Raymond Barkers: The Power of Decision Chapter 6

Think about it — By Ryan on November 10, 2009 10:57 pm

Diving into Ch 6 of Raymond Charles Barker’s book titled ‘The Power of Decision‘ as always if you have any thoughts or things to add comment away!  There will be a prize given to the person who comments the most of eternal peace and inner-calm

This chapter is on spiritual healing, that being using the power of spirit, the subconscious mind to heal our physical selves.

Soundtrack for this Chapter:

• Jeremy Soule: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion OST

Questions:

For whom is spiritual healing appealing?

Barkers thoughts: Those who are certain in their beliefs and know what they belief to be true.   He mentioned that an absolute belief in ‘god’ is essential, perhaps those that believe in god also find it appealing

My thoughts:  My belief, regardless of god or not is that the mind is an infinitely more powerful tool than we know what to do with.  In clinical tests placebo’s have somewhere around a 33% success rate as the drug they are disguised as.  This is for people with untrained minds with minor suggestions about what the effects of the placebo are.  If you brought a fully trained mind in and their absolute truth became that the placebo would infact do x,y and z I firmly believe you would see success rates closer to 100%.   Spiritual healing would appeal to many people like this who realize something that normally takes chemicals and surgeries can just as easily be accomplished with their minds.

Is there a conflict between spiritual mind healing and modern medicine by metaphysicians today?

Barker’s thoughts: There is no conflict.  Which I agree with, as most ‘metaphysicians’ today no doubt could care less about traditional medicine.

What is psychosomantic medicine? Who were it’s pioneers:

To quote the all powerfull wikipedia: Psychosomatic medicine is an interdisciplinary medical field studying the relationships of social, psychological, and behavioral factors on bodily processes and well-being in humans and other animals. The influence that the mind has over physical processes including the manifestations of physical disabilities that are based on intellectual infirmities, rather than actual injuries or physical limitations, are manifest in phrases such as the power of suggestion, the use of “positive thinking” and concepts like “mind over matter“.

Barker says that the The Pioneers were Dr. Franz Alexander of Chicago and Dr. Flanders Dunbar of New York however it turns out that Muslim psychologist-physician Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi might have had a 1000 year head start

Why is it important to praise our good health?

Barkers response: All things response to self-recognition, health is no exception.

My thoughts: Much in line with that and it even reminds me of an old sesame street episode from back in the day   What you dwell or focus on will no doubt become your reality.  If you are aware of your good health, thankful for it and keep it at the front of your mind chances are your reality will mold more literally around this image.  If you are focusing on illness, sickness, or loss chances are your reality will mold itself around that.

Barkers states that he cannot help someone unless three factors are present, what are they?

Barker: I cannot help anyone unless he has made up his mind to be healed and believes health to be normal and his physical problems to be unnecessary.

My thoughts: I imagine it would become a science in its own right just to deduce if a person has these 3 factors present and aren’t just telling you what you want to hear.   But all in all I agree with this, I’ve learned the same thing in my spiritual teachings over the past couple years.  The truth, be it about your spiritual being or your physical health is like a seed and my role is to just plant this seed.  In order for it to do any good there must be the correct conditions for growth: The soil must be furtile, there must be enough sunlight and the seed must be tended.  All of these factors are out of my hands and it is just a matter of being able to recognize if they are present or not before planting a seed on the beach or in a dark rock garden

Why is a clear decision for health on the part of the one with the illness so important?

Barkers thoughts: The subconscious mind is the operative system(notice his pre-computer age terminology, operative instead of operating system) of the body.

My thoughts: As stated before what is in the subconscious mind, seeps into the conscious mind and becomes reality.  This is why it is so important and so challenging to begin a spiritual journey of awakening because the first step is to realize the patterns and beliefs of your subconscious mind, a part of you that by definition you aren’t even aware of.  It’s like having a tail that you had no idea you had and this tail for your whole life randomly smacks you and whacks others without your control, you wonder why some things happen the way they do but just write it off as ‘the way it is’ when all along its because this jackass of a tail has been smacking people to and fro you’re whole life and you didn’t even know about it

When did the modern metaphysical healing movement begin?

According to Barker it all began around 1860

Who is Phineas P Quimby?

