Everyman’s Search E-Book

Rebecca Beard

• Herausgeber: Andura Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Experience the life-changing power of Rebecca Beard with this unforgettable book.

Das E-Book wird angeboten von und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

Everyman’s Search

Rebecca Beard

CONTENTS

Chapter 1.

Materia Medica to Spiritual Therapy

Each man in searching travels his own road, yet his experience can be of value to other seekers.

Our experience led us from materia medica to spiritual therapy. This might seem, at first sight, to be more in the nature of a conversion than a transition, yet as I look back upon the steps over which we came it seems an inevitable transition for one trained in the scientific field, if that one be willing to go far enough. Whether one advances along this road or not depends, it seems to me, upon a willingness to explore with an open mind.

In my earlier years, science was my religion. I was so fascinated and enthralled by the things I was learning that I was open to nothing else. I owe much to science and to my training in science, for my first deep concept of God came to me through my introduction to the laws of valence, the atomic theory and the periodic system. All these revealed to me the underlying order and rationality of nature and gave me an awareness of the dependability and unchangeableness of natural law which is still the foundation of my enlarging faith.

It is not easy to tell you the steps in the transition from materia medica to spiritual therapy. It is a matter of picking up threads and weaving them together, as one recalls them. Often the things that have motivated us become vague as time goes on. It is difficult to recall just what the actual steps were, but as nearly as I can I shall give them to you, because if one is searching for a path it is sometimes a help to know of the path over which another has travelled.

Early in my hospital work I had charge of the drug-room because I had a steady hand and could pour from one bottle to another without spilling. Each morning we filled the bottles for the wards out of the stock-bottles in the drug-room. After some months of this I found there was something strange about the popularity of drugs and the faith of the doctors in certain preparations. One drug would appear on the horizon and would be acclaimed by all the doctors. It was difficult to keep the bottles filled because of the demand. Then, little by little, doubts and criticism would creep in, the negative reports would be heard, until that drug lost its popularity. The huge bottles out of which the others were filled were gradually pushed further and further back on the shelf, and I said to myself, “Isn’t that queer? Why?”

Today the medical world seems to be moving out of the world of drugs, as such, into the use of natural remedies which are more or less native to the body. Many have come into the recognition of hormones and enzymes, vitamins and minerals, all of which the body itself would appropriate or produce if it was always operating in perfect harmony.

Another thing happened once in a while which made me ask, “Why?” A patient in the hospital in an extremely serious condition from exhaustion or shock might pass into a coma, and we could scarcely catch the heart-beat or the respiration. We would send out a frantic search for the doctor in charge of the case. Perhaps he could not quickly be located, and we would be at the bedside, tense with anxiety.

You learn to know the sound of different doctors as they come into a hospital, so as we stood there at the bed, with our fingers on the patient’s pulse, we would sense, rather than hear, the grapevine message that would pass along the corridors, “The doctor has come.” “The doctor is here.”

How the patient would be aware of it is still a mystery but before he could even come up the steps the patient would breathe a great sigh of relief and begin to relax. We could feel the pulse coming back, and the respiration deepening. We could feel the warmth of new life flowing through the body, and see the colour return slowly to the lips and ears. ”The doctor is here!” Sometimes the release from fear would be so marked that one could not help realizing that here was something that more than met the eye.

Then, once in a while, there would be a consultation over someone who was very near death. The verdict would go out, “There is no hope. It is a matter of hours.” The doctors might have agreed that nothing more could he done. Then possibly a pastor, a lovely mother, wife or friend would come and say to us, “May we go in? We would like to stay at the bedside.” Always consent was given. The door would be closed. The nurses would go in only on call. We would walk quietly past that room, for we knew they were praying.

Once in a while, not always, but it happened, the patient who was not expected to live would get well and walk out of the hospital in a few days. The doctors, shrugging their shoulders, might say, “It is just one of those things.” And I would ask myself again, “Why?” “Why don’t they ask? If it could happen once why could it not happen again? What is it?” But no one asked. No one sought the answer. Today we feel it is definitely not “just one of those things”, and a mere shrug of the shoulders is not going to carry it off.

