HEALER, HEAL THYSELF<\/p>\n
Back in the nineteen eighties, I took ten trips to the\u00a0Philippines to research the legendary psychic surgeons. I became intrigued with
one healer in particular, Alex Orbito, who was well known by both native\u00a0Filipinos and visitors from all over the world. One of his assistants told me that\u00a0when Alex was fourteen, he placed his hands on a paralyzed woman\u2019s legs and she\u00a0got up and walked. Word got out and people began lining up at his door. Alex was\u00a0terribly upset. He didn’t want to be a healer. He wanted to be a photographer so
he snuck away to live in another province. It didn’t go well. In a short time, he\u00a0was falsely imprisoned for stealing camera equipment, he became ill with a\u00a0fever and as he stared at the filthy walls of his cell, he realized that\u00a0healing was his destiny. Within an hour, the police found the real thief and freed\u00a0Alex from jail. When he got back home, his fever lifted and he devoted himself\u00a0to helping people. So the story goes.<\/p>\n
Whether or not that tale is exaggerated, I don’t know, but
it didn\u2019t matter when I had the good fortune to meet this inspiring man. I\u00a0found him to be humble and unassuming. He took money for his work if someone offered\u00a0it. If they didn\u2019t, he took a fish or a cup of rice. No one was ever turned\u00a0away. Alex\u2019s life story as well as his healing powers and methods may be controversial\u00a0but that\u2019s not what this blog is about. It\u2019s about the way Alex healed himself.<\/p>\n
Each morning, his back yard chapel filled up with people who
needed help. After a reverend led everyone in prayers for about thirty minutes,\u00a0Alex worked on them one by one in a room with glass windows so others could\u00a0observe. After a couple of hours of non-stop healing, when he began to looked\u00a0exhausted and drained, he stopped, went into his house, he prayed, drank water,\u00a0spoke to the spirits and after about twenty minutes he emerged from his home
looking refreshed and radiant and he started all over again. That was my most\u00a0valuable lesson.<\/p>\n
The greatest gift we can give ourselves is learning how to comfort
and make friends with ourselves. I often talk about the workshops I attended\u00a0that were led by Death and Dying specialist, Stephen Levine, and his wife,\u00a0Ondrea. They had moved to the outskirts of Northern New Mexico to be alone and\u00a0pray and meditate when Stephen died of a long illness. Ondrea said, \u201cI lived\u00a0far away from my family and friends and I had to learn to hold my own hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
I want to be able to do the same thing and I\u2019m still working\u00a0on it. It helps to remember whether we’re alone or not, we all feel lonely and
isolated sometimes. The quarantine is loosening in some places but we still\u00a0have to learn to comfort ourselves because sometimes, no one else is around to\u00a0do the job. My cat is pretty good at it, I make phone calls to check in with\u00a0friends, but in the end, I am here for myself which takes a lot of practice and\u00a0dedication. And I make a point of being there for others who reach out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I got\u00a0an email yesterday from a long time Filipino friend, a renowned researcher of\u00a0psychic phenomena. He always appeared self-sufficient and strong, but for the\u00a0first time in decades, he admitted to being sad and depressed. I was so glad he\u00a0wrote to me. There is great power in accepting ourselves as we are and reaching\u00a0out for help. I wrote back right away and reminded him that when he is
depressed and lonely, the solution is not to chase it away. That\u2019s common behavior\u00a0among us human beings. We don’t like to hurt. But I\u2019ve learned over the years\u00a0that the only way out is in. Everything changes, we know that for sure, so if\u00a0we commit to feel our feelings fully, hold our own hands and stay in the truth\u00a0of the moment, ultimately we can heal ourselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HEALER, HEAL THYSELF Back in the nineteen eighties, I took ten trips to the\u00a0Philippines to research the legendary psychic surgeons. I became intrigued withone healer in particular, Alex Orbito, who was well known by both native\u00a0Filipinos and visitors from all over the world. One of his assistants told me that\u00a0when Alex was fourteen, he placed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}