Mental Patients Held Prisoners in a Church for Spiritual Healing

This report comes from South Africa near Namibia. The mentally challenged people were left chained to trees and heavy objects of years sometimes. Mathias Haufiku reports on this story in AllAfrica. Here is what he says about mental patients being held prisoners in a church for spiritual healing.

Mental Patients Held Prisoners in a Church for Spiritual Healing

The practice of incarcerating mental patients with chains padlocked to tree trunks and other objects has apparently been going on at the church for over a decade after the victims sought "spiritual healing" from Reverend Matyayi for mental and other illnesses.
After New Era broke the story, members of the police and social workers appalled by the illegal detentions intervened and ordered their immediate freedom on the grounds that the practice infringed on their human dignity.
But the police said Matyayi's actions though well-intentioned, were illegal. They say the situation was prompted partly by the fact that the country has only one psychiatric unit, denying many mentally challenged patients in the country access to proper mental health care.
The psychiatric unit in Windhoek cannot accommodate all people with mental disabilities in the country, hence it sometimes takes years before patients are even admitted, the deputy commissioner said.
"Whenever we have criminal cases involving mentally-ill patients it becomes a problem, because we do not have the facilities to detain such people. Sometimes we have no choice but to lock them up in cells all by themselves to avoid fights with other inmates," he said.
Last week Thursday, Bampton led police officials to the Sauyemwa informal settlement where they ordered the reverend of the church, Moses Matyayi, to unchain the mentally challenged patients.
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While this situation is shocking, what are the alternatives for these people? They haven’t the money for medication and chances are these poor people are violently dangerous. If we think back to mental asylums before medication in Western countries, people were chained up as well. The article didn’t say what became of the 9 people nor what spiritual healing they actually received in the Apostolic Church outside Rundu. What do you think should happen to these people in order for their lives to be more peaceful and productive? Leave a comment below for others to see.

Positive Spiritual Changes are Getting Easier

In a world filled with negativity, thinking positively is an important part of personal spiritual growth. Eve Wilson, Director since 1986 of the Healer Development Program, has written this article in Mind, Body, Spirit Guide about positive changes. In her world people are making positive changes more easily and perhaps more quickly. Here’s what she says about positive spiritual changes getting easier.

Positive Spiritual Changes are Getting Easier

Over the next 20 years we will actualize a significant piece of our potential as spiritual beings living in a physical world. You could compare the spiritual changes we are undergoing with those that the industrial revolution and technology have brought to our material experience. The shift we are undergoing is of that magnitude but taking place in consciousness and spirit. It will impact the material world in every way, but the influence will come from a higher and truer state of being and have infinitely more balanced and healthy results.

The ascension process you are going through at this time is a speeding up of your vibration so that your body and soul resonate more in harmony with God within you. This is activating changes in your body chemistry, your genetic makeup, and your spiritual and psychic development. You are becoming increasingly intuitive and self-aware. It is easier and easier to forgive the hurts you experience and the stress from the world and to trust that somehow everything is going to be OK. You can sense a purpose behind things and are more inclined to be patient and let go of trying to control things. You are more and more inclined to watch and see how things turn out.
Increasingly God consciousness is waking up within us and within the world at large. As we awaken to this truth at the core of all life forms, and especially within ourselves, we will find new ways of being and doing things that really work for us. These new ways of being will be natural and emerge out of a new wholeness and awareness of our unity with all of life. We will be telepathically able to cooperate with all life forms to create a world that supports all of us without greed, fear and selfishness. All of this will take time, but we are seeing positive change becoming easier and easier. Just 10 years from now, you will look back and see so much that has worked out better than you could have predicted and even more so in 20 years. No change is without stress, but there is good stress that brings about good changes and we are experiencing it now.
To read more of this passage, click here.

While there are an increasing number of people who realize we are changing as a human species, there still is not much in the way of guidelines to foster or even speed up this process. This article also doesn’t offer us much in the way of HOW to ascend to a higher level. Some people think we don’t need to do anything; the change will just “come over us” like rain from the sky. Some maintain that the extra terrestrials will come down and help some more advanced people to spiritually advance towards enlightenment. What do you think? Are positive spiritual changes getting easier for you to make? Please leave a comment below.

The Spiritual Healing Presence of Silence

We are a society that has overdosed on media, both visual and auditory. I don’t know about you, but I tend to tune most of it out. What then replaces it? Do we have something better to see and hear? Are we really comfortable with just silence? I suspect most people just let their own babble go on in their heads instead of taking a break, letting go and enjoying silence. Here is an article by Father Gabriel Rochelle, a priest of the St. Anthony of the Dominican Orthodox Mission in Las Cruces, New Mexico who suggests we find the spiritual healing presence of silence and the voice of our hearts.