Later, there came a time in my life when science and the love of scientific knowledge did not seem to answer the need. I think many of us who have been deeply impressed in our scientific training have, all unconsciously perhaps, an unawakened religious spirit. Anyone who reads Lecomte du Nuoy’s books realizes that what he says is true, that a man of science without imagination is not a true scientist. He must be able to formulate an hypothesis, or he is only a tabulator of facts. He must have the divine imagination and power of visualization to step out on his supposition and prove it; so, also, must we be able to leap the gap from facts which are known to those facts which are but yet dimly discerned.

But so often we do not see or feel this thing until we are forced to our knees, and have come to the place where we can no longer go under our own limited human power and strength. I came to that place, and my colleagues who knew me well and loved me, said, “You must put your affairs in order, for you cannot live through another heart-attack.”

When faced by that ultimatum you realize that you have nothing within yourself with which to meet it. For the first time in my life, literally and figuratively, I went down on my knees. It was only then that God became real, and I began to sense the great power that was outside of myself, and yet was part of me, and I cried, “If it is possible, take this from me. Either take it from me or take me. I have gone as far as I can.”

A wonderful revelation came; a great spiritual illumination. I knew then that I was healed, and I knew that the rest of my life would be given to helping others find that healing. How, then, to get out of the field in which I was serving, and move into the other field in which I wanted to serve ?

Long before this I had given up the use of drugs. They have their place. I do not imply anything against them. There are thousands of agencies, and they seem to me to be all God-given. They have their place and their use in some part of our process of growth, and we do not depreciate them. But when we learn that there is only one power behind all the agencies, and we choose to go directly to that power, then the agencies lose their importance, and we lose our dependence upon them and our need of them.

So there is no quarrel, ever, as to what you use. What you use simply determines how far you have gone. When you are ready to use only the power of God you will not need the agency. But that time should never be forced. One should hesitate to say, “I will give it up and see if I can do without it.” You will see, beloved, but you may not see what you want to see, for faith must precede. The signs follow.

Late in 1945 Dr. Glenn Clark called a conference to be held near Minneapolis. He invited those who had been practising spiritual healing to meet with him with the hope that we might be able to pool our findings and share our experiences in healing through prayer. Each person who attended had done some outstanding work in the field of spiritual therapy. They represented a cross section of religious and scientific groups, although none came as a direct representative of any group.

The spirit of the people whom I met at that first Healing Advance was beyond anything I had ever experienced. I had attended many medical conventions where everyone was stampeding and stepping on one another’s heels, so anxious were they to be heard. Here were thirty-five or forty consecrated people with the light of God shining in their faces, every one of whom said, “l would rather not talk. I want so much to hear what YOU have discovered” — eager and willing they were to step aside.

We had heard of the “wonderful triumvirate”, as Dr. Clark called them — Louise Eggleston, of Norfolk, Virginia, who had organized more prayer groups than any other woman in the country; Ruth Robison, whose husband was pastor of a Methodist Church; and Agnes Sanford, wife of an Episcopalian rector, and author of “The Healing Light.”

One after another these three remarkable women on that first afternoon told their stories of personal healing and of the healing of others through prayer. Dr. Stanley Tyler and I were the two doctors of medicine in the group, and I don’t think either of us sat back in our chairs while they were talking.

It was immediately after this meeting that we all unwittingly re-enacted one of the miracles recorded in the New Testament. Dr. Tyler came out of the meeting that afternoon all afire. He had told us when he first came to the Advance of a patient who had had a stomach ulcer which perforated just before Dr. Tyler was due to leave for the conference. We knew he had been torn between his duty to stay with his patient and his desire to come to the Advance. Finally, he turned the patient over to his colleague and came, but the man was on his mind and heart for he knew he was desperately ill with peritonitis.

At this time Dr. Tyler was not so much interested in healing through prayer as he was in his new-found psycho-somatic discoveries. He was full of his subject and eager to speak of it to his fellow townspeople but they seemed reluctant to listen.

