February 2012
By Nipun A Jacob
Brandon Bays, author of The Journey, is now in India to create awareness of her cellular healing technique that also gives the participant an experience of the soul, says Nipun Augustin Jacob
I had first come in touch with Brandon Bays several years ago when a friend gave me a copy of her book, The Journey, after rhapsodising about it. On reading, I could understand why. The Journey is a profound approach to healing. It stipulates that our emotional history is stored in every cell in our body and eventually affects its health and effectiveness. When old cells die, new cells replicate the same faulty patterns, thereby keeping the disease in its place. The trick, therefore, is to heal at the cellular level by deleting our emotional history. Once we do so the body will begin the process of healing. She points out that the Inner Intelligence that regulates our heartbeat, controls our breathing and creates new cells within the body, has the power to heal without any interference from us.
Brandon happened on this insight when life handed her a basketball tumour in her stomach region in 1992. Her doctor gave her exactly one month to heal through alternative sources, before taking the knife to it. With almost the momentum of a mystery novel, we are led to the steps she takes, eventually culminating in a meeting with a massage therapist with a reputation for working on emotional issues. Here, Brandon unearths a traumatic memory at age four. But healing only happens when she forgives her parents, the perpetrators of the incident, whole-heartedly. Then and there, her body began to shift and change and her rock-hard tumour softened and reduced until she was free of it.
It became her mission to help others also heal emotionally and physically. At one point, following a spiritual teacher’s instructions to experience emotions rather than suppress, reframe or rationalise them, Brandon decided to do just that in the peace of her home in order to resolve a recurring issue. Determined not to run away from whatever she felt, she found herself pulled into successive highly charged emotional states. First came fear, then loneliness, despair and finally a void that was so frightening that she could not allow herself to experience it. However, when she finally let go, she plunged into the peace of the soul – the domain of the real Self.
It is this technique that forms the heart of The Journey. Using NLP techniques, participants are encouraged to swiftly go through successive states of mind until they come to the place of peace. From there, they process any emotional memory that surfaces that is at the heart of the issue they wish to heal. The list of people who have healed from even incurable ailments through this approach, and who have found themselves transformed by their immersion in the zone of spirit, is impressively documented in her book.
Now Brandon is in India for the release of the Indian edition of The Journey. A student of the advaita guru, HWL Poonja, Brandon has a special connection with India which she calls the ultimate sacred spiritual hub.
How has your life been after The Journey?
The tumour was my greatest gift, a wake-up call to get real and starting living life from who I really am. Ever since then, my life has been an ongoing journey of freedom and liberation. Each moment reveals more of who I am and I pray that people wake up and find the love, the joy, the peace inside themselves. My only prayer to life is that it uses me to bring awakening and healing to our planet which is so desperately needed.
What do you think of India? What do you hope to achieve in India?
India is the source of the world’s ancient spiritual knowledge, where it meets and co-exists – all of life is here. I feel India is in my DNA. It’s like coming home to myself; to the truth inside. I am truly privileged and blessed by India’s spiritual heritage and ancient wisdom and have felt inexplicably pulled to be here.
How receptive have Indians been to the Journey?
So far, the Journey is brand new to India and the people we have met are willing to try. Indian people already know this truth, it is in their DNA, passed down over thousands of years and now there has been a calling that India is ready and all I can do is listen to and answer that call to make this life-transforming work available here. The Journey already offers workshops in 38 countries and is translated into over 20 languages and the results are astonishing. I am excited to see what unfolds for India.
Your old life collapsed before you could begin your new life of service through the Journey. You have written vividly about how a fire consumed your house, your husband left you for another woman and your daughter ran away from home more or less concurrently. Is there anything we can learn from this on how to face calamity?
My old life had to fall away, everything had to happen just as it did so I could realise this freedom. That possessions, relationship, health, jobs, money, even my physical form, can’t give me this which I had been searching for.
When you subtract the story of pain and limitations, you are naturally left resting in the joy and freedom that you have always been. | ||
I had to lose everything to realise I am not my marriage, I am not my motherhood, I am not my family, I am not my job, I am not my body…. Then Who am I? I am love. What is left is just the universal love that I realise is my own divine nature. People come and go, lifestyles come and go, jobs come and go but this universal love does not go anywhere.
How scary is it for those who are going through such terrible situations?
We are living in a crazy age of catastrophe, terrorism, earthquakes, tsunami, financial crises, relationship breakdowns, and physical and emotional traumas. Wherever I go, I see people paralysed in fear, shutdown, afraid to take action. The Journey allows you to take the lid of this fear and open to your own divine potential. Then from a clear and conscious place you can be inspired to move forward, take action and be a catalyst for change in our world.
Is the experience of seeing their real selves in the Journey the equivalent to an enlightenment experience?
Love is eternal. It can’t go anywhere or be a brief experienced moment. This eternal love is who we are. It’s unchanging. The Journey is not just a method for physical or emotional healing. It is a means of liberation to help you discover your way back home, to your own essence. Journeywork removes the veils, the blocks, the lies and limitations that have kept you small and separate from life. When you subtract the story of pain, the shutdowns, and limitations, you are naturally left resting in the joy and freedom that you have always been.
Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharishi both suffered from cancer despite being enlightened. How do you explain this?
Ramana and Ramakrishna were not their bodies. Their bodies had nothing to do with freedom; bodies come and bodies go but that eternal presence does not go. Their bodies decided to fall. That is all.
What was your experience with Poonjaji as your teacher?
Poonjaji said something that I have never forgotten: if you stay unborn, you remain what you are, and hence you stay infinite. Enlightenment is not a onetime revelation, rather it’s an ever-changing mystery.
Does enlightenment necessarily mean being physically and emotionally healed forever?
No, not at all. It is inevitable that as we live in the world relating to each other and our environments, each of us has a certain amount of emotional, spiritual and physical karma which may have to be experienced in this life-time.
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