And more energies.

Been listening to our buddy Wayne Dyer on the CD player during the long and frequent drive to Geneseo and back. He talked about an energy healing method I'd never heard of (and I'm pretty well versed in all things fringe and woo-woo), so I ducked into the bookstore in Geneseo to hunt up the reference:
http://www.amazon.com/Sanctuary-Path-Consciousness-Stephen-Lewis/dp/1561708453

Despite much help from a bookstore guy who looked like he'd spent too many hours in the hallucinogenic plants section, no book was forthcoming. Not wanting to have to cope once again with the inexorable slowness of the accursed Media Mail, I popped into a Barnes and Noble on the way home and paid full price *shudder* for a copy. John read it in one sitting and is all set to have an energy frequency adjustment or whatever the hell it's called.

Okay, maybe it's my Scots blood, but I have a little trouble with just sending a check (and a not insignificant one at that) and waiting for someone, somewhere to heal me using cosmic rays. So what if it is endorsed by not only Wayne but a slew of 1980's B list actresses? I'd be a lot more enthusiastic if I could go to Arizona or California or wherever-the-hell and meet this "Max" person, see his magnificent machine, talk to "Jennifer". I wanna believe, really I do - I'm clapping like crazy here - but I have the same problem, essentially, that I had with Redfield (Redfern? Redsomething...) and the Celestine books: retreaded philosophy being passed off as discovery in a penny-dreadful novel. Tossing in occasional Einstein and Plato quotes doesn't elevate the material so much as convince us that the author has a Bartlett's nearby and isn't sure that his audience would recognize other names. Calling it a "religion" sounds to me like a simple tax dodge. As I said, maybe I'm just a cynical Scot.

But I do believe in the ability of the mind to heal, and even if it can all be written off as coincidence (which I don't believe in, incidentally), placebo effect or some other more esoteric cause, bottom line is whether or not the patient is better in his own eyes. So if your back is so bad that you can't get out of bed for more than a few hours at a time, or your liver is compromised and western medicine can't offer you more than a 5% chance of remission after 18 months of torment, maybe you go for it. Maybe, for whatever reason, you feel better. That's all that matters.

So I'll keep clapping just as hard and as fast as I can.