Deborah King Author Speaker Blog
Adieu Hubert
I first met my future father-in-law, Hubert, at 6:00 a.m. one beautiful July morning nearly 40 years ago when Eric, my new French boyfriend, and I arrived by train in Grenoble, France. The gallant Hubert, dapper in a three-piece suit, tie and tennis shoes (I later discovered this was somewhat of a uniform), met us at the station. We had foolishly hopped the train in the late afternoon the day before in Paris without securing seat assignments and ended up sitting in the aisle on our suitcases all night. This particular train, the “milk run,” had stopped in every nook and cranny as it meandered along toward the French Alps.
A man of education and culture, oddly enough, Hubert spoke not one word of English. I, on the other hand, spoke not one word of French and was discovering just how unhandy that was. Hubert, always courtly, bowed, kissed my hand in the old-fashioned French tradition, and immediately stole his way into my heart.
As he drove us from the station, he asked me what I wanted to do and being very young and full of energy, despite sitting up all night, I replied, “play tennis!” Despite the early hour, he took us straight to a tennis court, where I found him to be quite an accomplished player.
A designer with his own advertising firm, Hubert’s formal education had been in art and engineering. But during World War II, he had to resort to running his father’s leather business to try to make ends meet, with a wife and six hungry mouths to feed. By the time I met him, however, he was quite comfortable and he and his family divided their time between an apartment in Grenoble and a summer home in St. Ismier, a charming nearby village.
From the tennis court we headed for the summer home. You can imagine the surprise of this teenage California girl when we arrived at an enormous three-story French chateau that had once been a monastery. Formerly the chapel, a cross still hung over the claw foot tub in the bathroom, a tub so enormous it took nearly an hour to fill with water. There was only a single toilet in a dank closet for the 8-bedroom residence—indoor plumbing was unknown when the structure had been built—which was inconvenient but terribly French and picturesque. The gardens were filled with wild flowers and amazing butterflies with views of the Alps from every balcony.
Each weekday at noon, Hubert drove out from the city to the summerhouse for le déjeuner, the main meal of the day. The food was fantastique! Course after course, beginning with, for example, un pâté de foie gras, followed by a simple soupe de poisson, next the entrée, perhaps l’entrecôte picked up that morning at the local boucherie, garnished with mint and surrounded by des petites pommes de terre. We would chat and rest a bit, clear the big table where the entire family sat (all the siblings and their families would come visit in the summer), up to 25 of us at a time, and then continue with the meal, with la salade, les fromages (an entire course all of its own, with at least 6 or 8 cheeses to choose from), with une bagette from a nearby boulangerie, then les fruits, and finally, le desert, perhaps une tarte aux pommes straight out of the oven, followed by un cafe out on the terrace. I joined Hubert in the smoking of Gauloise, cigarettes so strong they made my head spin (which I was loathe to admit).
At the table, the family would speak of art and religion and politics and music and sports, especially the sports of skiing and mountain climbing, my personal favorites. After a few hours listening to la famille, I had picked up a few words and phrases and, always wanting to be part of the action, I leapt right into the lunch conversation by boldly exclaiming “comme excitée d’être en France!“ (how exciting to be in France!) Hubert and the rest of the family chuckled in amusement. I later learned that “exciter” is a verb that refers to sexual excitement, not at all the meaning I was trying to convey.
On the weekends, my father-in-law would paint. A gifted water colorist, Hubert could knock out one amazing watercolor after another in less than an hour. It was breathtaking to watch. He could have had a career as an artist, but he treated it more like a hobby, perhaps fearing it would not have been stable enough income for a man with so many children. I attended shows of his work in France and realized that he had quite a gift. And his artistic talents did not end there: he was also a sculptor and a musician, playing an ancient instrument that predated the violin.
We made annual treks to visit la famille every year, and each time my French would improve. A frantically busy lawyer and sports enthusiast at home in the US in those early, heady days of marriage, I never could seem to find the time to make a proper study of the language. Each time we returned to France, it was a shock stepping off the plane in Paris and suddenly switching into this very foreign language. My French husband, otherwise quite pliable, refused to speak more than one language at a time (either English or French, but never the twain shall meet) so I was totally on my own once the plane had landed. Accents are easy for me to imitate, so I sound great but often don’t have a clue what I’m saying or what is being said to me. Many was the time I thought we were heading for le club but would find myself instead at le cathedral!
Hubert and my mother-in-law visited us in the U.S. every year. This was quite a shock to a young American bride, not accustomed to regular month-long family visits, a European tradition. My in-laws were intrepid travelers, ready to follow us to the base of our frequent mountain climbs. Hubert was always game for hiking the highest mountain or heading out on the longest bike ride, even well into his early 90’s. On one memorable trip, we had stopped for gas early on in the 5-hour trip, and when we arrived home, our beloved dog, Dolly, was missing from the car. Hubert had let her out of the car at the gas station, then forgotten to put her back in—one of the many cultural differences I encountered over the years. It was a long drive back to pick up a very small dog.
On one of his many visits to the U.S., when Hubert was in his 80’s, I was studying with a spiritual teacher who lived about an hour away from our home. One day, I invited him to go with me and I recall his utter surprise to find that she, in her 90’s, was even older than he. He was totally game for almost anything intellectual and loved having a long discussion about spirituality. And though I had learned passable French in the meantime, sufficient for day-to-day conversation, I wasn’t ever really able to converse at his more philosophical level. Even so, Hubert was always delighted to see me and easy to have around. He had been very stern with his own children in their youth, as was the tradition of his time, but age had softened him considerably.
In fact, during Hubert’s last ten years he changed a lot. Very much like the four stages of life as described in Hinduism—the student, the householder, the retired person, and finally the ascetic—Hubert entered the fourth stage and became the ascetic. After 65 years of marriage, his wife died. They had long ago sold the magnificent summerhouse, the apartment in Cannes, the grand apartment in Grenoble, and, in the European tradition, lived frugally on the proceeds, never adopting our American more profligate, spendthrift ways. Hubert, not wanting to be encumbered by possessions in his final years, ultimately gave away the last few possessions he owned—his watercolors, his sculptors, his furniture—and moved into a monastic setting, a home for retired priests. He even gave up the Catholic guilt that had caused him so much unhappiness in life. His prolific letters, always poetic and philosophical, became even more focused on the meaning of life.
He got more real—the courtly manners, which had often disguised his real emotions, no longer hid anything. Rather than medicate himself in his final years, as we are inclined, he stayed as aware as possible, even after he fell off his bike at 90 and needed a hip replacement. He cheerfully spoke of being ready to die and did so yesterday, just a few hours shy of his 95th birthday. He was a shining example of the spiritual resurgence that can come towards the end of life.
Adieu Hubert.
Meditation: Reverse the Ravages of Time
Have you ever daydreamed of turning back the clock to a more youthful, more energetic, more carefree time in life? Or perhaps having at your disposal a magical cosmic Undo button that could erase certain effects that have accumulated over the course of time—from stress, abuse, or other erosive habits that have left you with less than perfect health or a waning enthusiasm for life.
I experienced the need for a second chance at a clean slate earlier in life than most. I was only 25 when I received a diagnosis of cancer. That cancer was just the last in a whole host of serious problems I’d had. Those of you who are familiar with my story know that I had a horrendous childhood filled with sexual and emotional abuse. I’m certain I had post-traumatic stress disorder by the time I was four. By my teenage years, I was a complete wreck. At that point, I began doing everything possible to numb my feelings and run from them—I smoked, drank, took drugs, and acted out promiscuously. I was anxious. I was depressed. When my cancer announcement came, it was really time for a change. By then, I needed some truly powerful help to undo all that I had been through so that I could continue to live.
