Dr Sir John Whitman Ray Anniversary Message
2007
Hello everyone.
Each year I have sent a short (I like to think of it as short) communication to all within the reach of my digital pen to reflect on the anniversary of the death of Dr Sir John Whitman Ray, founder of Body Electronics. John died on 21 April 2001 while visiting New Zealand, following the expiry of his Australian visa two weeks earlier, which he only discovered as he left Brisbane airport with only a single overnight bag. Many have suggested that the stress of this visa situation contributed to, if not caused, his heart failure. We cannot know this.
What we do know is that John survived a number of near-death events from major coronaries to terminal cancers to road accidents and more over a number of decades and was in many ways in the best health he had been in for some years. Rather than reflect on the 6 years he has not been here, I thus find it more beneficial to reflect on the many years that he was here and the countless people he helped directly or indirectly. It may in fact be the people he indirectly helps who in time prove to be his greatest legacy. Whose lives will we touch in the years to come in ways that could not have happened without John's assistance to us and whose lives will they touch?
To illustrate this in a small way, in December last year I became suddenly inspired to take the plunge and create my own website for Body Electronics and Naturopathy. Although the digital domain was not John's "cup of tea", I hope that many people can be reached in this way. There had been no shortage of people informing me that I "should do that", but somehow circumstances and my own opposition (probably more of the latter) prevented it.
One obstacle for me (nearly insurmountable, I'm sure you'd agree) was finding a good name. The name for my Body Electronics and Naturopathic practice, which I'd been vaguely entertaining in the cobwebbed recesses of my mind, was "Healthy Being," but the name never quite fully satisfied my desire for it to be meaningful and relevant. In fact, my principle enthusiasm for the name was the humourous appeal of being able to answer the frequent phone call question, "Is this Healthy Being?" with "Yes, this is healthy being," and hoping the assertion would rub off on me.
However, it was not until I wrote the name down in webspeak with no capitals or spaces that I recognised an obvious truth about health hidden in the words - the secret to "healthy being" is to "heal thy being". There is no herb, vitamin, mineral or enzyme to take for this, no point to hold, no book to read - if we want to be healthy then it is all in our choices as to what and who we create ourselves to be. Easier said than done perhaps, but bottom line nonetheless.
When the ancients proclaimed the only true knowledge was to "Know Thyself" they also knew by way of corollary that this meant the only true healing was to Heal Thy Being. Getting the right name was the hard part for me - writing a bunch of stuff to put on the net was the easy bit and so following this small but significant revelation the website www.healthybeing.co.nz sprung into form out of "chaos and disorder" in a matter of a few days.
We may live or die as a matter of small consequence to the universe, but who we are, how we conduct the life we have, the attitude we take to every event, how we interact with other people (with whom we're yet to do justice to our connection) are all crucial, for these determine our growth as a soul, our progression towards perfection.
Are we not already perfect? Yes we are, but so hard-pressed are we to find the person who will allow themselves to recognise this inevitable and ever-present truth that we had to be commanded to, "Be ye Perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is Perfect."
Our perfection, the perfection of every event, is eternal and already existent. We cannot be unhealthy, unlucky, cheated, lost, or poor, no matter how much effort we put into affirming our imperfection. Be honest, did you just read that sentence and say, "Oh yes I can" to any item on that list?
It is only our refusal to be responsible for our view of the world and our actions in it that holds us from the abundance of the expression of our inherent perfection. In its truest form, Body Electronics has always been about perfection - not the creation of perfection but the realisation that perfection already is. When we look at a memory of "imperfection" on the table we but see our past, present and ongoing (so far) refusal to acknowledge its perfection. Our unwillingness to love unconditionally (not just a philosophical love, but a deeply present and intentional love) any pain, any circumstance, any loss is what locks in the manifestation of that pain, circumstance or loss.
Imperfection is nothing more than outright denial of perfection - we judge a thing not to be perfect and assume some sort of logical inference that only perfect things are loveable therefore we don't love it and lo, the appearance of imperfection. Even our so-called imperfection is perfectly created just the way we want it to be to vindicate or be consistent with our judgements and view on life. It is our being that needs the healing instead of us being intoxicated with the satisfaction of feeling justified that we see things a certain way. Our comfort zone is our feeling of being right about how we see ourselves.
Our experiences "on the table" in Body Electronics pointholding are often held up with great reverence (and rightly so) for the sometimes seemingly miraculous transformations that occur in our body or life and yet they are no more than practice sessions for our daily life. If, by practice at coming to full awareness of a traumatic past event and having the determination to change our attitude towards it to one of love in spite of our justifications not to, we can deal differently with our daily present life, then we have learnt something valuable.
Pointholding is our "flight simulator" - every session has inherent value to us, but it's all about what we do from now on. The purpose of repaying a karmic debt is not merely to be debt free (which definitely has a value), but to learn the skills and motivation to conduct life differently from now on. The regeneration of body we may experience has an inherent value to us but its purpose is to facilitate us being more effective and appropriate participants in life - not just to have a healthier or more whole body (and what a great thing that is) but to be a more healthy or whole being.
There's only one thing we need to love - everything. The more things we love, the more times we love, the more easy it becomes to love other things we thought we couldn't or didn't want to love.
There are thus no solutions to any of our problems in attempting to manipulate outcomes or perceptions or in wishing things to be different or in trying to make our body be healthy by filling it with supplements. There is one freedom and it comes from willingness to love everything we and others create; unconditional love, enthusiasm. In this scenario there are no problems to solve, only consciously recognised manifestations of perfection. Then, should the desire to continue with a certain manifestation cease, it may instantly be uncreated and something else put in its place, if desired. There is no change to make. So fixated have we been on changing things, resisting change or compulsively changing, that we’ve overlooked a third option - uncreation. Our motivations to change things arise out of denial of their perfect creation. Mind you, we're good at that.
Do not then expect healing if you look to change in external factors alone to bring it about. Healing is not measured by physical appearances, since every appearance must necessarily be already perfect, although we may choose not to see it that way. Healing is instead measured and made only by an internal attitude or outlook on life, one in which perfection is not denied.
Nonetheless, most of us will agree that we typically look exclusively at physical appearances, tempered by our judgement or ideas of perfection or imperfection, to measure health.
A wart does not need to be healed - the one without a wart is not necessarily healthier than the one with a wart (although they may be happier if that's what makes them happy, which is just another choice). The wart is merely a mark of identity, of beingness. To heal thy being is to be able to have the choice between having the wart or not, each alternative being equally perfect and desirable, not the presence or absence of the wart. It's just a wart, a thing, a creation and someone made it. "How delightful!" as John would say; what a perfect wart that is. Did you make that? Nice.
Dr Ray is not the only one to teach these kind of truths, yet he is the only one to have reached certain people with it - you and I perhaps. Others have had the masters and teachers they required and may themselves become the only ones from whom a certain truth may be received. We all have our part to play.
And so I honour the person who has opened my eyes to certain truths and honour those truths as best I can by living them and teaching them as best I can. Let each of us do our best to live the truths we understand and become more knowledgeable of greater truths. We will all heal where we can when we accept the healing we are currently capable of, without rejecting it in favour of denying the perfection we don't yet admit to seeing.
I invite you to visit my new website www.healthybeing.co.nz and I thank everyone who has ever helped me realise its possibility. Thank you John for the skills and motivation to distinguish truth from falsity.
In Love, Light and Perfection,
"I AM"
Graham Bennett
And yes, the humour still appeals to me…