Seva And The Waves

When I feel the waves, I am usually silenced and immobilized, only present to enjoy their divine bliss. In the early days of my sadhana, my spiritual journey, my Guru gave me plenty of opportunity to build strength, the strength to continue being functional whenever I feel those divine waves. I am thankful now for that strength which without it this writing would not be possible.
 
What do I mean by waves? The best way I can describe what they are is this: ripples upon the ocean of consciousness caused by maya, the actions of the mind. When you can go about your day actually feelingthem as they pass through you, you know that you are in complete unison with God. Her divine support is what keeps me going during days like this. Her unconditional, divine love is what gives these waves their blissful sensation. My detachment from the earthen rajas, actions of others around me and my own, is what lets me know that I can be anywhere in the Universe and still feel these waves. They let me know that I am not contained within or defined by a situation or a location.

God sent me here to Yuma, Arizona for one reason -- I needed to learn something from an experience. I have obtained That…..

Too many people in this world have finite vision and understanding. They think that their immediate surroundings define their value, their purpose, their life. It  is only when this bubble can be burst and one becomes detached and moves on that they can develop true understanding. Too many people in this world would rather have their finite limits because to expand is too frightening. This too takes strength, a strength that can only be developed through spiritual contemplation. When the disciple is ready, the master really does appear.

Then there is seva, selfless action done without the expectation of reward. Seva is not something you do to gain recognition, to win favor, or even as a sense of duty. It is something you do automatically when you know that you are a channel of God’s peace playing a role in this Play of Consciousness, detached, carefree, and without limits. Seva is your gift to the world. Seva can be your livelihood, what you do for your living. As long as it is done with the intent of serving the highest good of all, it is selfless services. It is done in the name of God. It is not a “job”, for that is limited thinking. It is how you, as God’s instrument, create. One who feels “the waves” automatically feels called to service, to seva.

For me, surfing those waves goes something like this: Wherever I go, I look around me. As I am observing the actions and interactions of people around me, as well as the rest of the scenery (décor, music, odors, the weather, etc.), everything produces a vibration within. It doesn’t matter if it is a pleasant situation or an unpleasant one, as it is all a play anyway. The more pleasant it is, the more the vibrations are filled with a feeling of bliss. I experience bliss as a sensation of “butterflies” in my third chakra. From there the bliss explodes throughout the nadi, causing me to be still. This event is what I refer to as a “wave”.

These divinely produced waves are possible only when I feel completely detached from my surroundings. How is detachment possible? Coming here to Yuma, Arizona solidified this concept for me. It doesn’t matter where in the world you are, who you are interacting with, who you call “friend” or acquaintance, what situation  you find yourself in, what scenery you are looking at, what conversation is going on around you. It is all part of a certain “bubble”. When you can go from bubble to bubble without attaching yourself to any of them, you are truly free. That is what being detached is all about.

It doesn’t matter where I am in this world. There is no place that the Guru is not. There is no place that I am not. The waves are everywhere, and I live everywhere. Nothing is separate, and without the sensation of the divine flowing waves, from That.

 

Healing Shakti

Yesterday I was taking care of one of my regular chiropractic patients, an elderly man who is totally deaf without his hearing aid. His wife always stays close by to be of help. I knew how much of a challenge it always was to have him follow directions and to answer questions, so shortly after beginning my routine I said to his wife, “I’m going to do things differently today.” Because I am intimately aware of how healing energy works, I decided that I would let my intentions do the work.

I invoked the Reiki energy, and I asked it to guide my hands. My educated diagnostic criteria then became secondary as I followed the direction of the Shakti running through me. When I was finished, and after my patient stood up and walked, we were all pleased to see how much more stable his gait was, finally free of the chronic pains that kept him from walking very far. That is when I decided that it was time to take my practice to the next level. This is the approach that needs to be taken with each and every patient from now on, not just in special cases as I had with this patient.

The power to make such changes is in one’s intention. I intended for my patient to be well, and I called upon the “higher” power to do this. The other component of this healing approach is surrender. The meaning of “surrender” is not to be confused with giving up or becoming insignificant. It means to let go and let God. Once you intend on something to happen, you have to let it happen, on God’s terms, without your own expectations (ego) getting in the way.

In the previous paragraph, I referred to the “higher” power and not becoming insignificant. As the healing practitioner, it’s not that there is a “higher” power; it is the power that exists everywhere equally that is flowing. There is no “higher” or “lower”. The divine energy that heals, the power of God, is never high or low, weak or strong. It knows no degrees, no limitations, no gradients. It just is. The other thing is that you, the healing practitioner, are very significant indeed in the entire process. You are the channel of God’s peace, the instrument through which this energy flows. Because you are the Light of God, you are blessed with the ability to be of service to people in this way.

