In 1998, I entered my very first Religious Science Church and I began the journey to discovering the Power of my Mind. At that same time, I was in the throes of a difficult divorce. I’d been married for 27 years. I was also beginning a new relationship with Patrick Feren. I had a lot of conflict going on in my mind. My heart and mind were definitely not beating in coherence. However, I didn’t know that. All I knew is that I was both filled with joy and filled with angst and guilt at the same time. As we know a house divided against itself cannot stand. My broken house was experiencing the worst sciatica of my life. I was in pain all the time – sitting, walking, standing.

Yet, I kept going. I got involved in the Church from the very moment I heard that I could have my heart’s desire. At that time, it was to be a working actress. I studied the Principles. I had practitioners treat for my sciatica. I would not relent. I didn’t understand that the cause needed to be released. I went to chiropractors, acupuncturists and anyone that offered healing.

You can’t just treat symptoms. Consciousness must be changed. The practitioners were telling me this, but I wasn’t getting it. Yet, I kept going.I remember being involved in a musical review that we were doing at one of fundraising galas and actually standing there in acute pain. But, I just kept going. I studied. I read. I kept asking for Treatment. I sought outside help.

Then one day, through a path of synchronistic twists and turns that I know was an answer to the Treatments, I found myself in the room with an Doctor of Osteopath, who I met through a acting project I was doing. I told him about my sciatica and on lunch break, he asked if he could work with me. As he examined me and performed his physical maneuvers, he began to ask me questions about my past, my present, my emotions and feelings. Something clicked in and when I arose from that table, I was healed. Within a week’s time, the sciatica that I had experienced for well over 25 years was released from my body.

One might ask, how did the healing take place? Was it all the Spiritual Mind Treatments? Yes. Was it the Osteopath and his questions and maneuvers? Yes. But, what was it that created the healing. The answer is simple and it is the answer for all of us. It was me. I am the healer. You are the healer of your life. However, as Dr. Ernest Holmes once wrote, we can’t heal from anything if we are not willing to release the cause. We can treat symptoms all we want, but the cause must be released and it is always a mental emotional one.

That day on the Osteopath’s table, I released my cause. I became a new me. The sciatica could no longer live in my body. This is the truth about healing. We must literally become a new person. As Jesus said, we must lose our life to gain a new one. We can’t put old wine in new skins. We must forgive, let go, and surrender to a Power greater than ourselves within each of us that is the healer. It’s not about will power or coercion. It is about the willingness to accept the healing.

I am grateful for the healer within me and within you. We are born to heal, and don’t you forget it.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita