My name is Stewart Epstein. This is the story of my healing- I share it with the hopes that it may inspire others.

Twelve years ago, my life went through a sudden drastic change.

Things fell apart. I suffered three herniated discs in my lower back, which put me in constant agonizing pain. I also suffered from a degenerative knee disease (chondomalasia). The doctors said I would never walk up a hill or dance again from either of these conditions. For months after the discs went, I could not walk at all, or sit. I was wheeled around on a board. The pain was unbearable.

My acupuncturist said that my life force (chi) was ebbing, almost gone, and that this was in fact the cause of my body giving out. He warned that other worse problems would follow, and I would not live very much longer, unless I found a way to reverse the downward spiral that my body was in. But no one could tell me how to do this. I knew it was my sacred task to try to discover how. It would require a miracle.

My body wasn’t the only thing in my life that was falling apart. My business failed. I was audited by the IRS. My marriage ended. I was anxious and terrified.

I refused surgery. I wouldn’t even take pain meds. I wanted to be as present as possible through this primal upheaval the universe was putting me through. What could I learn from this? Surely, this was an initiation of some sort.

I cannot tell you the awesome power of the pain! It was my adversary, twenty four/seven. I kept my mind present with it, like twisting daggers in my spine, it overwhelmed me. I had out of body experiences, and lucid memories of past lives.

I learned great lessons......Once, I was lying on the floor, and I felt myself lifting out of my body. I experienced deep serenity. Hovering over it, I knew I had a choice. I could leave, and let my body die, or I could go back into it and commit myself to the challenging journey that lay ahead…… I went back into my body.

In the moment of that decision, I was changed forever. I had taken the first step on the journey to becoming my true self, the person I was born to be.

I began to leave behind an identity that I had lived all my life- a self comprised of vanity, family and social conditioning- a self that was not real. All of the disasters I was going thru were serving to demolish that false self.

This ego based self was causing me to live out of sync with my true essence. It was draining me of my life force. I decided to take a stand now and try to know my true self. I decided to do a drastic thing, a thing which would plunge me deeper into the crucible of change. Even though there was risk, I knew, was my only chance of healing.

I asked to be left out in the jungle on the remote north shore of Maui where I lived, where I would either heal, or die. With little money, I lived in an abandoned broken down shack, over grown by jungle, air thick with mosquitoes. It was built on ancient burial ground. By that time, I had healed enough to hobble around with agonizing slowness. I ate the wild grass that the Hawaiians had subsisted on in times of famine. Sometimes, food was brought out to me. But mostly, I was alone with my pain, and with the ghosts that haunted the place.

I sank into despair. I contemplated suicide.

One day, I was lying in my bed, praying, staring at images of holy beings that I had put up on the ceiling, (a regular alter was useless because I could not sit by it.) I made a tremendous plea for help. I summoned the life force in my loins and energized this prayer, and offered it to God. I prayed for divine intervention. I prayed for help in healing my being that had become twisted out of alignment with my soul’s true self.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my prayer was heard.

In an eastern city in the U.S., a young woman felt a Divine Soul from a higher realm enter her body. For months to come, she was to share her body with, and serve this being, who was an embodiment of pure love. She did this willingly, as an act of service. She did not know why this divine spirit had come into her.

As she walked down a street, a stranger walked up to her and said,

“When you go to Hawaii, be sure to meet Stewart.” Then, without another word, walked away.

She wondered, who is Stewart? Am I going to Hawaii?

In fact, within a few months, her employer (she was a nanny) announced a trip to Maui, Hawaii, and invited her to come along to watch the children. Soon after arriving on Maui, however, he noticed that she had gone through a change. He realized that she was a “walk in” - that there was a different soul in her body from the person he had hired. Indeed, in many ways, she had become a completely different person. This new person was not the least interested in watching children.. She had arrived on Maui for a different purpose. Her employer let her go.

Two weeks after that, we met. She made the most unusual delightful sounds, and proceeded to dance around me in sheer joy. The sounds were not like anything that I had ever heard before. They reminded me more of dolphin sounds than human. But they weren’t that either. They seemed to evoke some higher place than Earth.

“This person is either crazy, or enlightened,” I remember thinking.

I had never been in the presence of such love.

She came to live with me in the jungle.

She informed me that she would only be staying long enough to fulfill her mission. She explained to me that she was from a higher plane of existence. She was a walk in, and had come in answer to my prayer (“my request,” as she put it.) She had been literally sent from the far reaches of the universe to come to my aid.

I had absolutely no doubt that this was true, because the love that flowed through her was more powerful than anything I had ever experienced from a physical being. To experience such love changed me forever. She was a hilarious, delightful, sometimes mischievous being. Physically, she was strikingly beautiful. She knew my thoughts, often more clearly than I did, whether we were near by or far away. (This could be embarrassing.) I fell in love with her, and she with me. The Universe had created the perfect way for me to receive the healing that I had prayed for.

I, who had nothing to lose, because I was on the brink of taking my own life, threw myself into this love with total abandon. I felt that in loving her, I was loving the Goddess Herself, because it was She, that had come to my aid. In the surrender of loving her, I caught my first true glimpses of my own soul. It was through divine love that Spirit planted the seeds in me for awakening. It would take years for them to sprout and grow. They are growing still.

As my spirit healed, my body, slowly but surely, followed suite.

Now, years later, never having taken meds, or surgery, or physical therapy (except hiking through chest high jungle grass) my body has healed, and still grows stronger day by day. I hike mountainous trails and dance barefoot for hours. I am free of pain. I know that this outer healing is but an expression of the healing that occurred deep within, when I once again became aligned with the truth of my existence.

I learned that the spirit must heal before the body can. That the greatest healing comes from Divine love. That life essence and health comes from alignment with the Truth of who we are. I call this truth the Higher Self.

Post Script:

Someone once shared with me a story of her healing. The faith that that story gave me was like a thin straw that I was able to use to pull myself out of the quick sand I was sinking in. Hope is like a fragile straw, but strong. Because of it, I didn’t give up. And so I share my story with you. Now, I know that it is my life path to help people to wake up to their Higher Selves. I invite you to discover your true essence.

With love and aloha,

Stewart Epstein

Please feel free to contact me at: (808) 870 1668