Spiritual Healing Seminar - Jamae van Eckjamaevaneck.com/PDF/Articles/2011/August/Spiritual... ·...

© Jamae van Eck Spiritual Healing Seminar 1 of 14

. . . Spiritual Healing Seminar . . . Jamae van Eck, CSB – March 18, 2000

I

Spiritual healing is not an occasional, unreliable, or unexplainable phenomenon. Such healing was an integral practice of the primitive Christian Church. We know that Jesus cited his healing works as evidence of his Messiahship when questioned by the disciples of John the Baptist. He said to the Pharisees: “If ye believe not me, believe the works.” Yet, he never claimed to do anything of himself. It was the power of God to redeem, to heal, to restore, to save, that was evidenced in everything Christ Jesus was, said, or did.

Such healing has appeared randomly, though misinterpreted and often suspect, through the ages. But in the late nineteenth century in the United States it again flowered in the Pentecostal movement and in the discovery of Christian Science or scientific (provable, demonstrable) Christianity.

The explosion of medical technology and pharmacology in the twentieth century, especially following World War II, would have crushed this flowering except for the coincident surge of interest in and hunger for genuine spirituality, as evidenced in the tremendous outpouring of books on the subject, the rise of movements both within and outside the traditional churches, and a growing dissatisfaction with the horrendous costs and often damaging side-‐effects of mechanistic medicine. The latest reports from the Journal of the American Medical Association indicate that more than 50% of those seeking healing in the United States now use some form of alternative medicine. Sheer materialism hasn’t answered – and never can – the yearning of the human heart for meaning, succor, purpose, significance, assurance, comfort, peace.

Psychologists have demonstrated widely in this century the effect of thought/emotion/belief on the human body (“Sick thoughts make a sick body,” Mrs. Eddy wrote in the 1860’s). One result has been a more holistic approach – an attempt to integrate mind/spirit/body in healing. But that still doesn’t explain healings like the following.

In 1972, Marolyn Ford, the wife of a Baptist minister, was totally blind. She had struggled with failing vision since her teens a decade earlier. Many times during their 12 years of marriage, she and her husband had prayed for her healing, but it hadn’t come. Then on the evening of August, 1972 – her husband’s birthday – they both cried as he prayed: “Oh God, You can restore Marolyn’s eyesight. I know You can do it, and if it be Your will, I pray You do it tonight.” Suddenly, Marolyn could see. They were overwhelmed with joy! A few days later, at her family’s insistence, Marolyn had her eyes examined. The Doctor’s report was that her eyes, medically speaking, were the same. From his standpoint, sight was not possible. But her sight has remained. She has written a book about her experience and has spoken to many audiences about God’s power to heal.


In 1965, Barbara Cumminsky was an active teenager. But by 1978, she was in a wheelchair, feet and hands curled and useless, dependent on a supply of oxygen. She had been diagnosed in 1970 with multiple sclerosis. Medically, nothing could be done to stop the deterioration, and by 1980, a lung had collapsed, and she could barely see. Her pastor encouraged her to be actively engaged in prayer – prayer for others. Then, on June 7, 1981, on the occasion of her sister’s birthday, Barbara heard a voice. It was firm, audible, compelling. It said, “My child, get up and walk.” Barbara complied. As she tells it: “This wasn’t possible, of course – there were 1,001 medical reasons why this couldn’t be happening. Yet, there I stood, firmly, solidly, feeling tingly all over . . . I could breathe freely. And I could see . . . My hands were normal, nor curled to my wrists. The muscles in my arms and legs were filled out whole.” Family and friends crowded around her jubilantly praising God. Her testimony concludes: “I don’t know why God healed me . . . I only know on that morning I felt good about myself – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually well. Through my prayer life, I was a busy, active member of the human family – not running or jumping or even walking like most people, but not separated from them by bitterness, self-‐pity, or despair. My mind and spirit were healthy and whole. Then God made my body whole, too.”

