My Heart Gets Awakened (Again)

The first time my heart woke up was sometime during my pre-natal development. The second time my heart woke up was in a small town in Brazil in February 2013. I went to see a spiritual healer that people call “John of God”. JofG is a man that channels spirits of master healers that have chosen to remain with us to help each of us wake up. He puts himself in a meditative state and gives his body over to the spirit that is being called to heal the person that is in front of him. He sees anyone that travels to see him – no charge. He has been doing this for over 50 years. When he finishes seeing everyone, he reverts back to his former self with no memory of what transpired. They call him a highly-functional full-trance medium, but to me he is a superhero – except he doesn’t wear a mask – though when he was embodying different spirits, the color of his eyes looked different to me, depending on the particular spirit he is embodying. The first time I saw JofG I swore he had angelic blue eyes, and the second time I saw him I recall him having light brown eyes, though pictures of him show that he has dark brown eyes.

Brazilians are predominantly catholic. However, their brand of Catholicism is influenced by the local pre-colonial culture and is infused with Spritism – the belief that our spirit transitions from this plane after we die, only to come back reincarnated and that some spirits choose to remain on this plane to support us in our healing and wake up. In this belief system, we are all mediums to some degree and the degree of our functionality as mediums is based on our calling. From a very young age JofG was discovered to be a highly-functional medium and after having done this for 10-15 hours a day, three days a week for 50 years, he has become even more so.

The people that take care of JofG (in his trance state) and the Casa (the ashram-like grounds he “works” from), suggest that a visitor ask for no more than three concisely worded requests. Everything is available, nothing is out-of-bounds. If you could ask for anything, what would you ask for? This was a question that confounded me for some time leading up to my trip to Brazil. Of course, I wanted to ask for a complete healing from leukemia – something I was diagnosed with almost exactly 3 years earlier. I also wanted to ask to be completely immersed in love – my description for wanting a similar persistent experience of living from love that I heard Wayne Dyer describe after he was healed from chronic leukemia by JofG. As a brief digression, when I first decided to journey to Brazil to see JofG, I used to say I wanted my heart opened – and I ended up having a coronary bypass operation exactly 2 months (to the day) before my departure date – 2 months being the recovery time from the surgery that the surgeon used to determine whether I could travel. Finally, I decided to ask to know and fulfill my life’s purpose.

My two weeks in this small town of Abidiania, Brazil were magical. This part of town consists of the JofG grounds and a series of small inns / restaurants, called “pousadas”, where the inn-keepers (and for that matter everyone in town) are committed to taking care of visitors that are there for healing. The JofG grounds are built upon the largest crystal deposit on earth – so large that NASA detected its energy emissions from space. JofG has been practicing at the Casa for over 30 years and the field of love is so strong and palpable that I felt nauseous each time I walked off the grounds. Through the chakra alignment “treatment” of the crystal beds, the spiritual surgery, and the hours of sitting in meditation in JofG’s presence, I received a deep healing of my body, my mind, and my spirit – in particular my heart.

It is hard to tell what part of this course of “treatment” is really the thing and what part is mind candy. I say this because of how much effort I put into wording my three requests – making them clear, concise and complete. Then they need to be taken to a translator because, of course, JofG doesn’t speak English. It is only after my three requests, each worded with less than seven words, was translated into 3 Portuguese words that I started to wonder what this was all about. Then, after waiting for hours to get an audience with JofG, a second of so after he saw me, he gave his prescription (which of the three things “treatments” I was to do next). The translator had gotten maybe a word or two out of his mouth, certainly not the entire translation – the effort for me to concisely word my request was only so I could get clear on what I wanted. The rest is mind candy – Spirit knows the moment I get clear and the work begins.

Each of the three “treatments” were in their own way trippy. The crystal beds focus lights shining through different colored crystals onto each of the chakras in ones body. After a few minutes, the scar that was along my sternum from the coronary bypass surgery I had recently undergone felt like it was being electrocuted and I felt energized all over.

The meditation room that they call the Current, consists of an L-shaped room with approximately 200 people meditating in JofG’s presence for 4-6 hours in the morning and again in the afternoon. The locals say that the process cleanses the auras of the people coming to seek an audience with JofG, each of whom must walk by all of the meditators before approaching JofG. The moment I took a step into that room for my first audience with JofG, I felt like I was wrapped in a warm blanket of love, as tears spontaneously started emerging form my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. Sitting in that field for 8-12 hours a day over a two week period has to be healing.

The spiritual surgery was the most unique part and for me, the most sensational. Some people opt to actually be cut open, but most ask for the energetic variety – having just undergone coronary bypass surgery, I wasn’t about to let someone in Brazil cut me open again. Sitting in a room with a few dozen other visitors, JofG comes in and says some prayers and it is done – rather anticlimactic at first. We were all ushered out and encouraged to go back to our hotels to be sequestered for 24 hours. It was in that 24 hours that I got some incredible, life altering downloads and revelations about the source of the cancer I had been diagnosed with, about my bypass surgery and its causes, and in general how my life was out of alignment with Source. This is what I received as a download.

The word sin can mean a break from connection to Source (or God or whatever word you like to use). It can be an act or action that is out of alignment with myself and Source. Prayer is a means of reconnecting with Source – and in its broad sense can include playing music, painting, enjoying community, creating in connection are all forms of prayer. Being in sin (being disconnected from Source) for extended periods of time without prayer (some form of reconnection), causes disease in my body. It is not that I am being punished by Source / God for sin, but rather that it is a consequence of the disconnection. It became clear to me during those 24 hours that for many decades, my life was indeed disconnected from Source. My periods of prayer were brief and not enough to replenish me. Moreover, I hadn’t forgiven myself for all of my sins. In those 24 hours, I forgave myself and everyone else in my life for everything. Sometime in the middle of the night, I purged – what I purged I don’t know, all I know was that it did not resemble anything I had eaten. Looking back on it, the experience was similar to a plant medicine journey.  The three things I had asked for were all different aspects of the same thing – complete love for myself and those around me – such is the power of love.

When I emerged, I was feeling an abundance of love for everyone I saw and was feeling no negative judgments towards anyone. For 3 month after returning home, I experienced this perpetual state of love, where I could “observe” any negative judgmental thoughts as they emerged in my head and choose a different thought. The negative judgmental thoughts never had a chance to take hold and have any impact. It was sort of like catching leaves falling from a tree before they hit the ground and have to be raked up afterwards. I felt compelled during this period to feed any homeless person I encountered.

When I returned, I confounded my oncologist because when I went off the targeted therapy medication to manage the leukemia, the tests that detect the cancer mutation showed the cancer was growing out of control, but the leukemia (defined as an overabundance of white blood cells) would not manifest. My oncologist had no explanation, other than to convey his fear that the cancer could further mutate and manifest somewhere else in my body without being kept in check by the medication. After some deliberation, I went back on the medication I had developed a love-hate relationship with.

In hindsight, Source probably gave me the message that my purpose was to teach others to wake up. However, I wasn’t ready to hear it because I was too busy trying to stay awake. And so, 6 months after I returned, I felt I had not gotten what I truly wanted – a complete healing in body, mind and spirit – to live life fully awake. So, a year after I had taken this incredible journey, I went back to Abidiania again This time, in the 24 hours after spiritual surgery, I receive the message from Source that I had gotten what I was meant to from this place / experience and that it was now all within me. For months I felt frustrated and slowly I learned to trust my internal wisdom to find and follow my path.

As I write this, I am grateful to say that the cancer is undetectable in my body, that my heart is open and that I have found and am fulfilling my purpose. I guess it WAS all within me.