I have read and re-read Chinese medicine resources as much of it aligns with symbolism and patterns I've witnessed myself. Below is an excerpt from one resource by Lawrence Michail of Compassionate Dragon Healing that speaks to how the body displays its symbolic patterns of energy that are stuck or disharmonious as disease (often past harmonious patterns can become disharmonious if clinged to as life is dynamic).
What was even more intriguing was he pointed out that healing at an "individual" level may impact the collective, the global. That's essentially what ho'oponopono does--it clears past energetic patterns to allow life to flow without any obstructions or blocks. I just utilize symbolism (often to decipher the symbols, I use a combination of Louise Hay, Lise Bourbeau, very good dream symbol dictionaries such as passed down by the Toltecs as well as my own innate ability to perceive symbols) to help me focus on a particular pattern we're dealing with. That is longer story (and possible a future post), yet if you begin to consider and experiment with the physical (matter) to be constellations and representations of holographic energy it may make more 'sense.'
You can also do this for yourself. You are your own healer if you are willing to heed all the messages sincerely and with integrity. It wasn't until I lost my health insurance over ten years ago that I was guided to learn these self-healing techniques that ultimately depend on no external healer and simply point you time and again back to the divine wholeness that you are.
"Realistically, when our body refuses to do what we want it to, metaphysically, it is not actually broken. It is doing its job. One of its functions is to carry messages from the higher energetic planes to us. [For me, I don't think of it as higher or lower--just more subtle dimension of ourselves.] It is then up to us to interpret these messages and take action.
Western medicine takes the position that we feel pain because we can. Western approaches to pain, as the main symptom of any disease, are pretty much limited to drugs and surgery. Treatment consists of numbing or diverting pain receptors in the body or cutting off the offending organ. While this approach does have its place in acute situations, it is at best a temporary and often harmful way to approach pain or other disharmonies we feel in our bodies.
Most often, western medicine has little to offer most of us and incredibly makes us wait until our symptoms become unbearably acute before it can even acknowledge a disharmony.
The trend today, as much for economic reasons, as for reasons of spirit and human development is to encourage people to take responsibility for their own lives. This is the approach of ancient wisdom.
We use our bodies to communicate with our selves and with others. We use our bodies to work out emotional, mental and spiritual questions. While we do tend to judge a diseased body negatively, there really is no right or wrong about it.
The ancient Taoists theorized that good and bad, right and wrong, yin and yang, were just different points of view that we all adopt at one time or another. Because the earth plane is dualistic in nature we all view, at one time or another from both the Yin and the Yang ends of the telescope. There does not seem to be a point in judging one good and one bad or judging one good and one evil. These just are the symptoms of being human.
Still, there is such a thing as being well, and there is such a thing as being sick. When we get sick we tend to want to do something about it.
Enter the healer.
A healer is trained in the observation and interpretation of signs and symptoms, and in methods for dealing with them.
Wholistic Healing of the individual occurs at different energetic levels. These are the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels.
For those on the path, there are a great many more levels and sublevels identified in various cultural, religious and philosophical traditions. But for our purposes we can look at the individual in these four broad realms to at least begin the process of healing.
Healing by the way occurs not only at the individual level, but also at the family, community and global level. When one heals 'mindfully', as the Buddhists say, these other aspects of individual healing may become apparent. " - from Compassionate Dragon Healing
"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" is as good or bad a question as "What would you attempt if you knew you would succeed?" These sound like great questions don't they?
Yet it all hinges on whether you are a loser, or not. A failure or not.
If a plant doesn't fit into a pot anymore, has it failed? Perhaps from the pot's perspective. It's just growth from another perspective.
Success/failure is based on judgment and interpretation. It's a polarity of opposites, just like pride/shame.
Accept and allow yourself, others, and that life is unfolding in surprising ways (that don't fit neatly into polar interpretations).
It's taken me my entire existence until rather recently* to recognize that failure and success are cultural notions (often based on control), and are woefully subjective. Really, I didn't see that failure and success were perceptions; I'd gone along with the program and believed like most people that they had held some objective truth.
When ten years ago I could not afford health insurance, I became a loser as a health insurance consumer. Plus, an utter failure at the yuppie identity that I had groomed ;) Yet little did I know it would pave the way to learn healing on my own and techniques shared on this blog, so even when I could afford it again, 'insurance' made no sense to me. Another example is when my car failed, I was a loser who couldn't afford a working vehicle. I had to walk or bus everywhere in suburban San Jose. That's how I learned I had neighbors and hosted a tea party for all of us on Sept 11, 2007, that magnolias bloomed on my block, that serene parks and tall sequoias welcomed my footfall, that street art flourished best for pedestrians. It was from that time on when I started valuing walkable neighborhoods, community placemaking and public space. In some strange way, it is as if I were guided to abandon routes that I'd been accustomed to--which definitely looks like "failure" since it doesn't meet any cultural norms--and get mighty curious.
When you see the word "failure" or "success" bandied about (and it happens often in USA), either directed at you or to a project at work, or to someone else in your circle, or even to an authority figure, that would be an opportune time for Ho'oponopono and seeing the pattern of believing in that dichotomy that we all may yet share. They are both sides to the same coin, which is easy to flip. Look within where you feel reactive around the words and the emotional tone behind them. Look within where you feel any kinship with the person's or situation's pattern. Then, silently or aloud to yourself: "I love you, please forgive me, I'm sorry, I love you, thank you."
A better question might be along the lines, "What would you attempt to do if you knew you did not fear the unknown?"
Or poet Pablo Neruda's questions:
How much does a man live, after all? Does he live a thousand days, or one only? For a week, or for several centuries? How long does a man spend dying? What does it mean to say 'for ever'?
* Here's when I opened my eyes about concept of failure and success being trained into us, and not true. I read about these research studies by Carol Dweck and others that compared children who were praised (or upbraided) for being smart and capable with children that were praised for moving forward, growing, learning and stumbling along the way regardless. Over time, the praiseworthy "capable child" will give up in the face of failure and avoid unknowns to retain their honor, whereas the other children praised for trying are motivated by the chance to explore. See article: "The Effort Effect. According to a Stanford psychologist, you’ll reach new heights if you learn to embrace the occasional tumble," Stanford Magazine, March/April 2007
"If someone wishes for good health, one must first ask oneself if he is ready to do away with the reasons for his illness. Only then is it possible to help him."- Hippocrates
In the strange way that everything is One, and thus more than just interconnected, this all is coalescing into a singular larger message that relates to the recent spate of posts on pancreas, Occupy Wall Street, Steve Jobs, and becoming our own authority/expert.