Perhaps such healings and others both within and without the churches, as well as the continuing body of evidence recorded by Christian Scientists regularly in their periodicals, in published compilations of individual healings – often with medical diagnosis or confirmation, and voiced weekly in their Wednesday testimonial meetings, have spurred interest over the past 10-‐15 years in spiritual means.

One expression of this interest is through course-‐offerings by schools of theology and of medicine. For example:

1. In the spring of 1988, I took a course at the Andover-‐Newton Theological Seminary in Newton, MA entitled: “The History, Theology, and Practice of Healing in the (Christian) Church.” It was taught by a husband/wife team who had long served as hospital chaplains and been engaged in a healing ministry. The Course syllabus offered this theological position: “One of the basic missions of the Christian faith is to minister healing and wholeness, justice and peace to the world’s sin, sin, sickness and brokenness . . . We live in a constant process of healing through which we are transformed from pain to redemptive suffering, from sickness to wellness, from brokenness to wholeness, from sin to salvation. Christ gave to his Church the commission and authority to carry on this healing ministry. Those who comprise Christ’s faithful in every generation are called to be healers in a vast variety of ways . . .”

There were 12 in the class from a variety of traditions. All had experienced spiritual healing and all felt deeply that this healing – this transformation of thought and regeneration of life – was Christ’s work in the world. The course encompassed a historical understanding of the healing ministry of the church as practiced over the centuries, including the abuses and corruptions to which it has been subjected, and the thread


of noble heritage, which has survived. It also explored ways in which this healing ministry can be practiced today and incorporated into pastoral care.

An extensive bibliography was shared which, sadly for me and another Christian Scientist in the class, didn’t include any of the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. In fact, without exception, the theological libraries I have visited have had virtually nothing to offer on Christian Science or its founder other than a few copied of early, hostile biographies which today have been thoroughly debunked, most recently by Robert Peel’s 3-‐volume trilogy, Dick Nenneman’s single volume biography and Gillian Gill’s scholarly work, published respectively in 1997 and 1998.

2. Then, in the summer of 1991, I was one of 25 enrolled in the first course offered on healing at the Boston University School of Theology, entitled: “The Psychology of Healing,” and taught by a young Lutheran minister who was also a clinical psychologist. This class was the outcome of a conversation I had with the Dean of the School (when I was there in a Master’s program) and a follow-‐on letter I had written him about the need for such an addition the curriculum. Dr. Chris Schlaugh, who taught the class, consulted with me about the syllabus. During the course, I, Mark Pearson, and Episcopal minister who had been involved for 20 years in healing activity, and Carrie Doehring, a new faculty member who was completing her dissertation in the area of recovery from victimization, each taught a day of the class, sharing our perspectives.

The group was international and wonderfully diverse in its make-‐up – it included a Jewish Rabbi, a Muslim, several from the Harvard medical school, pastors from the Baptist, Presbyterian, U.C.C., and Methodist traditions, several social workers, psychologists, and hospital chaplains, and a Christian Science practitioner. Everyone in the class believed in spiritual healing and had experienced it. They were searching for how it occurred – a rationale, an explanation, a method.

Some simple but powerful conclusions were drawn by the class:

• That healing is not so much an event as a process • That it is as different as we, as individuals are different; yet there

are commonalities we can all share. • That two-‐thirds of what we see is behind our own eyes – we each

live within a perspective and generalize from our own experiences. • That to participate in another’s healing is to be healed – together

we experience grace. • That our behavior or example has more influence than our words,

and that in the effort to help others, we must be authentic to ourselves as well as empathically attuned to others; but we must never forget the healing power is God’s.


• That healing involves more than being knowledgeable humanly. It requires being aware divinely. It is both an art and a science.

• That caring requires emptying ourselves sufficiently so that we can come close to another.

• That the essential core of each individual is spiritual, and we need to be able to recognize that core and relate to it. As one of the class members put it: “We long for others to see us in our goodness.”

