Chapter 1 Now You See It, Now You Don't


2005, the Fourth of July holiday weekend rolled around, and I went to a party at the home of a successful chiropractor. I knew a handful of the thirty or forty people there and a group of us had gathered on a large deck over a dock that also served as a shelter for a couple of boats that were moored underneath. It was a beautiful day, and the conversation was light, the weather was warm and could have been hot if not for the shade, the breeze, and the lake. There were a few tables and chairs on the deck and we were idly chatting, with no sense of seriousness about anything.

The people there that I knew personally were all engaged in some sort of personal development. Some were students of A Course In Miracles. Some had taken one or two weekend workshops on energy healing. Some were students of reiki, and some of us had gone to channeling sessions. By and by my cold beverage ran out, and I went in for another and to use the facilities.

In the kitchen, I overheard a man sharing his experience of recent knee surgery with the woman of the house. He was on crutches, and there was some swelling around his knee. I asked if he’d considered healing energy work for his knee and he confessed to never having heard of it. I said something about subtle energy, I don’t recall what exactly, but he reached out to feel the energy from my hands and when he did his eyes went wide. Then the woman of the house asked to feel the energy, and when she did she quickly asked if I would do some energy work on her mother. I said sure, and she went to get her. 

In the living room, I was introduced to a slender, older Italian woman, possibly in her mid-eighties who, as I recall did not speak much English. Her daughter pulled the collar of the woman’s blouse back a bit to show me a lump the size of half a grapefruit on the right side of her back, about at the bottom of the shoulder blade.

After introductions, the woman and I sat in the living room on a couple of dining chairs facing each other, and the daughter left to tend to guests. 

I began by moving energy in the woman’s hands. Moving my palms a few inches away from hers, not touching. I went slow and made sure we both stayed connected and present with the work as I talked to her about what I was doing. Some people tend to drift off in their imagination when I do the work, but that doesn’t help at all. I avoid any hint of hypnotism or mesmerism. I also avoid going into a trance state myself. Explaining what I’m doing as I go helps keep our awareness in the present moment.

I continued to move subtle energy in the woman’s hands, establishing a connection and bringing to her awareness the rising energy between our palms. I stirred it around, mostly in a counter-clockwise direction, then stretched it out, and moved it up and down each of her fingers, focusing momentarily on each knuckle, one by one, one finger at a time, one hand at a time. Then I circulated the energy through her wrists, forearms, and further up her arms to her shoulders. 

I made sure she was staying present and happy with what was going on, not resisting or worried or frightened. She was quite calm about it. She had a subtle sort of Mona Lisa smile on her face. She wasn’t overly enthusiastic, nor resistant to what I was doing. She seemed mildly interested.

I then asked her to put a foot on my knee. She slipped her shoe off, lifted it to my knee, and again I established a connection with the energy through the sole of the foot just as I had with the palm of each of her hands. Once we felt it moving through the main energy center in the foot, I moved the energy into each toe, putting a little emphasis on each joint, as I had with each finger.  Then I held my hands a foot or so apart with her foot between my palms and let the energy flow through my palms and through her foot, swirling it around, stirring the energy of her foot, breaking up blockages, and clearing out tangles. I moved to her ankle and moved the beam of energy between my palms through her ankle, first clockwise, then counterclockwise, about a half-dozen times each way, intending to break up any blockages, or stagnant energy that might be there. 

All the while, the woman was quiet, and I wondered if she understood things I had said as I was working on her. I explained each new thing that I introduced to the session. Stirring energy in the palms, moving it into the fingers, focusing on the knuckles, and then in the other joints, telling her joints are one place where blockages can occur and it helps to give them special attention. The response I got from my explaining these things to her wasn’t much more than slight nods and that Mona Lisa smile. 

When I finished stirring the energy in her ankle I told her that I wanted her to help me build up a ball of this energy in her foot and we’d send it up to her hip and back down. She gave a slight nod and I proceeded. The ball of energy, a chi-ball, was quite energetic and I said “On three let’s send it up your leg and back down. I can only reach midway up your calf, so you have to take it the rest of the way and bring it back down”.