The Spiritual Healing Presence of Silence

The novelist and essayist Pico Iyer wrote, "We have to earn silence, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence; not emptiness but repletion. We all know how treacherous are words, and how often we use them to paper over embarrassment, or emptiness, or fear of the larger spaces that silence brings. 'Words, words, words' commit us to positions we do not really hold, the imperatives of chatter; words are what we use for lies, false promises and gossip." Iyer is onto truth in this Time magazine essay from Jan. 25, 1993, but I think it incomplete; what I miss is the note that genuine speech emerges out of true silence even as true silence issues forth in authentic speaking. Thus are the lies avoided, thus do we become truly present, and thus does the soul speak.
The world is full of babble. It surrounds us on all sides, seeps into our lives via a host of media: radio, television and now the other devices that invade our space and rob our silence. Words have become cheaper than ever before, it seems, and hence we distrust the voice.
For many people in our society, the retreat to silence means only absence and not possibility, only void and not creative center. We have been so long drawn off silence by noise that surrounds us that we think we are hollow when noise and words are absent. It is not so.
We still have time to find that heart where the voice originates, where the soul can be expressed through the voice. Every spiritual tradition presents a way into silence through contemplation, meditation or prayer. Find it in yours or find someone to help you enter it. The world is in need of authentic speech.
To read more of this passage click here.

Paul Simon years ago wrote the song, “Sounds of Silence”. If you truly take a break from the hubbub of your modern life you might discover true peace of mind or even the solution to that problem you have been trying to resolve, maybe a great invention or a way to resolve differences with on old friend. It’s sort of a defragmenting of the brain, a type of walking meditation to find the spiritual healing presence of silence. I will stop now as there is also too much written nonsense. I’ve said enough. However, I’d love to hear from you, so please leave a message below.

Spiritual Journeys American Native Style

Here is the spiritual journey for this week at MysticFare. Here is a tour group, Spirit Trails, can offer you a great variety of experiences sectioned off by tribal First Nations traditions or at least by geographical location. They use the slogan, “Insightful Encounters with People and Planet”. Here are some of the details of their spiritual journeys American Native Style.

Spiritual Journeys American Native Style
TRIBES OF THE SOUTHWEST USA:

# TRIP 1: EARTH MEDICINE VISION QUEST RETREAT

# TRIP 2: NATIVE AMERICAN PEOPLES OF THE COLORADO PLATEAU

# TRIP 3: SACRED MOUNTAINS OF THE NAVAJO

# TRIP 4: NAVAJO CROSS-CULTURAL TOUR

TRIBES OF THE NORTHERN USA:

# TRIP 1: LAKOTA PRAIRIE ADVENTURE - TIPI CAMPING AND HORSES

# TRIP 2: LAKOTA TERRITORY - THE SIOUX RESERVATIONS

# TRIP 3: LAKOTA TERRITORY TOUR WITH HORSE-RIDING

# TRIP 4: ON HORSEBACK WITH THE CHEYENNE, NEZ PERCE AND LAKOTA

# TRIP 5: MYTHS OF THE AMERICAN WEST

# TRIP 6: HORSE-RIDING WITH WHITE THUNDER

To read more about the tours, click here.

Not only are there these intriguing-sounding trips but they also advertise mini trips and soon trips to Equator and Peru. While I have not been on any of their trips and I don’t know about the authenticity of what they offer, the tours themselves look quite informative and well organized judging from the website and the contact I had with them. For anyone interested in Native culture and an up-close-and-personal experience, this is the tour group for you. I think “Horse Riding with White Thunder” is the one for me! Anyway, please enjoy spiritual journeys Native American style and leave a comment below. Better yet, please share this article with your friends.

Tattoos as a Spiritual Rite of Passage

Just look around today and you will see an increasing number of people with body markings called tattoos in English. The word, tattoo actually came from the Samoan, “tatau” and was first called by that name in English by Joseph Banks, the naturalist aboard Captain Cook’s ship the HMS Endeavor. However, tattooing is a much older art and common worldwide, especially among the native people. However, there is now a huge revival of tattooing, and it is not uncommon to see entire arms or backs covered with this permanent ink. Jacob Meyers writing for The Huffington Post (“Religion” section) has taken this one step further and maintains that tattoos in every country are a kind of spiritual rite of passage. Here are his reasons.

