Healers learn from spirits

A young girl, about 8 or 10 years old, was seriously ill.

Lying in her bed, she dreamt that a Capuchin monk appeared to her and touched her forehead. Next morning, she was completely healed.

When the child told her parents and other people that a good monk, who appeared in her dream, healed her, they did not believe her. Then they saw a tiny drop of red blood on the child’s white blanket.

The blood was found to be of a different type from the child’s. When Padre Pio’s picture was shown to her, she identified him as the one she saw in her dream.

Padre Pio, as we know, suffered from stigmata or spontaneous bleeding in both hands and feet in imitation of the passion of Jesus Christ.

This is an example of healing done by the spirit, although at that time, Padre Pio was still alive. His astral body must have flown to the sick bed of the child and healed her while his physical body was in his monastery.

He was known to do that during his time, and now that he is dead, he continues to heal people while in the spirit world.

The Christian Bible contains many stories of healing by angelic creatures. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ healed many, although he was not physically with the patients.
While we usually do not doubt stories from the Bible, we have difficulty accepting similar stories of healing from the spirit world when it happens to us today in real life.

We usually attribute such incidents to imagination, hallucination or spontaneous remission of illness. In other words, the disease would have healed by itself.

Verifiable stories
Spirit communication and spirit healing continue up to this day and did not stop with the death of Christ, as some evangelists seem to believe. And there are many verifiable and authenticated stories that these are still happening in modern times.

How do our local herbolarios or indigenous medicine men and women know which of the so many different medical plants and herbs are good for what disease?

According to conventional wisdom, this knowledge was handed down from one generation to another. If this were so, then these healers must have prodigious vocabulary and perfect memory to be able to remember all the different plants useful or effective against certain disease.But many local healers are unschooled and do not have sophisticated intellects. Yet they can put to shame those with doctorate degrees in big universities.

So how can we explain how the first healers learned about medicinal plants?

Incredible as this may sound, I believe that the first healers obtained their knowledge direct from the spirit world through a dream, in a trance state or a waking vision.

In the ’80s, I met a teenage female healer in the Mountain Province. She lived in a small hut with her parents. Although quite young, she was known in the village as a good healer and everybody brought their sick to her.

At the time of my visit, a mother had brought her baby for treatment. The baby’s back was accidentally scalded by boiling water. She was crying hysterically in pain.

No to doctors
Wanting to help, I offered to bring the baby to the hospital and even to shoulder the expenses. The mother simply looked at me and said sternly: “We don’t believe in hospital doctors.”That shut me up and I just watched what the healer did.

She burned some herbs and then poured the ashes on the burned back of the child. I was shocked because the baby could suffer from infection. But I couldn’t do anything.

As the healer slowly covered the burned portions of the baby’s back with ashes, the child stopped crying. I found that pretty impressive. I did not think she could make the child stop crying.

I asked her later how she knew exactly what to do. How did she know which plant was good for which disease? Who taught her how to do this thing?

She replied that no one taught her how to heal. She was told in a dream what plant was good for which ailment. She was even told exactly where in the mountain she could find a particular medicinal plant and which part of the plant to use, for example, the leaves, the bark, the root.

This story is typical of the many healers I have interviewed in the Philippines. Not one of them chose willingly or volunteered to be a healer.

They were somehow chosen by the spirits to become one. They all spoke of an invisible guide that appeared to them in a dream, direct vision, or during a trance or meditative state.

As the Japanese psychic and spiritual researcher Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama said: “No one becomes a healer unless he has encountered a god.” I believe he is absolutely right!

Note: For inquiries on books, paranormal services and seminars on Inner Mind Development, ESP and Intuition Development, and Soulmates, Karma and Reincarnation conducted by this writer, call 8107245 or 8926806; fax 8159890; e-mail innerawareness_2005@yahoo.com.ph.

Body-mind techniques help heal people

Since 1988, I have been running programs in my Inner Mind Development Institute to train people on the use of their brains to heal themselves through visualization and stress control.
At the time, very few medical doctors realized the importance of my work. Most of them considered such training programs nonsensical.

All that may change pretty soon. There is now incontrovertible scientific evidence about the crucial role of our mind in controlling certain illnesses.

In its May 2007 issue, for example, the Readers’ Digest (Asian Edition) reported the findings of Dr. Kevin Tracey after years of careful experiments.

Tracey, a neurosurgeon, immunologist and director of the Feinstein Institute of Medical Research in Manhasset, New York, showed how our brain might actually help our body’s immune system to fight disease.

According to the magazine, “In a series of studies since 2000, he’s shown that stimulation of the vagus nerve—a major nerve that runs from our brain stem to our belly and regulates our heartbeat, breathing and intestines—stops severe sepsis.

