Awakened at Needle Point: A Shamanic Journey into Body-Mind-Spirit

Wellness
By John Jay Harper

“The search for new shamans has begun in earnest.”

~Margaret Wheatley, Ph.D., Harvard University, author of Leadership
and the New Science

Introduction

It was late Friday afternoon February 26th, 2010; a cold, snowy mid-winter day in the Pacific
Northwest when an unresolved, incapacitating childhood conflict surfaced again. Indeed it was
the source of symptoms, mental and physical, that had controlled my entire life story until now.
These anxieties dogged me like a proverbial hound from hell and I began paying close attention
to them. I knew my sanity depended upon comprehending these symptoms as “signs and
symbols” of my unconscious psyche, but I did not understand why they manifested—yet!

The original catalyst for my crash and burn was the abandonment by my father in Seattle at age
5. He left my mother, Catherine, and my two brothers, Ron and Steve, homeless and penniless,
so he could hire on with a fishing fleet. His goal was to become the chief marine mechanic to
keep them trolling for the “deadliest catch” in waters up and down the coastlines of Alaska,
Canada, Washington, Oregon, and California. I never saw him again until I was 32-years old.

In fact, as I shared in the Second Edition of my book, Tranceformers:

Shamans of the 21st Century, my perceived reality since the 1950s was
nothing but the symbolic cutting down of my family tree reenacted
through me. And my heroic efforts to stop it from happening to those I
loved, again and again and again. Clinically speaking, I was suffering
from a borderline personality disorder known to psychotherapists as
“third degree emotional burns.” In short, I felt a swarm of toxic
emotions sting me that evening and reacted as a helpless child alone in
the dark—not an adult. I truly did not have a “life” yet, nor an
authentic sense of self that was symptom-free and able to engage the
world on its terms.

But the scenario that led initially to nothing more than headaches and sinus symptoms was
Claritin™ clear enough. My beloved 20-year old granddaughter, Kathryne, who had been living
with us for the past 3 years, was embarking on her first solo cross-country road trip from
Spokane, Washington to Jacksonville, North Carolina, and I was “deathly afraid” for her safety.
Katie was en route to Andrea, a girlfriend she had known in Spokane since 14, to share a
recently purchased home close to the Atlantic Ocean. Andrea was today a proud U.S. Marine
stationed at Camp Lejeune, awaiting the return of her husband, high school sweetheart Joshua,
likewise a combat soldier fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan until summer 2010.
Specifically, I decided to drive our gas-miser Honda Civic in front of Katie’s car for the first one
thousand miles of her four thousand mile journey to the East Coast, in a heartfelt albeit panic-
stricken moment. I wanted to blaze the trail, so to speak, make certain she, and co-driver Jody,
got safely through the snowy mountain passes in Idaho, Utah and then into the first city they
planned to stop on Saturday afternoon: Las Vegas, Nevada. I even paid for a deluxe room-in-
advance at the Luxor Hotel for my wife, Connie, and myself before we departed Spokane
confident this was a “mission possible.”

However, my cock-eyed military veteran optimism overstretched my capacity to drive around-

the-clock anymore, as I did easily in my pre-retirement years. We never made it. For I collapsed
from physical exhaustion early Saturday morning while driving on Interstate 84 through Boise,
Idaho, forced to exit the freeway pulling into the Hampton Inn™ at approximately 3:30AM PST.
Connie called Katie’s cell phone and explained what had happened and wished her and Jody a
fun weekend in Las Vegas, but without us. We would rest a few hours, we said, and chart a new
course back home via western Idaho, eastern Oregon, and central Washington, avoiding the
mountain passes crossed in the middle of the night.

With hindsight 20/20, I saw I’d been literally travelling on “sacred

ground,” revisiting a segment of the East-to-West migration route
from Scotland-to-Virginia-to-California that was significant to my
family ancestry. I recalled my grandfather was born in Salt Lake City
in 1890 and my great-grandfather, Robert Harper, helped lay stones
on The Mormon Temple. Moreover, my father, in fact, was born in
Eureka, Humboldt County, California on April 6, 1928, but died at Las
Vegas Medical Center on February 25th, 1991. So my advice early on
to my readers is pay special attention to the meaningful coincidences
sprinkled like Old World spices throughout this autobiography. These, of course, are relevant to
me and my life story ultimately but let me give you a hint upfront: Your body is an open book
too! Wake-up and follow the trail of breadcrumbs—blood and bones—of your own genealogy
for there is meaning to everything in existence once we can read the “signs of the times,”
symbolically mapped by The World Tree and The Cosmic Serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Clinical psychologist Wilson Van Dusen, Ph.D. (1923-2005), could do just that, soul travel, and
worked for many decades with the mentally ill in California state hospitals after serving during
WWII in the U.S. Merchant Marines. He had a remarkable life concluding that “spirit
possession” can be the “soul” cause of illness. And upon retirement, he wrote about his life as a
mystic, sharing a lifetime of insights in many inspiring books on heaven, hell, and “hyperspace”
nature of existence: infinite worlds within worlds without beginning or end. Dr. Dusen became
a proponent of Swedish scientist, inventor, and Christian mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg (1668-
1772), and learned, as I had, that “The great spiritual adventurers found the whole of creation
and every part of it symbolic” as he shared in Seeing Through Symbols: Insights into Spirit.
Wikipedia records this much on Swedenborg: “In 1741 at the age of fifty-three he entered into
a spiritual phase in which he eventually began to experience dreams and visions beginning on
Easter weekend April 6, 1744. This culminated in a spiritual awakening, where he claimed he
was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly doctrine to reform Christianity. He claimed that
the Lord had opened his eyes, so that from then on he could freely visit heaven and hell, and
talk with angels, demons, and other spirits. For the remaining 28 years of his life, he wrote and
published 18 theological works, of which the best known was Heaven and Hell (1758), and
several unpublished theological works.” Interestingly enough, overall Swedenborg’s model of
creation matches the shamanic that is usually akin to a three-layered cake: upper, lower with
earth in the middle of it. So how does “evil” work? Quite simply, through negative emotions!

