If you're into sci-fi you must remember this movie, Scanners. It was a riot! Scanners concerns a group of beings with supernatural, extra-sensory skills that are so strong they can bend, twist, manipulate and explode other human beings, using only the power of their minds!

This reminds me of an adventure I took with another ULC Minister, whom out of curiosity wanted to attend an S/M Seminar that proclaimed that S/M could be very beneficial with relational problems where trust was an issue. You read it right! Following was another gathering of people who claimed to have certain "extra" powers where if they wished hard enough could bring harm on another through spells and other witchcraft avenues. We were headed for one entertaining evening!

Sure enough the first hour was filled with guest speakers who passed around certain gadgets while explaining and displaying their beneficial uses. Mind you, they were very adamant while stressing inflicting pain within limits, meaning stop means stop, as the emotional repercussions could be very devastating, which was understandable. I'm not advocating this, I'm just telling you what I opened my mind to and agreed to listen objectively to. Anyway, to make a long story short, it was very enlightening and clear to me that if Ministry wasn't paying my bills I might want to consider another field as it's rumored to be very lucrative! (Joking!)

Afterwards, we decided to stay for the "scanner" stuff. This was fun as people actually got up and spoke about their supernatural powers, insisting that they could make someone hurt just by looking at them! Others insisted it was no less powerful than prayer, that if we can "pray" someone well, we can pray them bad and illness will fall on them. Now, I don't know about you, but for me this kind of mindset went out with the old superstitious wives tales. In my opinion, no one can inflict harm on someone else by "thinking" them harm. They have to physically do something to them or emotionally harm someone by their words or actions, after knowing full well the person claimed their actions hurt them. Then again, it's a whole psychological mindset as to why people continue to put themselves in positions where they are hurt by others, and that's a whole other topic in itself.

I'd like to talk about some "real" hurting that is going on and on a grand scale. A classic example is people who send viruses in their email or put them out on the Internet where someone unknowingly opens a site or file, they become infected and their computer is ruined. Computers are very expensive and people's personal information can become lost and their businesses destroyed!

Now, I ask you, why would someone in their right mind do something like that? I'll tell you why. When people inflict harm onto others it is because they are hurting inside. They have what I call a hole in their soul. A hole in the soul is caused by an emotional injury that doesn't heal properly as a child so as adults developed defense mechanisms dictated by our egos which cause us to reflect this pain outward because we are trying to make up for the wrong-doings done to us in our past.

No matter how hard we "wish" someone else harm, nothing will come of it until karmic retribution is presented, meaning they get theirs and it is usually a payback related to the harm they inflicted on another. As God's children, as we all are, we each have a personal responsibility to ourselves to deal with our holes so that we don't blindly go through our days after looking in the mirror and project that image of ourselves negatively onto others.

Sorry, folks, Scanners was just a movie and isn't real. But, what is real is if you're having difficulty with dealing with your pain and coping by hurting others or turning toward anti-depressants or other such drugs, you are only putting a band-aid on the problem and self-medicating. You must trust me on this, embrace the hurt child within you, forgive it and love it so you can free yourself and be the beautiful and loving person you were meant to be. All it takes is reaching out to another and trusting them so you can come to grips with it and set yourself free. There are many organizations offering services to help you, as you are not alone. Reach out and remember, what goes around does come back around. God bless!