A Healers Perspective on the Nervous System: Radiance,

Webbing and the Integral Field

by Rev. James I. Kepner Ph.D.

All proceeds are donated to the Bon Orphans Fund (gYung-Drung Bon Temple Foundation)

©James I. Kepner 1997 Originally written as a Ordination Paper for

The Healing Light Center Church

Table of Contents Two Prayers 1 Preface and Acknowledgements 4 A Healers Perspective of the Nervous System: Radiance, Webbing & the Integral Field 7 The Web Between Realities 9 Expanding the Nervous System’s Range 10 The Integral Field Through the Nervous System 12 Radiance 14 Evolving Techniques, Techniques of Evolving 15

The Foundation: The nervous system chelation process. 16 Time: Resetting rhythmicity and stress response 18 The Spacious Nervous System: Opening out into the spacious linkage to the chakra bodies 20 Shock/Trauma in the Nervous System: Dispersing fixed response patterns 21

On the Way to Radiance: Stages of renewal 25 Filling Up 25 Reclaiming and Repairing 26 Balancing 26 Creating the Integral Field 27 Augmenting Evolution Through Integral Functioning- 27 Developing Radiance 28

As Above, So Below 28

Two Prayers

Blessed be the works of your hands, O Holy One. Blessed be these hands that have touched life. Blessed be these hands that have held pain. Blessed be these hands that have embraced with passion. Blessed be these hands that have tended gardens. Blessed be these hands that have closed in anger. Blessed be these hands that have planted new seeds. Blessed be these hands that have harvested ripe fields. Blessed be these hands that have cleaned, washed, mopped, scrubbed. Blessed be these hands that have become knotty with age. Blessed be these hands that are wrinkled and scarred from doing justice. Blessed be these hands that have reached out and been received. Blessed be these hands that hold the promise of the future. Blessed be the works of your hands,

O Holy One. (Dian Neu)

May in Beauty you walk.

May Beauty be before you. May Beauty be behind you. May Beauty be above you. May Beauty be below you.

May there be Beauty beside you. May there be Beauty within you.

May you walk in Beauty, May you walk in Beauty, May you walk in Beauty.

(Navaho)

Preface and Acknowledgements Since I “came out” about becoming ordained, a number of people have asked me why? What does it mean? I think (sometimes) their question really is: “Why would an otherwise sane, stable and self-possessed and accomplished and Jewish man like yourself want to become a minister?” At first I could not explain very well, other than an inarticulate “It was time.” Worse: Try telling friends in the secular and professional community, “Well, a number of past lives have been preparing me for this...” and watch for the rolling of their eyes. The truth is, it has only been in the process since I asked for ordination, about a year ago, that I understand a bit more of the “why.” My request came from deep inner yearnings and urgings, which were countered by just as much uncertainty and even fear. Both sides of this equation seemed to emerge from unknown sources within me. As a psychologist I would say that the request came from my unconscious. As a minister, I would say that the request came from my Higher Self. I know both to be the case, and further that what is unconscious in us comes both from personal sources and from sources beyond our ken. What is most true from where I sit now is that ordination is about the affirmation of the centrality of spirituality in my life. Before, it has been easy to see my spiritual interests as an addition, something grafted on to the complex and busy structure of my life. Now, it is a bit like handing over the reins of my life to my Higher Self, my soul, and subsuming my personality to this as, hopefully, a vehicle of the Greater Light. As I acknowledge the presence of the spiritual dimension as making up the center of my Wheel of life, this then is acknowledged as the sustaining fire that imbues everything else with greater warmth, fuller meaning, Higher perspective. Ordination is fundamentally, for me, an Initiation into a larger circle. To be honest, I am not yet sure what it means to be a “minister,” although I suspect I shall be taught. I know that I will try to remain open to what Spirit calls on me to do: to weave Heaven and Earth, to heal, to foster love, in whatever form is required of me, to live, to love, to learn, to strive to hold a sense of the greater

spiritual community.

*********************** Perhaps the most important part of my learning and growth spiritually is that I am not alone. This has not come through some great spiritual insight or from some great enlightened awareness of the Presence of Deity in my life: this awareness has come through the love, support, help, and deep friendships I have been Graced with in this Journey. It is they who have, through their presence, taught me about the greater Presence, and it is they who, by webbing me into the fabric of human love and companionship, have allowed me to glimpse the Web of Love and Light, which we are all part of. First to thank among these is the Rev. Rosalyn Bruyere. By your teaching, by your humor, by your dedication to developing your own field so that you may transmit your learning and insight to others, by the Teachers you channel so generously and fully to us, you have watered and nurtured the seeds that had lain dormant in me. I thank you for your generous encouragement and your acknowledgment of the “whom” which I am remembering myself to be. To the Abbess, I thank you again for the healing you have given me, initiated so long ago and continuing to this day. May your work be Blessed, may your heart be full. I thank also my deep friend and “Dharma Buddy” Carol DeSanto. I simply could not walk this path without you. You have healed me, humored me, supported me, taught me and taught with me, stretched minds and fields with me until we were pushed beyond our individual boundaries in ways we could never do for ourselves alone. You have joined me whole-heartedly, again, in this odd and unusual Path of teaching, living and service. This paper has been possible only because synergy of our energies in grasping the Mind beyond the intellect. Thank you, thank you. My deepest thanks go also to my Guidance in Spirit. Your comfort, wisdom, encouragement and presence have been indispensable. I am so grateful for your patience and generosity with me, and your help in becoming more than I could