There is yet a third component of this approach. In addition to intention and surrender, there is the vehicle of delivery. The conduit through which healing energy is delivered is not only through touch. It is also through communication, whether it be the written word, our spoken words, or our actions. When I have a patient on my table, especially one who is sensitive or has deeply-rooted issues, I always share words of strength and encouragement with them. It’s not that I want to merely sound like I care. People tend to respond more to the spoken word. When the word is divinely inspired, healing is imminent.

The power of the spoken word is known as matrikashakti. Since God can speak only love, the power of the words spoken with intention and without ego is immense to a person’s healing journey. For words to have affect, the person needs to identify with them. When there is a patient on my table, the words I speak are intended to bring the person from a state of darkness to a state of light. I first acknowledge the darkness, the illness, the pain. Then I speak words of direction on how to find the light. The words are never from a self-help script. They are very specific to the individual’s situation. In this way, the person identifies completely and finds nuggets of gold in what is being said.

The key is this: the invoking of the divine Reiki energy, the Shakti that flows from the Guru, the blessings that come from God. To say that you are the “healer” is ego. To surrender is paramount. And there is yet another point to be made, which I recently shared with a reluctant group of self-proclaimed New Age healers, “Structure and discipline are mandatory.” Formal training in a healing art is required. The practice of healing is never a whimsical hodgepodge. I want to see certificates and know your methods. If you say you are “gifted”, I will ask, “What healing discipline gives structure to your gift?” This is something that every person should ask of their prospective healing practitioner.

There is always room for learning, no matter what healing arts you practice or how long you’ve been practicing. With intention, surrender, and with a vehicle through which the Divine can be expressed, you will be presented at the right time and in the right way with what you need to know to become a powerful instrument of God’s work. St. Francis of Assisi prayed, “Lord, make me a channel of your peace.” A channel, the conduit through which the divine power of God flows. This we can all be for each other.

 

Discovering The Light

One of the greatest misconceptions that many people have about people who live in spiritual awareness is that their life is easy. Now and then someone will ask me, “If you have a Guru, why is your life so hard?” In reality, if you have a Guru, a true Guru, your life may indeed be a lot tougher. Before gold is transformed into its highest state of value it has to be purified in fire. A lot of dross needs to be burned away. So too it is with the human individual. Before the light of God can shine forth at its most brilliant gleam, the Guru, the Spiritual Master, needs to burn off the paradigms and expectations that we build our lives around and the karma that we created for ourselves in order to produce a masterpiece. I had been through a lot in my life well before meeting my Guru in 1998. Many hardships have been experienced since then, and I’ve been grateful for every one of them.

Over the past fourteen years I’ve asked for clarity about my life purpose. My prayer in the past couple years had been, “If I’m not meant to be a healing practitioner, then please show me what it is I was meant to do.” Still, the answer is always the same. I saw inklings of this calling when I was a young child. Incidents and encounters throughout my life propelled me down this road even if I didn’t put much thought into it. It was as if I was being carried down this road by the “powers that be”. It also seems that my nearly-ten-year professional struggle in Minnesota had its purpose. It helped me to focus more on why I am supposed to be a healer, and it helped me to develop a coherent method of how to go about doing just that. Now that I am living in Yuma, Arizona as of just four months ago, the southernmost U.S. city that sits directly on top of my Jupiter line of influence, I feel that the flood gates are about to open. It is here that I was meant to flourish, to blossom, to excel as a healing practitioner.

A true healer cannot wholeheartedly be of help to others unless he knows, firsthand, about the concerns his patients have. I will not rehash my life story of health struggles here, but I will say that I feel that there was a “purpose to this porpoise”, a method to this madness, a happy ending to the story of pain and suffering, a divine order to all that I had experienced and all that I will experience from this point on. Now when somebody tells me, “I suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and most days I need to drag myself everywhere,” I know exactly what they mean. As many of you know, I suffered with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for fourteen years. I know precisely what to say to them, how to say it, and what I need to do for them as a physician. There is a lot of truth to the way of life of the Wounded Healer (as long as the Wounded Healer is doing his/her work sans ego).

When the Guru hands you a hardship, you bow with reverence and say “thank you”. It’s the only way true spiritual awakening is possible. It is the only way you can become introspective and discover God’s light within yourself. Once you discover it, you can’t help but share it. When the discovery is made by wading through a sea of frustration, it is all the more appreciated and revered. It’s not a matter of “no pain, no gain”. It is a matter of being able to find the needle in the haystack that you thought would never be found. If it was easy, it would just be something else taken for granted. There would be no value placed on it. When you ask God to reveal her light to you, you better be prepared for what you find. Light needs to push its way through darkness before you can see it.

