Strong Woman: Unshrouding the Secrets of the Soul

by M. Sue Benford

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Nashville, TN: Source Books 2002   272pp  $17.95   6pp refs.

Sue Benford shares her personal journey of recovery from childhood cancer, which left her severely disabled. With dogged perseverance, she overcame her crippling weaknesses and physical deformities, going on to become the women’s world champion weight lifter in the 97 lb. class and breaking all records for breaking records in weight lifting.

Benford describes her spiritual awakening – through meditation, psychic counseling, research in religious texts, and guidance from spirits, angels and Christ. Milestones along the way were a series of synchronicities  – those remarkable coincidences that remind us we are part of a larger, exquisitely choreographed existence.  Three soulmate relationships ripened her spiritual development.

The wisdom in Benford’s spiritual development is inspiring. I share here a few words that synchronistically complement the editorial in this issue of IJHC.

I remember something Scott Peck had written describing the inability of people at earlier stages of spiritual development to accept those at more advanced stages.  Peck observed that, “The greatest problem of these different stages – and the biggest reason it is so important to understand them - is the sense of threat that exist between people at such different points on the spiritual journey.  To some extent, we all may be threatened by the people still in the stages we have just left, because we may not yet be sure or secure in our new identity.  But for the most part the threat goes the other way, and we particularly tend to be threatened by people in the stages ahead of us.”

I now experience first hand, this fear by a person not yet ready to be transformed or born.  A strict fundamentalist, Dan [a soul mate] was in the second trimester, or Stage Two, of his fetal soul’s development.

I found it interesting how Dan, and most other fundamentalists Christians like him, considered themselves already “born” when, in actuality, they had only truly just been “conceived.”  I wondered how they justified their unloving and unforgiving behaviors, toward themselves and toward others, if they really thought they were now born into the all-loving Christ.  Who was right - Dan or me?

Jesus explained to me the cognitive differences between developing souls in terms of grade levels in school.  He said that no grade was more worthy of loved by God than another but each did have its own set of rules and responsibilities to master along with its own level of understanding.  He said that we would not expect a first grader to understand the same things that a twelfth grader did.  Nor would we apply the same responsibilities and freedoms to the two different grades- tests would be different and privileges would be different.

He said that those in the higher grades, and the graduates, must always defer to the understanding of the lower grade levels.  To do otherwise would be “unloving” and unacceptable behavior for the higher-grade students.

In other words, Dan was not wrong; in fact, quite the contrary.  He was portraying his understanding of being a “good Christian,” according to his elementary understanding. He would have to continue his attempt to become “perfect” through following the only rules and test allotted for his grade.  Eventually, most likely in another lifetime, he would progress to new challenges, rules, and understandings.

Jesus said that is why he and the disciples spoke in parables about things visible in the physical world.  It was so every grade level would have something they could grasp onto and comprehend, regardless of the developmental capacity of “their eyes and ears” for seeing and hearing the invisible, or spiritual, truth represented by the physical world analogies.” p. 111

Benford initiated a scientific re-investigation of the shroud of Turin, alleged to have been wrapped around Christ after the crucifixion. She feels the evidence supports its authenticity.  This book deserves a thoughtful read.

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