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beckyboop922

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Hello I am new here and have been lurking since yesterday, I like this place there appears to be many lovely, warm, intelligent and amusing people here so hello to you all.

I am posting to ask your thoughts on why you think any form of faith healing would work on one person and not on another?

I have recently been intorduced to Christian Science by a dear friend who is a life long member of the chruch oc christ, scientist. I am surprised at how open I have become to this because the words God, Jesus and bible have never figured in my life and if I am honest they have scared me, the few religious people I have known throughout my life have been bad people.
My background is in spiritualism, I have the 'gift' of claisentience, empathy and psychometry, although I regard all three as anything but a gift I hate it and spend a great deal of my life researching how to get rid of it.
I am a qualified counsellor of Rogerian psychotherapy, I love crystal healing and the angels, I know I have lived many times before and remember living in a time of magic, sourcery etc and I am facinated with all things metaphysical.

I have had some amazing experiences of healing with Christian Science despite being a total novice, I know these healings are real one example is I live in southern Spain (I am from UK) the climate here is warm all year round and the other day I was bit several times on my chest by something yukky, the bites turned into lumps and itched, the more I scratched the more sore they became so I decided to pray the way Christian Scientist's do and low and behold ten minuted later they had gone, not just the bites, but the redness and any sign of itching.
Last night I decided to do an internet search relating to critism's of Christian Science and there are thousands of testimonies about the staggering amount of Christian Scientist's who's children have died due to them believeing that their faith would heal their child and didn't.
Now I know there is a world of difference between a few nasty insect bites and a possibily terminally ill child but a healing is a healing........urrmm I think.

There are many aspect of Christian Science I am not happy with (even before I read the critism's) such as not being 'allowed' to belive in spirits, other energies etc, I am not keen to be tied down to something that tells me what I can and can't believe in especially when I know what I have seen and experienced.

I am glad I was introduced to it though, I feel like it has helped me find God and Jesus and that can't be a bad thing, but I can't ever see myself becoming a full member or taking my studies any further despite the healing I have recieved which I think is a wonderful thing, but I would love to hear your thoughts on these healings and why they worked for me, a total beginner, but alledgedly not for the children of life longer believers.

Love and Angel Hugs

Rebecca xx
 
Hi and welcome to CR :)

Just saying hello, I don't have a response to your question I'm afraid.

I notice that you are interested in crystals and angels. My partner is too. I thought she'd met someone called Doreen Virtue-Herself; but finally realised she was just impressed. :D

Snoopy.
 
beckyboop...Welcome to CR and I hope that your stay here is beneficial.

The longer that you participate here the more you'll recognize that this place is full of people who agree with Joseph Campbell's prime directive, "follow your bliss".

We also have some orthodox believers and fundamentalists participating, but I view the mix here to be a healthy one since most people seem to respect each others' beliefs and don't usually allow the disagreements to become personalized.

My impression is that you are like most of us here, seriously exploring your spiritual nature and are seeking to try and fit in somewhere. Some of us never desire to fit in and be labeled as this or that, and that's okay also.
I suggest that you embrace who you are on a daily basis and also be open to change and adjustment. From you've said, it seems that you're already living your life in that way.

Embrace what you are spiritually and try not to think in terms of "either-or" but always try and embrace the concept of "both-and". When you can effectively do that, much of your turmoil may fade away if I'm not mistaken.

flow....:)
 
Hello Snoopy thank you for your welcome and reply, I love Doreen Virtue's work.
Hi Flow thank you for taking the time to reply, your words are the same as what I have been thinking, myself all day which is 'both-and' I don't want to lable myself,

Angel Hugs to you both

Rebecca X
 
Hi, Rebecca, and welcome to the Forum. you said,
"I am a qualified counsellor of Rogerian psychotherapy...."​

--> I am a fan of Rogerian psychotherapy, although I am more attracted to Gestalt psychotherapy.
"why you think any form of faith healing would work on one person and not on another?"​

--> I had a friend who was a great psychic. She said that there were some people she just could not read, as they had put up such a strong psychic defense that she could not get through. It would seem such people would be less responsive to psychic healing.
"...the words God, Jesus and bible have never figured in my life and if I am honest they have scared me, the few religious people I have known throughout my life have been bad people."​

