FROM JESUS TO LAO TZU

Another supplementary chapter for My Autobiography

When I was a child I would visit a church on the corner of my street every day to talk to the man who held the light.
He was so kind looking and I was only 4 years old when I first saw him.
I had no idea what a church was and less idea of who this man was,
but I liked the image so much that I set about finding out.

As time went on we moved away from that street and I never saw that image again but I didn't mind too much because by the time I was 7 years old I had realised that the man in the painting was supposed to be Jesus and I was already in considerable doubt that he ever actually looked like that anyway.
I knew that he never wore a jewelled cape or a fancy crown and that the image meant "knock and the door shall be opened for you".
So I did my knocking in my quiet moments throughout my childhood days and I found myself comparing all adults with him.
I read all the stories about him, like a little fan. I read what Mathew, Mark, Luke and John had said about him and I gave a lot of thought to Jesus' parables and speeches.
I considered every healing event with great wonder and I knew that Jesus had been quite firm in believing that we are all equally capable of such things.
Throughout my youth I was a singer with a local church group and we visited lots of other churches in our area to give performances. I loved doing that but began to feel very uncomfortable as I observed the behaviour of some members of each congregation.
I saw snobbery, jealousy, fake devotion and strange things like speaking in tongues, which I confess scared me rigid.

One day our church leaders decided that we should all go to a Billy Graham event in London. Apparently this man was considered a great US preacher in the early 1960s and our minister was most insistent that we should all go along to hear him.

Billy Graham speaking in London

We took a coach to London and we were all very excited. We streamed into the venue and were among an enormous crowd of 27,000 people at Earls Court.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2726358/The-pop-star-preacher-ve-friends-48-years-How-Cliff-Richard-Billy-Graham-united-shared-faith.html#ixzz50I9EoJjb

When Billy Graham finally appeared, tiny on the distant stage, the crowd erupted with joy and he encouraged them to yell things like "praise the Lord" and "I am saved" along with him.
I started to feel very frightened.
It was as if the whole crowd had suddenly become hypnotised and each person had lost their individuality..... and that was all I remember about Billy Graham.
The next thing I remember is being in the back of a Red Cross ambulance with a couple of uniformed people who were fussing over me and refusing to let me get up.
I had fainted, they said and I needed to wait until my blood pressure normalised.

As I waited I could hear the crowd within the building roaring and squealing and I eventually managed to escape from the ambulance and go for a walk to clear my head.
I had one of my customary chats with Jesus as I headed as far away as I could get from the din.

I decided right there and then that I could not trust the people from my church to act responsibly.
I found our coach and sat waiting for my companions to return.
When they did, they were so excited, so loud and so overwhelming that they did not notice how horrified I was.
One woman was insisting that I had been overcome with awareness of my sins and THAT was why I fainted. I told her that was not the case, I had no sins to become aware of and I did not appreciate her fake diagnosis.

I never went back to that church.

Years went by and I remained a devotee of Jesus but I recognised that not many people were emulating him in any way. I saw nobody trying to live in simplicity. None were healing and even less were talking about loving their neighbour as themselves.
I was developing a distinct revulsion at organised religion and thanks to following the Beatles, I started to take a big interest in eastern philosophy, particularly learning how to meditate, practice yoga and eschew all bias against other races or religions.
I wanted to learn to heal and was particularly fascinated by the evidence, from the Bible, that Jesus had apparently disappeared from all records from shortly after his birth until he reached adulthood.
I speculated about where he had been educated and by whom.

Many years later, after I had married and started a family I began to study the Taoists and Shaolin of China. Their stories were incredibly similar to those of Jesus. They talked in parables, they even explained the difference between Yin and Yang using fish and loaves.
I felt a great affinity with their teaching and found great wisdom in the I Ching but, as my studies intensified, I realised that spiritual and mental understanding was not the full story, there was more to this.

I was lucky enough to be given a copy of a rare book called The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine and I read it with a joy of discovery that I had never felt before. This was my answer.

Within a week of being given the book a close friend had been at Essex University and had jotted down an advertisement that she had seen on the noticeboard.
It was from a traditional Chinese Herbalist who was seeking a personal assistant. The only qualification that was necessary was a familiarity with the I Ching. I immediately phoned and arranged an interview.
The interview was great fun and I was asked which was my favourite hexagram in the I Ching.

I responded that Number 32 was my favourite because it signified perseverance, was the centre point of the treatise and was the attribute most needed by a student of the I Ching.

I got the job.

Excited? You bet I was! This was by no means the best paid employment I ever had, but was by far the most fitting to my interests and I had access to my new employer's huge library which I plundered mercilessly.
I was researching in his huge volume of strategies and formulae when I came upon a Eureka moment.
I discovered that Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh was an ancient traditional formula for the cure of all types of poisoning and that was when all the pennies dropped simultaneously.
I had found the way of healing that Jesus had been taught and there was no stopping me now.

Gold, Frankincense & Myrrh

Slowly, book by book, week by week I learned to become not just a secretary and a receptionist but an apothecary too. I immersed myself with my studies and decided to work towards becoming a Barefoot Doctor of Chinese Medicine.
My employer helped me to meet Dr Mai Chen, a professor of Chinese Medicine who was living and working in the UK for a few years. She was a 7th generation traditional practitioner and an examiner for the Beijing University of Medicine.

I could hardly believe my luck in finding myself with the best possible employer and the most eminent teacher who lived in the UK at that time.
After many years of study I finally qualified and set up my own small practice.
I also helped to establish a charity which specialised in the treatment of addictions.
Open Road still is the best place in Essex to gain access to treatment for that type of problem. I remained in close contact with Dr Mai Chen and she voluntarily gave our charity a lot of her time. When I asked Dr Chen virtually any question she would usually reply, with a semi-critical grin:

"It is magic, Frances! Now, will you PLEASE stop smoking and drinking coffee?"

So you see, my journey took some strange turns but I eventually reached my chosen destination, discovering along the way, that I had never known a real Christian
because Christians do not know the real origins of their master's knowledge and understanding.
He simply did not live long enough to impart all that he knew and he was murdered for trying to teach those around him.

You can find other auxiliary chapters listed in: My Autobiography.

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xx