My inspiration
The quotes below are from healers and other wise folk I have come to admire greatly. Many, not surprisingly, are from a different era or a different culture than ours.
“The fees depended on the wealth of the family calling for services, also upon the anxiety of the relatives of the sick person who wanted to urge the doctor to do his utmost. The fees for doctoring might be ten blankets, prepaid, for each patient, or it might be as little as one blanket. But if the doctored person died afterwards, the blankets were returned.” ~Isaac Tens, a Gitksan Indian from North America (quoted in Shamanic Voices, by Joan Halifax)
“You cannot work on the client. That’s an illusion. You can only work on yourself. If you are aware of that, there is no need to worry about the ego, because you’re dealing with it. Every client that has been put in front of you is a lesson not about the client, but about you. As long as you can recognize that, you’re doing the work. And it works much faster that way.” ~Alex Stark, (quoted in Travelling Between the Worlds, by Hillary S. Webb)
“I don’t even want to be called a medicine man, just a healing man because this is what I am made for. I don’t ask for anything. A white doctor has a fee; a priest has a fee. I have no fee. A man goes away from me healed. That is my reward. Sometimes I do not have the power; it makes me sad. When I have the power, then I am happy. Some men think of money, how to get it. That never comes into my mind.” ~Petaga Yuha Mani, “He Walks with Coals of Fire,” a Sioux medicine man (quoted in Shamanic Voices, by Joan Halifax)
“I am not doing the healing. You are not doing the healing. It is Mother Earth doing the healing. That is why, as a healer, you have to learn how to interact with the spirits. As soon as you know how to interact honorably with spirits, it is easy for you to do healings.... When a person gets into this work they begin to see amazing things happen-things that from a Western world perspective are too much to be true and too much to believe. But if you really change your way of thinking and just allow yourself to be a tool in Mother Earth’s hands, you can do miracles.” ~Ipupiara Makunaiman, Brazilian shaman (quoted in Travelling Between the Worlds, by Hillary S. Webb)
For 4 years Peter Caddy (accidental co-founder of Findhorn, the extraordinary, spirited garden on the sandy flank of northern Scotland) supported his family on 8 pounds a week unemployment benefits while searching doggedly for a job. Desperate as he was for employment, something always seemed to prevent him from being offered a position. Finally, he was called before a special committee to review his case. “They learned from my record that I had been a senior officer in the Royal Air Force, manager of a prestigious hotel, that I was a good organizer, efficient and extremely healthy. Then why was I without a job? Eventually, the Board sent one of their investigators around to see me. He had with him a fat file with a complete record of my efforts to obtain employment. After going through it, the looked up at me and said, ‘Would you say that God is preventing you from getting a job?’ Amazed at his understanding, I replied ‘Why, yes, indeed!’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘then presumably if we cut off your money, God will provide for you.’ He had played his ace card. (Yes... yes, I expect... yes, he would,’ I stammered. So that is what they did. And that is what God did. Just when they cut off the last payment, donations started coming in to us from our first publication of Eileen’s guidance, God Spoke to Me, which we had sent out to a small mailing list.” ~The Findhorn Garden
As I child I was told that in ancient China, doctors got paid only when their patients were healthy. If a patient became sick, the doctor did not get any payment until the patient fully recovered! I have no idea if this anecdote is true. But I have never forgotten it. What a refreshingly different perspective on how to facilitate health, wellness, and healing!! ~Calloway’s note
“Eager beaver psychic healers are those who work on the removal of symptoms and not the removal of cause. Let’s say I am a psychic healer living next door to you, and you have chosen to come into this life to face some kind of physical symptom until you have removed the cause. Well, when the symptom manifests, I remove it. And so the symptom manifests again, and then I remove it again, and I manage to keep that symptom removed. When you step over to the disembodied side of life, for another reason altogether, instead of blessing me for having removed the symptom, you’ll say, ‘That meddler! I came to solve this problem but she kept removing the symptom and therefore I never solved it!’ That’s what I mean when I speak about some who are content to deal with the removal of symptoms. When one meddles in the life of another it will just cause the symptoms not only to re-manifest, but carry over into another lifetime. Most healers do not know this and they go on merrily removing symptoms.” ~Peace Pilgrim, Her Life and Work in Her Own Words
“The farthest we’ll ever have to travel is from our heads to our hearts. If people start down this path using just their head, it can take a lifetime. Two lifetimes. Three lifetimes. Four lifetimes. But if people wake up to this path with their heart, they don’t need to study with any teacher. They are already there.” ~Oscar Miro-Quesada, shamanic healer
“The way back to my real environment, the place where my soul was meant to exist, doesn’t lie through any set of codes I will ever find outside myself. I have to look inward. I have to jettison every sorrow, every terror, every misconception, every lie that stands between my conscious mind and what I know in my heart to be true. Instead of clutching around me all the trappings of a ‘good’ person, a ‘successful’ person, or even a ‘righteous’ person, I have to be exactly what I am, and take the horrible chance that I may be rejected for it.” ~Martha Beck, Expecting Adam
“Oh, Great Spirit of Surprise,
dazzle us with a day full of amazing embraces,
capricious, uncalculated caring,
great hearts, kind souls and doers of good deeds.”
~Molly Fumia
“Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
To all the people you can.
As long as ever you can.”
~John Wesley
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
~Denise Levertov
May we grow into true understanding - a deep understanding that inspires us to protect the tree on which we bloom, and the water, soil and atmosphere without which we have no existence.
May we turn inwards and stumble upon our true roots in the intertwining biology of this exquisite planet. May nourishment and power pulse through these roots, and fierce determination to continue the billion-year dance.
We call upon the spirit of evolution, the miraculous force that inspires rocks and dust to weave themselves into biology. You have stood by us for millions and billions of years - do not forsake us now. Empower us and awaken in us pure and dazzling creativity. You that can turn scales into feathers, seawater to blood, caterpillars to butterflies, metamorphose our species, awaken in us the powers that we need to survive the present crisis and evolve into more aeons of our solar journey.
Awaken in us a sense of who we truly are: tiny ephemeral blossoms on the Tree of Life. Make the purposes and destiny of that tree our own purpose and destiny.
May we speak in all human councils on behalf of the animals and plants and landscapes of the Earth.
May we shine with a pure inner passion that will spread rapidly through these leaden times.
We call upon the power which sustains the planets in their orbits, that wheels our Milky Way in its 200-million-year spiral, to imbue our personalities and our relationships with harmony, endurance and joy. Fill us with a sense of immense time so that our brief, flickering lives may truly reflect the work of vast ages past and also the millions of years of evolution whose potential lies in our trembling hands.
O stars, lend us your burning passion.
O silence, give weight to our voice.
We ask for the presence of the spirit of Gaia.
~John Seed, respectfully excerpted from his remarkable poem Invocation