Dear Ground Crew:
In these days of intense change we are forced to go within at an increasing rate. We need to look for peace in every corner of our lives. Sometimes it is even a challenge to meditate or pray for at times peace feels like a galaxy away.
These changes are part of the purging we are experiencing, the need to release the old so that we can become fully new enlightened beings. As we look around us we see many facing profound challenges with health, relationships, work or home. We see the mirrors in our lives getting bigger and bigger. At this point we may find ourselves scratching around for answers. The answers are there yet often feel remote. When the answers come they come with simplicity and clarity. It is no magic puzzle once you learn to trust the inner voice.
So when we are in some of our darkest hours waiting to see the meaning and Light, we need inspiration. I want to share with you some inspirational words from an 82-year-old friend of mine, Ruth Downhour. I have known Ruth for about six years. She was living in governmental housing the tenderloin (a place where the prostitutes and other derelicts hang out) in San Francisco when I met her at a spiritual gathering. She has studied Yogananda for 40 years. Her ability to manifest changed a couple of years ago when she found affordable housing here in Mount Shasta. At first she could only walk about 30 feet and now she walks for miles. She is flourishing.
About two months ago a mutual friend of ours, David, had a massive stroke here in Mount Shasta. He remains paralyzed on the right side and hospitalized. His speech is good and his mind works quite well. He is a large man and probably weighed about 400 pounds at the time of the stroke. He is getting ready to go to a rehabilitation unit to see if he can get back on his feet to walk again, a problem for anyone with a stroke, no less such a large man (although he has lost some of the weight).
Ruth stayed up all night one night and wrote David the following inspiring letter. I will share parts of it with you so you can see that even at the darkest hour, there is hope, faith, God and that miracles happen:
“Dear David:
“. . .On November 13, 1989, I was taken to St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco with terminal emphysema by 911. I’d had emphysema about 13 years on that day, called 911 because I couldn’t breathe. They came, put the oxygen on me before we left my house and took me to emergency. It was found that the whole circulatory bed of the lungs was just destroyed and I was expected to be dead before morning!
“While I was lying there on the gurney in the emergency room, with the hospital oxygen going into me, (I didn’t’ know what the diagnosis was), and was waiting for a doctor to come, and for them to take me to a room, I said inwardly to Yogananda: ‘Master, I know this is the last day of my life, and –that’s ok by me, I’m not afraid, but my only regret is that I would l like to have learned more!’
“He (Yogananda) left and I was taken to a room and put on constant oxygen, but I found out later that they did not expect me to be still alive by morning, and when I was still alive three days later . . . My daughter Sandy was notified in North Carolina and I was flown by air ambulance, on constant oxygen to her house where everyone expected me to die there . . . I didn’t! Four months later, on 24-hour oxygen by Master’s grace, my emphysema was completely cured! That does not happen with emphysema. It is a fatal disease, ending always with death! But here I am! Also gone were my heart disease, angina, diabetes, tardive dsykinesa and a peppering of other senile diseases.
“I came back to San Francisco again to resume my own life. The night I came back I was having a victory dinner at the top of a well-known hotel and I was looking out over the glittering lights of the bay and the whole sparkling beautiful city that lay 32 floors below me, exulting in my freedom, and that my life was back under my own control again. I was of all things, smoking a cigarette and sipping a glass of Scotch, and I said to my Guru, ‘Oh, thank you Master for giving me life back.’ At that point I felt him beside me and heard him say 'All right.' Now put that thing out, and never light another one! I was startled, and I glanced guiltily at the glass of Scotch, and I heard, ‘And you don’t need that stuff either!’
“Well, to cut this long story short, I never took another drink, (after a long career of alcoholism and about 40 years of heavy smoking that I had been unable to stop), never took another drink, or ever lit another cigarette.
“ . . . I don’t want to bore you or tire you, but you need to know that your own recovery is available to you and at your own decision, and faith in what you choose to believe is not a fairy tale. You have Power, David! And Sananda (AKA Jesus) and the God within you stand behind you if you want it!
