IJHC
    Subscribe to the IJHC for FREE!

    Name
    Email
     
    Home
    Donations for IJHC
    Current Issue Preview
    IJHC Contents
    Subscribe To IJHC
    Search Site
    About IJHC
    Editorial Panel
    Links
    Appreciations
    Submissions
    Volunteer
    Contact Us
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Returning Subscribers

    Name
    Email
     
     




    Dan Benor's Wholistic Healing Blog Awesome Wholistic Healing Blog Wholistic Healing Research facebook page WHEE facebook page International Journal of Healing and Caring [IJHC] facebook page Sands of Time eZine facebook page Paintap twitter Daniel J. Benor - LinkedIn
    The International Journal for Healing and Caring
    Spirit Relationships Mind Emotions Body # #
     

    Book Reviews

    by Daniel J. Benor, MD (unless otherwise noted)
    Dowload PDF Download PDF
    Master Table of Contents Return to Master Table of Contents

    Deena Zalkind Spear. Ears of the Angels: Healing the Sounds, Heard and Unheard, of Humans and Animals


    Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc. 2002. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House 2002. 158 pp PB $12.95
     
    This is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary person. Deena Spear completed her premedical studies in neurobiology but decided not to pursue a career as a physician. She unexpectedly found herself attracted to playing the violin (with very modest success), which led to a career as a luthier -- building and repairing violins, violas and cellos with her teacher, who then became her husband.

    Being something of a perfectionist, Deena was constantly seeking ways to improve the sound of the instruments they built and repaired. Through channeled guidance from master violin makers, she learned to shave minute bits from precise points on the instruments, significantly enhancing their sound.

    Deena was also drawn to spiritual healing and graduated from the four-year Barbara Brennan School of Healing course.

    Her two interests merged when she discovered that she could tune the instruments mentally.

    Conversely, her studies of how to tune the instruments mentally enhanced her confidence and skills in offering distant healing.

    If it vibrates, it can be tuned. Everything is energy -- violins, animals, people, potato chips, thoughts, feelings, and events. They all vibrate...

    As the instruments were teaching me that I really was altering resonance with thought, I learned to recognize acoustical transformation with an inner sense -- a kind of 'felt' sound. Healing is creating more harmony of vibration in multiple dimensions of the body and the spirit. The most important listening I do is with the 'Ears of the Angels.' (p. ix)

    After honing her healing skills with the same diligence she had applied to studying to enhance the sound of violins, Deena started teaching others both of these skills. She finds that the tuning of violins gives people confidence in their abilities to influence matter at a distance, which then helps them to believe they can send healing to people from a distance.

    Deena's writing is punctuated with humorous observations and asides. Even the somewhat lengthy and detailed description of how she grew and matured in her skills of violin tuning are readable. I found these fascinating in the sharing of lessons channeled by several gifted intuitives -- both for the instrument repairs and then for the healing.

    The telepaths are like people who see color in a world where 'normal' people see only black and white (and think that is all there is), or who hear in a world where 'normal' people are deaf (and believe only in silence). When those with extra senses try to explain to 'normal' people about the existence of color and sound they are sometimes considered two players short of a duet, or turned into material for science fiction entertainment. Still, it beats the old routine of burning at the stake." (p. 30)

    Deena shares generously from her personal healing lessons.

    It was hard enough to know he was dying, but visiting him for hours each day in the hospital during his last two months was painful beyond words. Sometimes doing everything medical science can do just to know everything that could be done has been done is not necessarily the wisest choice. The toll in human suffering can be too high. In my father's case, it was. (p. 50)

    A time of deep despair can create personal growth that we have otherwise been unable to achieve. The struggles of daily life may not be enough to break through those emotional blocks that keep us from reaching our potential. For some people, the change comes in response to a debilitating or life-threatening condition caused by an accident or illness. It may result from the process of grieving the loss of a loved one and eventually healing from the trauma of separation. I often hear or read about life-renewing spiritual development that was brought about by physical or emotional struggle. These events were horrible to live through, but many are aware that they would not have made the changes without the wakeup call. (p. 47)

    Deena also presents in this refreshing book her constant growth and progress in refining her tuning and healing skills.

    Over several years, as I moved from energy tuning individual points on a violin's ribs, which replicated the physical scraping process, to working with an entire violin at once, a change of beliefs was required. In order to progress, I had to rethink what was in the realm of possibility for anyone to accomplish, and what I, as a former self-declared psychic brick, could manage... If you think you can do something that you cannot, the belief itself prevents you from accomplishing the task, either because you never try it in the first place or because you have block yourself by your belief. (p. 56-57)

    Deena also has the humility to offer her healing with no expectations of change in her human and animal healees.

    People or animals who have cancer, or an illness, have their own agendas. The outcomes of these healings are less a reflection of my work and more an indication about choices the client is making. Sometimes a healer or intuitive can help a client understand the thoughts behind a condition in order to help the client make a different choice. (p. 101)

    Having no expectations enables us to love those who seem to unlovable, no matter what they have done. They need it. It enables us to love ourselves. We need it. We are much more than our achievements and our misachievements... In the end, healing is not some impersonal technique of running energy. What heals is love. Our essence is love, and it is who we really are. The rest is just insanity, but it's only temporary. (p. 158)

    Rarely do I find a book like this that is both rich in innovative lessons, reaffirming of healing wisdom and highly readable. I warmly recommend this book as being all of these.

    Deena Zalkind Spear. Ears of the Angels: Healing the Sounds, Heard and Unheard, of Humans and Animals, Ithaca, NY: Singing Woods Press 2002. 215 pp HB $29.95.

    The hardback edition, available only through http://www.singingwoods.org/books.html, contains an additional chapter, "Working in the World of Matter: A violinmaker's acoustics manual with a subtle slide toward the 4th dimension."

    See article by Deena Zalkin Spear in IJHC, January, 2004.


    Janis Amatuzio, MD. Forever Ours: A Forensic Pathologist's Perspective on Immortality and Living -- A Collection of Real-Life Stories

    Minneapolis, MN: Midwest Forensic Pathology, P.A., 3960 Coon Rapid Blvd., LL21, Coon Rapids, MN 55433 www.foreverours.com 203 pp. $19.95

    This is an amazing, heartwarming, spiritual book written by a pathologist who has a big heart and truly cares for the families of people who have died under difficult or questionable circumstances and required her to perform an autopsy.

    A wonderful series of stories is shared, much in the style of Chicken Soup for the Soul, each speaking for itself of the inspiration and hope brought by pre-death visions and bereavement apparitions.

    Here is a particularly poignant tale:

    The wife of a man who died suddenly due to unusual cardiac problems was sorely distressed by lengthy delays in obtaining the death certificate, due to pathology consultations on the tumor that had cause d the death.

    "Julie continued, 'I was exhausted, numbly making funeral arrangements. The third night when I got back in out bed, I started crying all over again. I'd read for him and he wasn't there. I think I finally fell asleep around 3:00 AM. At about 4:00 AM I was awakened by the sound of footsteps in the hall. I sat up in bed, listening ... thinking it might be my son. I had closed out bedroom door so that my sobbing wouldn't wake up the children. Doctor, the next thing that happened was the most amazing thing that has ever happened in my life.' She paused and I waited 'It was Randy, those were his footsteps. I saw him walk right through our bedroom door. It was dark. I don't even have a nightlight, and I could see him clearly; he just glowed! He had a wonderful smile on his face and walked right up to bed. I couldn't believe my eyes! I was shocked! We talked for a long time. He told me what to do with our children and about their future plans. We talked about the finances and the property that I couldn't sell until I had that damn death certificate!' (I now began to understand the urgency and the anger over the death certificate.) 'But that was not all. I felt so calm, so reassured, so okay in his presence, for the first time in almost 4 days. I told him I didn't want him to leave and what he said then will last me a lifetime. I remember that while we were visiting, he sat on the bed next to me and had his hand on my shoulder. He wiped the tears from my eyes and told me that our love would be forever--that whenever I needed him to just think of him and he would come rushing to my side. He told me that I would feel his presence and love in my life many time and in many way and that he would be there to help our children throughout their own lives. I can't even put it all in words, Doctor. There are no words to describe the comfort that I felt... but there is more.

    "'When we finished talking, I felt overwhelmed and wrapped up in his love. As I said, we had never slept apart and always slept wrapped together like spoons. As far fetched as this sounds, Randy then laid down in the bed beside me and wrapped his arms around me.' Her voice shaking a little, she added, 'I felt the weight of his body and the warmth of it. I slept soundly and contentedly for the first time in 3 days.'

    "'My, my, what a marvelous experience!' I said.

    "'Yes, when I awakened the next morning, I was overwhelmed and, most of all, comforted. I could feel that he was gone, but when I think of him now, I feel a warmth around my back and neck. I know that is his love.'

    "She paused. 'I still miss him so much though, this is so hard to get used to,' she sighed. 'I broke down and cried in front of the bananas at the grocery store last week. Randy just loved bananas. But by the time I got to the checkout line, I could feel the heat on my neck and I had to smile. I bought the bananas in spite of myself.' We both laughed." (p. 117-119)

    This is a book that can transform your views and understandings about death and the hereafter. It is also a confirmation that there are physicians out there with big hearts. 


    Louis E. LaGrand, PhD. Messages and Miracles: Extraordinary Experiences of the Bereaved

    St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn 1999 311 pp. $11.95 Glossary
    6 pp Recommended reading, bibliography

    In a question and answer format, Louis LaGrand, a grief counselor and Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York, provides a wealth of information about bereavement apparitions.

    Many and varied are the ways in which the living on earth and the living in spirit dimensions can communicate. LaGrand's collection of stories is both engaging and informative.
      
    Points the reviewer had not seen elsewhere:
    The ancient Christian doctrine of communion of saints states that the living and the souls of the deceased are connected through all eternity. Some Anglican communities and all Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communities, believe a spiritual union exists in which intercessory prayer can take place. Thus the living can pray to their deceased loved ones (who are saints if they are in heaven) to intercede to God for them... (p. 105)
    Direct after death communications (ADCs) may occur as auditory, visual, tactile, dream, intuitive, olfactory and out-of-body perceptions by a living person.
      
    Indirect ADCs may include symbolic, third-party, fourth-party, bird and animal, olfactory and dream communications. As an example, a case is described in which Gina's mother gave her an African violet as a gift, at a time when her mother was ill and not expected to live much longer. Gina had not been successful in keeping similar gifts of her mother's prized African violets alive previously, and tended this one carefully. Its flowers died, but it survived several months, and was still alive when her mother passed on. Two weeks later, blooms suddenly appeared one day -- without the prior development of the usual buds. Gina took this as a sign of her mother's communicating that all was well with her in the spirit world. (p. 69)

    LaGrand answers a question, "I have had several dreams of my father since he died a year ago. How can I decide if any of them are ADCs?" with the following observations:
    1. Dream Clarity. ADC dreams are most often described by dreamers as being bright and vivid, not like their usual dreams. .. The entire dream scene is alive and rich with information.
      
    2. Specific Message. In most cases, the message or messages from the dream are specific and there is no doubt about content or meaning... Sometimes these messages are inferred by nonverbal signs or mind to mind (telepathic) communication.

    3. Strong Feelings. Feelings and emotions are most important indicators of authenticity. .. It is not unusual for the dreamer to wake up and feel a previously unknown sensation of deep inner peace and freedom that lasts for a long period of time...
    This is and excellent introductory book that explores and explains a helpful spectrum of spirit awareness experiences.


    Carol Look. How To Lose Weight With Energy Therapy

    Self-published 97pp
    $34 (including shipping)


    Carol Look. Quit Smoking Now With Energy Therapy, Self-published 71pp
    $29 (including shipping)

      
      
    Carol Look is gifted with common sense and a clarity of presentation which make her writing highly readable and helpfully informative. In these manuals she describes Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and how it can be used for self-healing of addictions to food and cigarettes.

    EFT was developed by Gary Craig, who has done more than anyone else to popularize these Meridian Based Therapies (also known as Energy Psychology). They are potent, rapidly effective interventions for dealing with anxieties, phobias, current and residual emotional traumas, physical pains, allergies and more.
      
    Where many approaches to addictions and self-defeating habits focus on dieting and restraint, Look suggests ways in which we can identify underlying contributing causes that keep us locked into these negative patterns.
      
    The beauty of EFT is that it provides a tool for transforming such patterns rapidly and permanently. It also provides relief for cravings and withdrawal symptoms.
      
    These manuals are intended for caregivers who want to hone their therapeutic tools. They also provide guidance for careseekers who might want some general maps for ways to deal with their issues, and might be introductions to self-healing. The aid of a therapist is still advisable, as it is often difficult to identify our limiting beliefs when we are caught up in them.
      
    Here is a sample of the helpful approaches Look provides:
    When the anticipated pain of changing exceeds the actual pain of staying the same, clients will not have sufficient motivation to change. Competing motives and inhibiting fears operate on unconscious as well as conscious levels. When one of my new clients first contacted me for weight loss, I asked her to assess her level of motivation on the SUD's scale. She reluctantly admitted it was only a 3. We tapped until it moved up to an 8 and the proceeded with treating her limiting beliefs.
      
    It should come as no surprise that Energy Therapy techniques are incredibly effective for treating low motivation. I have successfully used some of the following statements to address a client's state of mind regarding motivation:
      
    "'Even though I feel too lazy to start losing weight ...'
      
    "'Even though I don't want to put in the time and effort...'
      
    "'Even thought I resent having to work at it...'
      
    "'Even though it will probably be a waste of time to start a diet now...'
      
    "'Even though I feel paralyzed by the problem and don't want to start...'
      
    "'Even though I don't really want it badly enough...'
      
    "'Even though it doesn't seem worth the effort...'
      
    "'Even though my head isn't in the right place...'
      
    A clinician I supervised described these Setup phrases excuses. No matter how the clinician or client categorizes them, they will inhibit the client from making any headway whatsoever. I tap on any and all excises, judgements, or rationalizations that are blocking progress.
    How to Lose Weight with Energy Therapy, p. 48
    Several other approaches are also mentioned, including meditation and journaling.

    The reviewer has worked with many people who struggle with various addictions, bad habits and negative beliefs about themselves. EFT and related therapies have transformed my psychotherapy practice and my personal life. Prior to my introduction to these energy therapies, lack of motivation was often a major obstacle to treatment. Look points out a variety of self-defeating statements that can be addressed through EFT, so that lack of motivation can be partialized and addressed step by step with EFT.
      
    These refreshing applications and adaptations of EFT can be used for dealing with addictions of all sorts, in addition to eating and smoking.
      
    The Meridian Based Therapies (MBTs) are vastly under-utilized in the field of addictions therapies. I have seen them help even with severe cravings. A 14 year-old teenager came to me after two weeks of being clean, following a year's addiction to heroin. She was crawling out of her skin with craving, having difficulty sleeping, and unable to focus her mind constructively. WHEE (a related MBT) was of enormous help to her in reducing her cravings and in dealing with painful emotions, residuals of her year's struggle to stop her addiction.
      
    I highly recommend Look's manuals for anyone wanting to learn EFT for addictions.
      
    (See also an article by Carol Look in this issue of IJHC.)


    Machaelle Small Wright. Co-Creative Science: A Revolution In Science Providing Real Solutions For Today's Health & Environment

    Warrenton, VA: Perelandra, Ltd 1997.

    This excellent book details ways in which we can invite nature spirits to work with us in creating a garden. The garden can be a plot of land with vegetables and flowers, or it can be a project for growing better relationships or for growing in our own inner wisdom.
      
