Adapted from ‘©My Life with Betty Shine’
by Mercedes Leal

It must have been summer, because I wore a light jersey suit and no coat. It was a sunny day and the appointment to see a talented healer had been arranged by a mutual friend with whom I had worked. I had been suffering with slight back pain, the result of an injury sustained in childbirth and had heard that someone with the illuminative name of Betty Shine lived close by and could help me.

My boss, the managing director of a national department store group, was not happy that I was taking a full lunch hour, for I rarely took them in order to be able to leave work soon after closing time to be with my small daughter.

As I stood on the steps of the suburban apartment, I had to knock twice. Eventually the door was opened and I found myself staring into a smiling face surrounded with curly blonde hair and pale green eyes which surveyed me with a laser of observation. I knew instantly that there was something very special about this person. I could feel her gaze absorbing every aspect of my life and its history and without dialogue, I knew, as we stood mutely facing each other, that she would become special in my life.

Time seemed to stand still as our spirits spoke and we stood in silence absorbing and transferring inner data without speech. Then I felt as if I had passed a secret test as her welcoming smile broke into an apology for her delay in answering the knock on her door. It was nothing at all, I responded truthfully, as she led me to a sunlit room with pale blue walls and invited me to hop on her therapist’s couch.

I told her about my back and she said it was as good as cured; she had not even laid her hands on me yet. In fact, she never did. They hovered a few inches above my face, as I lay on my back looking up at the ceiling, and she kept them that distance away as she moved down my body to my feet.

This was a lady who could see through bodies to find the source of illness, communicate with someone across the globe and without speech or without having ever met you, could tell you all the secrets you held about yourself. Her green eyes were like two laser x-ray machines, piercing the fluff and spotting the truth. There was no point in being anything other than oneself. She knew you after a few seconds better than you would ever know yourself. She believed in a Supreme Intelligence and the Power of its Universal Energy – I called both God.

Betty had hardly started, when a gush of clairvoyance flew forth from her lips like a pack of galloping horses. She started to tell me of the continuing existence in another realm of a cousin who had died very young in a car accident. I was puzzled. No one I knew in the UK was aware of that cousin. She proceeded to tell me so much about this young man, whom I did not know well, which on checking turned out to be accurate.

Then she told me that my maternal grandmother was permanently with me and would help me to develop my career as a healer. That did not make sense to me at all, and I said so. Betty continued to say that in order to believe my grandmother was really there, she was holding a small, brown jewellery box which was all we had left of her belongings after I broke her last, elegantly formed, crystal glass at the age of seven on the concrete-hard floor of our kitchen. I could have cried when she reminded me how much I valued that box for that very reason. It was all we had left of someone special. My mother had been so gracious with my clumsiness and we both had placed great warmth and affection in the last, mottled, beautifully polished brown box.

Betty said my grandmother was showing her further evidence of survival of life after death. She wanted to convince me of her connection to both me and to my mother and this sweet old lady was holding up a gold coloured object which she said was mine, the first valuable item I had received as a child. Betty said it was gnarled – and she made a twisted shape with her hands. I was puzzled. It rang no bells at all.

Betty then added that this item caused much consternation then mirth among my parents because it was their first gift to me and my grandmother was indicating discreetly that something quite strange had happened. I contradicted her by saying she was wrong. I remembered that first item as being a gold, circular St Christopher medallion on a gold chain. I was four years old and remembered my pride at receiving it.

Betty shook her head. “No, it was not circular. It is twisted and it’s gold. Your grandmother says you must check with your mother.” I was so very sure she was wrong and asked my mother when I returned home what was the first item of value I was given as a child, confidently expecting confirmation of my memory. My mother’s face softened and she smiled. “That would have been the gold nugget,” she said. I was confused. I asked her if she was sure I had that before the medallion. She laughed and said yes, because on being given the item at the age of one, I had promptly put it in my mouth and swallowed it.

Betty continued, “Well,” she said confidently, ‘You are destined to be a healer and you will never be really happy until you are healing.” I was shocked. Healers in those days – in the late seventies – were not earning very much, Betty included, and after that first session, she refused to charge me because she knew I would help her to excel in her profession. She was not awash with funding either in those very early days; her security would come only when she expanded her knowledge through her books to touch millions how to help themselves.

I had some hefty financial responsibilities, caring for my mother, paying my mortgage and keeping my daughter at a private school. Yet Betty was adamant. I would become a healer. I was equally stubborn that I needed to earn my good salary to take care of my family, after a divorce which netted two dependents. Betty stopped healing and looked at me softly but earnestly, like a mother about to give advice to a child; but she asked a rhetorical question instead. “Why are you in a job you loathe?” I protested I did not loathe my job because it paid me so well. “Has it never occurred to you,” she continued in her calm, controlled manner, ‘that you can be paid well and still enjoy what you do?’ I confessed that I did not think the two could be found in the same profession. Her next comment changed my life forever.

