January 8, 2023 Sunday Afternoon, Remembering Wholeness, Excerpt
Barbara’s Introductory Talk
Barbara: Good afternoon, and happy new year to you all. It’s good to see your faces on the screen, so much light. I love seeing your faces.
I’m going to share a bit with you from myself before the Mother comes in because I had a very interesting period from Christmas until now, these two weeks. Since Remembering Wholeness is literally about remembering our wholeness, I want to share this story with you; I think you’ll enjoy it.
This goes back a number of years. I have something call spinal stenosis. There are openings in the spine where the nerves come through; the bone grows in and pinches the nerves causing pain and, in some instances, almost paralysis.
I saw specialists at U of M. Finally, they said they would have to do maybe a 16″ incision on my back and open these pinched places. After the surgery, I would need to wear a body cast for about six months, but that the surgery was usually successful.
The biggest risk with the surgery is, in opening that space, if they nick the nerve while working in very close quarters, it could leave me paralyzed.
I decided to take this to Brazil, to Dom Inaçio. Now, John of God was the medium there, but my work was never with John of God, it was with the entities. And in meditation I always go directly to the entities.
Dom Inaçio said that he would do it. That I would need to come maybe two or three years in a row for a half dozen surgeries. That he could not do it all at once. Fine. I’m happy to be there.
So, he did these surgeries, maybe five surgeries in three years. And after the third year I was able to stand straight, walk straight, with no more pain. In between them, going back to the specialist at U of M, he would take pictures and shrug and say, “The openings are getting bigger. Your back is clearly healing. I don’t know how! But, fine.” Finally, after the third year, he said, “You’re dismissed as a patient. I have no further need to see you. Come back if you have new trouble.”
Last summer I started to have new pain in my back. In meditation, I asked Dom Inaçio—Saint Ignatius, for those who are not clear. Dom Inaçio is simply the Portuguese way of saying Saint Ignatius. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Dom Inaçio.
I came back to him in meditation, and he said, “Yes, some of these need to be treated again. Plan a week in which you can be very quiet—three first days in which you will literally just stay in bed, and then a week more in which you can be quiet.”
And I said, “Thank you, I will do that. It will be later in the fall. I have a very busy schedule right now.”
He said, “Fine—whenever you’re ready. You don’t have to make an appointment ahead of time.” He’s there, he’s ready.
He asked me a couple of times through the fall, and I said I can’t, I have classes, I have this and that scheduled. I cannot take a week off now. I said, probably at Christmas time. But I didn’t plan it specifically; I just didn’t do it.
The day after Christmas, that Monday, I woke up with some nasal congestion. That’s all—no fever, no body aches, just nasal congestion. And by the next day, Tuesday, it was very bad congestion. I took Covid tests every day; they were negative. I had no cough. No symptoms of flu. Nasal congestion and total exhaustion.
I just didn’t put this together. So, that Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, probably each day I was in bed sleeping. I couldn’t get up. I’d get up to go in the kitchen to open a can of soup, and those of you who have been at the Casa will remember what it feels like when they use their anesthetic. You just have to go lie down. There’s nothing else you can do.
So, I was in bed sleeping 22 hours a day. The fourth and fifth day, it was down to 18 or 20 hours. I’m dense! I still had not put this together with Dom Inaçio’s request, although I was asking spirit to help me with this total exhaustion.
A week later, the following Tuesday, when I was meditating in bed very early in the morning, I felt the entities come in and begin to check the different places in my body—not just the back, but this shoulder, which was very painful for several years, so painful that I had almost no arm movement. I felt them checking that, and my torn hip tendon of a few years ago, and my back. It suddenly occurred to me, and I asked, “Is this surgery revision?” And they said, “Yes, of course.”
Well, they didn’t sneak this up on me. They had asked me did I want this, and I said yes, very much. They had said, “Please put a time aside for us to do this when you can be quiet for a week.” I hadn’t done that. Well, here I was. They must have checked in with Aaron and said, “Is this a quiet week for her?” And he must have said yes. So, there I was.
I can move my shoulder. My back doesn’t hurt anymore. I just started physical therapy two or three days ago for my torn hip tendon, but it’s feeling pretty good. Basically, all I can say is thank you, thank you. Obrigada, thank you.
You have to ask for the help you want. And it helps to pay attention and say, “When are we going to do this, schedule it?” But if you don’t schedule it, and you’ve asked, they probably will schedule it themselves and just knock you out. You did ask!
