Dennis,

I admit sometimes my reasoning may bounce around a bit, expecially at 3am,
or whenever I posted that message (I'm currently working the 6pm-6am shift
at work).  However, as it's still relatively early, I'll try to answer some
of the points you brought up.

In some of the reading I've done on alternative and mind/body medicine, I've
run across a couple different definitions for the word, "healing."   On the
one hand, it can sometimes be considered a synonym for "cure".  From the
other perspective, one can be healed without necessarily being cured.  In
this latter definition, healing does have more of an emotional, spiritual,
psychological component, whereas cure refers more to the physical.
Sometimes, being healed can lead to an actual cure.  I'll use an example
that my acupuncturist once told me.

Years ago, before acupuncture was legal in PA, this woman and her partner
used to have an acupuncture practice in Delaware.  There was a law pending
about this time to possibly legalize it in PA too, when they got this
patient who came to them because of heart problems.  She had been told by
two MD's that she would need major heart surgery, and only wanted to pursue
that as a last resort, so she had sought them out.  Well, one of the main
aspects of alternative medicine, isn't just to treat the symptoms/disease,
but to first get to know the whole person.  While two people may have heart
disease (or pd) no two cases are ever exactly the same.  So, the
acupuncturist spent an hour or two with this woman prior to her treatment,
just getting to know her.   When asked what had been happening in her life
over the past year, she replied that not only had her husband died, but her
son had been killed in a car wreck.  She then said that since that time was
when her heart trouble began.  The acupuncturist said simply that maybe due
to all of her recent losses, she had a broken  heart.  Well, when the lady
heard that, the realization hit her that that could perhaps be tied to her
physical condition.  She then began crying, and ended up crying for a few
days, releasing all of these pent up feelings.  Needless to say, she never
got her acupuncture treatment, and  when she went back to her MD, her  heart
was just fine.  Later she wrote a letter to the PA governer concerning this
incident, arguing for acupuncture to be made legal there.  Supposedly, her
letter played a crucial role in making that reality.

So, to summarize, when her emotions were released, that in a sense healed
her of her loss, and then led to her physical healing/cure.  There are also
many stories of people who supposedly have a fatal disease, who just decide
that if that's true, then they're gonna have a blast before they go, and
they end up having so much fun that they end up sticking around for a while
longer.  Some of them only experience a temporary delay in the prognosis,
some are actually cured.

Some of the current treatments under consideration for PD, such as implants
(electrical stimulators), transplants (pig fetal cells), and others, maybe
in one sense cure us of PD (i.e., eliminate symptoms and halt progression),
in my mind they don't constitute a cure in the strictest sense of the word.
The underlying cause of the disease, while now controlled, still remains.
Personally, I am determined not only to see an eradication of PD symptoms
and progression in my body (alhto' I'll gladly take them too), but I want to
get PD totally out of my system.


So, there are levels of meaning to both the words "heal" and "cure."  As of
recently, I've probably been using them interchangeably, and in the
strictest sense of the word, i.e., the disease is completely gone, period.
That's how some of these Christian healers also refer to the word "healing."
In my opinion, healings/cures can be facilitated via doctors, evangelists,
shamans, etc., but ultimately,. the internal changes which are required to
truly eradicate the disease in someone's body, come from that person's
belief.  I heard of this study done once on more tribal/shamanistic healing.
For the people in this tribe, their system of healing (herbs, chants,
prayers, etc.), worked quite well for them, and this was because of their
belief in the system.  Conversely, as many of us were not raised in this
sort of tradition, it most likely  wouldn't work for us, as we don't believe
in it.  Likewise,  our system of medicine, which generally works ok for us,
probably wouldn't work as well for them, for the same reasons as theirs
wouldn't for us.

Speaking of PD being fatal and relentlessly progressive, I have seen those
exact terms, as well as similar ones, used in nearly every formal research
paper I have read on PD.  My point there was, that since we get inundated by
this negative prognosis whenever we attempt to read up on pd research,and
since repetition has a way of becoming reality, I'm trying to counteract
that by saying the exact opposite repeatedly.  Perhaps my example using the
book Megatrends wasn't a perfect one, but there are many others.  Another
could be taken from when I used to tutor kids in this housing project.
Daily they were surrounded by crime, filth, lack of respect for another's
property, loss of hope and ambition, etc., and that ultimately becomes their
reality.  It's kind of like the learned helplessness of Pavlov's dog.  We
were there not only to teach them concrete reading and math skills, but also
to show them that there were other ways out of that situation that what they
saw daily, altho' it did take effort and ultimately belief.  Sadly to say,
alot of them were excited as young children about learning, but when they
got to junior high school age, they lost interest.  Eventually, many of them
would likely  end up like their older siblings, stuck in that situation and
lacking any hope of getting out.  Some, however, would eventually succeed in
going further and creating for themselves a different life.  Since all of
them started with basically the same resources (or lack thereof), the key
difference in determining their own future was in their minds.

That's kinda what I'm saying here.  In a way, I guess I'm attempting to do
the same thing on this list as I (hopefully) did for some of those kids.
I'm fighting against the learned helplessness and resignation that  PD can
bring on.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not in denial about pd, in fact I'm
sometimes ambivalent about being healed, cuz in many ways, it's enriched my
life.  But generally, I think I'm catching on now to the things I'm supposed
to get out of this, and I'm ready to move on.  Just like in leaving the
housing projects for the "real" world (actually in many ways, their world is
more "real"), getting over PD isn't the beginning of the end, but rather the
beginning of many new challenges, as well as blessings.  I for one am ready
to take this new step.

And speaking of natural laws, I personally feel that they were made to be
stretched and broken.  Nor are natural laws static.  Modern quantum
mechanics has already blown away many of the older Newtonian "laws".
Electrons tunneling through solid material, time dilation and contraction,
particle vs wave, etc.  Also what constitues a "law' depends on one's
perspective somewhat.

This is an example my dad always liked to use.  Say, for instance, you draw
a picture of a stick figure on a piece of paper and draw a box around it.
From that figure's perspective, it is now confined to within that box.  In
it's world, natural law would prohibit it from going beyond that wall.
However, you and I, being three-dimensional, could lay that piece of paper
on the floor and walk right "thru" the walls with no problem.  In "reality"
we live in a four-dimensional world (three spatial directions plus time).
It's not hard to picture that God, being infinite, might exist at a level of
five or higher dimensions.  Thus, from his/her perspective, there is no
natural law, even time is easily bypassed, by simply walking right over it,
as we might do to the box on that sheet.  And, if we truly also believe that
we are more than these physical bodies, that our real core is eternal, then
couldn't this eternal part of us also be unbounded by natural "law" in the
physical 4-D realm?  And if that's true, than we can take our knowledge of
that power, and use it to "walk" through walls in our daily lives.

I'm not sure that I answered all of your comments, but as I've rambled on
long enough here, I'll sign off for now.  Anyway, thanks for the comments
and the thought that you put into them.  I truly do enjoy the discourse.

Wendy Tebay