“Sepsis is a condition in which the immune system massively reacts to a bacterial infection, indiscriminately training its canons on the body’s own tissues.

“It stops this self-destructive process by using neuro-chemicals to signal immune cells, which prevents them from releasing alarm molecules that spur inflammation and cause damage. In a 2006 study, he discovered a brain circuit that could stimulate the vagus nerve to switch off inflammation.”

Meditation helpsTracey acknowledged that meditation could help, too, in the fight against disease. “People,” according to him, “can learn to slow down their heartbeat by modifying vagus nerve activity, which suggests they might be able to control their own brains to calm inflammation and fight disease.”

Calming the mind and body through certain mental techniques can even slow down the spread of diseases like cancer.Dr. Carl Simonton, a cancer specialist, has shown for decades that by visualizing white cells fighting cancer cells symbolically or metaphorically, certain forms of cancer can be controlled.Although his method was first junked by the medical community, it is now being taken seriously by certain hospitals in the West.And a new branch of medicine has emerged with the tongue-twisting name of “psychoneuroimmunology” that studies the connection among the mind, emotions, and immune system.

According to a director of the National Institute of Mental Health, “Studies like Glaser’s and Tracey’s have given credibility to mind-body approaches which have been rejected and ignored by the scientific and medical communities. Now, scientists have begun taking the next step, harnessing the powers of the human brain to help people heal themselves.”

The Readers’ Digest reported the work of a biotech company that trained people to “reduce chronic pain by visualizing and learning to control it.” And some were able to do so by more than 40 percent.Well, in my Inner Mind Development seminar, I teach a powerful visualization technique to control pain and some are able to do so with 100-percent effectiveness.Of course, not all succeed in doing so, for a variety of reasons. First, because of lack of concentration; second, failure to slow down their brain waves to the alpha level, and to relax; and third, perhaps the presence of other disturbing factors.

Documented successBut we have documented cases showing the success of such visualization techniques taught in my seminar, like the case of a 35-year-old accountant with myoma as big as a fist, an architect with chronic asthmatic condition, a mining engineer with severe back pain, and a female industrial engineer with a herniated disc.With just a single visualization session in class, they were all relieved of their sickness.

I am glad that such body-mind techniques are no longer objects of ridicule by the medical and scientific communities abroad. I hope such an open-minded attitude toward alternative modalities of therapy will also begin to influence medical practitioners in the Philippines.They have nothing to lose but their skepticism.

Note: For inquiries on books, paranormal services and seminars on Inner Mind Development, ESP and Intuition Development, and Soulmates, Karma & Reincarnation conducted by this writer, call 8107245 or 8926806; fax 8159890.

E-mail the author at innerawareness_2005@yahoo.com.ph

http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view_article.php?article_id=67251

Limbo’s impact on Philippine folk beliefs

So now the Vatican has officially declared that Limbo does not exist as it had taught since the 13th century.

Limbo, from the Latin word meaning “border” or “edge,” was considered by medieval Catholic theologians to be a state or place reserved for the unbaptized dead, including good people who lived before the coming of Christ.

The declaration was made by the International Theological Commission, a body of Vatican-appointed theologians who advise the Pope and the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The present Pope, Benedict XVI, headed the Congregation for 20 years before becoming Pope in 2005.

According to the news item that appeared in the Inquirer on April 22, “while the report does not carry the authority of a papal encyclical or even the weight of a formal document from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it was approved by the Pope on Jan. 19 and was published on the Internet—an indication that it was intended to be widely read by the faithful.”

ImplicationsThe implications of this declaration, that Limbo does not exist and therefore infants who die without being baptized can still be saved and enjoy eternal happiness, will be debated for years to come by theologians. Let us leave the debate to them. What interests me at the moment is what impact this reversal of a long held Church teaching will have on Philippine folklore, on the beliefs and practices of Filipino albolaryos, healers, occult practitioners and mystics.

Philippine folk religious beliefs often mimic or follow the outward rituals of the Catholic Church while changing their meaning or intent. For example, the Catholic belief that unbaptized infants who die go to limbo has given rise to the folk belief that such infants become tianaks, or engkantos who are mischievous elemental creatures. The negative engkantos are believed to be those who die without being baptized and therefore are still tainted by original sin.

Another example of such mimicry is in the practice of sorcery. I learned that one well-known and confessed sorcerer of Siquijor Island (who died already), used to go to the oldest Church in the island to pray for the success of what he was about to do, i.e. to inflict sickness, harm or even death on his victim. He would ask the help of God and his angels to help him succeed in his task, saying it is not his intention to harm this person but was only hired to do so. This is similar to the perverted reasoning of a hired killer who justifies his action by saying he is only doing a job he is being paid to do and had nothing against the person he was going to kill. And therefore the assassin should not be blamed for the crime.

