The Search For Healing

By Roberta Godbe

After my son left home to attend college, I made the decision to paint the house that I'd been living in comfortably for eleven years. Never could I have imagined the changes I was inviting into my life. In May 2006, after I'd spent countless hours picking out beautiful complementary colors, the project began. Though I'd chosen low-VOC paint for most of the house, I allowed myself to be persuaded by the painter to use oil-based paint and two coats of water-based polyurethane sealer on one faux finished wall in the kitchen. I had a definite premonition that I should wait on that part of the project, but I didn't listen to my intuition. The moment the oil-based paint appeared on the wall, my body had an extreme reaction with pain deep in my eardrums and my head ached.  Despite countless attempts to remedy the problem, I could not re-enter my house without ill effects during this period of time. Gradually I became sicker and sicker, succumbing to the illness known as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, or MCS.

Over the next 15 months I had to move eight times, relying on one friend only to have to seek refuge with another friend as my sensitivities expanded to include many substances and settings that I had previously been able to tolerate. I became sensitive to paints, pressed particle board, strong scents, pesticides, mold, new carpets, fabrics, gasoline, and especially cell phone radiation and wireless internet frequencies. For me the entire world had become a toxic place. On four different occasions, I had to flee where I was staying in the middle of the night and sleep curled up in a blanket in my car, because my body was reacting to relatively small quantities of toxins in the environment. Though my experience was extremely uncomfortable and unsettling, I realized how lucky I was to even have a car to escape to, unlike refugees in Iraq, Afghanistan, or other parts of the world, who must leave their homes and cannot return. With this tiny taste of homelessness, my heart opened to greater compassion for the suffering in this world.

As someone who has been blessed with good health my entire life and accustomed to moving freely in the world, I found my sensitivities confusing and frustrating. Exposure to any of the many "triggers" would result in severe headaches that lasted for hours, often accompanied by physical lethargy and mental confusion, the "brain fog" so often described by people with MCS. Much of the time I couldn't tell in advance where I could go without reacting, and when I had to leave gatherings or events because my body was so compromised and sensitive, I developed a kind of renunciation and peaceful dispassion I had never experienced before. Eventually I took a month off of work in an attempt to get stronger and rest. Sometimes I cried tears of desperation; at other times I laughed at the absurdity of my situation.

On my search for healing, I tried conventional Western medicine, homeopathy, alternative medicine, acupuncture, and Bioset (an allergy relief technique). I had spiritual healings, ionic foot baths, infrared saunas, and I changed my diet several times and drank lots of fresh juices. My life became preoccupied with finding ways to heal and get well. Although I experienced despair at times, the spiritual practices I've cultivated since my 20s left me feeling largely hopeful and at peace. This inner state, and my connection to the divine, guided me, almost miraculously, through this most difficult journey of my lifetime.

As a strong, independent woman most of my life, I found it profoundly humbling to need so much help. While feeling deep gratitude for all the love and support shown by my family, friends, and partner, I also became keenly aware of the fragility of the apparent security I had worked my whole life to create. Significantly, this awareness opened me to a new understanding and empathic connection to the displaced, the homeless, all those stricken with illness, whether physical or mental, and a genuine commitment to compassionate engagement in benefiting others. What had previously been a spiritual ideal emanating from the hearts of my teachers began to dawn in me as my own deepest longing. This shift, I believe, was the opening through which true healing found me.

For years, I had heard about an amazing healer in Brazil by the name of John of God. Now I felt drawn to go to Brazil and ask him for healing. As I began preparing for the trip, I heard from a friend about a device from Europe that increases the microcirculation of the blood and thus increases the production of ATP, which then supports the body's self-healing through increased energy and natural oxygenation of the whole system. I was intrigued and decided to rent this device, the Bemer 3000, to see what it could do for me. I certainly had nothing to lose, and I had tried everything else imaginable. The effects of the Bemer were a revelation to me. Each time I used it, my overall vitality and well-being increased, and I found that I could sustain my newfound energy throughout the day. My daily brisk walk turned into jogging, and I rarely needed to slow down. My endurance radically improved, both physically and mentally, and I was again able to sleep at night without herbs and melatonin. Needless to say, I decided to buy my own unit.

The Bemer 3000 is an electromagnetic field system that has been used by Olympic athletes for peak performance and recovery from injury, and by most others for overall health and well being. My own personal experience with the Bemer thoroughly convinced me of its profound power to heal the body by supporting the body's own natural immune and healing responses.

After a few weeks I was feeling so well that I questioned my trip to Brazil. Finally, I had a device that could help my body to heal, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. But my intuition told me to go, and I reflected on how my healing journey of the past 18 months had begun with a moment of disregarding my intuition. I decided to make the trip and bought my tickets for Brazil.

Arriving in Brazil at the "Casa," the community where people from all over the world come to ask for the healing of John of God, I felt a presence I can only describe as palpably divine. I felt immediately uplifted, and my heart soared with certainty that I would find final healing here. Then I encountered the incredible stories from the people themselves. A woman stricken with MS, bound to a wheelchair for two years, now hiking two miles at a time. A man whose baseball-size cancerous tumor on his face shrank by 40% after one week. People came for every sort of healing, and most experienced improvement, and sometimes, not always, complete remission. Significantly, John of God never charges anything for his work. The whole enterprise is run by volunteers and grateful recipients of his healing, for which, by the way, he takes absolutely no personal credit. As he says, "I do not heal, it is God that heals." There is only a small box at the Casa with a simple sign that says "donations welcome."

When I spoke with John of God through an interpreter, he told me that he would help me and directed me to "the current room," where I spent three or four hours, usually twice a day, sitting in a chair with my feet on the ground and palms facing upwards, absolutely still. The power of the energy and spiritual presence in the room was profound. I felt my heart and body being cleansed and my spirit naturally lifted. All my heaviness was washed away, and I felt light and filled with divine love. Beginners and experienced meditators alike were able to sit for this length of time in stillness and trust because of the energy of the place.

The second week I was told to get an intervention or "surgery." (My surgery was nonphysical, but some people opt for physical surgery, in which, usually, a small incision is made in the body.) The following session, the intervention group was led into a small room with chairs and seated. We were told not to be afraid and to trust that the spiritual doctors and beings on the other side that work with John of God would help. I could feel the spiritual anesthesia filling my body, and then I could feel hands working in my brain for quite some time and my body being skimmed over and strengthened. There were also sensations in my aura, beyond the physical body. At the end of the surgery we received herbs and returned to our rooms, where we stayed in bed for 24 hours with eyes closed, except for bathroom needs and meals, which were brought to us. I relaxed and slept and found that my body was so happy to be in bed. The next morning, a deep peace descended on me and an exquisite love and presence established itself in me. Post-surgery protocol also included instructions on how to proceed for the next 40 days while the spiritual healing was still working in us.

The two weeks I spent at the Casa in that incredible environment of love and caring renewed my deep faith in the goodness that is inside and all around us, and I flew home elated and inspired. The first week back, my brain felt swollen, and I needed even more rest than usual, often 10 to 11 hours at night and naps in between. Now my body feels so much stronger, and I don't feel like a "sick" person waiting for the next environmental toxin to overcome me. I feel clearer and more integrated in myself, more aligned with what I've come here to do, and more peaceful and joyous. I have a deeper understanding of this past year and a half and reflect now with appreciation on the teachings of the journey.

Through this past year of chaos and failing health I was carried by a deep spiritual connection that I have cultivated and honored all of my adult life. When ill health or other life challenges are given to us, we are naturally thrown upon our spiritual core and invited to meet that challenge with an open heart and trust in ourselves, in the divine, and in that Truth that both transcends personal existence and yet abides innately at the core of all that we experience as "personal." It's one thing to practice as I have and hold these ideals close to my heart, and quite another to traverse a "dark night of the Soul" through serious illness or calamity and encounter there a profound confirmation of these truths.

My 27-year practice as a transpersonal therapist has been clarified and focused through the experiences I relate here. I know myself to have been blessed in a most unusual way, which I can only understand as an initiation into the role of "wounded healer." I look forward to returning to John of God again, not with a strong need, but a grateful heart.

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