A post prompted by reading Oprah’s interview with John of God, a mystical healer in Brazil
Oprah is a very influential woman and her latest story about John of God, really caught my attention. I don’t have cable TV so I read the interview online. Oprah had on her show a medical doctor named Dr. Rediger. He met and experienced being in the presence of John of God. Dr. Rediger was quoted as saying, “Whatever is happening at the Casa with John of God, I believe it’s not about the phenomena or even about the healer—it’s about a shift that happens to these people internally, spiritually or psychologically". Reading what he said prompted me to see an important connection to my own life and prompted me to write about that.
I began thinking about my most recent step in my journey of personal development. I have been going off an anti-depressant that I have been on for a while and it has really effected me. I have felt ill, emotional and if I used one word to describe the final result of stopping the medication, it would have to be clarity.
A bit of background into why clarity is such an important feeling for me: I am a recovering addict and I have been sober for 4 years. I have spent most of my life looking to cloud how I feel – searching for the perfect numbing substance to take me to the ‘land of bliss’. I am sober. I want to be free of chemicals. My intuition was prompting me that now is the time to go off the chemical that helped me for many years. I decided to trust that intuition.
Here’s how I see the link between what John of God is doing with his extraordinary healing gift and what I am doing in healing my own life. We are both ordinary people who are healing with love and faith.
We are both showing ourselves and the world that our bodies are just merely the vehicle for which we live on earth. The vehicle is subject to breakdowns and the real power of healing doesn’t lie outside of us, but it lies within our souls. As we learn how to tap into this power of our souls……as John of God has and is exhibiting by healing others with his miraculous intuitive mind, we can harness amazing healing power for ourselves and others.
I tapped into my own power to overcome an addictive lifestyle. I went inside myself to find what I needed to heal. The addict was created out of my need for not feeling the horror of my life. I don’t live that life anymore. I have healed and forgiven and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. I have no more need for my old friends drugs and alcohol. My freedom from pain, healing, no longer lies in a substance or a drug. It lies in my ability to learn and trust that I have the answers I need inside of me. My own intuition and instincts and power of my thoughts have healed me from addiction.
So, going back clarity… for the first time, perhaps in my life, I am clear. I am clear on why I did what I did. I am clear about why I am feeling emotions that have been muted and diluted for years. I am not afraid of them because I have learned that you can truly heal what you feel, but only if you feel it.
What caused the shift and the clarity? A conscious choice to feel. A choice that was made when I listened to what my intuition was trying to tell me and a desire to love and understand myself instead of belittling and tearing myself down. A desire to stop resisting.
I know now that I was not born into this world a bad person who wanted to be addicted to drugs and alcohol and make bad choices.
When I met my life coach and mentor, Maia Berens she me that we create EVERYTHING that happens in our lives. I decided to try that philosophy on. My intuition screamed that what told me what she was true.
So I began to take responsibility for everything that happened to me since I arrived here on earth. Once I changed my perspective on my life and agreed that I created it, I was able to stop playing the victim. I was able to see that how I viewed my circumstances was affecting the quality of my life. My situation, my experiences of the past did not change, but how I viewed them did. I could see that I could chose a better life by taking responsibility for creating it. Essentially I could choose to create a happy life.
Today, near the end of an uncomfortable detox, and in the midst of a sober life I realized….I am here, I am home. Amazingly enough coming home didn’t mean death for me. It was quite the opposite. It was a rebirth.
I, like John of God, am normal person, who has tapped into my own spiritual power and used it to heal. I have used it to heal myself. I, like him, feel my work, my change, my shift, has been a divine intervention of some sort – not something I studied in college to learn, but something that was given to me and has actually been inside of me since my birth.
I can see that information that I needed to hear and now and the placement of the proper people to enter my life when and where I needed it, have been a part of this process as well. A big master plan of sorts so that I could see that the power and potential of our spiritual self is unlimited.
And, the timing of this information and the people who have helped to deliver it is important as well. I had to go through all of the suffering and addiction in order to be brought to a place where I was willing to listen. Now, I plan to carry this message through my work as an emotion-based personal development life coach.
Because of my healing and taking responsibility process, I now know my gifts. Now my job is to relay my story to others so they can also see their gifts. I am participating in the ripple effect in the universe we need to change mankind.
In ending I quote Dr. Rediger again. He reported that meeting John of God was life-changing. "Perhaps the real heart within us is not just a pump, he says. “Perhaps the real heart within us is about love and faith. Perhaps the physical body is not who we really are. Perhaps we are these invisible souls walking around, and the body is just an instrument or metaphor for something we are trying to learn.”
We are really on the verge of harnessing our spiritual selves and reaping the benefits as a race. And so it is.