Brenda's Bicycles

 
(This is the fourth installment of a series of posts describing my experiences in San Marcos, Guatemala from November 7^th up to the present time. Subsequent posts will follow very soon.)

I remember like it was yesterday. The first few weeks of sharing an apartment with Sandra felt like living in a magical fairy tale. As we gradually prepared to begin Nadia’s course, our lives were filled with joyful growth and laughter, frequent spiritual conversations, and delightful outings with our friends. As the first day of our classes finally arrived, Sandra and I found ourselves giggling with excited anticipation and child-like joy.

“Let’s be silly and pretend that we are penguins.” I teased Sandra as we prepared to make the five minute walk down to Nadia’s house.

The playful unexpected thought had not been premeditated – the silly idea simply surfaced out of thin air and found itself escaping through my out-loud voice. A few minutes later, at 8:45 a.m. Sandra and I waddled out the front door and turned the deadbolt three times to secure the lock.

“Hi, my name is Pingoo.” Sandra exclaimed joyfully with an outstretched hand. “What’s your name?”

“Nice to meet you Pingoo.” I replied. Then, with barely a second to think, I quickly added, “And my name is Pinga.”

The two of us must have been quite the comical sight as we waddled side-by-side down San Marcos’ main cobblestone walk, completely ignoring the smirking faces of those who stopped to watch. In typical penguin fashion, we stood up straight, with our arms held tightly at our sides and our legs clenched firmly together. Pointing our hands and feet outward, we wobbled, wiggled, and giggled, back and forth down the one-hundred-yard sloping path all the way into Nadia’s front door.

Have I told you Lately?

When Sandra had first suggested the possibility of renting a home together, I was both ecstatic and frightened at the same time.

Joyful anticipation filled my heart at the thought of sharing space with such a beautiful and spiritual young woman. Even though she is only twenty-three years old, I saw Sandra as my spiritual teacher – a powerful and wise “old soul” growing up in a young and vibrant body.

At the other end of the pendulum swing, fear of messing up an amazing friendship taunted me, telling me that I would fail. I know myself well enough to realize that I often crave privacy and space – a quiet place to write, along with ample uninterrupted time to do so. If I cannot find that space, I have in the past experienced a tendency to feel trapped, sometimes projecting my confusing feelings onto others. Uncertainty laughed in my face, telling me that if I were to share an apartment with Sandra, my whole life would be shaken up, and that I might regret the loss of privacy and possibly even the friendship.

It was not until Sandra and I spent a house-hunting day together that we both knew, without any doubt, what we would be doing. Our hearts were both strongly and energetically guided to the same newer and modern two bedroom apartment right in the center of town. Yes, it was a done deal – we would be sharing the apartment together.

I instantly knew that I had made the right decision. I can only remember one time during our nine weeks together when I started to judge and to project – but I quickly turned that one around by tearfully apologizing to Sandra for what I was beginning to do.

“Have I told you lately how much I love living with you?” began to be a common phrase that we frequently spoke to each other – sometimes even multiple times in the same day.

Old Souls

On an almost daily basis, I continued to be amazed by the depth of Sandra’s soul. We became each others’ teacher. Many times she would offer deep gratitude for the insights into life and love that I was able to share with her. And my statements of loving gratitude to her were every bit as frequent. I learned so much simply by watching and observing her, especially in the social arena.

At times it felt as if we were a mother-daughter combo, at other times I felt as if we were two teenage girls having a fun giggle together. And then there were times when Sandra glowed with love and endearment as she told me that, in many ways, my personality reminded her of her father.

But always, we continued to feel the incredible depth of our soul connection – to recognize that the wisdom within each of us is very ancient – far older than the age of our physical bodies.

One of our favorite things to do during our frequent spiritual conversations would be to suddenly burst into the shaking voice of a little old woman, squeaking out words such as: “You are such an oooollllldddd soul.” – or – “We are such oooollllldddd souls.”

Guess Who’s Coming to Visit

It is 9:30 p.m. when an unexpected visitor shows up at the patio door. Sandra and I are in the middle of deep meaningful conversation. Our day has been delightful – including a morning session with Nadia doing facials and learning the meridian points on the face.

Playing with acupressure points around the eyes had again caused me to focus slightly on the fears regarding my right eye. But as I did so, I had realized that I am now completely at peace with whatever happens. Inner feelings confirm that all is perfect – so perfect in fact that I almost completely forget that today (November 20) is the exact one-year anniversary of my last physical trauma. Gratitude still fills my heart for the life-changing experiences related to that third degree burn in the Yucatan.

But conversations and memories all disappear into nothingness as we open our patio door, and a bubbling and animated Keith walks out of the late-night darkness into our cozy living room, excited to share the many events of his day with us.