• That suffering is alleviated when we can attach meaning to it; despair comes from lack of meaning.

• That all healing involves transformational change; that health is basically an attitude, an approach to life – it involves vision. Healing comes with a change of view – sometimes a radical paradigm shift, sometimes just a moment of spiritual insight.

The point was made that the modern medical approach is reductionist. It breaks everything down – compartmentalizes everything. The need is to put the pieces back together again in order to restore wholeness. Healing viewed spiritually is a reorientation in our relationship with God – it is repair of our self-‐definition in terms of what is sacred or holy. Faith may help us, but more than faith is needed if healing is to be consistent, reliable.

It was also agreed that theology cannot be abstract – it must be practical. Yet, our theology (our God-‐view) determines our anthropology (our self-‐view and view of others) as well as our world-‐view, and it determines our approach to and our practice of healing.

3. Starting in December, 1995, a continuing education course of the Harvard Medical School entitled “Spirituality and Healing in Medicine” has been offered twice yearly in Boston and in other locations around the country. It was offered in Los Angeles several years ago, and my husband and I were among the more than 1,000 attendees. Dr. Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School, and author of several books dealing with the “placebo effect” and the “relaxation response” has been the guiding figure in this week-‐end conference, and has brought together a number of contributing faculty, among them the much published Larry Dossey, and Virginia Harris, then Chairman of the Christian Science Board of Directors.

The purpose, as stated by Dr. Benson, is to enable medical professionals to better incorporate the spiritual element into their patients care. The conference has been funded by the Templeton Foundation, and incorporates talks by representatives of various religions, both Christian and non-‐Christian, about their healing practices. These practices vary widely.

It was heartening to me to witness the breadth and depth of interest in spiritual healing evidenced at the conference. There was skepticism, of course. The woman surgeon from Canada sitting next to us openly voiced such skepticism. It was also plain that this was an attempt to integrate


spiritual healing practices with medical practices – in fact, to draw under the broad umbrella of medical practice all “alternative” practices.

Dr. Benson acknowledges that one’s “belief-‐systems” govern his health and experience. He equates prayer with a “belief-‐system.” He even acknowledges the negative effect of “belief-‐systems” – that illness itself can result from belief in and fear of disease. The media/medical alliance was explored – how constant television advertisements for health products tend to induce the very ills these products are designed to alleviate. The powerful effects of visual imagery were noted. It would follow that even repetitive news reports or programming focused on various social ills or depicting violence, brutality, crime in an effort to expose and inform the public could induce similar consequences.

One recent example of this was recorded in the Wall Street Journal recently during what was widely reported in the media as an extreme flu outbreak. Although the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the illness wasn’t any more serious than in other years, intense media attention was being driven by an aggressive advertising campaign for new flu medications mounted by two giant drug companies. The marketing campaigns of these companies were estimated to cost in excess of $50 million.

The most important common conclusion among the various religions represented at the conference was that illness and suffering are not punishment from God; that God is not only with us in the midst of such evils, but present to free us from them or turn them into blessings – that the challenges we face are often opportunities to grow spiritually. It was agreed that God’s purpose for humanity is healing, redeeming, saving – that we don’t use God to obtain health, but honor God by overcoming the evils that breed dis-‐ease, discord, and pain. Nothing is impossible to God nor is there any limit to what prayer can do.

Among the many books available at the conference is one called Remarkable Recovery – a collection of medical anomalies, healings that are medically unexplainable. The common component in all these healings is faith-‐based prayer plus an unwillingness to accept or succumb to medical verdicts of hopelessness and incurability.


II

Christian Science or a Christianly scientific practice of healing based on Scriptural teaching

At the Harvard conference we attended, the most moving talk was given by Dr. Samuel Solivan, a professor at Andover – Newton Theological School near Boston. With great humility he told of his own remarkable healing. He was born prematurely and early experienced traumatic physical problems – he underwent numerous surgeries in connection with a mastoid condition, which left him with an obvious facial disfigurement due to a severed nerve. He also showed early signs of mental retardation – was even labeled an idiot. But the Pentecostal Hispanic community in which he was raised rallied to his support and nurtured him “in an environment of prayer, expectation and hope” – in which, in his words, “people believed they were called to be a community of healing . . . as modeled by Jesus Christ.” Such people he indicates, view the Scriptures as the authority that defines and directs our life.

By the time he was in the eighth grade at school, Samuel was still functioning as a second-‐grader. But at that same time, he sensed an early call to the ministry and made a commitment to trust God’s healing power. He worked with a scriptural passage from James which reads: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.”

Toward the end of that school year, additional tests showed he had leapt eleven grades forward. His facial disfigurement also gradually disappeared. In the mid 1960’s Union Theological Seminary granted him a PhD in “systematics”. He says of this healing: “That healing came, not because I am especially worth . . . but because God’s graciousness had touched my life . . . I know that healing is greater than the relieving of any single element of disease. Healing, as we understand it in my faith, is about wholeness in all aspects of our life.”

“Prayer is never manipulation,” he declares. (I take that to mean that prayer cannot be an effort to use God for our purposes, but a yielding of ourselves to God’s will or law and to the divine purpose.) He continues: “But a life in prayer, a life in the spirit, is a life of liberation and wholeness, of hope in the midst of despair . . . Spirituality of mind and body is an invitation to journey, to discover, to care, to heal. I have come to know the presence and the power of a living and loving God who seeks to heal us.” (This is quoted from an article about Dr. Solivan in the Christian Science Journal.)

Mary Baker Eddy could have said much the same thing. She, too was a discoverer, a pilgrim making a journey, always following the path the Wayshower, Christ Jesus, point out. Her only authority was the Bible. She not only experienced healing, but healed others, laboring to understand and practice the laws, the science or knowledge, the truth, that undergirded Jesus’ healing work. That she succeeded is attested in a body of consistent evidence spanning the last 125 years. Here are a few healings I’d like to share with you.


1. One is the experience of a young naval officer, a Christian Scientist, toward the end of World War II. He had developed persistent pains in his back, and a strange swelling in his thigh until he was no longer able to serve. The naval hospital diagnosed him with fatal spinal tuberculosis; he was discharged and sent home. Ultimately he was completely healed, had a very successful business career and in 1994 was married.

2. Another is told at length in the book: Spiritual Healing in a Scientific Age. A California couple, Christian Scientists, were asked to adopt an unwanted child. Prenatal tests indicated that the child would be born handicapped. And Affidavit by Doris Wiederkehr of Mar Vista, CA given in 1983 tells the story. (p. 54-‐63) The child was born in 1947 with multiple handicaps, including unformed vocal chords, a damaged heart, serious bone and blood conditions, and cerebral palsy. The physicians predicted the child would live no more than 6 – 8 months.

Doris had been healed in Christian Science of a curvature of the spine and had learned to trust God. So she prayed and cared for the baby’s physical needs as best she could. After 6 months, their adoption was finalized, although the presiding Judge urged institutionalization for the infant boy. Medical visits were mandated over the next several years, although the Doctor’s position was always that the baby was too frail for either surgery or medication.

Gradually, each one of these conditions was healed, and at the time of the affidavit, Les, the son, was happily married, physically sound, and fully employed in a plumbing firm. He was never permitted to enroll in public school classes, but earned his diploma by attending adult night classes.

This is what Doris said of the experience: “In the beginning, we did think human love was going to be enough . . . we thought we could just love him out of anything. And we had to learn that divine Love – you need the human love – but divine Love does the healing. And that takes a lot of praying, forgiving, it takes patience . . . listening, it takes being directed and allowing God’s will, and not yours, unfold.” When Les would get frustrated or angry with himself, Doris would tell him: “When Jesus tells us ‘Love they neighbor as thyself’ you have to love yourself (first), and that means every part of you. Loving the best . . . you’re demonstrating at this moment . . . To love yourself is to see yourself as God sees you.”