    Setting up a co-creative science class with nature.
    In Co-creative science, the scientist acknowledges that there is an inherent intelligence within all of nature, builds a communication bridge that allows him to access that intelligence, and then asks nature directly to explain and provide experiential insight to him so that he may understand 'from the horses mouth' (so to speak) how something works. In co-creative science, nature becomes a fully operational, functioning, conscious partner with the scientist. Together they create a team, with each member of the team providing specific and different information that is needed for understanding and solving a defined problem. (p. 1)
    Everyone's class will be individually designed by and for that person.
    When you are working directly in partnership with nature, you cannot simply announce, "Let's put in a garden!" and expect that you will get any information back from nature regarding the garden. You must supply the definition, direction and purpose of this garden. In other words, you must supply the evolution dynamic within the i/e balance, and you are the only one who can do that. Nature will not do your job for you. It will only supply the evolution dynamic for objects that fall within its "natural" domain: plants, rocks, deer, lightning, etc. (p.17-18)
    The average class takes 4 years.

    You should decide how much time each week you will spend on this and set a time period as a study "term." 4-6 months is a comfortable time in which to see progress on a project.
      
    Nature can sort out its lessons in a more structured and orderly way when you let them know the parameters for your availability.
      
    1. Verbally state your intention to nature. Out loud is best.
      
    e.g. "I would like to open a co-creative science classroom with myself as the student and nature intelligence as my teacher. My intent is to be educated and trained as a co-creative scientist. I am ready to learn."
      
    2. Select your classroom. This can be anything that provides structure for action. "Pick something that you can do alone, and remember that whatever you choose will become a classroom and you will need to hand over all the activity, timing and rhythms to your teacher. So, don't choose something you are not willing to release control of and don't pick something that is life-threatening either to yourself or anyone else. Your classroom has to remain personal for the amount of time you and nature are using it..."
      
    3. Read the Perelandra materials, especially the 2 workbooks.
      
    Keep detailed notes, a log for each day. Be as complete as possible. Keep notes organized, so you can review them periodically.
      
    This is an excellent self-help book, enriched by the author's sharing of her own path in opening to intuitive and spiritual awarenesses and learning to be a co-creative gardener.
      


    Joellen Koerner. Mother, Heal My Self: An Intergenerational Healing Journey Between Two Worlds

    Santa Rosa, CA: Crestport 2003. 211pp 3pp Resources $14.95

      
    This is an extraordinary book about a conventional nurse executive who is led by her work, her family and her destiny to explore Native American healing to heal her daughter and her family traditions of women who face health challenges around childbirth.
      
    Joellen Koerner is from a Mennonite family with a history of traumas around birth in five generations. Her great great grandmother died on board a ship bound for America shortly after childbirth. Ten days after Koerner's mother's birth, her mother (Koerner's grandmother) died of blood poisoning. Koerner had two miscarriages prior to birthing twins.
      
    In the course of her work in the Sioux Valley Hospital in South Dakota, she met and befriended Wanigi Waci (Spirit Dancer), a Native American healer of the Lakota Sioux who was ministering to patients served by her hospital. This meeting was significant to Koerner, as it rekindled roots of respectful and helpful cross-cultural exchanges from earlier generations in her Mennonite community.
      
    Wanigi Waci offered classes to the hospital staff in cultural sensitivity, to help the conventional medical personnel appreciate the traditional ways of healing of his people.
      
    Koerner's daughter, Kristi, nearly died in birthing her first child, whose head did not engage in the birth canal, requiring an emergency caesarian section after a forceps delivery failed. Her son nearly died of an infection due to the prolonged labor. He had repeated hospitalizations for respiratory infections during his first six months. Kristi's second pregnancy was marked by diabetes, hypertension, toxemia and preeclampsia. In both childbirths, Wanigi Waci was present, unbidden, and enormously helpful with his Native American healing treatments.

    Koerner went on to study and participate in the healing ceremonies of the Sioux. She shares from her many lessons of the heart and spirit, in a book that is hard to put down.
      
