Healing Powers

I am a long-time member of a book club that specializes in spiritual, New Age type publications. Actually, I'm a member several times over, because when you start a membership you get a choice of five books for one, greenback dollar. In order to expand my library on the cheap, I went through a frenzy of joining that included memberships for my daughter, my pets, my plants (Begonia Gabriel and Palmetto Gabriel), my father's deceased first wife and permutations of my name like "Ingora Gabora" and "Inez Gabriez".

If you think that this is a bit dishonest, keep in mind that membership requires you to make a minimum purchase in the first year after joining, and the postage/ handling rates on their books are exorbitant. It all comes out in the proverbial wash on both sides, I think. I like my book club well enough. They send glossy catalogues bi-weekly with reviews of books, CDs, guidance cards, journals, Tai Chi DVDs, energy chimes, iconic statuary and chakra paraphernalia. If you are remotely interested in alternative spiritual publications and tchotchkes, you'll be in mail-order bliss.

The club carries all of the prolific works of master mass-market gurus like Dwayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil and Sylvia Brown - authors and self-help professionals so ubiquitous that one has to assume that each and every utterance they ever make is published. One imagines that Chopra need only walk outside and say, "Look!...There's a toad on my patio!" and a book about amphibious guided meditation is on the shelves by morning. But lately, I've noticed a distinct trend away from Eastern Spirituality and generic enlightenment toward "HEALING".

My common understanding of healing is that it is associated with recovering from an accident or a disease. You had a boo-boo, it hurt, but now you're getting better at some variable pace. Injury takes place when your well-being has been compromised physically, and you need to stay put for a time. Example: "I'd love to go Zydeco dancing with you, Thibodeux, but I just got a new tattoo of a Chinstrap penguin and it's healing. Call me next week."

I also recognize that there are equally painful, invisible psychic wounds that require time to heal such as grief from loss or an unresolved emotional trauma. This is sensible and we commonly think of healing as requiring some peace, nutritious food, rest, time, a little pampering and maybe medication or therapy if the healing process is more complex. Well and good.

But my book club is not peddling either garden-variety injury or commonly recognized cures. My club is offering antidotes for disorders that are so subtle I can't comprehend I have them, and cures that hardly seem effective even if I knew what I was suffering from in the first place.

One offering from my club catalogue is a coloring book of mandalas. Do you know about the inherent healing qualities of mandalas? Do you even KNOW what mandalas ARE? No? Small wonder you're such a mess. Let me act as your guide: mandalas are these pretty circles with colorful geometric squiggles inside of them that, according to the author of Coloring Mandalas, "elegantly convey the mysteries of life, beginning with the wonder of birth." (Between you and me, I didn't wonder so much about the mystery of birth as I pondered the mystery of why the anesthesiologist was taking so long with the laboring woman in the next room.)

By coloring the pre-drawn mandalas in this coloring book with the set of Memory Pencils (purchased separately) you "may find yourself attuned to the sacred feminine in ways that are HEALING…" The author does not say what I am healing, but I can only presume that I am suffering from some of sort of Sacred Female Deficiency Disorder of which I have yet to become aware. And, coloring will help with this.

Another practitioner in mandala therapy offers a companion set that includes a CD, stencils, paper, more colored pencils AND a gel pen (yee-ha!) to create the sacred symbols. With this kit, I can "heal the heart and open the compassion inside." Damn, that's what's been wrong all along…I have problems with my sacred femininity because my heart is somehow clamped shut and my compassion is trapped, valiantly struggling to be released. Through coloring. Who knew?

This whole system of healing would put you back at least sixty bucks. On the downside, I see that my insurance provider does not cover mandala therapy. On the upside, there are plenty of other available paths for healing whatever has been metaphysically ailing me.

Gladdened, am I, to discover that my book club offers at least three guides to "the healing power of water." Thank Isis that I didn't waste any precious resources coloring, because now I learn that a "detoxification specialist" is going to teach me how to "properly hydrate" myself and set me on a path of "healing and discovery". Essentially, these publications are going to guide me in how to drink water (a skill I thought I had pretty well mastered at an early age). I can't think of anything drinking water will heal, except thirst and dehydration, of course. Yet, somehow, drinking water will lead to discovery of something vital. I don't know what. I don't have the books.

If coloring and drinking water don't improve your ethereal pathology, there are more options to be found. A book reviewed on the same page tells me that learning certain breathing techniques will start me "on the path to self-healing" and assist in "mastering fears" (I AM a little anxious when it comes to coloring). An additional benefit of breathing is, fortunately, the continuance of life, being, as I am, dependent on regular intake of oxygen.

So, here we are, going along and doing some serious (if non-specific) healing through coloring, drinking and breathing. But, fiddlesticks, I see on page 31 of my catalogue that using my Memory Pencils and listening to my mandala CD and breathing several times a minute is probably ineffective BECAUSE "healing must touch the cells". The cells? Did you not know that "healing must touch the cells, because illness begins at the cellular level"? Silly me. I thought illness began with my disenfranchisement from my Sacred Femininity. Or my imprisoned compassion. Or my ambivalence towards coloring. Healing is about to get more complicated and I still have not a clue what's wrong with me.

This particular author is a biophysicist who assures the purchaser that the book is a "healing portfolio." At its essence, this book is about THINKING about healing…that is, we, the vaguely unwell, should mediate, visualize and "see the God in everyone" and somehow, our cells will pick up the healing message. I find this especially disconcerting as I, for one, am incapable of seeing the God in everyone. Many hours of my waking experience are spent trying to avoid people all together, let alone embrace their godliness. If my uncharitable thoughts are all it takes to release my enigmatic cellular illness, then I am organic, whole-grain, sprouted toast. Call me Namaste Challenged, if you will.

The book below IT suggests that healing will begin with my "full comprehension of the role that neuropeptides play in healing." I'm not even going to bother going there. College taught me that my comprehension of organic chemistry will never be more than remedial, at best. Full comprehension does not seem realistically possible. Failing all of the above options for healing, I see that Deepak Chopra has a new book offered on page three, which is a guide to navigating the Afterlife. That book would come in handy if only you could take it with you. (Stay alert for Chopra's next book, "Taking My Books with You to the Afterlife.")

Although I remain mystified regarding the nature of my esoteric ailments, I concede that there is some wisdom in proactive healing. So, I am making immediate plans to engage in a traditional healing ritual that involves salt, lime and distilled agave. I do not see that my book club offers a guide of any kind to this ancient and powerful medicine. But previous shamanic journeys have revealed to me that the elixir, consumed at a frozen, slushy consistency (with a CD by enlightened Master Jimmy Buffet playing in the background), will infiltrate my cells faster than any other healing force on the planet. Of this, I have full comprehension. My coloring, however, is likely to suffer.

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Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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