I had encountered people who would come once to the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center, never to return again. The reason was not so much that it wasn’t their thing. It was because while in meditation there were too many memories of past traumas and hardship that surfaced. I celebrate the fact that this happens to people because it means that if they stick it out they will certainly make astounding breakthroughs in their lives. If they stick it out, they will go on to become brilliant beacons of light in this world. Some people cannot take pain very well. But pain can be conquered only by pushing through it. Presenting it to us is the job of the true Spiritual Master. There really is a nugget of gold on the other side of it all.

My own challenges with pain due to illness, pain from being so “different” due to having autism, and enduring the tapas, the spiritual challenges, that the Guru has handed me these years, have all led to one result: spiritual vibrance. I am sensitive, and most everyone with an Autism Spectrum Disorder has profound sensitivities. This is probably why the Guru had been working so hard on me these years. When I received Shaktipat, spiritual awakening, on October 3, 1998, the encounter was so great that its effect has never waned, and it never will. But even before this, intuition would come to me through my sensing of the unseen forces around me. So much greater has this been since being blessed by my Guru that when my patients open up to me about their concerns, their energy reaches out to me so strongly that they need not speak many words before I am able to find and correct the sources of their pain. God gifted me in this way, and she knew that because of my sensitivity I would be able to carry on and through such a purification process, thusly sharing the beaming results with others.

Yes, it is a PROCESS. The blessings of God do not suddenly make your life easier. The blessings of God help you to discover the light within. And here’s the best discovery of all: once you discover the light, you realize that you are and always have been the light. There is no separation between the “light of God” and you. It is all one and the same. Enjoy the process. It will be your testimony to others as you help them to discover their own light within.

 

On Conquering Fear

This morning just before I woke up for the day I had a strange dream. The chant “Om Namo Nityananda” (properly titled Nityanandam Brahmanandam”) was playing in the background throughout the dream. I was attending an outdoor Catholic mass which was being celebrated by the priest who has known me since I was nine years old, Father Stephen Halabura. I was sitting behind him on the alter.

When it came time for the Gospel Acclamation, a prayer or “Allelujah” that is sung just before the priest reads from one of the gospels of the New Testament, Father Halabura called me up to the alter to read a passage I had written about the importance of Jesus’s teachings which the gospels are based on.

I walked up and stood at the actual alter to speak, not at the lectern that the lectors usually stand at. The scene was coming into clearer view for me. I had to peer through an opening to see the congregation in front of me. The sky was clear but growing darker. I began to speak. The passage I wrote was only one paragraph long. Father Halabura sat behind me as I spoke. As I continued to read, I noticed that what I wrote was actually a page and a half long, the typical length of one of my meditation writings. As I continued to read, I would occasionally lose my exact spot. During those times, I would ad lib my speech, adding a flair of emotion to my words to hide my momentary “lost”-ness.

When I was halfway through the speech, the sky had become so dark that I could no longer read clearly. I saw a light bulb with a cord attached to it hanging down over my head. I reached up and pulled the cord to turn the light on. As I turned back to my paper, I was surprised to see how much I had actually written. This was only supposed to be a brief introduction. Instead, it was an entire lesson. As the church scene faded out, the chanting of Nityananda’s name continued on in the background. I soon woke up to face the new day.

I thought to myself, “Wow, what a blessed way to start the day!” But then I realized something very humbling: today was just another day in the life of an autie. I spent the next thirty minutes just lying there in bed, recounting my life which, despite rays of hope and moments of upsets, never seemed much to talk about; I’ve been driving around in an airplane that never got off the ground in fifty years. So too on this day, nothing is different.

Despite all the time I spent on the ground, I always knew that I was THIS close to losing everything. I had ALWAYS had someone show up in my life at the right time to rescue me from total doom or to give me a chance at something, even if it was just a chance to have a bed to sleep in. The best lesson I’ve learned in this lifetime so far is to not fear. Near the time I was born, I learned very quickly to not fear illness. I don’t know how old I was or which illness it was (I had many in my early childhood), but I remember an event (or was it a dream) when two angels comforted me. They even showed me what Heaven was like. It was all so fascinating – a place without pain, a place without fear. I never feared illness again, neither when I had open heart surgery in 1981 nor when I suffered a stroke in 2009.