Again, a slight nod.

I went slow. “One, two, three…” As I was counting I was also moving my palms closer and farther apart, building the energy, compressing, expanding, and compressing it again before pushing the chi-ball up her calf and turning it over to her. Together, with her intention and my intention, the chi-ball moved up her leg to her hip and then back down again where I caught it, and began expanding and compressing it for another run up her leg. We did this three times.

I gently moved her foot back to the floor and put my palms a few inches away from each side of her knee and beamed energy through it, stirring it first clockwise, and then counterclockwise, several times.

I shifted to her other foot and repeated the process. 

I had worked on her for about 15 minutes when her daughter came back in the room, pulled the woman’s collar back, peered down the back of her blouse, and announced, “It’s gone.”

I got up and looked, and sure enough, it was gone.  

I smiled and sat down, and after the two women left the room, I remained there a few minutes quietly contemplating what had just happened. I didn’t even get around to working on her back. Just her hands, arms, feet, and legs to get the energy flowing more freely throughout her body. 

While I was sitting there processing what had just occurred, an older man hurried through the room. He turned and tried to scowl at me on his way towards the front door. He opened the door and waited for the woman I’d worked on to catch up, and he escorted her out. 

I think he was pretending to be angry but was hiding happiness for his wife's healing. I suppose his religious upbringing or his culture suggested what I was engaging in was not to be trusted or something similar. I never got to find out for sure. 

I guess it was miraculous by any standard and could throw most people off. I had been doing healing work for a little over a year by then and I was starting to get used to miraculous things, but this incident was significant for me and put me in a quiet reverie for a while.

My problem was I was still trying to figure out how this stuff worked. I say problem but being analytical about things has its plus points if you don’t go overboard with thinking, or draw conclusions too soon. There’s a lot to be said for living the mystery.

Something else here, when you walk away from something like this and try to tell others about it, it often doesn’t carry well. It's like putting water in a wicker basket. You try to give it to someone, and the water is gone. 

As I said earlier, the people I knew at the party were aware of Quantum-Touch and Reiki and other healing techniques, so healing wasn’t a new thing to them. But when I returned to my seat at the table on the deck and was asked what took me so long, I said I did some energy healing on someone. And I was asked how’d it go and I said a lump the size of half a grapefruit disappeared, the people around me smiled like they’re wondering how many beers I’d had and they quietly changed the subject, leaving me in quiet contemplation.

I think most miracles are meant to be private affairs. There’s no need to dilute their gift by trying to get others to believe them. There’s something in the bible about Jesus, after doing some healing saying “don’t tell anyone about this”. I get the gist of that. Why invite invalidation or ridicule if the people you tell it to don’t believe you? Don’t even bother. Just accept the gift you’ve received and enjoy the miracle of life that much more.

I couldn’t deny what had just happened. I couldn't not believe it, nor any of the other miraculous things I’d seen on this path I’d been traveling. I was still fairly new to all this and, I didn’t feel particularly special, or gifted, or talented about it. I knew several people who had taken training of one form or another to become a healer. I thought perhaps a few of them were seeing similar results and would understand. 

However, by this time I’d seen rivalry in the spiritual community that I hadn’t expected. Some who had been doing it for many years sometimes had a tone of superiority that made it difficult to discuss things like this with them. Instead of nurturing the mystery of it and openly sharing experiences and exploring together, the tendency was to explain things away, and questioning the explanations was to invite hostility. In short, there was a lot of posturing.

As a result, I was learning to keep quiet about miraculous healings and looked farther afield for teachers that might provide deeper understanding. Teachers that could help me advance and grow into and get better at this.  They weren’t to be found at the local community college, or University extension, nor in any of the circles of friends I’d been introduced to thus far on my journey.

I sipped my beer, sat back in my chair, took in the world around me, and felt a degree of comfort with the uncertainty of what tomorrow may bring.

~ S