Keith quickly tells about some fun spiritual experiences and synchronicities that are unfolding in his own life. His most recent one occurred as the result of feeling a prompting to walk into town to go to the “Tienda El Centro” (The Store in the Center). Directly in front of the store, Keith had become engaged in a powerful conversation with two people from Catelonia (a part of Spain).

“They scheduled an impromptu chocolate ceremony with me for tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m.,” Keith tells Sandra and I with animated passion, “and I feel strongly that I would like the two of you to both be there as well.”

“I’ll be there for sure.” I respond with slightly mixed feelings.

For several days now, I had been planning to spend my Sunday engulfed in non-stop writing. Suppressed creative passions were bubbling inside – but I also intuitively sensed that this session with Keith was one that I should not miss.

“I guess my writing can wait a few more days.” I reluctantly whisper to my soul.

Keith then looks into Sandra’s eyes and tells her that he has definitely not been seeing enough of her, and that she has some powerful work that she needs to do before she goes home. Sandra hesitates in responding because she already has plans to spend her Sunday with Sharon, shopping for family gifts and running last minute errands.

“But Sharon will be waiting for me in the morning.” Sandra blurts out.

I can intuitively sense that Sandra wants to participate in the ceremony, but is feeling trapped by previous commitments. I quickly point out that we could take a Tuk-tuk out to Sharon’s home in the morning (a 20 minute walk) and leave her a note, letting her know about the change in plans.

“I guess that would work.” Sandra responds hopefully. “But I need to sleep on it before I am sure regarding what to do.”

Get Out Of Your Head

The air is crisp and cool as the early morning sun peeks above the mountains across the lake. Sipping my mug slowly, the hot lemon water gently warms my tummy. The banana trees below are especially beautiful on this magical Sunday morning.

As I drift in and out of meditation, I am again drawn to the memory of my intuitive prompting earlier in the week – the one telling me that Sandra needs to help me with something before she flies home to Australia. Something deep in my heart tells me that today will be the day that this happens.

When Sandra finally brings her own mug out onto the porch I can intuitively sense her slight confusion.

“Have you decided what to do yet?” I ask with hopeful curiosity.

“I don’t think I am going to the ceremony this morning.” Sandra begins. “There is so much I want to do today and there is just not time …”

“Is that answer coming from your head or your heart?” I ask lovingly.

Intuitively, I know that Sandra needs to go to the ceremony, but I also know that if I try to push her, my effort will backfire. I want to try to reason with her, to coax her, to convince her – but instead I do something even more difficult. I say nothing more. Waiting quietly, I return my focus to the beautiful nature scene directly in front of me.

“Sandra is deeply intuitive,” I reassure myself. “As soon as she connects with her heart, she will know what to do.”

“I guess I am going with you to Keith’s this morning.” Sandra pipes up a few minutes later. “Thank you for reminding me to pay attention to my heart.”

At 8:00 a.m., the two of us hop into the cramped back seat of a funny-looking Tuk-tuk. Five minutes later, I wait in the small three-wheeled motorcycle taxi while Sandra runs down a jungle path to leave a note for Sharon. By 8:15 we are being dropped off back in the center of San Marcos – just enough time to regroup and to stroll out to one of my favorite spots on the other side of town.

Explosion of Tears

Six of us are gathered in a small circle of chairs on Keith’s cozy little porch. The morning sun is now quite warm, as is my heart. I love participating in these types of healing ceremonies – both for my own personal healing and because of the joy that I receive when I am able to help others in one small way or another.

After the initial formalities and discussions, the ceremony is finally underway. Adela, a beautiful woman from Catelonia, appears to be in the process of uncovering some deeply buried energy. Her face fluctuates frequently, vacillating between looks of fear and terror intermixed with joyful bursts of smiles and giggles. I have no idea what is going on in her mind, but I am fascinated to be an observer.

“Brenda,” Keith soon interrupts, “I want you to connect to Adela’s energy.”

“I guess I get to do a few things to help Adela,” I think to myself as I naively interpret Keith’s intentions.

Immediately, I lock eyes with this amazing woman. I hardly even blink. Adela is sitting directly across the circle from me, perhaps seven or eight feet away.

I do not know exactly how it happens, but I almost immediately feel as if I am connected to Adela’s soul. I began to laugh with her and I begin to cry with her. I feel her fluctuating emotions. But I am unsure, perhaps even slightly confused, as to whether the emotions I am experiencing are hers or if they are my own. And exactly whose emotions is she feeling? Mine or hers? I simply do not know.

