I am in the back seat of a car, somewhere on a mountain road. My dear friend Isaias is driving, but he needs to stop the car for a moment to run a quick errand. As he rushes away from the car (which is still idling in the middle of the highway), Isaias first asks a man in the front passenger seat to park the car and wait for him. Before I know what is happening, that man reaches over, grabs the steering wheel, and backs the car down the busy highway, doing so at high velocity. I repeatedly ask the man to please pull over and stop, insisting that we are supposed to wait for Isaias – but he continues backing down the mountain against the flow of traffic. When we finally reach the bottom, I suddenly wake up, somewhat confused, frustrated, and annoyed. As I realize that I have been dreaming, I note that it is 4:05 a.m. on Wednesday morning, June 13, 2012.
“Wow, that was a crazy-making, nonsensical dream,” I ponder as I go back to sleep.
Suddenly, I find myself working with an old friend who is a licensed mental health counselor. We are preparing to guide a healing workshop together. For what feels like hours, I repeatedly reshuffle seating arrangements, but the workshop never starts. As people and chairs are moving from this place to that, shuffled from one room to another, I am disoriented and frustrated that my friend does not take charge. Again, I wake up, quite confused and annoyed. It is now 7:30 a.m. on that same weird Wednesday morning.
It seems that the Universe is giving me a message about the crazy-making and out-of-control feelings that have consistently dominated my life.
Know Rather Than Believe
After a beautiful conversation with my roommate, I sit down in an attempt to meditate – to figure out what is going in with these dreams. But inner emotions suddenly surface – emotions of anger and rejection at God.
“I don’t want to meditate,” the self-sabotaging voices rage. “I know from experience that I will just fail and feel more rejected and abandoned by God. This is the story of my life … I give it my all … I struggle to do what is right … but Higher Energies always abandon me in the end. I would rather not try to meditate than feel abandoned yet again.”
I am quite surprised that these two strange dreams seem to have triggered additional God drama emotions.
Later Wednesday morning, I do find the centeredness to at least do a little reading in “Oneness” by Rasha. I love chapter twenty-three. I could quote many sections from those pages, but one jumps out as particularly applicable to my age-twelve social suicide struggles. It is the first paragraph of page 220, and reads as follows:
“When one is working with information that constitutes major shifts in one’s life perspective, it is to be expected that repeated episodes on that theme will manifest as experience. In this way one is able to build a base upon which a radical shift in one’s world-view can rest. These are not understandings that can be instilled overnight. One can anticipate being exposed to a concept and to then experience several examples of that concept in rapid succession. In this way, the conceptual understandings of the world at whose edge you now stand can be reinforced. And ultimately, one is able to ‘know’ rather than to ‘believe’.”
I clearly recognize that this is exactly what is happening to me with regards to past emotional realities flowing through me, and with re-experiencing the nightmare emotions from my youth. I am building, through successive examples, a deep ‘knowing’ as to how such a process works – a knowing that cannot be achieved through reading a book.
Learning To Read
As the Wednesday afternoon chocolate ceremony gets underway, I cannot help but notice that of the eleven present in the circle today, eight of them are men. Again, a very masculine, stuck, not-interested-in-processing energy is dominant. Deep curiosity causes me to wonder why I continue to manifest such ceremonies.
As the “Glow Meditation” begins, I find a gentle and loving smile while feeling quite connected to Higher Energies – at least as much as I am currently capable of doing. After a while, I begin to feel strong pains in my solar plexus.
“My heart is strong right now,” I remind myself as I check in with body awareness. “This tells me that the pain I am feeling in my solar plexus is not MY pain … that I am reading the emotions of others.”
A few minutes later, Keith glances my way. I hold a hand on my painful solar plexus while pointing at someone else.
“I’m reading these pains from them, aren’t I?” I whisper to Keith, not wanting to disturb the meditation.
“You are reading it from somewhere in the group,” Keith confirms without singling out one source.
Sweetness Of Life
As I sit in continued meditation, I note that a very persistent honeybee repeatedly attempts to fly through the cheesecloth blocking Keith’s entryway. I watch with keen interest and deep fascination as the bee relentlessly persists.
After a while, the bee lands on my blanket. As I put my hand next to the little messenger, the bee climbs up on my finger, and then crawls around while checking me out for about five minutes. After the bee eventually flies away, he soon returns, again landing on my blanket. To my delight, when I place my right index finger near the little guy, he once again climbs up to explore my presence.
