This is the second time I’ve been in a Washington D.C. taxi on my way to the airport and learned a “secret of life.” Maybe it’s the quality of the cabbies here; most are foreign-born (lots from Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Indian subcontinent) and quite educated.

Mohammad is a smiling 41-year-old Pakistani man who recently became an American citizen. A college graduate, he came to the States to get a masters degree. He drove a cab at night to support himself and earn enough money to send for his wife. The financial demands were such that he worked more and studied less until he had to drop out of school.

We got to know each other when I asked him about the Native American medicine wheel hanging from his rear-view mirror. Mohammad said he got it from an American Indian friend who told him it was a good blessing. He liked it because it reminded him that in this country everybody could pray freely. He was Muslim but he didn’t care what a person’s religion was as long as their religion didn’t interfere with their humanity. When I asked him what he meant by that he said. “If I pray five times a day but I wouldn’t stop on my way to the mosque to help a wounded neighbor, then my religion would get in the way of my humanity.”

Raised in a traditional Moslem home, his marriage was arranged by his parents. Since he came from an educated family, they did not seal the deal with the prospective girl’s parents; instead, they gave him a choice of four potential wives. He met them all, and during their initial chaperoned meeting, after introductory conversations, Mohammad asked them all the same hypothetical question, which for him was the crucial deciding factor. What would she do in if she were driving home after work and saw an accident on the road — people were crowded around the injured person whom she could not see, nor could she see the vehicle. This was also about the same time her husband usually came home. Mohammad wanted to know if she would stop. (A religious Muslim woman is prohibited from looking at another man, especially one who might be exposed.)

Only one said she would stop, and that’s the one Mohammad chose to marry. He said if she did not let her religion get in the way of her humanity, then they could work out any potential problems in their marriage.

They have been married for eight years and have two children. Both of them work six days a week; he drives the cab during the day, and his wife cares for the children and works nights when he is with them.

I asked Mohammad if he had any regrets about leaving school and being a cab driver. He said, “No, I don’t compare myself to rich people. I don’t get jealous or angry; I don’t have any room for that. I embrace my life and welcome what comes. I look at what God has given me and have found riches more valuable than anything money can buy.”

As I listened to him I thought, whatever religion he’s got is the one I want to have. Here is another secret of life: it doesn’t matter how you pray or how often, a person of faith is one whose humanity comes before their religion.

P.S. To all of you interested in expanding your power to heal yourself and others, check out the upcoming Last Mask of the Authentic Healer worshop in Phoenix June 6-8, 2008 @ www.healingdoc.com

Registered for the Healing Cafe? If not, click here

As many times as I have visited Washington D.C. I’ve never been there during the season of flowering cherry blossoms, but this years National Caring Awards were held 2 weeks ago at the height of its glory. The bureaucratic grayness of Washington was transformed into a pink fairyland; trees, streets, statues, your hair, everything covered in pink petals.

I always try to attend this ceremony because the honorees restore my faith in humanity; especially the young people, the kids 10-18 years old who remind me that the American dream still lives. We are a people who; pursue life, liberty, opportunity, identify with underdogs and believe in upsets.

Among this years Young Award Winners was Ashlee Kephart, a 16-year-old girl from Minneapolis who founded Kids for a Better World” which donates books, clothes, toys, household items to orphanages and disaster victims in the U.S. and Africa. She is setting up an African chapter of Kids for a Better World, and partnering with charities in Liberia to build solar-ovens.

What impressed me most about this smiling, blond, energetic bundle of joy was her preternatural wisdom. Her father died before she was born so she only knows him through stories. Her mother and grandmother have inspired in her a meaningful connection with him. She would celebrate her birthday by stuffing notes into balloons telling her father what she was doing, learning, her hopes and even fears. When she released them and watched them drift away she felt his presence.

Ashlee just wrote a children’s book A Special Way of Remembering (www. kidsforabetterworld.com), which speaks to kids who’ve lost a parent. She tells this simple story; don’t forget the important people in your life. Think about them when you’re doing the things you love to do. When you let people know they are not forgotten, and you care about them, then even grief can be used to heal.

Here I am in the administrative center of a current war, a tightening economy, environmental disasters, other assorted crises, and I’m humming Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White doing a cha-cha on the path around the Tidal Basin. No gray buildings, cynicism or despair today, only a pink-petaled fairyland for dreamers.