3. Immediately following in the same book is the story of John Ondrak, a former member of the New York City police department, who was healed of a line of duty injury that left him a cripple for over 12 years (p. 87-‐89). The injury occurred in 1955, and his testimony appeared in the Christian Science Journal in 1982.


John’s wife is the Christian Scientist – his god was his gun, nightstick and shield. Despite the finest hospital, surgical, and rehabilitative treatment over a three year period, John was told he would be permanently crippled. He was retired from the police department. The doctors said that the bones in John’s feet had calcified into nearly solid pieces, severely limiting their flexibility and motion. Though he eventually learned to walk laboriously assisted by two canes, he struggled with constant pain. Even with daily sedatives, sleep was difficult and getting out of bed was an ordeal.

In his personal account, he tells of reaching a point where he seriously considered suicide. He had prided himself on being an athlete all his life, and now he was filled with anger and resentment. His wife quietly insisted that there was a better way. His initial efforts to study and pray met with little success, until she suggested that he stop seeking a physical healing and forget himself in finding out about God and his relationship to God.

With this new perspective, the words now came alive with meaning, and he began seriously to lean on something much greater than material means and human will. Gradually, he was filled with an overwhelming sense of peace. The understanding of God as Father/Mother, as perfect Love, began to dawn in consciousness. He became so preoccupied with his study that he never knew exactly when the healing came. But one morning, he was overjoyed to realize that there was no more pain.

This former police officer, who had been told he might never walk again, now runs three or four miles each day thanking God for His love, power and presence, and praying that he might be guided to do whatever will glorify God’s name.

4. In my own book is an account of a healing of Thomas, one of my students, of medically diagnosed cancer (pages 17-‐19).

5. And finally, the healing of Bernard Medford, a Church of Christ minister for many years, of diabetes. Bernard is now is the practice of Christian Science. His healing appears in the Christian Science Journal of September, 1998.

These healings are representative of thousands of similar healings. The single thread that can be found in them all is a change of thought, a needed spiritual insight, a growing understanding of and a willingness to trust divine Love, a yielding to the power and will of God, an awakening to and acceptance of what is spiritually true.


Understanding such healing is a basic theology, an understanding of the nature of God as revealed in the Bible. It should be obvious that our concept of God – what we reverence or adore, what we endow with power and authority, what we worship – determines what we are, our concept of ourselves and our universe. Our whole approach to life, our view of it, our values, attitudes, motives and purpose, our health and happiness relate fundamentally to what we call God. Everyone’s highest sense of good is his god – whether he acknowledges it or not.

An interesting report in the Christian Science Monitor about “God at 2,000” – a symposium held recently at Oregon State University for theologians from all around the globe – concluded with these words from a Professor at George Washington University in D.C.: “We must be able to see God everywhere . . . and the highest goal is to see that God is all there is.” He added: “It is essential that individuals and religions also see that there is a ‘science of God’ . . . a science of the real or the divine which is beyond theology and philosophy.”

Here’s a definition of God that appears in the Christian Science textbook (p. 465): “God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle, Life, Truth, Love. These seven synonymous terms come directly from the Bible and reveal fundamental aspects of the divine Being. God is understood to be the only Creator, the one Father/Mother of us all, the creative Intelligence forming and governing the universe and man. God is also acknowledged as Spirit, the only substance, all that is good. Life, Truth, and Love are the manifestation or outcome of this infinite Good, which could never produce anything unlike itself. Death, error, and hate, then, have to result from misconceptions of Deity. Man, made in God’s image, expresses goodness, innocence, purity, holiness, wisdom, loving kindness, etc. Such qualities of God characterize each individual’s true or authentic spiritual selfhood.