I giggle when the bee repeats this scenario a third time, again taking an adventurous ride on my finger. This time I quietly tap Keith, showing him the bee on my finger. He briefly interrupts the ongoing meditation to comment.
“The bee is telling you that you are beginning to return to the sweetness of your life,” Keith shares guidance.
“If it does not come back again,” Keith adds when the bee soon flies away, “you will know that what I said is the message that you needed.”
Keith and I briefly discuss how bees have been a repeated metaphor in my journey, beginning with a powerful dream in April 2009, then seeing a swarm in Belize after visiting my first (and only) cacao orchard in March, 2010. But perhaps the most amazing experience was having an entire swarm take up residence in my bedroom window in November, 2010. Just this past week, several times per day, a single bee has repeatedly entered my kitchen, gravitating to my honey bottle, determinedly climbing all over that clean and sealed jar … refusing to leave for hours at a time.
I only giggle during this conversation as the bee again starts to fly back onto the porch, but it suddenly turns around, flies away, and never comes back for the remainder of the day. I love my little “sweetness” messenger.
A Teacher Perspective
Soon, as the “Glow Meditation” resumes, I focus on following other metaphorical breadcrumbs of my process – feeling quite proud of myself for exploring the pains in my solar plexus. Eventually, convinced that I am still not just reading, but instead eating this painful density, I find an appropriate moment to speak.
“I’m still running this density through me, aren’t I?” I whisper to Keith during a pause in the meditation.
“Yes, you are still running a little bit of it through you,” Keith quietly responds a minute later after checking his own guidance. “Go inside and find out why.”
Initially, I judge this occurrence – my continued bringing of other people’s density into me – as a bad thing. I focus on figuring out what I am doing wrong, on trying to fix myself, and on attempting to coax that metaphorical “assemblage point” to go back outside me to where it belongs so that this density will not flow painfully through me.
After a confusing period of seeming to fail in my quest, I latch onto a statement Keith makes as he continues to guide the “Glow Meditation” – a statement about “when you feel a physical metaphor happening inside, don’t try to fix what is happening, but instead see it as your teacher and ask the light to show you what you need to learn.”
Immediately, I shift energies, seeing this pain as a metaphor for something I still need to learn – as something trying to help me grow. Without saying a word, I follow guidance and quickly step into Keith’s kitchen to retrieve that large quartz “teacher” crystal. I would love a little inner guidance from a different realm.
Love Equals Garbage
“I still have love hooked together as being equivalent to eating people’s emotional garbage,” intuitions soon flood my mind. “I need to explore the reason why I still have this hooked.”
Soon, I venture deeper into subconscious metaphors. I am determined to find the reason why I still have these concepts hooked together. As I venture into the metaphors, I access more self-love – finding love and gratitude for my journey – eager to learn the lessons that await me.
“Give what you are feeling to the crystal,” Keith interrupts the meditation he is still guiding.
“That is what I am trying to do,” I explain my ongoing journey to Keith. “I am focusing on loving what I am doing while releasing the beliefs and energies that continue to cause me to run these emotional densities through me.”
When Keith finally finishes the opening meditation, he asks who would like assistance.
“I still have love hooked with eating more emotional garbage,” I respond a minute later.
“Take a trip down into the subconscious,” Keith guides me. “Find the doorway with a sign that reads “Love Equals Garbage” and go inside. See what you find and then work with that.”
Part of me hopes that Keith will guide me there, that he will interact with me step by step, but I realize that I already know how to do it all by myself. His instructions tell me that he wants me to make this journey solo … trusting myself. I resist, because I was hoping for more personal assistance.
“OK, I’ll do it,” I soon respond, “and if I get stuck somewhere I will ask for more guidance.”
Powerful Pervasive Distractions
The very moment that I close my eyes to imagine myself walking down a staircase – even before I get to the first step – a man on the porch asks a very distracting and irrelevant question. Within seconds, the rest of the porch launches into talking and loud storytelling. The whole porch is deeply distracting and I find it impossible to focus on my own process. I continue to struggle with even taking my first step down that inner staircase.
Even Keith joins in to what I perceive as a noisy, off topic, distracting disturbance.
“I wonder why I am creating this massively distracting environment,” I ponder quietly, choosing to perceive what is happening as my personal holodeck.
Finally, after sitting in this strange situation for a while, I glance at Keith and begin to share my puzzled confusion.
“I know this is my creation,” I express inner truth, “but I am so distracted that I still cannot get to the first step.”
“Keep working on it,” Keith encourages me, not offering any solution or guidance.
