Hi there,

This is my first post and I have not read the book yet. It's on the way to me
here in Italy now.

But I've been following Tom through News For the Soul.com and other internet
radio programs for a couple of years and resonate with his explanations.

I'm a chiropractor and would like to meet up with other folks in the healing
professions and talk about incorporating more fully this way of thinking
into practice.

Is there already such a group....or more than one?

If not, anybody interested in forming such a group?

Any help would be appreciated.
Bryan
Brindisi, Italy

Bryan,

Welcome to the Bulletin Board. There are/have been several such groups, established ad hoc, because of someone's specific health problem or a discussion of a specific point. There is nothing continuing as I understand your question. I suggest using the search function and seeing what is there. There have been good results as I can assure you, having been the recipient of some health help here myself and some ongoing attention. There are some members involved in Reiki and past and present caregivers. There are only so many members and thus only so many with ongoing problems and specific interests in healing. Things are more general in scope and related to understanding and personal development.

This bulletin board is relatively free form and we have not been maintaining any strict organization of categories. Threads metamorphose to other topics as members discussions change. We are trying to get things more organized and have some new forums started at the bottom of the index page where we are trying to collect and organize information from the past posts, particularly for the benefit of newcomers. There is a little bit there on healing as I remember. Tom had been running these boards by himself in addition to his professional work and has relatively recently had me helping him as he is now both a consultant to NASA and busy on the lecture/workshop circuit, including appearances outside of the US. We do have one member putting in some time currently on working with this organizational improvement as well as my own sporadic contributions as things come to my attention.

The Bulletin Board is dedicated to the discussion of Tom Campbell's trilogy, My Big TOE, but the over riding purpose is the dissemination of the Big Picture of reality and Consciousness Space. This would of course include the subject of healing as it is so much needed here in Physical Matter Reality (PMR). There are a number of contributors here with developing understandings and abilities and there is most certainly a place for anyone interested in healing. If you look around and like what you see, including the potentials, then you are most welcome to start something more organized related to healing. All that is needed is someone sufficiently concerned to manage such an effort. Look around, find some interesting conversations, contribute a little and get to know each other. See what develops. There are some developing contacts with other writers and organizations involved in what you might call the 'consciousness movement'. There are other organizations involved/interested in healing. I anticipate that this will continue to develop over time.

Ted Vollers

I appreciate your thorough response, Ted. Thank you for taking
your time to be so clear.

Maybe the best thing is just for me to state what I'm interested
in and then anybody who would like to connect and discuss
the topic can post here to let me know.

I'm interested in communicating with other health care providers
who work with the general public.

Here are my thoughts for the moment:

People come to our offices primarily with a perception of a
"real" health problem that "happened" to them and they come
with the expectation that the provider will "do something"
to them that will "fix" them.

They want a ritual because that is what they believe will fix them.

The belief in the ritual will most certainly contribute to their
capacity to heal.

If the practitioner has the same belief in the ritual, everybody
is in business and singing the same song.

The concern I have is this........when the practitioner wakes
up to the concept that the ritual is just a ritual and really
now serves to distract the practitioner from really focusing
intent.

So, the patient believes in and needs the ritual, but the practitioner
does not participate in the belief and in fact perceives the
ritual as a distraction from his/her capacity to really help
the patient by best focusing intent.

Thoughts?
Bryan
Italy

Question For Ted:

Hi Ted, I had a question relating to healing. I know that everyone tends to have a life purpose or plan. I'm curious though, how does healing play into this? For example, what if being healed isn't in that person's life plan? Does that mean that the healing will automatically fail? and lastly, should consent be given before an actual healing is attempted? Thanks Ted, love all of your posts on here....

I searched "healing" and "consent" and found these two threads.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3742&hilit=healing+consent
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3703&hilit=healing+consent
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

thanks Bette, but I still wonder what happens if being healed "DOESN'T" into your life purpose or plan. Perhaps you are meant to experience an illness for growth?

Bryan,

I find your question confusing in several ways. I thought that it was the accepted thing that patients belief in the doctor's ability to heal was basic to their being successful at the highest level. And I thought that this was also the accepted thing from the doctors as well. Everything from the placebo effect to the doctor's bedside manner was an established part of this as I understood it. If the doctor is hesitant and uncertain, a patient does not have the confidence in his ability to be an effective healer. And I understood that it was the accepted thing that there were doctors with all of the required credentials and then there were healers who perhaps lacked the credentials, but still were able to contribute to healing just because of this recognition. And in a sense, I though this was much like a ritual.

And I thought that doctors always recognized the nature of this relationship so what is there about loosing belief in the ritual? I don't therefore understand why the practitioner would 'wake up' to the concept that the ritual is just a ritual and this suddenly becomes a distraction. I thought that they always knew this. That the practitioner does not believe in the ritual but believes it helpful to the patient was always accepted by the practitioner was the way it was. Even if they knew that it was just a ritual, I thought that the doctors accepted it as necessary. That shamans always included an element of showmanship in their practice was the way I always thought that it was.

Ted

Personally I don't believe anyone should be healed without their 100% permission. If someone is able to be healed without that permission, then that flies in the face of any evidence suggesting that one's life is pre-determined..........

vestal,

The posts that Bette has so helpfully looked up are pertinent to your question. Tom has spoken about how our life purpose is not necessarily a specific plan. For there to be a detailed plan, choreography as I call it, is not common or usual and as Tom also explained, there are always significant random elements. Most lives are randomly accepted or more generally selected on the basis of perhaps being the mate of someone you have been long associated with in past lives or some other limited planning. You still have free will, so if you had a set up expecting to experience a life long illness, you still could choose to work towards healing, if you so desired and worked on it. It would not be easy as you would obviously have the deck stacked against you, having a problem that would normally be life long. So the healing will not automatically fail nor will it automatically succeed, however skilled the healer. Someone doing psychic healing with some capability should likely see that there is something implying purpose to the situation. Hopefully they would consult their guides/spirit helpers and get some background and help. They could perhaps still help with easing difficulties if not absolutely heal.

Tom also made a post, not the two listed, in which he discussed getting permission before a healing. The situation is not at all clear. In general, he said that you should ask for consent of the patient before attempting a healing. But he went on further and said that sometimes you get no permission but should attempt the healing anyway. Also that some times you obtain the permission, but sill should not or decide that you should not attempt the healing. He was not just being unhelpful, although this is unhelpful on the face of it as it does not give a clear answer. Part of getting permission is to ask the Consciousness System, your guides, the patient's guides or however you think of it for guidance or permission. A shaman would consult their spirit helpers or ask the spirits for help. This should elicit the information necessary to resolving all of the options that Tom stated. A shaman viewed, in my understanding, as being the one in the position and with the responsibility to intervene and create reconciliation between his/her people and the spirits or powers. To achieve balance. In an earlier viewpoint I once held and still do in a sense, you learn to act as God's will. But it is not really that you act, but that you make a request and then get out of the way for God's Will to do the actual work of healing. If you use the tool of visualized light in healing, you are not actually doing anything directly yourself. You do not have any real understanding of what is being done, either in PMR medical terms or in terms of changes to the virtual PMR body. You are simply applying Intent and visualizing your healing light tool doing the actual work. That is, the Consciousness System is giving the permission and doing the healing.

Ted

You are welcome. As I understand it then the healing won't happen.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Hi Ted,

I'm not surprised by your perspective.......that's why my interest is in connecting
particularly with traditionally trained practitioners who have had this transitional
experience themselves but still work with patients who have had no exposure to
this way of thinking.

But let me see if I clearly understand what you're thinking......

A lot of 22 year old kids graduating from university suddenly wake up one morning
and say: "I think it would really be cool to put myself through heck for another 4-8
years and go into huge debt learning a ritualistic method that kills as many people
as it helps so that I can spend the rest of my life pretending to patients that they
must take the risk of the side effects because this ritual is really important."

Does that sum up what you're thinking or did I misinterpret your second paragraph?

Put in that light, would you reconsider your second paragraph?

I'm really not trying to be a smart aleck......but I am a bit amazed that you
may think that most doctors can actually separate the ritual from the reality
and happily go on damaging people for the sake of the ritual.

Ted, if that were the case, everybody would have just yawned when they read
"The Biology of Belief." Instead, many traditional practitioners read the indisputable
evidence and still refuse to accept or believe it.

It's probably a safe bet to think that nearly all doctors recognize that presenting
in a confident manner to patients is helpful, but not that their primary activity
is a ritual instead of reality.

BTW, I'm not meaning to beat up on the western medical doctors at all. Standard
chiropractic thrusting type manipulation carries with it a certain risk also....albeit
much lower than drugs and surgery, risk nonetheless.

I personally applied those methods gladly for many years because I believed
that their efficacy was worth the risk because it was what was required in order
to benefit the patient. I laughed my backside off at friends who did "no-force"
techniques because my perception of those methods was that they provided
no physiologic benefit whatsoever.

It was only through observation of my patients over many years that I began
to conclude that there was far, far more to the interaction and began to allow my
ego to recognize that all the smarts that I learned and practiced was secondary
to who I was BEING with the patient.

Bryan

Bryan,

There are at least 3 disconnects between our thinking here. First there is probably the widely differing viewpoints between allopathic, osteopathic, homeopathic and chiropractic models of medicine and healing with the widely differing range of attitudes of individual practicing physicians. I know no medical doctors as friends, only as a patient, but would presume that their thinking and motivation ranges all the way from making the big bucks in whatever way necessary to serving mankind as a healer. Other than the fact that I have not been a member of academia, there is then the conflict between doctors of the Piled Higher and Deeper type and the Many Dollars type with the former looking down on the latter as mere technicians. So basically I have no knowledge of where doctors typically 'come from' in their thinking as I am outside of all of these differing viewpoints and sub cultures.

Then there is the content of The Biology of Belief, of which I have no knowledge and the book has never been mentioned on these forums. I have only the information I found on a quick Internet search and scan but clearly the concepts are not foreign to these forums. Tom could have probably told them what they would find in their research. We have had discussions here on the forums in the past, specifically related to our virtual brains. As a quick review of what you will find on these forums if you look, your brain, your internal organs and biology is all virtual. It does not exist as a 'thing' and 'out there', but only as a virtual potential. What exists is your mind residing within Consciousness Space as a collection of digital data and operational code, probably in the form of a neural net, the original in functionality of the neural nets as biological examples that appear within your virtual brain when examined. None of this exists in the normal day to day virtual reality, being modeled only when some kind of situation permits their examination. That is, trauma of some kind, either accidental or deliberate as in surgery or based upon a PMR technology such as an MRI scan. When your 'internals' can be examined in some way, what is found is based upon a feedback from your mind in Consciousness Space and the rule set based upon which the PMR VR is generated to appear and be experienced within your mind based upon a digital data stream. This is very condensed, but is this not the basic thesis of The Biology of Belief or at least, does this not explain how this thesis arises as fact?

The third disconnect is that there will be a number of fellow medicos participating here on these forums that would be interested in your proposed discussion. There are certainly a few, but that does not appear to be their source of interest here. Be that as it may, you have certainly come to the right place to expand your understanding based upon The Biology of Belief and why things are that way.

In very short form, Tom Campbell is a member of the millennial long chain of metaphysicians and mental explorers that come from the concept that reality arises from Mind. Tom does not originate there in this thinking, although he has had contact with that tradition, but as a scientist and independent OOB explorer of Consciousness Space. I come more directly from that tradition. You need to get a copy of My Big TOE ASAP as it will explain to you the origin of what is described in The Biology of Belief. Tom's books include a scientific model of Consciousness Space and describes the functioning and existence of all of us as part of and within that space. You will not get such a full explanation anywhere else. This will quickly become obvious to you if you look around these forums and when you get into the books. You might start your looking in the 3 forums that appear at the bottom of the index page of the BB. They are far from complete but they do have a few basic and relevant ideas included already.

As a last suggestion, there is something about how you are creating your posts that locks them into a fixed width rather than letting them flow to fill the available width of the viewers window. If you create them in Think Pad and in any case, without inserting 'carriage returns' and turn off word wrap before copying them into the post, they will flow properly. Or you can just create them in the BB posting function itself. As a simple word processor, it works fairly well.

Ted

I think Ted may have had a moment of pollyannian thinking with the idea that doctors are any less susceptible to cultural programming than others, or perhaps not.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Hi Bryan and welcome!

I have had experience with laying on of hands healing for many years. I probably think a little differently about healing than most people. For example I liken healing to Tom's description of reducing entropy from the standpoint of consciousness. The rituals, the motions healers "perform" are simply tools to focus intent. Metaphors we create to help us accomplish whatever it is we intend.

If a practitioner no longer believes in a particular ritual that doesn't mean the ritual as a tool cannot be helpful to the patient. To me this simply means the practitioner is becoming more aware of the bigger picture within the consciousness system. If you're not able to make use of a particular ritual/tool to focus intent, then create your own as you work with your patients.

A healer can certainly help, but as far as I've ever been able to tell, it is the person that must heal his or her self. Any and all rituals, tools, metaphors are simply the means by which one (healer as well as patient) focuses their intent. They're not something you need to believe in, they're something you use.

Kathy

Hi Kathy,

Thanks for your response. I appreciate your frame of reference. I would imagine that
patients come to you with a different frame of mind than patients have when they come
to me. This is part of what I am attempting to convey...and I think doctors from
conventional backgrounds could relate to it more easily.

Let me put it into another frame that you may be able to relate to.

Let's say that a patient comes to you with a belief/expectation system that
limits your flexibility in choosing the type of ritual you would be required to perform
in order for the patient to connect.

And not only does the patient want to prescribe the ritual you apply, but they require
that you participate in this ritual in a way that your reality system says would be
harmful.

Let's use a farout example.........patient presents with a respiratory problem and believes
that the way to treat it is for you to hold a pillow over their mouth to reduce their
breathing until they are almost dead.

Okay, there's your ritual/tool....does that assist you in focusing your intent?

Patients come to me with very limited options available to them because of their
limited thinking. They think they have a "thing" and they are convinced that
a certain physical ritual must be applied in order to correct that "thing" that they
have.

I am expected to apply the ritual that they are convinced they need. I understand
the risk of the ritual on the physical plane and I also know it is not really necessary.

So, the ritual distracts me from focus rather than helping me focus my intent.

Does that clarify some where I'm coming from?

Thanks,
Bryan