I also have had such close encounters with the citizens of hyperspace since childhood and
methodically investigated near-death experience (NDE) visions of the End-Times for that
reason, as well as written and spoken to millions of listeners on talk radio shows regarding my
conclusions about them since 1993. Today these themes are common cocktail party
conversations among psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers, physicists, and theologians; so
at least I am in good company, finally. I no longer feel crazy nor like a fish out of water. French
scholar of religions, Mircea Eliade, saw the “axis mundi” conduit, subway, tunnel or trunk
within The World Tree as the gateway to the gods, and devils, writing in his classical book
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy: “The underworld, the center of the earth, and the
‘gate’ of the sky are situated on the same axis, and in past times it was by this axis that passage
from one cosmic region to another was effected.”

My vision in total is that we are in the early stages as a species learning to climb the world tree,
“walk between worlds,” bring the spiritual truth of heaven down from the magnetosphere and
hell of our fiery molten core up to the surface of planet earth again through the third eyes of
shamans. Moreover, I see us integrating the wisdom of outer and inner space through an
emerging “science of soul” First Nations wisdom tradition wellness clinic in the 21 st century.
(See www.near-death.com/experiences/experts13.html)

Shamans of the 21st Century

In the days, weeks, and months of spring 2010, my symptoms

increased from sinus to serious and I lost the ability to control
my neck muscles and it collapsed. A pinched nerve in the upper
region of my spine at the base of my skull became so painful that
it demanded medical intervention. This bracing against pain 24/7
began a decline in my health with sleepless nights and miserable
days of suffering spiraling towards disaster. I no longer had a life
really; rather I became a walking, talking set of symptoms
constantly seeking a savior with a “magic silver bullet.”

So I brushed-up on my pig Latin because my constant bedfellow

companions spoke only in the multisyllabic language of the Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR)
dictionary. My medicine cabinet’s stock and trade went from boxes of Alka-Seltzer™ to neatly
ordered rows of pill bottles from the allopathic pharmacy. To my primary care doctors credit at
Group Health Cooperative in Spokane, Tim J. Meyer, M.D., and Jan H. Mueller, M.D., I began a
course of drugs that did address the PAG (periaqueductal gray), the pain control center of the
brain. Thus we started down the right track pharmacologically even if I was to derail later. I
reviewed the medical literature in articles, books constantly for clues to my situation and read
in Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel the encouraging words of biochemist
Candace Pert, Ph.D.: “Pain researchers all agree that the area called the periaqueductal gray,
located around the aqueduct between the third and fourth ventricles of the midbrain, is filled
with opiate receptors, making it a control area for pain. It is also loaded with receptors for
virtually all the neuropeptides that have been studied.”

There was the key word I must investigate further I mused: neuropeptides. So began a major
turning point in my search for salvation from suffering, although understanding neuropeptides
was not that easy since they acted more as quantum ghosts in the brain, non-local “fields of
energy” declared the late Francis Schmidt of M.I.T. He called them “information substances” or
“messenger molecules.” Dr. Pert proclaimed “This complexity has led to their being classified
under a variety of categories, including hormones, neurotransmitters, neuromodulators,
growth factors, gut peptides, interleukins, cytokines, chemokines, and growth-inhibiting
factors.”

Nonetheless, ideally, these “information substances” in balanced proportions give our human
brain-blood-bones a sense of wellbeing, “bliss” or euphoria that make life worth living in plain
terms. But my body quit making them, and my physicians prescribed the opiate-derivative
equivalent drugs to them such as hydrocodone and oxycodone as I underwent a comprehensive
diagnostic work-up to isolate the problem over a 3-month period from June to August 2010.
These tests included the cutting-edge in X-Ray for the spine, laboratory analysis of blood and
urine for general chemical health index baselines, as well as cardiac enzyme function
examination at Sacred Heart and then, the final straw that pushed me into an urgent search
mode for alternative treatments, my MRI at Holy Family Hospital.