A French film company actually filmed the entire process of sorcery performed by this sorcerer, from the initial preparation to its actual execution. It’s a sickening and shocking movie to watch. Only the victim’s identity was not shown. What was shocking to me was that all the preparation the sorcerer made followed exactly the rituals of the Catholic Mass and asked God’s blessing for what he was about to do.

How the Filipino folk belief in the unbaptized children as the bad guys will evolve, now that limbo has been eliminated, remains to be seen. Will belief in tianaks or negative engkantos be redefined too? We can only speculate what will happen.

Revised teachingsThis is not the first time the Catholic Church has reversed its own teaching or belief. The Church used to believe that the sun revolved around a stationary earth. And Galileo was arrested and put on trial for saying otherwise. He would have been executed had he not retracted his statement. Centuries later, the Church apologized to him.

A worse fate befell the young French peasant woman, Joan of Arc. She was burned at the stake as a witch. Four hundred years later, the Catholic Church declared her to be a saint!

The late Pope John Paul II, now in the process of being declared a saint, also issued an apology to those who suffered from the persecutions of the Church, referring to the excesses of the infamous Inquisitions during which tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children were mercilessly tortured and killed for allegedly “practicing witchcraft” or “being in league with the devil.”

As science advances our knowledge of the universe we live in, more outmoded teachings of the Church will be revised or redefined in the near future, just as it happened to the belief in Limbo.
Would it be farfetched to speculate that when science finally proves the possibility of multiple rebirth, the church may also reverse its current stand against reincarnation?

Note: For inquiries on books, paranormal services and seminars on Inner Mind Development, ESP and Intuition Development, and Soulmates, Karma & Reincarnation conducted by this writer, call 8107245, 8926806; or fax 8159890. E-mail the author at innerawareness_2005@yahoo.com.ph

http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view_article.php?article_id=64637

Limbo’s impact on Philippine folk beliefs

So now the Vatican has officially declared that Limbo does not exist as it had taught since the 13th century.

Limbo, from the Latin word meaning “border” or “edge,” was considered by medieval Catholic theologians to be a state or place reserved for the unbaptized dead, including good people who lived before the coming of Christ.

The declaration was made by the International Theological Commission, a body of Vatican-appointed theologians who advise the Pope and the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The present Pope, Benedict XVI, headed the Congregation for 20 years before becoming Pope in 2005.

According to the news item that appeared in the Inquirer on April 22, “while the report does not carry the authority of a papal encyclical or even the weight of a formal document from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it was approved by the Pope on Jan. 19 and was published on the Internet—an indication that it was intended to be widely read by the faithful.”

ImplicationsThe implications of this declaration, that Limbo does not exist and therefore infants who die without being baptized can still be saved and enjoy eternal happiness, will be debated for years to come by theologians. Let us leave the debate to them. What interests me at the moment is what impact this reversal of a long held Church teaching will have on Philippine folklore, on the beliefs and practices of Filipino albolaryos, healers, occult practitioners and mystics.

Philippine folk religious beliefs often mimic or follow the outward rituals of the Catholic Church while changing their meaning or intent. For example, the Catholic belief that unbaptized infants who die go to limbo has given rise to the folk belief that such infants become tianaks, or engkantos who are mischievous elemental creatures. The negative engkantos are believed to be those who die without being baptized and therefore are still tainted by original sin.

Another example of such mimicry is in the practice of sorcery. I learned that one well-known and confessed sorcerer of Siquijor Island (who died already), used to go to the oldest Church in the island to pray for the success of what he was about to do, i.e. to inflict sickness, harm or even death on his victim. He would ask the help of God and his angels to help him succeed in his task, saying it is not his intention to harm this person but was only hired to do so. This is similar to the perverted reasoning of a hired killer who justifies his action by saying he is only doing a job he is being paid to do and had nothing against the person he was going to kill. And therefore the assassin should not be blamed for the crime.

A French film company actually filmed the entire process of sorcery performed by this sorcerer, from the initial preparation to its actual execution. It’s a sickening and shocking movie to watch. Only the victim’s identity was not shown. What was shocking to me was that all the preparation the sorcerer made followed exactly the rituals of the Catholic Mass and asked God’s blessing for what he was about to do.

How the Filipino folk belief in the unbaptized children as the bad guys will evolve, now that limbo has been eliminated, remains to be seen. Will belief in tianaks or negative engkantos be redefined too? We can only speculate what will happen.

Revised teachingsThis is not the first time the Catholic Church has reversed its own teaching or belief. The Church used to believe that the sun revolved around a stationary earth. And Galileo was arrested and put on trial for saying otherwise. He would have been executed had he not retracted his statement. Centuries later, the Church apologized to him.

