John. Of. God.
John of God is the famous trance channel in Brazil. A middle aged Brazilian man known for his ability to go into trance and heal people of various ailments, with the help of some 30 different "entities". He has been doing healings since 1978.....except he doesnt remember a single thing he does once he goes under, it is the work of the entities and God he says. Thousands line up at his center to receive his blessings, healings and "surgerys", which he sometimes does with a kitchen knife, and zero anesthesia. So far no one has complained. If you find him on U-tube you will find videos of people all in white, lining up inside a big room with blue and white walls hobbling on crutches, sitting in wheel chairs, and dragging IV lines. There are countless stories of healings and happenings, spirits and meditative experiences, as well as complete cures of various intense illnesses. As proof of this, on one of the videos someone has filmed an area in the center, where you see a pile of crutches and wheel chairs as people are healed and set free, presumabley tossing them aside as they leave the surgery room. My skeptical mind wonders how long it took to create that pile, a week? A month? Was that just in one day? I search the internet for statistics, I want to read "healed 22 people with stomach cancer, 18 of breast cancer, 3 of diabetes 2 broken legs and a bad case of a broken heart, all in the month of April". I don't find this kind of information on line. Maybe faith doesn't work in statistics. But modern science sure does. To have people tell me--"so many have been healed by him", and yet I don't get names and telephone numbers, triggers my skeptical mind further. This is what I want. I want PROOF. Is this "unspiritual" of me? At this point I don't care, I want guarantees, I have breast cancer, I want it gone and I want to get up in the morning and have this cancer story finished so I can go out and live my life. Generalities do not help me sleep at night. I wish I could be more in the blind faith category, but lets get real, I just want to get well and live a happy life, and I don't care how that happens. Doctors, healers, dolphins, herbs, vizualization, trance healers, chemotherapy, or raditation if it means LIFE, I believe it. Call me old fashioned.
My first introduction to John Of God happened about 6 years ago, when my college boyfriend was diagnosed with Brain Cancer and all the traditional medicine wasn't working. He had called me, after 2 years of not hearing from him, (we had been broken up for some time) and thinking he had gotten better, only to find out it was back and he was sitting in his wheel chair, sounding weak and faint, asking me, did I know of any healers at this crucial hour. Immediately I contacted my girlfriend in LA, a former lingerie model and stripper who had become involved with a group of healers and had left the sexy world of bodies to enter into the healing world of bodies. She was one of those women who could do that kind of transition and be taken seriously. She was a gemini, go figure.
Her immediate response was to direct him to John of God, a name that at the time sounded like such a complete quak job. Who was he to say he was of God?....and John? Like from the bible? But, her stories of successes and healings, resonated in my gut as true, and since he didn't charge any money, I felt, well, if he isn't getting rich off his promises, perhaps this guy is on to something real. In those days, I mostly trusted and kept the skepticism to myself, especially if it involved other people on deaths door. Today, I mostly remain a skeptic and keep the trusting to myself, especially if it involves my own healing. I am a gemini rising, go figure.