P.S. Remember the upcoming June 6-8, 2008 workshop “Last Mask of the Authentic Healer” which combines the science and spirit of healing. It is for people interested in expanding their healing abilities. Early registration discount @ www.healingdoc.com.a

Registered for the Healing Cafe? If not, click here

This weekend my grandson, Ace, celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. The day before he was called to the Torah to be initiated into Jewish tribal manhood, I sponsored a Native American sweat lodge ceremony. My Akimel Authum brother Dallas, conducted this warrior initiation sweat for 17 men who sat cheek-to-cheek in the small canvas-covered, willow-framed hut.

This prayerful purification ritual is an intense confrontation with one’s self. In the take-your-breath-away heat, inconsequential preoccupations seem to melt away, and you focus on more significant issues (like breathing).

Scrunched tightly together, we spoke to each other about what we thought important about being a man; sharing a story, an experience, a teaching, that profoundly impacted our lives.
I told him a story about a young Masai warrior I’d met in Kenya a couple of years ago. Joseph was the first-born son of the village chief who would inherit his father’s position and cattle. He was also the first in his family allowed to continue his schooling beyond the first three years of compulsory education. He learned to speak English fluently and was also able to hold a conversation in French and Japanese. Joseph was working as the cultural liaison at our tent camp during our safari.

My wife actually met Joseph first when she listened to him give an evening campfire lecture while I went out on a night’s safari. After the program they spent time together and Joseph shared his uncertainties about the future. He told her he wanted to choose his own wife (not the one that his father had picked for him) and to build a substantial house (not a dung hut that periodically washed away in the rainy season). He told her would not circumcise a daughter if he had one and that his attitudes were estranging him from his father and family.

Elaine felt his suffering and mentioned to him that I was a doctor who worked with American Indians and had experience with such conflicts. The following day was New Year’s Eve, and after dinner Joseph and I had a deep soulful conversation about how people survive in rapidly changing times. We talked about what happens to those first people that I call bridge people, who cross into a world of new experience. It brings combination of discovery and liberation, as well as the potential for conflicts when one sees the world from a completely different perspective.

Joseph did not want to abandon his Masai traditions, but he also didn’t want to live like his father. At the end of our conversation he asked me what I thought his future would be? I said it was possible for him to be a good Masai warrior and also enjoy hot showers.

In the morning before we departed, Joseph came to our tent. I had to look at him twice because I didn’t recognize him in his shorts and buzz haircut. Joseph said he came because he wanted to thank me for helping him welcome this New Year in a new way. He was going home today to greet his father in this new dress and reached into his back pocket and took out the war club he himself carved. Joseph handed it to me, saying this wasn’t the only thing that made him a real Masai warrior; he could tell his story in any costume he chose.

I gave it to my grandson in the lodge and told him it was a reminder that a good man will honor the teachings of his elders, but a warrior will look at the old landscape with new eyes and make his own decisions.



P.S. If you’re interested in expanding your power to heal, join me in an exciting, unique workshop “The Last Mask of the Authentic Healer” June 6-8, 2008 in Phoenix, AZ. Check my website (www. healingdoc.com) for details.

Registered for the Healing Cafe? If not, click here

Was I the only one who wondered what Eliot Spitzer, New York’s former Governor, got from a prostitute for a $1,000/hour that he couldn’t have gotten for $100? The answer came in a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It turns out it’s not what “Kristen” did to “client # 9” that made her worth the money, but rather it was what Spitzer anticipated.

Doctors Baba Shiv, a Stanford University behavioral economist, and Antonio Rangel, a Cal Tech neuroeconomist, published a study in which they demonstrated how the brain changes when you anticipate that something great is going to happen. Lots of studies have shown that people’s judgments about quality are powerfully influenced by price; the general assumption is that expensive things have higher quality. It turns out that it’s not just a placebo effect: using neuro-imaging studies, the researchers discovered that the brain actually experienced pleasure more intensely. The medial orbitofrontal cortex, which makes judgments about pleasure, lights up more if you pay a premium for something.

The researchers didn’t use hookers (but the principle is the same); they used two bottles of wine, one priced at ten dollars, the other at ninety dollars. The experimental subjects didn’t know that the wine in the bottles was exactly the same, and the people who thought they were drinking the more expensive wine had a significantly greater activation in their medial orbitofrontal cortex.

When you’re paying a premium price for something, your investment actually increases the motivation to be satisfied. Did Spitzer get ripped-off? No, he actually got a better deal because buying at bargain prices sets you up to derive less satisfaction. No more discounted fees for me.

Registered for the Healing Cafe? If not, click here