"Perfect Spirit"

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.”
—Eckhart Tolle 
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This is an excerpt from an interview for the 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 said 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 believe those thoughts are true. I gradually let go of those thoughts.

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 was well. All symptoms through my health were simply gone. I knew it was over.

After hearing the voice, I began to taper off my medicine, which I don’t recommend, but I had an inner knowing that all was well. It took me eighteen months to get off all my medicine. I have had no need for medicine for five years and no ER visits, so something has changed.

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/.