Day 149 - Have Energy Work Performed on Me

Date: June 4th, 2010

It has always been interesting to me that people are so skeptical about things like energy work.  While I'm sure there are some crackpots out there claiming to have the cure for cancer literally at their fingertips, the idea that a touch can heal has been around for centuries.  It struck me that I had fallen victim to the same skepticism about the power of touch, despite oodles of studies showing that all sorts of touching (all the way from nice to naughty, and everything in between) can have healing effects.  For the most part, something about the idea of someone else shifting around energy in my body just seemed too out there for me.  But since this year is essentially a parade dedicated to "out there", I figured it was something I should try.

I've walked down a long spiritual road in my life.  The further down it I go, the higher up in the clouds my head ends up.  My mom has always been Christian and my dad, well, not so much.  When I was younger, we didn't really do the whole church thing.  That was largely because I came from a family that considered the joy of sleeping in on Sundays to be a form of worship in and of itself.  By the time I got to high school, my general sense of logic and desire for visible test results precluded me from really having much of a religion.

I spent the vast majority of high school as an atheist.  When I got to my junior year in high school, a friend pointed out to me that while science couldn't quite prove there was a God, it couldn't really prove there wasn't one either.  Though I know that to be a logical fallacy now, at the time it seemed like a darn fine argument.  The most logical course of action went from being an atheist to being agnostic.  The realization that I was dealing with something unproven was not nearly as eye opening as one would think.  I generally retained the atheist leanings and spent a good deal of time devoting myself to rolling my eyes and sighing heavily at authority figures.  That has nothing particularly to do with religion, but I was a teenager, after all.

When I got to college, I was struck with the desire to learn more about religion.  Transitioning from being a science nerd to a history nerd is what did it, I think.  My tendencies became more accepting of the idea that sometimes you just can't know something for sure.  I hadn't put the word "faith" to that concept at the time, but I started to within months of getting to Ann Arbor.  I decided to attend a couple of Bible studies in my dorm, put on by the Campus Crusade for Christ.

That put me in more than one awkward situation by the time I called it quits.  The first week that I started going, they were doing something they called "dorm storm".  It is, in retrospect, highly embarrassing that I didn't figure out what that meant right away.  Turns out, as I discovered when it was too late to back out, dorm storm is where they storm the dorms, Bible in hand, hoping to convert people who were naive enough to put their name of the free pizza coupons they stumbled upon in the diag earlier that day.  That's right.  Under the guise of free pizza (well, not guise entirely, since they did get the pizza) we gained access to people to preach the word of God.  As a formerly avowed atheist and person who hadn't quite decided what I believed, it was not the best of nights for me.

During this time, I decided that it wasn't really in line with my logical/scientific precepts to refuse a belief without studying it.  So I started reading the Bible.  Now, I didn't really understand the whole, devotional, thing.  So I started reading it like a book.  My non-religious critique?  Too many begots.  As for how I went from an exploratory atheist to a Christian?  Its not something I've told many people because, quite frankly, I thought myself insane at the time.  I don't deal well with the unexplainable.

I had gotten to 1 Kings, fairly uneventfully.  It had taken a couple weeks because of all the begots.  As I lay in my bed, getting ready to go to sleep, I decided to read a chapter or two (long, I know, but I'm a reader) before turning in for the night.  Before I started reading, I thought about the utter disregard I once had for this book and wondered aloud whether I was being led a particular direction.  It was the first time I consciously thought that a God might be directing my life.  It was also a thought I dismissed rather quickly.  I hadn't been reading more than about ten minutes when I became distinctly aware of the smell of baking bread.  I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out where it was coming from.

I put on a robe and walked out into the hallway, expecting it to grow stronger as I let my nose do the walking to the nearest kitchen.  It didn't.  Confused, I went back to my bed and continued reading.  I had just finished 1 Kings 18 when the smell returned.  It wasn't subtle either.  It was a powerful smell, pungent, but in a good way, and deeply comforting.  Baking bread is, in many ways, an incredibly safe and inviting smell.  Despite the general sense of comfort at what the smell was, I had a serious and severe discomfort about its existence.  In a dorm where no one had kitchens in their rooms.  At 1am.  On a school night.

This time I checked out the windows and searched the whole building for the smell.  I even asked a couple girls who were up late studying if the smelled anything.  The look they gave me did not help stem my growing fear that I'd somehow become detached from reality.  As before, the smell lost its power when I got up and walked around, but I assumed there was a vent or an air circulating device of some kind that brought it into my room.  Finding none and being utterly and completely unable to dismiss the smell as my imagination, I decided instead that I would read one more chapter and then force myself to sleep.

Back in my bed, it was just as powerful as before.  It lingered in the air in that thick, warm air sort of way, as I went back to reading.  I doubt this experience will be the kind of thing that anyone accepts as proof of anything, I thought to myself.  However, if I understood what the heck was going on, perhaps it would serve as proof for me.  No sooner did I get back to reading than I stumbled onto 1 Kings 19: 5-6. "All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat." He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again."

That was the moment I became Christian.  It was also the moment that I came to the realization that sometimes the "proof" that God offers is just for me.  I came to realize that I could feel physical sensations and changes during prayer that I hadn't felt before.  Over time, I began taking in the world around me in a different way.  I found that skepticism is often an excuse for cynicism, but I did retain some apprehension.

So, just as I did with the Bible back during my freshman year in college, I decided to study energy work a little and see if it held any water.  Justin knows a lot about the energy of the universe, balance and all that other delightful mumbo-jumbo, so I asked him for a favor.  Would he consider performing energy work on me so I could see what it felt like?  He agreed to do a brief exercise on me that would, theoretically, function as a cleansing.

I sat in my recliner with my feet bare and learned back.  He sat on the ground and put one hand on each foot.  Now, when I tell you that the sensation was instant, I do very much mean instant.  The second both of his hands grasped the top of my feet, I felt a light, electric sensation in my head.  I don't know about you, but that is not normally the sensation I experience when someone is touching my feet.  Generally that experience is more of a "stop tickling me or I'll hurt you" situation.  For the next few minutes, the sensation in my head got stronger and stronger.  It was definitely pleasant.

But then it stopped.  I started to sit up, thinking we were done, but he told me to stay still.  So I leaned back, closed my eyes, and tried to think about what I was feeling.  Slowly, my head started to feel heavier, but not in a bad way.  The feeling moved down my neck, shoulders and chest.  At that point it felt like standing up and getting out of deep water.  Everything was heavier.  I could feel a sense of refreshment though.  Despite the heaviness compared to when my head went all electric, I still felt lighter than before he started.

When he finished, I asked him what exactly that treatment entailed.  Essentially, he said, the first half was the act of pushing energy in on one physical side of the body until it reaches the top of the head and starts spilling over to the other side of the body.  Then it becomes a process of pulling it back out the other side.  His description was awfully darn similar to what I felt.  I haven't entirely processed what that means, quite yet, but I do know that my beliefs have become more broad than my early Christian thoughts.  I am, without question, still Christian and I don't intend for that to change any time soon.  But I wonder if there are things in the world, not generally associated with Christianity, that can serve to increase the connection we have to God.

For me, energy work was one of those things.  Generally speaking, energy work or Reiki, is associated with Buddhism.  However, for me, no part of the treatment conflicted with my Christian views.  Rather, it reinforced them.  I have a much greater appreciation for the complexity of human life than I did before.  It was truly an enlightening experience.