Does healing meditation work?  A growing body of evidence suggests that healing meditation and prayer have a measurable positive effect.  TOS meditators perform a healing service written by Geoffrey Hodson, and invoke healing energy for the highest good of the recipients. It's like releasing "Smart Energy" (energy that's even smarter than our phones...), and letting this luminous buddhic energy do its work without trying to control or direct the outcome.  There's no possibility of the meditators directing results since the healing service includes only names, not medical conditions.  Sometimes healing does not equate to curing, but it always means a movement in some way toward wholeness.

See this 1990 Quest Magazine article by Larry Dossey, MD:  "Healing Prayer: A Rationale."  You may also enjoy this recent interview of Dr. Dossey by Liz Sterling at an ISSSEEM conference (filmed by Doug Fisichella).

If you'd like information about how your group can participate in this work, just reply to this email and let me know.  In the meantime, feel free to submit names of those who need healing via this form, or call 800-838-2179.

Photo by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez; Licensing

The Institute of HeartMath suggests a way to help children shift their energy when they find themselves getting stressed or upset (and it works for adults, too). Parents, please help your children with the following steps:

1. Heart Attention – Place your attention on the area around your heart or center of the chest. It helps to put your hand over your heart area. Model by putting your hand over your heart.

2. Heart Breathing – Now pretend to breathe in and out of your heart. Take three slow breaths. Model the breathing.

3. Heart Feeling – Think of someone or something that makes you feel happy, like your mom or dad, or maybe a special place that you visit, like the park. Feel that happy feeling in your heart and then shine that happy feeling to someone or something special – your brother or sister or the whole world. Let the children experience the feeling for a few seconds. The length of time will increase with each exercise.

For the love of the wolves . . .

The TOS supports the Saint Francis Wolf Sanctuary in Montgomery, Texas, which holds as its mission the rescue and care of abused, non-releasable wolves and wolf dogs.

Their website is a joy to explore.  You can meet the beautiful wolves they care for on the wolf bio page, learn more about wolves on their FAQ page, and even read a slightly revised and quite theosophical version of an old story, Little Red Riding Hood.  Now that's a story you can tell your grandchildren!

"Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission—to be of service to them wherever they require it."—Francis of Assisi

"Wolves are probably the most misunderstood of the wild animals....wolves are almost the exact opposite of how they are portrayed. They are friendly, social, and highly intelligent. Their sense of family is strong and loyal, and they live by carefully defined rules and rituals." excerpted from Animal Speak by Ted Andrews

Theosophy teaches that over the course of our human career, we will come together with the same people again and again, but in different relationships.  In this way, the love we experience broadens, deepens, and intensifies, coming ever closer to that all-embracing LOVE that binds together all creatures.

"Although we imagine that all our relationships are based at our personal level, they are in reality at the level of the Spirit, and the intervening bodies are merely veils that hide the true participants in the actions and relationships."  The Pilgrim and the Path: Living Theosophy by John Algeo

This incredible video about the father and son team, Dick and Rick Hoyt, leaves no doubt: it's the power of SPIRIT that fuels loving human relationships.

With Spring upon us, we naturally turn our thoughts to cleaning and sprucing up the exteriors of our homes, porches, patios and gardens.  The exterior of our home is all that most people will ever see of it, and presents a constant opportunity to bring pleasure, and perhaps even inspiration to others.  A lovingly tended home, yard and garden brings comfort and joy, certainly, to its occupants, but also to everyone who passes by.  

"A house is a home when it shelters the body and comforts the soul."  --Phillip Moffitt

An interesting advantage of a garden (even one as small as a basket of flowers on a balcony) is the opportunity it provides to serve the plant kingdom, and the nature spirits whose task and joy it is to tend them.  C.W. Leadbeater wrote that "Plants, like animals, are quick to respond to wise and loving care, and are distinctly affected not only by what we do for them physically, but also by our feelings towards them."  He saw that "flowers delight in and respond to a feeling of admiration" and some say that when you catch the scent of a flower or plant, it is extending a friendly greeting to you in its own way.  You can return the favor by extending a heart-felt "Hello Gorgeous!" to the plant, even if it's done silently in your mind. 

Trees, with their slower growth and longer life spans, are able to form even deeper attachments, and each has a distinct personality.  Communicate with the tree spirit by appreciating the tree's beauty and all the good it does for so many life forms.  All forms of plants respond to and benefit by our appreciation of their colors, shapes, beauty, and scent . . . and they are generous in their repayment of our attentions.

"I cultivate my garden, and my garden cultivates me."  Robert Brault

Theosophical Order of Service

"a union of those who love in the service of all that suffers"

www.TheoService.org