One thing I do know is that when I maintain my unbroken eye connection, I am looking directly into the eyes of God. Her joyful ecstasy is my joyful ecstasy. Her fearful shaking is my own trembling fear. My heart continues to soften. I feel a deep recognition of unconditional love. I do not have the slightest clue where this is all leading me, but I absolutely love the experience – the sensation of hanging out and communing with divinity herself.

After perhaps fifteen minutes, I am quite surprised as I overhear Keith ask Sandra if she would like to come over to work with me.

“Why do I need help?” I think to myself. “The only thing I am doing is helping Adela. This is not about me … or is it? What does Keith have up his sleeve this time?”

Sandra seems to intuitively know exactly what to do. Grabbing an overstuffed pillow, she kneels down on the ground directly in front of me. Ever so gently, Sandra places her hands in the middle of my forearms – just above my wrists. Instinctively I respond by wrapping my own fingers around her tiny warm arms.

As our energies connect, I get an immediate intuitive sensation that Sandra is about to take me somewhere – somewhere deep in the subconscious world – somewhere that I cannot quite reach by myself.

I feel Sandra’s gaze staring directly into my eyes, but Adela and I maintain unbroken eye contact with each other. I am still not sure what is happening – not sure if Sandra is helping me so that I can help Adela – or perhaps it is the other way around. Perhaps Sandra and Adela are both helping me. I do not seem to have the answer.

I give up trying to figure things out, surrendering to the present moment, releasing all attachments as to what may or may not unfold.

A deep internal longing begins to hope that perhaps Sandra is about to take me into a deep right-brain oneness experience – perhaps deeper and more profound than I have ever before imagined. I totally believe Sandra to be capable of doing such a thing.

I surrender to this thought. I crave such a oneness experience. I still have no idea how to get there on my own, but yes, I will allow her energy to guide me. I am eager to find out where it leads.

As I continue staring into Adela’s eyes, I am no longer confused regarding whose emotions that I am feeling. As I anticipate what might be about to happen, I begin to experience feelings of sheer terror – and I know that the terror is my own.

As I surrender to the emotion, I begin to literally shake with fear. The sound coming out of my mouth is a funny cross between moaning and shaking – a vibrato type of terrorized whimper that only intensifies as time goes on.

“Good Brenda,” Keith interrupts, “now we are getting somewhere … let it come up … let it come out …”

Ego wants to hold back – to suppress the embarrassing emotion.

“You are supposed to be a healer!” Ego taunts me. “You don’t deserve to emotionally lose it and to do your own work in front of such a group. You are supposed to be the strong one – the capable and the healed one.”

I ignore ego’s subtle manipulation, continuing down the rabbit hole of the unknown, allowing my fearful sobs to go even deeper. Intuitively, I begin to recognize that I am regressing into deep teenage suffering. This was a period of my life where the emotional anguish was often unbearable. I had believed myself to have already popped the cork on all these buried emotions – but I was obviously mistaken.

I surrender.

Again and again I surrender, going deeper and deeper into the intense painful memories.

As the sobs and shaking continue, I am fully aware that Sandra is giggling and laughing, rocking side to side as she appears to be having the best time of her life. Our forearms are still tightly interlocked.

Somewhere in the process, I realize that between my painful sobs, I too am giggling – both giggling and crying at exactly the same time.

I begin to rock back and forth in synchronized harmony with Sandra. In my mind, I imagine two beautiful little penguins, one helping the other to access and to release deep buried slimy emotion. The little penguins both know that this is all an illusion, and they turn the process into a game.

After what must be at least a half hour of continuous gut-wrenching terror-filled sobs, my physical body begins to collapse. The intensity of the emotion passing through me is so powerful and dark that I can no longer sit upright. As I collapse forward onto Sandra’s hands, I feel as if I need to vomit – not in a physical way but in a deeply emotional way.

Sandra releases her grip on my hands and begins to move them to my crown chakra. I momentarily lift my head, make eye contact with my dear friend, and smile.

“Hello Pinga.” Sandra smiles with a giggle.

“Hello Pingoo.” I giggle before returning to my emotional purging, continuing to rock playfully from side to side.

“I knew it.” I proudly think to myself. “I knew that she was sending me her playful Pingoo energy.”

Deep gratitude flows through my heart. I am fully aware that Sandra is doing exactly what I need her to do to help me before she leaves. She is helping me to access and to free all of the thick volumes that fill the shelves of a huge emotional library – an intense library that is figuratively overflowing with long-forgotten buried pain.

Intuition tells me that I am literally expunging all of the remaining emotional sludge that has been buried away in my solar plexus since those excruciatingly painful years of my life. I don’t know how I know this – but I just know it.

