Rita Sewell (Now Ruth Benor Sewell)           

When I appear before the heavenly court, they will not ask me why I was not Moses.  They will ask me why I was not myself.
                                        -- Abraham Kaplan

When I was a child I spoke with the wind and conversed with trees.  I was able to move from one time dimension to another and aware of spirits and fairies being around.  My parents, other adults and children made fun of me and discouraged me from speaking about this.  By the time I was eight I had stopped myself from having these experiences as my way of resolving the conflict I felt between my innate special senses and the ways others expected and wanted me to be.  This was a poor decision, but one taken with the best understanding and coping mechanisms of a child.

  Having done this with one part of my life, it was easy to do it also with other conflicts.  My father died when I was four years old.  I asked my mother about him and was rebuked for questioning her about matters she found unpleasant or too painful to discuss.  She expected me to accept his death without grieving or learning to let go, considering I am sure that a child had little to no need or ability to grieve.  I felt guilty for upsetting my mother by speaking of these things.  This guilt was deeply imbedded in my personality.

  Death was something my family found fearful and spoke of in whispers.  My mother and others in the family were afraid of dying.  Without malicious intent they tried to inculcate their beliefs in me.  Our Christian Protestant tradition taught that the body would be resurrected but we had little teaching on the spiritual essence of our being.  The emphasis was on penance for wrongdoing.  There was little to no joy of a spiritual life or spiritual wisdom, just dogma to be accepted.  Death was not seen as a transition.  I knew and felt differently on the basis of my personal perceptions, which were clearly discouraged by the church.  Christ's example of life and connection to God in itself loudly spoke for me of life's continuity and transition.  It has taken many years to resolve these differences between the teachings of the church and my personal spirituality.

  I grew up feeling that I had no person who could relate to my repressed grief and starved spiritual awareness.  I also felt a lack in myself and underdeveloped worth and esteem.  I craved to reach and release my knowing of other dimensions and the wonderful connections with the world I knew existed.  I longed to release my potentials.
 
  To please others, I denied my own nature and feelings.  I lacked self confidence because I felt that my own views must be wrong if the adults in my world told me I was wrong.  I  worked very hard on myself to fulfill my potential, often battling against self doubts.  Despite doubts I could express myself through teaching.  At times information and knowledge which is not of my academic learning came through spontaneously.  This was also apparent in my clinical work as a nurse, manifesting itself especially with people who were dying, grieving or experiencing transitions either physically or spiritually.
 
   Autogenic Training was of a major influence in my early self discovery journey.  Meditation deepened my connections with my true self and put me in touch with my higher self.  I was the grateful recipient of healing from some gifted healers.  My own healing gifts developed.  I had personal supervision in counselling and my own psychotherapy.  All of these helped, but none was sufficient to overcome completely my self doubts and low self esteem.

  A process of self healing evolved spontaneously in my meditation.  It is this that I wish to share, with the above as background to a process which may be of help to others.

  In a grounded state, in deep meditation, I ask my higher self to be available to help me sort through the unfinished emotional business I carry around inside me.  On the screen of my mind appear painful scenes from as far back as my early childhood.  The emotions which I swallowed down at the time are released from their dark closets, often in their full intensity - as though I were experiencing these traumas in the present.  Along with these come understandings of how these buried experiences and feelings left crippling scars within me.  The love and acceptance I feel from my higher self and God both guide and nurture me through these painful experiences.  The relief at their termination is enormous.

  The process lasted for many hours.  Following the insights I felt drawn to write down all those experiences and examine the worst and best of each, to draw them into a tangible form.  It is just as important for the intellect to recover as for the heart - to rationally and cognitively resolve hurts and heal.  It was here that I came to understand my mistaken perceptions as a child of a family which did not tolerate openness to these dimensions.  What an enormous relief to forgive myself for these imaginary guilts! 

    I walked by the sea, enjoyed the sun and felt connected physically to the energies of earth and consciously to the energies of the universe.  I needed the refreshment before continuing my journey of release and resolution.

  I then returned with altered intellectual insight into a deep meditation state.  I experienced a gentle but definite alteration and increase in my energy, evolving into a glorious sense of love and well being.  The time had come to open to healing.  The energy flowed into me, warming, refreshing, stimulating me to tears, deep joy and a peace which I had never known before.

  I studied and talked of wholeness but had never known it personally before.  I experienced it completely for the first time in my life - the glory of God's healing.
 

You may quote from or reproduce these editorial clips if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1992 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com   DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com 

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