After hearing my words, the man who initially started this massive distraction immediately apologizes, but then another man distracts in a huge way with surface-level storytelling. Keith again feeds into the shallow party-like atmosphere.
“A very powerful part of MY energy is creating this scenario in a very skillful and profound way,” I start to ponder with deep clarity. “This part of me is massively powerful because this distraction is so pervasive and obvious, coming from nearly everyone in the group, including Keith.”
A Loyal Servant
“Why would I be creating such intense distraction energy?” I ponder. “Distraction has always been a huge issue for me. This is showing me something.”
Finally, still being unable to move beyond the first step of the staircase in my subconscious meditation, I begin to follow what are now quite obvious breadcrumbs – shifting my focus to one of working directly with the distraction energy.
First, I visualize myself in my inner conference room. Then I invite the distraction energy to join me, across the table. Rather than attempting to put a face on the energy, I see it as a faceless orb.
“This distraction energy works for me,” I soon understand with clarity. “Distraction is a loyal member of my resistance team, serving me by fulfilling a job that kept me alive as a teenager. It kept me so distracted from my emotional pain that I did not have time to suffer as deeply from the anguish and self-hatred – doing so just enough that I would not kill myself.”
As I explore deeper, I also recognize that this same distraction kept me separate from the Higher Energies. Every time that I tried to connect with God, the distraction would keep me from going there. This is because, at a subconscious level, I have God, Higher Energies, and true unconditional love hooked with pain and eating emotional garbage from others. The distraction energy protected me from creating and consuming even more pain – doing so by shutting down loving energy connections that would have only fueled the painful fire.
From Resistance To Survival
“I wonder how this distraction orb fits into that group of resistance orbs that I worked with last night,” I explore the breadcrumbs further.
“This distraction orb is the chief, the leader, the powerful ‘mob boss’ of all the other resistance orbs that served to keep me alive,” I continue to follow unfolding intuitions. “As a group, those resistance energies literally were in charge of keeping me alive and in a shut-down state. They were in charge of my physical survival on this planet, and that distraction energy was the ‘mob boss’ of them all.”
I suddenly see these energies as needing my love and gratitude for how they have served me. Immediately I focus on reconnecting with the love and peace from last night’s meditation during my private session with Keith.
“And these are not resistance energies,” I ponder another insight. “They are survival energies, trying to keep me alive.”
Soon, In the midst of continued, loud, ongoing external distraction, I have found a place of deep meditative peace in seeing these distraction and other energies with deep gratitude.
Survival Team Leader
After a long meditation – one in which I find deep awe for how I manifest such crazy distractions – Keith looks my way and begins to work with me again.
After filling him in on my awe-filled journey and sharing insights about this distraction energy being the “mob boss” of the other survival energies – energies like confusion, projection, judgment, clenching, etc. – Keith interrupts me.
“‘Mob boss’ has a negative connotation,” Keith coaches me. “It implies that those energies are evil and bad … and that you are trying to attack and fix them from a perspective of seeing them as your enemy.”
“No,” I defend myself, “that is not at all what I am feeling as I use that term. I am finding love and gratitude for these energies, seeing them as having kept me alive, as being in charge of my survival.”
“I am responsible for watching your back,” Keith firmly retorts, “and that is what I am doing by pointing out the subtle energy of the term ‘mob boss’.”
“If people don’t share their process,” Keith adds, “then I cannot point out where they are scamming themselves.”
I clearly perceive that while Keith’s last words were spoken to me – and done so with truth – that he really intended for them to be heard by another person on the porch who is in deep silent self-scamming.
“Thank you for watching my back,” I soon respond. “Wow, the subtleness is quite profound, and I now see what you mean.”
“How about you see those energies as your ‘survival team’,” Keith then suggests, “and see this distraction energy as the leader of your survival team.”
“I like that,” I giggle, “I will play with that for a while.”
Distractions To The End
After continuing my silent meditation in a long quest – a journey that continues to be dominated by the loud, laughing distractions of others, I engage Keith in what turns out to be a winding-down conversation.
“I have been working with Higher Self to give this distraction energy a new job description,” I update Keith on my process. “Rather than calling it my “survival team,” I am asking that this energy’s job description be updated to leader of my “thriving team.” That sounds like so much more fun.”
As I begin sharing further details of my journey with Keith, the rest of the porch goes wild with even louder distraction and conversation. I discuss openly with Keith regarding how I created this distraction today to take me on this journey.
One man who is listening in actually interrupts with boasting about how proud he is for being a part of my distraction. I sense huge ego on his part.
