Image by Couleur
Whether you are conscious of it or not, if this has found its way into your hands, you are probably walking the healing path. Your awareness of this healing path may be focused on the physical, emotional, and psychological suffering you have experienced, and yet there may be a higher calling beneath the layers of pain and disease. It is a calling or awakening to come home into your physical body, to come home to the truth of who you really are. Can you hear the call?
During the early part of my illness while I was praying for help, the poem below came to me. Whether I was channeling my own inner wisdom or or an angel I don’t know, but I wrote it down and the words became a mantra for me and I suggest referring to it again and again.
The Healing Decree of Immunity
Walk in Love.
Walk in Peace.
Ask the Matter,
What’s the Matter?
End the Mental Chatter.
Look Closely: What Do You See?
Work with the Physicality.
Bless Your Body
And the Enemy.
Liberate Those That Seek to Harm Thee.
Harm Not Thy Own Body.
Stand Firm against Those That Seek to Harm Thee.
Forgive Yourself from the Past.
Support Your Immune System to Do Its Task.
What Was Going On?
About a year after I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, I went into the hospital to do intravenous antibiotics for forty days. Six months earlier I had finished a course of doxycycline after being initially diagnosed with Lyme, and at the time, I thought it was all over, that I was cured.
Little did I know it was just the beginning. Lyme had entered my brain, and a kind of meningitis was ravaging my head and body. As I lay in the hospital bed, I began to cry. I was in a state of utter despair. What in the hell was going on? Why was I sick again after taking antibiotics? I began to pray for help, for anyone or anything to show me what was going on, to show me the way.
I could still breathe so I focused on my breathing. Because I couldn’t think properly (Lyme jumbles your brain), I began to feel more. If I can still feel, and I can still breathe, and I can still love, I still exist, I thought. Then I “felt” into my brain and asked, What’s the matter? as if my brain were a little baby.
I felt like a mother who senses something is wrong with her baby, even though he or she can’t speak. With all of the love and tender feelings I could muster, I “cradled” my brain and asked again: What’s the matter? I love you, brain. What’s the matter?
Then a miracle happened. I had a vision. I saw a beautiful large oak tree in the woods, and up the side of the trunk, shelf mushrooms were growing. Rows and rows of these beautiful mushrooms spiraled up the tree toward the sky.
I remembered three kinds. Two I recognized from my work as a field biologist as reishi mushrooms, another was a turkey tail mushroom, and the third I had to wait till I got out of the hospital to look up, but it was called chaga.
I need these, I thought.
The vision was so clear and from a place of love that I knew there must be something to it. Once I was out of the hospital, I researched the mushrooms. It turns out that reishi mushrooms have been used for thousands of years as an immune booster in Chinese medicine. Turkey tail mushrooms are also immune boosters and are part of an anticancer drug currently being developed and tested called PSK, and chaga is another incredible immune booster (Stamets, 1999).
Confirmation from Ötzi the Iceman
A short time later, I read in National Geographic about Ötzi the Iceman. Ötzi, a 5,300-year-old man who had been mummified in ice, was found in the Alps in 1991 by hikers on an unusually warm day. He was brought to scientists, who examined him to discover how he died, what he ate, and what diseases he suffered from.
It turns out Ötzi had Lyme disease (Hall 2011). Reading this nearly bowled me over. Lyme disease, I realized, has been around for a long time, or at least some version of it has.
Ötzi wore a belt with a leather pouch, and guess what was in that pouch? Shelf mushrooms like I had seen in my vision: tinder fungus or polypore (Fomes fomentarius), and birch polypore (Fomitopsis betulina). Both mushrooms are antibiotic and antiparasitic (Stamets and Zwickey 2014). Then I got chills. I speculated he was treating his Lyme disease with these mushrooms. Whether he had visited a shaman or had intuited this cure himself, I have no doubt he was using them to treat himself. I used the information from the article as validation, confirming my intuition that reishi and shelf mushrooms could help me heal.
Intuition and Guidance
After I got out of the hospital, I began to hone my intuitive skills, much like one would practice an instrument or develop a muscle. I began to practice the art of intuitive sensory perception inside my own body and write down what I was seeing, tasting, smelling, and hearing during my motherly loving meditations.
Then I had another breakthrough. One day during my inward viewing, I saw the cysts, those nasty little “eggs” that Lyme transforms into. The cysts can lie dormant for up to a year or more. I saw these round little eggs inside my brain. I saw rows of them like peas in a peapod, coated with slime (a biofilm). But I also saw a pencil on top of each egg.
I couldn’t understand what this image was. A week later, I saw them again in my meditation--pencils on top of eggs. OK, then, I thought, what the hell does a pencil over an egg mean? As I worked with my sensory perception, I began to learn that my body’s intuition would symbolically speak to me and to think outside the box.
I thought, A pencil, hmmm, a pencil contains lead. Does this mean I have lead poisoning? Wait, a pencil contains black lead or graphite, right? But that’s poisonous too.
