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A Well-Reasoned Faith

522586_10150971277076940_132592530_nAt this point in my spiritual journey I am guided by Rabbi Brickner:

“If I am for myself, what am I? A well-reasoned faith is independently formed but not solipsistic. It does not isolate a person from humanity; it does not allow an individual to turn away from the needs of others. A well-reasoned faith does not pretend that all human beings are good or kind or honest.”

I being an ISTJ need to guard against solipticism!

“The politics of God, as unfashionable as it has always been, has never gone out of fashion. The remembered giants of religion – men such as Martin Luther , Sir Thomas More, Walter Rauschenbusch, John Haynes Holmes, Rabbi Stephen Wise and Martin Luther King, Jr – are remembered and admired precisely because of their willingness to speak their religious truth to those in political power so as to effect social change. They made a virtue out of seeking to implement for society the ethical demands of the prophets of Israel.”

“These men shared one common commitment: They preached and worked for a finer public morality without advocating some specific religion for all.”

“Herein lies the world of difference between them and many of our contemporary evangelists. Those clergy who pursued the elimination of social evil used the logic of their fith to influence , not to coerce or CONVERT.”

New Understanding of Prayer

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With my new mind and my new body I resonate peacefully with Rabbi Balfour Brickner’s interpretation of prayer:

“For me prayer has become meditation upon the best we know, communion with the noblest that we understand, and reaching out of what we are to what we yearn to be.”

“I like that definition because it completely shifts the grounds of responsibility from God to us.”

I agree with the rabbi. I don’t want to offend anybody but I can’t stomach the type ‘Amen” mentality on Facebook.

The rabbi continues:”It reverses the common view that in prayer, we should somehow affect God, compelling the Eternal One to do something for us. Not so, my father suggested. God is an ideal, a paradigm of all we hold of ultimate value or good. Prayer i the activity we enter into to enable us to concentrate on those values. Such concentration help us to find our FINER SELVES, act more responsibly, better control our passions, come to some deeper understanding of a given situation, reach out for a solution of what troubles us.”

This to me is closer to what the Law of Attraction teaches. We are the answer according to M Tamura. God has given us the tools. We are to help ourselves. We have been empowered. We are not victims!!!!!

I am amazed at how this interpretation of prayer empowers me. It emboldens me. I can do things for myself.

“This is what we mean when we suggest that God is, we do. The purpose of prayer is not to change God, but to change the person praying.”

I like the above. This defies the “appease the gods” mentality!

“God does not manipulate or change the intimate details of a person’s life as an accommodation to that individual’s momentary personal needs.”

I believe God gives us the tools we need to find our FINER SELVES, to act more responsibly, better control our emotions, come to a deeper understanding of a given situation, reach out for a solution of what troubles us.

“God is, we do.”

Healthiest Worldview

12801157_894514387335076_2600969822241122526_n After many years of searching. After so many ailments I have decided that the healthiest worldview for my sanity and spirituality is from “infinite Possibilities”.

“Our first responsibility in life is not to make this world a better place or to tend to those less fortunate, but to live up to our own high standards, to act with faith that our dreams are ‘meant to be and to maintain a tolerance and compassion for our divine journey’

This sounds selfish to traditional thinkers but this is what I need after years of searching and getting sick many times.

By being so responsible to ourselves the world will become a better place, and those around you will richly benefit, not just from the love you’d share but from the example you become.”

OF COURSE, I am not happy with the author’s pronoun shifts from “our” to “your”

Responsibility for Joy

11218773_1202061363145241_4051875601677544383_n Michael Tamura wrote: “… when crises arise in your life, they aren’t due to something wrong with you. Although you may take them personally, situations in your life don’t happen to you. They just happen and you are involved in them according to the way you respond to them.”

Certainly I am not amused with the statements of M. Tamura. Of course I take the situations personally!!!!! Why did I fall last March 16 when just that very morning, I announced to an Ilonggo couple waiting for the door of the mall to open, that I would no longer need my cane in April.

Yes, I would not need my cane because I would need a walker to go around our condo and be wheeled outside the comforts of our unit. What wry humor life has!

“The New World of Self-Healing” seems to add insult to injury with the following: “Everyone has an inner essence, soul a spirit. It is this inner essence that attracts life situations and experiences for your highest good. We may not constantly realize that we invite the lessons needed to assist  our spiritual growth!”

Grrr! I am not pleased with the pronoun shifts! From “you” to “we”.

I agree it took me quite some time to accept that my spirit may have invited my March 16 fall for my highest good. Obviously my ego is still in control.

Our daughter reminded me that my surgery brought together a lot of our relatives and friends to pray for me. Silently, I mused: could they not have prayed for something for pleasant like finally liberating me from my cane which I have been using expertly for three years?

Well, It has made my husband even more loving and caring – my superhero, my healing presence! It has brought to the surface my my secret resistance towads yet again applying for a UK visa. It has made me admit the surgery has given me a convenient excuse not to go to Mass and agonize over the unpalatable sermons, ever scolding!!!!

But Dr Sarno does not subscribe to the theory of “secondary gains”. He believes that the secondary gains which in my case are: not applying for a visa again and not going to mass are forms of conditioning. He believes in “Treat the disorder that is the root cause of the pain.” He was referring to repressed emotions that cause oxygen depletion in the body.

Lynn Grabhorn has given me a refreshing insight towards my pains: “The need to feel the old pain is nothing but a trick  your ego is playing on you to avoid assuming the RESPONSIBILITY for and therefore the joy of life.”

Yes! I am “an unlimited being of light” I can take control. I can recognize what has happened. Yes! I won’t let my ego have its way.

Dr Sarno on Pain

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Today I will write about pain again but from the perspective of Dr Sarno. I like Dr Sarno’s description of pain as: “all the tissues suffer from oxygen deprivation, so that one may experience both muscular and nerve pain.”

From my experience, with Jean Netario Cruz’ magnesium and especially when I spray several drops of magnesium into my drinking water various types of pains on different occasions disappear.

I lke Dr Sarno’s explanation of why in spite of advances in science I, like countless others, still experience various types of pains.

“Traditional medical diagnoses focus on the machine, the body, while the real problem seems to relate to what makes the machine work – the mind… physical pain but that acute discomfort is induced by psychological phenomena rather than structural abnormalities or muscular deficiency.”

Dr Sarno refers heavily to tension : “The word tension is used here to refer to emotions that are generated in the unconscious mind and that , to a large extent remain there.”

“The kinds of feelings referred to are anxiety, anger and low self-esteem (feelings of inferiority). They are repressed because the mind doesn’t want us to experience them, nor does it want them to be seen by the outside world. It is likely that if given a choice, most of us would decide to deal with them, but as the human mind is presently constituted, they are immediately and automatically repressed – one has no choice.”

He continued: “Everything medical is influenced in some way by the emotion. I believe that all medical studies are flawed if they do not consider the emotional factor.”

I truly like how Dr Sarno understands the medical practitioners: “Most contemporary medical investigators cannot accept such an explanation (pain being a signal of oxygen deprivation) since it violates their basic assumption that the etiologic explanation for physical abnormalities must be in the body itself. (not in the mind). They cannot conceive of the idea that something like back pain might originate in the mind.”

I wish more physicians would pay attention to the studies of Dr Sarno. After all science requires that all new ideas be validated by experience and replication.