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Awakened at Needle Point
Awakened at Needle Point
Awakened at Needle Point
Introduction
It was late Friday afternoon February 26th, 2010; a cold, snowy mid-winter day in the Pacific
Northwest when an unresolved, incapacitating childhood conflict surfaced again. Indeed it was
the source of symptoms, mental and physical, that had controlled my entire life story until now.
These anxieties dogged me like a proverbial hound from hell and I began paying close attention
to them. I knew my sanity depended upon comprehending these symptoms as “signs and
symbols” of my unconscious psyche, but I did not understand why they manifested—yet!
The original catalyst for my crash and burn was the abandonment by my father in Seattle at age
5. He left my mother, Catherine, and my two brothers, Ron and Steve, homeless and penniless,
so he could hire on with a fishing fleet. His goal was to become the chief marine mechanic to
keep them trolling for the “deadliest catch” in waters up and down the coastlines of Alaska,
Canada, Washington, Oregon, and California. I never saw him again until I was 32-years old.
But the scenario that led initially to nothing more than headaches and sinus symptoms was
Claritin™ clear enough. My beloved 20-year old granddaughter, Kathryne, who had been living
with us for the past 3 years, was embarking on her first solo cross-country road trip from
Spokane, Washington to Jacksonville, North Carolina, and I was “deathly afraid” for her safety.
Katie was en route to Andrea, a girlfriend she had known in Spokane since 14, to share a
recently purchased home close to the Atlantic Ocean. Andrea was today a proud U.S. Marine
stationed at Camp Lejeune, awaiting the return of her husband, high school sweetheart Joshua,
likewise a combat soldier fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan until summer 2010.
Specifically, I decided to drive our gas-miser Honda Civic in front of Katie’s car for the first one
thousand miles of her four thousand mile journey to the East Coast, in a heartfelt albeit panic-
stricken moment. I wanted to blaze the trail, so to speak, make certain she, and co-driver Jody,
got safely through the snowy mountain passes in Idaho, Utah and then into the first city they
planned to stop on Saturday afternoon: Las Vegas, Nevada. I even paid for a deluxe room-in-
advance at the Luxor Hotel for my wife, Connie, and myself before we departed Spokane
confident this was a “mission possible.”
Clinical psychologist Wilson Van Dusen, Ph.D. (1923-2005), could do just that, soul travel, and
worked for many decades with the mentally ill in California state hospitals after serving during
WWII in the U.S. Merchant Marines. He had a remarkable life concluding that “spirit
possession” can be the “soul” cause of illness. And upon retirement, he wrote about his life as a
mystic, sharing a lifetime of insights in many inspiring books on heaven, hell, and “hyperspace”
nature of existence: infinite worlds within worlds without beginning or end. Dr. Dusen became
a proponent of Swedish scientist, inventor, and Christian mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg (1668-
1772), and learned, as I had, that “The great spiritual adventurers found the whole of creation
and every part of it symbolic” as he shared in Seeing Through Symbols: Insights into Spirit.
Wikipedia records this much on Swedenborg: “In 1741 at the age of fifty-three he entered into
a spiritual phase in which he eventually began to experience dreams and visions beginning on
Easter weekend April 6, 1744. This culminated in a spiritual awakening, where he claimed he
was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly doctrine to reform Christianity. He claimed that
the Lord had opened his eyes, so that from then on he could freely visit heaven and hell, and
talk with angels, demons, and other spirits. For the remaining 28 years of his life, he wrote and
published 18 theological works, of which the best known was Heaven and Hell (1758), and
several unpublished theological works.” Interestingly enough, overall Swedenborg’s model of
creation matches the shamanic that is usually akin to a three-layered cake: upper, lower with
earth in the middle of it.
I also have had such close encounters with the citizens of hyperspace since childhood and
methodically investigated near-death experience (NDE) visions of the End-Times for that
reason, as well as written and spoken to millions of listeners on talk radio shows regarding my
conclusions about them since 1993. Today these themes are common cocktail party
conversations among psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers, physicists, and theologians; so
at least I am in good company, finally. I no longer feel crazy nor like a fish out of water. French
scholar of religions, Mircea Eliade, saw the “axis mundi” conduit, subway, tunnel or trunk
within The World Tree as the gateway to the gods, and devils, writing in his classical book
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy: “The underworld, the center of the earth, and the
‘gate’ of the sky are situated on the same axis, and in past times it was by this axis that passage
from one cosmic region to another was effected.”