    Koerner is clearly gifted as a nurse and as a teacher of the essence of nursing. She shares many insights around conventional and Native American healing.
    ...the secret gift of nursing: The chance to bear witness to people in crisis sorting through their lives, offering safety and unconditional regard as they bring completion to issues unresolved, or not understood. The person who learned most in the process was always myself. (p. 20)

    There is an inner reality which is as surely objective as any outer one. Don't go outside yourself, return into yourself. The dwellings place of truth lies in the inner man. And if you discover your own nature subject to change, then go beyond that nature; it is the reasoning soul which you go beyond. Press on, there fore, toward the source from which the light of reason itself is kindled. (p. 185)
      
    While life and all its vagaries are interesting, it is the growth of the Soul that is the essence of our purpose for gracing the Earth.(p.129)
    Koerner's integrity as a healer who walks her talk is evident in the stories she shares about her healing journeys. What she writes of others is also true of herself:
    ...wisdom is the benediction on a life well lived. (p. 60.)
    Hopefully, Koerner's pioneering work with Wanigi Waci will open more nurses and hospitals to healing collaborations and spiritual lessons.
      


    John Horgan. Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border between Science and Spirituality

    New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company 2003. 292pp Notes, references 34pp $25.00

      
    This is a masterful discussion of scientific perspectives on spirituality, supplemented with a series of interviews with many of today's prominent (mostly US) proponents of various views on mysticism and spirituality. Horgan is a skeptical mystic whose personal struggles with a wish to find a graspable truth is tempered by his theodicy -- a difficulty in accepting that there could be a God who would allow the degrees of evil, suffering and pain that have been experienced in the world.
      
    Horgan considers the perennial philosophy through an interview with Houston Smith, supplemented by Smith's writings and those of William James. Smith glories in the wisdom teachings of diverse traditions. Horgan finds Smith
    ...too forgiving of religions' faults and contradictions. His affection for religions is of course one of his most appealing traits. He does not merely tolerate the diverse faiths of the world; he embraces them in all their multifarious glory... (p. 22)
      
    All these contradictions and distinctions, Smith asserts, dissolve within the supreme mystical vision, which reveals a reality that transcends all worldly categories of experience and description. This vision is ineffable, or apophatic, a theological term that means devoid of any specifiable content. The apophatic experience "goes deeper noetically and philosophically into the human apprehension of the deepest reality," Smith told me. (p. 22-23)
    While Smith is wonderful at summarizing the views of diverse mystics and spiritual traditions, his greatest personal connection with the mystical came through entheogenic (mind altering drug) experiences. This is a spiritual path that Horgan is comfortable with, and explores through several other explorers in psychedelics.
      
    The postmodernists explore spiritual awarenesses and explanations as expressions of their cultural contexts.
    ... More radical theorists assert that all texts, even scientific ones, are not really about the world but only other texts. Language is ultimately a self-referential, hermetically sealed system, which reality always eludes. (p. 37)
    Horgan's interview with Steven Katz a champion of postmodernism, is instructive in understanding the elusiveness of spiritual truths. Katz dismisses personal experiences as evidence for a mystical reality because all he can relate to are the descriptions of others about their mystical experiences -- words that are derived from their expectations and cultural contexts. Katz comes up short in responding to Horgan's inquiry about his personal mystical experiences -- minimizing this as of any real value.
      
    Space does not permit detailed analyses of Horgan's enlightening interviews with Ken Wilber, one of the internationally acknowledged experts on Buddhist meditation and mysticism, Susan Blackmore, a skeptical UK parapsychologist; nor of many others interviewed; James Austin, a Zen Buddhist neurologist; Stanislav Grof (researcher), Terence McKenna (psychedelic author) and other explorers of entheogenic effects; and neurotheologist Andrew Newberg, who has mapped areas of the brain that become active during deep meditation.
      