“One of my biggest reasons for distraction and defense in my life was the profound trigger I have with big egos,” I whisper to Keith when that man is not listening.
“I am thrilled that I can now say this from a state of perception with no judgment,” I quietly share with Keith. “Such huge out-of-control egos used to drive me insane. Today, I am quite happy with myself for not judging this.”
Lesson Learned
At shortly after 4:00 p.m. – ending one of the shortest chocolate ceremonies in which I have ever participated – Keith does something quite unusual, standing up on the still noisy and distracted porch and announcing that he is going into his kitchen to get ready for tonight.
I clearly know that I have already completed the processing I needed to do today – and I perceive that Keith recognizes what I perceive as truth – that no one else on the porch is the slightest bit interested in doing any inner work at all. Keith has better things to do with his time.
“Wow, what an interesting ceremony,” I tell Keith as I follow him into his kitchen to give him a quick thank you hug. “I’ll see you tonight for chocolate bagging.”
As I walk home, I cannot stop smiling at the bizarre one-of-a-kind experience. I see the ceremony today as a beautiful creation to give me another profound message about my healing journey – about my own journey with distraction energy. I am quite proud of myself for having learned the lesson without trying to analyze it with rational mind. Today, I trusted my flow, trusting that what happened was my creation, not needing to judge what took place as bad or wrong in any way.
“Brenda,” Keith had quietly shared with me just before going into his kitchen. “What you are doing is teaching you how not to judge others when they go into such distraction energies themselves.”
Lesson Missed
Shortly before 6:30 p.m., ten of us are rapidly bagging, weighing, and sealing one-pound bags of chocolate, doing so in assembly line format. We are working quite rapidly, zooming along in near-record speed as we finish bagging the first four of six fifty-pound buckets of freshly ground still-barely-liquid chocolate.
But suddenly, four of the volunteer workers get distracted and stop working, deciding instead to take a smoke break before sitting on the garden steps for the remainder of the evening, simply visiting with each other, acting quite proud of themselves for not working.
Because forty percent of our assembly line is now missing, the remaining six of us are working very slowly at handicapped speeds. Only two people remain spooning chocolate into the bags, and they are doing so at a snail’s pace.
The whole scenario frustrates me deeply. I am anxious to go home. I am exhausted and want to go to bed, but now, because of these “slackers” I will need to remain working for an extra hour. What frustrates me even more, however, is that no one else seems to care, not even the other workers who are forced to pick up the extra load. To me, this is a huge and annoying issue, triggering me deeply.
I sit in this annoyed energy for the remainder of what is now a long evening, struggling to maintain a non-judgmental and calm composure. I am not enjoying myself … not at all.
It is only in retrospect, as I write about this experience, that I clearly see what happened. During the ceremony, in an environment where I am now quite accustomed to seeing things as my reality creation, I easily weathered an entire ceremony of inconsiderate distracting energies from others, doing so with huge inner peace and personal insight-filled growth.
But, just hours later, in a different environment, I completely missed the fact that this too was my creation – and that this entire chocolate bagging experience was also filled with intense distraction energy. I think I missed the lesson entirely. I was not quite so adept in “not judging others when they go into their own distraction energy.”
A Different Light
On a positive note, I had felt deeply complimented earlier in the evening when Paul had actually commented, congratulating me several times for my fun and playfulness. I was indeed in a state of playful joy when we first began bagging the chocolate. It was only when I lost myself in “judging others for their distractions” that I gave away my power and lost touch with that joy.
I am so annoyed as we finish our work for the night, that I am the first to leave, choosing to walk alone in the dark rather than face fears of being social with those who have pushed my buttons so deeply.
“Congratulations on the work you did today,” Keith calls out to me as I disappear down his garden steps.
Even in my state of deeply confused frustration, I love the feedback. I know that I did do great work today – profound work might be more accurate. I took an extremely difficult situation and found the treasure hidden underneath. I used the massive distractions to access ever deepening healing insights regarding one of the more powerful childhood energies that, in a strange twist of understanding, actually kept me safe.
During the ceremony, I was not the least bit attached to what anyone else did or did not do. I kept my power, with no judgment, and instead did only what I needed to do to heal myself.
Even though, in that moment, I missed the “distraction” lesson during chocolate bagging, I will eventually figure it all out and get the lesson after-the-fact.
“I create my reality in every environment, not just in chocolate ceremonies,” I ponder with clarity. “I will never again see the distractions of others in the same light.”
