Sources.  As someone who considers himself to strive to develop his abilities to assist healing in others and myself, I am constantly on the lookout for insights that will help me improve.

Regardless of what someone thinks about present day Christianity, I still think there is much to be gained from investigating its roots and sources.  The stories that are reported to us in the Gospels and other books of what is called the New Testament are quite remarkable, and it doesn't surprise me that many people considered them to be fabrications.  But, regardless of what one thinks about the accuracy of the sometimes contradictory accounts of Jesus given in the Gospels, I still think there is a tremendous amount to be gained from seeking out truths they might contain.

Healing Ability?  What really contributes to developing healing abilities?

Many people feel a need to tell me that I can assist healing because these abilities are given to me as some sort of gift.  They often seem to feel/think they are so certain about this that they seldom allow me to tell them my views and experiences on this.  Well, these are almost all of the very few people who have actually interacted and acknowledged that I have helped them or others with healing.

I have a tendency to suggest to these people that since they like to appear so confident that these things happen because they were just given to me, they should be very happy to pray to have particular abilities "given" to them as they were "given" to me.  For some strange reasons they have always been unwilling to ask for such things to occur with them.  It seems that many people will go to great lengths to not recognize other people's efforts and appear holy while doing it.

I also think that people, particularly certain authorities, are so willing to say that other's abilities are gifts or have evil sources so that they can deny their own lack of efforts to develop their own abilities.  While I certainly believe that people should investigate the source(s) of other's abilities to the fullest extents they can, it seems that people who really are of effort towards not being hypocritical should be willing to examine themselves and discover how their own hypocrisy impacts their own abilities.  For some strange reasons, this seems to keep not happening almost relentlessly and entirely, particularly within certain power structures.

While possibly most religious sources claim that healing is not something that can be developed, when I read the Gospels I understand Jesus to have worked with his apostles and disciples to help them develop these and other abilities in themselves.  Though maybe it really is all just based on this something called faith, that so many claim to have, but so few seem to give the same sorts of evidence that someone like Jesus (or myself, for that matter) have given.  I also understand Jesus to claim that we should all be developing things that many others claim should just be given to us.  I also remember a passage where he is cited as stating we should actually be able to do more than him.  But rather than get into this more at present I first want to list out particular citations and then discuss them later.  Though this won't happen until I've addressed some other issues.

How Helpful Are Written Texts?  One of the things I have found to be terribly frustrating is the pervasiveness of authorities who are generally pushy about correct interpretations of  religious and spiritual texts.  They seem to either seldom or never give much if any evidence that duplicates the abilities of those they claim they know the true ways to follow and/or interpret.  It is also the case that I have yet to have any of these self-professed authorities be honest about what has been happening with/through/around me.

  But while growing up I was always curious about healing and wondered whether such abilities could be developed.  But I also found the gospel accounts not particularly helpful in my quest.  The "faith" word is so frequently used to describe why someone was able to heal or be healed.  But what does this word actually mean?  It seems there are also all kinds of authorities about this, but none of them seemed to ever help me.

In my own explorations, I have found the citations of Jesus like the following to be much more helpful

• If you want to remove the splinter from your brother's eye you must first remove the plank from your own and then you will be able to see to remove the splinter from you brother's

• You are judged as you judge

• You are forgiven as you forgive

• The standard you use is the standard that will be used for you

•  The parable of the talents which relates to how people who do more with what the  have will  get more

So I have been on a quest to discern my own hypocrisy, work towards rooting it out of myself, discover truths regardless of their source and seek assistance from greater powers that are less hypocritical and better investigating than I.