My vision in total is that we are in the early stages as a species learning to climb the world tree,
“walk between worlds,” bring the spiritual truth of heaven down from the magnetosphere and
hell of our fiery molten core up to the surface of planet earth again through the third eyes of
shamans. Moreover, I see us integrating the wisdom of outer and inner space through an
emerging “science of soul” First Nations wisdom tradition wellness clinic in the 21 st century.
(See www.near-death.com/experiences/experts13.html)
There was the key word I must investigate further I mused: neuropeptides. So began a major
turning point in my search for salvation from suffering, although understanding neuropeptides
was not that easy since they acted more as quantum ghosts in the brain, non-local “fields of
energy” declared the late Francis Schmidt of M.I.T. He called them “information substances” or
“messenger molecules.” Dr. Pert proclaimed “This complexity has led to their being classified
under a variety of categories, including hormones, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators,
growth factors, gut peptides, interleukins, cytokines, chemokines, and growth-inhibiting
factors.”
Nonetheless, ideally, these “information substances” in balanced proportions give our human
brain-blood-bones a sense of wellbeing, “bliss” or euphoria that make life worth living in plain
terms. But my body quit making them, and my physicians prescribed the opiate-derivative
equivalent drugs to them such as hydrocodone and oxycodone as I underwent a comprehensive
diagnostic work-up to isolate the problem over a 3-month period from June to August 2010.
These tests included the cutting-edge in X-Ray for the spine, laboratory analysis of blood and
urine for general chemical health index baselines, as well as cardiac enzyme function
examination at Sacred Heart and then, the final straw that pushed me into an urgent search
mode for alternative treatments, my MRI at Holy Family Hospital.
For now I had more diagnoses, prognoses, and fear factors than my beloved late grandmother,
Mary Evelyn Scott (1888-1977), would say “Carter had liver pills!” Yet these high-tech toys are
our pride and joy in the Western world, our electron microscopes and spaceship-shaped nuclear
magnetic resonance imaging capsules save lives every single day because we can “see” into the
living brain-body-blood-bone matrix non-invasively, but intervene surgically with razor-edge,
laser-light precision if warranted. Indeed, my wife’s cousin in Kansas City has her husband, Bob
Stevens, alive today because a neurosurgeon was able to pinpoint a brain aneurysm earlier this
year and repair it successfully. They call Bob a miracle-man for he beat the odds but he is still
seeking relief from one nagging problem: pain that prevents sleep!
Psychiatrist Rick Strassman, M.D. has also released his clinical experiments on 60 volunteer
subjects at the University of New Mexico with approximately 400 doses of the spirit-seeing
substance N,N-dimethlytrptamine in DMT: The Spirit Molecule. One hypothesis is that DMT is
endogenous, made in the pineal gland, what French philosopher, physicist, and mathematician
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) himself called the “seat of the soul.” In metaphysical terms, this is
the third eye. Since 1996, Dr. Strassman has been exploring models for the DMT effect, and has
focused primarily on the Old Testament concept of prophecy. This is a spiritual experience
which takes into account the apparently external, free-standing nature of the DMT “worlds,” in
which one’s sense of self is highly preserved and interactive. This is in contrast to previous
models that borrow more heavily from Eastern religious systems, ones that emphasize unitive,
ego-dissolving experiences. In addition, the prophetic model deals directly with ethical and
moral concerns, adding a crucial element to our ability to understand and integrate the content
of the psychedelic experience. He is developing these ideas in his next book, The Soul of
Prophecy, due to appear in 2011. (See www.rickstrassman.com)
Along this same line of treatment, I went to several complementary health care specialists in
my community to tap my biological plant farm roots that included acupuncture with Rebekah
Giangreco, L.Ac., Dipl.Ac., at New Moon Family Acupuncture; sports medicine chiropractic with
Ryan Johnson, D.C., at Pearson and Weary Pain Relief Clinics; and massage therapy with
Marlene Sullivan, L.M.T.
