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I devote myself to healing and
teaching and writing about hypnotherapy. My life is
dedicated to helping others through hypnotherapy. I
got into this because hypnotherapy saved my life when
western medicine and psychotherapy hadn't helped me
and I didn't have anywhere else to turn. I was doing
fairly well, both physically and emotionally and feeling
good about my life, especially being able to help so
many people, when all of a sudden, things turned bad.
A lot of things happened to me
during the past year of 2003, tragic things which tried
my faith, and the return of personal illness that I
thought I was rid of forever.
* In January, 2003, my sweet
dog, Sweetsiepootsy had to be put down because of
cancer. Pootsie was more than just a pet. She was
my Clinical Associate and was featured on my website.
She would greet my clients at the door and usher them
into my healing room, where she would bring them a
toy to relieve their nervousness. When I put the client
into hypnosis, Pootsie would also go into hypnosis
and then when I brought the client out, Pootsie would
greet them as they awakened. She had such a warm heart
and I loved her dearly.
* In March, my sister Jean
died of a heart attack. Jean and I were always close.
She was a Nanny and loved to take care of little kids.
I took care of Jean for the last 20 years of her life
because she could not make that much in the Nanny
business. She was my connection to the past because
she and I shared so much growing up. She and I practically
raised my brother Bill because my mother was working.
* In April, my son-in-law committed
suicide. Richard was very much like me. He was depressed
from childhood, felt very insecure and, like me, linked
security to the amount of money he had. Richard was
very gifted mechanically and was a US Airways Senior
Captain. When the airline went bankrupt, Richard lost
most of his retirement, which meant so much to him,
and he killed himself.
* In May, my only son died
after surgery for an aneurysm on his heart's aortic
valve. The aneurysm was imbedded into his sternum
and when the surgeon opened his chest, he cut the
aneurysm and nothing could stop the bleeding. Charlie
loved life and was doing very well as a CPA and he
had a good job and wonderful family.
Suddenly, in three months, six
of my eight grandchildren had no father and I had lost
my sister, son and son in law. This is a lot of stress.
Going to three family funerals in three months does
not inure you to death. Instead, it brings death right
into your face, full force.
I have a past history of high
blood pressure, and a sleep problem caused by two surgeries
that left me with scar tissue which irritated the sciatic
nerve going to my feet and caused stabbing pains in
my feet at night when I tried to sleep. Hypnotherapy
and mild blood pressure medication took care of these
problems for me, and I led a normal life and did my
work. I was okay with my blood pressure and sleep during
and after the family deaths until about mid November
when my blood pressure began to rise with increasing
speed. With the approval of my allopathic physician,
I increased my blood pressure medication to compensate.
Two weeks later, I went to the hospital emergency room
because my blood pressure was up to 210/105. My blood
pressure soon reached 220/120, and I was in the hospital
ER five times between December and March. This happened
despite taking seven powerful blood pressure medications.
I continued with allopathic medicine,
psychiatry, hypnotherapy, psychological counseling,
herbal medicine and shamanic healing without any success
in reducing my blood pressure. I really thought I was
going to die from a stroke. Nothing that my doctors
suggested had any effect on my blood pressure. It was
consistently very high and I was scared that I this
was it for me. I lived with the Sword of Damocles hanging
over my head all the time and I could not get out from
under it. I began to cancel clients and students, and
prepared myself for death. How could I help others or
teach them about healing when I was about to die? I
had no idea of what to do about it.
I consulted with an Ayurvedic
associate and determined that I was full of rage over
what had happened to me during the year. This rage was
causing my high blood pressure. But, how could I translate
this knowledge into something concrete that would lower
my blood pressure? As usual, I didn't know what to do
about the problem. But, I didn't have to worry; the
Creator (Spirit) did it for me… again.
This is how Spirit works. If
we don't get the message from our life lessons, then
Spirit will keep creating bigger and bigger lessons
for us until we finally do get it. It is the hard way
to learn. All my life, I have always been cursed to
learn my lessons the hard way. Unfortunately, that's
the way I constantly do it. I never learn until it is
shoved into my face time after time. It's stupid and
really unnecessary, but there are those of us who are
too dumb to learn any other way. We, who are dumb, are
condemned to learn life's lessons the hard way.
This is how I learned. All my
life I had been afraid of death. The fear came to me
when I was in my mother's womb and I had never been
free of it. The lessons of my family's deaths were Spirit's
way of teaching me to accept death as a part of life.
But I resisted because I was so afraid, and so Spirit
drove it home to me in this very hard way by making
me face death repeatedly. The fear in me combined with
the rage I felt towards learning this hard way drove
my blood pressure up. I could not get this fear and
rage out of me to lower the internal pressure.
After Pootsie died we got a new
little dog who we named Daisy. We got her when she was
eleven weeks old. She really grew on us, especially
me. She was a little eleven-pound Shih Tzu who I had
grown to love and who loved me. She was about sixteen
months old and we had a special relationship. I loved
the way she would cock her little head and growl at
me when she wanted something. I loved the way she would
put her little head on my shoulder when I was sitting
on the floor with my back to the couch eating something.
She was very precious to me and occupied an especially
warm place in my heart.
We were remodeling parts of the
house and the workers had arrived early that morning.
Daisy, who had slept with me, was hugging me in bed.
I left the door open so she could leave whenever she
wanted. I hadn't noticed that she had left until I heard
my wife screaming. I leaped out of bed full of foreboding
and found out what had happened. Daisy had gone out
of the house through her doggie door and had been run
over and killed in the driveway by one of the workmen.
When I heard this, I felt like I exploded. I shrieked
and cried and screamed for over one hour. I could not
control the outpouring of emotion from within me. When
I finished, my blood pressure was better. Daisy, in
dying, had saved me by providing me with the safety
valve that vented my internal pressure.
So now my blood pressure is improved,
but I have no Daisy. I have replaced pressure with grief
- a hard way to resolve my blood pressure problem. Is
it really necessary that learning be so hard? I think
that Spirit works like this if we don't do what it is
necessary to correct our lives. If we just go on muddling
through life's problems without resolving them, than
this is the way we learn. I think that Spirit wants
us to use our minds to come up with our own solutions
to life's problems because that's a good way to learn.
If we don't solve our problems, then they will be solved
for us and we may not like how it is done. Remember
the old adage "Be careful what you wish for, you just
might get it".
If we just wish that the problem
is solved for us without doing it ourselves, then we
leave the problem to Spirit and it might be a hard solution.
We should not just leave the solution to our problems
to the Universe or Spirit; we should solve our problems
in the way we want them to be solved. Otherwise the
solutions may be taken out of our hands. This is very
elegant because we learn and grow by taking responsibility
even though it is much more work. But that's why we
have minds. Our minds can often lead us to a problem's
solution that is much easier and acceptable to us than
if we just leave it to Spirit. Perhaps this is Spirit's
way to get us to get off our duffs and make us learn.
Perhaps if we go the hard way
a sufficient amount, we finally say "enough" and try
to learn an easier way. It's not that Spirit wants us
to suffer; it's just that, unfortunately, many of us
only learn that way …we have to suffer enough first
and then we begin to get a little smart. If we are lucky,
this happens when we are fairly young. But then there
are those of us who don't get the message until we are
pretty far over the hill. It's the story of the jackass
who had to be hit over the head with a two-by-four to
get his attention. I am that jackass, and I am telling
Spirit now that, yes, I have finally gotten the message.
I will solve my problems. You don't have to do it for
me. Amen!
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