“You CAN control your own destiny, and happiness is your RIGHT. You WILL heal people’s lives”. She was calm and confident. I must have looked disbelieving, for she continued, “Your grandmother says she will guide you to healing and she tells me you do not believe me; but to prove to you that she exists still and is always with you she will open paths for you to follow which will bring you many inexplicable results.”

I returned to work, my back completely free of pain, and immediately typed my resignation letter and handed it to my boss. He was stunned and refused to accept it for three weeks. I had no other source of income, and no job to supplant it, but it felt right. I had faith that something else would turn up. I would make sure it did by doing the exercises Betty taught me in that one and a half hours we spent together, although the healing was only meant to last thirty minutes. We seemed to have so much in common. My boss finally accepted my resignation and my jobs got better and better. Within a couple of years, I was head hunted to work for as executive assistant to the Managing Director of one of North America’s biggest companies. Eighteen months later, the MD resigned and I replaced him as head of the company’s European operations.

In the meantime, impressed with Betty’s extra ordinary talents, I invited her to give lectures on mind energy expansion in my home, to my friends. As these classes grew, I helped her to find bigger and better venues, finally settling at the Sheraton Park Tower in Knightsbridge, London, where my good friend Caroline was working in Public Relations. I told her about Betty and asked her if she could help. She was delighted to do so, as she was also impressed. With almost 200 people in attendance, I knew Betty was now a star and could soar unaided. She begged me over and over again to write her life story. I tried several times, but was too busy and never could get beyond the first few pages; I felt somehow she should write this personal document herself. After asking me for a year, eventually she agreed to take my advice.

Betty’s first book went straight into the Sunday Times Bestseller list; her second and third followed, reaching the number 1 position. I was beside myself with pride and joy. More books followed and she sent me a hard backed copy of each one as a gift, each with the most touching inscription to our friendship, addressing me by my middle name, Alicia, by which most people knew me at that time.

Betty was rapidly becoming a household name, with her column in The Daily Mail, and was being sought by the rich and famous for her exceptional powers of healing, mind expansion techniques and clairvoyance. Yet, her life was not an easy one and her health was not perfect; but stoicism and courage were weaved within her strong, stable character and the secrets she imparted to me over 25 years will never be revealed.

Betty’s books now sell in millions and have been translated into many, many different languages. Her lovely daughter, Janet, who is also very talented spiritually and has inherited her mother’s wonderful singing voice, continues her legacy from Sussex. From time to time we still meet. Betty died in 2002. The ‘mind energy’ lessons she taught me undoubtedly helped me to keep my mother alive for fourteen happy years after she received an ‘imminently terminal’ medical diagnosis in 1994. This success triggered my interest in expanding healing beyond family and friends.

Several decades after her prediction about my working as a healer, Betty’s prediction finally came true in 2008, when I ran my first spiritually empowerment workshop on a research basis, with a group of erudite professionals. Lives were enhanced, people were healed, and I was delighted. The workshops grew and more and more people were helped by my healing, especially the sweetest little German boy whose mother did not wish him to endure the stress of an operation. I was a little apprehensive and did not wish to offer false hope; but somehow I felt I would succeed.

The dear little fellow was deaf and about to go to school. In two sessions, using Betty’s techniques, I was able to restore this playful little boy’s hearing. The note from his mother that his German Ear Nose and Throat surgeon had declared that an operation was no longer necessary as her son’s hearing had completely been restored was one of the best to receive in my life. The photo his mother sent to me of her small son, with the inscribed declaration that her son could now hear, is one of my greatest treasures and will always be special.

Additionally, Betty’s tuition, with innate skills inherited from my mother, a powerful manifester, who worked from altruistic love and guided by my maternal grandmother, a very successful professional psychic, created the inspirational techniques’ formula I now use to help clients find a magical light within themselves which can lead anyone to great joy via the acquisition of a winning mentality. Those wonderful spiritual influences are evident in four generations in my family.

Although I still feel her presence very strongly, my biggest regret is that I can no longer sit with Betty at the Indian restaurant where we spent time so often in those early days. A third person, the late Peter Carpenter, was a part of that spiritual ‘sibling’ group, a trio of mutually supportive inspiration. Betty was right, yet again, in her predictions. As she said would happen, despite my defiant protests three decades ago, I am now in the healing profession she wished for me all those years ago – and, as she also predicted, I have genuinely never, ever been happier.

What Betty taught me, I added to what I acquired from my mother and maternal grandmother and to what I had learnt in my first out of body experience in 1992, when I was infused with light from a Being of Light I knew to be God. It is this combination of remarkably blessed gifts which I seek to pass on to you through books and seminars and Skype.

My favourite inscription from Betty Shine, as written on the inside covers of her Book, is ‘A Mind of Your Own’, which she sent to me as a gift in 1998. She kindly sent me a a copy of every book she wrote, and always included a handwritten tribute to some aspect of our enduring friendship, love and mutual support, sometimes also addressing me as ‘Alicia’, the middle name so many of my longest standing friends still call me. For twenty five years we lived like mutually supportive, spiritual sisters and her presence is still evident.

 

Adapted from an article first prepared in May 2011 for Julie Nelson of Aromatique Essentials in Australia