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 21st 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
● ● ● now. Trust me they are right-on-target when it
comes to Hades—“the hidden place”—and the
He knew that Glory “evil spirits!” For the “doubting Thomas,” I only
and Hell too, ask you to review one “non-religious” textbook,
The Body of Myth: Mythology, Shamanic Trance,
Are in your soul, with and The Sacred Geography of the Body by
mathematician, and physicist Professor J. Nigro
all their myths; Sansonese, and the objective documentary DVD
film titled “Gates of Hell” produced by The
He knew, like the History Channel. That is, I am not focused on
Greek, that the days fear at all but facts that will convince you
Of Time are Eternity’s beyond a reasonable doubt that what we’ve
called “hell” is right here on earth. Specifically,
Mirrors. we’re experiencing a literal warfare going on
within the cells of our human body-mind-spirit!
~Jorge Luis Borges (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.
 "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." So I asked myself: Can amino acid
therapy rewire our genes towards not
~Mellen-Thomas Benedict only optimal wellness and personal
www.mellen-thomas.com 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)

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 tears: “With his visions, his ability to
transform energies, and his mastery of healing, Christ could be seen as a
prototypical shaman.”

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 3rd 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
counseling homework assignment: “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. Note that they are a
non-profit organization and need your love offering donations to stay afloat.
Indeed, be bold and call the Mind & Body Works clinic Toll Free at 1-888-788-
7348 and see how you can help spread the word in your community, and
perhaps you or a loved one will likewise 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)