Tuesday
Now: A Rubber Curtain
Although I let laziness cause a lapse in my regular visits to Jon MacRae post-surgery, in the fall of 2004 I was jolted back to him. During the period where I lost my father and saw stress creeping into my job, my cancer cell activity more than doubled over a three month period.
This timing, of course, matched my coming-out-of-cabbageness-and-into-connectedness transformation. And, since Jon was the one who sent me on the vision quest that produced the first version of this book, he has been my most valued coach in this new journey.
In recent sessions with Jon we’ve talked about a serious health condition he is battling on both physical and spiritual paths. As related above, Jon still eschews any New Age labels to his therapy practice. He did recently talk about the term "shaman". His teachers advised him not to call himself that, but instead let others reach the conclusion that he has attained such a stature. While that word carries a mixed-bag of meanings to different parts of society, I think it is a fitting label because he makes mysticism come alive in his clients. Many of his clients are terminal and Jon works to ease their last days with his quiet conviction that there is a place for their spirit to go upon death. And Jon’s hands bring on a calmness for their passage.
Jon’s hands have once again beckoned visions of connectedness with nature, energy and the way to a fuller life in my mind during these sessions. The time before last I was reveling in the calm gray fog and the energy transfer from body to healing hands when the fog quickly cleared. I was standing in a rain forest facing a passageway of ancient carved stone walls filled with hieroglyphics, with creeping vines clogging the way and the walls. This vision lasted maybe three seconds. Then suddenly I was through the passageway, still on the forest floor, but I raised my head to peer at twin mountain peaks in the distance. Each peak had a sun above it casting glimmering rays tumbling down the craggy sides. This vision lasted maybe two seconds.
At the end of the session I told Jon about these visions, and as is his style, he gave a little shrug as if to say: “Why are you surprised or amazed, this is natural and this is what I do.” But, Jon did say: “That’s good. The two suns represent the head and the heart and the balance between them that you are striving to achieve.”
Walking into the most recent session with Jon, my head was fighting notions of why I needed this quest. I’m not sure why. Partly it was because I had to tear myself away from work projects that day to make the drive there. Partly it was because I was operating outside of my center during that period and was engaged in many new projects related to work, family, my non profit, and the new book I was planning with the Missouri journalism school about my classmates from 1973, including vital and vibrant friends sadly lost via a mere lack of connectedness.
When I climbed on Jon’s table, my body did undergo its every-30-second slump into deeper relaxation. But my mind swirled with the minutia of work and personal projects. In fact, I was consciously conjuring up this debris of reality. Then I had perhaps the oddest vision yet. The minutia became a curtain of snapshots representing the people and activities I was concentrating on. A rubber curtain. And pushing with great pressure against the elasticity of the rubber curtain was an unseen energy force, trying to burst the rubber membrane. But it didn’t burst. It just kept pushing with more force on the curtain. This vision lasted perhaps five seconds.
A minute or two later the session was over. As I climbed off the table, I said the Jon: “Did you feel me fighting you?” Again, a subtle shrug. Jon said: “I felt you fighting me the second you walked in today.”
I’m not sure why, but the feeling of a lighter step and calmer and deeper breathing lasted longer after this session that normal. And these physical feelings included for the first time an unusual inkling – not really a feeling – that the chest area around my heart was somehow better buffered for the future.
My next session with Jon was once again a unique experience. I was feeling bouyant and Jon mentioned this when I walked in. I told him I had been pondering a notion by a friend I had just spoken to. My friend said: "I don't think you should think of it, and call it, "my cancer". It is not yours." The notion so jolted me that I asked her to repeat this again. Had I actually been mistaken in ascribing my cancer a place on the shelf of who I am? Or, was this a foreign object brutally shoved onto that shelf, toppling some of the good stuff there? I told Jon about the conversation and he said that this was a concept worth my pondering. He said that the Buddahists believe that materialism as evidenced by the physical body closely follows the material make-up of the natural earth. And indeed, persons need not merely capitulate when uninvited foreign matter knocks on the vessel door.
I can't really call my mind meanderings "visions" from this session. Perhaps a feeling of a rush of energy from the groin up through the brain with some light flashes was vision-like. But more amazing was the briefest of moments. In this tiny niche of time I felt what I can only describe as total stillness of body and mind. I had no thoughts during this moment. None. Coming right out it, the mind picture that flashed was that I had achieved the same stillness as a polished black rock sitting at the bottom of a still creek bed. You're probably thinking: "Hey wait a minute! I can maybe buy this guy's light shows in his mind, but achieving the Zen-like state of a pebble? Come on now." OK, you're right. I may be tip toeing too far into somewhere here, so I'll retract the rock statement.
Earlier I mentioned another healer, Master Chunyi Lin who is winning converts nationwide to his variation on the ancient Chinese medical practice of Qi Gong. He calls it Spring Forest Qi Gong. In fact, the Mayo Clinic and Lin have two jointly-prepared proposals before the National Institute of Health. With my amazing experience under the hands the Jon MacRae, I'm now adding sessions with Master Lin to my regimen.
These are very different sessions, but results after just two weeks are encouraging. During these sessions I simply sit in a fairly uncomfortable chair, close my eyes and relax. Master Lin, whom I said earlier can demonstate the release of energy from the fingertips, uses his hands without touching me to unlock what he calls "energy channels" in the body. Hooey? The lack of touch certainly had me thinking this. But I have to say after my second session, I'm a believer. Sitting in that chair today, I felt the very subtle flicker of what must have been the energy channels opening all over my body. It was as if you could feel a heart valve opening with the warm passage of blood replaced by an energy flow. And tonight, five hours later? The effects are still there. ¶ 1:00 PM
This timing, of course, matched my coming-out-of-cabbageness-and-into-connectedness transformation. And, since Jon was the one who sent me on the vision quest that produced the first version of this book, he has been my most valued coach in this new journey.