    Horgan's own spiritual search is a linking thread in his presentation, adding a pleasant tension to his thesis.
    I do not believe in miracles, at least not defined in the conventional religious manner as divine disruptions of the natural order. But if a miracle is defines as an infinitely improbable phenomenon, then our existence is a miracle, which no theory natural or supernatural will ever explain. (p.220)
      
    The problem is that any truth or anti-truth, no matter how initially revelatory and awe-inspiring, sooner or later turned into garbage that occludes our vision of the living world. Ludwig Wittgenstein had this problem in mind when he described his philosophy as a ladder that we should 'throw away' after we have climbed it. At its best, art -- by which I mean poetry, literature, music, movies, painting, sculpture -- works in this manner. Art, the lie that tells the truth, is intrinsically ironic. Like Wittgenstein's ladder, it helps us get to another level and then falls away. What better way to approach the mystical, the truth that cannot be told?' (p. 189)

    Joseph Campbell made this point in the Masks of God (p. 3): 'Prayers and chants, images, temples, gods, sages, definitions, and cosmologies are but ferries to a shore of experience beyond the categories of thought, to be abandoned on arrival.' Campbell suggested that poetry is the best medium for spiritual expression. When poets take their own imagery too literally, Campbell warned, they degenerate into prophets -- or, worst of all, priests, tenders of dogma (Campbell, p. 518-519; Horgan p. 224)
      
    ...any spiritual practice or path -- and particularly those emphasizing altered states -- can become an end in itself, which leads us away from reality rather than toward it. (p. 226) h
    I won't give away the ending to Horgan's search for the ultimate truth.
      
    This is an excellent consideration of an edifying spectrum of views, supported by well-researched notes and references, very worth a thoughtful and deliberate read.
      
    Reference: Campbell Joseph. The Masks of God, New York: Penguin 1978, p. 3.


    Peggy O'Neill with Illustrations by Denise Freeman. Little Squarehead

    Bellevue, WA: Illumination Arts 2001 $15.95

    Pleasant illustrations. Suitable for 4-7 year-olds.

    A simple tale of learning heart-centeredness that helps to overcome a physical distinctiveness that was inviting teasing and rejection by peers.

    While the story is a little facile, suggesting that a positive attitude will overcome all obstacles, its basic message is a healthy one, as in all of the books published by Illumination Arts.




    Vision Thang. John of God: Visiting Joao de Deus at Casa de Dom Inacio, Abadiania, Goias, Brasil

    Video by Mark Thomas, 2002. $20 + P&H

    Vision Thang Pty Limited, PO Box 2007, Clovelly NSW 2031 Australia www.visionthang.tv mvt@visionthang.tv 

    Shot on location, this video takes the viewer through the steps in a visit with John of God, who is reportedly a healer able to help with many problems.

    While westerners are impressed with the psychic surgery, the spiritual atmosphere appears to be the most potent aspect of the healings.

    This is an informative video for a prospective visitor, rather than a documentary or scientific inquiry.



    Master Table of Contents Return to Master Table of Contents

    TERMS OF USE

    The International Journal of Healing and Caring On Line is distributed electronically as an open access journal, available at no charge. You may choose to print your downloaded copy of this article or any other article for relaxed reading.

    We encourage you to share this article with friends and colleagues.

    The International Journal of Healing and Caring - On Line
    P.O. Box 76, Bellmawr, NJ 08099
    Phone (609) 714-1885   Fax (519) 265-0746
    Email: center@ijhc.org   Website: http://www.ijhc.org
    Copyright © 2001 - 2011 IJHC. All rights reserved.
    DISCLAIMER: http://www.wholistichealingresearch.com/disclaimer.html


    We hope you enjoyed the article and welcome your comments and feedback in our new Forum.

    If this article has spoken to you and has been helpful, we would appreciate your support by:

    1. Making a donation to the IJHC
    2. Forwarding this article to others who might be interested
    The IJHC is supported through donations.

    Thank you for your help in making it possible to publish the healing articles in the International Journal of Healing and Caring on line.

    Blessings

    Dan

     
     
    Join the WHP Affiliate Program | Existing Affiliate Login
    Service Agreement | Privacy Policy | Download Agreement | DISCLAIMER