When Agnes Sanford finished speaking on that first afternoon Dr. Tylcr and the rest of us were all so moved that we left the room in silence.

In the recreation hall later Dr. Tyler came to us and said, “I know what I am going to do. I am going to take Agnes Sanford to my town and heal my patient and then those people will come to me and say, ‘What’s it all about, Doc?’ and I will have a chance to tell my story.”

Mrs. Sanford sat beside Dr.Tyler during this outburst, then she looked up at him with a smile and said, “Wait a minute. I am not in the habit of going out to heal people so that someone may have an opportunity to tell their story. We must take this under advice. We will pray over it.” To this the Doctor agreed.

The next morning we came down to the lodge before breakfast to warm ourselves by the fire, for the mornings were chilly. As Dr. Tyler came into the room Mrs. Sanford reached for her purse and remarked, “All right, Stanley, let’s go.” But Dr. Tyler said he would like to telephone first. “All right,” Agnes Sanford replied. “We will have breakfast and after you have telephoned you can bring us your news.”

We sat at the breakfast-table with our backs to the fireplace, facing the door, and as Dr. Tyler came in we knew something was wrong. Agnes and I both thought the worst had happened. Stanley came over to the table and burst out with, “Doggone, I knew we would wait too long!”

We both felt that this was rather a harsh way to break the news. Agnes was sympathetic. “I am so sorry, Stanley.” He looked at her with a bewildered expression and we were puzzled. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Well,” she countered, “didn’t the man die? Isn’t that what you were trying to tell us?” “Doggone, no,” he replied impatiently. “His wife answered the telephone and said he was all right. He got up this morning, ate his breakfast and is perfectly well.” Dr. Tyler sounded like a small boy who has had his new boots taken away from him, and we could scarcely believe he was serious. But it was true. The man was healed and well, and Dr.Tyler did not know, and we did not realize until afterwards, that the centurion’s story had been enacted in real life before us.

You will notice Stanley Tyler did not say, “If she can heal him.” He said, “I am going to take her down there and heal that man, and when he is healed the people will say to me, ‘What is all this about?’ ” You see, there was absolutely no question in Stanley’s mind. And in that self-same hour the man was healed! Dr. Stanley Tyler has been trying ever since to tell them what it is all about.

The following October, 1946, my husband and I both attended the second Healing Advance in Minneapolis, and in the spring of 1947 We gave up our home, and went to Merrybrook to start our work in spiritual therapy.

Chapter 2.

Hurdles

In looking back over the experiences of twenty years of medical practice we recalled this one and that one whom the doctors believed could live only a short time, and yet they lived, and some of them lived a very long time. The question of curable and incurable was, for us, the first hurdle.

A report issued by the Churches’ Council of Healing, an interdenominational body originated by the late Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, says that the Council deplores the frequent use by doctors of the word “incurable”, continuing, “The Christian doctor is coming more and more to regard it as scientifically unsound to pronounce any illness incurable, and is recognizing the unseen factor of spiritual regeneration as his greatest ally.”

When we came into the idea of meeting all sickness, all problems, with this one solution — prayer– we very naturally said, “What of these conditions which are called incurable? What of these diseases which so far science says cannot be healed?” The pronouncement of a condition as “incurable” was something I was no longer able to make because experience had continued to teach me that through the power of prayer such conditions were nor always incurable. No longer was it possible for me to say to a patient, “You have not long to live. There is no hope.” How could anyone know?”

As time went on I found myself more and more reluctant not only to make a definite prognosis of a patient’s condition, but to make a diagnosis, because I realized that by saying to a patient “You have a serious disorder, or a definitely diseased organ,” I was implanting into their subconscious mind a positive picture which was going to be difficult for them to forget or ignore.

The transition from materia medica to spiritual therapy was not one of giving up the use of drugs. I had not used them for a long time, unless one classes the native remedies like hormones and vitamins as drugs. The hurdle I could not get over was this one of diagnosis. When a physician no longer makes diagnoses he no longer practises.

