In 1982, I found myself in Eden. What I found out from my brief visit there is that the Garden of Eden is not a piece of real estate, but a state of beingthe reality matrix in which human beings were designed to thrive. While such forays into extraordinary states is the goal of spiritual aspirants, I did not gain entrance to the Garden via a conscious desire tonor through discipline, self-sacrifice, meditation or fastingI reached it because of something I did when I came up against a problem I couldnt solve in the ordinary human way. When my back was against the wall, I gave up. I surrendered. I let go, as the saying goes, and let God. The situation that triggered my ascent to Eden was a rapidly progressing case of that viciously painful, crippling disease, rheumatoid arthritis. I was 27 years old when I was diagnosed with it, and just months before, I had started a job teaching art in an international school in Japan, halfway around the world from home. I was virtually alone in Japan, without my family and longtime friends, I had only a rudimentary Japanese vocabulary, and I had big plans that did not include a serious illness. When I kept having odd aches and pains, sometimes excruciating, I went to see the Japanese doctor that all the teachers from my school used as a primary care physician for no better reason than that he spoke English. When he announced that my blood test results had come back positive for R.A., my initial reaction was to go numb, and I hightailed it to that zone named denial just as fast as I possibly could. There is no cure, he pronounced with a long, sad face, but if youre lucky, and undergo modern medical treatment, you ought to be able to take care of yourself for as much as ten years before you become totally dependent on others to care for you. I left that day with five or six different medicationssomething that, at the time, I didnt question. After all, he had told me that my only hope was to submit to medical treatment and I hadnt yet jolted awake and realized that his reality and my reality did not have to be the sameindeed, that they were completely incompatible. Though I still had pain and stiffness, the medicine seemed to be preventing my decline into helplessness, the specter of which was always present just beneath my consciousness. I took the three-times-daily handful of pills for about 7 months before the first signs of problems became undeniable. I had moon facethe classic side-effect of corticosteroids usage. I had not even known I was taking such a powerful and destructive drug, such had been the passion with which I adopted the ostrich method of abdicating all responsibility. I was instructed to immediately cease taking the little pink pill in the battalion of medications I had religiously taken since they were first prescribed, and obediently, I did that. Within 36 hours, I was in a crisis. Among numerous other symptoms, I was unable to lift my arms or bend my legs, every joint was on fire, and I experienced mild psychosis. You see, if youve been taking steroids at what turns out to have been the high dosage I was, for as long as I had, your adrenal glands, whose hormonal secretions regulate a mind-boggling number of your bodily and mental functions, have simply gone on vacationsometimes permanent vacation. That last bit is what I found out when I read Paovo Airolas classic book There Is a Cure for Arthritismy beacon in the darkness when I could finally stay in denial no longer. But all my newly found hope was shattered when I read that high dosages of steroids taken over protracted periods could so burn out your adrenals, you may be unable to heal. That was rock bottom for me. By the time I read that, I had visited many of the most highly-noted rheumatologists in Japan, consulted with doctors back in the U.S., had tried several unsuccessful, painful programs to get off the steroids, and had finally come to the realization that I was at the end of the line. It seemed that nothing I, nor anyone else could come up with, could save me from my descent into a physical nightmare with no apparent end. So I did the only thing I could: I sobbed, I wailed, and I pleaded with the god of my Protestant Sunday school days to please, PLEASE help me! I had always considered this god the ace up my sleevethe last-resort option in case I ever got completely desperate, and I was, by then, completely desperate. The sound of my pleading morphed from the voice of an anguished young woman into that of a terrified young child beseeching an omnipotent parent to help her. After a time, the pleading and wailing diminished and I was left with stillnesswhat can only be described as the peace that passes understanding. Nothing about my situation had changed outwardly, but everything had changed. Starting the very next day, remarkable events began to transpire, including the catapulting of my faith into the stratosphere. Solutions to every challenge appeared as if by magic, and in a few months, I found myself at a famous Swiss clinic for natural healing. There, I was able to get off all medication, including the steroids, and become symptom-free within 3 weeks. Though I could barely walk when I arrived at the clinic, I was, after those few short weeks, able to climb to the top of a mountain, which is where I found the Garden Gate and slipped throughwhere I was able to experience cosmic consciousnessand the Oneness of our origins. It took me over two decades to fully understand why and how that happened. I now know that my surrender to Spirit catapulted me up in frequencyup to the frequency level where Paradise manifests. It shot me up to the frequency level where there is no disease, no pain and suffering, and there is only harmony and bliss. When I hit rock bottom, it became my launching pad to the sublime, higher-frequency reality of Eden. My life since has been a quest to not only return, but to make sure everyone else knows how to get there, too. |