have possibly imagined. May our connection grow and strengthen over the years of my incarnation and beyond. May you teach me my place in the Web of service that our Band is about? I thank and Bless the “New England Retreat” and the community of friends and loved ones I have found there. Thank you for your patience with my rough edges, encouragement for my fledgling gifts, acknowledgment of what I have been able to give, and support in times of trouble and pain. I am so lucky to have found you. To my classes and healing community, I thank you for the trust you have put in me as a teacher, compatriot, and friend. May we nurture our Light together for many years to come. To my children Tessa Rose and Braeden, I hope one day you will understand how deeply you have opened my heart, how important you are to me. Much of what has driven me to find my own spiritual compass has been to give you both a vision of finding your true path. I thank also Mary Ann for demanding more from me and helping me to discover sources of untapped strength within me. To my mother Elaine Kepner, I thank you deeply for providing me with a vision of the importance of pursuing ones inner calling. I am grateful for the non-traditional model of spirituality you portrayed which gave me the latitude to see that many roads lead to God.

A Healers Perspective of the Nervous System: Radiance, Webbing & the Integral Field

A pre-ordination project paper

By James I. Kepner Ph.D.

From an esoteric and philosophical point of view, no less than the physical-scientific point of view, the nervous system is a great mystery. It is the place of the interconnection between consciousness and matter. This is one of the profoundest of the Mysteries for both science and spiritual understanding. As well, the nervous system seems to affect everything about us: it is the root and core of the auric field through the link of all of the chakra centers to it via the spinal cord and cranium. During the early parts of my training as a healer with Rosalyn, she would periodically refer to the fact that most energy healers did not have much success with healing nervous system disorders. She thought it was something about healers operating at the wrong frequency for this tissue. She was very frank that this had been an area of uneven success for her, and so she had taught little directly about work with the nervous system. Then, about three years ago, Rosalyn reported a shift in her own field and perception which was allowing her to work more consistently with nervous system healing: to help with restoring the developmentally damaged nervous system of cocaine babies for example. This led to the capacity for her to facilitate the repair in other nervous system problems. Healers are very familiar with the way in which such shifts and transformations spread through the field from a central node on the web, which a teacher like Rosalyn certainly is, to those usefully connected in the webbing. Rosalyn’s shift in her own understanding about the nervous system, energetically speaking, prepared the way for her students to begin to work in this realm as well.

From the energy opening that was created through Rosalyn, about a year ago my colleague Carol DeSanto and I began to be able to discern more about the nervous system in the course of our work as psychotherapists and as teachers of healing. Amongst other things, I began to be taught by guidance a process of “chelating” the nervous system. This process took as its starting point the basic brain balancing technique, but extended this energy flow through the nervous tissue of the mid and lower brain structures and down the spinal core into the peripheral nerves (see below for further description). This process left clients with a deeper sense of connection to and through their body, with increased body awareness and sense of their own physical presence. I used this mostly in the context of my role as a body-oriented psychotherapist, to facilitate increased body awareness and body sensation as well as for the soothing and calming effect it had on stressed and anxious individuals. It was clear to me that, useful as this was as a basic process, it was also a harbinger of further practices which I did not yet have the skills or perceptions to be taught. Guidance can’t teach us what we don’t yet have “hooks” for in our experience or perception, i.e. in our field. I frequently joke with my guides that it is certainly hard (for them!) to get good help these days! What working with this process began to teach us about is the energetic feel off the nervous system: the quality and texture of nervous tissue, its resistance or transparency to energy flow; the differences between parts of the brain, spinal tissue, peripheral nerves, and autonomic nerves; what it is like to begin to “swim around” in the realm and domain of the nervous system; it’s electrical qualities and its chemical nature; it’s emotional reactivity; its space and color. This first practice of chelating the nervous system became the reference point against which to refine our own perceptions and sensitivities in relation to the nervous system. By working with it over and over again, we could start to distinguish differences, textures and qualities along the way that prepared us for further learning about the nervous system. Little did we expect that, after about a year of work being introduced into this new domain, we would be pushed to use this work on a matter of life or death? Looking back, I appreciate that we were being prepared to be able to be of service for something we could not foresee, but which was being foreseen by our inner teachers.

In July of 1996 a close friend, student and colleague was stricken with a tumor and multiple bleeds in the brain stem. Our healing community was forced to take our meager knowledge and extend it as creatively as we could to be of service to our friend. This “forced march” in turn pushed us to learn and understand more as we now had a personal stake in this work; it was no longer an abstraction or something to be learned “in the future.” Our friend’s tragic passing left us wounded in our hearts, but open to another level of teaching we could not reach before this. Looking back, it grows clearer to me now that, in addition to their usefulness in healing disease processes and problems, these practices also develop and grow– evolve if you will– the nervous system of both the client and healer. In this sense they function as much for spiritual development as for physical healing: no matter if the disorder we are treating is a specific illness or, that general terminal disease we all suffer from, the “existential flu.”

The Web Between Realities Although my understanding of what the nervous system is all about esoterically has emerged from the practice of these techniques, it makes most sense in presenting here to describe the meaning of the nervous system first, before discussing the techniques. This requires us to put together what we know about the auric field, the place of the nervous system in that field, and its relationship to Spiritual Law. Like the webbing of the energy fields linking human to human to the Earth and cosmos, the nervous system too is a kind of webbing, an interconnecting network which links consciousness to the physical body. Esoterically speaking, it is through the nervous system that the Creative principle of the incarnating soul can become manifest in the material world, and it is through the nervous system that learning from incarnation is experienced by the spiritual self. The nervous system is the translating and integrating webbing, which links us between the worlds. The nervous system, more than any other body system, lives in both realities.

Healing the nervous system allows the Creative Principle of the soul to manifest more fully into all of our acts of incarnation, and allows the experience and meaning of incarnated existence to be translated back into consciousness for the evolving soul to benefit. To develop your nervous system is to increase the capacity for this learning-full exchange between your soul, your spiritual nature (the auric bodies) and your incarnated existence–– and it is a two way street. This is the rhythmic alternation, which is the soul’s journey and evolution: input and output, creation and learning, expressing and reflecting back. Beyond even that, the larger human and cosmic “web” of energy is reflected by the internal webbing of the nervous system, and it is this reflection in the nature and structure of the nervous system which allows for the translation of changes in the larger field into our felt and experienced physical existence. In other words, it is not just about personal evolution; it is about transpersonal and planetary evolution. To foster the evolution and connection of humankind to Spirit requires us to develop and heal our nervous systems and those of our nervous-shocked world. By healing and developing our nervous system, we become more fully linked into and responsive to the larger evolutionary and planetary field, the Webbing.

Expanding the Nervous System’s Range The core of the nervous system, the spinal cord and brain, exists within the core of the auric field and the central power current and chakras of our energy being. It therefore partakes of all the frequencies (i.e.. colors) of the auric field, assuming we have all our chakras present and accounted for! This assumption turns out not to be the case for most of us, and a nervous system which is missing colors is also missing certain dimensions of life and spiritual experience which those colors give us access to. It is not enough to work only on the chakras, however, for a nervous system not used to carrying Light will not take up that Light easily even when it is introduced back into the system. Remember that the nervous system is tissue, not some passive-mechanical wiring, which transmits whatever, you put into it. As tissue, it has consciousness, adaptation, resistance, habit, and so on, even personality and style. Work on developing the nervous system is about the tissue learning to carry more consciousness, more life, and more awareness.

In its fullest state, we can say that the nervous system has all the aspects of the field. There is a “red nervous system,” and a “green nervous system” and so on through all the colors of the field. We need each aspect of the nervous system if we are to express and learn to our fullest:

Red- to experience existence in material reality through sensation, movement, orientation, interaction. Orange- to have feeling reaction to experience, i.e. a sense of the nuance and tone of experience, its emotional reality. Yellow- to discern among experiences and have a clear concept which organizes understanding of experience and can test this through further action (red) and feeling reaction (orange). Green- to feel connected to others, and have an opening to the larger spiritual reality which the first three levels of experience are ultimately about. Blue- to sense and know the underlying form (laws, spiritual principles, etc.) which are the spiritual frame for material existence. Purple- to receive and translate communication from the inner planes of existence and render them meaningful into ones life, as well as to perceive the radiance (celestial nature) of all things. White- to recognize the presence of Deity and bring it into your awareness of material existence. (Likely there is also a gold, silver and platinum aspect to the nervous system, but their meaning is beyond me presently).

Note that in this view the emotional nervous system, for example, is not located in the amygdala or hypothalamus, although these are indeed the deep brain centers of emotional response, but throughout the whole of the nervous system through its orange dimension. Thus, emotion on this level is a whole field phenomenon and a whole nervous system phenomenon. As we clear and heal the nervous system we are able to bring more of our being to our experience, on all levels.

The Integral Field Through the Nervous System As healers, because we are often so focused in our training and work on the layered nature of the field, we often pay too little attention to the energy field as a

whole, in and of itself. We make the assumption that, because the layers or subtle bodies interpenetrate one another, as we heal the chakras and the associated subtle bodies, the holistic nature of the auric field will re-establish itself. Like any other aspect of human functioning, just because something is “repaired” doesn’t mean that we cannot keep it dissociated. Our ability to compartmentalize and preserve gaps of separation in our being is well proven. We have all seen, for example, how years of traditional psychotherapy can bring about deep understanding on mental and emotional levels, but exert little change to somatic symptoms; or likewise when healing of physical illness comes about with little impact on spiritual, emotional or intellectual consciousness. A truly integral field means that all the layers or aspects of our energetic being not only are healed and whole in and of themselves, but also function in concert with one another as a gestalt whose wholeness and integrity is greater than the sum of its parts. This does not automatically result from energy healing work. An integral field means that our spiritual evolution is significantly augmented in depth and scope because learning, experience, and understanding are not pocketed off and separated by the layered nature of the field. Thus learning in one domain of existence is brought into other domains of our existence more readily. So, for example, with an integral field with our dimensionality acting in concert, spiritual understanding brought about by meditation or guidance (i.e. the domain of the crown and celestial realms) becomes more readily brought into our emotional or physical functioning. Or, in another example, emotional learning (the domain of the second chakra) becomes more readily transferred to our relations with others (heart chakra domain of existence), and so on. So, what does this all have to do with the nervous system? When the nervous system can carry light and consciousness on all levels of the field, i.e. in all colors, it becomes an integrating force, webbing together the various layers of our being until perception and action take place simultaneously throughout all the different domains. This is particularly augmented by the fact that the central nervous system and spinal cord are also part of the central axis of the auric field, and so strengthening energetic flow in this axis also creates a magnetic force, which promotes alignment and coherence of the layers of the energy field as well. A fully dimensional nervous system promotes an integral field.

The potentiating effect of integral field to carry our learning into all levels of the field is perhaps this is why people on spiritual paths seem to develop “instant karma:” they notice that any action or choice they make seems to bring about reactions and circumstances almost immediately. As the field becomes integrated, consciousness, action and reflection back to the soul have a less circuitous course. Evolution is speeded in one sense, but the ante is upped as well and costs of wrong action, wrong thinking, and wrong speech are also increased. In spiritual evolution, virtue is indeed it’s own reward. At a certain point in the healing process, once the “parts” are attended to in their own right and the separate subtle bodies are healed, we must begin to attend to the integral field, making for a larger wholeness and concerted functioning. Some of the nervous system techniques described in this paper certainly contribute to the integral functioning of the field, because a nervous system developed on all levels of the field and running strongly through the core of the aura has such a cohering effect on the field as a whole. Other healing and spiritual practices also foster integration of the auric field. Certainly deep concentrated meditation (one pointedness) supports a gradual cohering of the energy bodies into a more integral unit (which is the energetic aspect of what “one mind” is about, where all our “minds” i.e., the various subtle bodies, are aligned as one). Similarly, the third egg of the energy egg procedure taught by Rosalyn not only integrates the first two eggs into a stable unit, but also generates what Rosalyn calls a “secondary field” which is another way of referring to the integral field: it seems to have a boundary of it’s own which is distinct from the layers of the auric bodies in of themselves.

Radiance Energy healers thoroughly develop the art and practice of “running energy,” that is, using their own body and field to generate a powerful flow of healing energy. Much of our development over the first years of becoming energy healers is focused on clearing our field and opening our bodies so as to be a better conduit for energy: broadening the range of frequencies available to us, and doing the psycho-physical-spiritual work required to clear and open dimensions of energy and flow we have had to close off or have been traumatized. All of this gives us a

big enough and whole enough field that we can begin to learn other aspects of the energetic nature of things which are not met by “running” energy and generating flow, although they require fullness and flow as the gateway to accessing them. One of these extensions is the quality of “Radiance.” Radiance is the intrinsic quality of light emitted by our activated spiritual essence. Radiance is a glow from the intrinsic nature of things. Radiance can also be said to be the celestial nature of things, which can be perceived through a “properly purple” nervous system. Radiance is very different from flow. To generate radiance indeed requires amplitude in order to have a strong enough field between ones hands to bring about integral functioning of the area one is evoking Radiance from. It takes a lot of field, but it is not flow and is not at all about “running” energy (except insofar as one must run energy to build up sufficient field strength in oneself as the healer). In eliciting Radiance, the healer “simply” holds the area between her glowing hands, seeking an open and spacious, but very concentrated quality, and waits. At some point, with the correct consciousness of the healer, the inner nature of the place in question seems to awaken, and an expansive radiant quality develops and glows forth. It is different from the glow which happens when we “light up” a body area or part of the field by saturating it with a flow of energy so that it is passively awash with light. Radiance takes place from the center outwards and has an active, intrinsic quality. Another difference between Radiance and flow of energy seems to me that flow creates organized patterning of the field and thus is “magnetic” in quality, i.e.. It sets up lines and directions of force. Radiance has more a quality of saturating everything it touches and calling to the inner nature of things. Both have a quality of attraction that we seem to hunger for. An example of the difference, to me at any rate, is to compare the impact of our teacher Master Chang with that of his father the Quan Lin. Chang has clearly magnetic qualities: when you are in his field you become reorganized and things surface in you as a result of the magnetic pulls on your field. This impact is additional to the sheer size and

frequency of his field, which has its own impact. The Quan Lin, on the other hand, is a Radiant being. With him you are “soaked” in radiant essence, and this begins to evoke the intrinsically radiant quality of your own celestial nature. His presence does the same with objects, such as the famous chair in which Rosalyn has been sitting in while channeling him. This chair quite clearly radiates his essence for a time, palpable in quality even the next morning after a channeling session, because it has been “activated” by him. To sit in the chair yourself is to be activated into radiance by his influence, just as it is to be in his presence, and this radiance begins to cohere your own field around the radiant core of your field, which is also the nervous system on all its levels. This is the link of Radiance to our discussion of the nervous system: the nervous system loves radiance. Establishing this radiance in the nervous system brings us into our true nature.

