Note: this is part two of a three-part story. If you have not yet read “Part 1,” you may want to read it first …
Sunday morning, January 8, I wake up shortly before 2:30 a.m., again hacking and coughing with fluid in my lungs. My mind is going crazy. Finally, at 6:00 a.m., still awake, I get out of bed to meditate.
I cycle between peace, chaos, and emotion – not having a clue which inner voices I can trust.
“The voice that tells me to be happy and peaceful … is that ego or spirit?” I ponder in confusion. “Is ego trying to get me to push my emotions down – trying to make me suppress them so that I cannot heal?”
“Then there is the voice that tells me to go into the pain … to explore it so I can ‘know myself’ … is that the voice of masquerading ego trying to scam me?” I slip into more confusion.
“How do I know which voice in my head belongs to me and which belongs to ego?” I sink into the craziness. “I don’t trust anything anymore. I am in complete confusion.”
In The Craziness
As a result of an early morning email to Keith, I have a short appointment at 10:00 a.m. – I only hope I can survive my crazy morning until then. I am up … down … in … out … and all over the place – literally feeling insane and unable to trust anything in my head. I feel like a crazy idiot, being flushed down the emotional toilet – on the verge of being committed to a mental institution.
I ponder how emotionally stable and spiritually strong I was just a year and a half ago when I began doing inner work with Keith – and now I am a puddle of confusion and emotional mush.
If it were not for the fact that I have repeatedly experienced amazing growth and magic while working with Keith, I would have packed my bags many times over – but each experience has led me to a solid base of trust – trust that lovingly reminds me that even in this craziness, I am profoundly progressing in my undoing process.
Powerful Panic
As I walk toward Keith’s home near the eastern edges of San Marcos, I am in the midst of a physical panic attack – my pulse races in high gear, anxiety churns in my stomach like a washing machine on steroids, and my mind feels as if I am watching a high speed video that frantically changes scenes every half second.
As I blubber through tears, sitting in front of my teacher, I explain my craziness, my doubts, and my out-of-control stuck-in-my-head mind games. I know I could use various spiritual “mental” techniques to center myself, but I do not trust those techniques. I want to get out of my head and into my heart – but right now I feel like using my head to get out of my head is simply putting a fluffy blanket of light over the chaos, and pretending the chaos is not really there.
I am in a state of mind where I do not fully trust any spiritual path or teacher. I do not trust anything going on in my head.
Profound But Risky
To my surprise, the first thing Keith does is to grab a deck of Tarot cards. After shuffling them for a minute or two, he uses his guidance to blindly select one card – it is the “Sun card” – a powerful Major Arcana card that, to me, represents a very high state in one’s spiritual journey. In my meditations with the Mystical Kabbalah, I believe that this card represents the journey between Christ Consciousness and Oneness. Soon, Keith pulls another card. It is the Ace of Wands – the highest card in the spiritual suit.
“I’m pulling these cards to give you something else to focus on outside of my own words.” Keith shares with me. “As you already know, these two cards are very powerful cards.”
Keith goes on to let me know that what I am doing is actually quite profound – but also risky – but that these cards confirm that I am actually in a very good place right now.
Soberly Searching
Keith is very serious when he shares that he has had to watch many people that he dearly loves, literally destroy themselves at similar points in their own undoing process. We talk for a few minutes as I begin to understand how incredibly painful it must be to watch someone you love literally destroy himself or herself in a losing battle with ego.
“Am I in danger of going down the spiritual toilet?” I ask Keith, soberly searching for feedback.
“Some people literally do end up in sanitariums, going crazy, and being institutionalized.” Keith responds. “Others do get lost in the ego craziness and end up destroying their lives in one way or another, never returning to their spiritual path.”
“I have never seen anyone crash at this point that has later returned to their spiritual path.” Keith shares a sober observation. “But based on the Tarot cards I pulled earlier, I do not believe that is where you are headed.”
An Inner License
“It is critical for you to understand this state of consciousness and craziness.” Keith further guides me. “Many people in the next few years will hit various stages of such emotional states of craziness. And many of those people will come to you, seeking your assistance, already being in such a state of consciousness when you meet them for the first time.”
“I’m sorry,” Keith continues, “but in order for you to be able to help them, you need to understand this state of consciousness from a place of profound personal experience – you need the inner license of having ‘been there, done that, and got the t-shirt’.”
“And since you are a healer and a writer,” Keith adds, “you have to deeply understand many more types of such experiences than most people will need to go through themselves.”
As I listen, I am so grateful for the email communication I had yesterday with my friend Nancy. I take the opportunity to share with Keith how I had felt the resonance of Nancy’s inner license – her profound understanding, compassion, and encouragement that could only come from someone who has once been there herself in the craziness.
Projection Perfection
“Yesterday,” I explain to Keith, “I yelled out in the privacy of my own home that I would rather die than have to accept help from Paul. Later, I realized that I was actually deeply immersed in my God/separation drama – that the truth was that I would rather die than to accept help from God.”
“I am projecting my anger at God onto Paul – and even a little bit onto you.” I add. “I am angry at the false judgmental God whose representatives were filled with distorted masculine manipulation and fixing energy – at the God who let me down time and time again throughout my life.”
Keith acknowledges that I am projecting a little onto him, but again congratulates me for powerfully manifesting Paul so that I could instead mostly project onto Paul.
“I know from personal experience that if you were projecting all of this onto me rather than onto Paul,” Keith shares the perfection in what is happening, “that you would not be able to hear anything I tell you right now – that we would not be able to have this conversation.”
Trust The Process
“How long do I have to experience this craziness,” I beg Keith for clarity, “and how do I get out of it?”
“There is no formula.” Keith gives me a truthful answer. “You simply get to experience this crazy process until it is done.”
Keith explains that there is no way to get myself out of the craziness – that I just need to go through the process with trust.
“Try things,” Keith suggests, “experience things, experience your projections and judgments, experience the peace, and observe all of the mental voices and all of the states of confusion. Trust that all is well in the flow that brought you here – that this is an experience you need – and that the flow will bring you to an end with perfect timing.”
Divine Order
Before disappearing into his kitchen to prepare for a Sunday afternoon chocolate ceremony, Keith feels guided that I need to read a quote that just barely showed up in his email. The quote is from a book called “Oneness” – a book channeled by a woman named ‘Rasha’ – a book that Keith highly recommends.
“This is the first time in your personal history as an incarnate individual that your conscious awareness has been augmented with levels of energy that enable you to transcend your physical senses. This is the first incarnation in which you have been able to reinforce intuitive knowingness with experiential knowingness. This is the moment you have been waiting for, for eons of existence. For, this is the lifetime that will catapult you beyond all you know to a depth of awareness and understanding you are as yet unable to fathom. Trust that this process, in which you are, by now, deeply invested, is unfolding as it is meant to. And that everything is, indeed, in Divine order.”
As I ponder these words, inner voices whisper that I am indeed on a path to a depth of awareness and understanding that, right now, I am unable to fathom. I do trust this process … I am deeply invested in it … and I do indeed know that all is in divine order.
Kermit Capers
Rather than going home and then returning for the ceremony, I opt to stay and meditate silently on Keith’s porch. My head remains a little jittery, while my emotions continue to bounce around slightly, but WOW, I feel so much better than I imagined possible just an hour ago. I am actually loving and accepting myself for where I am. I have new hope that I am on the edge of beautiful breakthroughs.
During this meditation, I remind myself, yet again (how easily I forget), that I create my own reality – especially on this magical porch. I make a conscious decision that, today I will pay extra close attention to this belief. I will strive to see everything that takes place as a stage play, personally created and directed by me.
Most of all, I will see Paul as being “Kermit the Frog,” the leading actor in my own personal episode of The Muppet Show. With all of my conscious effort, I will remind myself that whatever Paul says or does to trigger me, that he is only a little green frog, a divine actor who is intentionally trying to push my buttons for the sole purpose of showing me what I need to heal on the inside.
PLEASE READ – PLEASE READ – PLEASE READ
It is with great trepidation that I write on. I am skating on very thin and precarious ice as I write more and more about what I (at the time) perceived as the negative actions of another – yet I find it impossible to write about my own process without going into the drama of my continued interactions with my favorite projection-buddy Paul.
First, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. At the time of this writing (five weeks later), I have finally achieved a state of great peace in working with Paul. He is a beautiful being, an incredible man with amazing energy gifts – intuitive and perceptual gifts that continue to astound me. He is in his own beautiful process, playing the other side of my script, and I love him for it. Thank you Paul!
What I write in the remainder of this blog are my perceptions from that bizarre day. I know that I created this reality and that Paul was playing a crucial script in my self-created stage play. I describe events exactly as I myself perceived them. I have no idea how Paul or anyone else perceived them.
“Paul” is not his real name. Anyone who has been on the porch in the last months will likely know who he is, but anyone who has been on the porch will also fully recognize and appreciate the loving projection dynamic we have been going through together – so by writing what I do about Paul, I am not violating any confidences. Everyone on the porch was a witness, so nothing new is being revealed to them.
Anyone who has not been on Keith’s porch recently will have no idea about whom I am writing – so in that sense, Paul’s identity is also being preserved.
Next, I want to state again that as far as I know, Paul could be an enlightened being that I manifested to come here to San Marcos to play out these crazy “dense-energy” scripts for me. If so, he is an amazing actor.
Last, and most important, I love Paul’s contribution to my growth, I love the crazy things he did (at least I do now, that is), and I am grateful. I hold no ill will, and I write the following with purity and innocence in my heart – no judgment remains.
Act One
As the glow meditation gets underway, I am quite emotionally numb. I continue to experience little sharp pains in my upper chest – stinging pains that began instantly, less than three weeks ago, when my high heart center opened up at a beautiful ceremony across the lake. And to my dismay, I am also acutely aware that the fluid in my lungs seems to physically correlate to these sharp pains and to my level of emotional agitation.
I watch with non-attached interest as Keith works his way around the porch in a very weird order. Meanwhile, I observe as Paul continues his unknowing, subconscious attempts to push my buttons. I smile to myself as I observe “Kermit” run around the porch, not doing any of his own work, while being quite noisy, disrespectful, and disruptive of the processes of others. At one point, he is so disrespectful of one woman’s tearful emotional release that I actually speak up with indignation.
“Paul,” I sternly growl, “Stop that and hold space for her process.”
I then return to simply ignoring the green little frog that seems to have pulled out all of the stops in his efforts to trigger and annoy me.
Energetic Medicine
After more than an hour, when my turn to speak with Keith finally arrives, I explain my concerns over my upper-chest pains, and the fluid in my lungs that has again begun waking me up in the middle of the night.
“I know this is energetic,” I share with confidence, “but is there something I can do to work through this faster?”
To my delight, Keith immediately gets everyone’s attention and asks them to focus all of their healing energy on me – telling many of them that they do not yet know they have this ability, but that they can send me an energetic medicine to sooth my high heart and cough.
Less than a minute after this process begins (a process that gives me great hope of another beautiful energetic experience), Paul (or should I say Kermit) returns to action.
Unattached Observations
Kermit jumps out of his seat, runs into the kitchen, grabs a huge bottle of chocolate, and returns to the porch. Soon, he is noisily interrupting everyone, pushing more hot chocolate on them, talking out loud, seeming totally uninterested in what I am doing, and even less interested in allowing others to assist me in my process.
With deep focus, I remain unattached to this blatant attempt to shatter me, to distract me, and to disrupt the energy of the group that is currently focused on me. It is almost humorous how Paul seems to interrupt my process like clockwork.
I watch with surprise as Paul pours a large glass of chocolate for one newcomer on the porch – one that is so large that it could make many people quite physically nauseas to drink so much bitter.
Not wanting to lose my focus, but being deeply concerned for the possible unpleasant ramifications of Paul’s reckless behavior, I tap Keith on the shoulder and point out what is going on.
The Target Is Me
“This is for both of them, Brenda.” Paul angrily lashes out at me when he realizes I am the one who asked Keith to intervene. “I felt inspired to give this to them and mind your own business! You have major control issues Brenda!”
“Whoa,” I think silently to myself. “Not only does Kermit interrupt my process with rudeness and distraction, but he projects all over me for ‘his’ being extremely reckless with pushing excessive chocolate onto others.”
“It’s interesting how this happens when I am deep in my process.” I quietly speak aloud so that Kermit can most likely overhear.
After momentarily losing composure I again close my eyes and ignore Kermit. That little green frog continues to walk around the porch in noisy distraction and in what I perceive as ego pompousness.
Kermit is projecting all over me – I now realize he always has been doing so – and one of my biggest inner triggers is when someone is unjustly projecting onto me.
“This is not my issue.” I silently smile to myself. “I don’t care what he does or says. Kermit can project onto me as much as he wishes.”
An Ongoing Stage Play
To my delight, I watch as Paul does amazing healing work with one woman – my friend that I recently called Marie. I had almost gone over to assist Marie myself when I observed her tears, but I was so deep in process that I did not feel capable. As I waivered in my decision, Paul had jumped in to work with her instead.
I then observe with shock as Kermit interrupts Keith, right in the depths of someone’s process – just to ask casual questions. He does this many times, right in the middle of several peoples’ deep emotional work.
I simply watch as Keith lovingly answers Kermit’s questions before returning to what he was doing. It seems quite obvious that Keith is either not bothered by this behavior, or he is permitting the disruptions to unfold as part of my profound craziness training. I choose the latter answer, and remain completely non-attached, almost laughing at what I am observing. It is so far “out there” that I cannot help but know that this is a self-created reality – one orchestrated to drive me crazy.
At one point, Kermit is actually interfering with some energy-sharing work that Keith is doing with a couple. Keith bluntly tells Kermit to stop and be quiet – but Kermit continues to protest angrily that he is doing nothing wrong. Again Keith simply allows, and I smile inside with non-attachment.
Keith seems to deal with the chaos beautifully, not showing any type of judgment or stress – simply flowing with everything as if it is a normal everyday ceremony.
Tale Of Two Memories
Later my friend Marie is again in deep emotional pain. She is a beautiful older woman (in my age bracket) who I have assisted several times before. The experience has always been beautiful, and I feel a kindred bond with her heart. Even though I am still immersed in a little of my own painful process, I follow my instincts and finally go sit down cross-legged in front of her.
As I sit with her, I first ground the energy in her feet, and then take her hands in mine. As I stare into her eyes, I fill my heart with love while focusing on sending some of that love in her direction. Marie soon goes into deep tears as I continue. Suddenly, I feel deeply guided by two memories.
The first is from a private ceremony across the lake, just two days after Christmas. In that experience, Keith had coached Jill, a woman who was helping me, guiding her to open her heart and to allow me to pull through her precisely what I needed for my process of relaxing my forearms. During that experience, Jill’s deep vulnerability had allowed me to more easily receive the energy that was flowing through her.
The second memory comes from just two days ago. In a ceremony on Friday, Keith shared insights with those on the porch – insights about how he never goes digging into someone’s energy field so that he can push things onto them. Instead, he explained that he allows their energy to direct the show, pulling through him (energetically and verbally) whatever they need at that moment.
“I usually have no idea where the things I am guided to do and say will take someone.” Keith had shared.
A Loving Dilemma
As I begin to imagine Marie as pulling unconditional love through me, it soon occurs to me that I have a huge wall around my heart that prevents me from allowing any outside loving assistance to enter me.
“How can Marie pull love through me,” I ponder with confusion, “if I am incapable of allowing Higher Love to come in? If I desire to assist Marie in this way, I must allow this divine love to temporarily enter my heart while it is in transit.”
Divine Vulnerability
I maintain profound eye contact with Marie as I focus on dropping my walls, on allowing myself to be vulnerable to that frightening outside energy.
As I try to imagine these walls temporarily lowering, I am the one who starts to cry. As the tears begin to stream, I hear loud firework bombs going off repeatedly in the town, just a short walk away. I intuitively recognize how these loud booms seem to be synchronized with my vulnerability and opening process.
Keith is busy elsewhere, preparing to conduct an empath training. I do not need outside guidance. I know exactly what is happening, and it is beautiful.
The more I stare into Marie’s eyes, the more I am staring at a beautiful divine being with whom I can be absolutely vulnerable – with whom I can completely drop my walls, allowing the doors to open and the love to come pouring through.
Before long, I see the energy of God herself in Marie’s eyes. I am observing and experiencing my God/separation drama unfolding in an entirely new way as I experience God as being filled with unconditional love and vulnerability, rather than being a judgmental and controlling being.
Beautiful Support
I start to cry profusely as Keith finally begins to take notice of what is happening with my process.
“You take good care of her.” Keith momentarily stops and speaks to Marie. “She has been working on this for a very long time. Please help her in the same way she has been helping you.”
“Oh,” I hear a friend from Canada speak up across the porch. “I so want to go over there and support her too.”
I am so deeply immersed in what I am doing that I am not sure what happens next. I think Keith reassures my friend that I am in good hands, asking her to stay where she is, as he continues to proceed with the empath training while I work one-on-one with Marie.
Meanwhile, a beautiful young man seated next to me reaches over and places his energetic palm on the back of my heart chakra. I love his energy … I feel his beautiful loving support … pure masculine energy with no invalidation, no fixing, no pushing, just pure space-holding support.
A Perceived Energetic Assault
As Keith continues with all three phases of the empath training, I continue my journey into ever-deepening vulnerability with God. I maintain constant unbroken eye contact with Marie, at times imagining her as my mom, seeing myself as sharing this divine unconditional love with my dear sweet mother.
But mostly, I see Marie as being God – God in a vulnerable and loving state. Each and every time that I burst into another round of tears mixed with sobs, Marie does the same.
In the midst of this process, I suddenly experience the perception of Paul’s energy connecting with me, attempting to push me through this process, attempting to take me faster to where I need to go. I have no idea if Paul is actually doing this, or if my perception is even based on any facet of reality – but nonetheless, I experience this sudden intuitive perception.
Immediately I am yanked out of my process. I say nothing to anyone while I struggle to regain my loving focus – to reestablish my pure state of tearful, joyful, and loving vulnerability – but I find this quest to be quite difficult while I continue to perceive Paul’s energy attempting to “help” me.
Suddenly, just as I am reentering that beautiful vulnerable state, I overhear Paul’s familiar voice “oohhmming” loudly from across the porch. I perceive that he is trying to show his support for me in going deeper – trying to guide me to a place of vocally expressed anger where he wants me to go – but that is not where I want to go. I strongly perceive that he thinks I need to go into anger – that he wants to push me there.
But I am in a space of profound and beautiful loving vulnerability and his energy feels to me as if it is literally attacking me, invalidating me, disempowering me.
Interrupted Vulnerability
Momentarily breaking eye contact with Marie, simultaneously releasing my right hand, I lean back slightly and call out loudly to Keith, “NOOOOOO NOOOOO” while waving my hand back and forth, as if to say, “Please stop him.”
“Paul, you know that your energy deeply triggers her.” I quickly overhear Keith speak up. “You need to disengage and accept that you cannot help her right now.”
When I no longer feel Paul’s energy attempting to work with me, I return to work with Marie, reestablishing eye and hand contact while struggling to regain my deep state of profound and loving vulnerability.
Just as my eyes again water up in beautiful tenderness, I cannot help but notice Paul (Kermit) walk noisily into the bathroom, just a few feet to my right. My first reaction is that Kermit is angry, and that he is again attempting to disrupt my process in a different way. But I am now fully detached – not caring in the least what Kermit does to try to disturb me in the middle of this very interesting (but very real) stage play.
On The Very Edge
Soon, I cannot help but overhear sounds of Kermit vomiting.
“Wow,” I intuitively think to myself. “When I was projecting all over him, nothing I did seemed to trigger Paul to react. Now, the moment that I disengage from my energy battle, he is reacting in extreme ways – even physical ways.
I am quite shocked and intrigued by the dynamics, but continue my process, attempting to remain unattached and vulnerable. This realization is quite profound for me. I honestly do not have any judgment or anger about what Kermit is doing right now. I care about him, but realize that his process is his process, and my process is my own – and right now, my process is deep and profound.
By now, the entire porch is watching and holding space for me while Kermit is in the bathroom, seemingly struggling.
Suddenly, just as Keith is beginning to guide the group into the next step of practicing a way in which empaths might work, Kermit leaves the bathroom, returns to the far side of the porch, and goes into extreme and dramatic trauma.
Meanwhile, I am now at the height of my process, on the very edge of what I know is about to be a profound breakthrough in receiving divine love and in being vulnerable.
A Green Frog Freak-out
“KEITH!” Kermit suddenly interrupts with screaming volume. “I AM DEEP INTO SOMETHING AND I NEED YOU TO STOP EVERYTHING TO HELP ME RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!”
I am absolutely blown away by the bizarre occurrences unfolding around me. For a few brief moments, I am energetically pulled out of my process – but I never break eye contact with Marie. I do, however, begin to break a funny smile – a smile that appears both on my lips and in my eyes.
I visualize a little green frog on the other side of the porch – a little Muppet named Kermit throwing a huge tantrum, desperately trying to make me angry – desperately attempting to make me project and judge – desperately trying to take Keith’s attention away from me – desperately trying to make me feel victimized and abandoned. And it is all happening right at the very peak of my most profound process ever.
I smile, knowing this is all some type of wacky stage play – a beautifully orchestrated example of creating my own reality in all of its crazy bizarre details. The script is so “out of the ordinary” that I have no choice but to see it as my creation, masterfully scripted and acted out in a skillful ploy to try to push me back into ego and victimization.
But I do not buy into it.
Divine Support
While I continue to stare into Marie’s eyes, neither of us flinches. Love continues to flow through my heart – a heart that overflows with deep gratitude at what happens next.
Keith angrily reprimands Kermit for his trauma/drama interruption. He firmly points out the truth of everything I have noticed today – and then some – scolding Kermit for his pattern of interrupting, for his distractions, for his prancing around the porch while ignoring his own work.
“But the moment things get serious, especially for Brenda,” Keith speaks firmly to Kermit, “here you are, creating drama to pull all of the attention to you!”
My heart fills with warm and overwhelming joy and gratitude as I listen to Keith stand up for me. I am now projecting my God/separation drama directly onto Keith – but in a good way.
I literally feel as if “God” is finally giving me what I have always needed and craved. I am receiving loving support at a time when all seems to be falling apart. I am being validated. I am being supported. I am being defended. I am being loved and empowered.
I know that the true divine energies have always loved and supported me. I know that ‘it is me’ who has blocked out the higher energies for various reasons.
But this is profound. At the very moment that I begin to remove the blocks that prevent divine love from flowing through me – at that very moment I am being shown a beautiful sign of loving support that has always been there.
Pulling Out The Stops
Keith continues speaking to Kermit for nearly ten minutes, firmly pointing out nuances of his behavior, teaching him, etc…
Kermit repeatedly responds in anger, rebelling and demanding evidence.
“Give me proof of what you are saying,” Kermit screams out, “any proof, except I want something that has nothing to do with BRENDA!”
I smile and continue to make loving eye contact with Marie, actually beginning to giggle as I realize that I am now being publicly blamed for all of Kermit’s problems – that Kermit is massively projecting all over me.
This little “create-my-own-reality” stage play is pulling out all of the stops.
Remarkably Peaceful
Finally, Kermit lets out a blood-curdling scream of anger – accompanied by a burst of emotional release – then sinks into deep meditation.
I just smile and continue working with Marie. But given what has been going on around me, getting back to my deep state of vulnerability is akin to impossible.
Finally, as exhaustion consumes me, I release Marie’s hands, tearfully and joyfully thank her, arrange a few cushions on the ground, grab a nearby blanket, and curl up to simply rest and integrate. I continue to remain lovingly centered – slightly traumatized and overwhelmed by what just took place – but remarkably peaceful.
“How are you doing over there Brenda?” Keith finally asks when the commotion dies down.
“I’m doing quite well, considering everything that has been going on.” I giggle back to Keith. “I have just been visualizing The Muppet Show unfolding around me, not attaching myself to any external events.”
An Unexpected Request
“Do you love and trust me?” Keith asks an interesting question.
“I love everyone here,” I respond with curiosity.
“Do you desperately need love, Brenda?” Keith continues.
“Oh yeah,” I respond as emotions suddenly swell and tears begin to stream down my cheeks.
“Well Paul needs love too,” Keith shocks me. “Paul is a little boy that desperately needs love. Can you give that same love to him?”
I begin to sob and cough and wheeze uncontrollably as I initially contemplate Keith’s request.
Rebuilding Love
“It is really hard.” I finally begin to speak as my gut stops wrenching. “My heart shuts down with pain as I think about it, yet I know that I want to give him love. I know it might not be received right now given how strongly he is projecting onto me … but I will try.”
As I continue lying here … as my heart softens … I begin to imagine myself holding space for my own love-starved little boy inside. As I do so, I include Paul in that category of a love-starved little boy.
In the midst of some resistance, I also feel increased softening. I find that I can share the love energetically – but I remain totally incapable of contemplating a face-to-face encounter. I stare at Paul’s sad face across the porch. Occasionally, when he glances my way and catches me staring, he quickly turns away – the same thing I have done to him over the last few days.
Turning Tides
“Brenda,” Keith speaks so that the whole porch can hear. “You and Paul have been greatly serving each other. I have known that for two months.”
I do not think Paul’s ego has allowed him to see this wisdom, but I clearly see it. I do not think that Paul is even aware that he is projecting strongly onto me.
