Using My Spiritual Techniques in the World
by Zakiya Hanafi

In the push and pull of “getting ahead” in life it’s easy to get caught up in the currents of the world and lose your spiritual perspective.  Being an outsider in my surroundings, it’s also easy for me to feel isolated and alienated, cut off from my community and from my greater purpose.  I live in Venice, where I work as an English teacher, translator and interpreter.  When I came to Italy four years ago I had no idea why I was here, except for a vague need to escape my former life and to hide away.  My spiritual techniques keep me clear about who I am to myself, but they also show others who I am, and in the process, communicate a message to people who are looking for their path, too.

As a teacher, my job is to communicate clearly to students the information that they have come to me to learn.  Over the years, though, I have realized that regardless of the topic of the class, no matter what the subject matter appears to be, the only lesson that people really want to study is their purpose in life!  For example, an individual lesson with a CEO to bone up on negotiating skills in American English for a meeting in New York suddenly swerves into his relationship with his children; or a group class in a motorcycle factory on technical terminology for the racing circuit gradually comes to focus on what friendship means in different cultures and on enduring values to live by.  By trusting in my pyschic reading skills, I am able to better respond to people’s genuine desires for information about their spiritual reality, even though they would never ask me for it directly or out loud--and even though discussing such things means that we might get off the curriculum and not satisfy the course objectives.

The methods I use to teach have also evolved over the years to incorporate my spiritual techniques in more or less open ways.  For example, when I was a university professor I realized that my graduate students were barely able to concentrate because they were so focused on their feelings of inadequacy or on their anxiety about the future or on how they measured up to their peers.  I began classes by turning down the lights and asking everyone to ground and put their awareness in the center of their heads.  The clarity and creativity that resulted from these simple practices were astonishing to everyone involved.  Almost ten years later I am still contacted by some of the students who participated in those seminars.  They are professors themselves now and they write to thank me for opening up to them a new approach to teaching, one in which the participants decide what they need and how to get it, as opposed to adapting to the constraints of the institution we are often expected to serve.

A number of years ago I became more aware of the constant communication that passes back and forth between teacher and students and between students among themselves.  I began to experiment with non-verbal or telepathic techniques for teaching.  Would it be possible, I asked myself, to teach simultaneously at several different levels?  Of course it is!  Grounding the classroom, the students, yourself, is the first step to feeling safe and confident.  The rest will take care of itself as long you are clear about your own purpose and why you have chosen to be standing there in front of these people.

Recently, through my business teaching experiences, I received an extraordinary validation of the power of this sort of communication.  Three years ago I had been hired to act as an interpretor for a factory in its negotiations with Nike.  After the meetings ended, the factory owner asked me if I would come back and teach an English class to his employees.  I might have thought he was impressed with my language skills but the truth was, as I was to find out later, even though the conversation had never touched on anything but business issues, he was responding to his affinity for my spiritual perspective. 

For two years I taught English to his employees and to him in individual lessons.  None of them were very attentive pupils and I would always shake my head wondering what kept me going back there.  I had to struggle against feelings of failure in their regard.  Every couple of months I would quit, but somehow he would convince me to continue working for them.

One day, when I told him I was probably leaving Italy for good, he contacted me to hire me for a very special and confidential job: his 9-year-old daughter had a fatal genetic disease, he told me through his tears, and he somehow knew that I was the right person to help her.  For a year now she had stopped growing and was suffering from severe malnutrition.  Unless something happened to change her condition, she would have to be attached to a gastric feeding tube within a year.  Would I research treatment centers and strategies in the United States?  And even more importantly, would I be able to provide non-conventional healing?

I don’t know how anyone else would respond to a request of this kind.  I’m a sucker for perfect pictures and will bend myself over backwards to satisfy other people’s expectations.  My fear of not being perfect and of failing is so strong that it can paralyze me at times.  My first response was to accept responsibility for having created this experience, for whatever reason lay behind it, and then to get in touch with Mary Ellen Flora!

Mary Ellen reminded me that anything is possible if you have the desire and the belief to do it.  She suggested that I encourage this man’s faith in God.  Over the next five months, thanks to a long-distance reading and the CDM Healing Committee’s help, I was able to make all the arrangements necessary to bring the entire family over to the CDM in Everett for a visit.  Acting as interpretor for Mary Ellen was a truly fun experience, and fortunately she was very good at speaking slowly and using simple English structures!  The changes in the family after their reading were instantaneous and dramatic.  A group that had walked into the church building afraid and nervous went out laughing and confident.  The power relations between the members were changed and distributed more evenly.  The little girl learned that she is a gold rose and a powerful teacher about love.  After the CDM reading we went on to meet the staff of the Seattle Children’s Hospital who provided top-notch medical care. 

Three months later, the little girl’s doctors in Italy pronounced a miracle.  “There is no rational way to explain the remarkable improvement in her condition,” they wrote, “but whatever it is due to, she should be encouraged to continue.”  She has gained 4 kilos and grown a centimeter since the visit.  But more importantly, she is confident about her role in her own healing.

As for me, I have gained a family and a point of reference in my adopted culture that has eluded me until now.  Giving, I have received so much more than I could have ever imagined getting.  My faith in my spiritual techniques and how I use them in the world has received a powerful validation.  Even though I still get pushed and pulled by the need to “get ahead” in the world, my techniques help me to remember that I am a part of God and that my path is part of the whole pattern.