Evolving Techniques, Techniques of Evolving A number of techniques evolved which have given us a foundation for understanding more about the nature of neural tissue and it’s energies, and the impact on consciousness of practices, which augment and heal the physical and energetic whole of the nervous system. I present them here as general descriptions so that readers can get a glimpse of the domain being explored. These descriptions are not intended as a how-to manual, since there is no way to learn these practices without the field of a healer who knows them and knows the energies involved and can attune you to this. All this is quite rudimentary in its own way, but it is a beginning. I like to think of this work as about getting the nervous system to carry the Light and therefore consciousness that it is designed to carry. So far, four different healing processes have emerged from this work:

• The Nervous System Chelation– a process of clearing and promoting connection and transmission within the nervous system.

• Enlightening the Midbrain– a process of re-balancing the neuro-hormonal cycles related to the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis.

• Radiant Expansion of the Nervous System– Linking the nervous system to the chakras and subtle bodies via an expansive radiance.

• Undoing Trauma and Other Fixed Responses– a process of releasing shock/trauma reaction patterns set into the Central, Autonomic or Peripheral nervous systems.

Of course, the reality is that these techniques can be described, but the real issue in doing them is not applying a rote process. What enabled the techniques was that we were able to carry in our field and in our awareness the necessary feel for what the nervous system is about energetically. By being able to feel it, we could begin to distinguish qualities and structures and be taught how to work with them. Our experience in teaching these techniques is that students find them very difficult to apply until they develop the sensory capacity in themselves to feel what is happening, partly by having their own nervous system developed through them.

The Foundation: The nervous system chelation process. The nervous system should be balanced with both input and output of energies- thought and expression and sensing and observing; perception and response. Of course, like most balances, in the human organism balance is not the norm. Our bias is to fill our nervous system with mental (output) energies and crowd out our capacity to sense and feel (input). The vessel that is not empty cannot be filled with new refreshment. The nervous system chelation process involves clearing and filling the nervous system in a cephalo-caudal direction. I call it a foundation technique because it seems a necessary step without which some of the other techniques are difficult if not impossible to generate. The cephalo-caudal direction mirrors the way the nervous system develops in the embryo, and fosters the emergence of consciousness more fully into the body. The healer may start with a brain balancing, and then from the center of the brain she initiates a flow of energy inferiorly through the lower brain seeking the “opening” to the spinal cord. The process then continues, directing energy flow down through the spinal cord. The nervous system is often surprisingly resistant to energy flow, and students will often slip off the neural tissue in the spine itself and go for paths of least resistance in the space of the spine or even out into the

back musculature. Unfortunately, this does nothing to clear and open the flow through the neural tissue, which is the object of this work, and the technique is to direct flow at the resistant places until they clear, unless more direct work is needed in an area first. As the spinal cord opens more and the healer eventually can feel their way down through the carrier band of the energy to the sacrum and sciatic nerves. The big nerves seem to light up first after the cord itself is cleared and filled, then various peripheral nerves open up and light up, such as the brachial nerves of the arms or the cranial nerves or autonomic tracts. It’s a little like filling up a branched set of hoses which “pop” as the pressure gets out to the branches. Obviously, this technique is contraindicated in conditions where there is already pressure in the brain area or where the physical aspects of the nervous system are weakened or fragile. The nervous system chelation process itself can be followed by a process of pulling the energy one has filled the central nervous system with through the peripheral and functional nerves. This additional step is particularly helpful in restoring nerve impulse and in supporting repair of nervous tissue between the central and peripheral nervous systems. It is also helpful for the person who has deeply numbed their body. This combination of first filling the nervous system, and then pulling the energy out to the periphery seems to give the steps needed for a complete treatment in the support of re-growth and re-patterning than either one alone. When other elements are added, you have a useful treatment process to support repair. The nervous system then has a sense of itself as a whole and specific reparative healing work on the nerves has a larger energy and knowledge matrix to draw on. The process, particularly the first step, takes considerable sensitivity and tends to evoke a rather profound altered state for the healer as well. The second step of pulling the energy through the nerves is not always a very comfortable one, particularly in neural damage or in an emotionally numbed person who has dulled themselves to their sensation and body. It can result in a considerable increase in body awareness that is developmentally a positive direction, but may increase awareness of emotions and feelings which have been defended against by the dulling of sensation. It is not for novices. To do this requires that you can

discriminate neural from other tissue and have considerable sensitivity in your use of energy.

Time: Resetting rhythmicity and stress response The human stress response involves neuro-chemical reactions in what is known as the adrenal-hypothalamic axis (AHA), i.e. involving deep structures of the brain along with the adrenal glands above the kidneys. From an energy perspective, the overstimulation of the adrenals set up by an overactive third chakra, among other things, resets the pacing of the field and thus of the physical body. The pituitary and pineal glands, both implicated in controlling deep body cycles (seasonal, light/dark rhythms, menstrual rhythms, etc.) end up regulated by the peripheral demands of the adrenal glands and by the misperception of life as an emergency. We are coming to believe that work with these organs helps get us unstuck from being always on output. Rosalyn and Shelby Hammit have for years taught the “adrenal disconnect” technique which seems to help get these glands “off line” for a bit, allowing the system to right itself. The following process of “Enlightening the Midbrain” (as a punster, I’ve been tempted to call it the “Rhythm Method,” but will restrain myself) takes this from the other end of the axis by addressing the deep brain structures and related chakra connections and restoring the field to a pacing set by the higher centers, and introducing the quality of radiance to the seat of these higher centers. The shift of consciousness involved definitely gets you out of the mental body: It produces a profound altered state in both the client and the healer, giving access to the Celestial body. This work is very slow, delicate and advanced work. It takes a lot of clear perception and should not be done without it. It also requires a combination of clear direction (pattern) and awareness of spatial location, with a very open and liquid quality, which is completely unforced. Following a chelation, brain balance or filling up the nervous system as described earlier and working at the head, the healer finds the third ventricle space and gently “enlightens” it with Solar Radiance. After the ventricle space lights up the central brain, the healer then seeks inferiorly to opening at the base of the skull and through it to the hypophysis (pituitary body) and generates a Lunar quality of Radiance here. The

pituitary is purposefully (i.e. anatomically) kept in an energetically and physically cooler space by its separation from the brain and major arteries, hence the cooler lunar quality of light that is used. We can now better appreciate the rhythmic cycles set up around both Solar and Lunar energies, both of which are profound and crucial cycles for our being. Finally, drawing back into the ventricle locating the pineal gland at the posterior edge of the ventricle, the healer lights it up with Solar Radiance, leaving the whole midbrain glowing and radiant. At this point, the healer will find herself very joined with the internal space of the client, kind of swimming around inside the space of the brain and nervous system. To finish the session, she must consciously pull back to her own body and return fully back to her own hands before removing them from the client’s head. This can be difficult in such a merged state. It is important to give time for both the client and healer to settle into this deep state and different rhythm. It is very difficult to feel stressed out after this treatment!

The Spacious Nervous System: Opening out into the spacious linkage to the chakra bodies After years of being taught that the chakras center in the spine and that the central energy column of the field exists in the spinal cord it should have been obvious to me that the chakra system and the nervous system are intimately interconnected. But the deeper teachings about the nervous system I was being led through all began in the physical realm, and it really didn’t stand out that all along I was being taught something about the intimate interconnection of these realms of en-soulment. When clear, aligned with the chakras and activated in radiance, the nervous system has an expansive and spacious connection to each subtle body, reaching into that space beyond its physical boundaries. Subjectively it feels as if the nervous system has fine “root hairs” like that of a plant, connecting from the physical extensions of the nervous system into the energetic space. This has a considerable effect on ones sensitivity and perception into the subtle dimensions of experience.

In the radiant expansion process, the healer works from the head and feels her way down the spinal cord to the location of the chakra base. Then, holding that place in the physical dimension, she seeks for the chakra itself in its energetic dimension, and holds both dimensions at the same time. This is an essential healers skill of being two (or more) places at once, something like walking and chewing gum at the same time! Frequently, the healer will find that these two dimensions are not at all in alignment: the spinal cord feels off to one side or the other, above or below the chakra. One simply holds these two “magnetically” until they come into alignment and link up. When this occurs, the client will feel a sense of being “in line with myself” as one person put it. Often this is enough and can take considerable time, depending on the healer’s field and how out of alignment the client is. The second steps are to hold these linked and aligned dimensions, and seek to develop radiance within that specific chakra frequency. What occurs feels like the build-up of energy in the healer similar to the Peace Wave process that Rosalyn has demonstrated. At some point this radiance seems to “bloom” and expands throughout the nervous system and the subtle body related to that chakra. Each chakra and color has a different quality in its radiant expansion. For example, the radiant expansion of the nervous system and first chakra (red) subtle body is likened poetically to “a spreading brush fire” and can associated with a lot of prickly tingling sensations, while the orange nervous system radiance feels like a soft wash of fullness. We are just beginning to use this technique, so many of its effects are not yet clear. With sensitive clients, however, working with this process with one or two levels at a time seems to highlight and therefore allow them to sort out essential from non-essential patterns. For example, working with this process in the link between the nervous system and the third chakra body allowed one client to better see her neurotic mental patterns of thought, but from “a step back.” I think this occurs because radiance is the glow from our intrinsic being of that part of us and, as it shines through we can better discern the difference between our inherent being and those patterns that have been layered over it, obscuring our light. This is particularly true when working with the first three chakras in this way. The higher chakra linkages seem to provide a fuller connection to our expansiveness and to perceptions from these other dimensions, better revealing

the realms of soul.

Shock/Trauma in the Nervous System: Dispersing fixed response patterns As a psychotherapist I work a lot with survivors of abuse, rape and other traumas. Much of the energy healing work I have learned is significantly helpful to trauma survivors in rebuilding and helping to clear trauma from the field and from the body. But reducing the hyper-reactivity and tendency to flashbacks has always been a gradual process in healing and psychotherapy, attenuating over the course of years of work. As I’ve worked more with the nervous system, I began to be able to identify the “feel” of these hyper-reactive response patterns in the nervous system and understand their energetic nature. This has led to a methodology for undoing or dissolving these patterns and freeing the survivor from being as caught up in an automatic, reflexive trauma response. Generally speaking, shock/trauma is a high amplitude and strongly patterned energy wave (Rosalyn notes that it involves a DC shift in the field) of either high frequency– an example of which is terror– or very low frequency– an example of which is dread– of a combination of responses in both categories. This seems to set up a circuit or pattern in the nervous system that is quiescent until it is triggered by some stimulus related to the original trauma, such as an external event or internal feeling. Once triggered this pattern becomes highly charged and activated and seems to pull the nervous system into it’s own frequency, keeping the person in this involuntary reaction pattern until their energy is used up enough for the pattern to release it’s hold. Then they drop into exhaustion or depression, typical of the numbing/overstimulation cycle common in PTSD. Imagine that the trauma pattern is like an electromagnet run by a battery and the nervous system is steel filings. When no electricity is on it has no pull. When the switch is turned on and the magnet is energized, it pulls the nervous system either up to it (a high frequency pattern) or down to it (a low frequency pattern), using up the available electricity until the battery runs down and the magnet looses its pull.

Diagram: The Pull of the Trauma Pattern

The general process I have evolved to work this is to join with the clients nervous system to have the client think about the feeling, memory or response just enough to evoke it’s wave form. As soon as I can feel it between my hands and identify from this where they feel it in their body, I join with that waveform until I can hold it. At this point I ask the client to consciously distract him or herself from the feeling or memory so that they are not energizing it themselves and I can take it over. From here it is a process of gradually bringing this pattern higher and higher in frequency (which also requires a fair degree of amplitude). At some point the pattern can be felt to “peel off” from the nervous system and I can feel the person drop into the normal baseline frequency of the nervous system. This usually results in a deep breath and a relaxation response. The healer must, however, keep bringing the pattern up in frequency until it can no longer maintain coherency and disperses. Then I fill the “space” once occupied by the pattern in the nervous system with high frequency light. This sounds fairly straightforward, but it is complicated by the fact that trauma/shock patterns can exist in all three levels of the nervous system: as a generalized response in the Central nervous system; as specific responses in parts of the Autonomic nervous system, usually focused on specific nerve plexus; and as patterns of very specific spinal reflexes in the Peripheral nervous system which effect individual organs or muscle groups. The healer must be able to feel the difference in these responses, find the specific locations, and work with them a bit differently. For example, while the Central nervous system and Autonomic nervous system responses are handled as previously described, the spinal reflex patterns are worked more like finding the brush fires in the spinal cord (reflex arcs that won’t stop firing) and washing through them out to put out the fire. As I’ve gained experience with this process I am increasingly able to appreciate the complex of nervous system patterns that any particular trauma/shock pattern is, and work with the various levels of this complex all at once. This is exceedingly challenging to do and requires that my own field be very full and clear– not always the case! Clients report that their reactions after this treatment are not always entirely gone. In the best of results the trauma/shock pattern is completely absent. More usually they are present when stimulated but are minimal, more like mere habits, and the person is able to more easily detach and

make choices, rather than feel compelled and controlled by the reaction. One person described it as there being still a “shadow” of the trauma/shock pattern and that she could choose to go in an alternative direction rather than become absorbed by it. After a couple of these experiences she no longer had any reaction at all. The technique seems to require that the client have enough grounding and control, i.e. have done enough prior recovery work, that they can avoid becoming completely triggered and evoke the response minimally, then distract themselves. Most survivors in early phase of healing cannot do this readily, nor can they tolerate touch, so this is probably not as useful in this phase of healing unless very artfully applied. Also, sometimes relieving some trauma/shock patterns can uncover deeper memories and trauma that were distracted from by the ones more close to the surface. My motto here is “A little undoing, a lot of filling.” It’s important not to do too much at once. Recently, I have been experimenting with extending this notion of finding patterned responses in the nervous system to compulsive and addictive cravings and other behavior patterns felt as involuntary, such as compulsive eating, drug cravings and the like, with some preliminary success. I have been told that allergic reactions are similar in nature and can be worked with similarly-- I just have not been taught what they feel like in the nervous system or field yet. All of this is quite experimental in nature at this point. I hope to train a cadre of experienced healers and therapists to work with this process enough so that we can learn more about its usefulness, cautions and reliability.

On the Way to Radiance: Stages of renewal Some further implications of this work may be conjectured as we end this current discussion. As I think about my own experience and that of my clients of the course and process of healing as development of the whole being over time, some discernible phases of healing work stand out. I don’t think these are any kind of absolute stages, many of us go about this in a quite a circular and recursive way, but it is a useful schema to help us understand the process spiritual growth and healing is about as a whole.

Filling Up Most of us, particularly if we are ill or in emotional crisis, enter into healing work

quite debilitated and energetically depleted. We have so little energy available and so few frequencies that little of our being are available to us, and precious little even of what’s there. Debilitation, chronic illness, narrowness of scope in life, preoccupation with symptoms, inability to tolerate interactions with others or work life, and similar symptoms, are signs and signals of this terrible depletion, narrow range of frequencies and lack of energy reserve. So often the first need is to fill up and rebuild our capacity to tolerate, absorb and hold a sufficient quantity of energy (amplitude) and extend the range of frequencies we have available and can perceive. Increased amplitude or quantity of available energy begins to bring back our basic functioning. A broader range of frequencies available to us helps to bring increased awareness of the “missing elements” of our life and being, the lack of which has kept us in too narrow a scope. Basic energy chelation, the secondary chakra pattern (a process evolved by Carol DeSanto and myself), energy eggs, and similar processes are the foundation of this basic work to fill up, clear and extend the frequency range.

Reclaiming and Repairing As energy increases in the field and in the tissues “things begin to surface.” With sufficient energy we begin to discover our holes and blockages: damaged areas of the energy field; numbed and unaware body areas we have diminished in order to manage our emotional life; hidden memories; aspects of our being we have walled off or “forgotten” because of emotional, mental, interpersonal or spiritual conflicts. As energy increases and the clogged and hazy condition of the field clears these structural and dormant issues can now be seen and felt, they are energized and charged now, and their relationship to illness or life circumstance begins to become more apparent. Here we enter into a phase of uncovering, emotional working through, repairing the structure of the auric field and physical body, and reclaiming of aspects of our nature we have left out from our human equation.

Balancing The process of reclaiming and rebuilding is often very self-preoccupying and self-involved. By its nature, we must finally truly attend to our own business and learn to own our nature more fully. But this is not a balanced process. It is not

balanced between self and other, it is not balanced between self-care and service, and it does not necessarily balance even the different levels of our being. Some people get stuck in endless reclaiming and never move on, seeking another emotional catharsis or drama to affirm what is still a fragile self-esteem system, or to counter a deeper feeling of some emotional or spiritual emptiness. At some point we must shift to learning to balance our life, our energy field, our relationship to others, to community, to Spirit (ultimately, they are all the same). Another way of saying this is that we must work actively to have all our cylinders (chakras) firing, so that we live in a balanced way in our physical being, our emotional being, our intellect and reason, our heart connection to others and the world through compassion, our sense of the perfection and truth underlying all things, a deep intuitive sense of connection to spiritual reality, and a crowning openness to Deity as a real and palpable presence in our lives and in the world. This balancing process is, of course, an on-going work that we will be occupied with for the rest of our lives, and lives to come. It is never done because it is we are in a continual dynamic with continually changing energies and life events. But as we build a core of practices which sustain our balance— meditation, exercise, movement, sound work, self reflection, service to other, and so on— we learn the art of juggling and adjusting which is the art of balancing. For, in reality, there is no such thing as balance, only of balancing.

Creating the Integral Field As we become increasingly balanced, recalling that we never arrive at any end point but simply become more facile at this dynamic balance, the question becomes less one of balancing each separate layer or aspect of energy. Now we must learn what it is to be whole, to make our parts integral to one another and to the whole we are becoming. As our practices are directed at creating an integral field, we have the potential to become a whole with all our parts acting in concert. Our wholeness becomes greater than and different from the sum of its parts.

Augmenting Evolution Through Integral Functioning- As learning and experience are less separated off or pocketed off by the different

layers of the auric field, an integral field augments the souls evolvement through creative expression and interaction with incarnational experience. This means that learning on one level has impact on many other levels, e.g. that understanding of Spiritual Law gleaned through the higher layers of the field begins to have immediate implications for ones practical and material life. The integral field also increasingly extends beyond ones individual evolvement and opens our capacity for being webbed into the larger life field we are part of.

Developing Radiance The stage is now set for radiance: for the activation of the intrinsic Light of Being, which is the celestial nature of all things. As we are webbed into the larger field on the “outside,” now, through our inner radiance we partake of the Holy nature of all things. We unveil the spark of God, that which we are.

As Above, So Below; As Below, So Above Earlier in this paper I spoke of the way in which the nervous system is the microcosmic webbing that reflects and is part of the macrocosmic webbing which we are part of on the planetary and Cosmic levels. It is from this relationship of our internal webbing to the planetary and Cosmic webbing that we ultimately understand the way in which we are part of the web of the Deity and what healing is really all about. The Jewish Kabbalists say: There is nowhere God is not. A part of everything is the Holy Spark. We are all sparks of the Creative out streaming of God as the Deity emanated out from Void through the ten vessels and became Creation. It is said that these sparks lost consciousness of their Divine nature and of the Divine nature of all things; Paradise was lost. The work of spirituality, from this cosmological view, is to uncover the spark of God which we are, and which every rock and drop of dew is as well. In this sense, spirituality is a partnership with God, and from the Kabbalists perspective, human beings are necessary to the Deity. Without us, our reflected light of consciousness, the Divine cannot see Itself. God could not know Itself. In a similar view, spirituality is about bringing back together the “shattered vessel” of creation, which was not able to hold the immensity of the Deity in form and was thus shattered into an infinitude of sparks. We gather these sparks back to Itself by our recognition of the Divine in all things.

But another way of saying this is that God is the Webbing that binds all things into One. In healing, we must not only uncover the sparks, but we must also restore our consciousness of the Webbing in which each spark is embedded, and restore also consciousness of the Wholeness of the Web of Creation which is God. Healing, then, is nothing short of reweaving the fabric of Souls, of Sparks, and restoring the Web of God to Itself. As we work in the microcosm of the nervous system, let us be mindful of the Web we are healing, so that the Radiant nature of the being in our hands, of our own being, of all souls living and dead, of all our relations be they mineral, vegetable, or animal, may shine forth.