When I underwent a heart procedure in 1999 to correct the worst case of Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome that Dr. Francis Marchlinski, a world expert in cardiac arrhythmias, has ever seen, I again was oh so close to my death. Now during such procedures, they may play music that the patient likes in order to make the patient comfortable. My choice was the Guru Gita followed by the chant Govinda Jaya Jaya. At the point when Dr. Marchlinski warned me that this may be the end, I simply lied back and said to Gurumayi, “All I ask is that I get to meet Baba on the way out.” And just like that my heart started beating normally again. Dr. Marchlinski and his entire staff stood there in awe, wondering what had just happened.

Fear of illness and fear of death have no grip on me. But there were other fears to conquer. During my times of wandering here and there, trying to start practices to no avail, between 2000 and 2001, I always had my parents’ home to go back to temporarily. The first time I was truly “homeless”, in October of 2001, I was blessed to work in an office, my office at the truck stop, that had its own private shower facility. When I was in fear of losing even that much, I met my (former) wife Bianca. During my almost ten years of marriage with her, I learned that I had autism. That alone was a huge prayer answered. I finally, after 45 years, knew why I was so “different”.

Now I am here in Arizona. I shared in my last writing what brought me here. But the story doesn’t end there. There were more fears to conquer. Again I was faced with homelessness, and I was taken in by an understanding friend. Also faced with being penniless, I would go about my days sulking that I would be unable to manage – unable to eat, unable to go anywhere, unable to have opportunities to promote myself. Only by budgeting my last few dollars, and on some days pennies, do I manage to keep going, somehow. Thanks to having two regular patients at this point, I know that I will have something to live on.

People may wonder why I am unable to find part-time employment. When in Minnesota, as here in Arizona, people feel quite queasy about working with a guy who is SUPPOSED to be a doctor but ended up being a security guard at a theater (something I did for 18 months in downtown Minneapolis). Most companies just don’t bother calling, rationalizing that I would be gone in just a couple weeks when I finally have this whopping successful practice.

I would say that I conquered all fear. Illness, death, homelessness, pennilessness, and even lack of credibility. Yes, the fear of lack of credibility also came into play on those occasions when people would walk out of my office saying, “You’re not a real doctor.” Having autism is hard enough. Having nothing else is even harder.

John Milton once wrote, “Farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear.” Well, even though I said farewell to my fears, hope can never die. I have a Gurudeva. Despite having absolutely nothing in the worldly sense, or even in a mind-ful sense, I have EVERYTHING in the spiritual sense.

Jesus said, “He who has no concern for his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.” (John 12:25, The Lamsa Translation) While I cannot say that I am not concerned, by concern paying me no mind I guess I have no place here. It doesn’t mean that I will leave it like someone who has lost even hope. I have not lost hope that I have a purpose here. If God had deemed that I had none left, then I would not be here. But I do know that I may be reconnecting with Siddhaloka once I leave this world.

Sadgurunath Maharaj Ki Jay!

 

A New Life Begins

In a dream I had on December 26, 2002, my Guru told me, “Do not stop telling me what is happening in your sadhana (spiritual journey).” At that point in time, I was beginning a new life. I had been practicing Siddha Yoga for only four years, I was in practice as a chiropractor for only 2-1/2 years, I had been married for only six months, and I had been living in Minnesota for only four months. What I wrote about that dream was the 131st “meditation email”, as I used to call them, in a series of sharings that I included in a work called “My Personal Experiences As A Siddha Yogi”. Since then, I wrote only 45 more, the last one being on November 11, 2008. Now they will continue in the form of these blog posts, and this will be the primary content of my blog from this point on.

My Personal Experiences is a rather frank and oftentimes embarrassing examination of what transpires when I am in a meditative state or when my spiritual teacher presents a lesson to me in a dream. Frank because I describe the anatomy of a kriya, or purification process that takes place due to the rather extreme movement of chi energy, or Kundalinishakti, often resulting in physical movements or spontaneous mudras. Embarrassing because I expose my innermost thoughts and feelings, many of which we now know originate from the way my autistic mind interprets things. These writings are not meant to be teachings of the Vedanta or nondual Kashmir Shaivism philosophies, upon which Siddha Yoga is based. Instead, they are to describe my personal spiritual journey on the path my Guru has lovingly set before me, the path to spiritual evolution and enlightenment.

On November 11, 2008, the date I last wrote, my wife Bianca and I had been living in our new house in Richfield, Minnesota for only 3-1/2 months. So much has changed since that time. On the morning of October 15, 2009, I suffered a stroke. That was the beginning of a change in the direction of my life. The story of that can be told in the blog post that can be read by clicking HERE. The remainder of this writing will continue on from where that blog post left off.