--> I have had the exact same experiences. Been there, done that. I invite you to explore deep mystical religious experiences that do not refer to those three words.
"...I regard all three as anything but a gift I hate it and spend a great deal of my life researching how to get rid of it."​

--> I would love to be psychic, but I am not. You, on the other hand, are just the opposite. (Isn't it bizarre how things sometimes work out...?) Anyway, I have come across psychics before, who hated it. The way I see it, suffering is suffering, no matter to the sufferer is. I wish there was something I could do to help you with your problem.
"...not being 'allowed' to belive in spirits, other energies etc, I am not keen to be tied down to something that tells me what I can and can't believe in especially when I know what I have seen and experienced."​

--> Then you may wish to be eclectic. Feel free to pick and choose what you believe. (I do not let anyone tell me what to believe.) Can you attend their services without becoming an official member?
"...I would love to hear your thoughts on these healings and why they worked for me, a total beginner, but alledgedly not for the children of life longer believers."​
--> Karma is karma. Sometimes it is their karma to let us help them stop suffering. At other times, it is their karma to suffer, and we are not allowed to interfere. Oftentimes we cannot tell which type of karma it is. All we can do is try to help out, and see how it goes.
 
Hi, Rebecca, and welcome to CR!

I sympathize with you about disliking your abilities. I'm constantly thankful I am not a medium. That would scare me. Empathy is bad enough. I'm grateful that I can sense people's pain and sometimes help, but then there is a lot that is beyond my capacity to help/heal and then I just feel the pain/suffering without being able to assist. I can sense energies in places and sometimes nature spirits, but I don't routinely walk with the spirits, if you know what I mean. I'm glad- I prefer the silence most of the time. :eek:

As for faith healing, I have a few ideas but they are only based on my hunches and should be taken as a guess.

I consider myself a Christian (although some who are fundamentalist or orthodox might say I was not) and I am a Druid. I think that most intercessory prayer, including faith healing, is actually a concentration of the humans' will/focus that makes the change, not forcing the hand of God. That said, I think it is a gift from God that people have this capability to focus their will and energy to effect healing.

I know from my own experience with healing animals and people that I can focus any number of energies to accomplish it. I can focus my own life energy, but that is very draining and unpleasant. Usually, I focus the energy of earth and sky, uniting them in myself and then pushing them outward into the whoever I am healing while focusing my mind. This seems to create the best result for me. But it could be something different for others.

As for those who are not (or cannot) be healed... I don't think it has anything to do with faith. There have been people who were healed who were atheists or didn't even know others were praying or meditating for them. There are others who are on everyone's prayer lists for a long time, and succumb to illness. I think there are just times when it is part of the Divine Plan that people suffer through these natural processes and die. The times I have suffered have often brought me new spiritual insight and strengthened my relationship with God. And death itself brings new life, freedom from this world and passage into the next. While we might see it as bad right now, it may be that it is what God knows that individual needs for spiritual progress.

That said, I also do not discount that these parents, irresponsibly in my opinion, do not provide modern medicine to their children. While healing through faith or energy work is one good option, a focus on this at the expense of trying out another gift God gave us for healing- our logic and reason, leading to science and modern medicine- is to me, irrational and irresponsible. Sometimes the healer works in energy. Sometimes the healer works in surgery. It is easy, in my experience, to heal little things that many people take medicine for: headaches, arthritis, traumas such as sprains and strains, etc. It is very difficult to heal something like cancer with only energy work. Oh, I'm sure it occasionally happens, but the patient's odds are no doubt much, much better if they consult with doctors- holistic, natural, Chinese, western modern, whatever. I believe God works in all these people, and it's our reponsibility to find what will cure us.

I don't have kids, but I have pets that I love dearly. I do energy work with them when they have problems, but if they had something massively wrong, I cannot imagine withholding other options in healing them- modern veterinary medicine included. Sure, we shouldn't be popping pills for everything and it seems to do more harm than good. But if a kid is born with a heart defect, praying about it and/or doing energy work is highly unlikely to fix it. The kid needs a surgeon and the benefits of a hospital. In my experience, healings are not all the same. It takes considerably more energy, time, and maybe skill on the part of the practitioner to heal more serious mental and physical problems than it does mild ones.