I couldn’t figure it out, and I gave up. Then about a week later, I wandered into the supplement section in Whole Foods Market (as nearly every Lyme patient does) and noticed the homeopathic aisle. I saw one little blue tube identified with the word “Graphites.” Graphites, I thought. That’s black lead! Holy Moses! What do Graphites do exactly?
I read the homeopathic pamphlet in the store on Graphites: “Graphites can dissolve toughened skin, scars, boils, and cysts.” Oh, my God, this is what my intuition was telling me! Pencils over eggs!
I now believe that Graphites and similar homeopathic remedies are important for dissolving Lyme cysts, and this substance became a key component to my healing.
Intuitive Science: Trusting Science and Intuition
After this particular incident, I began to write down everything I could, and I started trusting the deeper wisdom that came through the senses and from a place deeper than my mind. Over the years, I have used this method of intuitive access and created my own protocol, eventually completely healing myself from Lyme disease.
My book, Liberating Yourself from Lyme, is written from the intuitive information I have received, as well as investigating the science to back up what I was intuiting. As an artist and a scientist, I have been blessed with the ability to intuit remedies and then do my best to back them up with science (although that wasn’t always possible).
By utilizing my intuition, I am in no way invalidating science, as I believe the scientific process is essential for collecting information and facts. This intuitive process is a kind of spiritual science, like an inner Sherlock Holmes looking for clues. It has been both a humbling and validating process in many ways, teaching me to trust my intuition just as much as I would trust the knowledge of a doctor.
I would often be “shown” a remedy and then find the medical research that confirmed what I had intuited. This method helped me validate what I was seeing and sensing. In addition to many common antibiotics and herbs, I discovered several unusual medicines and techniques for Lyme that I had never heard of.
You Don't Need To Be A Shaman
As I developed my intuitive abilities, I began to realize that perhaps one does not have to become a shaman to talk to plants and animals; maybe we all have that ability.
Our physical bodies have evolved and adapted on Earth for millions of years. All the plants, animals, and minerals that make up Earth have evolved and adapted along with us. Our bodies are made up of the basic mineral building blocks of Earth and, I believe, are infused with the breath or spirit that animates all life (or however you see it). It is this interface of spirit and matter that many call the soul. Many cultures access this as a place of feeling and being rather than thinking.
When you are in this state of your soul, plant and animal spirits and angels can communicate in the form of symbols, images, dreams, synchronous events, feelings, and sensory impressions, which are much more palpable. We need to quiet the mind, relax, and enter into a feeling of love to sense this. Though our ancestors wove it into their daily lives, most of us have forgotten this ancient wisdom and, along with it, the innate ability to know what or how we need to heal.
I believe we all have the ability to access this information, though some people are more naturally attuned to it than others. In reality, there is what I call a holographic medicine chest that we all can access. All the minerals, plants, animals, and medicines in and on Earth that have been here for millennia are potential medicines waiting to be discovered.
Accessing Our Intuition In Many Ways
Though we are more removed from our instincts than animals, humans are still animals with the capacity to know what we need to heal. We can access our intuition through meditation, dreams, movement, breath, relaxation, dance, stillness, and many other healing modalities. A healer can also hold the space and be a catalyst for this exploration as well.
Yet all beings possess the ability to be medical intuitives. You must simply look within and be open to all possibilities. Some believe that the best belief system is no belief system at all. Be open to the idea that you have innate wisdom within yourself.
As I believe we each possess this remarkable gift, we need to create the space for the magic to unfold. When you listen to the body’s wisdom, the deep messages or sensory impressions of the soul, it can help guide you toward finding life balance. Your intuition can magically show you what can be helpful in your healing. You must be open to listening to these messages from your body, mind, and soul. I healed from Lyme disease by listening to that deeper wisdom and creating my own protocol.
I feel that this ancient, intuitive knowledge resides in all beings. Lyme disease calls us to build a bridge between worlds and to transcend the dualities of good and evil or East and West. It asks us to embody, to use all of the tools in our kit, to open into the places that may be frightening, and to discover the healing gifts hidden within the suffering.
Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning. -- MAHATMA GANDHI
© 2021 by Vir McCoy and Kara Zahl
Healing Arts Press. Reprinted with permission
from the publisher Inner Traditions International.
www.InnerTraditions.com
This excerpt, by Vir McCoy, is from the Introduction of the book: Liberating Yourself from Lyme.
Article Source
Liberating Yourself from Lyme: An Integrative and Intuitive Guide to Healing Lyme Disease
(Updated Edition of Liberating Lyme)
by Vir McCoy and Kara Zahl
In this medical intuitive approach to Lyme, the authors share their personal Lyme journeys and their integrative healing protocol that bridges the scientific and the spiritual. They explore the peculiarities of Lyme disease, including how Lyme is often misdiagnosed, giving it time to establish itself deep within the body’s organs and nervous system, and examine in detail new and standard remedies, with thorough scientific references.
For more info and/or to order this book, click here.
About the Authors
Vir McCoy is a teacher, healer, author, lecturer, musician, and ecologist who works both as a bodywork healer and as a field biologist and botanist focusing on endangered species.
Kara Zahl is a healing arts practitioner, yoga instructor, and intuitive counselor with a bodywork practice combining massage and energy work modalities.