Christian Science makes a distinction between man (a generic term) made in God’s image, wholly spiritual and perfect, and mankind or the human self we appear to be. It views the human experience as a preparatory school – not as ultimate reality, but as a path toward an understanding of or awakening to that ultimate reality. The Psalmist put it this way: “I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness” (Ps. 17:15). And Paul wrote to the Ephesians of coming “in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). If spiritual perfection weren’t the fact of being, how could we hope to attain it, even by degrees? But because it is our authentic or true selfhood, we must attain it, and not by our own righteousness or works but by the grace, the gift of God, the logic goes.

Jesus modeled or illustrated this indestructible selfhood, this spiritual perfection, for mankind, and showed the way to attain it. Hence he is our Wayshower, our Example. It is the way of self-‐renunciation, of surrendering all belief in a material intelligence, action or life, separate from God. The Christ he lived, the spirituality Jesus expressed, is the Savior to mankind from all evil, worldliness, and untruth. Our own spirituality or Christliness relates to who we really are as children of God. To quote


Paul again: “The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death . . . to be spiritually-‐minded is life and peace . . . ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if it so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you” (Rom. 8:2, 6, 9).

In Christian Science, health is defined as having the mind of Christ – as a state or condition of pure consciousness, free of ignorance, fear, or sin (a mistaken sense of things). By contrast, disease is seen as “fear made manifest on the body,” – the result of what Caroline Myss calls “negative energy.” Healing is viewed as mental awakening, a change of thought from fear to trust, from ignorance to understanding, and from sin or error to obedience and righteousness. Sometimes suffering or sharp challenges are the catalysts which force that change or ready us for it.

Mrs. Eddy early recognized that what appears as a matter body is simply a human concept – the embodiment of human thinking. Decades later, Einstein defined matter as “a construction of the consciousness, an edifice of conventional symbols shaped by the senses of man.” Even when the physical sciences reduce matter to largely empty space or to a stream of consciousness (as Deepak Chopra puts it), this thought of the ultimate insubstantiality, the nothingness of what we call matter, is what “enrages the carnal mind and is the main cause of (that) mind’s antagonism” (S&H 345:28-‐30). Carnal or mortal mind is the term Mrs. Eddy uses for matter-‐based thinking, for entrenched human beliefs – not real any more than a mistake in arithmetic is real, but in need of rectification.

Most of us can agree that our thinking governs our experience. The mind/body relationship from a human or relative point of view is the objectification of human beliefs on or as the human body. The Mind (capital M)/body relationship from a spiritual standpoint is the relationship between the divine Mind that made us and our spiritual identity or body -‐ the “house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.” This true identity is the embodiment of good. It can never be lost, in jeopardy, nor at the mercy of matter, material conditions, or so-‐called material laws.

Christian Science avers that “the spiritual determines the outward” – that the eternal spiritual facts of being govern or have authority over the often troubled, discordant human sense of things. The phrase “the human and divine coincidence” indicates this ongoing dynamic, and healing is its outcome. Any individual healing experience illustrates divinity’s embrace of humanity – God’s will being done on earth as in heaven.


III

The prophetic method – judging “not according to the appearance, but righteously”

From what I’ve said, you may already have grasped that the method of healing used in Christian Science is prophetic – that is, it involves discerning the spiritual facts of whatever the material senses behold. Jesus taught us to “Judge not according to the appearance” but righteously. Our effort always is to behold the “perfect man right where sinning mortal man appears to mortals” – to see God’s own likeness. To do this, we start with God – with what we understand to be the truth of Being, and not with some problem whatever it may be. We don’t ignore the problem nor the common sense or humanity the case may require. (Christian Science nursing facilities train and equip nurses in the practical care of the sick, but that care never involves medication.) Our prayers acknowledge the specific truths (the spiritual counterfacts) the case may require, and this may involve spiritual intuition as well as the uncovering and correcting of some latent error.

