Brenda's Bicycles

Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “Magical Motherly Mojo.”

Friday, on the morning after Valentine’s Day, I am filled with beautiful vibrating energy. At around 9:30 a.m., a sense of annoyance attempts to grab my attention. My internet is flaky. A few things (such as my blog) are working, but all attempts to access email or Facebook are failing. It is only in hindsight that I clearly see how the timing of this outage caused a series of events to unfold in powerful sequence.

When this outage persists, I ignore the “annoyance attempts” and instead watch the movie Frequency, leaving me feeling even higher energy vibrations as I ponder the magic played out in this inspiring movie.

But nothing could prepare me for what is about to happen next. At right around 11:30 a.m., as I attempt to access my email for the umpteenth time, it suddenly works. To my delight, I note that there is a message from someone I love very dearly – a message sent two hours earlier – a message from one of my children who is expecting a baby in just over four months. As I eagerly open the email and begin reading, unexpected emotion suddenly shocks and consumes me as I read sparse details of a premature birth and a planned burial.

I have never been one to get too emotional at funerals. I have attended and participated in numerous funerals in my life, many of them quite emotional, and I have shed many a temporary tear at such events. Yes, I have buried both of my parents in the not-too-distant past, but I was strong, knowing my beliefs about how death is nothing to be feared or mourned, that it is just a transition into a Higher, non-physical state.

Suddenly, as I energetically ponder my child’s grief, an unexpected and overwhelming wave of sadness slams me to the churning depths of uncontrollable sobbing.

Empath Flashbacks

I have not blubbered and cried this hard since childhood. In a very real sense, I am intuitively whisked back in time, sensing a profound similarity to how I feel right now and how I felt as a tiny child crying uncontrollably for absolutely no known reason. A vivid scene fills my mind – a scene with me as a tiny child sobbing in bed while my mother kneels beside me, desperately trying to help me stop the irrepressible emotional outburst; both of us clueless as to why I would be so lost for no reason. Memory clearly tells me that those childhood emotions were sadness, just as they are in this moment.

Such childhood memories are vivid and frequent at a very young age; yet with all of those memories, I cannot recall, not even in a single case, the actual physical reason for why I was crying. If those tears had been triggered by trauma, I certainly would have remembered the cause, even at such a young age.

Rational mind clearly tells me that there is no logical explanation for my out-of-proportion emotional intensity in this present moment. Intuitions resonate deeply that the emotion I am feeling is not even my own. It feels like the deep bottomless grief of a child, and others, who are unable to process their grief and loss all by themselves, in their own way. I am quite clear that I am being given an undeniable empath experience, one experientially showing me the depth of what I repeatedly experienced as a child. But I am also quite clear that in this moment, I am out of control. The emotion passing through me literally feels like my own, and there is no stopping it.

Meditative Balance

Five minutes later, as this overwhelming river of sadness continues to consume me like a raging flash flood, I begin to walk out to Keith’s porch, knowing I will arrive twenty minutes earlier than normal, hoping he might be free for a quick chat.

After first bumping into two other friends, exchanging deep sobbing hugs (on my part anyway), I step into Keith’s kitchen and note that he is busy helping someone else. Seeing my tears, Keith briefly pauses to talk with me, reassuring me that what is passing through me will take me deeper, and that the emotion is not my own. He reminds me to focus on bringing in some light and not taking the emotion into my body and “eating it” – on not storing it inside of me as if it were my own.

“Why don’t you grab a green chair and go out back to meditate,” Keith suggests. “I will help you with this in the ceremony today.”

After about fifteen minutes of inner focus, I manage to stabilize the intense emotional river, continuing to allow it to flow through me while no longer getting lost in it. Once I am relaxed and stable, I return to the porch, set things up as normal, plop myself down in my seat, and continue the meditation.

As people begin to filter into the ceremonial space, I am quite proud of myself for being able to maintain loving, courteous, smiling composure while greeting them, making introductory announcements etc…, and then graciously excusing myself, sharing that I am deep in my own process as I again close my eyes and ignore them.

With eyes closed, I continue to focus on the light as intense waves of sadness continue flowing through me.

Innocence And Purity

As early portions of the ceremony proceed, I tear up and cry occasionally. I keep it low key, but do not repress anything. I use the beautiful “white bird” metaphor to help me get out of my head – imaging a beautiful white dove flying in front of me, doing the empath work for me. I occasionally ponder a phrase, “White bird must fly, or she will die,” from the song I quoted a few weeks ago.

My dear friend Isaias happens to bring his gorgeous nineteen months baby to the first part of the ceremony. As he stands near me for a few minutes, I reach up several times to giggle and tickle the feet of this precious little boy. Each time I do so, intense waves of sadness again surge through me, causing tears to again flow. Each time I connect with this pure and innocent baby, I feel an intense rush of loving connection with my grieving child.