Amazingly, I found it—the way to turn back time and release the many effects of all of the stress that my mind and body had endured. That way was meditation. A daily practice of 20 minutes, twice a day, gave me much more clarity to address my disease and ultimately helped me to heal my cancer, release my addictions, and end my destructive streak and get on my true life path. I can honestly say that meditation is the best thing I have ever done for myself. So much so, that I haven’t missed a single day of it in 30 years.
I am not alone in this discovery. Science and religion alike have studied and documented the vast numbers of benefits of meditation, revealing that meditation has a positive effect on people suffering from or at risk for many physical and mental health conditions, including high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, congestive heart failure, stroke, diabetes, menopause, ADHD, memory loss, anxiety, obesity, and much more. It was even found to be twice as effective in helping people to quit smoking than the other popular remedies. Given that smoking is the number one cause of preventive death in the U.S., this is no small benefit! The studies also show advantages in other areas of our lives, such as making us more effective on the job and in school.
So what is meditation and how does it create so much good for our bodies and minds?
A big part of meditation’s success on improving conditions like those listed above is its powerful ability to reduce and release stress, as stress is often a precursor to so many of our physical and emotional problems. But the manner in which it does this happens at a lot deeper level than many people might think. Meditation works at the level of our consciousness.
There are four states of consciousness: waking, sleeping, dreaming, and meditating. So, meditation is actually a different state of consciousness from our waking life. It is a far more expanded state. Many people think that the purpose of meditation is to tune out, to get away from it all. While that’s partially true, the real purpose of meditation is actually to tune in—to take the journey into expanded consciousness that meditation provides.
Meditation expands our consciousness by helping us to get into the space, the gap, between our thoughts and taps into the incredible energy that exists there. So you have a thought, and then another thought, but between the two, there’s a little space. According to the ancients, this space between the thoughts is the portal to the infinite intelligence of the universe, our Source. Some people call this energy “Spirit”; some call it “God”; some call it the “Universal Energy Field” or the “Unified Field.”
Once you get into that gap, you’ll find that, through this all-pervasive web of energy, everyone and everything is connected to everything else. You also discover that this universal field of energy is unlimited; it’s pure potential, and anything can be accomplished when you’re connected to it.
When we connect to the Unified Field through meditation, our bodies and psyches are cleared, leaving us refreshed, restored, and balanced. Just 20 minutes of meditation offers as much rest as 1-2 hours of sleep! The effect is truly a turning back of the clock, where we look and feel healthier and younger.
We can experience other profound changes by tapping into the Unified Field through meditation. To heal ourselves and fix our lives, we need information. We need to root out the true cause of what is ailing us, and find the most expeditious and effective route to a cure. I certainly learned this with my experience of cancer. When you tap into the Unified Field, you are accessing life’s great encyclopedia—where every fact of the universe, past, present and future, exists and is accessible. You are also connecting to your own highest wisdom., and the insights that come from meditation help us to heal every area of our lives.
In this way, meditation paves the way for emotional healing. On an energetic level, it helps to remove any blockages that come from holding on to anger and resentment. Meditation thereby ushers in what is perhaps the most crucial part of the healing process, forgiveness. It opens us up to our connection to other people, and to All That Is. In this way, meditation also paves the way for global peace and well-being.
That brings me to the most important reason I can think of to meditate. Even after all of the benefits I’ve touched upon here—the better health, becoming wiser, doing better at school or work, experiencing forgiveness, and having less anxiety, more creativity, greater joy, looking and feeling younger—I still haven’t told you the real purpose of meditation.
The most important outcome of your meditating every day is that by expanding your awareness, by bringing yourself into balance and experiencing greater peace, by raising your consciousness—you are actually assisting every other person and creature on the planet to do the same. Remember, we’re all connected by one vast field of energy. The ripple of energy you send out into the world is a reflection of your inner state of being. Your ripple touches and affects others. If you’re uplifted, you uplift them too. If we’re all in a higher state, we just might feel more inclined to help one another and come up with some harmonious and creative solutions to our global problems. What a different world that would be!
I can’t recommend enough that you learn to meditate—for your own well-being, for those you love, and for making a positive difference on the planet and fulfilling your life’s potential. To be done correctly, meditation must be learned from a qualified teacher; it’s not possible to learn from a book or a CD. If you’d like to learn, please find a qualified teacher in your area, or learn with me; I teach both in person and via live feed over the internet.
For more information on learning to meditate, please click here.
Read this inspirational story about giving
Two Brothers – Author unknown
Once there were two brothers who inherited their father’s land. The brothers divided the land in half and each one farmed his own section. Over time, the older brother married and had six children, while the younger brother never married.
One night, the younger brother lay awake. “It’s not fair that each of us has half the land to farm,” he thought. “My brother has six children to feed and I have none. He should have more grain than I do.”
So that night the younger brother went to his silo, gathered a large bundle of wheat, and climbed the hill that separated the two farms and over to his brother’s farm. Leaving the wheat in his brother’s silo, the younger brother returned home, feeling pleased with himself.
Earlier that very same night, the older brother was also lying awake. “It’s not fair that each of us has half the land to farm,” he thought. “In my old age my wife and I will have our grown children to take care of us, not to mention grandchildren, while my brother will probably have none. He should at least sell more grain from the fields now so he can provide for himself with dignity in his old age.”
So that night, too, he secretly gathered a large bundle of wheat, climbed the hill, left it in his brother’s silo, and returned home, feeling pleased with himself.
The next morning, the younger brother was surprised to see the amount of grain in his barn unchanged. “I must not have taken as much wheat as I thought,” he said, bemused. “Tonight I’ll be sure to take more.”
That very same moment, his older brother was also standing in his barn, musing much the same thoughts.
After night fell, each brother gathered a greater amount of wheat from his barn and in the dark, secretly delivered it to his brother’s barn. The next morning, the brothers were again puzzled and perplexed. “How can I be mistaken?” each one scratched his head. “There’s the same amount of grain here as there was before I cleared the pile for my brother. This is impossible! Tonight I’ll make no mistake – I’ll take the pile down to the very floor. That way I’ll be sure the grain gets delivered to my brother.”
The third night, more determined than ever, each brother gathered a large pile of wheat from his barn, loaded it onto a cart, and slowly pulled his haul through the fields and up the hill to his brother’s barn. At the top of the hill, under the shadow of a moon, each brother noticed a figure in the distance. Who could it be?
When the two brothers recognized the form of the other brother and the load he was pulling behind, they realized what had happened. Without a word, they dropped the ropes to their carts and embraced.
“Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Movie Review
To be honest, initially I resisted going to see “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” It’s rated R for its brutal violent content, including rape and torture (among other things). Normally, watching something like that can cause some serious disturbance to our personal energy fields. But after reading a few reviews, I decided to chance it because of it’s focus on sexual abuse, one of my fields of expertise. I’m glad I went as I found this movie to be a winner for several reasons—and although it was indeed violent, the violence wasn’t at all gratuitous.
One of the things that captivated me about this movie was how inspiring and liberating Rooney Mara was as brilliant computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. Former investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist (played by Daniel Craig) hires Salander to help him find out what happened to a woman who went missing as a teenager 40 years previously. In most action movies, it seems like it’s always the 35-year-old white male who saves the day. But not in this one! Mara as the female 20-something Salander steals the spotlight of this riveting whodunit, delivering a potent message to women about intelligence, power, and grace under pressure.
Another reason I found this movie compelling was the accurate way it dealt with sexual abuse and how it runs through generations in a family. As Blomkvist and Salander delve deeper into the mysterious disappearance, they uncover disturbing family secrets that indeed echo the way sexual abuse appears over and over throughout many generations of the same family.