Here’s an illustration: Many years ago, I was called by a grandmother – one of my students – whose 6 year old grandson had fallen while he was outdoors playing. A stick he was holding had penetrated an eyeball, and his frantic mother rushed him to the emergency room of the nearest hospital. The examining Doctor said he had never seen an eye as badly torn. There was nothing he could do other than place a pad over the child’s eye and send him home, but predicted loss of sight and loss of the eye. The grandmother comforted the little boy and assured him that God was with him, and that, as God’s own image or child, he couldn’t be hurt.

I was acquainted with the situation. When the child was still an infant, the mother had divorced the father, a Venezuelan, because of the clash of cultures and the discord between them. The father, on the occasion of a visitation, simply took the child, then barely two, from Michigan to Venezuela. There was nothing that could be done legally – no way to compel the child’s return. But after two weeks of earnest prayer, the Venezuelan grandmother told her son that he must return the boy – that a child so young should not be separated from hi mother. He complied, and thereafter harmony was evidenced in his visits and contact with the child.

Knowing this, I prayed to establish in my own thought the fact that nothing could tear apart or do irreparable harm to this family – that father, mother, and child were held in divine Love together, that at no time was the child a victim of trauma, that he could never lose sight of good, be separated from his heavenly Parent, or be subject to some sudden or accidental disruption of his harmony. I prayed to see him as intact, whole, undamaged, safe, always under the control of the one divine Mind. This statement in Scinece & Health was helpful to me: “If it were possible for the real senses of man to be injured, Soul could reproduce them in all their perfection; but they cannot be disturbed nor destroyed, since they exist in immortal Mind, not in matter” (S&H 488:27-‐31).


In a week’s time, the Doctor again examined the boy and noted with delight that the torn areas were all mending perfectly, and within another week the boy was back in school. The eye was perfect, and the vision unimpaired.

In her latest book: “The Creation of Health” Caroline Myss elaborates on how “our acts and attitudes generate disease.” She emphasizes that “we create our own realities.” Mrs. Eddy put it this way: “Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it” (Unity of Good, 8:5-‐8).

In her “energy analysis” of heart attack (meaning by that term the emotional, non-‐material bases of the illness – which have to change for there to be any permanent healing) Caroline sates: “A heart attack is brought about through the inability of the individual to acknowledge and therefore process the emotional stresses of his or her life . . . People who prefer not to think about the meaning and significance of the events and relationships of their lives (usually because it upsets them or they feel unable to control matters) are more prone to create heart attacks than are people who know how to cope with internal stress . . . The fear of losing control, or of having control and responsibilities taken away, is extremely common in people prone to heart attacks” (p. 159).

This insightful but generalized kind of profile would not be unfamiliar to a Christian Science practitioner. But, while Caroline recommends certain types of nutritional diets and a regular, balanced life-‐style as the remedy, as well as learning how to cope with fear, which she calls “the one negative emotion” (others all being based in fear), a practitioner would go further. Not that proper balance and nutrition are bad – just that they don’t of themselves suffice.

The Christian Science practitioner would start with these Biblical assurances: “Your heart shall live that seek God; God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever; I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.” He would insist that the divine Mind, not a fear-‐prone mortal mind, controls all things, regulates all the functions of being. Because God is not “stressed out,” God’s image can’t be. Not genetic weaknesses or personality patterns but anyone’s spiritual nature and outlook as the loved of God is what maintains governs his health and well-‐being.

It seems to me that while Caroline Myss is very strong on why people don’t heal, she’s not so strong or clear on how and why they do. Certainly there are attitudes and behaviors that are toxic. From a strictly human perspective, some individuals are or have become their own worst enemies. Does that imply incurability? Probably from a medical standpoint, but never from a spiritual standpoint. Nothing can be impossible to God, or beyond divine Love’s redeeming power.

Each case is, of course, individual, and must be dealt on an individual basis. But the fact remains that not even fear can alter the spiritual realities of being, which God creates and maintains, and which can’t be altered, no matter how it seems. Just recently, in my practice, there has been a wonderful and complete healing of heart


failure, stroke, and diabetes for a woman who suffered what seemed to her a great professional and personal disappointment. The appearance was that the heart had just gone out of her, that she had suffered a blow from which she couldn’t recover, and that her entire system was starved for what is sweet and good.

