"Perfect Spirit"
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.”
—Eckhart Tolle
This is an excerpt from an interview for the upcoming book Healing Happens: Stories of Healing Against All Odds.
Sam Shelley’s story is of a man plagued by multiple sclerosis, bipolar disorder, and suicidal tendencies for most of his adult life before he underwent a transformation that made him symptom free in eighteen months. And not only did he heal his body but he discovered how to live joyfully. Author of I Don’t Dwell: How I Used Meditation, Mindfulness and Yoga to Reverse My Incurable Diseases, he now is a mindset mentor and abundant life strategy consultant.
Avital: Would you share your story, your experiences before and after your healing?
Sam: My pain and suffering began early in life. At six, I was run over by a van that crushed the whole left side of my body, nearly killing me. I had a slim chance of survival. I almost bled out. I had a lot of trauma and was in the hospital for about a year, then spent four months in rehab.
After the accident my parents were naturally always worried about me, so I started to obsess about myself. Then out of that I became bipolar. I was an un-diagnosed until my twenties. I had to be institutionalized twice due to being suicidal. I also had to go through a few other things along the way: psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, and migraines. At age thirty-seven I lost the ability to walk because of multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease of the brain and spinal cord that affects the nervous system. I had no coordination on the left side of my body, and I was basically blind from optic neuritis for a while. The left eye was jumping around like crazy; the right eye was blurry. I couldn’t really do much of anything, having lost most of my functions. Today I take no medicine and use no cane. I’m pretty much a medical miracle.
Avital: That’s amazing. How did it happen?
Sam: One day I was reading a book about meditation that stated “meditation equals inner peace,” so I’m like, I need that. I began at night with a five minute practice. The first two weeks were very difficult because I thought the brain was supposed to stop thinking. Instead, I soon realized that the brain never stops thinking, that it’s all a matter of how we react to our thoughts and if we believe they are true. After three or four months of meditating—ten minutes in the morning, ten minutes in the evening—one evening I heard a voice say, “Perfect spirit.” That’s it, I realized. My spirit is perfect, but my body is damaged. Then I knew that all my health symptoms were simply gone. Encouraged by this inner knowing that all was well, I began to taper off my medicine, which I don’t recommend. It took me eighteen months to get off all my medicine. Of course, some of the doctors didn’t understand why I was doing this, but I persisted anyway.
To learn more about the book Healing Happens: Stories of Healing Against All Odds, and discover more inspirational stories and transformative health and healing tips, please visit: http://www.healinghappensbook.com/
To connect with Sam Shelley, please visit http://www.dontdwell.org/.