And even though I’ve spent a good deal of my life recovering from this exact kind of abuse, I was startled to find how “triggered” even I was by the film, reminding me that even though we recover from traumatic events, there will be remnants of the event in our psyches forever.
Christopher Plummer does a great job playing the family patriarch whose niece was the missing teenager and who hires Blomkvist to find out what happened to her. The movie—an adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novel—is directed by David Fincher and is a remake of the Swedish film of the same name (that came out just two years ago).
Go see it—I guarantee you’ll be on the edge of your seat the entire time. And as soon as you can pry your fingers off of the armrest, go to my Facebook page and tell me what you thought of the ending. See you there!
We Bought a Zoo movie review
If you like feel good movies like I do, you will love “We Bought a Zoo.” Based on a true story, Matt Damon as a recent widower decides that a major life change will help him and his 2 children heal and find their joy again. Following the maxim that 20 seconds of insane bravery and risk taking will solve just about anything, he buys a dilapidated zoo and throws his life savings at it, hoping to turn it around. Teaming up with Scarlett Johansson, the very attractive resident zookeeper, he learns how to care for a variety of wild and endangered species that will melt the hardest, most damaged heart.
This film really took me back to the years when we had our own menagerie at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Every day, even when it was 10 or 15 degrees outside, we headed out in the early morning light to feed and care for the animals: a dozen llamas, 3 or 4 horses, and a smattering of peacocks, pigs, cows, goats, chickens, ducks, even a pond of koi. And then we repeated that same routine at 3 or 4 or 5 in the evening, communing with the setting sun and the early moon. Working with animals is one of the quickest ways to enlightenment; ask any monk and he will tell you that animals are the best teachers. What a remarkable way of life it was indeed, and the fun didn’t wear off for quite a few years, until one day, going out in utter darkness to break up the ice in the water tanks, I remember wishing I lived somewhere where I didn’t have to put on 2 coats and 2 pair of pants just to feed the family.
But back to the film: there’s also not one but two love stories within the story, both of them charming. (And if you’ve already guessed one is between Matt and Scarlett, you’ve guessed right!)
Matt’s brother (Thomas Haden Church) is an accountant who’s horrified at the thought of his brother leaving journalism for a zoo. That reminded me of my own accountant’s reaction to my leaving the field of law for healing – horrified!
Granted, this film is no “Descendants” – it isn’t at that level, even though they have quite a few plot pieces in common: both involve the death of a spouse followed by a major life decision. “We Bought a Zoo” is more contrived, there isn’t enough real interaction with the animals for my taste, but all that is minor: the only thing that really matters is how you feel when you leave the theatre and what you take with you. Rest assured you will feel light and happy on your departure and you will take with you a wider and gentler heart. That’s what really matters.
P.S. It’s a great film for the kids too.
The Descendants movie review
An unabashed movie buff, I have to admit I’ve seen 3 films in the past week, my first week home after 13 straight weeks traveling, and want to report in that The Descendants is the best of the bunch. Always good, George Clooney is great in this dramedy that is co-written and directed by Alexander Payne (think Sideways from ‘04 and About Schmidt from ‘02). The state of Hawaii is the co-star and setting – I’ve visited there many times and understand how Hawaiians feel a special love for their land and a need to protect it. The plot is built around Matt King’s (Clooney) upcoming vote on whether or not to sell a vast track of unspoiled land his family owns to a developer at the same time his wife is in a coma from a boating accident.
The story is based on a novel by Kauai’s Hart Hemmings, who is the daughter of a famous surfer and politician; we can guess that a lot of her can be found in the personalities and characters of Matt’s two daughters who are front and center in the film. Query whether the illicit affair the daughters’ now comatose mother was having before her accident is autobiographical or pure fiction.
The part you will love is how involved you will become with the characters, especially Matt, who really takes the high road throughout the film, and Sid, the boyfriend of one of the daughters, who has his own special moments of poignancy.
The Descendants is a film well worth seeing: despite its serious topics of raping the land, adultery and death, you will still leave the theatre feeling good. Matt’s character is a testament to important disciplines like work ethic and living a clean, simple and thrifty lifestyle, but these values are presented in such a way as to be appealing. That in itself is a tour de force.
I’m sure this film is an Oscar contender – stay tuned for more on that as I catch up with all the films I’ve missed since last August that may also be in the running.
50/50 movie review
Near the end of 50/50, one of characters asks, “What now?” And that pretty well sums up the theme of this amazing little gem of a cancer film that is a “must see.” Maybe you’re trying to decide whether or not to get in our out of that relationship or job or city or apartment, but you do assume that something will follow. Compare the experience of 27 hear old Adam, played skillfully by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has to contemplate a world where there might be nothing coming after “what now.” Really an inconceivable state of affairs to most people, certainly to a twenty-something.
Adam walks into the doctor’s office with a backache and walks out with a grim unpronounceable cancer diagnosis; he researches it on the Internet and finds out his chances are 50/50. But hold on, this film is not depressing. With a brilliant screenplay written by Will Reiser, who had his own successful battle with a similar cancer in his twenties, and co-starring Seth Rogen, hilarious as Adam’s best friend, and coincidentally, Will’s best friend in real life, the two main guy characters create the most real, most entertaining 99 minutes slice of life about cancer you will see.
Seth’s approach is a blend of backslapping friendship and a steady diet of chatter and crude jokes that would entertain even the most distressed cancer patient. (His list of supposed celebs who beat cancer includes Patrick Swazye) Director Jonathan Levine (The Wackness) takes this memoir and smoothly rolls it out without a hitch. The dialogue is spot on and will have you rolling in the aisle. And you’ll love Anna Kendrick (remember her great performance in Up in the Air with George Clooney) as Katie, Adam’s therapist. She’s so young (even younger than he is) that he asks her if he is her first, second or, possibly at best, third patient ever. Other supporting roles that round out this film include Bryce Dallas Howard as Adam’s departing girl-friend; she simply can’t “do” cancer, as many friends and family in real life find they can’t either.
Overall, the film succeeds because it never succumbs to sappy sentiment; often funny, even more often angry, very true to life and well worth seeing. And what really makes it work is the undying (no pun intended) friendship between Adam and Seth, a bro movie through and through. Bring the popcorn and enjoy!
Healing Your Pets
Even if you’re not sure what your pet is trying to communicate to you, you can still move forward to healing them with touch. Animals are far more responsive than humans to touch because they are less blocked than we are. Remember, never use your hands in anger with your pet; they will recoil from your touch out of fear. Always discipline your pet gently, using your voice, so you are always seen as their safe protector.
If you feel your pet is in need of healing, you can place your hands on the animal and focus healing energy their way. This doesn’t replace the treatment or procedures your vet may be doing for the animal, but will complement them. Healing can also be done at a distance. As you probably already know, animals are extremely sensitive to any changes in their energy field and respond incredibly well to healing touch.
Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Rub your hands together until they are warm and tingling. Visualize a healing light flowing from your hands into your cat or dog, as you focus your love for your pet into the flow of energy. Try doing this for ten minutes a day. And even though the word is visualization, it’s really the feeling that’s important, not anything you might or might not be seeing.
Animals also respond to sound healing. They hear more octaves and tones than humans do and are very affected by soothing calm music, which reduces their pain and anxiety. Tibetan singing bowls can generate tones that particularly affect animals in a beneficial way.
Just as you would with your own children, feel free to explore other types of healing for your pets; in the end, you are the very best judge of what they need. Use your intuition and know in your heart that you are helping them.
Healing vs. Curing
One of the most important questions you will deal with in your quest to walk the path of the shaman has to do with who gets healed versus who gets cured. And it’s not an easy one, as it can derail your faith in yourself.