For now I had more diagnoses, prognoses, and fear factors than my beloved late grandmother,
Mary Evelyn Scott (1888-1977), would say “Carter had liver pills!” Yet these high-tech toys are
our pride and joy in the Western world, our electron microscopes and spaceship-shaped nuclear
magnetic resonance imaging capsules save lives every single day because we can “see” into the
living brain-body-blood-bone matrix non-invasively, but intervene surgically with razor-edge,
laser-light precision if warranted. Indeed, my wife’s cousin in Kansas City has her husband, Bob
Stevens, alive today because a neurosurgeon was able to pinpoint a brain aneurysm earlier this
year and repair it successfully. They call Bob a miracle-man for he beat the odds but he is still
seeking relief from one nagging problem: pain that prevents sleep!

Though pharmacologically, we’ve only scratched the surface of these non-toxic vision plants for
pain potions and cancer cures. However, if my musings on this topic are validated, amino acid
therapy can combine with indigenous hallucinogens to create a pharmacopeia to treat
addictions, pain, and stress disorders second to none soon. I mean every single one of us make
the spiritual visionary substances of ayahuasca, the “vine of the soul,” for instance, every
second within our brain, blood, and lungs. The entheogenic—“creates God within us”—sacred
plant researchers such as Martin W. Ball, with a Ph.D. in Native American, mysticism,
shamanism, and religious studies, and Graham Hancock report the same inner space mindscape
in their own books, respectively, Mushroom Wisdom: How Shamans Cultivate Spiritual
Consciousness, and Supernatural: Meetings of the Ancient Teachers of Mankind. (See
www.alexgrey.com, www.martinball.net, www.deoxy.org/mckenna.htm and
www.grahamhancock.com)

Psychiatrist Rick Strassman, M.D. has also released his clinical experiments on 60 volunteer
subjects at the University of New Mexico with approximately 400 doses of the spirit-seeing
substance N,N-dimethlytrptamine in DMT: The Spirit Molecule. One hypothesis is that DMT is
endogenous, made in the pineal gland, what French philosopher, physicist, and mathematician
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) himself called the “seat of the soul.” In metaphysical terms, this is
the third eye. Since 1996, Dr. Strassman has been exploring models for the DMT effect, and has
focused primarily on the Old Testament concept of prophecy. This is a spiritual experience
which takes into account the apparently external, free-standing nature of the DMT “worlds,” in
which one’s sense of self is highly preserved and interactive. This is in contrast to previous
models that borrow more heavily from Eastern religious systems, ones that emphasize unitive,
ego-dissolving experiences. In addition, the prophetic model deals directly with ethical and
moral concerns, adding a crucial element to our ability to understand and integrate the content
of the psychedelic experience. He is developing these ideas in his next book, The Soul of
Prophecy, due to appear in 2011. (See www.rickstrassman.com)

Again, in addition to healing, the shaman is the one that can read the star maps, the signs of the
times in the precession of the equinoxes, as did the Old Testament prophets with regards to the
coming of Jesus Christ. In fact, the Zodiac, or “circle of animals” has been used as the solar lens
by which to forecast the future of the past for millenniums. I mean it is true, what goes around
comes around only in new costumes for there really is nothing new happening under the living
Suns of God!

Columbia University scholar Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880-1963) studied comparative religions,
mythology, and linguistics then wrote his doctoral thesis based upon his mastery of Egyptian
sun sign symbolisms linking them completely to the origins of Christianity titled Theosophy: A
Modern Revival of the Ancient Wisdom. This is not surprising given the Genesis of the Holy Bible stories
are themselves attributed to the writings of Moses and the retreat by Mary and Joseph to Egypt with the
“baby” Jesus for theology schooling by the priests-shamans overseeing the temples and pyramids.
This culture worshipped the Sun God: RA. However, the rest of the story is apocalypse, or “unveiled,”
truth about the revelation of renewal or Second Coming that Dr. Kuhn only hinted at in his final book
prior to his death, A Rebirth of Christianity.

Clearly, we are about to die and be reborn too! No modern-day mythologist speaking to these matters is
akin to the integrity and intelligence of Joseph John Campbell (1904-1987), than is Director of 2012
Studies, John Major Jenkins, in Ft. Collins, Colorado. He is the author of several authoritative books on
the Maya and Mesoamerica but, in particular, I am referring to his latest, and most informative in
dispelling the nonsense and highlighting the Sense of Self as the focus for the End-Time in The 2012
Story: The Myths, Fallacies, and Truth Behind the Most Intriguing Date in History [December 21, 2012].

Although I desire to cut-to-the-chase, since we are according to the Mayan calendar “running out-of-
time,” and that seems to be truly Good News! Specifically, Jenkins shares a vision he experienced in an
“isolation tank” under the influence of LSD at age 19 in Chicago, not unlike the approach employed by
the late John Lily, M.D. in Hawaii to symbolically, “telepathically” communicate with dolphins. Briefly,
after Jenkins sensed he was under-the-influence of this psychedelic neurotransmitter-receiver
messenger molecule, lysergic acid diethylamide, he “awoke within the dream” we call physical reality.
He travelled to the farthest reaches of inner space by catapulting through outer space in blunt terms
and that was his ultimate conclusion and one that I wish to emphasize as extremely important to my
own thesis now: “I also felt I had never left my body: I had, rather, explored the cosmic contents of it,”
Jenkins revealed. Is this not the supreme revelation of Jesus Christ with respect to his Second Coming:
“The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the face of the earth but men do not see it?” (See
www.Update2012.com)

Andrew Collins has, in my opinion, decoded the “secrets” in shamanic healing and divining and what is
the key idea to 2012 in his monumental book The Cygnus Mystery: Unlocking the Ancient Secret of Life’s
Origins in the Cosmos: The purpose of “junk DNA.” The shorthand translation of his research is that the
star constellation in the sky known to ancients as representing a “swan” (astronomically Cygnus X-3), is
the source of creation for us. This was discerned through the use of trance states by shamans in these
early cultures as depicted in prehistoric—that is to say, before language—cave drawings and myths. Yet
what we need to know is that gamma-ray bursts (GRB) from this, and perhaps, other light-storing “black
holes” in the Milky Way, are mutating amino acids-DNA-RNA protein synthesis into new configurations.
And this is reworking the expression of genes throughout the animal kingdom itself signifying a time of
rapid change in the ecology, and biosphere, referred to biblically as “a new heaven and a new earth.”
(See www.andrewcollins.com)

The Cosmic Serpent is the Human Body

In this same time period, Mona Klinger, a medical intuitive,

vibration healer, Reiki master, and shaman in Bend, Oregon
came into my life just when I thought I could go on no longer.
My suffering reached cosmic-levels heretofore unimaginable
and I could not cope with the pain or life’s demands. Often
collapsing into a fetal position, I retreated to my back porch
deck to curl up on my side to relieve the unrelenting ache in my
neck and pain in the bones of my skull. The cold concrete floor
served as a whole body ice pack in those early morning hours
before the sun heated it anyway. Without a doubt, however,
there is One Great Spirit that listens to our pleas for
intervention, and speaks to others to go help us recover, and
Mona was that “earth angel” God sent to my rescue. Through a synchronistic chat on
Facebook™ Mona sensed my situation resulting in her flying, and later driving, to Spokane to
reorient my focus from fear to faith, illness to wellness once again. She conducted not one but
two 3-day treatments a month apart for me and Connie, and she made all the difference in our
world. From her first session employing shamanic wisdom, it was clear that I was being spared
to “walk the talk” of a Christ-centered, earth-honoring medicine man as I had written a couple
books on this topic—and it was time to “put up or shut up!” (See
www.sacredreconnections.com)

Along this same line of treatment, I went to several complementary health care specialists in
my community to tap my biological plant farm roots that included acupuncture with Rebekah
Giangreco, L.Ac., Dipl.Ac., at New Moon Family Acupuncture; sports medicine chiropractic with
Ryan Johnson, D.C., at Pearson and Weary Pain Relief Clinics; and massage therapy with
Marlene Sullivan, L.M.T.

Thank God, I also had a strong spiritual support team that appeared as if by magic, usually a
bad choice of words with the Christian evangelic. Hopefully,
● ● ● I will be instrumental in helping them step-up to the plate:
the challenges and opportunities for ministry in this matter
He knew that Glory
now. Trust me they are right-on-target when it comes to
and Hell too, Hades—“the hidden place”—and the “evil spirits!” For the
“doubting Thomas,” I only ask you to review one “non-
Are in your soul, with religious” textbook, The Body of Myth: Mythology,
all their myths; Shamanic Trance, and The Sacred Geography of the Body by
mathematician, and physicist Professor J. Nigro Sansonese,
He knew, like the and the objective documentary DVD film titled “Gates of
Greek, that the days Of Hell” produced by The History Channel. That is, I am not
focused on fear at all but facts that will convince you
Time are Eternity’s beyond a reasonable doubt that what we’ve called “hell” is
Mirrors. right here on earth. Specifically, we’re experiencing a literal
warfare going on within the cells of our human body-mind-
~Jorge Luis Borges spirit! (See www.history.com)

● ● ● “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to

offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of
worship.” (Romans 12:1) Pastor Robert Lindseth of the Life Church located at the corner of 25th
and South Grand Boulevard in Spokane came into my life miraculously after his teenage
daughter happened to come by our house one evening to ask my wife if there was anyone that
needed prayer? Oh did I ever! Bob invested countless hours ministering to me this past summer
as we prayed together for answers to my situation. I even asked him to renew my covenant in
baptism for I identified with this proclamation of Paul of Tarsus as never before in my life: “I am
crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I
now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for
me.” (Galatians 2:20) Hint: The word covenant in Hebrew means a “cut-where-blood-flows! “

And while all of these skilled practitioners of the healing arts, sciences and religions helped me
cope to a certain extent, over the span of excruciatingly painful weeks that stretched into
agonizingly slow months I realized I was missing a critical key to opening the locked gates of hell
to my wellbeing: Life force energy. In particular, I needed to increase my ch’i with amino acid
therapy administered intravenously (I.V.) to repair the cell damage of aging, diet, and toxic
emotions in order to restore the functioning of my communication circuitry, the message
molecule carriers of the central nervous system. I had to glue Humpty-Dumpty back together
again, increase the “ligands” that are “binding” elements of DNA-RNA coded protein synthesis
cycles of consciousness. These electronic ions cement amino acid molecules into chains, the
building blocks of life. Anthropologist Jeremy Narby, Ph.D., Stanford University, unpacked the
secret in DNA from his own shamanic field work with the plant teachers in the Amazonian
rainforests, ecstatically reporting in The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge:

"When I started reading the literature of molecular biology, I was stunned by certain
descriptions. Admittedly, I was on the lookout for anything unusual, as my investigation
had led me to consider that DNA and its cellular machinery truly were an extremely
sophisticated technology of cosmic origin. But as I pored over thousands of pages of
biological texts, I discovered a world of science fiction that seemed to confirm my
hypothesis. Proteins and enzymes were described as 'miniature robots,' ribosomes were
'molecular computers,' cells were 'factories,' DNA itself was a 'text,' a 'program,' a
'language,' or 'data.' One only had to do a literal reading of contemporary biology to
reach shattering conclusions; yet most authors display a total lack of astonishment and
seem to consider that life is merely 'a normal physiochemical phenomenon.’"

Again, Dr. Pert, formerly a Research Professor in the

Department of Physiology and Biophysics at
Georgetown University Medical Center in
Washington, D.C., wrote in her aforementioned
textbook on this topic: “Ligands are generally much
smaller molecules than the receptors they bind to,
and they are divided into three chemical types. The
first type of ligand comprises the classical
neurotransmitters, which are small molecules with
such unwieldy names as acetylcholine,
norepinephrine, dopamine, histamine, glycine, GABA, and serotonin.” (See
www.candacepert.com)

Soon thereafter, at my wits end with drugs of every flavor that did not yield viable cures only
intolerable side-effects, I remembered an informative dialogue I had on Facebook™ again,
albeit a year earlier, with Steve Sewell, founder of Mind & Body Works in Durango, Colorado.
He had succinctly replied to a comment I made that I was using amino acids orally to improve
my health but he knowingly stated that in many cases, they had to be administered via I.V. to
enter the bloodstream: bypass the deleterious impact of digestive tract juices and processes.
Then in a subsequent telephone conversation, I shared my medical history and Steve offered
that, perhaps, my brain-body could no longer create its endogenous, morphine-like pain killers,
the endorphins, to give me that “runner’s high” I associated with wellness? That was a
reasonable conclusion given my “free-floating” symptoms of anxiety-panic, hypomania that
seemed even to me to be a case of hypochondria; that is, more psycho than somatic!

In the final analysis, I needed high-tech soul food: the “finger-licking-good to the last drop”
ligands! If I wanted what they offered, Steve said, I could report to the clinic on Wednesday,
September 15th, 2010 for a physical examination by Paul Glanville, M.D., an anti-aging specialist
schooled in complementary and traditional medicine. Of course, I was impressed with the
intravenous protocol’s potential for healing my spine and took his advice to heart, and head:
they seemingly had exactly what I was looking for no doubt about it.

From my own decades of study in the shamanic sciences and practice in Community Health
Administration and Wellness Promotion with the U.S. Navy Hospital Clinic, Keyport,
Washington, I knew that healing disease happened through integration of the East and West:
what Larry Dossey, M.D. in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and his wife, Barbara Dossey, R.N., Ph.D., call
ERA-III Medicine. They do not mince words or split-hairs—and neither do I—for this is the
emerging health care paradigm of the future: We are literally “thought forms” co-existing
within the Mind of God—Body of Christ—and we need to apply this eternal truth to our lives
here and hereafter. We co-exist with myriad life forms and we need to get over it and get on
with it: There is a lot of work to do if we are to bring hell up from and heaven down to earth.
Our mission is to merge three worlds—upper, lower, and middle—into one new world order
right here and now! Dr. Dossey counsels:

Taking nonlocal mind seriously can, as I describe in Reinventing Medicine, widen the
dimensions of consciousness. We can tap into sources of wisdom beyond ourselves and
beyond the present: Creative breakthroughs and prophetic knowing become ordinary in
the context of nonlocal mind. Empathy and compassion flower as a result of our felt
linkage with one another. And the awareness of immortality, as I've described, takes the
pressure off living and dying. This will not happen automatically, however. We have to
do our share and set our biases and prejudices aside. These are urgent matters. As
Andre Malraux said, "The twenty-first century will be spiritual or it will not be at all."
(See www.dosseydossey.com)

Rocky Mountain High

For the record, it is an absolutely divine drive into Durango.

Colorado from all directions but we had come by way of the
northern Interstates: I-90E, I-15S, I-70E: Spokane-Billings-Salt
Lake City-Grand Junction, and then south onto Colorado
Highway 550. This is a breathtaking scenic route with big
timber, wildlife views at somewhat oxygen-starved elevations:
over two miles high at its jagged-rocky top peaks. But what a
beautiful clear-blue unpolluted sky!
Then as we descended into the City of Durango itself, we saw clean streets, a well-planned city
center and marketplace that highlighted its southwestern cowboy theme. The focal point was
the restored train station for the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Of course, the
antique brick hotels with crystal-chandeliers and gun-fighting saloons of the 1800s helped set
the stage, literally. Actually, Connie remarked that we had come to a 5-star vacation getaway—
not a sterile-looking typical medical district as we had envisioned. There was even a gorgeous
fast-moving river running through the city park: Animas. This in fact was a sacred space nestled
within the Four Corners of the USA.

Upon arrival at the clinic the next morning, I already knew that I came to the right place to kick-
start my immune system. If I needed a booster shot of confidence, I was greeted with a warm
smile by Julie Frank, the office administrator, and Steve Adams, my co-counselor for the next
10-days. Then I reported for my physical exam at 10AM to Paul Glanville, M.D., and read these
inspirational words on his business card from Psalm 103 that made my day:

“
Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits who forgives all your sins and
heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and
compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed
like the eagle's.”

You know what an eagle can do, right? It can grow brand new feathers no matter its age!
Indeed I needed new feathers, and bones to support them, if I was ever to fly again without a
neck brace and a beak load of medicines. In a nutshell, be careful what you pray for and write
about, and who, for they may very well return to validate, or not, your claims about them be
they among the living or dead. You’ll see what I mean when you read the First Edition of my
book Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century. But, in brief, you will learn what I did from an
after-death communication incident with a “deceased” optics physicist colleague, George, and
why analytical psychologist Carl Jung, M.D., stated “Modern behaviorist psychology reduces
psychic happenings to a kind of activity of the glands; thoughts are regarded as secretions of
the brain, and thus we achieve a psychology without the psyche.”

In other words, we removed the powers of the psyche—soul—from our physical sense of self
but the greater truth is we are entangled within messenger molecules of “spirit” all the time.
Close encounters of ETs/UFOs, for example, are synchronistic clues—profoundly meaningful
coincidences—that speak to a multi-dimensional, layered “hyperspace” cosmos filled-to-the-
brim with psychophysical beings. Mind and matter is a single substance made of information.
There is simply no wiggle room anymore around this fact says National Public Radio award-
winning correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty, and acclaimed author of Fingerprints of God:
The Search for the Science of Spirituality.

The lesson we are learning from amino acid therapy is straightforward: the mind of the mystic,
prophet, and shaman is lying dormant, sleeping untapped within DNA yet cosmic consciousness
is forever flowing-freely through us all now. That is, the knowledge to heal ourselves is available
for the asking if we ask the right questions symbolically and playing possum is not the answer to
a spiritually alive, “genetically” mutating universe. The author of creation, God, writes the Book
of Life and illustrates it via DNA codes with our life experiences providing the “data” each and
every second for the messenger molecules forming and informing an infinite number of space-
time “real” worlds. With this insight, I wept tears of joy for I knew that my prayers had been
answered: my deliverance from pain was at hand and my walk into wellbeing had begun.
Although I was optimistic, and looking forward to the treatment sessions, I was about to take
an unexpected swan dive, and it was not the 6,500 foot elevation in Durango that made me
swoon either.

I Died in Durango

“Are you okay, John?” my nurse, Jessica Dehen, R.N., asked. She
had skillfully inserted the first of ten-day intravenous (I.V.) feeding
tube needles into my arm, but suddenly my mind relaxed its
tenacious grip on the pain in my neck. I unwittingly started to slump
into what I imagined was the darkness of unconsciousness, so
replying softly, I said what I felt was obviously true: “I’m dying.”

She calmly helped me into a black lounge chair and discretely

summoned Dr. Glanville to check my vital signs, if that was needed.
But it wasn’t, and of course I was not dying but being reborn in fact into a new way of living. Yet
I didn’t know that until a few days later after I shared what had happened to me with Jessica
and she corrected my distorted perceptions of this incident. She informed me that I did not
faint nor have any type of adverse reaction to the amino acid nutrients whatsoever, rather I
simply slipped into a deep state-of-sleep—and snored to high heaven!

As I reflected upon her words, that made perfect sense since I had not slept without a sleeping
pill in months. I knew I had stopped dreaming once I began taking Ambien™ and my educated
guess was that rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep is much more critical than we have imagined.
Perhaps, the brain-body cannot repair itself properly if we induce sleep with drugs of all types:
alcohol, prescription, and street? Maybe the organic messenger molecules created by nature
such as serotonin, dopamine and melatonin, for examples, are paralyzed, and cannot exchange
DNA-RNA protein synthesis maintenance information between brain hemispheres, I pondered?

Author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary
Shamanism, Daniel Pinchbeck, shared the conclusions of Dr. Carl Anderson of McLean Hospital,
Virginia: “… disparities between the left and right brain disrupt REM sleep, which as Anderson
notes is ‘essential for emotional regulation, learning, and memory consolidation.’” In particular,
I agree with Dr. Anderson, although I acknowledge that Pinchbeck, a wise urban shaman in his
own right, is not totally convinced yet with respect to this physician’s hypothesis:
“Interhemispheric struggles, primarily a result of child abuse, may be a fundamental
psychological root of drug addiction.” (See www.breakingopenthehead.com)
Accordingly, drug addiction is indeed getting worse every single year in PTSD breeding grounds:
military combat zones, inner cities, and First Nations reservations. This is the siren song warning
that our children and grandchildren are at high-risk for self-destruction in untold numbers if we
do not intervene now, if not for any other reason that we are a nutritionally-bankrupt nation!
The obesity we see is symptomatic of stress stored in belly fat and the high corn sugar-low
exercise diets will have only one long-term outcome for the Western world: degenerative
diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, premature pain, suffering, and death with its
correlated runaway health care medical costs for taxpayers.