I won't get to tie all the puzzle pieces together in this one post. As a catalyst, consider the feeling (not the meanings) of power/energy/will and the solar plexus chakra. Keep that feeling "in mind" for the next several posts.
In my own life, I tend to "kill inspiration," when I conjecture that the status quo power structure would mock my ideas--or, gulp, worse, and thus I self-police myself.
An intense self-preservation reaction takes me over as a force that I hardly understood until I read two books recently.
I received more insight into that self-censoring impulse (and truthfully it was just two chapters within each book that together were the huge Aha!). The nutshell is that cultural memes that progragate the easiest are the ones that stifle innovation, and serve to keep the status quo in place (see The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch--particularly chapters The Evolution of Culture, and The Evolution of Creativity). It's not me, it's not you. It's the memetic milieu you're born into. This is often done through the use of pyschological pressure of shame and praise and through the labeling of taboo.
More than anything, it's failure and success, that are shamed and praised (see Little Bets by Peter Sims). Thus, cultural indocrination (inherited generation to generation) instead of viewing failure as being a valid, natural part of the journey towards new inventions (and heck, adventures), paint obstacles as evidence that we are worth less as valued members of society. "They might not think I'm smart, so let me avoid that challenge since it may not pan out and make me out to be the fool."
"A functioning police state needs no police” - William S. Burroughs -- think that one over
Do you self-police your self expression? Do you censor vibrant inspiration since it doesn't fit the message and memes of yesteryear's society? As far as I'm concerned, it's all yesteryear's ideas since same old, same old memes and memories have been recycling in a loop-de-loop for a while. Dynamic civilizations ability to grow, progress, and evolve depend on knowing and allowing that failures aren't personal shortcomings. They're part of the process of progress.
Several research studies, including those by Carole Dweck at Stanford University, show that children praised for process and effort take on new challenges more readily than children praised for intelligence. The latter seek external pats on the back to keep up their self-image, and thus adopt a "fixed mindset" that pretty colludes with static societies. The former adapt to a "growth mindset."
If truth be told, I was a child praised for intelligence. Straight A's, yada yada.
The last few years I've lived a fairly unconventional life--probably classifying me as a 'loser' in the black-and-white failure-or-success culture of USA. I would keep feeling these strong, nearly debilitating sense of shame that was unsettling, and I didn't know why. Now I know why, and that knowledge that it isn't personal--but embedded into the cultural--has broken its hold over me (very, very recently).
Isn't that Dr. Len's point? That these patterns aren't personal to you or I. They're programming (and, memes serve that function). They're collective. That may explain why it feels like a force field when you begin to make some head-way and bump against their boundary... there's generations of cultural energy charging the battery up.
Enough was enough. No cultural censors--no priestly classes or doctor classes or police classes or what not authority figures weild power over me such that they will silence me.
I shall speak and express freely.
Power and energy are forces of life and existence itself, and thus are available to all.
Shortly after reading the article about the singer who is healing from leukemia, in the same coffee shop, I picked out a book from their shelf on New England Legends and Folklore. And lo and behold, I find a story about the Salem witch trials. (Remember static tactics are taboo... shame and praise... "You're a witch!" is a shaming tactic. Or, "You're a heretic!") Back then, shame went a bit further than just mere psychological abuse, it was literally killing inspiration.
In those days, traits of a witch included singing, writing, storytelling, reading, and spending time alone.
Even though I've been to Salem, Mass., myself, I don't recall this story at all. To summarize.... at that time the Mather family was quite powerful. (There's that word again.) And Cotton Mather was "the foremost clergyman of that dark day." Church and state were much less separate in that time as well, btw.
Reading this chapter I got the impression that everyone was cowed into obeying external authority of the day, especially if they claimed direct access to Divinity (as if you don't?). It's quite possible everyone believed the truths of the day unquestioned. Or, even if they did not, who wants to be the minority outspoken one who is made an example of ("off with her head"? Oh, at this point I should point out I have an unhealthy fear of being burned at the stake. Yeah, it makes no sense but maybe it does.
Except not everyone was intimidated. A clothier named Robert Calef spoke up.
"The sickening reflection that the judges had decreed the death of a score of innocent persons upon a mistake paralyzed men's tongues, unless, like Calef, they spoke in obedience to the command of conscience." - New England Legends and Folklore, by Samuel Adams Drake
Calef bundled together his thoughts in writing to rebuke Reverend Mather's teachings.
"No printer could be found in Boston or in the Colony willing to undertake the publication or expose it for sale. "
Fine, then, all the powers that be in the Colony may have the ability to intimidate the printers, but that didn't deter him. Calef printed his words against phony witch trials in London.
"It was publicly burned in the College-yard at Cambridge by order of the president, whom its exposures reached through his near relative."
The near relative was the father of Cotton Mather, a puritan Minister whom was President at Harvard. Fine then, the power plays escalate. The Mathers print a denounciation of Calef's work in his printing a response, Some Few Remarks upon a Scandalous Book. (That label scandalous is to make sure that the pious adherents to memes understand that it is taboo, just in case):
"To break its force, a vindication was prepared and printed;. . . ."
However, borrowing William Burroughs again, “Writers are very powerful,” Burrough tells us; they can write, and “unwrite,” the "script for the reality film." Calef used his own energy rather than bowing to others' perceived power, and in so doing, balanced the imbalance of power:
". . . but there were no more denunciations made for witchcraft, or courts assembled to hang innocent people. Calef indeed felt the resentment of the Mathers, but he had saved the cause."
John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem in Calef's honor called, Calef in Boston. Here's one verse (the full poem here) that I'd have to say pretty much could be a poem in honor of Ho'oponopono--cleaning away the old to allow the fresh, moment-by-moment inspiration:
"Falsehoods which we spurn to-day Were the truths of long ago; Let the dead boughs fall away, Fresher shall the living grow."
BONUS: A related video that I found really helpful is below. Almine uses Ho'oponopono principles to heal herself, even though it appears that a student is asking her for a healing because he'd completely lost his singing voice.