Then there arose the question of whether or not it is right to heal anyone through prayer. The right of physical science to try any method which promises a return to health is never questioned. Why, then, should there be a question about healing through spiritual power alone? Do we say to the surgeon or to the doctor, “Do you think it is right to heal this person?” We could not understand why we should hesitate to heal through spiritual means.

Lewis MacLachlan in his book, “Intelligent Prayer,” has a good deal to say on this subject. “Belief that disease can be and ought to be healed by prayer is often vigorously and sometimes indignantly resisted. The objection is not to healing, but to faith healing. People submit to hazardous experiments of all kinds, but cannot believe God will heal them in any other way. . . .Like Naaman, they take offence at the very simplicity of faith. They believe in healing but only by material means. They expect God to heal them, but only in ways of man’s own choosing! Faith has been transferred from spiritual to material forces. . . .We have gained so much knowledge about material things we have lost much of our even more precious knowledge of spiritual things.

“We live in an ordered universe where the divine power is manifested in the operation of natural law. . . .When we pray for health and healing, we are appealing to the laws of God’s ordered universe.”

*   *   *

The next hurdle was a common one. It was the question of functional and organic conditions. Many people believe that prayer could be effective in functional disorders, but resist the belief that prayer can meet an organic change. The clarification of this point we made a subject of earnest prayer, and there seemed to come to us a direct answer in the words of a great scientist, Virchow, who did his greatest research work at the end of the 19th century. His words came back and back into my consciousness. They were these, “The cells that we find in the body in disease are exactly the same cells that we find in health, only altered in their appearance.”

A pathologist looking through the microscope at a slide can tell by the appearance of the cells the pathological changes that have taken place in them, recognizing certain disease patterns. It is not a foreign cell which has usurped the place of a healthy cell. It is the identical cell of the healthy body, altered in appearance. On the other hand, a functional disorder is simply the inability of a cell to do its work. The function of the part is disturbed first, then gradually the changes take place in the cell itself, and we term this organic.

Think of yourself for a moment as an individual cell in the body. Suppose something were to happen to you during the next few months which would put you in an unnatural situation so that you were overburdened with problems, overworked, undernourished, and discouraged. At first your work would suffer. This would be a functional disorder. At the end of six months or a year you would not look the same. Your appearance might be so greatly altered that people would not easily recognize you, yet you would be the same person, wouldn’t you? You would have all the possibilities of coming back to your natural state if the conditions were changed for the better.

It is difficult to draw a line between functional and organic, so we decided to consider them together, one having progressed further than the other. But we realized that, unwittingly, we put a strain on the cells of our bodies at times, and in our ignorance we hurt them badly. When through our words or by the power of our thoughts we suggest that they are weak, inefficient and inadequate, they become discouraged and listless. How would you respond to such suggestions made repeatedly? By being strong or weak? By manifesting health or disease? Would such constant criticism tend to make you feel happy and free, and enable you to do your work with joy and competency?

Since it is the same cell in health as in disease, only altered in function or appearance, then it is my belief that it will come back normally and naturally to a healthy condition when fed a proper mental diet.

Albert E. Cliffe, now famous Canadian chemist, has this to say about mental diet in his book, “Lessons in Living,” “For the past decade the whole world has been increasingly food conscious, with our leading magazines and journals publishing many articles on nutrition by specialists, most of them advising us to eat the foods we ought to eat instead of the foods we like to eat. The word vitamin is flung at us from every conceivable angle, with warnings of the dreadful things that will happen to us should we not heed their importance.

“As a food chemist, I know that the foods I eat each day are converted into the various parts of my body; in other words, my physical well-being depends for its development upon my daily diet. However, several years it was found that in spite of a so-called perfect diet of the right foods, many people suffered from disease, which according to the principles of nutrition should never have occurred.

“It was then that I came into my study of the mind, which has taught me that the food I give to my mind each hour and each day is of far greater importance than the food I give to my stomach. The words of Jesus in this respect are most applicable, ‘Be not therefore anxious What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink?’ By an application of His words I discovered that I alone was the cause of my intense suffering from stomach ulcers for twenty-seven years. Once I proved that my mental vitamins were the real source of my sickness or health, I became as I wished to become, healthy, happy and successful.”

*   *   *

Then we came to the great hurdle — the headless horseman — that frightening thing which still holds the majority of the people of the world in the grip of fear — cancer. Our thought was — perhaps we can do everything through prayer but this, and yet, in our intuitive knowing we realized we dared not step out into the world of spiritual healing until we were absolutely sure that there was no barrier, and no hurdle that could not be overcome through God’s healing power.

Because we had seen so many cancer sufferers we found this a tremendous hurdle to pass. We needed conviction, and we prayed, “Father, show us a condition that is unquestioned, about which no one can rationalize. We want to see something that is so evident in its outward manifestation that everyone can see it. We want to see something that is called incurable. We want to see an instantaneous healing, and we want to see it complete and made possible without any agency but prayer.

The answer to our prayer was the healing of our friend, Alice Newton, of Leavenworth, Kansas. It was not many weeks after we had prayed that she came to us in St. Louis. She had known me in Kansas City when I practised there. This is what she said, “I come because I have faith in you, and because I know you have something beyond medicine. I am in great need. Tell me the truth.” Her appearance when we first saw her shocked us. Her huge abdomen was larger than a woman at full term pregnancy. She had the dreaded cachexia. Her emaciated body was scarcely able to carry the great burden. Her question was, “Do you think that I can be healed with prayer and nothing else?” For just a moment I felt a sinking feeling. “This is it,” I thought. “You have asked for it. You wanted it.”

You see, I did believe with my conscious mind, but my subconscious said, “Help Thou mine unbelief.” Then I heard myself saying, “Yes, Alice, I believe. But I want to sec it. I need to see it.” “All right,” she replied, “I’11 do it for you and for my husband. I will go home and map out a programme and a schedule. I will follow it every day, and I have absolute faith now that our prayer will be answered, and the Lord will heal me.”

She went home, cancelled all social obligations, did simple things about the house, rested, walked in the open air, read her Bible, sang hymns, and prayed.

Every day she repeated the same pattern. She wrote to us often and in none of her letters did she ever suggest failure. She confidently awaited the moment of her healing. You have no idea how this strengthened our faith. The unswavering faith of one person is a tremendous factor in building the certainty of God’s power in their lives. “Nor knowest thou what argument thine own life to thy neighbour’s creed hath lent.”

Among Alice’s friends was a wonderful doctor who visited her often, not as a doctor but as a friend. His medical knowledge made him insist that she permit him to tap her. It was curious, but the relationship of doctor and patient seemed to be reversed between them. It was she who would say to him, “Don’t you worry about me, Doctor.” She often consoled and encouraged him, but he would go on his way, sorry and unbelieving. A spiritual conviction and certainty such as hers is not easily gained. It is necessary to pay the price. Her constancy of purpose lasted over a period of two years. Finally, one night, with no special preparation, the miracle happened.

At the time, her husband, a warder at the Leavenworth prison, was working from midnight until early morning. Alice retired shortly after he left for work, and went to sleep as usual. As she slept she had a vision of the disciples asleep as Jesus came down the mountainside from his lone prayer. His face was full of sorrow as he looked at the sleeping men, then he glanced over and smiled at her. Immediately the scene changed. It was the day of the crucifixion. The cross was being lowered into the hole that had been dug for it, the Master’s body already nailed upon it. Torn with the thought of how the jar would hurt Him, she cried out, “Oh my Jesus,” putting up her hand to steady His body and case the suffering. At that moment her hand dropped to her abdomen and she awoke.

Turning on the light she saw that it was three o’clock. Only then she realized that her abdomen was perfectly flat. The huge accumulation was gone! Immediately she felt all around her for moisture, thinking surely something had passed, but the bed was dry. There was no pain. Her spirit rejoiced, and she knew something wonderful had happened. So she turned out the light and waited.