Life is a collection of events and memories. We evolve as individuals from our life experiences as we perceive and interpret them. Identical twins can be very different people even though they experienced similar genetics, family and educational backgrounds, home environments, and life events.
This is why each of us is an individual – an accumulation of our perceptions, life decisions, actions, and belief systems.
“I believe in miracles” because I myself have witnessed them. This was a phrase repeated by the “faith healer” named Kathryn Kuhlman, who performed “miracle services” in Pittsburgh, PA through the 1950s to the 1970s. This is going back in time, but what I saw influenced my belief system forever.
Dr. Wayne Dyer, the popular psychologist who has written over 30 books about reality, living life without limits, and living beyond miracles, has one book titled, “You’ll See It When You Believe It: The Way to Your Personal Transformation.” Dyer insists that those “skeptics” who preclude the reality of what we call “supernatural events” will never experience them.
The world-renowned Dr. Deepak Chopra, a leader in mind-body medicine and the author of over 50 books, also shares Dyer’s views of a life without limits. He, too, speaks of everyday miracles that happen in the medical and physical realms. Of course, he and Dyer are often disregarded by the medical/psychological communities because they think, act and lecture above and beyond the imposed-limitations of those academic communities.
I have met all three of these people in person, in a life quest for knowledge. I will reference each of them throughout this article so the reader can delve deeper into whatever appeals to him/her. Every “teacher” speaks to us in a different way.
In the late 60’s, I attended the Kathryn Kuhlman “miracle services” in Pittsburgh. Every service had about 2000 to 2500 people in attendance – of all faiths, or none at all. Some went only out of curiosity, but still experienced “healings.” One of Kuhlman’s books, “I Believe in Miracles,” followed some of the people who claimed healings, after they were rechecked by their own doctors and specialists. The Kuhlman ministry tried to follow the people for 5 years after “recovery” to verify that the healings “lasted.”
I saw people who claimed to be healed of deafness, blindness, chronic pain, visible tumors, cancers, and spinal problems – the whole realm of physical symptoms that affect human beings. My “inside source” was one of the ushers who followed Kuhlman’s ministry for years. She “verified” the genuineness of the healings that she was aware of. She said many people came weekly, and the staffers got to know them. She “knew” many of the healings were real because the people would return with verifications from their doctors. (Sometimes, they also had physicians sitting in the front row who “verified” that “if you were diagnosed with that problem, you could not do what you’re doing.”)
Perhaps such “insiders” – like the Kuhlman aides and people like myself – have an edge over those who never get to witness “miracles.” The stories are always anecdotal or three times removed from the original story.
Kuhlman never claimed to be the “healer,” but said she was simply an instrument for the “Holy Spirit.” At one service, I saw two men near the front row. When Kuhlman said she felt the Spirit was moving and healing those with spinal problems, with chronic pain – “Reach out and claim it for yourself” — both men jumped up and claimed “healings.
Both had had spinal surgeries that had not worked to create normalcy. One man was in the aisle touching his toes, with tears running down his face. He claimed that he had had spinal fusions and should not even be able to do what he was doing. He had not been able to touch his toes in years, but he now did it without pain.
If you have ever seen people get up out of wheel chairs or off gurneys and wildly run around a church yelling, “I’ve been healed,” you do not tend to forget it.
But, of course, you always have those who insist they are “plants” in the audience or they have “psychological problems” – like “blindness” – which are “temporarily cured” or never existed to begin with.
Chopra and Dyer both speak of the power of “knowing” which goes beyond belief. Dyer (Living Beyond Miracles) tells how he met Chopra because of his wife’s thyroid condition. Marcie Dyer had a tumor on her thyroid, which several doctors told her she would have to have surgically removed.
Dyer listened to Chopra’s audio books on Ayurvedic healing, involving meditation, diet, visualization, etc. – non-medical “cures.” Marcie went to the Chopra Center in California and was “cured” within about 6 weeks; she was able to “heal” herself by shrinking the tumor to an almost-invisible size.
Because I have been fortunate enough to “witness” miracles, I know that the self-imposed limits we have are based on false beliefs of “reality.”
I will tell of two personal experiences of “healing” that I participated in. I attended a Tupperware party at a friend’s house. The distributor was going to have surgery on her hand the next day. She had a carpal tunnel problem, and the doctors were preparing her for 3 to 4 hours of surgery with a 6 to 8 week recovery. She was prepared to take off work for at least a month.