Eye-Opening Guilt

Perhaps an hour later in this deep meditation, I begin to imagine connecting with the spirit – the Higher Essence – of my precious grandchild. I feel that he is happy, bubbly, and free, and I clearly understand that everything happens for a reason. Even with this clarity, however, I continue to experience the intense grief flowing through me – requiring my constant focus on the present moment.

Suddenly, I begin to realize that I feel guilty for not taking all of this grief inside of me – for not continuing to bawl my brains out – as if it is my sacred duty to process this emotion inside of me, even though I understand it is not my emotion.

This self-imposed guilt is quite the “eye opener” – reminding me of how I have repeatedly tried to own all of the guilt in growth-triggering emotional journeys with family and loved ones. Something inside of me insists that I need to be the one who suffers when the emotions of others are hurting.

I recognize that I have a deep pattern of feeling guilty when someone I love is hurting. I want to feel their pain to the core, and to process it on the hard bus. I again regress back to early childhood memories of crying for no reason, remembering how I felt guilty for crying.

“I felt my mother’s deep frustration regarding my crying, and I felt guilty for making her that way,” I ponder another profound clue.

Going Deeper

Finally, somewhere in the middle of this ceremony, the sadness flowing through me ceases. I begin to wonder if I just shut it down, or perhaps the flow is done for now. My heart is open, I do not experience  solar plexus pains, and I feel a sense of deep relief that the flash flood is over.

“If I were doing this just for me, I might not have kept my heart so open,” I ponder a strange absurdity. “But today, recognizing that I was helping loved ones (in ways they would likely not acknowledge or even believe to be possible), I found myself willing to go deeper. I opened a lot today.”

“Who’s next?” Keith asks a few moments later.

“Can you help me go deeper?” I ask as I look up and glance into Keith’s eyes.

We talk about my process for a minute, and then Keith guides me to move to the center of the porch.

Loving Contact

“Brenda,” Keith asks, “is it OK for me to share what you are going through?”

I quickly respond in the affirmative, but then spend a minute sharing basics of the story myself.

“In other words,” Keith speaks to the group, “Brenda lost a grandchild today.”

As Keith shares these words, the emotions again rage as I briefly sob and dry heave for a few minutes.

With me in the center, Keith quickly guides everyone to place a hand on me, pointing out that I need loving contact right now. Again, this beautiful gesture primes me for more flowing tears.

“Brenda,” Keith guides me. “Look at the young woman in front of you. By doing what you are doing, you are helping her to do what she needs to do today.”

I believe this … I feel this. I know that by having the courage to surrender to my process, I am giving other’s permission to do the same, in their own way.

Deeply Rooted

“Brenda,” Keith soon guides me, “go inside and pull something out of your abdomen, something deeply rooted.”

As Keith’s words filter in, I remember how he has occasionally coached me that sometimes, emotional densities in the second chakra can be deeply rooted, I clearly understand that there is something very deep inside that is ready to leave. I focus with all of my will in deep concentration, feeling deep agony as I emotionally pull, pull, and pull. Finally, I imagine (and feel) myself releasing it. I do not say anything to Keith.

“There,” Keith tells the young woman in front of me a few moments later. “Brenda let it go and you are now holding it in your hands. Please pass it on to the angels for transmutation.”

“Wow,” I ponder in silence. “I have no idea what it was that left, but I do feel lighter.”

Several times while in this process, Keith guides me to look into the eyes of various people surrounding me as he again tells me how I am helping this person or that.

Repressed Grief And Sadness

“I have never been allowed to grieve like this,” I share a new insight. “I never could … I never wanted to … and now I am blown away by the depth of this grief flowing through me, most of which is not even mine.”

“Much of what you are feeling was buried from other experiences in your life that you were not allowed to feel,” Keith validates my thoughts.

I begin to experience inner pains as Keith helps me to understand more about the repressed grief stored away deep inside me.

“My solar plexus is really hurting right now,” I share something new with Keith. “Am I reading energy from others?”

“It is yours,” Keith guides. “Open the door to that buried pain.”

As I connect with the immensity of what lies buried inside, I feel a deep sense of overwhelmed and terror-filled intimidation. I clearly have pulled the lid off a Pandora’s Box of old repressed grief and sadness.

“Send the light down there.” Keith encourages me. “You won’t be able to go down there and do that all by yourself, but open the door and send the light down.”

Repeatedly, I feel the door energetically open as I imagine a few bursts of light going down with loving healing energy.

“Brenda,” Keith soon points out, “that door is not just open, but it is now off the hinges and totally gone … and it will never come back.”

Wow, intuitions strongly whisper that Keith’s words are profoundly true. As I continue basking in this meditation, I soon imagine the roof coming off this dark inner reality, allowing the light to freely flow into this once-dark storeroom. There is no fixing energy here, no going in with a ray gun of light to zap the density, no beating up a scared puppy under the sofa. I am just imagining loving light freely flowing into a once-closed room, allowing the love to work in whatever way meets the highest good.