I arrived in Yuma, Arizona on June 25, the day after my Guru’s birthday. I didn’t get very far in my new life as a divorcee when I had to travel back to Pennsylvania when my dad passed away just three days later. After staying in PA for yet another ten days, I came back to Arizona. I’ve been steadily settling in ever since. The primary reason I came to Yuma is because of my astrocartograph. In previous writings, I had always talked about my difficulty in building a practice. I now know that the primary reason for this difficulty is because I have “atypical autism,” better known in the health care world as PDD-NOS. According to my astrocartograph, a chart denoting astrological possibilities based on one’s time of birth, Yuma, Arizona is the best possible place within the United States for me to have a successful practice as a healing practitioner. Now that I had no attachments to anyone or anyplace, I figured this was the best possible time for me to find out for myself if this was indeed true.

During the weeks I was in Pennsylvania taking care of my dad, I was preparing my application for a license to practice chiropractic in Arizona. Once I arrived in Yuma, I felt immediately intimidated by the place. The mere size of it was daunting, and the fact that the downtown areas were largely uninviting was even more frightening. Eventually I settled in the suburb known as the Foothills area, and I started to form my own circle of acquaintances and friends. Even though I found it easy to make friends and to talk to people, building a practice remains a challenge as always. For the amount of time I’ve been here, though, I will say that I do have more patients than I had anywhere else during the same amount of time. Because of the slowness in business, and because I had limited funds with me when I arrived here, I already had to move from one place that I could no longer afford to live in. I also felt lonely, which was to be expected. I had been married for almost ten years, and now I am on my own again without a significant other to share life’s journey with. By finding activities and my circle of acquaintances, feelings of loneliness eventually lessened.

During the first few nights I was here in Yuma, I had very revealing dreams, some of which my Guru appeared in. The message of the dreams was the same every night – that I would be hugely successful, even beyond my own expectations, BUT not before a very challenging and taxing struggle. I am in that struggle now, and because of recent events I am not sure how close I am to coming out of the struggle phase. This Saturday I will be leaving the place that I can no longer afford to live in (pending a miracle). Up until yesterday I had no place else to go, and I was facing the possibility of being in a homeless shelter for a while. Then a friend I had meant offered to let me stay at her place until I am able to get a foothold on my professional progress.

I had said that my Guru appeared in one of my dreams which indicated abundant success ahead. At no time in my spiritual journey had more than one of the Gurus (Bhagawan Nityananda (Bhade Baba), Swami Muktananda (Baba), or Swami Chidvilasananda (Gurumayi)) appeared at the same time in a dream. Both Baba and Gurumayi appeared in this one. Gurumayi was leading a chant, a song of praise, in honor of Baba, while Baba was alive and on the stage with her. I was watching this satsang (gathering of spiritual devotees) take place on a big screen TV while chanting along. It was a joyous event. Since that dream, I often find myself chanting a song written for Baba during the day, most recently “Gurudeva Hamara Pyara”.

For those of you familiar with chanting as part of your meditation practices, you know how chi energy moves in relation to the sound of the chant. The last time I sat to chant and meditate was about a week ago. I chanted to “Om Namo Nityananda,” a devotional song written for Bhade Baba. I was praying for guidance during my time of struggle. What I received was a movement of the energy, the Kundalinishakti, as I had not experienced in many years. The focal point of the energy was my heart chakra. As I felt the energy settle there, I begged that it stay there. I knew that the longer it stayed there the more my capacity to love and to be empathetic would approach the Guru’s level. Also, the longer it would stay there, the more I felt the energy coursing through all the nadi, the spiritual “nerves”, throughout my body.

This past Sunday I chanted the mantra which my Guru gave to me. I felt much the same as I did during last week’s chant. But there was one very surprising difference. At one point I fell into such a deep meditation that I experienced a very vivid vision. I was sitting in my own “Guru’s” seat directly facing Gurumayi as she sat in her seat. The look in her eyes and the experience of the Shakti flowing through her were identical to mine. In that brief moment I realized that THIS is what it feels like to be in that divine state, that enlightened state, of the Guru. That brief glimpse was worth more than any revelation, any answer, I could possibly have received from anyone. THAT is the goal of meditation. It is when That can be maintained throughout the day when everything that can possibly be attained has been attained. Then I knew that all else is secondary.

