by Rev Jim Pasmore
I was first attracted to Unity, with it’s positive prayer, healthy minded lifestyle and spiritual healing practices about thirty some years ago. As I learned more about Unity’s many healing practices, I ultimately found that Unity followers may practice some or all of the many dimensions of healing that exist throughout the world today. As I explored these many techniques, I found that my personal involvement in my own healing could be a powerful and effective tool for my well-being. Previous to this revelation I was content to put my health and healing into the hands of the AMA professionals, without regard to how well I liked or trusted that person. Today I cannot imagine living a vibrantly healthy life or healing occasional setbacks without using every mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and holistic practice that is available to me in this rich and diverse world of alternative healing techniques. Over the past few years I have had many opportunities to practice improving my health and facilitating my own healing. This has allowed me to refine my beliefs in the fire of my own personal experience.
The ideal practice I have found for myself is a simple healing meditation. The first time I used this technique was to heal a knee injury I incurred while playing with my teen-aged grandsons. We were jumping off a high structure onto the snow which was a lot of fun until one time I apparently didn’t land quite right and I felt something ‘give’ in my knee. I could walk OK after that but I had severe knee pain and weakness whenever I tried to play sports or take long walks. After several months with no seeming improvement at all, I found myself wearing a brace and was unable to hike more than a few miles without excessive pain… and since hiking is one of my all time favorite past times, I was actually considering having a doctor look at it. However, having ‘put off’ a visit to a physician, my wife, Joanne, and I took an extended camping trip and one morning set off on a hike up a mountain along the Hell Roaring River near Stanley, Idaho. Three miles into the hike the pain was getting to me and I had to stop to rest. Joanne suggested we head back down the mountain. Instead, I decided to try a technique the the co-founder of Unity, Myrtle Fillmore, had used to heal her chronic Tuberculosis. Sitting alongside this beautiful stream looking into a peaceful, idyllic meadow, I went into a deep meditation. In this meditation I began to feel a sense of total well-being and a peace beyond words. It was truly a timeless moment of pure spiritual bliss. I began sending love and light to my knee; affirming it was perfect and whole. After about 10 minutes, I announced to Joanne that I felt completely healed and we continued our hike for another 7 miles… and from that time until now, several years later, I have never again had any problem with that knee.
A year or so later as Joanne and I were about to leave on Thanksgiving day for another camping trip across country in our RV, I awoke in excruciating pain from my big toe. With only the hospital emergency room open due to the holiday, I checked in and was assigned to the duty doctor. The doctor looked at my red and swollen big toe and asked if I had ever had gout before. I replied, “Yes, but just once many years ago”. She immediately said, “Well, gout is a chronic condition you know, and requires medication to reduce the swelling.” I knew she meant that this was a condition she believed was recurring and incurable, a fact I immediately rejected… so I automatically responded with an audible “Cancel that”! The doctor, taken aback at my statement, gave me a condescending look and left me lying on the gurney without further comment while she attended to getting me my prescription. I knew I was going to be up against her AMA belief system and contemplated how I could best proceed when I remembered my spontaneous and miraculous self healing of my knee a year or so earlier. I decided to use the time alone to once again meditate on healing, specifically shrinking the inflammation and removing the intense pain. After 20 minutes, during which time I brought myself to a most blissful state of meditation, the doctor returned. Together we looked at my toe with amazement. It was perfectly normal with no redness, no swelling, no pain. Although the doctor did prescribe medication, I didn’t use it and my toe remained perfectly healed throughout our extended RV camping trip. This was several years ago and the full-on gout has never returned. The few times it “seemed” to be recurring, I immediately used my meditation technique and it has always quickly disappeared into it’s ‘native nothingness’.
I know the key to healing for me is getting myself into a state of complete connection with my Higher Self, or Spirit. From this state of complete harmony with Spirit, the healing seems to just flow as a feeling of well being that sweeps the ‘dis-ease’ from my mind and body. This is the amazing power of spiritual healing that Unity has taught me.