Let me mention this was the home of fundamental, born-again Christians, which the lady was aware of. I do not believe this is “necessary,” but it was the context for this situation. I said to the apprehensive woman that miracles were still happening today. Why couldn’t we pray over her and “prevent” the need for the surgery? She said she knew Jesus had done healings, but she didn’t feel “worthy enough” of a healing. I said Jesus never turned anyone away for any reason; anyone who asked was healed. Could she accept that?
She said, “Yes,” and we prayed over her. The head of the house, the husband, offered the prayer and asked the Lord to heal her “according to her belief.”
A couple days later, the woman called me to give a report. The surgery only took about 45 minutes; the doctors were amazed. They also told her she would probably only have restricted movement and need physical therapy for about a week before returning to work.
This lady was ecstatic! She said she knew she had had a healing to some degree and felt that if she had had an extra day, she might not have needed the surgery at all. She was sure she “felt” something happening in her body; she felt like her hand was healing itself.
The man who offered the prayer said he was caught off-guard and prayed in a “limiting” fashion with a touch of “doubt,” and he, too felt, if we had “asked” for a complete healing, this lady would not have needed the surgery.
Another experience happened in a church that had evening services for small groups for healing purposes. (Let me say that I have been to about 12 different denominations in my “seeking mode,” and I do not feel any of them has the “only solution.” But finding “believers” who are “open” to these experiences is still limited so you go where they are.)
Every week we gathered to pray for one another after a few minutes of silent meditation and prayer and meditative music. We laid hands on or over the one with a prayer request who lay under a cover on a portable table.
This evening, in candle light and music, a new girl showed up who was a bit curious and very apprehensive. She wanted to know what kind of people we were, what kinds of things did we practice, and what were we intending to do? The pastor said we prayed for healings for people who requested it. Someone brought her, but must not have clued her in about the proceedings.
Being under a blanket in candle light, in all honesty, I didn’t realize who she was. I placed my hands over her feet and we prayed. I had the most overwhelming feeling of “negativity” that I have ever felt around a human being. Three times I had to sit in a pew and rub my hands on the wood to “discharge” the negativity. (I had read that technique in a book on healings. I felt almost nauseated; I was willing to try anything for relief.)
This seemed to go on forever. I wondered why we were spending so much time on one person. Finally, this girl sat up and seemed energized. She got off the table and sat in a pew. The pastor did the final prayer, and we were ready to leave.
This girl approached me and asked if I was the one at her feet. My husband said, “Yes.” She said that was absolutely the most amazing thing she had ever witnessed. She was absolutely exuberant. She was going to Mexico for a week, but she wanted to meet me when she got back.
I later realized this girl was in a serious depression, and it had passed instantly.
In our “seeking,” we moved on to other places and did not return to that particular church.
I have a Christian background, but I do not feel any religion or group or person has an edge on healing. It is “mind over matter.” It is self-healing based on a moment of “belief” that it can occur.
Dyer quoted Christ as saying, “The Kingdom of heaven is within you.” “Even the least of these among you can do all that I’ve done and even greater things.” Dyer says when we go beyond our normal limits, we are simply “aligning with Source.”
These are the Jesus sayings that modern churches do not quote as something to be done by the average person in everyday reality. In fact, one young pastor (from another church I was a member of for a while) said, “The Biblical stories of miracles weren’t real; they were added later in the records because that’s how followers embellished their leaders.”
If you don’t believe in miracles, you will never see one. I used to participate in groups of “believers” because they were the ones who witnessed healings.
But the lack of “belief” can prevent miracles from happening. For the Christian reader who remembers the quote from Christ as to why he could not perform miracles close to home, his answer was, “I can do no great works there because of their unbelief.” Those who knew him as the son of a carpenter could not accept him as a miracle worker.
We met a man on several occasions who needed triple transplant surgeries to live: heart, lungs, and kidneys. In my zealousness to be a part of healing, we (my husband and I) offered prayer. He said, “No, thanks; I’ll take my chances on waiting for transplants and let the surgeons do their job.”
With that belief in place, no amount of prayer, “intervention” or the chance of a “miracle healing” would become reality. We knew that and so did he. Eventually, he got his new organs. He is not well, but he is still alive.
What pain and suffering might he have avoided if he had only “believed” in miracles and had – if only for a second – accepted one for himself?
Sources:
Kathryn Kuhlman, I Believe in Miracles. Published May 1, 1978. Website: http://kathrynkuhlman.com/about.html.
Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer. Audio cassette Living Beyond Miracles. New World Library, 1993.
