The Casa de Dom Inácio is a healing center in central Brazil, headed by a man named João Teixeira de Faria, affectionately called John of God. Medium João, as he is also called, serves as a channel for many healing entities that work through him to do what often seems to be miraculous healing.

While the healing seems miraculous, João remains humble. He says, “I do not heal; God heals.”

Approximately 31 different entities incorporate into his body, one at a time, to do the healing work. João was born in Brazil, just over 100 miles from the Casa. He has been doing this work for almost 50 years. It is through his dedication and vision that the Casa has come into existence. At the Casa, literally the lame often begin to walk, the blind to see, the deaf to hear. Those with diseases like cancer, MS and AIDS often find healing, as do those suffering from depression and mental disorders. Others, coming free of major disease, simply find release ofnegative emotions and clarity to their spiritual paths. While the healing seems miraculous, João remains humble. He says, “I do not heal; God heals.”

I made my first trip to the Casa in January of 2004 with the hope they could heal my deafness. I lost my hearing in 1972, just after my first child was born. In childbirth, the nerves were oxygen starved and died, leaving me deaf and without balance. Doctors in the U.S. said there was no cure.

For decades I lived with the situation, learning to lip read and relying on a walking stick for balance. At first I sought many “cures” but soon let go of the grasping for a cure and learned to live with this body as it is. For more about this phase of my experience, see Being Bodies, edited by Lenore Friedman and Susan Moon, Shambala, 1997, pp.35-42.

In 2003, someone “accidentally” sent me material about the Casa, a mailing list onto which my name had crept. I googled “John of God” and was riveted by the energy from his photographs, which felt so familiar. Immediately, I knew it was important to go. I had no idea how to do that. I looked up Abadiânia and could not find any reference to it in maps of Brazil. How do you book a trip to a place that’s not on a map? And my husband was concerned about my heading off alone to Brazil. My son decided to accompany me, and I looked on the web sites and chose a guide with whom I felt a strong resonance.

After I was committed, many changes began to happen. I understand now that once I had made a decision to go, the entities began to work with me. The first step was to look at the possibility of hearing. It seems wonderful but I had to be honest with myself. Deafness was also an escape from some unpleasantness. If someone was angry, I could avert my gaze. When the world news was unpleasant, I could stop reading the captions. If my children were noisy, I just looked away. After 3 decades of deafness, I was used to living in some degree of seclusion. And I saw the deafness in many ways as a gift, one that had led me to my life’s work as a medium and dharma teacher. What would it mean to hear? What would I lose?

The year before the first visit was intense, as I looked at the intention to hear and what hearing meant in a deeper way. By the time my flight took off, I felt ready. On that first trip, the entities told me they probably could help me. It would take time. I would need to return. That was fine.

Three months after that first visit I was in a terrible accident, tossed with my small surfboard against the ocean floor by a large wave. I was drowning, unconscious, with full-blown near death experience, in a tunnel with brilliant light. Loving energy was with me. Some level of awareness watched from above as the body slipped from terrible pain into unconsciousness. There was a moment of choice, to go further into the light or remain in the body. It wasn’t fear that drew me back, but love, and understanding that my work here wasn’t finished. When I made that decision, I felt spirit’s voice directing me, “swim toward the physical light.” I regained enough consciousness to reach the surface and cry for help. As hands grasped me, consciousness ceased again and I was pulled unconscious through the surf and onto the beach.