My guess is that since you already have quite a bit of psychic ability, you had an easier time healing yourself than most people initially would. And you were also dealing with a mild and easy-to-heal condition. I find inflammatory and pain conditions among the easiest to heal. The more a condition depends on serious, progressive problems that have their own life (bacteria, viruses, cancer cells), the more difficult it becomes. Myself, I can't heal anything serious except alleviating certain mental illnesses in people (but again, this is usually not an external cause, but an imbalance in the body/brain). Not that I'm special. LOL Just saying, from my experience, healing the really bad stuff (cancer, AIDS, etc.) is really hard and I find I can only alleviate symptoms (pain, nauseau, etc.). I can take beings who are dying and push energy into them and it will make them temporarily better, but it isn't going to cure them. They get worse after a little while, and at that point, you wonder if you are prolonging suffering and the inevitable just as badly as modern medicine would. I think there's a big lesson in learning when to treat beings and when to let them go.

There is no easy answer to this question, in my opinion. But I put forth that sometimes it is just a being's "time to go." Sometimes, there is a lesson for the being in suffering. The rest of the time, you never know whose gift God might want to use to heal-- so I say use them all: faith healing or energy work, natural and holistic medicine, western medicine. I say use one's discernment and try the least invasive methods first (if there is time), but don't irrationally cling to faith at the expense of a life that could be saved through modern medicine. Reason and science are gifts from God, too.

Blessings,
Kim/Path
 
Thank you Nick and Kim for your lovely replies, I do intend to reply in more detail, but I am a bit reluctant to try until I get a reply from the moderators. I did reply, at length, to your replies last night and when I clicked 'post quick reply' a message came up saying I did not have permission to post I should refresh the page and log in again, I am a technophobe so I do not know what is meant by 'refresh the page' and I was already logged in!

Love and Angel Hugs

Rebecca XXXXXXX
 
beckyboop922 said:
when I clicked 'post quick reply' a message came up saying I did not have permission to post I should refresh the page and log in again, I am a technophobe so I do not know what is meant by 'refresh the page' and I was already logged in!
Click to expand...

Yes, you were just timed out. If you don't interact for ten minutes or so your session ends and you have to log back in, that's all. It's a bit of a pain actually, but I think Brian is considering extending thee time limit.

It must be great to do any sort of healing. I wonder how you got into it? How did you discover you could do it? As for your itchy skin, it could always have a "rational" explanation: it could have been stress-related, it could have been a mild allergy, maybe all it needed was for you to stop scratching for five minutes. I don't know.

I wouldn't get too fixated on the healing though all the same. It's one thing if it comes out of compassion for people, it's another thing when it becomes a sort of entertainment. Not that I'm suggesting that's what you do, of course. But I think some religious groups do that. I've had some contact with spiritualism and there were some, not all, whose motives were unclear.

Hope you stick around this forum.

Cliff
 
Rebecca,

I am glad to hear that you were able to figure out your technical problem. One of the biggest problems we have is exactly what happened to you: A person will write a long post, and then try to post it. Sometimes, it just will not post. The long post is then lost. (I have had this happen to me more than once.) Solution: Write the long post, copy it into a word-processing program, save it there, then try to post it. If it disappears, you can then easily copy it back from the word-processing document back into the Forum's Reply to Post window. This happens a lot. Whenever I write a long post, I always copy it into a word-processing program first.

I am very computer-friendly. (I am Microsoft-certified.) There are several other people here at this Forum who are also very computer-friendly. If you have any questions on the technical aspects of using this Forum, please do not hesitate to ask.
 
Rebecca-

I ditto Nick on the advice to copy your posts before they post. I've lost a lot of longish posts by having my session time out without me being aware. I now just routinely copy each post before I click the post button. Then, if it loses it, I still have my work.

Cliff-

I agree wholeheartedly on your observations about healing. Of course, it is only my opinion, but I really am turned off by making a show of healing (no matter what the religion or the method). Many times, even the person being healed doesn't need to know what you're doing. If I feel pain in someone and can help alleviate it, I just push some energy their way and move on. Why advertise it?

