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events that would happen to affect my development as a healer. I repeatedly argued with the light in my head: "Stop! Wait! Clearly, there's been a mistake! You have the wrong person! It's not me you mean to be talking to! I don't believe in God! I don't go to church! I swear! And I covet I'm sure you've mistaken me for someone else!" |
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No one was more surprised than I, when the events came to pass, when I met the people who had been described to me, and when sick people told me they felt relief when I brought my hands near their body. |
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It doesn't seem to me that I consciously or unconsciously "chose" to give myself instructions about healing in a dream, and then decided to become a healer. I was an artist and a teacher at the time when the "gift of healing" was given to me. I was a most reluctant recipient of the gift. It wasn't what I planned to do with my life. I've had to grow into it. It has often been inconvenient and embarrassing for me. It carried great negative status at the University of Oregon, where I earned my Ph.D., and where I taught a variety of health courses for many years. It draws little financial remuneration. It has often caused my family and friends to treat me awkwardly. One boyfriend told me that he was afraid that I would expect him to become spiritual, or that I might try to use the power to control him. |
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I've been called stupid, silly, deluded, crazy, a religious fanatic, just plain weird, and inappropriate to be on a university faculty all for practicing this gift which I don't understand, but which seems to be efficacious. Fundamental Christians have told me that I'm in cahoots with the devil. One friend said she could no longer associate with me after she heard that I offered this gift to help alleviate someone's pain. In retrospect, I felt a bit like the heroine in the film Resurrection. In that film, the heroine becomes a healer after nearly perishing in a car accident. Then she is harassed by a Biblewaving preacher, shot at, and run out of town. |
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So why do I practice healing? Because it helps people in need, and because I have come to care less and less about what others think. Because I've changed I've adopted a lifestyle that does not require much money, and because the status and profession of being a university professor means less to me now than it did before. Because healing is a wondrous "calling." |
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