My beautiful first boyfriend Randy, rest his soul in absolute peace, never went down to Brazil, for reasons I still don't really know. And he died of brain cancer about a year later, having been diagnosed about four years prior. I always will wonder what would have happened had he gone down and I will always remember, that when I told him about John of God he sounded skeptical and wanted to be reassured that it would work. When I asked him what his inner voice was saying, all he said was, "I can't hear it", there was just too much fear, he couldn't let it in, he was panicking. Randy was "spiritual", whatever that means these days. He meditated, he believed in the power of the mind and the awareness that something larger was driving the show, but he was also skeptical of many things and always was questioning any spiritual path I chose. Maybe protective is a better word. But I guess when you are sitting in a wheel chair with all your hair falling out and your parents going broke to take care of you, a plane ticket down to Brazil, not to mention traveling in that state, to visit some guy wielding a knife and going into trance probably sounds a bit far out. Maybe he thought, better to give another round of chemo a try or perhaps his mother was afraid he wouldn't survive the trip. I don't know, I could never work up the courage to ask his mother after his death, anyway, I never thought she liked me and he and I had such a tumultuous first love romance, I didn'āŠĪ t want to add to any one's stress or sadness. I regret that to this day, another time in life, I feel I just couldn't fully let in and feel. The grief and sadness of loosing your first love, who truth be told, I still carried the young love dream that one day we would find each other again and get married. Instead, I stuffed the situation to the back of my mind, perhaps into my breast, and moved forward into the life I had still had ahead of me. Secretly feeling callous and uncaring, and feeling ashamed I had not done more to see him one last time or help him. But maybe it wasnt what was needed for Randy, perhaps people die according to a schedule I simply can never know how or why or for what purpose. Perhaps my own life is on that same schedule and I will never know if its "right" or "wrong" to live or die. Everyone just assumes, that fighting for your life is the only choice, they never consider simply surrendering the master plan, anyway, do we have that much control over it, really?
I had been carrying these questions around in my mind after my diagnosis of Stage 1 Breast Cancer, suddenly stopping in the middle of grocery shopping or the locker room at the gym, something taking hold of me in a moment, to say, I could die. The realization that death was possible suddenly becoming very real. And then, looking around at everyone else around me, busy in their lives, thinking, but we all will die, we are just visitors to this time and space and pair of shoes and dinner plans for the evening and this pressing phone call we think is so important right now. Its not going to stay put no matter what we do. When we are young and healthy and "spiritual" and educated with friends doing amazing things in life and buying plane tickets to exotic destinations, and supposedly "safe" and "protected" from things like death, we can forget to not take things for granted. But this is cliche right? Everyone says this when they get rocked by the possibility of death, or illness. But its not a cliche. Its very real this awareness that isn't just a moment lost in thought but suddenly a reality popping up in more hours of the day, that you cannot scoot around and dismiss.
I can remember my first teacher, Don Miguel Ruiz, calling death an angel, the Angel of Death was his term and I loved this. It sounded sexy. And for many halloweens, I would decide I was going to dress up as the angel of death, complete with angel wings all in black with alot of eyeliner and a gold halo and vampire teeth. Shadow and light personified in a safe costume. Nobody wants to call death an angel, because if we befriend death it may just come and get us, it may just win. But the truth is, death is going to win, and will always win, and only in surrendering to her power will we know the thrill of her seduction. Death is an angel. Death causes us to live now and fully. Her presence reminds us of time, of our finite time here, lived by an infinite soul. Of Carpe Diem. Of the Now. As in "right now before you die'. And I realized I wasnt afraid of death, what I was really afraid of was wasting a chance at fufilling a purpose for life, I was afraid of letting God down. Big Daddy in the sky God, who would wag his finger at me when I got up to heaven and say "Now why'd you go and get cancer when I gave you so much to work with down there, you were all set up kid, and you wasted it to cancer, so cliche. At least you could have died as a brilliant poet or a tormented musicican." The fear was failure, was being embaressed that I had screwed up and not gone for it in this life, to live fully in line with the soul, with the rebel spirit, with the undying passion of speaking up and sharing the deepest heart. It was like getting on the roller coaster, approaching the big upward mount and then getting off before you got the free fall woosh of intoxication. Damn it. This is not what I wanted. People were going to laugh at me, I was going to look like a fool if this is how the story ended. It was looking ridiculous that has always been my biggest fear, not death, lord knows, many a broken heart, I had wished to die, many a teenage melodrama I had planned my death to spite my parents, to fufill my soul thru self destruction. Death was the least of my worries. It was being a fool, a sad case in the eyes of god and the world that kept me up at night.
