First Meeting

 Recently I’ve been wandering down old and dusty corridors to the evening, forty-five years ago, when I first spoke to AndrewGlazewski whose book I co-authored.  It had to be during the Lenten retreat at my school, Divine Mercy College on the Thames, just upriver from Henley.

Book available in March from White Crow Books,  at Amazon, Paul Kieniewicz's website. and other online stores. Read sample chapters.

I’d heard his talks a few years earlier, was intrigued but couldn’t catch his drift so I didn't seek him out.  This year I listened more closely, especially to what he had to say about our sub-conscious, the messages we tell ourselves; both positive and negative. Especially psychological blockages that we’ve erected. Before we got around to talking about God we needed to first understand ourselves. Despite what parents and priests told us, getting to know ourselves, how we work, is not some self-centred preoccupation. If you didn’t know your ego, you could not transcend it. You needed to listen, deeply. Not only to what your subconscious and overconscious were telling you, but to all of nature. Its laws. Then and only then you had a chance of forgetting about your ego. Of receiving Divine Grace.

Interesting stuff, but my problem was more mundane: the physics exam that I’d probably failed and the specter of an unsatisfactory grade. I just didn’t get physics: formulae, constants of linear expansion, latent heat. I tended to multiply or divide numbers and hope for the right answer. While Andrew talked about listening, I fidgeted in the hard chair and worried about my parents’ reaction to an unsatisfactory grade.

 

Andrew (around 1967)

Early evening, before getting ready for bed I walked down to his room and banged on his door. Why did I want to see him? With his mop of white hair and piercing eyes he looked a bit like a magician. I’d seen him charm away headaches and other ailments. Maybe he could work some of his magic on me? I found him standing by a table cluttered with books and stuff. The room smelled of tobacco as he’d been relaxing with his pipe after a day of talks, mass, evening services and kids like me. He asked me to sit down. I immediately felt at ease with him. With little introduction, I told him about physics? What the hell was going on that physics was such an impenetrable wall? After listening to my woes he picked up his pendulum, a wooden bob hung on a piece of catgut, with a metal bolt through the middle. He held out one hand like an antenna to pick up my vibes, and twirled the pendulum with the other.

“You’ve got quite a blockage there,” he said after a pause. The wooden bob began to dance from side to side, his hand tried to control it. “Look at the way it’s jerking my hand,” he added.

Andrew --- pendulum in hand giving a treatment. 

After a few minutes he dropped the pendulum into an ash tray. “It’s going to take some work to clear it up,” he said. “I don’t have the time to do it now.” He glanced at me as if to say that I would have to do the work myself. After all hadn't he  told us all about blockages and how to remove them?

Something happened in that room. After our first meeting there was no more trouble with physics. I developed a determination to conquer it, make it my field. And unexpectedly physics began to make sense. In fact, it became my best subject. Years later I was to major in it at St. Andrews University.  

Was it magic? Though it seemed like a case of instant healing it was not. Without knowing it, Andrew had opened a door, made things possible. I had to do the spadework myself, but it was now possible once the blockage was removed. The healing was no different than many others I’ve seen, whether by Andrew’s Psychophysical Technique or by Therapeutic Touch. The outstretched hand can clear the blockage in the field but that's no more than opening a door. The one to be healed  has to walk through the door and do the hard work..