While wandering through the woods in the winter of 1858, a shepherd girl named Marie-Bernarde Soubirous saw a beautiful lady in a flowing white robe near a small grotto along the banks of the river Gave de Pau in France. The daughter of devout Christian peasants, the 14-year-old known as Bernadette eventually saw the lady a total of 18 times. The woman told the young girl to advise her village priest to construct a chapel on the site of the encounter. On March 25, 1858, on the occasion of the 16th visitation, the lady revealed herself to be none other than the Blessed Virgin. In an ecstatic trance, Bernadette rose from her knees, walked a few steps, and fell back to the earth, where she began to scrape the ground until a small rivulet of water formed a puddle in the dirt. In the days that followed, the puddle formed a sacred spring and pool that is now the famous healing shrine at Lourdes.
Although Mary told Bernadette that the waters would heal people, the spring did not cure this sickly girl, who suffered from debilitating asthma until her death at an early age. And yet, for 30 years after she passed, Bernadette’s corpse did not decay. To this day, Lourdes is the most visited shrine in all of Christendom, with some six million people making the pilgrimage each year. Within the first 50 years, roughly 4,000 miracle healings were recorded.
Of the 10,000 people who visit the spring at Lourdes each day, why do some dance away from the sacred waters while others depart still dependent on crutches? Why is one woman relieved of alcoholism, never to drink again, while another person who also attends her 12-step group religiously and stays sober for many years suddenly falls off the wagon, stays drunk, and ultimately dies of liver failure? Why do some people get the message, grace, miraculous reprieve, or spontaneous remission . . . and others do not?
As shamans and healers, we make a distinction between a cure —physical recovery and elimination of a disease condition—and a healing, which can occur on spiritual and emotional levels and may not involve a correlating physical resolution. Ideally, both will take place.
The Mystery School I attended taught that the higher self or soul of an individual ultimately makes the choice as to whether or not someone will physically heal. To an extent, I believe this is true. However, I saw that students often took the low road when a physical cure didn’t manifest. Many of them would step back and accept too readily that a tangible result had not occurred, rather than work diligently on raising their own vibratory ability to bring more juice—a stronger connection to Source with a higher potential for healing—to their work. The explanation provided in that environment was: “Your client’s higher self knows best and will decide whether or not to be cured. You, the healer, are not responsible for the choice of the client’s soul.”
I have given this a great deal of thought over the years, and I am bothered when the explanation serves as an easy way out for the healer when a cure doesn’t take place. For a period of time, it was convenient for me to excuse my own failures to effect a cure based on the idea that the client had decided at a soul level not to accept the help. But some part of me remained unconvinced, and I continued to grapple with the issue.
What I’ve come to believe, after working on many tens of thousands of people, is that it is uncommon for someone who is seeking to be cured of a physical condition to be at the point where his or her soul has said, “Time’s up—I need to leave.” So I’ve swung back to my original training: I believe that it’s the healer’s job to make it happen. In my early apprenticeship with Christian healers, I was deeply impressed by the work of Agnes Sanford. In her book The Healing Light, she explains: “Let us understand then that if our [healing] experiment fails, it is not due to a lack in God, but to a natural and understandable lack in ourselves.” This puts responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the healer.
Suppose I decide to try firewalking and several people in front of me make it across the burning surface without so much as a blister, but my attempt forces me to jump off the red-hot coals with third-degree burns. Are the coals at fault? Self-responsibility requires that I look at my state of mind and heart at the moment I took my first step.
Invariably, in the world of healing there are many individuals who are not physically cured even though they might be emotionally and spiritually healed, and I am constantly humbled by these failures. Fortunately, thanks to those who have successfully walked across the coals ahead of me—Mary Baker Eddy, Agnes Sanford, and Kathyrn Kuhlman, for example—I’m reminded that miraculous healings are indeed possible. This brings me back again and again to focus on my responsibility to forge a stronger and more reliable connection with Divine power.
Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 165-167 of Be Your Own Shaman by Deborah King, published by Hay House Books. ©2011 by Hay House Books.
Caring for Roberto
I had broken all of the rules about getting too close to Roberto—someone for whom I had played the role of healer. In fact, I had gone so far as to turn my home into a hospice for him.
It had all begun one foggy morning earlier that year. Distraught about being unable to pay his bills, Roberto missed a turn and drove his car off a cliff. He was badly injured, yet he’d managed to crawl back up to the lip of the cliff and was lying in the road. I was on my way to a little chapel not far from my home to meditate in the quiet hours before dawn, driving through the mountains in the darkness, when I saw something that looked like a piece of clothing that had been dropped in the road. As I slowed down to take a closer look, I found a crumpled human being lying there. At once, I slammed on my brakes, jumped out of my car, and ran to his side. A couple also pulled up to help at the same moment and frantically dialed 911 on an early version of a mobile phone. The man on the road was clearly in shock. Having no blanket with me, I cradled his shaking body the best I could with my own body to protect him from the cold.
When I assessed the extent of the man’s injuries, I began to panic. His leg was nearly severed just below the knee, and one of his arms lay completely lifeless on the ground. After what seemed like hours (but was probably no more than 30 minutes), the ambulance arrived, and I followed it to the nearest hospital.
While Roberto was recovering, I visited him nearly every day even though the hospital was about an hour away from my house. His arm began to heal, but after four surgeries to save his leg, it was still in fragile condition. On my daily visits to the ICU, I did hands-on healings on my “patient,” bobbing and weaving like a total fool in full view of the doctors and nurses. Much to my embarrassment, some of the hospital staff watched with unabashed interest while others politely looked away. But no one ever said a word to me.
One day several months after I’d found that poor man in the road, a hospital administrator phoned me at home. Assuming that I was his closest relative, he filled me in on Roberto’s situation. Being an artist who was visiting the United States from his homeland in the former Czechoslovakia, he had no means of support and no medical insurance, so the hospital had been picking up the tab out of their indigent fund. The man on the phone said that this source was now exhausted, and the hospital would have no choice but to put him out on the street the very next day.
I called to alert my husband—who always quietly tolerates my outrageous behavior—and ran to the rescue. I moved Roberto into the guest room. At this point, he still required twice-daily bandage changes and full-on home care, which I did my best to provide.
As we left the hospital, I bluffed my way through wound-dressing 101, assuring Roberto and the nurse: “I’ve had plenty of experience changing bandages on horses. I can do this blindfolded,” when, in fact, I had dissociated and heard not a word of the nurse’s instructions.
Five days later, a home-care nurse came to review the procedure.
“Show me what you’ve been doing,” he said.
“Well, I just unwrap the old . . .”
“Wait!” he exclaimed, incredulous. “You have to glove up!”
Horrified to discover that I’d failed to wear protective gloves when changing the bandages, he muttered something about AIDS and hepatitis and urged me to get tested immediately.
After a month of caring for Roberto, I sensed something odd one day during a bandage change. I immediately loaded him into the wheelchair, transferred him to the car, and drove to his surgeon’s office. This doctor assured me that all was well, but my intuition knew better. I made a few phone calls and found an infectious-disease specialist in town. I wheeled Roberto into the man’s office and insisted that he be seen right away. When the doctor unwrapped the leg, his face turned pale and he looked at me and mouthed, “Gangrene.” He immediately admitted Roberto to the hospital, where he stayed for three months, receiving IV antibiotics in a desperate effort to save his leg and his life. With a bit of sleuthing on my part, combined with persuasive tactics from my days as a lawyer, I convinced the hospital administrators to take Roberto back on the basis of a loophole.
Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 159-160 of Be Your Own Shaman by Deborah King, published by Hay House Books. ©2011 by Hay House Books.