God Drama Emotions
As I meditate early Thursday morning, June 14, 2012, angry stories of renewed frustration begin to consume me. The stories rant on and on about the unruly and inconsiderate distractions during the chocolate ceremony, and about those deeply frustrated “work distractions” during chocolate bagging last night.
Repeatedly, I attempt to ignore the stories, focusing instead on a quest to find joy, understanding, and clarity with the distractions that had occurred. But after about forty minutes of futile attempts to cover the stories with fluffy white light, I suddenly realize that I am extremely angry about what happened yesterday – and deeply angry at the distractions from “other people” throughout my entire life – people who kept me from my focus, my peace, my passion, and my ability to function.
It is soon quite clear that I really blame God for what happened in yesterday’s episode of “The Muppet Show.” I again ponder how I frequently project my God drama onto Keith – and how Keith seemed to intentionally feed into those distractions yesterday in a massive way, doing nothing to create my idea of a safe environment for me to do inner work.
“I am angry at God for the distractions that parents, religious authorities, and other leaders caused or perpetuated in my life,” I ponder my shock at the angry emotions that rage inside. “I am angry that they did nothing to create a safe environment for me to be myself.”
As I immerse myself in this new layer of God drama, I note that the surfacing emotions involve an intense mixture of deep anger and heavy sadness. As I allow the emotions to churn and boil, intentionally giving them permission to come up and flow out, I soon sink into several minutes of deep emotional release – an intense mixture of muffled sobs, muffled screeches, and overwhelming breath-restricting dry heaving.
Another Layer Gone
Finally, when the emotions stop, I continue to fill with light as intense squeamy (squirming and screaming) sensations consume my wrists and forearms.
“Wow,” I ponder with shock, “that was intense.”
I feel so much better after releasing this next layer of raging God drama emotion. The intensity of this new layer of anger and sadness astounded me, and the newfound peace that follows behind is magical.
I now clearly see that all of the distraction energy in my life has been my creation, my own survival mechanism to maintain a thread of sanity during extremely difficult periods of emotional survival. I am so thrilled to have released yet another layer of that mysterious anger at God and Higher Energies.
Speaking Truth
With the emotional charges now released, I spend more time pondering the strange events of yesterday.
“I wonder if part of my lesson was that I needed to learn how to lovingly speak my truth,” I ponder with curiosity. “Perhaps I needed to interrupt the distractions and lovingly ask people to honor our sacred space on the porch.”
“But wait,” I ponder with delight,” I actually did speak up yesterday – many times. I clearly and confidently discussed the distractions with Keith, doing so in a way that everyone could hear if they wanted to listen. And I did it from a place of love and non-judgment – from a place of empowerment, while realizing that what was happening was my creation and that I could choose how to respond. The fact that nothing changed when I spoke my truth was simply another reinforcement that I do create my own woo-woo reality, and that what I ‘needed to happen’ yesterday is exactly what DID happen. I was given a profound experience of seeing how I can be nonattached to annoying behavior – seeing how distraction has served me in my life – and how distraction still annoys me when I lose focus and connection to Source.”
After finishing beautiful-but-intense morning meditations, I finally put distractions aside and spend a magical day writing and publishing “A Magical Interlude” as I reminisce about a much-needed week with my dear friend Pyper.
Life Distractions
As I look back at yesterday morning, I almost giggle at the synchronous nature of two crazy dreams, and of my reading in the book “Oneness” by Rasha.
Those dreams both dealt with crazy life distractions – a dream of wildly backing down a mountain road while the driver was distracted and simply ignored my request for more peace – and a dream of spending an entire day distractedly rearranging chairs for a healing workshop rather than doing the workshop itself.
And that quote from Rasha, talking about how repeated episodes on a theme will manifest as experience – I now obviously recognize that the quote was preparing me for an onslaught of distraction experience that would help me understand one of the major disconcerting themes of my life.
The ceremony yesterday began with beautiful metaphors – a cute little honeybee bringing delightful messages of life’s sweetness finally returning – and intuitive understandings that took me into attempting to work on subconscious hooking between love and the eating of emotional garbage.
But then, the ceremony took a sudden and extremely unusual twist. Having had frequent training to condition my observer-awareness, I quickly realized that the “massive distractions” on the porch were my teachers – teachers that took me on a wild ride through childhood emotion, God drama, and clear recognition that I still have more to learn.
I love how a normal ordinary day – one that appears so distracting and frustrating on the surface – can bring such profound inner growth. After finally discovering love and gratitude for how massive distraction kept me safe and alive for all those emotionally agonizing years – I will never again perceive the distracting behaviors of others in quite the same way.
Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved