Hank Wesselman, P.h.D.

The Field Of Power

In our April 2005 column, I wrote about my encounter with a young woman who had lost her power, and by association, her protection, opening her up to a form of psychic assault. I went on to describe how this problem was successfully resolved with the assistance of one of my helping spirits, enabling this individual to experience empowerment, as well as relief.

The existence of power is one of the defining beliefs of the Transformational Community—so much so that the intuitive Carolyn Myss has called it one of the signatures of our “consciousness age.”

Interestingly, the indigenous peoples are also very much aware of it, so let me share some thoughts about the field of power, derived from my own experiences and from my background as an anthropologist.

Back in 1909, an early investigator named R. R. Marett wrote a book titled The Threshold of Religion in which he proclaimed that the origins of spiritual awareness were most likely to be found within the traditional peoples’ belief in an impersonal, supernatural power or force that permeates and animates all things. He called this belief animatism.

A good example of animatism is to be found among the Polynesians and Melanesians who hold that this field of power is everywhere, in everything. They maintain that it is highly dispersed throughout the manifested universe, but that it can be densely concentrated in certain places, objects, and within living beings as life force. They call this power or energy mana.

They assert that the quality of our lives is constantly being affected by the presence or absence of mana, and they proclaim with their considerable authority that everything that happens in our lives, fortunate or unfortunate, good, bad, or ugly, is determined by how much mana we possess, or by how much we lack.

Shamans pay particular attention to learning how to maintain, and even increase, their own personal supply of mana/power because the effectiveness of all of their practices is determined by its abundance or by its scarcity. They know from direct experience that our emotional state, our mental attitudes, and our personal behavior can affect its ebb and its flow, its waxing and its waning.

For the shaman, the name of the game is power. They know that when you’re focused in the positive polarity, your personal power is enhanced. When you descend into the negative polarity however, your power is diminished.

This power is analogous to the chi of the Chinese, the ki of the Japanese and Koreans, the dana of the Celts, the prana of the Hindus, the baraka of the Muslims, the ashe of Santeria, the manitou of the Algonkians, the num of the Kalahari bushmen, the kupuri of the Huichols, and The Force of Obi Wan Kenobi.

It’s probable that all people everywhere, in every culture, have a well-developed sense of it. In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic hierarchy, this power is elevated to “divine” status, and it is usually assigned to the monotheistic creator deity variously known as Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, or simply God.

But there are also cultural echoes reflecting our indigenous roots—specifically the widely-held belief that this power is invested in certain places associated with miracles, and especially healing miracles. The locality called Lourdes in southern France is an obvious example, but there are many such places and they are known in all cultural and spiritual traditions.

Allow me to share an interesting story of an encounter with power. It was told to me by a fellow professor from California State University at Sacramento where I was teaching anthropology back in the early 1990s. It’s a true account and involves the relationship between an older woman and her son, an architect by profession.

Every other year or so, it was their custom to travel to Europe together for a month. The mother would spend her days playing the tourist, shopping and visiting museums while her son spent his hours making drawings of sacred architecture in this holy sanctuary or that famous church. At day’s end, they would meet up and have dinner in some well-known café or restaurant.

Well, as it was told to me, the mother developed some difficulty in walking shortly before their semi-annual pilgrimage, so she went to her physician for a check-up. The doctor suspected that the symptoms revealed a deeper underlying issue, and sure enough, when the tests were run, it was discovered that she had metastatic cancer.

The doctor politely informed her that she was going to be admitted to the hospital that evening. She responded by saying that she was going to Europe with her son the following week. When he became insistent, she told him straight out that she was going with her son and that this might be the last trip they took together--and if so, so be it. Reluctantly, the doctor acquiesced but only when she agreed to come immediately to the hospital upon her return.

Off she went to Europe with her son, and as the doctor had predicted, her condition worsened by the day. The first week she was using a cane; by the end of the second, she was on crutches; and toward the end of the third, she was heading toward the wheelchair. It was at this point in their trip that something quite unusual occurred.

On a weekday, as I recall, they arrived at a well-known church not far from Munich—a church known for its unusual architecture and wall paintings of the saints and prophets that approach the surreal. Because the building is out in the center of a large meadow, at some distance from the parking lot, the son had to virtually carry his mother. But when he helped her settle in to a pew, she was happy because she was there with her son, and when he returned with his drafting instruments, he was happy because he was there with her, doing what he loved best.

They spent the day together in this sacred place, and when the light grew dim at the end of the day, they let themselves out of the church and walked back to their rental car. They were almost there when both realized simultaneously that the mother was walking virtually unassisted.

Imagine their continued amazement when the mother grew steadily stronger throughout the rest of their trip. The crutches were abandoned and by the time she returned to the United States, she was barely using her cane. She checked into the hospital, as she had agreed to do, but upon rerunning the tests, it was discovered that her cancer had gone into remission.

Now it is well known that spontaneous remission does happen and we don’t have to claim that anything paranormal occurred. Yet the mother and her son were both quite amazed, and upon doing some library research, both surmised that this church might have been one of those that were built upon an ancient pagan place of power.

It is known that during the earlier part of the Middle Ages, as Christianity spread its gospel among the tribal peoples of Europe, it was common practice to establish a church on such sites, many of which were localities saturated with dense concentrations of power—places where healing work often took place.

It is interesting that neither mother nor son knew of this before hand, nor had either of them held any expectation of a cure, ruling out the well-known placebo effect. It was their opinion that the power had worked anyway, affecting her energetic matrix in such a manner that her cancer was stopped dead in its tracks. As far as I know, her cancer has not returned.

Although such anecdotal stories hold minimal interest for the academic and medical community, preoccupied as they are with double blind studies, the popular literature is filled with such accounts, suggesting that even a brief encounter with the field of power in its concentrated form can be transformative, even life changing.

But just where is this field, and how can it be intentionally encountered? We will address this issue in next month’s column.

Until that time, allow me to invoke the spirit of my great Hawaiian friend, Kahu Hale Makua, and extend to each of you the Light and the Love of the Ancestors, The Source of Life, rejoicing in the Power and the Peace, braided with the cords of Patience, revealing the tapestry of the strongest force in the Universe, your Aloha.

--with warm thoughts--Dr Hank