Tattoos as a Spiritual Rite of Passage

Tattoos Are Road Signs Along One's Spiritual Journey
When a tattoo is affixed to a significant spiritual, relational or existential moment, the indelible ink is even more profound and can be powerful enough to return one to that state of spirituality. Like most significant experiences in one's life, the event of tattooing retains a place in our memory. We remember where we were and when the event occurred. Unlike these other experiences, however, tattoos retain their significance as visible reminders of an important, spiritual experience in our lives -- like footprints unaffected by the tides of time. Tattoos are fixed in living memory and thus they can serve as monuments, allowing one to retrace one's spiritual and existential pilgrimage.
Tattooing Inaugurates One Into A Community
Every tattoo has a story. A major facet of tattoo cultures is the unveiling of stories through one's tattoos. For some cultures, like the Maori in Aotearoa New Zealand, tattoos serve to signify one's place within society. For the Tofi people of New Guinea, a swirl on a woman's face indicates her family lineage. In indigenous cultures, tattoos mark one's role in a larger societal narrative.
In America, tattoos do not typically serve such societal functions, but they nevertheless inaugurate one into a community of persons who have likewise undergone this act of transformation. Through the manifestation of who you are, you communicate silently with those who are a part of this culture.
To view the rest of this passage click here.

It’s a bit alarming for me to see these huge tattoos these days despite the fact that I myself have a butterfly tattoo which joined my body long ago during my “salad days”. However, I spent 15 years in Japan where tattoos are a sign of the Yakusa, the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia. In fact, I was once thrown out of a Japanese spa due to my tattoo. I guess the Yakusa are not welcome there. What do you think of tattoos? Are they beautiful, ugly, enlightening, or disgusting? I suspect people have strong feeling about tattoos. Please leave a comment below to share with others.

Why do we Need Spiritual Guides?

I’d like to introduce you to another website that will be useful for everyone but especially for people just learning about spiritual healing. It contains useful information, practice ideas, inspirational readings and different tools and methods for healing. It does not profess to be a replacement for modern medicine but an addition to what doctors suggest. It seems that the owners and organizers of this site are all family members – two sisters and their English mother. Today I will curate their article on spiritual guides, but please check out the inspirational quotes, true stories and poetry in this spiritual healing encyclopedia for the basics of the spiritual path.

Why do we Need Spiritual Guides?

I could say that we need spiritual guides because we really don't do a good job of progression on the path by ourselves. (And you could take progression to mean personal development, balancing karma, fulfilling the plan God has for us, etc...) We are all susceptible to human weaknesses and the choice between doing what is 'easy' and what is 'right' is a dilemma we find ourselves in frequently. So, obviously we could use help in getting back on track when we stray.
I could also say that it's actually only pride and arrogance that would cause us to think we're capable of running the show by ourselves.
You only need to look around at the saddening state of affairs in the world to know that we aren't handling it very well. With huge sections of the population shunning God, it isn't really surprising that we're having so much trouble. Obviously there is much work to be done in asking for help from heaven, not just for our own lives but on behalf of all the other people in situations that so desperately need divine assistance, who are, for whatever reason, not asking. Fortunately the tide is turning with more people finding ways to make spirituality a part of their lives.
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The article goes on to explain what spiritual guides can do and how to request divine help. The website in well planned and informative but I wish it would not focus so much on Christian philosophy. There are spiritual guides for every religion, and perhaps the ones closest to their spirit guides are the natives of every land, the original peoples. Why do we need spiritual guides? In this chaotic, changing world we need all the help we can get. If you would like to know more about spiritual guides, I recommend this book: The Masters and Their Retreats by Mark and Elizabeth Claire Prophet. It is also recommended by the owners of this great website.

Spiritual Retreat: Faasai Resort and Spa in Thailand

As you may know I review at least one spiritual resort each week. This week I’ve found a very affordable and easily accessible resort that has been in operation 3 hours north of Bangkok for 4 years now by a Thai-New Zealand couple, Surin Laopha and Bronwen Evans. Surin is a former massage therapist who has studied Thai healing medicine as well. Bronwen is a former journalist with marketing experience. Here is part of this press release from PRWeb about this spiritual retreat: Faasai Resort and Spa in Thailand.

Spiritual Retreat: Faasai Resort and Spa in Thailand

“The local village is called Kung Wiman, which means Heaven on Earth, while the district is called Sanamchai or Field of Victory. We chose Faasai as our name as it means clear skies or pure heavens. Our resort faces east so we receive the healing rays of the early morning sun and have spectacular moon rises. We also have lovely views of distant hill and mountains, fresh sea breezes, scents from the forest and natural mineral springs.”
The special package deal costs 4080 baht for three nights in a bungalow (approximately US $136) or 4560 for three nights in a villa room (approximately US $152). The package includes:

• Daily Breakfast for 2 persons
• Complimentary Ecotopia package for 2 persons (Thai massage or trip to mangroves at the Royal Marine Sanctuary Kung Kraben)
• Additional Adult/Child will be charged at THB 200 per night.

To read the original post of this passage click here.

The Ecotopia Package is based on 3 concepts: “ecological” or living in harmony with nature, “cornucopia” fresh organic food from the local land, and “utopia” paradise on earth. Thailand is generally a safe country with good transportation service and the resorts cater well to tourists. Would you like to go to this spiritual retreat: Faasai Resort and Spa in Thailand? If so, please click the Facebook “like” or “share” below.