I will say that the Guru’s divine wisdom is always present. That is what does the work when I have a patient on my table. That is why everyone walks away knowing that they are better than they have been in a very long time. That is the glimpse of their own greatness that they revel in because of That which guides my actions. I recently told a friend of mine here in Yuma that I tend to go into a “zone” when I have a patient on my table. That “zone” is where I am totally connected to That, the divine Shakti, the Guru, from which all healing is possible.

It is my greatest joy in life to be able to give such a glimpse to others of their own greatness.

Sadgurunath Maharaj Ki Jay!

My Practice Techniques Explained

Some people say I should blow my own horn a bit more since they feel that my chiropractic techniques have been very helpful, in fact more helpful than those of other chiropractors they’ve been to. I guess that blowing my own horn will take the form of me giving away some of my "secrets". There are no real secrets, only a perfected system of analysis and care that I deliver with great care. Here is an explanation of some of what I do:

So what is my "secret" to being able to keep the lumbar spine and pelvis in perfect alignment and to hold? It's a combination of the Thompson Technique, an analysis and correction technique taught to me by Dr. Armand Rossi, and a few pointers offered to me by Dr. Tom (last name unknown) who used to coach me when I had an office at a truck stop in Bartonsvillle, PA. Putting all three of these techniques together formed the perfect solution.

MOST people I care for wonder what it is about the "upper cervical" adjustment since the way I care for a person’s neck is so different. I often hear, "my old chiropractor just took my neck and twisted it. But THIS is so much better." Most chiropractors who use specific upper cervical adjustments depend on x-rays in order to make very specific measurements. I depend on a combination of five different analysis techniques to determine the specifics of what needs to be done. It makes for a much longer exam, one which leaves patients scratching their heads as to what on earth I am doing.

The techniques I use are Thompson prone leg checks, Palmer supine leg checks, motion & static palpation, and applied kinesiology (as taught by the father of Dr. Palmer Peet, whose name I can't remember). The actual maneuver is properly known as the Palmer Toggle Technique. It has also been dubbed by Dr. B.J. Palmer as the "Hole In One" technique. THIS one adjustment alone makes AMAZING changes to peoples' LIVES, to say the least. Also, between adjusting the cervical spine with the patient lying face down and then performing a few minutes of manual traction, I rarely have to do the “taking the neck and twisting it” routine. When I do, my patients hardly even notice it because of the minimal rotation I use.

For the thoracic spine (around the ribs), not much force is needed when I "rub out" any muscle tension first and then adjust the subluxated vertebrae with a double-hypothenar move as the patient inhales and exhales. Patients are amazed that anything moved at all with such a light touch. I won't hesitate to use the good ol' anterior "bear hug" move for those really stubborn spots.

For extremity adjusting, I do everything according to the guru of extremity adjusting, Dr. Kevin Hearon himself.

When giving a Reiki session, I do everything according to Takata. If you say you are a Reiki practitioner but you do not know who Takata is, then you don't know what Reiki is. There is a reason why people who come to me for Reiki healing say that they've never experienced anything like it before, even from Reiki "Masters". You would really need to read the article I wrote that is on my website explaining what Reiki REALLY is.

A part of my practice that I no longer advertise, but I still make available, is functional medicine testing. I use Metametrix/Genova Diagnostics (who are now one company) and LabCorp to test for various conditions if requested. The purpose of such testing is to determine the status of your overall health, such as nutritional status, hormonal imbalances, allergies, etc. and to make referral to other health providers if needed.

Why? Well, let's put it this way -- such testing is what brought me from being house ridden to being functional when I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 1997. Also, if you were showing signs of severe internal bleeding and needed to go to the hospital for an operation and transfusion, I wouldn't be like one such chiropractor who, while I was in this very situation in the summer of '96, called me while I was out of sorts in my hospital room not to ask me how I was doing but to ask me why I didn't go to my chiropractor instead. Yes, there are such crackpots out there. He was a teacher at the chiropractic college I went to, and there were other such crackpot teachers and students there as well.

Well, that’s about as much horn blowing as I am able to do. I won't get longwinded with my "secrets". Just know that what I do is NOT what you would find in a typical chiropractor's office. People leave being very pleasantly surprised by how amazing they feel after receiving very precise, and very conservative, care.

What The Crucifixion Of Jesus Means To Me

NOTICE: You may not want to read this if you are a devout Christian. The message is not what you think.

Christians believe that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the key fundamental event surrounding their faith. By having died on the cross, Jesus, or that part of God which became flesh and blood to walk among us, broke the barrier between Earth and Heaven, thereby opening the gates by which those who abide by God’s truths can enter His kingdom at their time of passing from this world. Indeed this is quite a significant tenet, and it is why strong believers have crosses in their homes. For Catholics, they will often have crucifixes in their homes, or crosses that actually bear the image of Jesus hanging upon them.

I grew up in a traditional Roman Catholic family. I abided by the basic tenet, learned my Catholic catechism, and spent many years as an altar boy during the 70s. All twelve years of my schooling were spent in Parochial school.  My religion was very important to me during those early years. But as time went on, life events happened in which greater truths presented themselves to me, truths of a more spiritual nature.

Thanks to the teachings of a spiritual master I met in 1998, and the experiences I had while praying and meditating under her guidance, I came to see the whole universe as something completely different. As if it were something out of John Lennon’s song “Imagine,” I realized that that song really did depict the way things really are, but with one tiny exception: there is something called “ego” that makes us think otherwise.

The ego I am speaking of doesn’t refer to that part of us that is self-centered. It is that part of us that makes us believe we are anything OTHER than divine, that we are small, limited, and helpless, that we are anything DIFFERENT from God. The only way this ego can be broken and conquered is by following the path set forth by one who has accomplished such a feat.

Enter Jesus the Christ. Just like Siddhartha Gautama (the founder of Buddhism) 3,000 years earlier and many other spiritually enlightened people who have traveled the same journey, the tenet was different. When Jesus said, “I am the vine and you are the branches,” he described the true nature of how we are all one and the same in God. The “I” he was referring to is what one realizes and experiences when there is no ego present within us to cloud our vision, to give us illusions of separateness. There is only one “I”, and THAT is God.

How then does one go about conquering this ego? That definitely takes some doing, and it requires traveling a journey as I had mentioned in the previous paragraph.  It is not my purpose to teach or explain this, and I unfortunately could not find an article online that did the job. Notice in the image of the Dancing Shiva that Lord Shiva is standing upon a figure. This figure represents the ego within each of us which can be conquered only by embracing and practicing true spiritual principles, represented by the various limbs of Shiva and objects around him.

You may wonder what I experienced under the guidance of this spiritual master. I should say that it is not past-tense as the experiences are continuous, never-ending. Imagine being in the upper room when the risen Jesus Christ enters and brings the presence of the Holy Spirit in the form of tongues of fire upon his disciples. That is a good depiction of what it was like when I first received such a blessing from  this modern-day spiritual master. To suddenly be in awareness that there is no separation between the energy that fills and enlivens your body and the energy present throughout the furthest reaches of the furthest galaxies was definitely not for the fainthearted. It took some getting used to. It took a lot of rigorous practice to hold onto. It took a lot of study and contemplation to appreciate. It also took a beyond-outstanding Reiki Master to learn how to use this energy for healing purposes.

The level of awareness I have now is why many consider me to be a gifted healer. The way the energy communicates with me and flows through me is where my intuition comes from. And the fact that all of the Universe is my teacher is how I know what the right thing to do is and when to do it. Please note that this energy I am referring to is not at all separate from God. It IS God.

During the past several months I have been embracing the weekly messages of the preacher Joel Osteen on TV. He has been around for many years now, and his inspiring messages have certainly come along at the right time for me. When I suffered a stroke on October 15, 2009, I took that as my wakeup call from the Universe to get myself out of a situation I felt stuck in. It took me two and a half years to do it, and the messages in Joel Osteen’s words gave me the extra push I needed. My professional circumstances, living where I was geographically, and my marriage were all dead-end situations that were bad for my health and stifling to my personal and spiritual growth. I am free of all of these things now. Just in the past two and a half months, my wife and I divorced, I moved out of Minnesota, and I am in Pennsylvania to spend some time with my ailing father. In just three days from now I will be headed to Arizona, to where several metaphysical indicators assure that I will be happiest, healthiest, and most successful with my practice as a Spiritual Healer.

One reason why it was good to spend this time with my parents again was to reconnect not only with my family roots but also my religious roots. As my parents have always been true to their Catholic religion, they have a crucifix on the wall in every room of their home.  Now when I see the image of Jesus, bleeding and in pain, dying as he is nailed to those pieces of wood, I can’t help but to be reminded of one thing: what happens to each one of us when we leave the ego in charge. We crucify ourselves to our illusions that keep us feeling lost and insignificant, that make us think that we are separate from the divine energy, from God. There really is no separation. And that’s really the way it is.

