Love is not bound by distance, time, or space. It permeates even the most sterile environments….Comprehensive physiological monitoring during and after the procedure, showed that the patients, who were prayed for by the 7 religious sects, did 50-100% better than patients who were not prayed for by these groups.
Love is the Guru.
Alan Watts
Self-Mastery is the ability to live congruently in the service of your highest purpose.
Ramone G. Corrales
The sovereign cure for worry is prayer
William James, The Father of American Psychology
Words and painting, “Sanctuary” by Jan Jennings, artist
We have many diverse names and spiritual beliefs that express the Divine. We are all manifestations of the Creator throughout Creation. As John in his gospel expressed, “God is Love.” There is only one kind of Love. As Love is expressed through different individuals in different situations, it appears as though there are many kinds of Love, many levels and intensities. Love is the same and from the same Source in its multitude of expressions.
Love has been segregated, dissected, and disintegrated into many types: friendship, romance, maternal, paternal, patriotic, etc. This reflects the mind’s attempt to reduce, compartmentalize, and categorize love; and this separates it from the heart. Herein lies the mind’s attempt at disintegration. When the mind excludes the heart, unity with Oneness, and the experience of love is curtailed. This is the mind’s reductionism in its attempt to reduce fear through intellectual certitude. The illusions that are created by any of us assuming that our knowledge is complete, creates a vacuum in the heart. The fullness of our being is no longer orchestrated by our Spirit and the Creator when we do so. This is the real danger for all of us when we arrogantly see ourselves as the best or only expert merely because of our training or knowledge base. St. Paul clearly points out this illusion when he says, “if you have all the knowledge of everything, but have not Love, you have nothing at all.”
As we feel the connection of the Divine within, then we become conscious of Love. When we feel the Love within, we are able to give it to the world and we no longer are desperately driven to seek it in the world. With this realization, we also may feel that Love reflected back to us from the world. This detachment is unconditional Love. Our existence and all creation in the Universe bear witness to Love. Love is simply there. We each decide how much we want to consciously participate in it.
Love is synergistic. It is a blending, a harmonious symphony of our Spirit expressing itself, through mind and body. Our conscious participation in Love integrates and balances our awareness that we are Spirit. We cannot separate ourselves from Love. We can attempt to exclude it from our consciousness, but it remains there. Any exclusion sets up cascades of disequilibria and imbalance in our perceptions of whom we ourselves are, who each other are, and the interconnectedness of all the diverse life and forms of being in existence. Any perception of separation distorts mind, body, & Spirit connectedness and narrows perception in a linear fashion. In this state of mind, we selectively attend to merely the physical aspects of this world. The mind, in this limited state of consciousness, views everything as disconnected. It begins to distort by magnifying negative details as it loses its perception of the interrelationship between all things. Any glimpses of the “big picture” are lost.
The mind without the Heart, can deny the natural experience that we are connected to the Divine and one another. It creates its own false security as it limits itself to constructs rather than expansive experience. Simply put, the mind begins to worship itself, rather than experience the Creator within. The mind becomes clouded surrounding itself with itself as it attempts to block the radiance of love in and through all of us. Though there may be clouds in front of the sun, the sun, nonetheless, is always shining.
Divine Love, that we all can participate in through prayer, meditation, and loving intentional service and therapies, does harmonize the bodies and minds of our fellow human beings. As St. Francis prayed, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,” we all may be utilized as instruments to one another in the conscious healing of our species. As we evolve, prayer and meditation will become essential to all health care, as guiding expressions of Love. They are just as important as the actual medical or other noetic interventions, and these too can be expressions of Love.
Prayer and meditation are the avenues of conscious reconnection to the Divine Love in us all. A study completed by Duke University, showed that prayer deeply impacted patients who underwent angioplasty for coronary blockages. The study was double blind, meaning that neither patients nor staff knew who was being prayed for. In the same study, another set of patients undergoing the same procedure, received noetic therapy (guided imagery, touch therapy, or relaxation therapy.) The names of the patients to be prayed for by various religious sects, were E-mailed to Jerusalem, Buddhist monasteries in Nepal and France, Carmelite nuns in Baltimore, Fundamentalists, Moravians, Baptists and Unitarian groups.
Comprehensive physiological monitoring during and after the procedure, showed that the patients, who were prayed for by the 7 religious sects, did 50-100% better than patients who were not prayed for by these groups. In the noetic therapy group, there was a lesser, but 30-50% trend of improvement. Perhaps the difference in improvement between the two groups can be accounted for by the principle that “when we let go and let God,” we are more connected to a patient’s real needs, than when we attempt to standardize the intervention. Spirit doesn’t make any mistakes as it guides the mind, and the mind in turn guides the body. More research studies will be necessary to decipher scientifically, that this is the case. What is important from the study, is that both the groups prayed for, and groups receiving noetic therapies, did better than those who received only the medical intervention of angioplasty (catheterization.) Susanne Crater, the nurse in this catheterization study, stated that the results were dramatic enough, “to change my practice. It is possible to bring a calming, healing space into a hospital, which can sometimes seem cold and sterile.”
Everyone in health care, or service to anyone, must realize that what we do to others we do to ourselves. In health care, it is particularly important to treat the patients with reverence as we wish to be treated ourselves. This allows the channels of Love (that accelerates healing) to flow. As the Love flows, then we have the direct experience of the Creator within us. In this way, we are Divine instruments and we become one with those we serve, and realize that we are not separate from one another or the Divine.
As we already know through our experience, and this study, Love is not bound by distance, time, or space. It permeates even the most sterile environments, if only hearts are open to receive it. This intention and some level of open acceptance, consciously or unconsciously, are all that is required to participate in Divine Love. It is within all of us, and can be shared with One another. Divine love is witnessing itself through all creation, service to One another, and in each moment of this,… existence.
Connecting with the spirit manifests in some remarkable healing.
