2.6.16 It's not about the road

         I was talking with my husband yesterday, about some thoughts I'd had, on spirituality, on religion. Because many people with serious diagnoses convey their way into being a Radical Remission Person by stacking the deck with all the things they can possibly manage to afford/do/learn, without their entire lives being eclipsed by fear. Fear being sometimes a valuable pointer, often a wake up sense, and yet, not a helpful way to live all the time.

     Lots of people put in their plan of So Many Valuable Things a spiritual aspect that means true to them. Which of course comes in all shapes and colors, spirituality. Some of them 'return' to the religion of their childhood. Some come upon other organized religions that resonate with them. Some walk the path and come upside one way of being and growing and realizing and deepening after another, and keep on going.
For many, no matter the circumstance, this aspect of life helps them discover really what matters to them. What has meaning. It can even be a helpful thing as in,"Oh, now I'm here to do THIS', or possibly "Ok, NOW I'm doing this thing.' For others, it's an all day all night thing, that knows no bounds.

     And this slowly becomes a True North for them, whether they are praying to and talking to God, or meditating, or gathering with others and being taught, or playing music or humming or gardening or doing the weekly grocery shopping or helping out at the Shelter or doing that weekend once a month hammering nails for someone's new fantastic home, or settling down deep into a forest knoll with all the scents and sounds ferrying them to some essence of life.
     Years ago, I had a friend who was a fellow acupressurist and also a gifted Hypnotherapist, who I traded with a lot. I brought my kids to her for Hypnotherapy sessions for insomnia and math anxiety and fears and all sorts of things, and they grew up weaned upon her very wise relaxation tapes, to listen to at bedtime. I brought my wonderful grieving father-in-law to her for pain and grief of all kinds, and off he went with his tapes to listen to at night.
     She also did 'Past Life Regressions', and at that point I was pretty interested in what she thought of all that, back in the day when Ideas predominated in my life, versus now, when being has settled in.
     One of the things she said stayed with me all these years. It was that maybe it doesn't matter what you 'believe in' as much as what it brings you to. 

Let's say you use a modality or a model or template of ideas or belief to explore something, and your emotions and thoughts and growing accompanies this, and no matter if you believe in God or fairies or angels or The Magical Meaning of Cardinals or Rainbows or Synchronicity, what really might matter is what it lends you. Huh.
I thought about that all these years, and laid the idea upon many an experience to check it out.
     During my years having my practice, often clients would pray, or I would pray with them.
     Or I'd say "Imagine your bile duct , right here, is a tube that has frozen stuff in it, and see it warming and melting and flowing', and every single solitary time that bile duct would soften and the bile would begin to flow and the digestive issues would settle. 

Or, like many of us bodyworkers who know few bounds of what is possible, I'd be at someone's feet, and slowly reminding their body how to move smoothly between Sympathetic extremes to Parasympathetic and back and forth. I'd hold their feet and this movement would engage in the feet, ankles, knees, legs, lumbar area, thoracic area, neck, and brain, and back. If I described what I was observing, the impact would be far greater, because I'd be a shepherd, helping them learn the awareness of that dynamic, that would translate later into deeper sleep and a more agile capacity to move from great reactive tension to ease, simply by returning to that awareness.
     The point is that where they brought their awareness, things happened. Build it and they will come.

What I noticed with energetic healing or distance healing or plain old perceive-the-responses-to-acupressure, was that all they had to do is 'Go' there. And things would move and change.

     When clients prayed, or I knew they prayed and offered to pray with them while I was working, or they asked me to help them pray and I'd pray out loud in a general manner that supported whatever particulars or specifics they would want to include, beneath my hands and what I could palpate and perceive, they would change. Simply by them being present with that intention.

     Which led me to conversing with my beloved, a 'Recovering' member of a certain religion. For whom lots of the things that many are drawn to really have no draw for him. Make no sense. Doesn't want to go there.
     I was mulling over and seeing if I could convey to him how, just being with whatever really means something to us- brings us to important healing states of being.
We can go to the Shaman and perceive or not or believe or not, but if we choose to relax and engage in any way that fits for us, and translate the experience into our own words and way of seeing things, we will change.
     We will become more of an essence of our self.

     If we go to the cathedral in the pines or the church downtown or talk to that pastor or shift ourselves under the guidance of that priest, and it fits us, we will change.

     And it's the dynamic moving growing becoming shifting that I have watched afford so much to so many. Whatever the realm that fits. That shares with them glimpses of The Bigger Picture. The Whole. The loveliness and wonder of the person they are, including all the normal or more extreme aspects that are not so helpful or kind or good, that are there, today.

     That's what I was trying to convey. It's not the road or the time of day; its just being present while we walk.