Thank God, I also had a strong spiritual support team that appeared as if by magic, usually a
bad choice of words with the Christian evangelic. Hopefully, I will be instrumental in helping
them step-up to the plate: the challenges and opportunities for ministry in this matter now.
Trust me they are right-on-target when it comes to Hades—“the hidden place”—and the “evil
spirits!” For the “doubting Thomas,” I only ask you to review
● ● ● one “non-religious” textbook, The Body of Myth:
Mythology, Shamanic Trance, and The Sacred Geography of
He knew that Glory
the Body by mathematician, and physicist Professor J. Nigro
and Hell too, Sansonese, and the objective documentary DVD film titled
“Gates of Hell” produced by The History Channel. That is, I
Are in your soul, with am not focused on fear at all but facts that will convince you
all their myths; beyond a reasonable doubt that what we’ve called “hell” is
right here on earth. Specifically, we’re experiencing a literal
He knew, like the warfare going on within the cells of our human body-mind-
Greek, that the days Of spirit! (See www.history.com)
Time are Eternity’s “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to
Mirrors. offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to
God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” (Romans 12:1)
~Jorge Luis Borges Pastor Robert Lindseth of the Life Church located at the
corner of 25th and South Grand Boulevard in Spokane came
● ● ● into my life miraculously after his teenage daughter
happened to come by our house one evening to ask my wife if there was anyone that needed
prayer? Oh did I ever! Bob invested countless hours ministering to me this past summer as we
prayed together for answers to my situation. I even asked him to renew my covenant in
baptism for I identified with this proclamation of Paul of Tarsus as never before in my life: “I am
crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I
now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for
me.” (Galatians 2:20) Hint: The word covenant in Hebrew means a “cut-where-blood-flows! “
And while all of these skilled practitioners of the healing arts, sciences and religions helped me
cope to a certain extent, over the span of excruciatingly painful weeks that stretched into
agonizingly slow months I realized I was missing a critical key to opening the locked gates of hell
to my wellbeing: Life force energy. In particular, I needed to increase my ch’i with amino acid
therapy administered intravenously (I.V.) to repair the cell damage of aging, diet, and toxic
emotions in order to restore the functioning of my communication circuitry, the message
molecule carriers of the central nervous system. I had to glue Humpty-Dumpty back together
again, increase the “ligands” that are “binding” elements of DNA-RNA coded protein synthesis
cycles of consciousness. These electronic ions cement amino acid molecules into chains, the
building blocks of life. Anthropologist Jeremy Narby, Ph.D., Stanford University, unpacked the
secret in DNA from his own shamanic field work with the plant teachers in the Amazonian
rainforests, ecstatically reporting in The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge:
"When I started reading the literature of molecular biology, I was stunned by certain
descriptions. Admittedly, I was on the lookout for anything unusual, as my investigation
had led me to consider that DNA and its cellular machinery truly were an extremely
sophisticated technology of cosmic origin. But as I pored over thousands of pages of
biological texts, I discovered a world of science fiction that seemed to confirm my
hypothesis. Proteins and enzymes were described as 'miniature robots,' ribosomes were
'molecular computers,' cells were 'factories,' DNA itself was a 'text,' a 'program,' a
'language,' or 'data.' One only had to do a literal reading of contemporary biology to
reach shattering conclusions; yet most authors display a total lack of astonishment and
seem to consider that life is merely 'a normal physiochemical phenomenon."
Soon thereafter, at my wits end with drugs of every flavor that did not yield viable cures only
intolerable side-effects, I remembered an informative dialogue I had on Facebook™ again,
albeit a year, with Steve Sewell, founder of Mind & Body Works in Durango, Colorado. He had
merely succinctly replied to a comment I made that I was using amino acids orally to improve
my health but he knowingly stated that in many cases, they had to be administered via I.V. to
enter the bloodstream: bypass the deleterious impact of digestive tract juices and processes.