Particularly note the symbolism of singing voice, the singer in the Las Vegas Sun article, voice, inspiration, expression:
"My own life needed to sing more... even if it meant simplifying a great deal." - Almine
p.p.s. I'm also finding that lupus seems to also have a similar message. This post may be useful to delve into that too. The message in lupus is that one is feeling, "A giving up. Better to die than stand up for one's self." Again, it seems very related to power, 3rd chakra, and cultural meme of fitting in to rest of the tribe (by psychological pressure). For instance, a friend comes from a strict Asian family, and they don't like that she "defies" their cultural mores to go to school to be a modern dancer. So, yeah, you guessed it, she is diagnosed with lupus. It's almost as if this massive collective conflict between meme-memory and the flow of future is playing out inside us... Thankfully, life itself has no opposition.
Memorials, he said, "defeated the purpose of a man’s life. Only by living your own life to the full can you honour the memory of someone."
Perhaps the only way I could truly honor the memory of Steve Jobs is to step up another octave and live mine to the fullest.
"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." -- original Apple "Think Different" advertisement (long version)
These same words narrated by Steve Jobs in this video of a never aired TV commercial:
I'm surprised how much Steve Jobs' death has shaken me up. It may be a couple of days of processing and writing to get through all I'd like to express, and it may be a little jumbled, and not necessarily in any order.
I'm writing this post today because someone in my Google+ stream wrote yesterday: "I want to thank Steve Jobs for the way he lived with vigor in the face of cancer. My Mom did that, too. My heart goes out to his family and other loved ones. Losing brilliant people to cancer is so very painful. I hope someone who lives by "Think Different" finds a cure!" (For the record, my dad died of stomach cancer when I was a teenager.)
I'm not sure how many people know the history of computer technology (I do since my university degree is in computer engineering). To put it in a nutshell, originally computers were huge mammoth machines that took a huge room to house and due to lack of reasonable user interface (not that learning assembly language is rocket science, trust me, but it's not very facile either) where mainly accessible to scientists and other highly qualified experts in white lab coats. (I jest about the lab coats, sweaters would be better since it was freezing in those rooms.) The machines to the left in the photo above weighed in at 30 tons.
"This was the whole point of the 1984 commercial. That if IBM ruled the world, it would be boring, totalitarian, George Orwellian--just an ugly society of mediocrity and conformity and thought control. And Apple was going to send the proverbial act into the image of big brother. It was religious fervor in the sense that we were fighting a mighty opposite. Which was IBM, the totalitarian mainframe company.
. . . . What we did is we worked very, very hard because we truly thought we were on a mission to improve people's creativity and productivity and prevent totalitarianism, primarily of IBM." - Guy Kawasaki, early Apple Inc. employee, impromptu October 5, 2011 talk on the day Steve died
Apple's original vision was to end that 'only for experts' preciousness. Hey let's make the power in those computing machines available to be harnessed by individuals too. Allow people without reams of science credentials and computer degrees to be expressive and creative on that platform. Thus, adding to the option of computers built and designed for a team of scientists and engineers solely, the world would also have personal computer for any and all.
“I used to think, ‘He’s a doctor. Who am I to ask a question?’ ” Bill Lee, a Baltimore man who has suffered 10 heart attacks, says in a video on the agency’s Web site urging people to speak up.
. . .
“The unsettling reality,” they write, “is that much of medicine still exists in a gray zone, where there is no black or white answer about when to treat or how to treat.” -- - Maureen Dowd, Decoding the God Complex, September 27, 2011
The analogy between personal computing and personal health may not be immediately obvious.
It is obvious to me. It's been nearly a decade since I had any health insurance.
It wasn't something I deliberately chose--at first. I couldn't afford insurance (and a lot of other luxuries) as I was unemployed and as soon as the divorce was final, that was the end of the insurance too. It took a couple of years to learn self-healing. Only in retrospect, am I grateful for the impetus of lack to push me to look for a solution didn't require external experts. I'm not entirely sure I'd have enough guts to forego conventional thought without that nudge of "fierce grace."
“The answer often lies not with the experts but within you,” they write... " -- Maureen Dowd, Decoding the God Complex, New York Times op-ed, September 27, 2011
Bingo.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
"If we just scrapped our system and adopted any other wealthy country's system, at a minimum we would have a trillion dollars more a year for pay raises, for investment in new technology, to create new jobs, or whatever." - Former President Bill Clinton, comparing the United States, which spends 17.2 percent of gross domestic product on health care each year, to Germany and France, which spend 10 percent and are considered to have the most effective health care systems in the world. - Yes! magazine, Fall 2011 issue
And they have no respect for the status quo.
A small step, nice. However that is not much of a vision. It's an assumption that ill health is a given (it's possible to clear this kind of indoctrination from birth), and maybe we can just make ill health far more cost effective. What?! How about zero percent of GDP because everyone is healthy? All those people in pain and/or degrading in full use of their functionality are not simply profit centers... they'd rather be living productive lives with an able body, mind and spirit. (If GDP is so important to you, contributing direct to the GDP through their creative gifts and talents rather than by buying pills, surgery, health insurance policies, etc.)
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
All healers ought be working themselves completely out of a job/role in terms of healing ailments... (and I'm in that boat--even though I do this all pro bono, my vision is that this is a very, very temporary position on the way to... )... and I'll let you connect the dots of what's next when everyone's healthy.
“The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease." - Voltaire
p.s. And you are nature.
p.p.s. If you're looking for more information on pancreatic cancer and self-healing through Ho'oponopono, etc., also check out this fine post by Misa Hopkins (the pancreas organ is involved with diabetes too, focus on the 'sweetness of life' aspect she speaks to here: http://self-healingsecrets.com/965/diabetes-and-self-healing/
Her philosophy and her practical application (philosophy itself isn't sufficient to heal) is cut from same cloth:
"You are not broken and you do not need to be fixed. Your body and your emotions are inviting you to become aware of beliefs, feelings, or needs that are keeping you trapped in suffering. They can be changed, opening you to true self-healing and even more importantly, to a greater awareness of your Divine self. This web-site and what is offered to you is an invitation for you to create your healing miracles from the inside out." - Misa Hopkins
"I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living." John Dewey
A family member of mine remarked to me (they must have glanced at something in my regular blog, as this blog is secreted away and discovery is via the right keywords), "I don't believe in meditation."
"I don't believe in meditation." That statement perplexed me. What is there to believe? You try it. You do it. You either like it or not like it. It's not intended as yet another belief system. So too with many 'alternative' methods of healing, alternative methods of living, alternative methods of ___ <fill in the blank>. You try it, you do it, you perhaps wrestle with getting it (I recall my first faltering attempts at skiing!) yet that's still through doing, and ultimately it either rings for you or it does not. It works for you, or it does not. There's no need to believe when you can get your hands dirty, your mind messy, and check it out for yourself.
"Don't blindly believe what I say. Don't believe me because others convince you of my words. Don't believe anything you see, read, or hear from others, whether of authority, religious teachers or texts. Don't rely on logic alone, nor speculation. Don't infer or be deceived by appearances.
Do not give up your authority and follow blindly the will of others. This way will lead to only delusion.
Find out for yourself what is truth, what is real." - The Buddha
Trying out for yourself. It's kind of like prototyping: "In a world that prizes answers and solutions, prototyping can be somewhat counterintuitive, placing the emphasis on doing to be able to think rather than thinking in order to do. Discovery doesn't happen in a vacuum, which is why doing things, however imperfectly at first, opens us up creatively," says Peter Sims in Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries.
I like to think from stratch too, what if we could start with a totally clean slate and build from the ground up... what would responding to dis-ease and imbalances look like? What would maintaining a moment-to-moment alignment with well-being look like? So I really gravitated to a few stories of innovators and pioneers I ran across today....
"One evening about nine years ago, Simon, Mike, Aiden and I met up at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown. We’d become friends over the previous five years, working in various capacities at West Philly High. Somewhere in the midst of swapping gossip, storytelling, and generally giving each other a hard time the conversation turned more idealistic, driven by a simple question: if we could start with a totally clean slate and build from the ground up, what would high school look like?" - Introducing the Sustainability Workshop (from the school's blog on opening day)
So I'm kicking around ideas for an online curriculum and workshop to teach Ho'oponopono and other 'modalities' of Mind-based healing (even that word choice is wrong, that's just me trying to fit into conventional frameworks; the way 'healing' works is by clearing up habitual patterns obscuring the underlying perfection of Wholeness.... I've never gotten any positive results from focusing on brokenness nor 'fixing'...)
As much as I've learned from books and other teachers, it's been my own first-hand experiments and experience that has taught me the most, usually by trial and error, inquiry and refinement. So I'm working on a structure that is based on experiential learning. I liked what I read this morning in Newsweek, September 19, 2011 issue on "The Real Fixers" (yeah, ironically the headline labels them FIXERS, but many of them are really DOERS) about a pilot school:
"The boutique school follows the “project-based learning” model made popular by San Diego’s High Tech High and others around the country, where conventional classes are replaced with long, interdisciplinary exercises to solve real-world problems, like designing a solar charging station or writing energy-efficiency legislation. More engaged students, the thinking goes, learn deeply and retain knowledge longer. - The Real Fixers (on Simon Hauger and The Sustainability Workshop)
A family member of mine remarked to me (they must have glanced at something in my regular blog, as this blog is secreted away and discovery is via the right keywords), "I don't believe in meditation."
"I don't believe in meditation." That statement perplexed me. What is there to believe? You try it. You do it. You either like it or not like it. It's not intended as yet another belief system. So too with many 'alternative' methods of healing. You try it, you do it, and it either rings for you or it does not. And it works for you, or it does not. There's no need to believe when you can directly check it out for yourself.
I foresee two closed-intertwined tracks of project-based study and experiments. One focused on healers: clearing physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, psychological ailments and dis-ease as well as environmental dis-ease (i.e. anything from pollution to natural disasters). The second track focused on creators: releasing past to create through inspiration, improvisation and visionary (meaning could include manifestation, but not limited to that) in scope.
The complete list of catalysts to be introduced, presented, and then jointly as a class develop exercises and experiments to learn through direct experience might include: A Course in Miracles (particularly Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice booklet), Ho'oponopono, Byron Katie's The Work, dream/archetype/shadow work ala Carl Jung, Belvaspata, Louise Hay's symbols from Heal Your Body, Heal Your Life, Lise Bourbeau's work, Debra Shapiro's work, traditional Chinese Medicine (particularly the symbolic associations with body organs, etc.), Mary Baker Eddy's work, Gregg Braden's The Isaiah Effect, The Trivedi Effect, Zen Buddhism's notion of 'direct transmission', Full Catastrophe Living and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (Jon Kabit-Zinn's work), Richard Moss' work, post-traumatic growth resarch, sound healing (especially correspondence of frequency to different body organs), Jane McGonigal's SuperBetter health game, Florence Scovel Shinn, Abraham-Hicks, Thich Nhat Hanh The Energy of Prayer, Advaita inquiry, The Holographic Universe, Toltec teachings, Russian magical priniciples from the medieval guild of skomorokh performers--and, that's for starters.
In another example from The Real Fixers, lawyer Brooke Richie started a 12-week class, The Resiliency Advocacy Project, to teach teens how to navigate the legwork, paperwork and legalities of effectively using both social (and other) services and resources to break out of poverty cycle. The part that really struck me is that those that completed the program were then empowered to teach peers in their own neighborhood: "Each class of 15 [teens] can help up to 400 teens get answers to their questions without paying legal fees."
Thus, our teaching curriculum and workshop ideally would be a grassroots wave that trickles out so that those who 'graduate' go out and share their experience with their own peers, and so on. The idea is to empower people to be their own author and authority--to clear themselves in a natural, innate way that addresses root issues rather than symptoms alone (like pulling weeds from the root so they don't just grow back), as well as assist others in regaining their authority without dependency on hospitals, professionals, pills, insurance and ability to pay.
As far as structure, I'm not quite sure yet. By structure, I mean is it online or live in-person class? Is it even a classroom feel or is it more self-study or small teams (slight personal preference for the small teams tackling projects) or a combination? Is it for-profit or non-profit or B corporation? I have enough resources to begin something possibly online--yet not enough to see this all through all on my own. It is definitely intended to be international, grassroots, spreadable, and experimental (in terms of keep pushing the edges, don't ever rest on laurels).
If what I've written so far ignites your soul and intrigues your mind in any way, please write me or comment below.
p.s. Coincidentally, in the same The Real Fixers article, here are some stats on healthcare in USA: "Because we currently reward quantity over quality, the U.S. spends at least twice as much per person on health care annually ($7,960 in 2009) as Japan, Canada, Germany, and other developed countries. Yet whether measured by infant mortality or cancer survival, we are far back in the pack in terms of quality."
p.p.s. Don't feel obligated, however if you would genuinely wish to donate to this project:
"Love has no obligations. Fear is full of obligations.... Whatever we do is because we want to do it. It becomes a pleasure; it's like a game, and we have fun with it." -- Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love
Last night, deciding on some pretty radical ideas I have perculating around Ho'oponopono. Do I take it broader, deeper, wider than one-on-one remote healing? Or should I shutter those ideas at the public level... keep 'em closely guardly?
There is a play by David Mamet called "The Water Engine" about an inventor and it "highlights the sometimes violent suppression of a disruptive alternative energy technology." In that play, the inventor is harassed to stop his work since it would obviously threatened the oil companies. The keyword there is violent--underscoring the lengths that the status quo goes to protect their monetary interest by keeping any leapfrogging breakthroughs underground.
So, yes, ho'oponopono (and another remote healing technique I know) are alternative technologies that upend the way we look at well-being. Part of me is fearful of the backlash of the medical and pharmaceutical industry, or worse. Sure I know it is fear, and means I need to clean up this patterning of fear via ho'oponopono or any inquiry means available.
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern." -- William Blake
The idea started coming to me when I first read a blog post a few months back about a former real estate developer (or broker) and: "he's also a bit haunted by the loss of his father to a poorly understood but quite well known neurological disease. He's dedicated his life to supporting new approaches to research in the field, and the work he's funded is tantalizingly close to a breakthrough. It's an entirely new framework for understanding the illness, one that isn't easy to grok if you're a layman (as he was when he started). As I listened to him explain the work, I had a very strong sense of deja vu. Dan was an Internet startup guy now, pitching me his new approach to disrupting a sclerotic industry (in this case, the foundation-driven research institutes and their kissing cousins, the pharmaceutical companies.). It may work, it may not, but he's going to go for it. To raise funds for his new approach, Dan is talking to angels and VCs, and developing a new model for profiting from drug compounds that may come out of the research he's funded."
The dis-ease wasn't spelled out, although there were enough hints in the blog post that I recognized it. That same dis-ease was the first time I ever had to use these healing methods on a close family member (who's completely fine now)--besides the minor stuff like a broken toe or a toothache.
As I read the post about Dan's drug research arising out of the loss of his father, I noted, "Oh, he's look for a way to cure M.S. as a whole. Not just his father, or a surrogate for his father. The entire pattern of M.S. cleaned away." Only thing is he's doing it a very costly, old-fashioned (to me) way. You want an entirely new framework? It involves starting from a blank slate, or zero state as Dr. Len likes to say--not a slight incremental tweak in the health industries. Reading it was the Aha! moment for me--and it has gripped me since as much as I try to ignore its call.
I realize that healing by Mind alone sounds like magical thinking to the general populace. On the other hand, there's a growing amount of folks on this same planet who think relying on pills and injections is the magical thinking, aka to idolatry of icons or pleading to a statue. The statue wields no power; and similarly for me, there is no power in the pill, or in the procedure; they're actually props.
The only reason I am remotely interested in this (healthcare is not my #1 passion, but doesn't mean it just falls away as there is something true for me when it keeps tugging and tugging) is it is such a direct, nearly unequivocal way to know we are not separate beings -- it's not only self-healing, as in your body but anyone can heal anyone since there is no other, no out there. And heal any planetary imbalance, not just human beings. How? (In a nutshell:) Because we are all one singular contiguous Wholeness.
So yesterday I felt I needed to make a definitive decision to focus on 1-3 things max in my life and not be scattered on 10-20.
Then, I saw this as the first out of 213 comments on a website* I only frequent every 6-8 weeks last night as I was pondering this question around taking Ho'oponopono on an yet unexplored, enhancing direction to tackle healthcare more publicly at a pattern-level rather than individual-level, or not.
from Dan September 13, 2011
David, I have just finished reading your book and it was truly amazing, I couldn't put it down. One of the most profound points in the book for me was when you quoted Dr. Hew Len** and how he healed his patients by simply saying....I love you, I am sorry, please forgive me, and thank you. It brought tears to my eyes when you also ended the book with this quote.Thank you for this masterpiece, and my the source field be with you.
**Dr. Hew Len is the one who popularized the ancient shamanic technique of clearing his patterns to heal an entire hospital for the criminally insane in Hawaii. The technique is known as ho'oponopono.
** I don't abide by everything David Wilcock thinks whatsoever, however I'm primarily an explorer and spelunker of the Infinite in form. Thus I dive into edgy topics and conduct my own experiments. For me, I can't ignore because they don't fit my previous frames of reference. Use your own discernment. (I find discernment more refined than judgment, not to mention that judgment tends to towards division, obscuring the indivisibility of wholeness.) I didn't recall knowing Wilcock was a fan of Dr. Len.
p.s. How this would look like? Approach a research institution, build a small venture with a few people who have applied ho'oponopono for some time, band together with anyone who wants to try it (sort of a network effect)? Don't have any of the how's yet. Feedback, suggestions welcome.
I believe the first I heard about ho'oponopono circa 2003 is one of those "if it comes in threes, pay attention" serendipities. I'd already been doing my own process of watching and reclaiming my projections and shadow for several years before (also before I heard of Byron Katie).
I heard about it in different circumstances from different sources all within a few days. Anyhow, Dr. Len (via a blog post by Joe Vitale) was the one of those three ways (I am pretty sure the other was A Course in Miracles instructor).
Recently, Joe Vitale release a few clips of Dr. Len in a Ho'oponopono workshop video. I'll share some transcripts of those, but you can also watch the three parts for yourself at www.zerolimitsonline.com.
Below is an transcribed piece starting at 17:30 spoken by Joe Vitale describing how he uses the process (ha, or more accurately, how it uses us):
"When I start thinking that there is somebody or something that is troubling me out there, and your first response--isn't it, from a data perspective-- is to change them. Which is a little bit like I wake up and I'm unshaven and I look at the mirror, and go, "Man, I need to shave" and I start shaving the mirror. It doesn't work that way. I got to shave HERE, and when I shave here the mirror starts to look a lot better...So the thing we're cleaning on isn't anybody out there or anything thing out there-- what you're clearing on is that ball of perception, energy, feeling that you have when you think of out there--that's the thing. When he was working with the mental hospital he was not seeing people professionally one-on-one. . . as he would look at their files he would feel what he's feeling...--it could be rage, it could be shame, it could be embarrassment, it could anger--whatever he's feeling, that's what needs clearing. He's feeling it in him as it is being triggered by what it feels like being triggered by what he perceives to be a person outside.... in this case, he's looking at paperwork, and it's triggering the buttons.... He's feeling it in here, and he's taking it to what I call the Divine." - Joe Vitale
Basically how I interpret this is that if something is bugging me out there in my external world (typically I clear on the immediate sphere), or seems off kilter like dis-ease (some things are unbalanced or out of harmony in the world-at-large although that is hard to truly judge until we clear a lot of subconscious programming), it's time to clear that programming that we share.
And basically this expresses a viewpoint that the external world is more like a 3D hologram that the brain's visual cortex interprets as a fundamental reality, although it is decoded, or interpreted from a level of reality that's more about frequency, vibration patterns, etc. (visual cortex for eyes, but the other senses are also deciphering reality from the fuzzy set of waves and particles). And the subconscious can and may store up and hoard all sort of ready-made interpretations (i.e. memories) and overlays that can distort the perception of the pristine vibrational level occurring dynamically. And throw in the idea of "collective" unconscious, and you're getting hotter.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is - infinite." - William Blake
I'm doing a lousy job of explaining this. Go read The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbott, for starters. Or you can just go for the direct experience and see that there's no other, there's no out there--one reality, as Deepak Chopra calls it.
The other day I opened the book, The Secret Life of Water, by Masuro Emoto, and landed on the pages on the healing properties of music, specifically jazz. Since this blog was set-up to "clean up the gulf in us" (and as a side-effect of our own clearing, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico), I'm sharing some relevant information. Recall, that water and the emotional body are interrelated.
"Hado medicine focuses on the underlying cause of the symptoms of illness, in contrast to the medical practices which require that we take pills or undergo surgery to deal with the systems of the disease."
"The wavelength generated by anger is the same as the wavelength generated by the molecules of the cells that make up the liver, so the wavelengths of anger and the liver are in tune with each other. In the same way, the emotion of sadness is in tune with the blood, and so sad people tend to be easily plagued by leukemia and hemorrhage type strokes."
What's interesting about the above paragraph is that is exactly what many folks have been saying and I've been sharing in this blog, blood problems represent lack of joy, or in other words, sadness. However, previously I was coming mainly from the angle of archetypes and symbols. The paragraph above is closer to the Chinese medicine concepts of Chi, energy and/or vibration. So archetypes and tones both point to the same message. Even a subtle lack of joy obscures the natural flow and circulation of complete well-being (beyond "health" alone) .
The Gulf coast's oil spill was a message from the Earth itself reflecting our emotional body back to us in an vital message--that we must embrace our real selves, which knows a very peaceful, innate, natural and innocent joy. Now if you are actually living moment to moment in joy, you are probably NOT reading this, and this message isn't yours to hear. I know, myself, I was in a period of grief and sadness when the oil spill happened April 10, 2010.
"All symptoms of illnesses vibrate at a unique frequency. By knowing the frequency, it is possible to overlap the wavelength; thus, the frequency of the illness is dissipated and the symptoms alleviated." - The Secret Life of Water
THE GOOD NEWS: A couple of related vibration/toning good news. Beside Ho'oponopono which will clean up stored emotions (there's nothing wrong with emotions coming and going like notes in a symphony, it's when they are lodged into the body and held onto like a broken record that physical problems may arise to alert you to the fact you aren't living in the present, Now.) Notice that even Masuro Emoto's work shows that water responds the best (in forming beautiful cystals) when exposed to the vibrations of "I Love You." (I also find it funny in that cosmic pun sort of way that Emoto devotes his lifework to the study of vibration and water, and his name sounds like the word 'emotion'--and water is all about the emotions.)
In addition, as we'd already said in previous posts, chanting Ha, and/or Ham works very well clearing any imbalances around the pumping station for the blood, or the heart. And the same day as I flipped through Dr. Emoto's book, I was flipping through the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of Utne Reader "Ode to Joy" about research study published in The Arts in Psychotherapy that showed that depressed patients that listened to 50 minutes of classical music daily fared better than control group that went to talk therapy. Depression=sadness. So uplifting music seems to also be another joyful thing to include in our lives.
“Music offers a simple and elegant way to treat anhedonia, the loss of pleasures in daily activities,” the research team, led by Miguel-Angel Mayoral-Chavez of the University of Oaxaca, reports in the journal The Arts in Psychotherapy (via Miller-McCune, "Classical Music an Effective Antidepressent", August 2, 2010)
And the really good news shows that the Gulf Coast is healing and one mode is through frequencies (of course, all emotion is frequency too--so clearing out old sorrow and other unconscious conditioning via Ho'oponopono is a frequency clearing method as well).
Experiments showing water samples of 7 ppm of oil and grease are coming back after the frequency experiments below with zero parts per million of oil and grease.
"John Hutchison, scientist from Vancouver, BC [a scientist I recently obliquely refer to in a recent post on my other blog, Crossroads Dispatches--see the end where a tape is played--John is the brilliant genius referred to in the tape of a garage experiment that Bushman and Cook watch together at Lockheed Martin] and Nancy Lazaryan from Minnesota sought to help those affected in the Gulf of Mexico by the oil spill disaster.
Hutchison is world famous for his work with frequencies. Lazaryan can be described as intuitive. Samples of polluted Gulf water where sent to Hutchison's lab in Vancouver. Hutchison and Lazaryan worked together to identify certain ancient harmonics that have been used for healing. These frequencies were applied both with audio and radio waves to the polluted water samples.
Finding success in these limited experiments, Hutchison and Lazaryan packed up the necessary lab equipment into a borrowed trailer, and with a borrowed farm truck, left Canada to come to the Gulf.
The chemical analysis from the first "open air frequencies" experiment in Perdido Bay have shown the Gulf water can be restored to health.
Restored without the use of dispersants, chemicals or burning. Restored by use of Solfeggio tones, also known as Gregorian chants, and a harmonic "stream of sound".
The inspiration for these harmonics comes from the Essenes, a sect of Israel that Jesus was a member. The Essenes "inner circle" taught of the "stream of sound", the harmonics of the Creator.
Hutchison and Lazaryan endeavored to bring the "stream of sound" to the damaged waters of the Gulf. One of the tones used by Hutchison, 528 hz, is the frequency of the planet Jupiter. You can see Jupiter in the night sky, if you look for the bright light directly to the right of the moon. 528 hz is known by the ancients to be the "healing frequency" and to repair DNA.
Hutchison and Lazaryan are NOT asking for ANY money for the work that they are doing. This is a gift." - Press release by Nancy Lazaryan, October 27, 2010
Note the following quite recent update. Joy to the world! "The water [emotions] is clearer... and the dolphins are happy. " Thank you to everyone worldwide that is sincerely cleaning up the past in their emotional body!
The following is an update we received from Nancy today, November 1, 2010: "We have gotten reports from citizens (who work and live on the water) that "something happened"....the water is clearer...and the dolphins are happy. (One of these people is a captain of a boat that charters dolphin sightseeing tours, and logged an entry concerning the change in the water and the dolphins being "happy".) These people had no idea of what we had done in Perdido Bay." - Pure Energy Systems
I'm continuing to stay focused on the heart, while reams and reefs of buried, and re-triggered emotional pain is surfacing. (Remember the post a few back on getting to the oil at the bottom of the ocean? It's not enough to do a cursory quick glance over clean-up. Either in the Gulf of Mexico or our emotional bodies (ahem, as if there's any separateness). That said, there is no need to go searching for any hidden emotions that are NOT surfacing currently in you. It'll be obvious if something is up. Life will show you up front and center.)
It just so happened (coincidences abound) that my main teacher Adyashanti was speaking on the open heart last night. I sharing some notes below. The most eye-opening parts had to do with:
(1) viewing the heart as a sense organ itself -- this could be key for ho'oponopono (perhaps it can be employed rather than the mind)
(2) the idea that when one awakens to Oneness there's often a sense of spaciousness since the conceptual "I" is seen through yet that's only one aspect of Being--the other aspect of the Divine is agape. So there's both qualities of spaciousness and agape. Sometimes individual personalities haven't yet experienced both these aspects of Awareness.
Read on (the very end notes are parts of the answers to the Q&A that stand alone):
"Ego is often closed and guarded."
"An expert has a hard time opening the heart... The egoic mind likes to be in a state of knowing--this is my [knowledge?], this is my opinion. To be open is a state of innocence."
"As soon as you begin to relax state [of knowing] you come into a state of intimacy. You can't be in a state of knowing and be in the spiritual Heart at the same time."
Mind barricades (often because of "past" experiences where we associate being open with something bad that happened).
"There's a type of awareness that's very connected to the heart. There's an awareness most people are used to that is connected to the mind--it's a sterile, alert awareness. If someone asked us, 'Are we listening?' We'd say, 'Yes I am listening.' But it's a listening from the neck up." {This spiritual heart is an awareness from the neck down.}
"Awareness at the level of heart there is a feeling tone to it... the heart is opening up as it were and really interacting with what's in your environment or what's going on inside."
"It's through the heart that we perceive Oneness."
"I like the word Agape. It's a selfless infinite love. It's just a love for what is. It's unconditional."
"An unconditional love is also un-caused. There's no reason for it. The reason there is no reason... is because it's an aspect of your being. It's a pre-existing aspect of your being. It's just there. It's the love that's just loving. There's no reason why it's loving. It's just loving. It's an aspect of the truth of what you are."
"Other types of love are very conditional because there are a lot of attachments... conditions... You pull back if someone does something you don't like.... Or you can take it back from yourself--"I'm not being the way I want to be"--so I'll take that back, I'll take back that acceptance."
"Love is always there. It pre-exists anything that may happen. Anyone you may meet. A lot of times we don't experience this because we're protecting... some idea or image of ourselves. Or we're emotionally protecting or layering."
"Opening of the heart is necessary if we are going to come to the fullest of ourselves."
We have a lot of painful associations and wounding around the heart. "Sometimes there are literally energetic holds of the heart. A feeling of vacuousness. You sense for intimacy--and there's nothing there. Often these get created in moments of great stress."
"If you find these [holes], you enter into them instead of withdrawing or trying to figure them out [mentally, analytically]. Bring your presence into that "hole." Not to solve it, not to fill it up. Just bringing the Presence of your own awareness. If you're really quiet and willing to be still, these places of deficiency start to open up. They start to be available. They start to be penetrated by the true spiritual heart because they're being seen."
"The deepest forgiveness is realizing there's nothing to forgive."
"When we withhold forgiveness we are putting ourselves in a prison. The reason for this is our nature is agape. It's an aspect of our being. If we cut off an aspect from our being--if we withhold it from some one or some thing or some event--then you're literally severing a part of yourself. It's a way of putting ourselves in a virtual prison. We're withholding our own nature. We're hiding it from ourselves. For most people this is so unconscious they don't really know what they're doing.... In our own minds there's seemingly good reasons to hold on to all this [rage, blame, etc.].... Never mistake forgiveness for consent... It doesn't mean you agree with it, doesn't mean you like it, doesn't mean that you want to experience it again--it simply means you are no longer closing yourself... It's literally like killing part of yourself... The truth is unconditional love. It just shines upon all things and all events unconditionally.... It's not a way of pretending that something that happened didn't happen or that it wasn't very painful. We're not talking about forgetting.... So a lot of people have a lot of unforgiveness in their heart. A lot of people caught up in judgment and blame. And judgment and blame keep you from going deeper into your own being.... True forgiveness is not something you create or manufacture--you discover it. [You didn't discover it before] because you wanted to blame more than you wanted to forgive.... People all around us do this in our culture--it almost seems natural to spend a whole life resentful and rage-ful... You have to let yourself out of that prison. Very very important. You can transcend all this. " [Not to mention many, many dis-eases stem from storing and holding onto resentments and blame.]
"The spaciousness of Awareness is a different aspect of awareness. There is also the agape." So 'awake' people often are hopping on one foot [often aware of spaciousness, but not also of the agape aspect].
The spiritual heart is: "Richness of presence, warmth and intimacy."
"Oneness is lived intimacy with all things... See sameness in all the differences. The beautiful, unified essence in all diversity."
[If this agape aspect hasn't happened/occurred for you] "Ask: How is any thing experienced from the heart? You let your eyes see things. Your ears hear things [etcetera... going through all the senses.] Touch awareness. All of these are different types of awareness. What kind of awareness does the Heart have? Put your attention there and it'll start to open for you....The heart is a sense organ of your deepest being."
"On the human level there is always a becoming. On the awakening level, there is the sense of "It's done."... A sense of always being, always becoming. One doesn't cancel the other--they're both aspects."
"You can be in causeless joy, AND have other emotions--grief, for instance--arising in the midst of."
"Sometimes sorrow is God's reality. Sometimes people think Freedom is freedom from all negative emotions. That's a very immature understanding of awakening.
Sorrow can get us to hide from sorrow, to contract--or, or we can open to it. This is the response of the spiritual heart--it opens to what is. Even sorrow. If sorrow is what is, the true spiritual heart opens to it. We often open up in very difficult moments-- but it didn't happen TO open us up. (We can chose the other response too--to close [shut].) My teacher said there are great heartbreaks in life, and that is part of life. The heartbreak is also part of our own flowering and our own opening. We can honor the sorrow. We can honor the passing of a loved one. The passing of a loved one can then open us up to more of life, even grief."
"Our fear of death is often equaled by our fear of life."
"The thing with negative emotions like fear is we keep trying to SOLVE it.... I would look at this from a different point of view. Open to the fear not necessarily as a way to get rid of it but there's something here for you to see. And it's not going away until you see what you need to see."
Q "Yes it keeps recycling."
A "You can also ask for only what you can... how can I say this... ask for fear to be given to you in doses that you can incorporate. It's literally like a prayer. You'd be amazed how much Existence listens when you come from your heart. You can't say--"Hey can you get rid of this"--that's at odds.... You're just asking it to be given to you at a dose you can handle and integrate... Make that intention very clear."
"A big part of it is just coming into yourself and a willingness to experience your experience.... "I'm willing to be open to what Experience is trying to show me."
"Garden variety fear you can dive into. The type of fear that is wrapped in with trauma and panic attacks--you need someone at times to be WITH you [face to face] --to help you stay grounded and stay conscious."
"What you don't want to do is putting yourself into situations that will re-traumatize you."
"Anything that happened that you could not stay fully present for, gets trapped in your system... If you can stay fully present, fully here and now -- that's what starts to release it from your system. If you can't stay present, then that says "I'm going to have to find someone [to be present WITH me]."
"Every body and every thing is already what it is. So everybody and everything is already enlightened. You will never become better or worse... The only thing then is: Are you conscious of that?
"Life has an innate desire to be fully aware of itself."
"I can't really explain this... But it's literally not possible to avoid fully not knowing what you are indefinitely."
"Rational mind thinks in terms of time. So you're having this sense of fear and doubt that it may not happen... From the depth of your being, I cannot answer your question that has to do with time. Will I be fully awake before I die? That just keeps the mind in the world of time." Give attention to something outside of time.
"I cannot say anything that is going to calm your rational mind. Your Being is not caught in the cycle of time. From your Being, your question [Will I be enlightened before I die?] makes no sense at all."
"The mind keeps wanting to put spirituality into the context of time.... Your mind has this tendency to dream this kind of nightmare scenario. In the middle of the night, when you dream [maybe] you can negotiate with it. Or you can realize your mind is creating the dilemma... That's the solution: you see--'Oh, it's just mind. It's just rational mind doing what rational mind does.' There's no calming it. You're either acknowledging the fears of your mind, OR you give acknowledgment that there is something existent that has nothing to do with the movements of your mind. That recognition has all the power."
"Often through sexuality, deepest experience of maybe not oneness, but merging.... Then there's that feeling that I'd really like to experience that level of closeness, that profundity in our everyday life. That's often when people get scared. You can't have that oneness and that beauty and be closed off."
"One fear is that if someone [else] looks within consistently they're going to [see the real me or shadow parts.]"
"Some karmic connections there is simply no explaining."
Questioner was saying something about the relationship wasn't carnal. He cuts her off--"It's all spiritual."
"The way we divide the world: spiritual, human. We're just making that up. It's all spiritual. Whether it's at an altar, or sitting to breakfast. It's all the movement of Spirit."
Lately, I've wondered if I've been "thinking" too much about all this. Even Ho'oponopono is a bit long-winded and efforted. Perhaps too much analysis to pinpoint projection? "There's got to be an easeful way," I'm musing to myself.
I partly got confirmation two ways. I was listening to an audio series on "Surrender" by my main teacher Adyashanti, when in response to a woman's question. Yup, being "open" will bring up unconscious material. In fact, the impulse towards consciousness brings the unconscious to light. All our unconscious arises within Consciousness--and the mind thinks it needs to do something about it." (And ASAP!) (Much of this Q&A is in part 6 of the 10-part Surrender series.)
"Don't need to necessarily analyze it--be open... The deeper-seated demons [and here, he digresses into how Jesus had to confront 'devil' in the desert, and Buddha also had his demons under the boddhi tree] actually come as we open because they are deeper-seated. And what you need to do with them is allow them to come, and not fall prey to their temptation or their resistance. It's just forces within yourself that are just being released. It's just stored material that hasn't been conscious before.... It may not be comfortable at the moment, but lucky for you that you don't have the same capacity to put the lid back on... All this stuff has to be squeezed out of us one way or another. It's the purification that happens even when we're not trying to purify."
Purification was the keyword. It's what Zero Point is--Pure. It's what Dr. Len meant by "cleaning."
Later Adyashanti says it's the mind that will try to "manage." Just be with the feelings as they are directly, before they become thoughts, theories, stories, beliefs about what is occuring. He says experience itself is self-liberating-- life is bringing up what needs release, as long as we don't get caught up with the explanations, theorizing, analyzing, etc.
Another confirmation I got was hearing of a near-instantaneous healer from Croatia lately. I am familiar with instantaneous healing myself, personally. So that wasn't the big deal. What was informative was this woman's wise testimony (by Dorothy Walters):
Excerpted from Braco in Boulder post: "The image of Braco, cast on the wall, revealed a man serious, intent, concerned, and loving--just as he had appeared earlier in the flesh in San Francisco. But this time, my reaction was quite different. The result for me was one that frequently happens when deep emotions are brought to the surface--during certain workshops, massage sessions, even acupuncture treatment--one can become aware of unresolved issues, pressing into consciousness during this time of "opening."
As a result of this "unresolved issue" emerging into awareness, I spent a very uncomfortable night--with leg cramps, "burning nerves" throughout my body, and sleeplessness. But, despite my discomfort, I realized that this insight was in fact a boon, for only through unveiling those hidden emotions lurking under the surface, can healing occur. It is the same, for example, with psychotherapy, where one must face certain unpleasant truths and come to terms with them to improve. [My note: psychotherapycan be more mind-management rather than the being with raw emotions without any adornment of a story or theory of why this-and-that. And again Life itself will bring up whatever is getting in way of being your true Self with or without therapy.]"