In previous post, I mention Dr. H. calling and wanting to do clinical hypnotherapy over the phone, and that prior to this surgery he tried that in attempt to help get the pain level down through that means. I know some people have a misunderstanding of clinical hypnotherapy, as it is not stage hypnosis by any means. In fact, some of the "healer priests" actually are simply using hypnotic induction techniques. I'm not impressed nor do I go for that, personally.
However, there is much good in clinical hypnotherapy. I, in fact, am certified in clinical hypnotherapy. I was hired by a police department once years ago to help a rape victim be able to remember what occurred and identify the rapists. While the police could not use the taped hypnotherapy session, as it turned out, to arrest the two teens involved, the woman later on kept telling me how grateful and what good it did for her to have what was blocked in her psyche, freed.
It was the Lord's doing, not mine. She understand when I explained that to her. All good is God's.
Dr. H. helped me years ago after the first surgery, 8 years prior to my conversion to Catholicism and in quite a different time and place in my life. He'd come to the house where I lived with my three very young children and where my parents had come to live with us for the three months I was in a hospital bed in the tiny den. Dr. H. helped later, also, in his office, to utilize the therapeutic tool to help me manage the constant pain.
But it wasn't until after I had a supernal and unexpected, unbidden numinous experience in a clinical psychology course I was taking--in fact, it was a class on induction techniques in my clinical hypnotherapy certification--that I returned to Dr. H. to tell him about what occurred. He was fascinated, and so we explored that experience, and lo and behold--more unfolded in his office, of some apostles and prophet, an angel, and then God Himself would speak while I'd be having visions that I'd describe. It was all quite something. Dr. H. tape recorded these events, and I later transcribed them.
But after about five or so of these, we stopped. I'm not sure why he did not want to proceed, but it was all right. I always had the sense that it was upsetting to his mind view of the spiritual and religion. He had been reared Catholic but left. Yet he is spiritual and believes in God if not in certain terms, or religious construct. I think the last time when God spoke and answered Dr. H's questions which had to do with his trying to understand just what on earth and in heaven was going on with these supernatural events, it got to be too overwhelming to Dr. H. in a way he'd probably not have even realized consciously.
For awhile, I think it was that he considered, and I did, too, that I was kind of psychic or something. However, the Biblical and religious depth and reality of the personages was so great and indisputable that I knew from the various and numerous experiences I was given in private at home, at night, during the day, that the Holy Trinity was guiding me, was behind it all, of course! Scriptures began to come alive to me in amazing ways. It was a time of massive soul awakening.
Dr. H. over the years has helped countless people through the excellent therapeutic tool and technique of hypnotherapy. I find it a shame when people balk at its solid usage and the great success with all types of psychological and physiological and emotional ailments. He has helped children overcome phantom leg pain, bed-wetting, behavioral problems, and a host of other ailments including some unusual cases such as the girl who saw auras around everyone she'd meet or see.
He helps adults quit smoking and drinking or other habits that hindered their lives. He helps cancer patients learn to manage their pain and accept their coming death. What is helpful, also, about Dr. H., is that he reaches people wherever they are in their lives--regardless of type of religion or no religion. He continues to this day, into his seventh decade of life, often through utilizing clinical hypnotherapy to help people have breakthroughs that their conscious minds would obscure or hinder, thus impeding their healing of various problems.
But as for me, as the years have passed and the Lord brought me into Catholicism, and then through various levels and dimensions of His Real Presence, and continues to do so, with more and more guidance and luminous unfoldings beyond the temporal realm, clinical hypnotherapy for me is sluggish, dull, dragging, and so far less than what the Lord has provided, unbidden and inexplicably, that I simply don't want to go through the hypnotherapy process.
The distinction between the numinous of the Holy Spirit compared to the effect of hypno-therapeutic altered states is so great that finding a comparison is difficult. I cannot even give the comparison of being asked to ride a tricycle after one has driven a race care in the Indy 500 can do the distinction justice. There is simply no comparison possible between such as the unbidden mystical ecstasies during Mass compared to the deepest clinical therapeutic state possible.
And through the years of being drawn into His Real Presence, to a point of abiding in Him, or remaining in His love even in my worst of spiritual slothful periods or that of acedia--spiritual dryness--or darkest nights of the senses or soul, the thought of seeing if through clinical hypnosis we can try to enhance the healing of the bones in my spine post-operative now, I just don't see a point. For I know with a supernal assurance deep down in, that the Lord has the healing all in hand, all within His purview and power.
In fact, it seems wrong to even try to mess with it. For I've been told by the Virgin Mary in a miraculous vision that I've written about before, and including Christ in the vision, that I will find Christ in my pain. A week or two ago I was told within that pain and suffering is not the enemy. Now healing is not the same as trying to get rid of pain, but I simply know without doubt that Jesus is handling the healing in the way He wills, and a glimpse or touch of His type of healing is mega millions more powerful and perfect than what Dr. H. and I could attempt through clinical means even if of the realms beyond traditional medicine.
