Review of “My Journey of Decay” by Victoria Libertore

Perfomance Art? I think not.

Victoria Libertore

To call Victoria Libertore a performer would be a gross misjudgment and error in classification. She is more what I might call an emotional conductor moving not an audience, but witnesses, from one powerful vignette to another masterfully giving us a glimpse into what might be a tragic event to some with such loving tenderness or brutal honesty then pulling us back just as we are at the brink of “Oh, this is just too much!”

She shamelessly shows us a glimpse deep into her pain and her mother’s mental illness and then once we are completely involved, maybe painfully involved, she humorously and deftly brings us back into the room to safely with a sigh of relief.

I saw the show almost like a Tai Chi exercise with Vic gracefully moving our emotions like energy this way and that. I felt a sort of shock at then end as the lights went on and had to take a few moments to gather the pieces of my heart and soul up off the floor wishing I could just sit there in silence for a half hour and process the deep feelings I had just had. Wishing my therapist was there to hold my hand through them.

Did I relate to the material?

Oh yes. There were so many parallels…my mouth full of cracked in half teeth I ignore until they abscess because of my neglect due to fear of violation because of abuse and molesting by doctors and dentists; my own 30 year struggle and somewhat failure to “get” meditation and finally only use of it for pain management. Then there is the foods, my love of stinky cheeses and steak tartar which my glamorous but sociopathic Parisian Sommelier father was famous for, the mental illness of both my parents including my depressed alcoholic mother. Finally, there is changing my mother’s diapers when she had cancer and the intimacy of that moment and the one when she took her last breath in my arms.

And then there’s her sexiness.

Who else could pull grapes out of their tits and a peel a banana penis with such dignity? Victoria doesn’t turn you on by what she does so much a who she is in front of you. No safety-pinned-closed curtains here Victoria, we see it all. We witness sensuality on a cellular level through a backward jerk or a sidelong glance or even through stillness that is somehow ripe with tension ready to climax. I did not have expectations of this show because I though I do know Victoria personally, I had only seen her perform briefly as a hag tour guide at Angels & Accordions in Greenwood cemetery and through the day every time I saw her I could never bring myself to feel I knew her. I was afraid of her because her character was so intact. I have been around actors, singers and performers all my life so I don’t see myself as a naive fan when I say this woman has extraordinary talent. My only regret is that I waited to se the show until Sunday. Had I gone Friday, I would have been able to see it two more times.

Spontaneous Healing

Do you ever feel like you run from healer to therapist to doctor to psychic trying to find answers and hoping for miracles? I have found many guides in my healing journey of severe autoimmune deficiency and learned a lot. One thing that has been important to me is that permanent healing must occur on physical, emotional and spiritual levels.

A doctor can treat a symptom, therapists help us process, 12 step programs help us get connected to God. Some healers can remove illness completely.

No single person no matter how talented can heal the cause that starts somewhere in my soul and the only physician that heals at that level is my higher power. That does not mean I don’t treat on the other levels but I do it from a perspective that everything I do is simply to return me to a state of wholeness so my body can heal itself spontaneously

“The healer does not “do” or “give” something to the healee; instead he helps him come home to the All, to the One, to the way of “unity” with the universe, and in this “meeting” the healee becomes complete and this in itself is healing”
Lawrence H. LeShan Ph.D

Our Attitude has a Role in Spontaneous Healing

There are basically two metaphysical thoughts behind spontaneous healing. The first is that each individual has the ability to muster psychological principles, such as courage, faith, hope, prayer, optimism, etc., that seem to play a role in the spontaneous recovery of some cases.

The second thought is where the individual simply seems to surrender and plays no role in the healing process at all. Surprisingly, when the individual just gives up, resigns himself, and lets fate take its course, a mental shift occurs that allows the healing process to work. For unknown reasons the immune system “kicks in” and the patient’s health improves. Research shows attitudes have more effects on healing than medicines.

In reality, the second thought is much like the first in that “surrender to a higher power” implies trust in the same psychological principles discussed in the first school of thought. Simply put, the second cases reflect the Grace of God within us as the true healer.

Physical Healing

If one cuts a finger, there is an intelligence built into the cells of the body that causes the blood to form a clot and to begin mending the skin and other tissues. This type of physical healing is referred to as one of the lowest forms of spontaneous healing since humans do not play a role in this process. In fact, all life forms have the ability to heal or repair themselves to some extent.

Many believe that the power to heal is within every person and that the body will heal itself if the illness is brought to a level where the immune system can take over the healing.

There are physical activities that we can do to aid the natural healing process. They include:
• healing nutrition, natural supplements, sufficient sleep and hydration
• avoiding various emotional and environmental toxins
• mindfulness practices, stress reduction, exercise and meditation
• nurturing physical contact

We can participate in the healing process by doing certain things but this physical participation has very great spiritual significance in terms of willingness to heal.

Psychological Healing

Techniques such as therapy, hypnosis, placebo, biofeedbacks, meditation, visualization and faith healing prove the power within the mind affects the healing process. Research has shown the power of hypnosis in removing warts and placebos have been used to cure all types of illnesses.

It is known that if the mind embraces certain principles such as faith, hope, belief, and prayer that the mind will aid in this spontaneous healing process, no matter how hopeless the situation may look from a physical standpoint.

Expressing feelings and reducing emotional stress is a critical component of healing. It is repressed emotions that actually cause much of our illness. Support groups and families of origin or of our own creation are essential to emotional healing and well-being. Research further shows social interaction as a healing nutrient and having supportive relationships builds our immune system.

Spiritual Healing

Spiritual healing is the healing of the soul, which no doctor or medicine can heal. It comes from faith. We can open our minds to faith through developing a conscious contact with a higher power and exposing ourselves to miracles and possibilities. By keeping people of faith around us and reading about miracles to give us hope.

If you’re into the Bible, it does say “…thy faith hath made thee whole.”

Article based on the work of Dr. Lee E. Warren, B.A., D.D. See http://www.plim.org

References

Dossey, Larry, M.D., Meaning & Medicine
LeShan, Lawrence H., Ph.D., The Medium, the Mystics and the Physicist
Metzner, Ralph, Ph.D., Opening to Inner Light
Samuels, Mike, M.D., and Samuels, Nancy, Seeing with the Mind‘s Eye
Siegel, Bernie, M.D., Love, Medicine and Miracles
Rachel Naomi Nemen, M.D., Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind
Weil, Andrew M.D., Spontaneous Healing