Text Box: Interfaith Celebration Gathering Sunday, September 17, 2000 Interfaith Celebration Gathering Service Service agenda: Opening Prayer Readings Message OPENING PRAYER: Dear Mother, Father, Great Spirit, God, please hear my prayer. Open my heart that I may use it to see others. Let me pour out my compassion on all I meet. Help me to be patient with others, many of whom have gently and kindly suffered my flaws. Help me to see others with Your eyes in which we are all perfect children of our loving Creator. I ask this knowing that all I need do is ask and it is granted. AMEN READINGS: BARBARA BRENNAN FOUNDER, SCHOOL OF SPIRITUAL HEALING, LONG ISLAND, N.Y. Usually when a serious illness occurs or an operation is needed, the soul is experiencing a crisis and a lesson needs to be learned. A healer can help a patient clarify what the soul is trying to teach. Ecclesiastes 8: 21-22 Neither listen to your servant when he curses you; for your heart knows that you yourself have oftentimes cursed others. MESSAGE: Compassion and Patience Compassion and patience are two themes that have arisen often for me lately in my own soul work. The message when they arise is very clear—these are two attributes on which I need to do additional work. That is why they continue to be presented to me as lessons. The way Schoolhouse Earth works is that our lessons are presented to us until we learn them. Then, once we have learned them, a period of time elapses, and they are again presented to us. This last appearance is just to ensure that we remember our lessons. My lessons right now are about learning to have patience and compassion even with people whose behavior I find frustrating. Is that ever a problem for you? There are a few things I have learned over the years that help me have at least some compassion for others. First, I learned to be honest with myself as to my own character defects. Then, I heard a profound statement that says what we dislike in others are our own disowned traits. With the serious application of more honesty, I realized that this statement has a lot of truth in it. Then, there is the old maxim that we cannot know what another person faces until we walk a mile in his/her shoes. Nowadays my lapses in compassion stem from my wanting people I care about to be healthy and whole and to enjoy life. What I am recognizing in my lapses in compassion is that I need to allow for the fact that illness plays a major role in a person’s life. Illness is our opportunity to do some quantum soul growth. I have also realized that I need to allow for the fact that there are many levels of wellness and illness, and that each level has its lessons and its merits. Recently a person asked a list to which I am subscribed for help. The wonderful help that this person got from the people on the list was ignored as, in post after post, this person continued to complain about his life. I found this behavior frustrating until I stopped a moment to think about my own experiences with pesticide poisoning. I remembered (with some embarrassment) how right after the pesticide poisoning had put me at death’s door, I needed to tell the whole story to anyone who would listen. I told it over and over. A part of me was so outraged that it had happened that I needed validation for my outrage, and I needed to be heard. The last thing I wanted at that time was information on how I could change things or get better. I just wanted to be heard and validated. I realize now that part of my need to be heard was my adult’s need to find an answer to the question, “How could people do something like this to another person and just not care that they did it?” I was raised believing that people took responsibility for their actions. Somewhere I also acquired the belief that I was owed recompense when someone harmed me. In the world of today, neither belief is consistently valid. Another part of my need to be heard was my inner child’s need to be validated. This stemmed from the many times when I was not heard and validated as a child. For instance, as a child, when I was tired, my grandmother used to tell me I “shouldn’t” be tired because I was a child, and children had a lot of energy. Her attitude continued even through the year and a half that I had mononucleosis. Because I have found this stage of my illness somewhat embarrassing, I have tended to bury the memories of it. Thus, when I have seen others in this stage of illness, I have had little patience with them, and little compassion for them. But, I now realize that this is a very important stage of illness. It is a stage that most of us get through eventually, (although I do know a person or two who has been stuck there for years). A part of this stage of illness is wanting allopathic doctors to fix us. (Well, there’s another belief that has come unglued in all of this soul work—doctors do not hold the key to fixing everything there is to fix when it comes to illness. I was led to believe they did.) When in this stage, we may go from doctor to doctor insisting that one of them fix us. Unfortunately, few allopathic doctors have even minimal answers for disorders like chemical injury, CFIDS, FMS, lupus, and many other chronic illnesses. But, at this stage of our illnesses, our controllers are out and rampaging. (Our controllers come out when we are living in fear. We feel a need to control things around us to reduce the chaos in our lives and lessen the fear.) When I was in this phase, I needed to “make” these doctors do what they could not do. I’m sure I do not have to tell you this did not work. The next stage of illness is where we take charge of our lives. We learn that we have many tools we can use to heal ourselves. Whether the tool involves avoiding exposures, supplementation, or changing our diets, our jobs, and/or our homes, we do have tools we can use to help our bodies heal. Most of us progress through this stage, too - eventually. Until we do move to the next level, we try treatment after treatment, and remedy after remedy, always hoping for that magic bullet that will fix us. The one treatment we fail to use in this stage of illness is the one that will take us to the next level of illness on the road to wellness. This treatment involves seeing ourselves as healthy regardless of what our physical problems are. This is perhaps the most powerful treatment there is, because our subconscious minds believe every word we say. Our bodies then go out of their way to create the reality we have talked about. If we see ourselves as ill, then we will continue to be ill. If we see ourselves as healthy, then we can be well on the way to becoming healthy, with the full cooperation of both our minds and our bodies. When I was in each stage of illness from pesticide poisoning, there were lessons that I needed to learn for my soul’s growth. Until I learned those lessons, no amount of positive thinking, affirmations, treatments, or anything else was going to move me beyond that level. To my way of thinking during that time, the reality that I saw was the reality that would accompany me to the end of my days. I had little patience and compassion for someone who offered a different view. The stages of illness remind me of an allegory by Hannah Hurrard entitled Hind’s Feet on High Places. The main character is named Much Afraid. The guides who accompany Much Afraid on her journey to the High Places (communion with God) are Sorrow and Suffering. For most of Much Afraid’s journey, she limps on her crooked foot, accompanied by these two guides. But, like Much Afraid, we can eventually run and jump as if we had hind’s (deer’s) feet once we get past our major life lessons, some of which are available for learning in chronic illnesses. We just need to remember to have compassion for and patience with our brothers and sisters who have not yet traveled where we have been and learned the hard lessons we have learned. I currently have a dear cousin who is in the Cardiac Care Unit of a hospital. Knowing what soul growth is available in major illness, a small part of me rejoices that he has this opportunity to begin his own soul growth even though the rest of me empathizes with his struggle. Just as God has infinite patience with each of us, may we have unlimited patience with each other. Let us also view each other with boundless compassion just as God views us. May God add a blessing to these humble words.