The Dilemma Between Faith, me and Me

It was during the filming of my short documentary “The Curandera of Teotitlan del Valle” in 2006, that I first heard of the importance of faith in healing, in Mexico.

The curandera (traditional medicine woman who heals with plants) said it’s faith that matters in healing. She offered that If you have faith, your ailments will go quickly so that other good things can come in. Without, they won’t.

Moving in Faith
Sometimes I move in faith.

Lately, I’ve been receiving an alternative treatment called Medical Bio-magnetism, a technique that diagnoses with applied kinesiology (muscle testing) and treats with magnets.
 
On one hand, I trust muscle testing as it’s a direct communication from my body. On the other hand, sometimes I doubt what the practitioner tells me my body has said. I distrust him and the method, not my body.
 
“How can what he says be true? I know my body better than him. He doesn’t know what I know about my body.” Thus, doubt has entered.
 
When Doubt Enters
And maybe the information he’s received is correct. Of maybe it’s part of the situation. Maybe he didn’t ask certain questions that I would ask based on the details of my physical experience.
 
As Cathy Tingle, the cancer patient said in my documentary, Like Rembrandt Draperies: A Portrait of Cathy Tingle, “It’s my body.  I live in it.”
 
So, when do I remain in faith and when do I trust myself?

When is trusting myself exercising my inner authority and power, and when is it motivated by fear of losing control?

The Dilemma
I tend to enter into healing, educational and relationship situations with faith. I fall into the wind, trusting I will be caught and carried. I believe that all will be well and better than how things would be if I tried to maintain control.
 
In moments of faith, I am open and surrendering. And there is something that feels delicious about that.
 
But then, always comes a time of re-calling my self. What I think. What I feel. Who I am.

And then what to do?

Returning to the Familiar Me
Sometimes I eventually listen to myself and retreat, or recollect my sense of my old, known self. Maybe it's a cop out, maybe I've reached a limit and have gone as far as I can at that moment, maybe I'm rebelling against authority. Nevertheless...

I must say I have never regretted those decisions.

So, maybe my answer is right there. Still, though, there are questions of lost opportunities, and of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
 
Maintaining Absolute Faith
If I were to continue on the path of absolute faith, which in the case of working with healers implies trusting in what they say, suggest and do, in one sense, everything would be “fine.”
 
Maybe better. Maybe this is the way to go, in fact.

But there’s always another part of me that in the end wants to rely on myself, my knowledge and thinking. My sense of what’s good for me.
 
It’s the same with my relationship with the Divine.

Relationship with the Divine
In my life I have oscillated between complete surrender: "Whatever you think is best, I have no idea. Just take care of it, please,” and, “THIS problem only I can take care of,” so, “I’ve got this, G-d.”

On the one hand, we seem to have free will. On the other hand, and at the same time, I can also see everything as already having been decided.

So why even try?

Because even if this is all an illusion and a game, the illusion and game are that we are individual human beings with will and the ability to act.

We cannot leave everything to some divine force. WE have to somehow get the food, put the spoon in our mouth, put on our clothes, step into the shower.

Whether G-d or a doctor, or anyone or thing we give power to, the questions are the same. We are in a paradoxical world of self, other, and unity. There is no one answer. Life is a dance, the answers and truths prancing about, evading capture.

How to Reconcile Doubt
When my medical bio-magnetism practitioner tells me something that doesn’t jibe with what I suspect, what do I do? Does it mean he’s a fraud, that he’s wrong, that he’s made a mistake? Can that fit into my need for safety and trust? Could he be good but also in need of revision sometimes?

If I receive information through the muscle testing that I don’t believe, does it mean I’m wrong? Do I always trust the muscle test and the tester over my own sense? 

I love when things flow, and I fear panic when the foundation upon which I’m standing, shifts and breaks apart. Will I be safe? Am I safe? Was I ever, or was I a fool?

If I leave this work, am I giving up too soon? Or am I doing a good job of listening to myself?
 
What I’ve decided for today is to take what makes sense to me of his suggestions, and discard what I know from experience is not tolerated by my body.

In this way I am in relationship with the practitioner, the information, my body and sense of me. We all exist, and all is constantly moving, not all or nothing. And it is complicated, the multi-leveled issues of health and well-being.

And there is no perfect that lasts, unchanging.

There is no Perfect that Lasts, Unchanging
I can fall into the blissful union of faith, orgasmic in the losing of my sense of self and the joining with the cosmos. But in the end, I come back to myself, my body, the experience of me – no matter how illusionary and ephemeral it is. It’s what I have, here in this life and place of learning by practicing being human.

Me the faithful, me the doubtful, me the partner to my body. 
 
I experience and juggle it all. I am the practitioner, the expert - ever-learning how to cope with the multi-facetedness of Life Here Now as me. And as Me.

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