This is part two of Barbara Brodsky's reflections on her healing trips to Casa de Dom Inácio. Click here to read part one.

Last year I wrote about my trips to Casa de Dom Inácio in Brazil, the Healing Center headed by João Teixeira de Faria, affectionately called John of God. João serves as a channel for approximately 31 different entities that incorporate into his body, one at a time, to do what often seems to be miraculous healing.

This spring I returned to the Casa for 5 weeks. Many people have asked me to tell about this latest trip. To begin, I also need to talk about my spiritual practice, which speaks to me of opening my heart to things just as they are. This understanding begins with awareness of both the conditioned realm in which we live our outer lives, and the Unconditioned or Divine realm that is the core of everything. By “conditioned,” I mean the everyday world where plants grow when seeds, soil, rain and sun are present, and where emotions come also as prompted by outer conditioning. By “Unconditioned,” I mean that which exists beyond everyday conditions, the eternal aspect of being.

Only through full presence and kindness can we invite the heart to stay with such pain, and only in that presence is freedom to be found.

These realms are not dual but exist simultaneously. Open your hand and look at the fingers waving in front of your eyes. Each finger is there; no doubt about it. Now look through the fingers at the vast spaciousness beyond. When you look in this way, the fingers don’t disappear, but they are no longer the center of awareness. In the same way, when we open to a greater awareness of what we are beyond this mind, body and emotions, those aspects of being don’t dissolve. We just see more deeply into the truth of what we are.

I learn about this through meditation. For me, the center of meditation is presence in each moment with kind, spacious awareness. My meditation practice asks me to open the heart to whatever is predominant in the moment’s experience, and to watch the movements of mind and body as they relate to that object. Are the heart and body open or clenched tight? Is there ease and joy or fear and need to control? We can’t choose what will arise in the next moment; sometimes it’s pleasant, sometimes not. Sometimes there is great pain of body or emotion. Only through full presence and kindness can we invite the heart to stay with such pain, and only in that presence is freedom to be found. This is the freedom not to react from old conditioning, not to invoke old patterns, but to allow the heart and deepest wisdom to join together in each moment with love.

Many strengths come together to support that moment of open-hearted clarity. We can train toward full presence, but may not be able to open the heart and trust enough to touch the most painful moments. We can never force it. There must be full intimacy and kindness as we attend to these impermanent, yet sometimes very painful, objects. The natural tendency of so many years, of lifetimes even, is to flee. What allows the fullest presence? When strong fear and negative thought come, what sustains us?

With fear, for example, that which is aware of fear is not afraid.

Returning to the fingers and the space between, the experience of that spaciousness supports opening. With each object that arises, I see the immense space that surrounds and accompanies the object. My teacher Aaron uses a metaphor here; he asks us to imagine sitting in a tiny box while he approaches with a tarantula, and points out how quickly we would leap out of the box. But imagine a much bigger box and we see the capacity to stay and observe the tarantula, even to befriend it. Eventually we come to know the infiniteness of that box, which is the Unconditioned or Divine itself, and learn to rest in the spaciousness of the Unconditioned with full intimacy with the conditioned objects that challenge us. The balance of heart and mind allow both full presence and non-self-identification. We attend not to fix but just to witness and hold the space until they dissolve. With fear, for example, that which is aware of fear is not afraid. We rest in fearlessness yet are able to be lovingly intimate with the everyday mind and body experience of fear.

It’s with this background and practice that I first came to the Casa de Dom Inácio in Brazil in January, 2004, with the hope that I might hear after 32 years of deafness, and with the invitation of whatever healing might be found in other areas of body, mind and spirit. My trips there have challenged me in many ways, and the spiritual practice has been there to support the work with these challenges. For that practice I am immensely grateful. On the first trip, Dr. Augusto who is one of the Casa Entities speaking through João, said, “Possibly we can help.” The second trip he told me, “Probably.” Was there grasping? Yes, and letting go, again and again. The third trip another Entity who has been worked with me regularly, Dr. Valdivino, also said (speaking through João), “You will hear,” but this brought up new grasping and a quandary. If I will hear, what delays that hearing? Why is it not “Now”?