Page 8 GAY PEOPLES CHRONICLE February, 1989

by Fern Levy

The point of power is in the present

moment.

Louise Hay is probably the best known new age teacher in this country. Her book, How to Heal Your Life is a New York Times bestseller with over one million copies in print distributed all over the world. This book and her first book, Heal Your Body, lay the ground work for her newest book, The AIDS Book: Creating a Positive Approach.

In How to Heal, she tells of her own self-cure, without surgery, from vaginal cancer which led to her understanding of physical illness as a manifestation of the mind.

She attributes her cancer of the vagina to early life experiences: rape at age five, repeated beatings by her stepfather, and love deprivation. As an adult, she attracted men into her life who beat her and abandoned her to reinforce her already well developed feelings of worthlessness, the belief that she deserved abuse, and her refusal to recognize even her own physical beauty, even though she had become a high fashion model in New York City. Her feelings of loss, guilt, and shame grew when she gave up the daughter she had given birth to when she was sixteen.

This is the book that everyone in Provincetown had under their arms as they walked down Commercial Street on the way to their Louse Hay study groups this past summer. This is a book we all need to have.

Hay says, "We create every socalled 'illness' in our body." Her concept of healing is based on this principle: first, heal your mind, then, heal your body. Our thoughts manifest themselves in every cell of our bodies. Years of negative, unforgiving, unloving thought patterns compromise our immune systems until we have disease, and imbalance from our minds manifesting itself as illness.

How did she cure herself of cancer? By transforming her negative

Healing AIDS, healing our

thought patterns, the patterns of consciousness that had controlled her life and her body. And through nutrition awareness, reflexology, colon

Louise Hay

therapy, and counseling (during which she released long held anger and resentment by howling with rage and letting in compassion and forgiveness toward her parents).

"I only attract loving people in my world, for they are a minor of what I am. I love myself; therefore I forgive and totally release the past and all past experiences and I am free."

Louise Hay tells us the probable causes of cancer are: Deep hurt. Longstanding resentment. Deep secret or grief eating away at the self. Carrying hatred. "What's the use." The new thought patterns are: "I lovingly forgive and release all of the past. I choose to fill my world with joy. I love and approve of myself." But what does this have to do with healing AIDS?

AIDS is a disease of lack of love like Louise's cancer, so all of the same principles of healing apply. We all come to this planet with a lesson to learn. And whatever this lesson is called or seems to be, the lesson ultimately is a lesson about love, about learning to love ourselves.

And why is AIDS on our planet now? Because the lesson about love is not just an individual lesson but a

Center funding and support grows

by K.D. Mahnal

Cleveland's Lesbian-Gay Community Service Center experienced a strong and steady period of growth during 1988.

Evidence of this can be seen in the increase of services offered, community patronage, and expansion funding received from the Chicago Resource Center to enable Aubrey Wertheim to become a full-time director. The Center also receives funding from a variety of national, state and local agencies.

The expansion also has meant an increase in the operating budget, which will be $118,000, three times the 1988 amount. The Center has one-third of the budget raised and has many fundraising projects in the planning stages. Financial needs are not the Center's only priority for 1989. "Our challenge is to raise the consciousness of gay-lesbian community needs," states Wertheim. A major step toward that was taken when the Center went "public" in October, in conjunction with National Coming Out Day. The event brought the Center into the local media eye and exceeded the expectations of the Center's staff. "There has been little negative feedback, and it has opened a lot of doors with the media," explains Wertheim.

Of course, the Center still has financial needs. The Greater Cleveland Community Shares program is an excellent source of funding. This is a payroll-deduction program provided by some employers and contributions are evenly distributed to the 19 agencies in the program, unless a specific agency is designated by the donor. This fund may not be available through all employers during the autumn pledge drive, but re-

questing the fund be added as an alternative to United Way may raise awareness of the fund's existence and impor-

tance.

There are many other ways in which the community may support its Center. There currently are 165 members who pledge money on a monthly or yearly basis. The Center is in the process of soliciting private donors to fulfill $20,000 of its budget, with contributions ranging from $250 to $5,000.

One of the major concerns of the Center is a specific budget for the Living Room, a program designed to address the needs of people with AIDS. This program comprises almost onehalf of the Center's budget and has received two major grants: $28,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and $15,000 from the Western Reserve AIDS Foundation. The Living Room is a social support function for PWAS that offers a drop-in center during the day and an educational support group for alternative healing in the evenings.

The Center also leases meeting space to community groups. Ten groups currently use the Center on a monthly basis. The Center also has a hot line to address community needs and offers five regular programs that include Men in Touch and the Women's Coffeehouse programs.

The most important community need is the response of the community to support itself---to be "proud to invest in themselves, to consider themselves a good investment," states Wertheim.

For more information on membership, leasing space or programs offered, contact the Center at 522-1999. The hot line number is 781-6736. The Center is located at 1418 W. 29th St., between Detroit Ave. and Franklin Blvd,

global one as well. AIDS, like every opportunity, comes into your life to help you learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself and to heal your life. It is not the end of the world, it is not a death sentence---it is a lesson about love. It is not about suffering, anguish, and fear of dying and death. It is a lesson about self-loving the likes of which has never before seen on this planet. And gay men are learning this lesson of love all over the world, healing their lives, and often healing their disease too.

George Melton and Wil Garcia are two very beautiful men. When they speak, you know immediately that they speak from the heart and live what they say. They are lovers. They are in remission from AIDS. The purpose of their lives as it has now become known to them is to teach the lesson of self-love, healing AIDS, and healing your life.

Initially they panicked at their diagnosis, made many trips to Mexico to smuggle out drugs which may help slow down the progression of AIDS. But then they began to look within for healing.

They learned to forgive, they learned to nourish themselves differently, both with food and spiritually. They let go of the people in their lives who were unloving, and they believed

The First

they could heal their lives, thereby healing their disease. Last year they visited Cleveland twice. When they visit again be sure to hear their stories.

The probable causes of AIDS, according to Hay, are feeling defenseless and hopeless. Nobody cares. A strong belief in not being good enough. Denial of the self. Sexual guilt. Does it surprise us that we have denied ourselves the full truth of who we are by being closeted, that we believe we are not good enough because we are gay, and that we have guilt about sex with each other because only male-female intercourse is supported by our society? Wil and George feel these beliefs contributed to their being sick. They suffered from disease, an imbalance between the mind and the body. But they transformed their old beliefs into the new thought patterns suggested by Hay: "I am a part of the Universal design. I am important and I am loved by life itself. I am powerful and capable. I love and appreciate all of myself."

What is the difference between healing and curing? In this codependent, addictive society we are accustomed to the victim-rescuer model. We used to call people with AIDS "AIDS victims." People who have been raped, incested---all victims. Now

Annual Community Service Awards

Photo by Drew Cari

Martha Pontoni and Bob Downing discuss awards ceremony.

Aubrey

Bob Downing, Judy Rainbrook, Fern Levy, Dale Melsness and Martha Pontoni