I know an argument could be made for increasing people's faith, etc. But faith should spring from a commitment to God, not from evidence of miracles. We should worship because God is God, not in order to receive something. We should endeavor to grow spiritually, to love unconditionally, and to act in goodness because these things are right, not in order to receive something in return. Healing should be a simple and quiet act, born of compassion and love, not a way to convert people or bolster their faith. When it is used that way, people doubt God's presence and their own commitment if life doesn't go the way they want it to.
 
Path of One, you said,
"We should worship because God is God, not in order to receive something."​
--> I think we should also consider the other side of the coin — that we should not worship God (which I strongly believe). I am not saying this in order to be argumentative, I am saying it because it is something Betty (Rebecca) alluded to, and we should be supportive of her as she searches in that exact direction.
 
Thank you Nick for all your replies and for the offer of help with any computer problems I may have, I have to say you may live to regret that offer lol, I am an idiot with technology and anything with a plug on hates me.
To answer your question yes I suppose I could attend their services without being a member if there was one in Spain, but I just wouldn't want to, there is a lot of Christian Science that resonates with me and makes a lot of sense but there is twice as much that appears to be too much of a contradiction and although I don't doubt for a second that Mary Baker Eddy's heart was in the right place, I think a lot of it came from her over inflated ego the one she tells us to work hard to dissipate.
We only touched on Gastalt in college it was a long time ago and it was only mentioned breifly as a comparrison to person centred if I remember correctly it is more directive than Rogerian?
You say you wish you were psychic and are not, I have to strongly disagree with you there,we are all born psychic to some degree or another, the 'imaginary' friends we have when very young for example are rarely imaginary, it's just something that disappears round about the age of 7-8 when we get caught up in school, learning right from wrong, developing our own personalities etc, I feel it's round about this time of our lives that children lose the natural wonderment of being children and later in life it is up to us if we want to recapture our psychic abilities and develop them, if you truely want to go down this road I would be happy to help you, the only reason I hate it is because I always get the jokers (never anything evil or demonic) just the ones who want to invade my privacy and appear to have no reason whatsoever to be hanging around other than to annoy me, but I also know that the fear I have is through my addiction to fear itself, I was raised in a very violent, dysfunctional and emotionally neglectful environment and although I have dealt with a great many of my issues via my counselling studies, I have many residual ones left this being one of them, for all I know the energies I sense all the time may well have come to teach me many wise and wonderful things but I am too busy being scared of them to listen.

Thank you again

Love and Angel Hugs

Rebecca XXXXXXX
 
Hi Kim, Thank you for your lovely letter and warm welcome, I have just spent another half an hour replying to you to have lost what I wrote AGAIN! I copied it as suggested by a few of you then logged back in, which was hard to do because the site said I was already logged in, and when I hit paste it had gone. Something is telling me you and I are not meant to communicate lol. I will try again later when I have calmed down lol. Love Rebecca XXX

Flow, Just wanted to say thank you for mentioning Joseph Campbell in your reply to me yesterday I had never heard of him, I did a Goggle seach and spend all day reading about him. XXXXXXXXXX

Cliff, Thank you for replying I will try to reply to you later, I am just a bit hacked off right now about my post need to go away, calm down and try again. Love Rebecca XXXXXXXXXX
 
Nick the Pilot said:
Path of One, you said,
"We should worship because God is God, not in order to receive something."​
--> I think we should also consider the other side of the coin — that we should not worship God (which I strongly believe). I am not saying this in order to be argumentative, I am saying it because it is something Betty (Rebecca) alluded to, and we should be supportive of her as she searches in that exact direction.
Click to expand...

Of course- I should have made that statement more open-ended. What I meant is that many faith healers in Christianity seem to make it into a sign or miracle that bolsters people's faith and therefore their commitment to worship God.

I think if someone is going to worship God, it should just be because God is God.

Of course, if someone is not worshipping God at all, then the point is moot. Although, by extension, if someone is healing because of some other spiritual belief, the belief should not be founded on the healing. I find it dangerous to base one's spiritual stability on any sort of sign or "miracle."
 