In a subsequent telephone conversation, I shared my medical history and Steve offered that,
perhaps, my brain-body could no longer create its endogenous, morphine-like pain killers, the
endorphins, to give me that “runner’s high” I associated with wellness? That was a reasonable
conclusion given my “free-floating” symptoms of anxiety-panic, hypomania that seemed even
to me to be a case of hypochondria; that is, more psycho than somatic! In the final analysis, I
needed high-tech soul food: the “finger-licking-good to the last drop” ligands! If I wanted what
they offered, I could report to Steve at the clinic on Wednesday, September 15 th, 2010 for a
physical examination by Paul Glanville, M.D., an anti-aging specialist schooled in
complementary and traditional medicine. Of course, I was impressed by that time and took his
advice to heart, and head: they seemingly had exactly what I was looking for no doubt about it.
From my own decades of study in the shamanic sciences and practice in Community Health
Administration and Wellness Promotion with the U.S. Navy Hospital Clinic, Keyport,
Washington, I knew that healing disease happened through the integration of the East and
West: what Larry Dossey, M.D. in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and his wife, Barbara Dossey, R.N.,
Ph.D., call ERA-III Medicine. They do not mince words or split-hairs—and neither do I—for this
is the emerging health care paradigm of the future: We are literally “thought forms” co-existing
within the Body of God, and we need to apply this eternal truth to our lives here and hereafter.
We co-exist with myriad life forms and we need to get over it and get on with it: There is a lot
of work to do if we are to bring hell up from and heaven down to earth. Our mission is to merge
three world—upper, lower, and middle—realms into one new world order right here and now!
Taking nonlocal mind seriously can, as I describe in Reinventing Medicine, widen the
dimensions of consciousness. We can tap into sources of wisdom beyond ourselves and
beyond the present: Creative breakthroughs and prophetic knowing become ordinary in
the context of nonlocal mind. Empathy and compassion flower as a result of our felt
linkage with one another. And the awareness of immortality, as I've described, takes the
pressure off living and dying. This will not happen automatically, however. We have to
do our share and set our biases and prejudices aside. These are urgent matters. As
Andre Malraux said, "The twenty-first century will be spiritual or it will not be at all."
(See www.dosseydossey.com)
Then as we descended into the City of Durango itself, we saw clean streets, a well-planned city
center and marketplace that highlighted its southwestern cowboy theme. The focal point was
the restored train station for the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Of course, the
antique brick hotels with crystal-chandeliers and gun-fighting saloons of the 1800s helped set
the stage, literally. Actually, Connie remarked that we had come to a 5-star vacation getaway—
not a sterile-looking typical medical district as we had envisioned. There was even a gorgeous
fast-moving river running through the city park: Animas. This in fact was a sacred space nestled
within the Four Corners of the USA.
Upon arrival at the clinic the next morning, I already knew that I came to the right place to kick-
start my immune system. If I needed a booster shot of confidence, I was greeted with a warm
smile by Julie Frank, the office administrator, and Steve Adams, my co-counselor for the next
10-days. Then I reported for my physical exam at 10AM to Paul Glanville, M.D., and read these
inspirational words on his business card from Psalm 103 that made my day:
“
Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits who forgives all your sins and
heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and
compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed
like the eagle's.” You know what an eagle can do, right? It can grow brand new feathers
no matter its age!
Indeed I needed new feathers, and bones to support them, if I was ever to fly with my wings
upright again without a neck brace and a bucket load of medicines. In a nutshell, be careful
what you pray for but also extremely sensitive to what you write about, and who, for they may
very well return to validate, or not, your claims about them be they among the living or dead.
You’ll see what I mean when you read the First Edition of my book Tranceformers: Shamans of
the 21st Century. But, in brief, you will learn what I learned from an after-death communication
with a “deceased” optics physicist colleague and why analytical psychologist Carl Jung, M.D.,
stated “Modern behaviorist psychology reduces psychic happenings to a kind of activity of the
glands; thoughts are regarded as secretions of the brain, and thus we achieve a psychology
without the psyche.”
In other words, we have removed the psyche—soul—from our world as an independent reality
when the truth is we are entangled in messenger molecules just because “matter is minded.”
Spiritual encounters are synchronistic clues—profoundly meaningful coincidences—that speak
to a multi-dimensional, layered “hyperspace” cosmos filled-to-the-brim with wisdom beings.
There is simply no wiggle room anymore around this fact says National Public Radio award-
winning correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty, and acclaimed author of Fingerprints of God:
The Search for the Science of Spirituality.
The lesson we are learning from amino acid therapy is straightforward: the mind of the mystic,
prophet, and shaman is lying dormant, sleeping untapped within DNA yet forever flowing-freely
through us all now. That is, the knowledge to heal ourselves is available for the asking if we ask
the right questions symbolically but playing possum, therefore, is not the answer to a spiritually
alive, “genetically” mutating universe. The author of creation, God, writes the Book of Life and
illustrates it via DNA codes with our life experiences providing the “data” each and every
second for the messenger molecules informing an infinite number of space-time “real” worlds.
With this insight, I wept tears of joy for I knew that my prayers had been answered: my
deliverance from pain was at hand and my walk into wellbeing had begun. Although I was
optimistic, and looking forward to the treatment sessions, I was about to take an unexpected
swan dive, and it was not the 6,500 foot elevation in Durango that made me swoon either.
I Died in Durango
“Are you okay, John?” my nurse, Jessica Dehen, R.N., asked. She
had skillfully inserted the first of ten-day intravenous (I.V.) feeding
tube needles into my arm, but suddenly my mind relaxed its
tenacious grip on the pain in my neck. I unwittingly started to slump
into what I imagined was the darkness of unconsciousness, so
replying softly, I said what I felt was obviously true: “I’m dying.”
As I reflected upon her words, that made perfect sense since I had not slept without a sleeping
pill in months. I knew I had stopped dreaming once I began taking Ambien™ and my educated
guess was that rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep is much more critical than we have imagined.
Perhaps, the brain-body cannot repair itself properly if we induce sleep with drugs of all types:
alcohol, prescription, and/or street? Maybe the organic messenger molecules created by nature
such as serotonin, dopamine and melatonin, for examples, are paralyzed, and cannot exchange
DNA-RNA protein synthesis maintenance information between brain hemispheres, I pondered?
Author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary
Shamanism, Daniel Pinchbeck, shared the conclusions of Dr. Carl Anderson of McLean Hospital,
Virginia: “… disparities between the left and right brain disrupt REM sleep, which as Anderson
notes is ‘essential for emotional regulation, learning, and memory consolidation.’” In particular,
I agree with Dr. Anderson, although I acknowledge that Pinchbeck, a wise urban shaman in his
own right, is not totally convinced yet with respect to this physician’s hypothesis:
“Interhemispheric struggles, primarily a result of child abuse, may be a fundamental
psychological root of drug addiction.” (See www.breakingopenthehead.com)
Accordingly, drug addiction is indeed getting worse every single year in PTSD breeding grounds:
military combat zones, inner cities, and First Nations reservations. This is the siren song warning
that our children and grandchildren are at high-risk for self-destruction in untold numbers if we
do not intervene now, if not for any other reason that we are a nutritionally-bankrupt nation!
The obesity we see is symptomatic of stress stored in belly fat and the high corn sugar-low
exercise diets will have only one long-term outcome for the Western world: degenerative
diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, premature pain, suffering, and death with its
correlated runaway health care medical costs for taxpayers.
So I asked myself: Can amino acid therapy rewire our genes towards not only optimal wellness
and personal happiness but world peace too? Is it that simple: Let food be our medicine in the
way that the father of medicine, Hippocrates, meant it? It’s a visionary idea for certain and will
require considerable scrutiny if and when taken seriously enough to have federal government
funds assigned to it. In the meantime, I’d reflect upon the meaning of the epigenetic medicine
model findings of Dawson Church, Ph.D. relayed recently in his book The Genie in Your Genes:
“The healing power of consciousness and intention appears to be independent of time as well
as space. Prayer seems to work retroactively as well as across great distances. Perhaps the
whimsical injunction is true: ‘It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!’” (See
www.soulmedicineinstitute.org)
Can we pray our self and world well too? This much I know from my observation: our brain is a
terrible thing to see waste away on junk food, drugs, and booze! Slowly I stitched the pieces of
my addiction, pain, and stress disorder together with the help of the staff assigned to me for
that purpose: co-counselors extraordinaire Steve Sewell, Steve Adams, and shamanic
practitioner Marie Redfeather. Though my life story is
not unique, it is totally relevant to you my friends
“If we could give every regarding how to heal from childhood traumas,
individual the right symptoms, employing specific steps I took along the
amount of nourishment way that I methodically, painstakingly but also
and exercise, not too joyously, outlined in the Second Edition of my book,
little and not too much, Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century. Again,
we would have found Daniel Pinchbeck speaks wisely beyond his tears:
the safest way to
“With his visions, his ability to transform energies, and
health.”
