My childhood upbringing in liberal Conservative Judaism, including four years in Israel, gave me no appreciation for any personal spiritual awareness. Both my parents appreciated the 'thou shalts' of Judaism and ignored most of the cultural (to distinguish these from the moral) 'thou shall nots." So we did not keep kosher or attend synagogue on a regular basis. Prayer, for me, was thus a form of ritual recitation of traditional words on religious holidays. It carried no sense of connection to the Divine.

My education and training in psychology, medicine, psychiatry and research distanced me even more from a sense of connecting with the Divine. I cam through all of that education believing that God was a cultural myth inculcated by religions to strengthen their hold on their congregants; a father image satisfying to some people who missed having their fathers; or a promise to stave off fears of total dissolution of personal awareness at the end of physical life.

It was not until I started exploring spiritual healing that I began to open to a personal connection with spiritual awareness. As I sensed the bioenergies during the giving and receiving of healing, I gradually grew to trust the intuitive awarenesses that came with these experiences. Initially, I was convinced that these were just my nerve endings connecting with the biological fields of other people, providing information through an as-yet unidentified form of bioenergy. Over time, I came to feel there is more to this than just an energetic exchange that carries information with it.

I took a long while quieting my skepticism that healing could produce actual changes in living organisms - not just some variation on the themes of self-healing/ suggestion/ placebo reactions. I carefully reviewed the research literature and found 191 controlled trials of healinghttp://wholistichealingresearch.com/HealingResearchVolume1.html, many of them in non-human organisms, with 74% of the more rigorous studies showing significant effects. Most impressive were the studies in non-human organisms. If rodents, plants, cells in laboratory culture and enzymes could respond with significant changes when they were treated by healers, I could no longer say healing is just a placebo reaction.

I was curious to learn how healers could explain the unusual changes they are able to bring about through simply holding their hands near another person, or through mental intent or prayer from a distance. Some told me it was God's work or Chrits's intervention – and I felt ok with that, rationalizing that this was their belief or faith speaking. Others said it was the bioenergies that they transmitted, and I could accept that possibility, since I could feel these myself, and many healees reported they felt heat or tingling during healing treatments. But when they told me it was someone's grandmother, and she was standing right there next to them – that exceeded my boggle threshold.

So I started on a study of research in spiritual dimensions. Again, my left brain found peace from its struggles with doubts - in studies showing consistent reports around the world from people who had out of body experiences (OBEs); near death experiences (NDEs); reincarnation memories; encounters with apparitions (ghosts), nature spirits and angels; and impressive communications with relatives after their deaths, with the help of mediums (people who channel these communications).

At the same time, I practiced various forms of breathing and mindfulness meditation over several decades. Gradually, I came to trust that my meditative, intuitive awarenesses of being a part of a greater whole, with my consciousness extending beyond my physical body.

I also practice
WHEE (the method I developed and teach) for dealing with pains, stress and distress. I found that adding the affirmation, "God loves and accepts me, wholly and completely and unconditionally," would regularly boost the potency and shorten the duration of the process required to reduce the intensity of negativity to zero.

This strengthening of the effects of WHEE has been a consistently repeated personal confirmation of the power of a Divine force in my life. Not without periods of question and doubts, however. There were times when my left brain kicked in and raised questions of whether bringing God into it was just a placebo reaction. My resolution of this question continues to unfold…

The WHEE has also helped me identify some of the roots of my disbeliefs in the Divine. Because if I want to be perfectly logical and honest, I cannot provide convincing reasons to prove that the Divine DOES NOT exist – any more than I can prove definitively that it DOES EXIST.

Blessings

Dan Benor - WHEE MD