April 23, 2010
Abadiania, Goias, Brasil
I’m writing to you this morning from a very special place. I sit under an adobe tile roof on a suspended stone platform high over the cerrado on the edge of town in this place where thousands of people come every week to receive a healing from the world famous medium Joao de Deus (John of God.) We came here on Tuesday afternoon after a long morning in Brasilia doing business to put our things in order to return home. In search of an old friend we met here more than a year ago on our first visit, we found a pousada at the end of her street which she had long ago told us was a very good place to stay, owned by her friend from Germany, Walter. As we passed her house and could see she was not at home we continued on our way to meet Walter and see if perhaps this might be the place to stay while we received one last healing before returning home. Paul suffered a severe injury to his hip from a hammock fall onto a concrete floor several months ago and has been suffering ever since, unable to sleep much or take long walks. I was more than delighted that he agreed to return here to ask for help from the entities who work through John of God.
While waiting outside the door of a traditional Brazilian house for Walter to arrive, I did not know what to expect in the way of accommodations. Most were out of sight from where I stood so when Walter arrived to tell us that his one and only remaining room was a very special place of incredible energy, my curiosity was piqued in spite of the fact that the price was beyond my intended budget. I was surprised when we left the front of the house and continued down the road to the very end where we entered through a gate at the edge of town. We descended a walkway which meandered past another house before encircling the curve of the hill ending at an octagonal house made entirely of glass perched on the hillside with a view to the deep and lush valley which opened below it. “The energy in here is very special,” Walter said in his thick German accent with his eyes twinkling and his elfin like smile, missing a tooth or two. I could feel the hairs on my arm almost standing up as I stood under the center of the octagon. The floors were of white marble and the ceiling overhead had an array of halogen lights arranged like a starry sky or the bottom of a spaceship. Walter’s assistant stood nearby opening one after another of the thick white draperies to reveal more of the outdoors beyond the glass windows. As I hesitated over the price, Walter negotiated with me until it met both our satisfaction and I agreed to rent the room for our three day visit to this magical place of healing. In front of the glass octagon, which Walter reminded me was the sacred Sufi shape, was an open stone patio under a tile roof, off of which was a bathroom and behind one stone wall an outdoor shower which Walter wanted me to know was the best of the two (one inside, one out). There’s something about an outdoor shower in a tropical climate, which can’t be surpassed. The feel of fresh air around you as you stand under a spray of warm water is simply delightful. But enough of the surroundings of our temporary quarters and more about Abadiania, the Casa de Dom Ignacio and John of God….
John is an ordinary man, a simple Brazilian, but an extraordinary medium. For more than twenty years this ability has become known worldwide and continues to bring thousands of people from around the world and all over Brazil in search of a cure for a myriad of ailments, both physical and spiritual, minor and catastrophic as well as the occasional curiosity seeker. In fact our journey to Brazil nearly began with a visit to see John of God and now has come full circle as we prepare to leave.
There is so much to say that I will come back and revisit this in the book I intend to write upon my return, but for now I will attempt to be a bit more succinct. The town of Abadiania has grown around this healer and is full of pousadas, but not the typical “Bed and Breakfast.” In these pousadas, three meals a day are prepared and arrangements are made to bring meals to the room for those who are receiving treatments and instructed to remain quietly in their room in their own space following a spiritual operation. Most of the treatments given are spiritual operations which John’s volunteers will explain treat the more than 80% of the causes of illnesses which manifest into physical symptoms. Perhaps these things come in with us from previous lives, they explain, from the karma we carry with us. These can be treated by a spiritual intervention and the results of this phenomenon are apparent in the people we have witnessed regaining their sight, walking after years of being wheelchair bound, and the story after story of cured cancer, aids and more we have heard.
The process is impressive as people are divided into first time and second time visitors, those previously instructed to return at the morning or afternoon session or for an operation or a revision. When each session begins, a line is formed according to these designations and then permitted to pass through two rooms full of people who sit in meditation, what is referred to as the “current.” From the energy of this current, the entities are empowered to be received by John who is a powerful medium. As each person in turn stands before John he either hears their request or simply knows from their presence what it is they need and performs a triage, instructing them to return for a procedure or revisit at a later time for one of the three or four other remedies he uses to heal people. For Paul this Wednesday morning visit, he was instructed to return in the afternoon for an operation. I was simply asked to return to the two o’clock line at which time I was then told to come for an operation the following morning.