his mastery of healing, Christ could be seen as a
Hippocrates (c. 460-370 prototypical shaman.”
BC)
Not surprisingly, every one of the lessons-learned on
my own from decades of research, I saw incorporated
into the wellness model employed at Mind & Body
Works. Therefore, amino acid therapy is the key to
survival in our efforts to offset the impact of climate
changes and what near-death researcher at the University of Connecticut, Professor of
Psychology Emeritus Ken Ring, Ph.D., knowingly called us to embrace two decades ago: the
“shamanizing of humanity!” By the way, my two books are also directly related to what is
happening to people and planet today in era-2012: We are threatened with extinction. As cell
biologist Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. has said, “It’s the environment stupid!” Our toxic technology has
turned our agricultural soils and drinking water sources into septic tanks and our dysfunctional
attitudes, behaviors, and lifestyles are eating away at our immune systems worldwide. (See
www.brucelipton.com and www.iands.org)
Thus I cannot emphasize enough the importance of shamanic tools and techniques for our day
and age for it is indeed the “myths” by which we live that determine our life story individually
and collectively as a civilization. What is it we want to experience, in other words? It could not
be said more clearly and forcefully than this prophet: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
(Proverbs 23:7)
Over the 10-day course of I.V. treatments with amino acid nutrients,
what I came to call “Love Potion Number 9,” I also had sessions with
other outstanding health care providers including Healing Touch™
with Linda Marie Ambrose, as well as in the downtown Durango
community. Namely massage therapy at Amaya Natural
Therapeutics, and acupuncture at Animas Oriental Medicine clinic.
Beyond a doubt, I benefited once these blocked pathways were opened to the flow of life force
energy—ch’i—again through my spinal column vertebras and into the skull’s sinus cavities. I felt
the instant relief from pain when she inserted needles into C7 vertebra that second session:
these circuits began to function as intended. That is, I was no longer grid-locked neurologically
between my head and heart in particular and the neurotransmitters could transmit messages
full-circle in these circuits of consciousness. My nerves quieted down and restored themselves
to peaceful co-existence with the natural rhythms of my lifestyle in the days and weeks ahead.
Marie Redfeather played a pivotal role in recovering and releasing early childhood trauma that I
had completely buried within my body. She is a First Nations, French-Canadian descent initiate
of Peruvian shamanism. Through her expertise, and sensitivity, to what was seeking to surface
during our counseling sessions and ceremonies together, we rediscovered a series of medical
crises that had crippled me throughout my life. Specifically, I broke my leg in the 3 rd grade and
had to be transported for treatment to Auburn General Hospital, Washington. This was in the
days when a parent could not visit or stay at will with a scared child, but to make matters even
more terrifying in my case the ward nurses used hypodermic needle injections to sedate me—
keep me quiet—throughout the night.
Moreover, during my days hooked-up to I.V. at Mind & Body Works, I flashbacked to several
incidents that involved doctors, nurses, syringes and I.V.s in Seattle. For examples, I had blocked
memories of Children’s Orthopedic and Virginia Mason Hospital clinic visits that had
traumatized me severely in my early teen years. Thus, we uncovered and brought to light how
these disturbing incidents ultimately steered my studies to psychology and theology in my
totally subconscious efforts to continually work through these fears as an adult much as
psychiatrist Stan Grof, M.D. outlines happens in Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern
Consciousness Research. (See www.holotropic.com)
However, it was the insights of the founder of Mind & Body Works that triggered a major
catharsis during his first counseling session with me. Steve Sewell patiently listened to my
medical history: recitations of childhood and alcohol abuse, military injuries and related
psychophysical symptoms, allopathic and integrative treatments, as he observed my body
gestures, too. He then gently, nonchalantly offered this “pearl of great price” for me to mediate
upon later that evening at the Iron Horse Inn motel as my homework assignment in fact: “The
Key is Under Your Mother’s Pillow.”
