EPSON MFP image
EPSON MFP image
EPSON MFP image
I first met Marie Schmidt, a diminutive old woman in her late eighties, in July of 1987. She hosted a weekly meeting at the downtown YWCA, which she played one hour tapes every Sunday, since 1961.
I had seen a simple advertisement for her tape group, while attending the International New Thought Alliance conference in Portland, in the summer of 1987. The tape group was a combination mediation group, and a forum for listening to the taped teachings of Joel Goldsmith, a spiritual healer and mystic who first began his healing practice shortly after the Great Depression began.
Marie would sit in the front of the room, and lead a 15 minute meditation, followed by the playing of a cassette tape of one hour length. She had a collection of at least 300 tapes (of which I eventually copied virtually all of them, and committed them to memory as best that I could).
I was captured by this group, which had mostly older people who attended. I believe that I was the youngest person there, for the period from 1987-1991, while I remain involved with her group. Initially, I kept my distance from most of the people, not really being sure what the whole business was about.
From Text message to Marty
Many years ago, I met a practitioner of the Infinite Way, a movement of “spiritual healing” created by Joel Goldsmith (died 1964). I met Marie Schmidt in 1987, a woman about 87 years old, who taught every Sunday at the old YWCA on 10th Avenue in downtown Portland. She had been holding weekly meditations and tape recorded playbacks of Joel’s actual messages since 1962 (she had 1000 hours of his recorded messages, which she ended up giving to me). Anyway, one day in 1988, I had just broken off an engagement to be married to Laurie Hartmann (you knew her father, David Hartmann, from the BPA-he was the famous educator and speaker on transmission line theory and physics), and I was devastated. The sweet old woman, Marie, offered me a “healing session”. Well, I had my doubts, and nothing to lose, and I was a little curious about this “healing business”. I went up to her apartment, still devastated, and meditated with her for 15 minutes. At the end, Marie spoke the “message” that she heard from Spirit, in regards to me.
“More perfect than you are, you could never be”, with “all that is human, is illusion”.
Well, OK, but how can I possibly apply that spiritual salve?
As I thanked her for her time, I then noticed I was totally at peace, and I was “healed” of all of my emotional disturbances around the breakup of my engagement to Laurie.
I later tried to have her heal my mentally sick
ex-wife, Donelle, with no success. So there were limits to her ability, though she always
stated that God heals, not herself .
I can almost now hear Marie’s voice, telling me, in regards to you: “More Perfect than you are, you could never be.” How that manifests in all of our lives remains an unraveled mystery, to be experienced by us each day that we have the privilege to wake up.
We are all blessed by your continued walk through life Marty. Love goes before you, to make all of “the crooked places straight”. You are Loved, and, in fact are Love Itself. The body goes where it must, but also, Marty, so do you.
Go in Peace and Love, for that is who you always will be. Your body will respond as it must.