My Passion

As my wife lies in bed waiting to fall asleep she often listens to a CD, usually by Dr. Wayne Dyer or Deepak Chopra. This early morning she was listening to Dr. Dyer. In one clip he mentioned that a passion cannot fail when you tell the Universe that that passion is really want you want in life. I had to agree wholeheartedly, and I agree that my passions followed suit. My thoughts took me back to the summer of 1993 when I was working as a Respiratory Therapist at the Porter Memorial Hospital in Valparaiso, Indiana. Since leaving the role as a heroic Emergency Medical Technician in my home town of Reading, Pennsylvania just ten months prior, I can’t say that I really had a passion. But one developed over time during my days in Indiana. When I saw that I had the potential, the level of care for people, the smarts and the guts, I knew what I wanted to be – a doctor. The question, though, was what kind of doctor. Yes, desiring to go to medical school was at the forefront. But situations and circumstances proved that this would be practically an impossibility to attain due to floundering past academia and the political games of acceptance into the program. But it was a passion, and that passion eventually did come to be. Six and a half years later, I graduated from Life University in Marietta, Georgia as a Doctor of Chiropractic.

Now that I achieved the goal I was very passionate about, there was no other goal in sight. I was a doctor, and now I had to put a shingle out and take care of people. It’s been almost twelve years now, and I must say that I’ve been, for the most part, unsuccessful in this end. Yes, we can point the finger at my autism. But we can point the finger even more emphatically at the fact that I had no particular passions. Since 2011 had been my most dismal year yet in business, I am vowing not to repeat the same lackluster pattern ever again. I had been thinking for several days now that I need a new direction. While I am actively pursuing getting skills evaluation done through a nonprofit organization called Autism Works, something else profound ran through my mind this morning. I have been developing a passion all along that only in the past four months have I seriously started to focus on more.

My thoughts took me back to one very important letter I wrote in late June of 1994. I was living in Georgia and was studying prerequisite courses leading to acceptance into the chiropractic program. I was quite an enthusiastic visionary as I handwrote a letter to Father Stephen Halabura, the Catholic priest who saw me growing up since the age of nine. In the letter I expressed how excited I was to be entering chiropractic school. But I also said something in the letter that was quite intriguing. I said something without even knowing why I said it. I predicted that it would be because of studying to be a chiropractor that I would be led to a greater purpose, my real passion. Although being a chiropractor would be a tremendous part of the picture in the end, something even greater would be presented to me that would eventually appear to be true calling. That “something” is what I discovered four years later when I met a lady named Betty McKeon. Under Betty, I learned the Usui System of Reiki As Taught By Takata. (There are many forms of Reiki which are Westernized offshoots of the original method taught by Hawayo Takata.) I had not heard of Reiki before. After studying both the 1^st and 2^nd Degree levels of this great healing art, I was fascinated by its vast number of applications. I felt that I was a more aware, intuitive chiropractor because of it. I even managed to attract a few Reiki clients over the years. But up to this point in time, Reiki was an “extra tool” that I made use of. It was not a primary passion.

Now all these years later, as I am going through a personal re-evaluation process, I’ve really been wondering to myself what it is in life I really feel good about. What will be that thing I do that brings about countless successes as I strive to do what I love so all else follows? Because of Betty, I not only learned Reiki, but my eyes were also opened to a great path of spiritual development. I studied the principles and practices of yoga, and I dove deeply into the piercing words of Swami Muktananda. I also came to love and appreciate the teachings of Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Caroline Myss. I came to know a higher realm of healing and of existence, a realm which they just don’t teach about in any medical or chiropractic school. While I was ecstatic about having much knowledge and ability to help people with their physical needs for healing, I came to realize that there was so much more. Because of Reiki training and what I learned from these other masters, I now have the tools I need to help people not only physically but also emotionally and Spiritually.

Physically, I can adjust the spine to restore proper nerve function, and I can order diagnostic lab work to measure and evaluate one’s health. But the emotional and the Spiritual realms are not to be discounted. They often are, though, because most people, including most doctors, don’t see the connection, the holistic integration, the existential whole. Emotional healing doesn’t pertain just to helping a person feel good. It has to do with helping people discover how feelings, experiences, and beliefs influence their decisions and how they can cause them to become stuck. Emotional “stuckness” eventually leads to physical manifestations in the form of illness. Spiritual healing doesn’t just pertain to helping one find a connection with God or a purpose in life. It has to do with balancing the chi energy that enlivens a person and helping to resolve conflicts with metaphysical aberrations (hauntings, possessions, paranormal conflicts, etc). Reiki is a massively powerful healing art that helps on ALL of these levels. I am just now beginning to refamiliarize myself with something that I’ve been in possession of for the past eleven years. Because of my awe and respect for this ability, it has now become my passion. THIS is what I was meant to do. THIS is why I am here in this world. THIS is what I have to offer as a healing practitioner.