So I mused into the night, as my wife slept alongside me, about my life’s story and how I spoke
it into existence with every word uttered. Specifically, I came to see the wisdom in the words of
St. John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
(John 1:1). That is to say, I needed to wash my mouth out with soap for I spewed out toxic
temper tantrums, childish concepts and emotions in nearly every sentence. I colored my world
with words that had coagulated, nearly choked the life out of me with fear over many years by
failing to follow my bliss as a public-speaker because I was reenacting my mother’s sense of
“learned helplessness,” also known as clinical depression, at being abandoned by my father—
not me. In reality, I never knew my father given my age at the time of his departure so how
could I blame him for being a bad parent or role model? But I did incorporate—make physical—
every negative emotion my mother felt and expressed by her body postures and inadvertently
“poisoned” my environment. My father had little to do with my life issues was the bottom-line:
It was “mommy dearest” after all.
Summary
Apostle Paul summed-up my conclusions nicely: “Now you together are Christ's body; but each
of you is a different part of it.” (I Cor. 12:27) No one knows that truth better than Andrew
Newberg, M.D., Director of Research at the Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine at
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Medical College. He is a pioneer in the study of
religious and spiritual experiences, a field frequently referred to today as “neurotheology.” In
his career, he has also actively pursued neuro-imaging research projects on the study of aging
and dementia, Parkinson's disease, depression, and other neurological and psychiatric
disorders. He has also researched the neurophysiological correlates of acupuncture,
meditation, and alternative therapies, and how brain function is associated with mystical and
religious experiences. Dr. Newberg helped develop stress-management programs for the
University of Pennsylvania Health Systems and received a Science and Religion Course Award
from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences for his program entitled "The Biology of
Spirituality."
In the Gospel of Thomas, Christ spoke these words of wisdom: “If you bring forth what is within
you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is inside you, what you
do not bring forth will destroy you.” Daniel Pinchbeck has the right molecular spin on many of
these matters: “The tryptamine molecule is the building block of many neurotransmitters. …
You may spend the rest of your life suppressing the memory, but it is still inside of you.” Later in
a mystical burst of clarity, I saw that I did not get sick or healed in a vacuum these past months
either, rather my life story was the well-orchestrated script that God designed to bring me to
Him and my future work with people suffering from addictions, pain, and stress disorders
needing amino acid therapy.
No doubt about it today, my history is not my destiny. Yet to say I’m objective anymore is a lie: I
am subjective in that I know what works and I plan on shouting it from the rooftops. If you are
an adventurous, courageous soul willing to follow the road less travelled to achieve optimal
wellness here and hereafter, then I wholeheartedly suggest that you go to this website right
now without delay: www.mindandbodyworks.org. Indeed, be bold and call the Mind & Body
Works clinic Toll Free at 1-888-788-7348 and, perhaps, you too will become awakened at
needle point!
1. For those interested in the symbolic treatment of illness, I refer you to an eclectic new
book on this topic, Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy
by Alejandro Jodorowsky in Paris, France. As well as the insights of Jungian-oriented
psychotherapist Paul Levy in Portland, Oregon, himself a former mental hospital patient
and now “crazy life a fox.” (See www.awakeninthedream.com)
2. Braverman, E.R., M.D., and Pfeiffer, C.C., M.D., Ph.D. The Healing Nutrients Within:
Facts, Findings and New Research on Amino Acids. CT: Keats Publishing, Inc., 1987.
3. Harper, John Jay. Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century. CA: Reality Press, 2009.
(www.reality-entertainment.com)
4. Twiss, Richard. One Church Many Tribes. CA: Regal Press, 2000. (www.wiconi.org)