Hi Rebecca...

Yes , Campbell was a very special soul. He was the one who did the most to tie together Mythology, cultural anthropology, and religion in the 20th century. He advised George Lucas on the thematic materials in the Star Wars films, and did a memorable PBS series called The Power of Myth in the early 90's, I believe , with Bill Moyers. If you can find a set of tapes don't miss it. The tapes should also be available through your library system. There's an accompanying book called, The Power of Myth, which also gives one a very good overview of the material. I expect Amazon, etc. might have it.

Oh, try this on your posting problem. I don't usually write long posts, three of four paragraphs usually do the trick forme. But when I do compose a longie, I scan what I wrote with my cursor and move the text box to my desktop. Then I go back to the original log in screen, and no matter what it says, I log out, log back in, go to the reply window required, then just drag the text box to the reply window and post. It has worked for me for sometime now. You can also drag the text to the quick reply window since that's a little faster.

flow....:)
 
Rebecca, you said,
"...the offer of help with any computer problems I may have, I have to say you may live to regret that offer lol...."​

--> Hey, maybe a could talk you through a motherboard-install. I hope you wouldn't get any IRQ conflicts. (Just kidding!!!)
"...there is a lot of Christian Science that resonates with me and makes a lot of sense but there is twice as much that appears to be too much of a contradiction...."​

--> I wonder if this conflict can be traced to experiences you had in a previous lifetime. It would be fascinating to look into such an idea, in my humble opinion.
"We only touched on Gastalt in college it was a long time ago and it was only mentioned breifly as a comparrison to person centred if I remember correctly it is more directive than Rogerian?"​

--> Gestalt is a lot more directive than Rogerian. It is an effective way of opening up repressed emotions, and taking a good look at them. Unfortunately, we sometimes find things that are quite yucky.
"...we are all born psychic to some degree or another...."​
--> I know. However, for most of us, we need training and practice before we can show any progress.
"...if you truely want to go down this road I would be happy to help you...."​

--> Thank you for the offer. Perhaps I could find some free time, when things around here quiet down a bit.
"...the only reason I hate it is because I always get the jokers (never anything evil or demonic) just the ones who want to invade my privacy and appear to have no reason whatsoever to be hanging around other than to annoy me...."​

--> By jokers, do you mean annoying spirits who hang around?
"...the fear I have is through my addiction to fear itself, I was raised in a very violent, dysfunctional and emotionally neglectful environment...."​

--> I remember talking with a psychic who wanted to train me to become a psychic. She said anyone who wants to become a psychic must first deal with all of their emotional garbage.
"...for all I know the energies I sense all the time may well have come to teach me many wise and wonderful things but I am too busy being scared of them to listen."​
--> One of the warnings I received about becoming a novice psychic is that we start communicating with all sorts of trouble-maker spirits — which seems to be the exact problem you are having. Have you heard of the case of Susy Smith, a self-taught beginning psychic who was almost driven crazy by the trouble-maker spirits she came in contact with?

Susy Smith
 
Gday Greymare thank you for the welcome, I did do an intro, complete with photo (VERY clever for me! lol) in the intro section last Fri I think it was but it's still not there. XXXXX

Hi Nick,

Have you studied couselling? I love it and know all about dragging out all your garbage so to speak in order to heal and move on. No I have not heard of Suzy Smith I shall go and do it now, thank you for that. You are right though I have been told many times that I am meant to 'work' with spirit but it's easier said than done to get past the fear issue, although I know deep down I have to face it sooner or later because it's never going to go away.
Yes I did mean annoying ones who just hang around. Have a great day.

Love

Rebecca XXXXXX
 
Arrrrrgggghhhh this site is driving me mad, I just looked at the page about Suzy Smith and wrote a reply, it wouldn't let me post is so I tried to copy it, highlighted it and there was no option to copy, I am too thick to own a computer, why was there no option to copy, I pressed refresh instead just to see what would happen doh! and now I've lost it. XX
 
Hit Ctrl-A and Ctrl-Insert before you try to send, that copies the text to clipboard, then Shift-Insert will retype it all.
 
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