So I asked myself: Can amino acid therapy rewire our genes towards not only optimal wellness
and personal happiness but world peace too? Is it that simple: Let food be our medicine in the
way that the father of medicine, Hippocrates, meant it? It’s a visionary idea for certain and will
require considerable scrutiny if and when taken seriously enough to have federal government
funds assigned to it. In the meantime, I’d reflect upon the meaning of the epigenetic medicine
model findings of Dawson Church, Ph.D. relayed recently in his book The Genie in Your Genes:
“The healing power of consciousness and intention appears to be independent of time as well
as space. Prayer seems to work retroactively as well as across great distances. Perhaps the
whimsical injunction is true: ‘It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!’” (See
www.soulmedicineinstitute.org)

"This body, that you are in,
has been alive forever. It
comes from an unending
stream of life, going back
to the Big Bang and
beyond."
~Mellen-Thomas Benedict
www.mellen-thomas.com
tears: “With his visions, his ability to transform energies, and his mastery of healing, Christ
could be seen as a prototypical shaman.”
Can we pray our self and world well too? This much I
know from my observation: our brain is a terrible
thing to see waste away on junk food, drugs, and
booze! Slowly I stitched the pieces of my addiction,
pain, and stress disorder together with the help of the
staff assigned to me for that purpose: co-counselors
extraordinaire Steve Sewell, Steve Adams, and
shamanic practitioner Marie Redfeather. Though my
life story is not unique, it is totally relevant to you my
friends regarding how to heal from childhood
traumas, symptoms, employing specific steps I took
along the way that I methodically, painstakingly but
also joyously, outlined in the Second Edition of my
book, Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century.
Again, Daniel Pinchbeck speaks wisely beyond his

Not surprisingly, every one of the lessons-learned on my own from decades of research, I saw
incorporated into the wellness model employed at Mind & Body Works. Therefore, amino acid
therapy is the key to survival in our efforts to offset the impact of climate changes and what
near-death researcher at the University of Connecticut, Professor of Psychology Emeritus Ken
Ring, Ph.D., knowingly called us to embrace two decades ago: the “shamanizing of humanity!”
By the way, my two books are also directly related to what is happening to people and planet
today in era-2012: We are threatened with extinction. As cell biologist Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. has
said, “It’s the environment stupid!” Our toxic technology has turned our agricultural soils and
drinking water sources into septic tanks and our dysfunctional attitudes, behaviors, and
lifestyles are eating away at our immune systems worldwide. (See www.brucelipton.com and
www.iands.org)

Thus I cannot emphasize enough the importance of shamanic tools and techniques for our day
and age for it is indeed the “myths” by which we live that determine our life story individually
and collectively as a civilization. What is it we want to experience, in other words? It could not
be said more clearly and forcefully than this prophet: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
(Proverbs 23:7)

The Key is Under Your Mother’s Pillow

Over the 10-day course of I.V. treatments with amino acid nutrients,
what I came to call “Love Potion Number 9,” I also had sessions with
other outstanding health care providers including Healing Touch™
with Linda Marie Ambrose, as well as in the downtown Durango
community. Namely massage therapy at Amaya Natural
Therapeutics, and acupuncture at Animas Oriental Medicine clinic.

Macushla F. Hobin, L.Ac., MSTOM is a graduate of the Pacific College

of Oriental Medicine, San Diego, California and her expertise in
clinical diagnosis and needle placement really opened the door—chakras and meridians—to my
healing. For the first time in six months, I finally heard an assessment of my situation that made
sense of the symptoms that was a true mystery to me. Yet I agreed with her immediately,
intellectually and intuitively, as to the underlying cause-effect relationships: Sleep Deprivation.
More so, I was told that my neck symptoms presented itself in a way that was well-known to
the classical oriental medicine model and therefore had specific treatment protocols that could
be followed to heal me now.

Beyond a doubt, I benefited once these blocked pathways were opened to the flow of life force
energy—ch’i—again through my spinal column vertebras and into the skull’s sinus cavities. I felt
the instant relief from pain when she inserted needles into C7 vertebra that second session:
these circuits began to function as intended. That is, I was no longer grid-locked neurologically
between my head and heart in particular and the neurotransmitters could transmit messages
full-circle in these circuits of consciousness. My nerves quieted down and restored themselves
to peaceful co-existence with the natural rhythms of my lifestyle in the days and weeks ahead.

Marie Redfeather played a pivotal role in recovering and releasing early childhood trauma that I
had completely buried within my body. She is a First Nations, French-Canadian descent initiate
of Peruvian shamanism. Through her expertise, and sensitivity, to what was seeking to surface
during our counseling sessions and ceremonies together, we rediscovered a series of medical
crises that had crippled me throughout my life. Specifically, I broke my leg in the 3 rd grade and
had to be transported for treatment to Auburn General Hospital, Washington. This was in the
days when a parent could not visit or stay at will with a scared child, but to make matters even
more terrifying in my case the ward nurses used hypodermic needle injections to sedate me—
keep me quiet—throughout the night.