Yes, given where I am at right now, I can love Paul, and I can allow him to project onto me as much as he needs to – for as long as ne needs too.
The tides have turned … at least for now.
Opening Sensitivities
As Keith finally resumes his empath training, I feel guided to share energy with a woman seated nearby. I feel a LOT of energy in my hands – sensing a lot of energy movement that I intuitively know is not my own. I have no idea what that energy is, but at least for this moment, I am feeling it strongly.
“Sit up and touch the back of her heart chakra,” Keith guides me.”
As I do this, I begin to feel pains in my heart area.
“Keith, I’m hurting a lot … can you help me?” I interrupt briefly.
“Wait, my heart is not shut down.” I add before Keith replies.
“Brenda,” Keith smiles back, “you are feeling her heart chakra pain.”
As Keith guides this woman to touch her own belly to release some resistance energy, I simultaneously feel a sharp pain in my second chakra.
“Oh,” I ponder with wonder. “I’m reading her energy, more easily than ever.”
Pondering Possibilities
In an unexpected twist, Keith invites Paul to come over to hold this woman’s feet. The woman initially recoils, being quite intimidated by Paul’s recent angry outburst on the porch.
“Paul is now in a beautiful energy.” Keith reassures the woman.
I cannot feel Paul’s energy, other than my perception of his anger toward me, and I can only trust that Keith would not be doing this if he himself were not genuinely feeling Paul’s beautiful energy.
“Brenda and Paul are working together to help you.” Keith guides this woman.
Paul does not look at me. I look at Paul’s innocent boyish face, trying to feel love for him. I feel the energy of his angry projections still aimed directly at me, but I also feel his genuine little boy wanting to be loved.
“I can stop projecting onto him now.” I ponder timidly, not sure if I believe it. “I can send love his way and allow him to do whatever he does. I cannot be friends with him until he stops his projecting onto me, but after today, I see that all things are possible.”
Preacher Kermit
Shortly after arriving at home, while taking notes and preparing a plate of rice and beans, I hear angry screaming coming from the speakers of the nearby basketball court. It is a bible-banging preacher, loudly screaming out a message of hellfire and damnation.
“Oh, Kermit is now preaching in the basketball court.” I ponder with a smile, being totally unattached to what once would have raised the hair on the back of my neck.
A little more than a half-hour later, after repeated visualizations of a green frog screaming into a microphone with super-amped up speakers, I finish my notes and my food.
“I’m going up there to feel and reflect love.” I ponder with a giggle.
Absence Of Malice
By the time I arrive at the religious gathering, the preacher has ceased his fiery tirade of words and is now singing as the lead (and only) singer in a small band of Spanish Gospel music. There are two guitarists, a drummer, and one man playing the marimba on an electric keyboard – plus of course the basic set of fourteen huge speakers cranked up to full volume. I giggle as I contemplate the necessity of so many speakers for a small crowd of worshipers.
To my delight, I realize that the screaming noise I heard was extremely exaggerated by the speaker system. As I watch and listen to the concert, I am dancing along with a giggle in my step. I love the preacher’s energy. I feel love for him as he sings to the crowd. I feel his genuine heart and his love for the people assembled in front of him. I feel his profound love for his beliefs.
I feel no judgment in my heart … none whatsoever.
I bounce and wiggle to the music for more than thirty minutes. This is the first time, in a very, very long time, that I have felt like dancing.
Return Of The Ego
Right before bed, I send an excited email to my new friend Nancy. I share my delight with her – describing how my thirty-six hour bout with craziness has subsided, at least for now – thanking her from the bottom of my heart for the profound support and guidance that she gave me at a time when I so desperately needed help.
But at the instant my head hits the pillow, the ego chatter begins again.
Suddenly, massive slow-motion video clips – clips with multiple ego commentators doing the play-by-play – are streaming by in the television reruns of my mind.
To my dismay, I am observing everything that took place today through mental chattering eyes – through the eyes of an angry and victimized ego – an ego that demands to be validated and heard.
The “Muppet Show” perspective dwindles rapidly as I sink into the mental trauma. I am exhausted from a very long and emotionally taxing day. I feel as if I am literally experiencing “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)”.
I mostly do not buy into this chatter, but end up being obliged to listen to it for hours as it continues to rampage incessantly until I finally fall asleep.
… to be continued …
Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved