A Spiritually Enlightening Online Magazine. May's Theme: "Humour"
Volume 3 Issue 4 ISSN# 1708-3265

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Illuminations Aleesha Stephenson About the Cover Aleesha Stepenson Dragon's Daughter Part Five Jennifer Monaghan Aspartame - No Laughing Matter Dawn Baumann Brunke What's Funny About Waste? David Suzuki PhD Being Light of Heart & Spirit Rev. Cheryl Jewett PRIVATE Humour David Reber Male Menopause Martin Avery To Bee or Not to Bee John Penberthy Weird and Wonderful Magi Frost Confessions of a Spiritual Stealth Bomber Spirit Painter Wyrd Lynx John Sacelli Da… Funny Pages! Featuring: Dan Pelletier Wiccan Voices Anne Ellis Lifetalks Dawn Baumann Brunke Technically Tarot Jeannette Roth Aunty Nasty Nasturtium Blackwitt Meditate a Moment Featuring: Toria Betson Tales of a Country Vet Dr. Bruce Burton DVM AngeLynx John Sacelli Fractal Firebird Tarot R.M. Kruse Animals Divine Tarot Lisa Hunt

I turned 50, quit my job, sold my house, moved out of "cottage country", and took an apartment in Edge City, east of Toronto, beside a nuclear power station.

What was I thinking?

The year before, I stepped down from my position of Arts Department Head at a small school in Muskoka.

I didn't know if this was my mid-life crisis or just my 19th nervous breakdown.

It all started when I moved my soccer team from the gym to the field, after spending the winter training indoors. During a school council meeting after soccer practice, after drama club, after another day of classes, I felt my right leg tighten, stiffen, ache.

When I tried walking on it, every step felt like I was pounding my heel on a thumbtack.

Planter's faciitis, the doctor said. Orthotics and physiotherapy failed to do anything for it. A shot of cortizone from a podiatrist - a foot specialist - took away the pain for a few months. What did it all mean? I wondered.

Was I turning into one of those grumpy old men who fall asleep after dinner? Was it andropause, male menopause, or just middle age setting in? Would I soon start developing hardening of the arteries and hardening of the categories? Was there a patch for this?

I found a personal coach on the internet.

"We are entering into the era of the Divine Feminine," Janet Amare said, at the end of 2005, the year of unprecedented natural disasters. "That's why the weather has turned so weird. Mother Earth is responding to a century of wars and pollution, competition and violence, all over the planet."

Janet Amare is a psychic as well as a healer. She has traveled the world to meet many of the greatest healers, including the Sai Baba, in India, John of God, in Brazil, and Margot Anand in the USA. She teaches channeling and a variety of healing techniques, works as a coach, and leads trips to the big island of Hawaii to swim with the dolphins.

I got the gospel according to Janet and some new age advice. My coach follows the Louise L. Hayes method of reading illness as metaphor. If you have a pain in your neck, she says, it might be because someone in your life is being a pain in the neck. She said my sore foot was a sign it was time for me to move on. It was past time. I was holding on, living in the past, dragging my heels. As soon as I moved on, the pain would go away.

Instead of battling with the provincial school system, the administration, my colleagues, I should see them as messengers from my higher powers, telling me it was time to get on with my life.

Seeing some of my colleagues as messengers from my higher powers was a stretch. -- I thought they were working for someone else.

I listened to the new age advice and I started making plans. That's when I first heard about a new age healing technique called Quantum Touch.

I was ready to try alternative medicine. I got First Degree Reiki and then became a Quantum Touch practitioner. At the first QT workshop, working with a partner with this new age healing technique, running energy on my leg, I started to feel better. At lunchtime, I wanted to go for a walk - something I had not wanted to do for about a year. By the end of the day, I wanted to go dancing.

I continued running energy into my sore leg, the way we were taught at the QT workshop, and the pain went away completely.

I kept an appointment with the foot specialist, who had given me the big needle in the heel, shooting me with cortizone. He gave me a sophisticated, contemporary, mainstream medicine, test so he could analyze my response: He took a hammer and whacked me on the bottom of my foot.

A few months earlier, for the same test, he called in an orderly in case I needed to be restrained. He said the cortizone shot hurt some guys so much they tried to kill him with their bare hands right there in the hospital.

When he hammered my foot, I barely blinked.

"No cortizone for you," he said.

I was cured.

I kept going with my plans for changing my life at age 50, saying "take this job and shove it, I ain't workin' here no more". I took early retirement, went to a lot of retirement parties, said farewell to my students at a big assembly, hosted commencement at the end of the school year, and I was outta there.

It took just four days to sell my house and one quick trip to find an apartment.

My new age coach says things fall into place when you are on the right path, doing your life's purpose; the universe opens up for you and gives you everything you ask for.

I wanted to write. Freelance writing opportunities arrived via e-mail every day. Soon I was doing four stories a day and on track to make more money they I had as a teacher. I wanted to work as a healer. My new age coach sent me an e-mail announcing a new course leading to a certificate in spiritual healing at the International Centre for Holistic Studies. I wanted to write some novels. I got e-mails from friends reminding me about the 3-Day Novel Contest, in Canada, and NaNoWriMon, in the USA. I wanted to run some workshops. The local library invited me to be their writer in residence, do a reading, run workshops of my own and for other writers, and create a new novel marathon. We launched The Great Canadian Winter Novel Marathon in February at the library in Pickering.

The winter novel marathon makes Pickering in February feel like Paris in the springtime.

I was in the flow, for a while. But then, as it happens, I experienced the ebb, as well.

For a little while, it felt as though everything stopped. I was missing my old life up north. I got an offer to go back, to teach up north, and I almost took it. I decided to hang in there, stick with it, keep going with my plan for a new life. I got invited to a local healing circle. I started getting calls from the local school board to teach whenever I wanted. I discovered new magazines and got lots of ideas for non-fiction book projects as well as novels - all of them about healing, in one way or another.

The power plant shut down a couple of its reactors. I discovered the area around the nuclear generating station is a reclaimed wilderness area. The largest wind turbine in North America is between the power plant and the wetland area by the beach on the shore of Lake Ontario.

Who knew?

It has been an amazing journey.

Lao Tze is famous for saying "The greatest journey starts with a single step". In my case, the greatest journey started when each step became painful.

You have to watch for the signs.

There is an old joke about a guy who goes to the doctor and says, Doc, it hurts when I do this. And the doctor says, So don't do that.

What I've learned is that sometimes if it hurts to take a step, you're just going in the wrong direction.

I'm happy, despite the international situation, which is desperate, as usual, according to the media. It may be the era of unprecedented natural disasters and fear inspired by international terrorism. Just when it appeared peace was finally starting to break out, the political situation was not as desperate as usual, the planet suffered a series of hurricanes, starting with a tsunami, and many fear it will end in a pandemic of avian flu that will make SARS look like mad cow disease.

As we enter the era of the Divine Feminine, my new age friends say, Mother Earth is reacting to a century of war and pollution, not to mention racism and the growing gap between the rich and poor, but I am walking on my path to bliss and I say, "The better it gets, the better it gets."

Martin Avery, B.A., B.Ed., M.F.A., A.Q. Drama, CISH, Reiki Master, Quantum-Touch Practitioner, of Soul Guides & Spirit Mates. He is an author, educator, and healer. An amateur gardener and cook but a professional writer, photographer, and workshop facilitator. He's also behind The Great Canadian Winter Novel Marathon in February. Feel free to visit his website.

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