So when the oppurtunity came to do this long distance healing with John of God, I wondered what for? To make the cancer gone? That wasnt really going to solve the issue. Then what? The cancer is gone and then I have to live my life. Doing what? Will I really live it now, or will I just go back to old patterns, stuffing things to the back of the closet, not fully stepping into living from the heart, kind of dilly dallying around with the ideas of things and jumping from one thing to the next? This was how I had been living my life. This was not the life I wanted to go back to. If I was going to live, I wanted to live a different life, I wanted to live the life, I knew I kept planning to live, alive in the heart, soul, body. Getting rid of the cancer was just the surface issue, living beyond the cancer was what my soul longed for. So if anything, even if John of God and his crew of some 30 entities didnt make the cancer dissapear, well maybe they could recharge my soul, my heart, my desire to live and create and grow. Maybe they would give me some special sauce to amp up the tune of my life, maybe they would hand me some keys to unlock the places that had gotten stuck inside. Maybe they could just root out where I had forgotten how much I did want to live, now, in this body at this time with these friends with this name and address and planet. Maybe this was better than getting rid of any cancerous cells, maybe they knew it wasn't really about the cancer anyways. Maybe they knew that I knew this and they knew that I wanted that and so they would just help me get to where I already knew I wanted to go. Maybe they were well ahead of the whole cancer game already, and just wanted to come and tickle me in the night, and get me giggling back to life again, back to the real reason I came, not to "beat" cancer, or to "fight" for my life, but simply to LIVE it. Now. Like a kid, real as rain life, on life;s terms, cancer or no cancer, did it really matter? It wasn't about the cancer is what I am trying to say. And it wasn't about getting "healed" or a miracle, it was about LIFE.
So. Once that was clear on the inside, life as it does opens up the perfect setting to recieve the physical manifestation of that realization. A space of time, rent paid, (thank you parents), fear of money temporarily settled, a cozy room to myself between operations, the healer angel friend connecting the dots in brazil to make it happen and walla. Fast forward to a few weeks ago. The special herbs came in the mail, a protocol of no pork, peppers, alchol or sex for 40 days. No sex?!! Masturbation? Nope. Not even arousal. Funny how sex was the last thing on my mind and the minute they say no sex, suddenly, porn shops are catching my eye. I even left the herbs sitting on the altar in the living room for a week before I started taking them. Resistance is like this sometimes. My reasoning was "I am charging them up with divine energy" as if John of God wasnt charged enough. As if we have to be perfectly ready to recieve God, as if God is waiting for us to be perfect before "he" decides to dance thru us....We little humans think we know so much, and really, we are sitting on the doorstep of a tsunami ready to pour us back out into an ocean of endlessness, if we only surrender and just take the freakin herbs already. Follow the protocol life is handing us.
Immediately, upon taking the herbs I felt a little divine lift. I felt these little capsules in round blue bottles with portuguese written on them were really acting like connectors to a vortex. Little portals connecting me or at least tuning my body so that I would be ready to receive this healing. Opening secret doorways within my cells and soul, to let in this healing energy that was slowly moving towards me, preparing me to receive these new guests in my 24 hours in bed, alone in a room in white. Bed. Bed and more bed, as my healer angel friend had joked. This was the protocol. 24 hours of bed, only moving to get drink, nourishment or el bano. Nada mas. No checking facecrook, no making a quick phone call, no stopping to try on my roomates lipstick, and definitely no hands in the cookie jar, let alone the pork or peppers jar. At the time I would enter the bed was the exact time John of God would be down in Brazil with my picture, laying on the secret sauce. I could not be tardy for this.
So I set about preparing. I cleaned my room, I re-did my altar, added another one, washed the sheets, found a beautiful white dress in the back of the closet. Set up the Boise and Ipod, set to healing Brazilian songs in Portuguese ( I wanted the spirits to sing along with me) and chants from a deep well of a select group of soulful goddesses. I saged, I copaled, I took a nice shower, and got a massage an hour before showtime-12:30 pm so I was all ready to just BE. I ate a some whole wheat toast, took melatonin (part of my acupuncturists cancer regime) and finally called back my healer angel friend who had called three times the morning of making sure I was ready. "He's ready, are you?, My god where have you been, I am going to need a sedative after this" Somehow I had missed her calls, thinking they were insurance agents vying for my dollar. NEVER fill out those forms on line about getting insurance qoutes, they fill up your inbox and have no mercy in trying to get you to buy from them and you end up avoiding answering the phone for fear, some strange voice is going to ask for you and mispronounce your last name in a southern accent.
