Healing of the Heart
By Mike Kawahara

Just last summer it crept up on me. At first just a little tiredness. I ignored it. Then days where I got tired moving around. I still ignored it. Soon it got to the point where just getting out of bed and moving across the room had me gasping for air.
After a while, I knew I had to deal with this. I made a trip to the emergency room for treatment. I got a lot of tests and was given the bad news: my heart was double its normal size and the function was one not normal. My lungs were filling with fluid and the other organs in my body were also having problems. The doctors said I was in congestive heart failure and that I must be admitted right away. That finally got my attention.

Right away, I had an echocardiogram. It showed a heart function (called the ejection fraction) of 15%. Normal is over 60%. A group of three doctors came in to see me. “It will be a week before you can leave the hospital. We can get you back on your feet, but don’t expect a huge improvement for quite some time. You’ll be permanently disabled due to heart disease. You will feel better, but your heart function will never return to normal. You have to get used to illness. In fact, we are not even sure if you will see any improvement.”

Right away, the staff and students at the Spiritual Rights Foundation began a prayer vigil. Here, they looked at energies around my body that cause illness or disease. Many of them found several kinds of energies that had influence over my state of mind and my body and worked to remove those energies. Their whole purpose was to heal the spirit so that the spirit can heal the body.
On the second day in the hospital, a man I never met came to visit. He was one of the hospital chaplains. Even though I had never met him, the first words he spoke to me sounded like they came from an old friend: “You know how you got here? You believe you have to live your life better than your dad did and do all the things he’ll approve of. Why don’t you stop? You have that choice and he won’t give a damn anyway. Let go of what your dad wants out of you. The sooner you do that, the sooner you’ll get out of there. And by the way if you want some background on that, take a look at Corinthians here. It’s the part that talks about our spiritual gifts. Read it and remember it. Not only can people you know help heal you, you can do it as well. Now, can you be open to that?”
After picking up my jaw from the floor, I realized that this chaplain who never met me before just gave me the psychic reading of my life. He saw the pictures in my space that had me in a state of mind that had me pursuing goals that were unrealistic and even destructive for me. All to prove a point to someone who didn’t care anyway. That pretty much shook my whole world. It’s one thing to know what your body is doing, but something completely different to know how it got there.

After swearing up and down that my hospital stay would be “at least a week”, I was discharged after only four days. While it was nice to be there, it was nicer to go home.

The prayer and healing work being done at SRF continued. More and more healing on the spirit level was being done every day. And on the body level, my doctors were performing regular tests administering drugs. An echocardiogram showed some improvement, but still, function was showing only 19% and my heart was still enlarged.

I joined some internet groups related to congestive heart failure to see what others have experienced. One group labeled themselves as the best heart help and support source on the web for people with heart failure. After joining, I asked, “Can someone relate their experiences with this illness?” The group manager’s reply was short and direct: “You’re screwed. You’ll feel sick if you live and you’ll die in year like most people. If you live longer, then your energy levels will be very low, you will have problems moving around and you will need constant care until you die in a year. But do come here regularly for positive, healing support.”

Next I moved on to a different group. A “compassionate group of kindred souls in search of support for heart failure” Maybe this would be better. I asked the same question. Not only did I receive the same answer, but furthermore the “head” of the group sent me a long message by email advising me to never trust doctors, lawyers, clergy, healers or anyone with an “e” in their name. No one but him, of course. And expect a long illness. Well, two years of illness at least until you are dead. But he did relate that he beat the odds by fighting those he didn’t trust (which seemed to be everyone) and that if I knew what was good for me, I’d better listen.

After leaving those groups (and blocking their email) I looked back on that experience: How could anyone believe that the Supreme Being could want them to live in pain and illness? If it is true that we are made in His image, then how could He have made a creation that is anything less than perfect? How can anyone believe in death and disease over health and wealth? Why fight your way to health when you can use the love of the Supreme Being to love yourself to health?

The founder of SRF was fond of saying: “If you believe in the pill more that the prayer, then you need both.” I knew I believed in the pill. I am sure we all do. But right then, I needed to believe in the prayer. How else can I see that He created a body that is perfect as it is? What pill can you swallow to make you believe in health and wealth? What pill can help you let go of your painful past and look forward to your prosperous future? It doesn’t exist.

I knew I had belief in the pills I take. Now, I know that I believe in the prayers that have been made for me. And I realized that the only way to health was to embrace that belief. I knew that I had to join others in the belief that I was happy, healthy, wealthy and whole in body, mind and soul if I was going to make a recovery. The pills, the tests, the medical procedures – those were in the hands of the doctors. The prayer, the belief – those are between me and the God of my heart.

And for me, the belief was simple and it still is. It is simply the knowingness that I can achieve health and wealth by keeping my attention on that thing. There is no need to stay on my knees praying for hours a day or torturing myself for a greater reward. It is just as it is taught here at the Spiritual Rights Foundation: picture and feel that which you desire. For me, it was a healthy heart.
After several months, I made some good progress but not a full recovery. The heart function increased to 24% but I was able to move around. That was good. The drugs and tests continued. The one test all heart patients dread came in February: the stress treadmill test. I made it through just fine although pretty winded.

Then in April, I went for my usual cardiology exam. The doctor and I talked about a few things until he said, “Well, we would like you to have a device to help your heart. It will take some minor surgery but it only takes an hour and you can go home the same day. I’ll send you up to echocardiography for a scan today. Come back in a couple of weeks and we can get things going.”
An echocardiogram is just an ultrasound scan of your heart. They are usually pretty routine and take only a few minutes. I had a few so I knew what to expect. The technician looks at your heart, grunts a few times and shows in loving detail the parts of your heart that are having trouble. This time was different.
A few seconds into the exam, the technician started to giggle. The kind of giggle you hear when someone finds out his rich uncle named him in the will or that his ticket has the winning numbers. After a few more minutes, more giggling. Then “ooohhh” and “wow, look at that”.

I couldn’t stand it. Thoughts of three-headed aliens in my chest came to mind. Maybe I got worms. I had to ask.
“So,” I asked, “what’s so interesting in there?”
“Well, I found something unexpected. Your heart (giggle) – the enlargement is gone and the function is at the 60-65% level (giggle, giggle).”
“Uh, what does that mean?”
“Your heart is at normal size and function.” (giggle, giggle)
I walked out of the exam room in complete shock.

Three doctors – my cardiologist (a professor from UCSF medical school), his boss (a nationally known cardiologist and the department head) and my primary physician, a general medicine resident arrived to look at the results. My primary doctor couldn’t stop squealing and stamping her feet. She did stop long enough to throw cold water in my cardiologist’s face. The department head could not stop staring at the results, hand over his mouth, eyes wide in amazement. They called in the physician who treated me while I was hospitalized. After reading the results, she tried to sit but went sprawling on the floor. Long minutes passed in complete silence as they looked for some flaw, some glitch, something to show that the echo was a fluke or a mistake.
After a long while, my cardiologist finally said, “Well, I guess we have to believe this thing.”

From the physician’s point of view, there is no explanation for what happened. No drug therapy, no surgery, no electronic heart devices, nothing in medical science can explain a healing that simply could not have happened.
But, we aren’t talking about healing through medical science, are we?