Re: When one is struggling

This is posted with the permission of my friend Dr. Harold Bob

There are a couple of comments to this excellent blog. I feel that the disabled person was very brave, in trying to be healer, in the face of not being totally able to cure his or her own pain. It is a sign of evolutionary growth to be able to look beyond ourselves and to see our connection to the universe, and thus to others, and that to heal anyone else in the universe, helps to heal ourselves.

I had a friend who I brought to a class to learn something about Reiki - she was to take a level one. She was pretty excited about it, but one of the things that happened at the class was that, in scanning one of the other students, she found that a person had a "blockage" causing back pain. (not an uncommon human problem). She placed her hands in a Reiki position, found a lot of warmth, and that, even though she could not heal all the pain, the could ease it a little bit. This really was a highlight for her of the class, that, she could actually channel energy from God, and bring even a little bit of relief to another human being. For her, the compassion was more important than how much she learned. Which is why, I think, she will gain a great deal from her ongoing studies and be an incredible healer.

We cannot heal all the pain and all the ills in the universe; we cannot end all poverty and alone save the environment - but what we can do is remember and keep in mind both the light and the darkness that exist in our world. We can remember, which is powerful, and we can emanate compassion into the world. We can care where we cannot cure, and we can pray to God (in whatever language and using whatever name we choose to call upon that which is more ascendant than ourselves) .....and in do doing, the "energy" that we are made up of "ascends" or evolves to a higher vibrational (or energy) level.

There is a Bible story about a man named Job. This particular story of the Bible is felt to be very ancient and attributed to Moses. Job is a good man, but, he has wealth and family and Satan challenges God that, if Job lost everything Job would lose his love and faith of God. And so, Job ends up losing everything that matters to him - and his friends chide Job, searching (even though Job was faultless) for what he had "done wrong" to "earn" such a terrible fate. Job and his friends could not figure out what he "had done," but, in any case, through it all, Job retained his faith and kept praying to God. In the end of the story, God rescued Job and restored him to a good life, and, his friends who looked for "what he had done wrong" were chided.

Job's faith was being tested. His colleagues' compassion was tested. Job "passed" and all his friends "failed." Whatever our circumstance, faith in God and compassion for others are the two things we can retain. There is a book, "The Lizard Cage" by Karen Connelly, that describes the horror of a poltical prisoner in solitary confinement in Burma. Within his cage, he continues to call to the Lord Buddha for help, and continues to exude compassion to his jailers even as they beat and torture him. His body can be broken and fail, but his faith and compassion overcome everything.

Hopefully we do not need to face the trials of Job or Teza (the prisoner), and that, in all our classes and all the days of our lives we can retain our faith and our compassion.

Dr. Harold Bob
Sat. May 17. 2008