“ . . . In about 1963, I had a very severe fungus infection in my left eye, which left me blind in that eye. The story is long and dramatic, a story of decision and faith, very long and heavy pain and fear, and the need to decide if I believed all the lessons I had been learning or not. In very excruciating pain (of the infection), I decided, ‘Yes, I did believe the things my teachers had told me.’ At that second, there was a blinding flash I of light, and the pain, which had pervaded my entire body, stopped, just like someone turning off a switch. The doctor had been going to operate the next day, telling me that he must remove my eye or the infection would travel up the optic never of the brain and kill me. ‘I shouldn’t regret the loss of the eye, since the infection had deeply scarred the cornea, my eye would be all white and I would be completely blind, since ‘corneal tissue does not heal.’ “When I appeared at his hospital office, my husband had to lead me in, my face was swathed in heavy bandages and light was extremely painful. The doctor, who was caring for me, gasped in surprise. He told me the infection had stopped. (There had been no medication because he didn’t know what the fungus was) and he told me, well now he wouldn’t remove my eye but I would still never regain my sight.
“He continued to care for my eye for about two months more, muttering in amazement because the cornea was clearing and ‘Corneal tissue does not heal. ’ The bottom line is my ‘blind’ eye slowly cleared completely, instead of being opaque, and my tested vision at the end of treatment was 20/20. Because I said, Yes, I believe!
“And then there was the time I fell into the ocean, into a tide channel at Newport Beach, at the turn of the tide. I was swept into the channel by an unexpected wave coming from behind me on a low rock. The channel was deep and filled with wild surging water of the changing, incoming tide and the sides were steep and rocking and impossible for me to climb out of unaided, and even impossible, because of the in and out surging of the wild water, to even reach the rocks at the side!
“I was pulled out by the extended hand of a ‘man’ who appeared from nowhere on the empty beach on that side of the channel, who climbed precariously low to the water and holding to the rocks with one hand, extended the other to me, sweeping majestically in and out with the wild tide. Finally, with extreme difficulty, I managed to grab his hand and he pulled me laboriously up, over the rocks on to dry land above while the crowd of about 15 helpless people who had watched from the other side of the channel rushed around the land end of the channel to where I was just emerging.
“I got my breath to speak, and there, just as I was about to thank him for saving my life; in front of me he VANISHED! One minute there he was, in his white shirt, open at the neck and his tan pants, and the strong grasp of his hand that pulled me up on the rocks, and the next, GONE, NOTHING!
“David, the world is not really as it just appears to us! There is much more! Naturally, I have never forgotten these things and I share them with you so you will know that you are not alone and that the energy that Sananda has put aside for you is real. Where you feel only weakness, know that there is more; believe in the God within you! You don’t have to do it alone!”. . .
Ground Crew, I share this special letter with you from Ruth in the hopes you will pass it on to others who may need assistance at this time. I ask for your prayers for David, and all who are searching for healing, meaning, freedom from depression, faith, and for this planet to be a better place. Your Light and love are needed like never before. Use it for your own healing and for that of the planet.
As Special Prayer for us at This Time
Oh precious, I AM presence. Make myself more aware and knowledgeable of you. Help me to heal my inner child, the precious inner child that so eagerly awaits my love and attention. Help me to empower myself through the God That I AM to awaken to the true remembrance of who I AM. Help me to take the next steps to my full empowerment. Help me to remember what I came here to do, to make new choices for myself. Help my soul to shine and sparkle in the pure joy of being. Help me to renew every minute my appreciation for life, for the true pleasure of being in this physical form. Help me to take increasingly better care of my body, mind, heart and soul. Show me the power points of myself where I can create from within the codes of restoration and renewal for my ascended Beingness. Help me to feel my wings again so that I might fly to the greatest heights of my own true glory. Help me to see and be who I AM. Help me to let go of resistance. Take me to the portals of new openings for my growth and healing. Help me to step into my awakened mastery. Help me to remember that I am God and that is all that matters. When I remember who I AM, fully and foremost, I will walk the path of the Masters who were here to blaze the trail of Light that we are now anchoring in on our beloved Mother Earth. And, Oh, precious I AM presence may the gateway of my heart open widely enough for me to embrace all of life as the fullest expression of God. May the blessings and healing flow for me now and forever more. I am indeed truly grateful for all that I AM.
|