Even though I vent and fuss and am taken aback by such as this surgery's tediously slow and tentative recovery period, what I am being taught by the Lord is far better than the work-effort of mind to try to access through our hypno-therapeutic process, some type of "healing" of the bones. I'm sure it won't hurt or hinder, these well-intentioned and charitable attempts to help, but it actually has no appeal to me. The Lord has taken me elsewhere, has answered my prayers to increase my faith, has shown me my flaws and provided opportunities through suffering and pain, to recognize my flaws and what hinders me spiritually.
At this point, even now, He slowed me down from the little physical progress I was making. I'm in a setback from slightly overdoing the exercises and times to get up. Today I'll not get up the 8 times; I have to take it easy and rest. And with the setback comes the reminder to begin reading/praying the Divine Office again, and to get a notebook or such to write down prayer concerns I'm given rather than to haphazardly write on a scrap of paper or to trust my mind to remember, although in faith I do know that my angel Beth will also be praying for these intentions. Yet, I will strive for more discipline and regularity, as I do pray in all the prayer formats. It is not all contemplation, not all mental prayer, not all verbal prayer, not all prayer of union. It is not all pain praying or kinesthetic tactile praying or labor praying.
I think Dr. H and I will be better off discussing the spiritual life, and if there is anything of what I share that can help him with his patients, then that is worthwhile. For in fact, love heals. The first major vision with locution of a saint that occurred in that classroom setting in 1988, when I was taking the clinical hypnotherapy course, was that message in the main: Love heals. Later I would learn, after I became Catholic, that the woman who appeared to me and spoke to the classroom of adult students, was St. Teresa of Avila.
And another time, when Dr. H. was tape recording one of the locutions while I described the visuals I was being shown at the same time, the message again pertained to love heals. That was Luke the Physician and Apostle who spoke then.
Prayer, giving myself to God in prayer, in setting aside the distractions I've become too adept in utilizing for pain management, will do as well and in fact far better than guided imagery and a therapeutic induction into an altered state. Or so it seems to me from experience in these matters. I realize that the altered state can be synonymous to a certain degree, with prayer. God allows all good. I will pray and He will answer, if I am wrong in my simply not wanting to bother with clinical hypnotherapy after all these years. I've been far, far beyond and away, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Why go back to before, to less than, than to the All of God?
One unbidden experience in Christ cannot compare with the greatest of good that clinical hypnotherapy provides. Of course, I'm not discounting that God works in good clinical aides utilized to help people. He can very much utilize hypnotherapy to teach and to heal and to guide us. God certainly did that the five or so times over three decades ago. It just does not seem at all worth it to me to try that which the Lord, when He wills, provides so effortlessly and spontaneously, so perfectly.
Blessed the man who makes the LORD his trust;
who turns not to idolatry
or to those who stray after falsehood.
Sacrifice or oblation you wished not,
but ears open to obedience you gave me.
Burnt offerings or sin-offerings you sought not;
then said I, "Behold I come."
"In the written scroll it is prescribed for me.
To do your will, O my God, is my delight,
and your law is within my heart!"
I announced your justice in the vast assembly;
I did not restrain my lips, as you, O LORD, know.
~Ps. 40: 5, 7-8a, 8b-9, 10
And from Ps. 40:8a, 9a:
Here I am Lord, I have come to do your will.
In the morning I will try to explain some of this to Dr. H. I'm not sure there is a point in phone call conversations, otherwise. But the Lord will lead and guide in that, also. My whole existence (not just a vocation), my entire being, is that of remaining in Christ's love, of union with the Holy Trinity, of being through, with, and in His Real Presence.
It is not that there is anything wrong or not good about clinical hypnotherapy. But my life in Christ is that much more and farther than anything other. I did submit to surgery, but from surgery comes whatever is next, such as now the time period of this tediously slow and painful recovery period that is going to last some indefinite time unknown to me or others, medical professionals included.
God's will per this hermitage and my involvement with it also is unknown at this time. What I am to learn with wisdom and detachment, will unfold by His Grace. As Catherine Siena once reminded me in a dream and locution: It [faith] is not a set formula." What we learn in the process of suffering and waiting and learning to discern, and of letting go of aspects and things of the temporal realm, and the more we return to his unknown, numinous delights, the greater our faith will be, and all else to be given us, as well.
Hypnotherapy can be like centering prayer techniques, but it is not techniques that I'm after nor desire. I'm not interested in set formulas to enter into God's will. I want to seek Him with love and live and learn per His wishes for me, no matter how slow or painful or long. Just this setback from pushing ahead with getting up 8 times two days in a row, is reminding me that it is not worth it to get ahead of myself.
It is in patience, after all, that one possesses one's soul. Seek and you shall find; ask and it shall be given you. Jesus gave to me years ago through the marvelous tool of clinical hypnotherapy, but as the certification professor said in that class, this experience I had went far beyond hypnotherapy. It was something else entirely he said. Dr. H. had said when the mystical ecstasies started occurring, that they were not clinically reproducible. He said they had to be from God alone, somehow.
There is no sense in going back, not in physical therapy setbacks nor in techniques helpful years ago. Just keep going, simply keep going, as St. John the Baptist once told me, and added, "Now that is truly simple, is it not?"
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