Moreover, during my days hooked-up to I.V. at Mind & Body Works, I flashbacked to several
incidents that involved doctors, nurses, syringes and I.V.s in Seattle. For examples, I had blocked
memories of Children’s Orthopedic and Virginia Mason Hospital clinic visits that had
traumatized me severely in my early teen years. Thus, we uncovered and brought to light how
these disturbing incidents ultimately steered my studies to psychology and theology in my
totally subconscious efforts to continually work through these fears as an adult much as
psychiatrist Stan Grof, M.D. outlines happens in Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern
Consciousness Research. (See www.holotropic.com)

Needless to say, I was indeed “awakened at needle point” in Durango, Colorado! However, it
was the insights of the founder of Mind & Body Works that triggered a major catharsis during
his first counseling session with me. Steve Sewell patiently listened to my medical history:
recitations of childhood and alcohol abuse, military injuries and related psychophysical
symptoms, allopathic and integrative treatments, as he observed my body gestures, too. He
then gently, nonchalantly offered this “pearl of great price” for me to mediate upon later that
evening at the Iron Horse Inn motel as my homework assignment in fact: “The Key is Under
Your Mother’s Pillow.”

So I mused into the night, as my wife slept alongside me, about my life’s story and how I spoke
it into existence with every word uttered. Specifically, I came to see the wisdom in the words of
St. John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
(John 1:1). That is to say, I needed to wash my mouth out with soap for I spewed out toxic
temper tantrums, childish concepts and emotions in nearly every sentence. I colored my world
with words that had coagulated, nearly choked the life out of me with fear over many years by
failing to follow my bliss as a public-speaker because I was reenacting my mother’s sense of
“learned helplessness,” also known as clinical depression, at being abandoned by my father—
not me. In reality, I never knew my father given my age at the time of his departure so how
could I blame him for being a bad parent or role model? But I did incorporate—make physical—
every negative emotion my mother felt and expressed by her body postures and inadvertently
“poisoned” my environment. My father had little to do with my life issues was the bottom-line:
It was “mommy dearest” after all.

Summary

Apostle Paul summed-up my conclusions nicely: “Now you together are Christ's body; but each
of you is a different part of it.” (I Cor. 12:27) No one knows that truth better than Andrew
Newberg, M.D., Director of Research at the Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine at
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Medical College. He is a pioneer in the study of a field
frequently referred to today as “neurotheology.” In his career, he has also actively pursued
neuro-imaging research projects on aging and dementia, Parkinson's disease, depression, and
other neurological and psychiatric disorders. He has also researched the neurophysiological
correlates of acupuncture, meditation, and alternative therapies, and how brain function is
associated with mystical and religious experiences. Dr. Newberg has received an award from
the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences for his program entitled "The Biology of
Spirituality." (See www.andrewnewberg.com)

In the Gospel of Thomas, Christ spoke these words of wisdom: “If you bring forth what is within
you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is inside you, what you
do not bring forth will destroy you.” Daniel Pinchbeck has the right molecular spin on many of
these matters: “The tryptamine molecule is the building block of many neurotransmitters. …
You may spend the rest of your life suppressing the memory, but it is still inside of you.” Later in
a mystical burst of clarity, I saw that I did not get sick or healed in a vacuum these past months
either, rather my life story was the well-orchestrated script that God designed to bring me to
Him and my future work with people suffering from addictions, pain, and stress disorders
needing amino acid therapy.

No doubt about it today, my history is not my destiny. Yet to say I’m objective anymore is a lie: I
am subjective in that I know what works and I plan on shouting it from the rooftops. If you are
an adventurous, courageous soul willing to follow the road less travelled to achieve optimal
wellness here and hereafter, then I wholeheartedly suggest that you go to this website right
now without delay: www.mindandbodyworks.org. Indeed, be bold and call the Mind & Body
Works clinic Toll Free at 1-888-788-7348 and, perhaps, you too will become awakened at
needle point!

Further Recommended Reading References

1. For those interested in the symbolic treatment of illness, I refer you to an eclectic new
book on this topic, Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy
by Alejandro Jodorowsky in Paris, France. As well as the insights of Jungian-oriented
psychotherapist Paul Levy in Portland, Oregon, himself a former mental hospital patient
and now “crazy life a fox.” (See www.awakeninthedream.com)
2. Braverman, E.R., M.D., and Pfeiffer, C.C., M.D., Ph.D. The Healing Nutrients Within:
Facts, Findings and New Research on Amino Acids. CT: Keats Publishing, Inc., 1987.
3. Twiss, Richard. One Church Many Tribes. CA: Regal Press, 2000. (www.wiconi.org)

About the Author

John Jay Harper is a Community Health Coach specializing in the treatment of addiction, pain
and stress disorders and author of the bestseller Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century.
He holds post-graduate degrees in Business Administration, Human Resource Management,
Community Health Administration, Wellness Promotion as well as Clinical Hypnotherapy and
Psychology. He can be reached for radio/TV/print media-interviews at jjayharper@msn.com or
on Facebook anytime. John is now serving as a consultant to Mind & Body Works in order to
establish a public-speaking awareness campaign for amino acid therapy clinics nationwide. (See
www.johnjayharper.com)