I’m very grateful to them. Last week they asked me to have a very quiet week. No channeling at all. To keep my energy field very quiet. To sleep a lot. I’m still sleeping twelve hours a day, just still exhausted. I slept last night, and I just got up from a two hour nap from 11am to 1pm, so I’m still tired.
We will start the Remembering Wholeness with the Mother in a normal way. Please be forewarned that if my energy becomes low, and if the Mother says we need to stop, I’m going to need to stop.
She will do a lot of work with the whole group. Other entities will come in. Just ask now, quietly. We’ll all be quiet for a few minutes. Ask for the help you need, so that it is directly with the Mother, or directly with Father John, or whoever. It will be directly with them, but without me intervening. You don’t need me in the mix. The entities are there. But as much as possible I will do this; I will bring in the Mother. But as I said, I don’t have a choice; she will simply withdraw her energy from my body if she feels the body is getting tired and needs not to carry her anymore. S he won’t to do anything that will harm me.
So that’s my story. If we ask for help, we have to be ready to receive that help, to choose to make ourselves available for that help.
I was supposed to start that day after Christmas putting together the schedule for the workshop at the end of this month, Healing and the Ever-Healed. Some of you have participated in that in past years. I’m excited about it, but obviously all the planning I did was in a half-dream state, lying in my bed, not writing it down. So, this week we’ll get the schedule written out.
But one of the things that came to me strongly, as I meditated in bed these last two weeks, is the importance of intention and of gratitude.
Our intention, we can’t… Let me say this carefully. I don’t want to talk about healing as a linear process. The ever-healed is always there. I had the image last week of needing water. A place where there’s water deep underground, but there’s none in my house. I want to put in a pump. I know the water is there. I’m not creating the water, I’m tapping into the water.
The wholeness that we seek—physical, emotional, spiritual, that wholeness is already there. We’re tapping into it.
If I put in a very narrow pipe, I’m not going to get much water. The pipe has to be big and clear and open. Opening my energy field, opening my receptivity to what is offered. And one of the best ways I know to open is with the various Brahma Viharas—loving kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity. And all the beautiful states like gratitude.
So as I was lying in bed, I spent a lot of time looking at the chakras, seeing where my chakras were closed and what helped them to open. Better phrased, since they are never closed on an ultimate level, where I had no or only limited access to the ever-open chakras. And just opening to joy, to gratitude, to participating in this vast flow of energy and love and allowing it to fill me.
In the Buddhist teachings there’s what’s called the far enemy of something and what’s called the near enemy. For example, the far enemy of generosity is stinginess and fear. If I’m feeling stinginess and fear, it’s hard to be generous. The near enemy of any trait is always something that’s much closer to that trait. The near enemy of generosity, then, would be not a feeling of lack, that’s the far enemy. I would say one near enemy of generosity is a feeling of entitlement. Or maybe a feeling of, “I’ve done enough” with a kind of judgment, feeling, “That was good; did I give enough? How much generosity for this or that? Measuring what we give by what we feel we received.
So, then I was asking—and this is going to be a very big topic in our workshop—what is the near enemy of gratitude, of joy? Of some of these traits that really open our energy field?
I actually did something I haven’t done in a long time yesterday—I signed up for a one-day retreat with my friend Lama Surya Das. During a discussion period, Surya and I got to talking about what is the near enemy of gratitude.
I don’t have a clear sense; neither did Surya. We were just talking about it back and forth. So, I leave it to you to think about. It’s going to be something we’ll look at in the workshop, because we need to see what it is we’re doing that closes us off rather than allowing us to connect. To put that pipe in the ground and let the water pour out. To feel all the love and light and energy coming through. To feel the wholeness coming through.
It’s a weeklong workshop; five days of preparation and then, on the sixth day, an intervention with Father John, Dom Inaçio, and other entities, working with those who choose to put themselves in the center of the circle for specific healing.
Those first five days Aaron is suggesting we start with what opens us up so that this energy can flow through, BIG pipe, this ever-healed, so that we can tap down into the groundwater of our soul and have this love coming through.
I’m curious to see where it will go. I know Mary Magdalene, Yeshua and Love and others will be participating. And I think they’ll have some good ideas.
There is still space in that workshop. It’s on the Deep Spring website. Just go to the website, if you’re interested in registering. John will lead vipassana and pure awareness meditation instructions and sittings. Spirit will be leading the program in general, and you and me. We’ll see where it goes. It’s always an interesting week.
Okay—Mother, are you ready to come in? She says, Yes, I am…