A worse fate befell the young French peasant woman, Joan of Arc. She was burned at the stake as a witch. Four hundred years later, the Catholic Church declared her to be a saint!

The late Pope John Paul II, now in the process of being declared a saint, also issued an apology to those who suffered from the persecutions of the Church, referring to the excesses of the infamous Inquisitions during which tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children were mercilessly tortured and killed for allegedly “practicing witchcraft” or “being in league with the devil.”

As science advances our knowledge of the universe we live in, more outmoded teachings of the Church will be revised or redefined in the near future, just as it happened to the belief in Limbo.
Would it be farfetched to speculate that when science finally proves the possibility of multiple rebirth, the church may also reverse its current stand against reincarnation?

Note: For inquiries on books, paranormal services and seminars on Inner Mind Development, ESP and Intuition Development, and Soulmates, Karma & Reincarnation conducted by this writer, call 8107245, 8926806; or fax 8159890. E-mail the author at innerawareness_2005@yahoo.com.ph

http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view_article.php?article_id=64637

Mother wants to know what religion to teach her kids

I am confronted with a question that I honestly do not want to be asked. In fact, my first impulse was to ignore it.

But I find myself haunted by the question of this young mother about how to raise her two babies “in terms of religion and spirituality.”

Here is her thought-provoking letter:
“I am a mother of two toddlers, a 2½-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy. How, do you think, should I bring up my kids in terms of religion and spirituality?

“I read a line from your articles that whenever you see one of your former students, you would apologize to them for teaching them things you don’t believe in anymore.

“I, myself, was brought up in a strict Catholic environment. I was very religious then, and very active in church activities. I was a member of different religious organizations and you can say I was the youngest manang then at 10-11 years old.

“I still go to church but I have a different point of view now.

“Since my kids are already in that stage where I can teach them the basics of life (which will form a big part of their growing up years), I am kind of unsure how to introduce religion to them, or if I should.

“And how to explain things to them that will not confuse them given the beliefs of the majority that they will surely encounter when they start going to school? ”

Personal
I really am at a loss how to answer this question because I believe religion is a very personal thing. Each of us has his/her own belief system and no one should ever impose his/her own religious beliefs on others.

I cannot pretend to know more than this mother or anybody else how best to introduce religion to her children or even if she has to.

But since my opinion is sought, here is what I can say about this very important subject, which I do not expect everybody to agree with.

I think it is good to grow up having a religion, no matter what that might be so that the child will have an anchor or foundation.

But whatever religion she chooses to introduce her children to, she should also teach them to be open to other belief systems that may, at first glance, be different from or contrary to their own.
I do not think it is wrong to belong to one religion (Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or Taoist) provided one does not become fanatical or dogmatic about it.

Ideally, religion should unite all human beings but, instead, it has succeeded only in dividing them. How many millions of lives have been destroyed in the name of religion? Is the world better off today than before Jesus Christ was born over 2000 years ago?

Of course, you will get different answers to this depending on whom you ask. George Bernard Shaw once quipped: “We can’t say Christianity has failed, because it has never been tried.”

But is this not true of all religions? Followers of every organized religion do not even completely agree on what their founder really taught, nor how to interpret them. So every religion eventually splits into various sects and cults, each claiming to be the true one.

One thing more, no matter in what religion you bring up your child, s/he will eventually form his/her own belief system, just like you did, if your kids are intelligent enough.

They will soon see the logical inconsistencies in their adopted religion’s official teachings and will question them either openly or silently.

Respect for others
You have to encourage your children to respect the religious beliefs of other people while maintaining their own beliefs. There is absolutely no point in converting a person from one religion to another because each religion puts one’s mind in a box. And converting people is just like jumping from one box to another. You are still in a box, see?

Despite the fact that I have long ago graduated from my school boy mentality about the Christian religion, I still believe in what Jesus taught, as he originally taught them, not the interpretation of the official Church. As you begin to dig deeper into the origins of Christianity, you will begin to discover to your great horror how different the Church teachings are compared to what he originally taught.

With the historic findings of the Gnostic Gospels in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Upper Egypt, for example, we now have reasonable proof how much of Christ’s original teachings were edited out by the Early Church Fathers.

By declaring such lost teachings as heresies, they have succeeded in making people believe theirs is the only true and authentic teachings. That is the situation we find ourselves now in terms of Christianity.

When the American psychic Edgar Cayce, while in a trance, was asked, “Which version of the Bible is the best?” he replied: “The one that you live.”

I shall answer this mother’s question about religion in the same way. “The best religion you can teach your children is the one that you live.”

http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view_article.php?article_id=63347