What, then, is the practitioner’s aim? It is to see as God sees, and to rely thoroughly on the power of that Truth to heal, to awaken thought and change body. Jesus put it this way: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). The practitioner’s role is to be such a clear transparency for the divine that it can shine through him or her in all its radiance and power. Much of the practitioner’s work, then, is with her own thought – keeping it clear of any film or cloud of fear, resentment, error, anything that would darken the light of the Christ, of revealed Truth.

In a letter Mrs. Eddy wrote to a young student aspiring to the practice, she said: “Your aid to reach this goal is spiritualization. To achieve this, you must have one God, one affection, one way, one Mind. Society, flattery, popularity are temptations in your pursuit of growth spiritual. Avoid them as much as in you lies. Pray daily, never miss praying, no matter how often: “Lead me not into temptation” – scientifically rendered, Lead me not to lose sight of strict purity, clear pure thoughts; let all my thoughts and aims be high, unselfish, charitable, meek – spiritually-‐minded . . . this is the state of mind that heals the sick . . .” (Christian Healer, pp. 170-‐171).

The practice is a calling, a ministry, and I know of no one who has been called to this ministry that has not overcome in some way in his own experience the belief of death – of some supposedly life-‐threatening ill or crisis.

Are there failures in the practice of Christian Science? It depends on what is meant by failure. The individual never fails to draw closer to God, to deepen his understanding of what is spiritually real, to mature in grace. The outcome is not always what one would hope for or perhaps outline humanly. Yet, the over-‐all record of healings in Christian Science compares very favorably with the medical record. To me, healing is not necessarily the same thing as physical cure – in fact temporary cure or relief can occur without healing. Nor is perpetuating a material sense of existence necessarily God’s plan. Our times are in God’s hands, are they not? And the practitioner endeavors to yield to and help others trust God’s plan.

Can this method mix with the medical approach? Not usually! It is based on totally different premises, on totally opposite views of man, matter, causality, disease, of life itself and its meaning. It would be like truing to ride two horses going in opposite directions. (See S&H 167:7-‐31) I’ve known of and participated in healings of the severest kind of trauma – where no medical aid was even possible. In fact, many people have turned to Christian Science and been healed when given up by the medical.

[In your packet are two recent statements published in the December Christian Science Journal, together with an article about the healing of a child. There is a “standard of healing” in Christian Science, but we approach that standard by degrees, and the emphasis


must be on compassion and on the wisdom that guides us to what is the “nearest right thing under the circumstances” in Mrs. Eddy’s words. In the textbook, she talks of stages or degrees of progress, of spiritual advancement, and names them broadly: Physical, Moral, and Spiritual.]

If we view ourselves as wholly physical, then it would make sense to address our needs in wholly material ways – that is, until they fail. If we think of ourselves as moral and humane, but as part material and part spiritual, then we might try to combine medical/natural and psychological/mental means with spiritual in remedying our ills. But if we grasp, even in a measure, that we are fundamentally spiritual in nature, and are governed wholly by God, Spirit, then our appeal would be solely to divine aid, to the Great Physician, whose Word is “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-‐edged sword” and to whom “all things are naked and open” (Heb. 4:12-‐13).

Healing as practiced in Christian Science does so much more than make matter better. Ultimately, it restores one to his original God-‐created wholeness, lifts one above the conflicts, stresses, griefs, and fears of a matter-‐based sense of things, and reveals God’s kingdom within.

Jamae van Eck

Spiritual Healing Seminar - Jamae van Eckjamaevaneck.com/PDF/Articles/2011/August/Spiritual... ·...

Documents

Transcript of Spiritual Healing Seminar - Jamae van Eckjamaevaneck.com/PDF/Articles/2011/August/Spiritual... ·...