In recent sessions with Jon we’ve talked about a serious health condition he is battling on both physical and spiritual paths. As related above, Jon still eschews any New Age labels to his therapy practice. He did recently talk about the term "shaman". His teachers advised him not to call himself that, but instead let others reach the conclusion that he has attained such a stature. While that word carries a mixed-bag of meanings to different parts of society, I think it is a fitting label because he makes mysticism come alive in his clients. Many of his clients are terminal and Jon works to ease their last days with his quiet conviction that there is a place for their spirit to go upon death. And Jon’s hands bring on a calmness for their passage.
Jon’s hands have once again beckoned visions of connectedness with nature, energy and the way to a fuller life in my mind during these sessions. The time before last I was reveling in the calm gray fog and the energy transfer from body to healing hands when the fog quickly cleared. I was standing in a rain forest facing a passageway of ancient carved stone walls filled with hieroglyphics, with creeping vines clogging the way and the walls. This vision lasted maybe three seconds. Then suddenly I was through the passageway, still on the forest floor, but I raised my head to peer at twin mountain peaks in the distance. Each peak had a sun above it casting glimmering rays tumbling down the craggy sides. This vision lasted maybe two seconds.
At the end of the session I told Jon about these visions, and as is his style, he gave a little shrug as if to say: “Why are you surprised or amazed, this is natural and this is what I do.” But, Jon did say: “That’s good. The two suns represent the head and the heart and the balance between them that you are striving to achieve.”
Walking into the most recent session with Jon, my head was fighting notions of why I needed this quest. I’m not sure why. Partly it was because I had to tear myself away from work projects that day to make the drive there. Partly it was because I was operating outside of my center during that period and was engaged in many new projects related to work, family, my non profit, and the new book I was planning with the Missouri journalism school about my classmates from 1973, including vital and vibrant friends sadly lost via a mere lack of connectedness.
When I climbed on Jon’s table, my body did undergo its every-30-second slump into deeper relaxation. But my mind swirled with the minutia of work and personal projects. In fact, I was consciously conjuring up this debris of reality. Then I had perhaps the oddest vision yet. The minutia became a curtain of snapshots representing the people and activities I was concentrating on. A rubber curtain. And pushing with great pressure against the elasticity of the rubber curtain was an unseen energy force, trying to burst the rubber membrane. But it didn’t burst. It just kept pushing with more force on the curtain. This vision lasted perhaps five seconds.
A minute or two later the session was over. As I climbed off the table, I said the Jon: “Did you feel me fighting you?” Again, a subtle shrug. Jon said: “I felt you fighting me the second you walked in today.”
I’m not sure why, but the feeling of a lighter step and calmer and deeper breathing lasted longer after this session that normal. And these physical feelings included for the first time an unusual inkling – not really a feeling – that the chest area around my heart was somehow better buffered for the future.
My next session with Jon was once again a unique experience. I was feeling bouyant and Jon mentioned this when I walked in. I told him I had been pondering a notion by a friend I had just spoken to. My friend said: "I don't think you should think of it, and call it, "my cancer". It is not yours." The notion so jolted me that I asked her to repeat this again. Had I actually been mistaken in ascribing my cancer a place on the shelf of who I am? Or, was this a foreign object brutally shoved onto that shelf, toppling some of the good stuff there? I told Jon about the conversation and he said that this was a concept worth my pondering. He said that the Buddahists believe that materialism as evidenced by the physical body closely follows the material make-up of the natural earth. And indeed, persons need not merely capitulate when uninvited foreign matter knocks on the vessel door.
I can't really call my mind meanderings "visions" from this session. Perhaps a feeling of a rush of energy from the groin up through the brain with some light flashes was vision-like. But more amazing was the briefest of moments. In this tiny niche of time I felt what I can only describe as total stillness of body and mind. I had no thoughts during this moment. None. Coming right out it, the mind picture that flashed was that I had achieved the same stillness as a polished black rock sitting at the bottom of a still creek bed. You're probably thinking: "Hey wait a minute! I can maybe buy this guy's light shows in his mind, but achieving the Zen-like state of a pebble? Come on now." OK, you're right. I may be tip toeing too far into somewhere here, so I'll retract the rock statement.
Earlier I mentioned another healer, Master Chunyi Lin who is winning converts nationwide to his variation on the ancient Chinese medical practice of Qi Gong. He calls it Spring Forest Qi Gong. In fact, the Mayo Clinic and Lin have two jointly-prepared proposals before the National Institute of Health. With my amazing experience under the hands the Jon MacRae, I'm now adding sessions with Master Lin to my regimen.
These are very different sessions, but results after just two weeks are encouraging. During these sessions I simply sit in a fairly uncomfortable chair, close my eyes and relax. Master Lin, whom I said earlier can demonstate the release of energy from the fingertips, uses his hands without touching me to unlock what he calls "energy channels" in the body. Hooey? The lack of touch certainly had me thinking this. But I have to say after my second session, I'm a believer. Sitting in that chair today, I felt the very subtle flicker of what must have been the energy channels opening all over my body. It was as if you could feel a heart valve opening with the warm passage of blood replaced by an energy flow. And tonight, five hours later? The effects are still there. ¶ 1:00 PM
