I damaged the cartilage in my right elbow in 1995 or 1996, as a result of my anger towards a sick man in recovery that was becoming abusive toward me physically. For the following 12 years, I felt mild pain, if I lifted anything over a pound, and I was unable to lift anything over twenty pounds because the pain was so extreme. However, in the Summer of 2007, while sitting on my bed and doing my daily spiritual breathwork, I experienced the miraculous healing of this injury. As I sat on my bed, simply observing my inhalation and each roaring exhale of repressed past emotion, I felt my right elbow area increasingly pump up. I was absolutely amazed! My elbow felt as if it were coming alive; it dazzled with energy. It was somewhat similar to the feeling of 'pins and needles,' when my arm had 'fallen asleep', but of a different, much more intense, spiritual quality. Afterward, I feared my right arm would not support me as I leaned on it to turn a lamp on. This energizing phenomenon continued during my numerous daily emotional clearing sessions for at least four to six months.
During this time my elbow also began vibrating in public. One Sunday morning, I read that the early church father, Irenaeus, had referred to the communion bread and wine as 'the medicine of immortality,' and I comically told myself, "Wow, I need some of that drug." I then jumped up and went straight to the first Roman Catholic mass that I had been to in years. I arrived twenty minutes early and stood in a pew. I was excited because I had been telling myself for several years that I wanted to do some orthodox spiritual practice daily and I had decided that it would be Catholic mass, but I kept putting it off. In a moment of giddiness, I joked with God that I was only there for 'the goods.' I then asked whether it was good enough to simply remain standing while forgiving everyone, or if I needed to get on my knees? The elbow immediately started vibrating! Tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor!
On a second occasion, I was retelling a story of how several people had badly mistreated me in the past, and my entire right arm began to violently shake. It was as if God were saying: "Stop, you're hurting yourself again!" Indeed, the lesson was that my repeated retelling of the hurts of the past, without consciously experiencing the blocked feelings and releasing them, was in fact, a re-living, or reenactment of the hurtful past events. I was in effect hurting myself over and over. In a third event, during a morning mass, my mind wandered into unhealthy ruminating about 'bully behavior' that I had experienced for years from some men in recovery. I felt hopelessly blocked from my recovery by these men that I thoroughly resented. My mind would rehearse the past experiences of what had occurred in my interaction with them over and over, without seeing my part. I was standing in mass, in a half-conscious daydream, mentally rehearsing my long litany of reasons why they should accept me and treat me right---my mother's suicide, my stepfather's death in a housefire, my horrible life ... --- when the elbow spontaneously began to vibrate. It seemed to be my Higher Self saying, "Well, why don't you stop complaining and do something about it? Assert yourself and stand up to them, rather than constantly reliving the past." After sharing this with a friend in recovery, I began to let him talk me out of this interpretation. But within several days, my elbow vibrated under similar conditions, thus confirming my original hunch. Here, I was again learning to let my own conscious be my guide. This was how I came to finally launch forward to complete the bulk of my inner anger work towards men. I had stood on the edge of this abyss for many years, feeling very emotionally incompetent of handling the outcome if I really confronted them by completely opening this can of worms. I have also come to understand that what I began to refer to as my 'bubba work,' is really about confronting my early bubbas---the father who abandoned me and the drunk stepfather that abused me.
Several years later, in December 2010, I sat listening in a Sunday morning meeting discussing the topic of anger. I began thinking about this elbow injury and how it had arisen out of my unwittingly hurting myself, while alone and in a state of anger towards a dysfunctional man that had been bullying me. I then thought of the New Testament healing of the man with the palsy, described in Luke 5:20-24 :
[And when he saw their faith, he said unto him, "Man, thy sins are forgiven thee." And the scribes and the Pharisees, began to reason, saying "Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?" But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto them, "What reason ye in your hearts? Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he sayeth unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house." And immediately he rose up before them… ].
According to this passage, it appears that this divine physical healing of my right arm, may be equivalent to the forgiving of my sins--- perhaps, in particular, my sin of anger towards this sick man that resulted in my hurting myself. A major lesson here is that: while anger is a human emotion, whenever I persist in anger, or holding grudges, irregardless of whether I hurt the other, I am always hurting myself. In other words, simply having anger toward another is simultaneously having anger toward myself. Jesus stated this as, "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you." Moreover, from the perspective of New Thought Christianity: my erroneous belief in sin and the power of sin, as well as my erroneous belief in sickness and death, was what was being healed. This divine healing was the equivalent of the message that sin and death have no power over me, because I Am (the Christ Consciousness).