Healing Gaze

So I woke up the other morning and walked out into the living room to find my mother on the couch watching a DVD. The DVD was about this guy from Croatia who apparently has the power to heal people – simply by staring at them. I swear I am not making this up. He simply goes by the name Braco, and he has supposedly rid people of cancer and helped people walk again and is reportedly the mastermind behind Britney Spears comeback (okay, so I made that last one up). Apparently he has the ability to manipulate energy or something and heal people, and does this by just staring at rooms full of people.

I wasn’t really surprised that my Mom was watching this; my Mom is one of those people who is always trying the latest weird healing methods. Technically, nothing is ever wrong with her except for the fact that all she ever does when she isn’t at work is sit on the couch eating snacks and watching DVDs about mystical healing methods. At various points, our house has been filled with things that sounded like ingredients to a magical smoothie. At one point, we had tons of cases of something called gogi berries. At the moment she is preaching some things she learned in a book about eating right for your blood type. She told me that since I have blood type O, I am supposed to avoid pork, milk, cookies, meat, fish, lettuce, tomatoes, air, frozen foods, refrigerated foods, red foods and any foods with more than three vowels. According to this diet, I can basically eat only celery and dirt (unless you are one of those weirdos that count “y” as a vowel).

Anyway, so these new “gazing sessions” are her latest fad. Apparently Braco is in Hawaii, so my Mom asked me if I wanted to come with her to a session. Since my New Year’s resolution was to be open to trying new things, I enthusiastically jumped up off the couch and said “No.” Then I sat back down, because sudden movements hurt my back. I am the opposite of my mother; I’m not a big believer in any sort of medicine or healing. When it comes to healing, I believe in the holy trinity: sleeping, eating and beer. So I was not about to go pay some money to have some guy stare at me. I mean, I had my doubts that somebody staring at me would make me feel better (unless that somebody was Megan Fox).

But I was a bit curious about how this whole thing worked, so I eventually went. Plus I was really, really bored. Besides, it was only $6. Apparently the guy is loaded and doesn’t need the money and practically does this stuff for free. I mean, except for the fact that you have to pay for his plane ticket and his hotel room and buy his instructional DVDs and jewelry and autobiography.

So after we got our ticket, we took a seat in our room. We were told to sit wherever our “energy” directed us. And as with most of my college classes, my energy was directing me to the back row where I could sleep, because I used up all of my energy trying to figure out where to sit. But my mother’s energy apparently was telling her that we should sit in the smack-dab middle of the room, next to the weird couple that was clearly way too into this.

The first thing I noticed was that the crowd was clearly made up of a certain demographic. That is to say, everybody was old and white. I was easily the youngest one there. Part of it is that there is actually a warning outside that prohibits people under 18 and pregnant women due to – again I’m not making this up – “the potency of the energy.” At that moment, all I could picture was Yoda using Jedi mind tricks to fly me across the room, and I was beginning to wonder if that was the real reason my Mom wanted to come to this thing.

Anyway, the session lasts about 30 minutes, but Braco is only involved in about eight of those minutes. The first fifteen minutes or so was people sharing their experiences, and of course the first person to speak was the lady next to me. She started talking about seeing “balls of liquid crystal” and “bright rays of light,” which raises several questions. What type of drugs is she on? Where can I get some? What the hell does liquid crystal look like? Not coincidentally, she and her husband also had tropical drinks from the hotel bar, so maybe showing up drunk helps with the “energy.” Give me enough Mai Tai’s and I’ll be finding balls of liquid crystal everywhere.

Finally, we all stand up and Braco comes in and gets on a stand in the front of the room. And then for ten minutes he just stares at you, and it is indescribably creepy. He doesn’t say anything (in fact nobody has heard him speak publicly for years) or do anything, he just stares out into the crowd. Some people also hold up photographs of loved ones, because supposedly his gaze is supposed to be able to go through photos (apparently it can also work through Skype). But mostly, you are just supposed to stare back. It's like a really bad first date.

After it is all done (and the guy next to me stopped having weird spasms), you just leave the room. And I’ll tell you what, despite my cynicism and disbelief, I left the room feeling something very strong deep within myself: hunger. Frankly, I was starving, and standing up for ten minutes and staring at this guy was exhausting.

In conclusion, I have no idea why I am paying money to go to school when I could be making money by staring at people. So I’ve actually been practicing on people here, and I think it’s going well so far. I’ve only been pepper-sprayed five times.