What follows is an email string and the author has requested to remain anonymous:
Dear Mrs. Gutierrez
Having had a lot of people recommend to me the lightning process to treat my M.E. I was glad to discover your website to find out a Christian response to it. There is some helpful information about the roots of this mind-training technique.
One sound piece of advice given to me by a friend was to search the scriptures to know the truth ( The Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth… (John 16)
The Lord has led me to the following:
Psalm 106 verse 15: when the Israelites protested about their wilderness situation, this verse says the “He (the LORD) give them what they wanted but sent leanness to their souls”. Part of the way of the cross is to be willing to go through wilderness experiences and to wait on the Lord to lead us through them and sustain us / provide for us during them.
Saul and the medium of Endor in 1 Samuel 28. The mediums had all been expelled from the land but Saul did not trust the Lord to fight for him against the Philistines. He put more trust in the forces of darkness than his God. As Christians who trust in and financially invest in this Lightning Process, are we not siding with and building up the kingdom of darkness?
Anyone with M.E. would want the quick fix solution to sort out their health issue, so that once more one can assume control of one’s life. However, as Christians we need to remember we live in an upside down world (God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble), and as disciples we are not to stand in our own strength but depend upon the Lord’s strength (Isaiah 40 verse 31) . Moreover we are commanded to renew our minds (Romans 12 verse 2) rather than resume our old mindset or worse, try hidden (‘occultic’) techniques to control our well-being. We must remember that we are in a battle with principalities and the powers of darkness and our warfare must be spiritual.
I am very happy for you to include any of the above on your website but I wish to remain anonymous. Thank you for the help your website has given me. I personally have not had the ‘go ahead’ from the Lord to pursue the Lightning Process option: too much of His word deters me!
Yours sincerely in Him and His service,
My response:
Dear
Such was my joy when I read your email!! Praise the Lord Jesus Christ, and thank you for taking the trouble to write. I will include your email on the website and will keep it anonymous. Thank you so much!
On another note, you may, or may not, be interested in a technique I am pursuing called the Perrin Technique. An Osteopath designed it when he ‘accidently’ cured someone of their ME when he treated them for back pain. His theories make sound sense to me and for that reason I have embarked on the treatment. His theory is that the fluid around the brain and spine cannot drain adequately and so there is a back-flow causing back pain, neck pain and headaches and foggy thinking. He has found that the lymphatic vessels are almost ‘varicosed’ because of back flow.
However you may not like his technique as it includes Cranial Osteopathy which is an odd therapy involving placing hands behind the neck and any other necessary places to encourage what they call the body rhythm. I wondered if this was actually the lymphatic flow because it has been discovered that not only the heart has a beat but so does a little gland called the Thymus which collects the lymph from the vessels and then pumps it up to the subclavien veins. The back flow in ME people causes this not to happen very well. While listening to Ray Perrin’s talk he did suggest that the body rhythm is the lymphatic flow but I am a ‘little’ sceptical as to how anyone can sense this!! Still I personally feel his therapy is OK as far as Christian aspects are concerned but would encourage Christians to check it all out for themselves and make their own decision.
I am about 30% better than I was and it is my husband, children, sisters and friends who have noticed. It is a slow process (not a lightning cure!!!). My treatments started in November, I think it was, 2007. Ray Perrin says it takes about 2 years and not everyone gets completely well but most do get a lot better, with some making a 100% recovery.
Like you I finally accepted my illness, thinking that it was where God wanted me and I have learnt a lot and so has my husband! So for that I bless the fact that I have ME because of the huge learning curve! But as we turned into January 2008, a little voice seemed to say: This is the year you will get better. Well I wait to see about that!
Whether I will ever be 100% better I don’t know. But suffice to say today it is nearly 10:20pm at night and I am still compus mentis – normally I would be a foggy, soggy, limp lump on the settee comatosed in front of yet another Murder She Wrote to switch my brain to sleep mode and hopefully keep it there for one or two or three hours.
My sleep now is 8 hours more or less. And quality sleep to boot! Not all the time but most of the time.
Most recent email:
Dear Mrs. Gutierrez
I hope that you are gradually feeling better. As you will remember, we had some email exchange about the potential spiritual dangers of the lightning process. Just for your information, I thought you would be interested to know two things:
Firstly I had a very interesting email from your local M.E. group president who forwarded to us an email from a person who had gone through the lightning process and felt extremely uncomfortable afterwards by such techniques as powerpoint presentatations proclaiming the wonders of the process and the need to really BELIEVE in it all, or otherwise you would not be healed through it. This person mentioned how certain words and phrases were used. I wonder if that is similar to how mesmerism is executed?!!
Secondly a vicar, a born-again Evangelical went through the L.P. a year or so ago. On the phone he told me how much he had benefited from it. Unfortunately his symptoms have now returned.
I don’t want to flog this subject since I believe we have both closed the door to the L.P. option because of spiritual and biblical reasons. I just wanted to give you some reassurance that we have made the right decision! Praise the Lord!
Every blessing in Christ,
A respected health professional said:
One man came to me in despair after having received the Lightning Process treatment, his body was telling him he was ill but his mind was telling him he wasn’t and he felt like he was going mad and was suffering from depression.