"PROOF OF THE PUDDING"
| "PROOF OF THE PUDDING" | |
| Every event has its consequences. All changes cause ripples on the surface and in the depths of the status quo. Some happenings, that on the surface appear to be inconsequential, may turn out to have far reaching repercussions. The loss of an American space craft with its human crew was due to the altered specifications of a 10 cent bolt. Plainly, not all changes have such dire results. As a general rule, the smaller the degree of change, the smaller the observed results. The paragraphs below show facets of the degree of change possible. They also illustrate the dangers of untutored experimentation. They are the story of why and how I used the knowledge described in these texts to change myself. At no time do I wittingly lead any reader into practices that may endanger them. My own case may be considered as being extreme, as I was far down the line with very little to lose. |
Final Medical Certificate on Discharge from Hospital. Diagnosis & prognosis Name of Disability, Chronic Pain Syndrome. Probable cause, Organo-phosphate poisoning.Percentage of disability 75%. Condition progressive. Estimated period of disability, permanent. Extent of disablement re effect on activities, pursuits and processes of everyday life: All physical activities are affected. Assessed by APH rheumatology & pain clinic. Further medical help is not possible. |
| I stood there, stunned; feeling as though I had been handed a death sentence. The three doctors were plainly frustrated by their inability to offer positive news. "I'm sorry," one of them said. "We just cannot perform miracles." Still dazed by what I had read, I spoke without thinking. "Then I guess that I will have to give myself a miracle." Miracle was not the right term for what I was planning. Miracles imply the intervention of supernatural powers, and I intended to call upon the most basic, natural powers that we possess. The next two years were hell as I struggled to put theory into practice, making more than one mistake along the way. Humiliated at having to rely on others to help me to and from the toilet, I told myself that I would have to be more thick skinned than I was. Within a fortnight my arms and legs were a mass of small tender nodules. When these were lanced it was seen that each contained a hair, coiled like a tiny watch spring. Impeded in their natural growth by their inability to pierce my thickened skin, they had continued to grow beneath it. I viewed them with mixed feelings. Obviously I had made some sort of contact between my conscious mind and my body's autonomic actions, but it was clear that I had to be very precise in what I wanted. The body plainly took things very literally. |
| My problems had started on a quiet Saturday morning. I owned a 6 ton recreational vehicle that had damaged a rear end shaft bearing when crossing rough ground, so having secured the replacement part I set about the repairs. The front wheels were chocked and the handbrake was on as I slowly jacked up the rear end, first one side, then the other. I had two solid stands with cupped upper ends into which I gently lowered the rear axle. As the ground was damp, I slid a sheet of corrugated iron under the vehicle so that I could lie on my back to work in the cramped space. I had barely made a start when there was a muffled crack and the vehicle came down on me. Unbeknown to anyone, I had parked above a disused holding tank for waste agricultural and industrial chemicals. The weight of the vehicle, concentrated on the small area of the stands, had caused the roof of the tank to collapse and the rear end sank beneath the ground with me pinned beneath it. At first the hole was quite small but as the edges collapsed the sheet of iron was wrapped around me like a winding sheet and I was plunged into several feet of chemical sludge. When all movement stopped I was lying, wrapped like a mummy, with only my face above the surface of the liquid. It was 10 a.m. when it happened and 6 p.m. when I finally managed to extricate myself. It was a long day. |
| Several times I had fallen asleep, to be awakened by my head falling backwards into the cold liquid. The details of my day-long struggle to escape are lost to me but I next remember being out in the clean air of the late afternoon. Crawling around the vehicle I tried to climb the metal steps leading into it. Covered in slime, I lost my footing and cartwheeled down, to be brought to a stop as my left foot jammed under the metal cross struts of my workbench. Hearing a shout, I looked up to see my son coming across the fields, returning from a day with his friends. As I watched him draw closer I could see him in extraordinarily sharp detail and I was overwhelmed by a great love of him and his sister and by life itself. |
| So began the long haul. My deep interest in the mind-body relationship began as a schoolboy when I first read of the case of the lad with icthyosis. The common term, 'fishscale disease', describes it well. The victim's body is covered with fingernail sized extrusions that resemble fish scales. If damaged, these scales exude blood. It is both painful and unsightly. Everything known to medical science had been tried in the efforts to heal the lad. Even skin grafts proved unsuccessful, the grafts failing to take. Then a young physician who had been taught hypnosis, asked if he could handle the case. His offer affronted the establishment but he was given permission to just talk with the patient. Each day he would sit at the bedside, quietly telling his patient that the disease had run its course and that he was getting better. Within two weeks the lad's arms began to heal, the scales drying up and dropping off, to be replaced by healthy new skin. Within a few months the lad's skin was indistinguishable from that of his playmates. Within weeks I had taught myself hypnosis. This led to a lifelong search for practical ways that the mind could be used to influence the body in positive ways. For years I have worked to understand the latest findings of researchers exploring the frontiers of fields of research that often had no apparent connections. On countless occasions I have been instrumental in helping others in dozens of differing ways. But there lay the rub! It is an old saying that those who can, do; while those who can't, teach. I had great success in teaching others how to use what I learned but had never quite managed to use the knowledge for my own benefit. Now it seemed as though I had no choice. It was a question of do it myself, to myself, or go under. Frustration doesn't cover it. I would watch others take the knowledge and stride out on their planned course, whereas I saw myself likened to a broken-backed beetle struggling across an arid plain. Sometimes I endangered myself with experiments that I had dreamed up but had always considered a breach of ethics to try on others. |
| Quite early on I accepted that I had to open the lines of communication between my conscious and unconscious minds. Lying in bed that night, I told myself that the two parts of me would establish contact, each part accepting the other as a full equal in decision management. Wrong! The next three days were a nightmare. All reason had been lost in a tumultuous chaos. Had I not been alone, and therefore able to sort myself out, I may well have been sectioned. After that episode I repeated the experiment with one important rider. The final instruction was that, upon awakening the next morning my conscious, logical mind would take precedent over all others. It worked. These were by no means the only mistakes. One of the biggies was when I started giving orders to my immune system. There followed one of those battles when the willingness of the troops to obey the orders of an incompetent commander almost lost the war. I have considerable understanding of the bodies immune system and the ways of antibodies, but had failed to understand the enemy. At that time the virulence and long term effects of Organophosphate poisoning were being denied by the giant corporate organisations that produced the chemicals and, for reasons of their own, various national governments were sticking their collective heads in the sand - thereby exposing their brains to criticism. A doctor from New Zealand has told me that the government of the time were actively engaged in a covert operation to discourage doctors from naming Organophosphates as a cause for the increasing number of sufferers that they were being called upon to deal with. The apparent reason for this campaign was that, although New Zealand was a major user of the chemicals on its sheep stations and vineyards, general knowledge of the effects would harm the country's clean, green image in the eyes of overseas tourists. Those in authority deliberately turned a blind eye to the fact that dozens of communities were regularly subjected to wind-carried, toxic fallout. I have photographs of a man in full protective clothing spraying a bowling green. The spray can be clearly seen to be drifting over a small stream and into a very large camping ground on its banks. The windows of cars and caravans on the downwind side of the bowling green were misted with the chemicals. |
| So I was engaged in combat with an enemy the ramifications of which were largely unknown. My mistake was to think of it as a disease, as in infection. OK, I thought, there was only one way to deal with this; bring on the troops. Most of us know of the internal organisation of an anthill with its workers, soldiers, repairers, etc. Few children are taught that our bodies are as equally well provided with such a work force. As I wrote on page 6 of Chapt-3 :- 'One species of immune cell, the monocyte, acts in one of its functions as a guardian on point duty. It patrols the body in search of alien invaders. When an 'outsider' is discovered by the monocyte it produces a killer cell, the macrophage, whose job it is to attack and destroy. Other components of the immune system act as our friendly, neighbourhood repairmen.' Although it was the absorbed chemicals that were attacking my central nervous system, stripping away the myelin that serves the same purpose as the insulation around electrical cables, I had wrongly conceived myself as being invaded by a virus or bacterium. Blithely unaware of the Sword of Damocles that hung above my head, I instructed the K-cells to attack. And they did. Me! It was days before I realised my error and weeks before I was able to hand back control to the autonomic system. Because I had assumed instead of deduced I had gone about things with all the finesse of a chimpanzee dismantling a wristwatch. In retrospect I saw that I had called in the heavy mob when I needed the assistance of the repair crew. It wasn't all a comedy of errors. Sometimes the pain and debility got on top of me and I became very low in spirit. The anagelsics numbed the pain but left me too zonked to think straight. Always, when things were at their worst, I would suddenly get tired of being pushed around in this manner and would again start to follow my own advice; REMEMBER THE AFFIRMATIONS! By trial and error I found that the way forward was not one of continuous progress. Once I had achieved some improvement such as regaining the full use of my right leg, it paid to rest on my laurels for a period of time. R and R for the troops. Then I would restart with another clearly defined object in mind. As stated at the start of this chapter, I started from way behind; but all's well that ends well. These days my greatest pleasure is to spend a day on a 20 klm. wander across the countryside. I trek along ancient footpaths over ridges and through leafy glades, following the deer herds as they descend in the twilight to the drink at the river in the valley. Percentage of disability 75%? Condition progressive? Not! It's all in the mind. |