A clock and watch maker by trade, Quimby was the father of  ‘New Thought’. Among the students and patients who joined his studies and helped him to commit his teachings to writing were Warren Felt Evans, Annetta Seabury Dresser and Julius Dresser, the founders of New Thought as a named movement.

The earliest identifiable proponent of what came to be known as New Thought was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–66), an American philosopher, mesmerist, healer, and inventor. Quimby developed a belief system that included the tenet that illness originated in the mind as a consequence of erroneous beliefs and that a mind open to God‘s wisdom could overcome any illness.^[8]

Name some reasons why a sick person my subconsciously hold onto their illness:

Barker and I’s thoughts on this are fairly similar, with just different words used to describe the reasons why.  In the end it all boils down to Ego.  The illness brings the person attention, affirmation of their worth and importance and allows them to feed on the pity of others for power.  It’s all ego, the longer their sick, the more they get and the less they have to do.

Why do some who say they believe in god find they cannot be helped by spiritual mind healing?

Saying you believe in ‘god’ and actually believe it as a fundamental truth in your life are two very very different things and I would suspect the vast majority of monotheistic believers are lying to themselves and carrying on a nice facade to appease what they think society wants, to appease their ego.  I say this with confidence because of a study done of terminal patients during their last few minutes of life.  It was done with christians as it was an american study and there are more christians in the US than you can shake a stick at but the conclusion of the study found Christians to be overwhelmingly more fearly and scared in their last moments than atheistists or agnostics, 80% more fearful if I remember correctly.  What that tells me is that most of those people didn’t actually believe in god or perhaps they did and they didn’t believe they would go to the promised land because of the lives they led, which in turn tells me they didn’t really believe in the whole affair or else they would have lived better lives.

What is theology?

All praise Lord Wiki! The term “theology” literally means the study of God, deriving from the Greek word theos, meaning ‘God’, and the suffix -ology from the Greek word logos meaning (in this context) “discourse”, “theory”, or “reasoning”. Augustine of Hippo defined the Latin equivalent, theologia, as “reasoning or discussion concerning the Deity”,^[1] Richard Hooker defined “theology” in English as “the science of things divine”.^[2] More generally, it is the study of religious faith, practice, and experience, or of spirituality.

What advantage is it to know that your health is spiritually based?

Barker’s thoughts: Your recognition of this fact causes the health process to begin its perfect work

My thoughts: I’m not sure how I feel on this.  I would use the term ‘consciously based’ instead of spiritually based.  Barker talks about accepting that our physical beings are expressions of the perfection of god and that god knows no illness.  Once we surrender to this we can have that perfection of god flow through us and make us whole and perfect.  I feel this is a positive approach that will no doubt reach the same ends as what I would propose but again having the duality come up of ‘god’ and ‘me’ bothers me.  In the end I know that Barker means god in the sense of the eternal spirit of all things as in I am god, god is me, etc etc, but his wording still has a tenancy to lead people down a path of duality, which is wrong.  I simply believe that our bodies are just manifestations of our conscious mind, and our conscious minds are or can be led around by our subconscious mind.  Mind training is the first step I feel to uncovering the subconscious mind and shedding the layers of false believes and egoic patterns we carry around with us.  Going through all of our thoughts, all of our emotions, everything we believe and holding it up to the light of truth.  A light that eventually comes instinctually from within but at first must be found through simple question and answer periods on everything you hold dear, the simplest question of all actually: “Why” .  Ask yourself why enough times and you will find truth, but only if you are willing to listen to it, only if the conditions are present for that seed to grow.

What do healthy minds do with negative conditions?

Barker: A healthy mind minimizes negative conditions

Me: A healthy mind in my mind is a conscious mind.  I would feel that a conscious mind accepts negative conditions and allows them to be for the most part, much like the duck allows the rain to be, or the lake to be, yes when it emerges from this wetness it all runs off, none of it stays with the duck at all.

Facing the lie of illness with the truth of health is what?

Barker: This is the healing process

My thoughts: What is truth?  Is it truth to be healthy?  We apply a label on health because we’ve evolved in a way that healthy is favoured and illness isn’t, mainly because those who are healthy have a better chance at spreading their seed than those who aren’t.  I’m not saying we should all want to be unhealthy, but besides that difference between the two and the fact that you feel like shit when you’re sick, what other reason do we have to label it negative or positive? It’s simply a state of mind, our mind telling us that something is wrong and we interpret this as pain or as something negative but why?  Why is it interpreted as negative?  It’s just our body ringing the alarm bells in a way that normally we can’t ignore, can’t we just thank our bodies for this alarm system that has no doubt allowed our species to survive, act accordingly and then move on?  Why isn’t pain and suffering seen with gratitude, in a more positive light?  Without pain we wouldn’t be here today and that’s a good reason to be thankful and label it as something a little less demonic.  As for health being our truth, hmmm, that’s an interesting take on things.  I’m not sure if I would say that exactly, I’ll go along with it for the most part but ‘health’ is very relative.  What I consider healthy is very very different than what the average person does.  What a starving child considers healthy is very very different than average person.  Can such a subjective, relative term carry any truth with it?  I mean all things in this world are relative and I feel almost nothing in our world has absolute truth, but health would certainly be something that has even less than most things because of how relative it is in the eyes of men.

What is ‘true health’ based on?

Barker: God is life and that this life is your life now.  You did not create it nor can you destroy it.

Me: Again while the wording might not be what I would have chosen I see what Barker’s underlying message is in this as I have made similar statements, sans god, in regards to our truth and our greatness.  That being our truth, our greatness, isnt something we can find, it’s not even something we can look for, it’s something we are.  Inherently and intrinsically something that makes up who we are, we’ve just layered on a multitude of distractions to take us away from that the quest isn’t to find truth, nor is it to achieve greatness(or health in this case) its simply clearing away everything that is lying ontop of it, unraveling the subconscious patterns that hold us back from seeing it.

Barker Says ‘You are health, not healthy’ what does this mean?

Now we’re getting to the guts of this topic, because now barker is speaking in absolutes not relative adjectives.  We are intrinsically perfect, are ARE health, we are the starting point that all definitions of ‘healthy’ originate from. Underneath all of the layers lies this perfection, the layers that are illusions, are created by ego and all the other subconscious devices we needed as a more primitive culture to survive but which we’ve grown past.

What is consciousness?

Barker: Conscious is what you are and everything you experience is consciousness

Me: That question my friends needs a book unto itself, infact it needs a library.  But I’m thinking that Barker is simplifying this down to a single point.  That being that consciousness is everything, the all pervading spirit that is us and everything around us.  There are so many definitions for this word, I feel that consciousness in relation to our human mind is enlightment, it is being completely free of suffering and ignorance(ie: the ego).  It is an experience of life purely in the moment, entering the stream of truth where egoic patterns cease to be, meaning that all past events, all future expectations are no more you simply exist in that timeless, infinite moment.

WorkSheet:

1. When it comes genetic predisposition I believe that certain traits such as height, perpensity for weight, eye color, hair, skin pigment all come from genetics.  As for the rest I believe that’s up the environment in which you are raised and the choices you make in life.
2. As far as aging I expect to age very slowly, very happily, and for a very long time
3. I would rate my health as an 6 out of 8
4. If I could change one thing about my health it would be to push myself physically further and more often.  I would also like to eat more
5. When I think of infectious diseases I feel nothing
6. My body size is Tall, lean, muscular
7. My strength is above average
8. My stamina is above average, not where I want it thanks to me accepting my knee injury as dabilitating but still in a happy place

Select one of more of the above and reverse the statement, or make a treatment based on change that you would like to see

Treatment on my knee:  I accept that my truth is within me, it has always been within me and it is simply my choice to walk down a path where I can see it.  The truth of my being is that I create all that ails me and my knee is no exception to this.  My knee injury was allowed to exist and be, partially because of the attention and sympathy it got and perhaps as a way of getting out of cardio.  It also represents the attachment to emotional pain I allowed to be adn connects me with that.  I hereby release myself from that connection, I have no need to remain in that place as my path lies ahead of me, not behind me, and yet my path lies right now in this moment and no where else.  It is my desire to be healthier, fitter, trimmer, and have 3 times more stamina.  I will only achieve this with a healthy knee and therefor a healthy knee I shall have from this moment onwards.

Tags: Health, power of decision, raymond barker, science of mind, spiritual science