November 2, 2010--GETTING ORIENTED

In our Pousada, as elsewhere, we can hear a babel of different languages spoken besides Portugues, including French, Spanish, Italian, German. There are people here from most of parts of Europe, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and even Khazakstan. For some people this is their first time to see John of God and others have returned dozens of times. There are even some who have moved here permanently in order to be close to this healing environment.  We spend the day recuperating, exploring the little town, and getting acquainted with the guests in the pousada who all have an interesting story to tell of how they ended up in search of healing with John of God. Some are in search of emotional and spiritual healing, but many come in search of physical healing.

There are people here with every kind of physical ailment including various cancers in all stages of proliferation, multiple sclerosis, seizure disorders, ALS, blindness, intractable migraine headaches, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis.....it’s a very long list. People also come for emotional and psychological healing. There are people here who have schizophrenia, OCD, depression, and crippling anxiety. There are people of every creed, including atheists, agnostics, and Buddhists. You don’t have to have any prerequisites to come here, just an open heart and open mind and a genuine desire to heal.  I have run into quite a few people you wouldn’t guess would come here---like lawyers, conventional doctors, and people in the corporate world. My neighbor in the pousada is a banker. Even the super rational, left-brain dominant types have been known to open up to the supernatural when they are desperate enough to look outside the box for answers to their suffering. 


Some of you might be wondering how a rational, western-trained doctor like myself could end up "falling" for something that defies reason or explanation. I had my first introduction to the world of the paranormal with the Navajo during their healing ceremonies when I was a young school teacher living on the edge of Canyon de Chelly. I experienced my own spontaneous healing during a ceremony that was given to me as a gift, and I witnessed the spontaneous healing of others as well. Ever since then, I have been intrigued by phenomenon that I observe as real but cannot explain. This fascination is in spite of my training that tends to dismiss and even ridicule that which cannot be explained. (My idealist notion of a real scientist is someone who observes with an open and enquiring mind.)