Surfacing in my heart are gut-wrenching memories – memories of aloneness, hopelessness, despair, pain, rejection, sorrow, shame, and helplessness. I feel forgotten and intense anger at God for having abandoned me. I feel the horrible solitude of feeling “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”.

The painful memories continue to surface: “I have to do it alone … there is no one to help me … there is no one to talk to … there is no one … no one … I am alone … no one to help.”

Eventually, the stream of horrific pain begins to die down. Sandra and I are still rocking side to side. She continues to giggle and laugh. I am still simultaneously giggling and crying – but the tears are softer – the emotion is settling. Finally, a deep sense of relief tells me that we are done.

As I gather my strength to return to a sitting position, the peaceful feeling of having been reborn settles gradually into my awareness. I laugh inside as I gratefully recognize that yesterday’s liver cleanse is now complete – the remaining gallstones in my liver were indeed emotional ones, dark blobs of emotional toxicity that had been stored away in forgotten corners of my energetic liver for more than forty years. In this precious moment, I now sense that these large bile-green boulders have been washed away in a raging flash flood of life-changing emotion.

Powerful Processing

When Sandra and I eventually leave the magical space of Keith’s porch, we are both floating in the stratosphere. She is ecstatic – bouncing around in joy, having found a new and deeper connection with her own inner passions as a budding healer. Not only did she help me in amazing and powerful ways, but she had later participated in quite similar energy work with a couple of others in the group.

I too am bouncing around in joy, feeling free and light – as if the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. I literally feel reborn. Only time will tell what the long-term effects will be in my life, but regardless, I know that today’s healing was indeed powerful in major life-altering ways.

Later, Sandra relates a little about her experience while working with me. She tells me that she felt a powerful and continuous stream of dark dense energy flowing out of my body, passing through her hands as it grounded itself into mother earth. When I had collapsed into her arms, and as her hands were resting on my crown, Sandra tells me that her hands were frozen in place, as if she would have literally been unable to move them if she had tried.

Yet, through it all, Sandra had known that she was in no danger whatsoever. She was light and giggling, fully trusting that she was simply a vessel – a channel intuitively assisting the dense energy to flow from my body so that it could go to a place where it could be transmuted into light. In a magical way, Sandra had become a powerful empathic conduit, helping me to release my long-trapped lower-vibration energies.

“What was amazing,” Sandra adds with joyful emotion, “is that I simply knew what to do. I didn’t even need to think about it. I just knew.”

Later that night, I again express a deep heartfelt gratitude to my dear Pingoo.

“Sandra,” I tell her, “Have I told you lately how much I love living with you? I am so grateful that you listened to your heart this morning. You have no idea how much you have helped me to heal my life with your simple act of love. There is no doubt in my mind that what you did for me was perfect. It was exactly what my heart told me that you needed to help me with before you fly home next week.”

“I love you Pingoo.” I giggle.

“Love you too, Pinga.”

Back to the Future

As I finish up my writing today, I am amazed by how life is again taking me full circle. The above healing experience with Sandra and Keith took place exactly three weeks ago to the very day. It is now approximately 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 12.

This morning, I felt a deep urge to get up early – hoping to finish my writing journey in time to squeeze in a chocolate ceremony with Keith. But as I stared blankly at my computer, a feeling of mild depression and exhaustion haunted my soul. I simply could not access the necessary energy to begin.

Finally, as I considered going back to bed, my heart whispered: “Remember to have a genuine heart and a willingness to push the play button on your IPOD”.

I giggled and reached for my little musical wonder. Thirty minutes later, my soul was on fire with energy as I finally stopped pushing the repeat button for the umpteenth time. The song “Always There” had performed its magic on my heart. My divine source did indeed show up to refuel my soul. With passionate energy overflowing in my heart, I was off and running in day four of my writing marathon.

As fate would direct, my wireless internet connection disappeared at 8:00 a.m., remaining unavailable throughout the day. As noon entered the history books, I intuitively knew that I was only an hour or two away from finishing – and that without internet, there was no point in pushing myself.

The Jedi voices whispered quietly to my soul, saying: “Take a break … take a stroll over to Keith’s magical porch … it is time to balance your writing efforts … today’s chocolate ceremony is calling you.”

Even more amazing is that my internet suddenly came back to life at 5:00 p.m., only fifteen minutes after returning home from an incredible and magical afternoon.

Today’s ceremony was indeed powerful for me. In a turn of energies, I became Sandra, joyfully and playfully assisting others in accessing their own dense energies.

As I held an energetic and loving space, I became Pinga, rocking back and forth, channeling the playful love and healing energy, giggling in my soul as I reminisced about how Pingoo did the same for me just three weeks ago.

Sandra, Have I told you lately how much I loved living with you?

Copyright © 2010 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved