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.