Mariko's challenges began when she was in her early teens, with the beginning of World War II. Although she was born in America, her parents were Japanese. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were placed in internment camps. Mariko and her family were held in one of these camps for three and a half years. Instead of succumbing to boredom, she busied herself teaching classical Japanese dance to the other inmates.

After the war she became a successful businesswoman, but she felt that something was lacking. She began a quest, looking for a spiritual teacher. She thought that this person might be at a university, so she enrolled in college. After receiving a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in education, she began teaching public school.

While Mariko was teaching, she was challenged again. She severely injured her back while putting together a bulletin board in the classroom where she taught gifted junior high school students.

She had been standing on a chair on top of a table and was getting down. As she stood on the table and lowered the chair to the floor, it slipped from her grasp and landed with its legs up. Then she lost her balance and began to fall on top of it. She twisted to protect her heart and ended up landing on her back.

Although she was in great pain, she insisted on going back to work right away so she wouldn't miss the first week of school. This experience seemed to her like the return of a severe karma, but she didn't know the cause.

Mariko had been raised a Buddhist; however, her mother had also taught her to respect Christianity. She believes that God and the Buddhist deity of mercy, Kannon, or Kuan Yin, helped her to get through those first few weeks of school.

That year was a success. The school received the School of Excellence Award from the president of the United States. But Mariko's back injury continued to bother her from time to time, so she knew that the karma behind it was unresolved.

Her spiritual search led her to The Summit Lighthouse. She began giving violet-flame decrees every day but soon had a recurrence of the injury. She wrenched her back while moving a heavy table, but the pain was not as excruciating as before. Mariko continued to decree for the transmutation of the karma and she felt that the violet-flame angels, along with Kuan Yin and Mother Mary, were helping her.

Little by little the true cause of her pain was revealed to her. She realized that she had carried on her back the burdens of others that were not hers to bear. By doing this, she had interfered with their ability to overcome their own problems and thus grow spiritually.

"Then one day I was shown," she says, "like slides slowly moving in front of my eyes (yet I think I was half asleep), what seemed like an entire picture of my karmic debt, which was pertinent to my...back injuries. Perhaps it was from several lifetimes as well as my present life."

Soon after, she experienced a dictation by Saint Germain and felt a healing miracle take place. "I could feel Saint Germain's violet-flame angels repairing and renewing the rent in my back. First vertically and then horizontally, like patchwork, the healing process went on, very slowly, until the rent in my back was totally mended and healing had taken place. I felt no pain while this miraculous healing process was being performed. In fact, I was in heavenly bliss!"

After this experience Mariko was able to sleep soundly without pain. It has now been two years since the healing and she believes that her problem has been healed for good, thanks to Saint Germain and the violet flame.

As you begin to use the violet flame, you will experience feelings of joy, lightness, hope and newness of life, as though clouds of depression were being dissolved by the very sun of your own being....

The violet flame forgives as it frees, consumes as it transmutes, clears the records of past karma (thus balancing your debts to life), equalizes the flow of energy between yourself and other lifestreams, and propels you into the arms of the living God.

--El Morya