Paul’s request was brief, please fix my hip, he asked. I was not to speak a word. The encounter is strange, as John, to me, each time has appeared to be in deep trance, and does not make eye contact. With so many to see I’m always given the impression of being waved off and quickly dismissed. In my mind I have reasoned that I am one of the incredibly lucky ones who should not be wasting his precious time while so many are in such critical need, as I am blessed to be in good health. Perhaps this is the case, but one can only know their own perception of what is so. I do not wish to bore you with the small details but I am thinking there may be those of you who are really curious about what actually happens on the physical plane, so I say more perhaps than is necessary.
I’d like to skip ahead and relate some of what Paul describes as it is different than my own experience. When you return for an operation, the process is very similar. You form a line with others who like you are having an operation or as it’s sometimes referred to, a spiritual surgery. You file slowly past the meditating people of the current in the adjoining L shaped rooms into a small closed room which looks much like a chapel with long benches separated by an aisle down the middle. You sit, although on the day that Paul arrived there were so many people that he among a few others had to stand off to the side or as in my case the next day when there were a few in wheel chairs who rested just outside the surgery room, inside the current room, to receive their operation. With eyes closed and a few quiet instructions given and perhaps words of prayer, (they are spoken in Portuguese so I can’t say for sure,) the entities go about their procedures for healing. Paul describes a feeling like small knives cutting him, mostly around his heart. On his hip he explained it felt like scratching. I felt very little, a small amount of warmth only and the lifting of my hand from my heart. The procedure lasts less than thirty minutes and then we are lead outside to be given instructions in English by a volunteer. The instructions basically say to have a prescription of herbs filled at the pharmacy, return to the pousada by taxi cab, rest for twenty-four hours quietly in your own space. Have your meals brought to you, don’t speak much, stay by yourself. The entities, we are told will continue to work on us through the next 24 hour period. And this, Paul and I can testify to be true. Although Paul was not as good this time at following the directions to remain silent, he spoke to me a few times to describe what had happened and to tell me that he could feel them working on him.
I too could feel them from time to time and was surprised and a little disconcerted that I was feeling so much discomfort where before I had not. Old symptoms of a condition I had called Hashimoto’s Disease returned after being absent for a couple years, such that I had even forgotten I’d ever had it. In fact I was sure that I had succeeded in healing myself before I arrived in Brazil the first time and come to see Joao more than a year ago. But the first place I felt anything during the procedure was in my right hand where the entities were clearly focusing their healing. Paul reasoned that this disease must have lain dormant without really going away and that it was likely the cause of my joint problems which still cause me pain in one shoulder and one hip from time to time. “Ask for a straighter and stronger back,” Paul said to me. Actually my back was feeling fine; nothing was hurting me at the time. But you see during the operation and the next few days following it, my back was hurting so bad, I was almost mad that I’d asked. I could feel such a strong pressure across my lower back which was painful; since then it has moved up to the middle. We can only assume the entities are working on me and really helping me to have the straighter and stronger back I asked for. I felt very much as if I was recuperating from surgery; weak and very sore. * (Just a note to say as I review this now several days later, I can report no more problems with my back.)
As for Paul, the most amazing thing, the next day following his 24 hour recovery time he told me his pain was gone; his hip was cured. He slept with no pain. But better than that, his depression was gone. I don’t know exactly how to describe this but, he returned into his eyes. When he is depressed he has a way of retreating deep inside himself so much so that his eyes take on a kind of cloudy look. With a person of his personality type, the observer/ type five in the Enneagram, you can sense their presence is almost halfway behind their physical body. The energy is a half step back. Because this observer stance is not only observing everything outside themselves but at the same time observing their own interaction with the outside world, it is a very cerebral internally focused energy. When depression comes, they retreat even more as if to escape this painful reality in any way they can and often this is by going even deeper inside. So I saw that his eyes became brighter and I could feel his presence more solidly in his body. It’s the strangest thing that when this is happening, this depression, we often don’t realize it until it is over and they come back. It’s that whole hindsight being 20/20 kind of thing. So as I was resting in the room, completing my 24 hour recovery, Paul had finished his a half day before me and could bring the last two meals from the pousada’s kitchen down to our patio. He was happy! His energy and vitality had returned from a long and deep slumber of months. And suddenly he was finding and acknowledging the good things about Brazil and telling me he wanted to come back, perhaps for the winter. I was absolutely stunned. I tried to explain how my perception and experience of Brazil was so different from his, but he wanted to argue that it was only because I couldn’t understand how bad he was feeling. And I suppose this is true. I couldn’t. I was experiencing relaxation and peace of mind in a way I never imagined possible, while Paul’s reality was black and dismal. But that then is a perfect description of depression, isn’t it? I regretted that I hadn’t noticed until so recently, but then as we discussed this fact we both acknowledged that there really isn’t a way to help another emerge from such a depression. Well, the entities sure know how to do it! And for this I am so incredibly grateful. Now Paul is cured and he is happy. And I am feeling better too. I can move my shoulder now without pain and the back too is better.
The healing continues for a week and then the entities return to where you are on the 7th night and remove any stitches they have used during your surgery. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights respectively this will happen. But Paul remembers well the night this took place over a year ago when the entities removed the stints from his heart. He could feel them there working. And once again, he knows that even though he did not ask for more than the fixing of his damaged hip, they have worked again on his heart and also fixed the elbow which he fell on but never mentioned as well as the depression neither of us had acknowledged was happening.
April 27, 2010
Abadiania itself is an unusual place. In many ways a typical Brazilian town, but so very different in other ways. Our first impression over a year ago was dismal. Here in this place where heavy duty spiritual work was taking place, cottage industries abounded selling white clothing to all the weary travelers who are asked to wear only white when going before the entities. This we are told helps the entities to see better where the problems are. I suppose it all comes down to blocked energy as we are simply that. After traveling through Brazil for 4 weeks, we were filled with appreciation for the generosity and loving nature of its people, the music in the people who played in the streets and in their homes, the slow rather laid back energy of a culture whose main preoccupation was not the incessant drive to earn money but seemed more focused on enjoying life. That time we were appalled at the energy around us on business enterprises which occurred to us then to be preying on the unfortunate who had traveled far to come in the hope of being healed. Americans with laptops conducting business deals, buying and selling crystals, arranging future tours, this then was a source of disapproval on that first visit. We found the sale of herbs infused with the entities blessings to be suspicious and were disappointed to see travelers ignoring the pleas of the unfortunate local people who asked for a few coins while they purchased their crystals and rosaries to take home appalling. But we were different people then, I think a bit more opinionated and less understanding. Paul couldn’t wait to leave then and get back to what he considered the real Brazil.
Coming back the second time I found a different place, one which I quite liked. But perception is everything, isn’t it? After all, look at how different the very same experience of this last 10 months in Brazil has been for me than it has for Paul. It’s like we are a chemical cocktail. If my blood sugar is low, things can look incredibly dismal. I might wake up in a panic for instance if I haven’t had enough to eat before going to bed. Pain is another factor that might color one’s outlook. It’s crazy! It has nothing to do with external factors – what some people would call physical reality – it’s all perception which for each of us is different.
We came back to Abadiania not long after we returned to Brazil and were still living in Cidade Ecletica to see the most wonderful woman who had become our friend on our first visit. She implored us to go back to the casa and see Joao, thank him for the healing Paul had received there, but Paul would not. His head had been filled with stories of bad things that the friction between spiritual schools seems to abound in. Some of the mediums from Ecletica disapprove of Joao who as a man has had a history of some actions which would not have shown good judgment or integrity. They disapprove also of the money that is being exchanged around although not directly for, any services of healing, for example the sale of blessed herbs and water, the crystal beds and things of this nature which help to fund the running of the casa and the soup kitchens. At Ecletica it is contrary to their spiritual laws to accept money for their spiritual work and this remains a bone of contention between the schools. This very ill feeling that had been also forming in our minds on our first visit. So we did not return to the casa to see John until now, and Paul’s opinion of Abadiania remained the same even then on that second visit. But our sweet friend Beatrice was another story which enriches our journey to this land beyond the veil (my personal description) or land on the other side of the mirror (Paul’s personal description) here on the continent of South America.
For now I will simply say that Beatrice came to Brazil from a life in Luxembourg, renounced all material things in one fashion or another to become one of the most spiritual and highly evolved people either of us has ever known. In the process she has been given some very hard lessons which would make a lesser person suffer incredible sorrows. Reunited with a husband of shady character, she has according to her friend Walter now disappeared under questionable conditions. “I thought to contact the Luxembourg Embassy,” said Walter. “I don’t know whether that lunatic of a husband of hers killed her like he did the other one…” Meanwhile my emails have gone unanswered…..
As to Abadiania now, I think it’s a very special place. I wouldn’t hesitate to return here for healing or to bring anyone here for that reason which I hope in fact to do. It’s a quiet little town and out on the edges of town where the ground drops away into crater like ravines, one young man from Ohio who we met over lunch one day at Walter’s pousada, reports seeing the entities late one evening on a walk past the casa. They appear like a series of twinkling lights, he told us. Two photographs on the wall inside the casa show a distinct column of light just next to the chair where medium Joao sits while incorporated.
Bubbles and columns of light, oh my!
As tonight will be the night the entities return to remove stitches for Paul, I shall have perhaps more news next time to report on his experience. For now I will end this report on Abadiania until another time.
Sunday April 25, 2010
Moinho
What a glorious day. I awoke to join Paul on his morning walk to the bakery to buy fresh bread and pastries for our breakfast. Upon returning Uta and Olivia dropped by for a visit and this brought us such joy. Now that we are not sharing a house we do not see them as much as we would like. As the morning neared its end we drove from town to Moinho, through a small mountain pass to this magical place we once visited long ago. This time we had directions to our friend’s fazenda (farm) to join them for lunch. Pass 4 bridges, Freida told me and then take the right fork in the road, passing between the football field and the cemetery and through the gate. Forgetting the very first part of the directions, I neglected to count bridges and got us a little lost but stopping twice to ask did eventually take us through a gate that we only hoped was theirs. Amazed to arrive at what I’d been led to believe was just a small farm with a very humble and simple house to find the farm covered a vast area of land surrounded by mountains nearly encircling a whole valley. The house was indeed simple but only in that it is just large enough for a bedroom and bathroom. The kitchen itself is outdoors under a roof of banana leaves, yet containing everything a kitchen needs including energy to power a refrigerator and light. Outside this covered room, a sink stands in the fresh air overlooking the vegetable gardens and beyond to the banana plantation, one of several fields of manioca, (a root tuber much like a potato only more versatile and nutritious) and the mountains beyond.
I thought I’d found my way to heaven as I sat with my friends, enjoying an afternoon and a meal together in this fantastic place. I must admit it was everything I’d hoped to find for my own home in Brazil before plans emerged to return north. It’s times like this I have regrets that I am leaving. But I do think now of returning and spending some time each winter as this is a place that really welcomes me.
After lunch our friend hung his 2nd hammock on the porch and excused himself to drift off into an afternoon nap while I swayed gently in the other hammock talking to his wife, my good friend Frieda. Paul stretched out next to my hammock on a blanket on the floor of the porch, drifting in and out himself for a few minutes respite. It was an ever so peaceful way to spend an afternoon and when the men awoke we all climbed into Kelson’s pickup truck to have a tour of another side of the farm, even more beautiful than the part we’d seen. Gently climbing a hill and driving deeper into the valley, the view expanded as we continued to the end of the lane where we left the truck to walk past fields of beans almost to the bottom of a nearly vertical mountain which led to an area, we were told, which has a flat place the perfect shape for a UFO landing. Stopping again midway back we walked out to another field of beans, this one interspersed with palm trees reminding me that I am in a tropical climate, should I have forgotten. Here in Moinho the air is cool and a gentle breeze made the afternoon perfect.
These visits to places like this fill our heads with fantastic ideas as we spend much time designing the home we intend to build upon our return to Vermont. Though modifications will need to be incorporated to acclimatize things to withstand the severely cold temperatures and snow, the basic concepts are helpful and inspiring. We have decided to eliminate the beliefs and concepts we hold in place that serve to limit possibilities and instead expand our thinking to unlimited potential.
April 27, 2010
My friends and loved ones,
I’ll bring this letter now to a close as activities ensue to wrap things up here in Brazil for our return to Vermont. It is a beautiful sunny day in Brazil and we will leave shortly to drive to the capitol to continue our business there. Until next time, stay happy and be well.
Kisses
Mindy and Paul