After I had calmed my healer angel friend, I put on my good luck medicine necklace and bracelet, called my healer one last time ( "just call me when you are actually in the bed, so I can rest") and told her, "If I leave with the spirits, make sure my parents pay you for the herbs". I pulled the shades and curtains and then I was alone. In my room with the new white sheets and the smell of copal and a couple of candles burning and a woman calling in Krishna. The sounds of second avenue just outside my window, my roomate gone for the weekend, the upstairs neighbors creaking and rolling something over the floor, my stuffed bunny from Duane Reade in my arms, my crystal in my hand and a bunch of herbs on my nighstand table. 24 hours stretched out before me, with nothing to do but lay in bed. Bed, bed and more bed. No texting? No. Prayer, solace, sleep, review of life, review of death, prayer, bed, bathroom, nibbles. No texting. Prayer, bed, review of life. Look at clock, no texting, prayer, ....
Immediately upon lying down I felt something kind of take me, energetically and I feel asleep for six hours, waking up at 6;30pm. My hand was on my heart, and I was bathed in sweat, feeling a subtle surging thru my body, a sense of a presense in my awareness, and a deep stillness inside, a sense of calm. And then I prayed. I placed as much of my heart as I could on the tip of my tongue and mind and offered it to whoever had come to visit me. "Make yourself available" my healer angel friend had advised. I could feel my mind wandering, over things like time, and was I doing it right and did I feel anything and what was I going to do after these 24 hours, but beyond these thoughts was a very real sense of an energy dancing. I could feel an "instruction" to put my hands on my breast and breathe long breaths of intention into this breast and to speak aloud anything hidden in my mind, any hidden fears or worries. Like a purging. I also could feel a comforting, a sense of being told to comfort myself, to hold myself to snuggle into the deepest part of my heart. My little stuffed bunny felt alive in these moments, as if filled with a comforting energy, like a child animates her toys, but it felt real and warm and caring. And I noticed how my crystal fit perfectly in my hand, with my pointer finger over the top curving into the shape of my hand perfectly. Sometimes I would give in to my restlessness in between and wander into the kitchen for some crackers. And I noticed, walking thru the living room, I was slow, and sensitive, kind of groggy, and my body really didn't want to move, it was just the restless mind. I would come back to bed soon after, the crackers tasteless, not entirely needed for hunger, rather for restless impatience of the mind. And drop back into bed like a surrender and feel the energy take me again.
I passed thru visions of inspiration of how I wanted to live my life, practical ways to manifest abilities, new ideas, new possibilities, ways I wanted to restructure my healing practice, how much I wanted a family and children, to give more love to the people in my life, to write and share and create. It all seemed possible, and I was reminded it was the truth of what could be if I wanted it. At certain points I felt a pulsing in my breast, at the site where the tumor had been actually removed. And I felt myself passing thru a review of my life. How certain actions had led up to this point, insight into how I was living my life that wasn't working, how i was rushing thru things and jumping so fast from one thing to another, I was rushing thru my life and missing the deepest parts of it. I saw how I was trying to escape something inside of me, running from myself to get to what I wanted outside but actually running away from everything I truly wanted inside. I was shown my relationship to abundance and lack and had to take a very honest look at how I had disrespected the abundance that had come my way out of this running to buy, to acquire, to travel to some place that could fulfill me, to get the right healer, or shaman or cute outfit to fill this hole in my soul, that really needed expression, an outlet, a voice, a facing up to, to see it wasn't a void of ugliness, but a void of immense possibility. And I felt the sadness at seeing how much time and resources I had wasted on this illusion of fear and lack, on this shadow self that I thought had the power over me, that I thought if I could just avoid and meditate away from or cleanse, then I could avoid it. But what it really needed was a voice, a recognition, a witnessing, a turning on the light to its own lie of the mind. Not a hiding and stuffing as I had done into this breast to come back and bite me with a crisis like breast cancer. Look at me, it was saying, see me, do not run from me, I have gifts of awareness for you, of gratitude of humility.
And then in the morning, a hell descended and I encountered a place inside my soul that wanted to die, a place that really thought it was all pointless and would never get better and that I was a hopeless case. Not hopeless like I couldn't "beat" the cancer, but that even if I did beat the cancer, my life wouldn't change and even cancer wasn't enough to wake me up to start living the life that God really wanted for me. That truly, lets face it, I was broken, unworthy selfish mess, and the spirits had probably already abandoned me. This wasn't going to work I had gotten cancer because I deserved it, I was really a very very bad little girl, just posing as some spiritual person looking for love. I was a hopeless fraud. I know this place of intense suffering, the place inside the mind, that is so dark, we are afraid to admit to our spiritual circles for fear of appearing un holy or "dark" but here it was. And I was alone in a room with it and it was dragging me down. I began to panic a bit inside, oh no, I thought, I am sabotaging the healing, the spirits can't get in because this shadow has more control over the situation and I am powerless to stop it. This damn shadow will always get the best of me, in the end, I am always going to loose. This is the cancer, this is the real cancer. It is a cancer of the mind, a darkness of the soul, that we cower from and give power to. And in that moment I heard a voice, whether it was mine or some spirit, I don't know but it was clear, It said "rise up and sit up on the bed and say no more. You have the power to rise out of its grasp. It is not you, it does not have power. It has as much power as you allow it." And I did. Not in the heroic way I had hoped, sit up tall and powerful all in white bathed in light and dramatically pronounce that I would not give it power anymore, pull out my sword and cut it into little bits like a magical fairy tale. But I did sit up and it took strength to sit up out of that depressive repetitive comfortable pattern of my deepest mind hook and simply say I want to live beyond this, I know I can. To step up, not perfectly as I thought it should look, but in my own honest and real way with the strength I could find and have that be enough to pull me thru to the other side and see how much help is available if we only try just a bit. Our minds make our fall from grace a dramatic "fall". Maybe all we have done is trip on a little stone and god is just steering us back on course. And I realized God wasn't mad at me, he was just tapping me on the shoulder. Saying, I know you got more in there girl, I know you got more to give, I know you have been hiding the good stuff, waiting for that rainy day, so here it is, let the sunshine out. Now. Its been written in your chapter book that the sun must come out now, so, let it come. Straight from your unkempt bed, hair a mess, sweaty white dress and little bunny made in china, this is the show right here and now where no one is looking and you get no applause. This is the scene on life's terms where angels are born. It doesn't need dramatizing or adding to, its sweetness is in its surrender to what is. A little girl with breast cancer in a room on second avenue, talking to spirits from Brazil. And downstairs and outside is a whole world that has no idea what is going on, that probably doesn't care if you live or die, that is too caught up in their own running to understand how sweet a deal this is. This Cancer thing is between you and God and everything else you think you are doing in your life, rests on this relationship, right here and now. Its your choice.
And while I cannot say some dramatic light beamed out my head and I saw Angels come in the room, I can say after that moment, something shifted that has stayed shifted. An awareness. A deeper knowing, that post poneing this relationship, this communion, this recognition is creating a distance from something so precious and real and divine, that I cannot turn away from it and why would I want to? The Angel of Death keeps tapping me on the shoulder...."if not now, when?" she purrs, criss crossing her legs, " I am coming to get you kid" she beams at me, with her smile. "Love me baby, love me, I am your ally, not your foe." And she is, a precious ally. A seductive friend that calls my deepest soul to stir in her presence. It only took 24 hours in bed for her to work her magic, seduce me to her level, awaken my deeper passions, peace and pointlessness. She will always win and I am so grateful she always will.