Pure Love

As Keith begins to briefly work with a young man who went deeper because of my process, I note that there are still some pains in my solar plexus, but far less than I felt earlier. Inner guidance whispers that most of the remaining layers of this pain will vanish as I increasingly find self-love for this energy – as I release the masculine rejections that have projected onto male energies who told me I had to repress such emotion in the past.

I quickly reflect on another event from a few minutes earlier. Keith had pointed out to me how pure the energy was that was coming from a young man seated behind me. I had felt it as pure, divine, masculine love, and I had shared this beautiful feedback with him.

As I continue to sit in the middle of the porch, I feel so much love from everyone right now. I can see it in their eyes, and I can feel it radiating from their hearts.

“Take a deep gentle breath,” Keith soon turns back to guide me.

I take a few such breaths. Several minutes later, clearly feeling complete, I stand up and return to my cushion by the kitchen.

I literally feel as if I am in a different reality. It is a lighter energy, filled with pure love.

An Unforgettable Journey

At around 5:30 p.m., as several people begin to leave, I suggest to Keith that he briefly talk about empaths, since I sense that many of these people are powerful empaths themselves. Keith does one better as he soon goes into a beautiful empath training.

I am still mostly in my own quiet “basking in the light” process, but I occasionally interrupt to share beautiful feedback regarding how much of what was running through me today was not even my own emotion. I add that in the past, I would have totally believed it all to be mine, considering myself to be a loser and beating myself up with guilt.

“This has been a profound lesson for me,” I share with the group.

At the end, I hug everyone on the porch, squeezing tightly and hanging on until they let go.

“I don’t think I need to tell you that congratulations are in order for your beautiful work today,” Keith tells me as I hug him.

I am delighted by the opportunity to then spend several minutes in discussing insights with Keith regarding my process. Soon, I quietly giggle, slowly walking homeward bound. As I near the halfway point, three young women from the ceremony catch up with me, and slow down to my pace for a fun visit. I am delighted by the magical giggles and inner peace that are now lighting up my energy – quite the contrast from how I felt just seven hours ago.

It has been a day, and an emotional journey, that I will never forget.

Raising Vibrations

Saturday, after a beautiful and relaxing day while writing, “Pondering Personal Power,” I have a fun giggling talk with my new neighbors – a young couple from France. They have been here for a few days, and have been delightfully quiet. I love my new social courage, and how I can confidently build a friendship with them that will prevent future frustration. Now, even if they are a little noisy, it will not bother me, because I see them as the beautiful beings that they are.

Later that evening, as I ponder recent events, a new insight floods my mind. It is an idea that should have been obvious but wasn’t – an insight that Keith discusses at the beginning of nearly every “Glow Meditation” – an insight that is only now becoming “clear as day” in my understanding.

“I don’t need to go looking for density,” I giggle to myself. “I can simply focus on bringing in more light and raising my vibrations. In doing so, whatever is not in alignment with the light will come up with perfect timing.”

This is what I have been doing now for the last six weeks, but part of me had wondered if I was avoiding deeper issues by doing so. Now I clearly understand that the deeper issues do not need me to go searching for them. I do not need to feel guilty for not spelunking down into those dark caves without proper lighting. All I need to do is to get better lights to guide me, and then whatever is hiding in dark places will inevitably reveal itself with perfect timing, as it did today. It is much easier to see and deal with such issues when there is more light with which to partner.

A Level Of Intrigue

Sunday afternoon, after a beautiful Glow Meditation, Keith sits in the middle and begins to work with several people on an individual basis. At one point, he glances at me, gives me a huge “thumbs up,” and compliments my energy today.

I have been sitting on my cushion focusing on my insights from last night, doing nothing but raise my vibration while not searching for densities … trusting the rest to take care of itself.

“Put your necklace in the freezer tonight to cleanse it,” Keith’s words suddenly catch me off guard.

“Is it carrying negative energy right now?” I ask with curiosity.

“No,” Keith peaks my curiosity. “This is just to clear your current level of energy from the necklace. Your guides are telling me that you are going up to a new level, and the old energy needs to go now to make room for the new energy.”

He explains that he is suggesting the freezer, not just because it works, but also because he is not sure what metals are in the necklace, and is not sure how they might be affected by the normal salt-water cleanse.

I take this exchange of words as a beautiful positive hint, but do not think much about it during the ceremony. I am in a beautiful energy right now, simply trusting that whatever is coming does not need me to worry about it.

Unbridled Childhood Energy

But even so, with Keith’s intriguing guidance, I am expecting a magical and high vibration ceremony. It does begin that way as Keith asks me to share energy with a woman across the porch – but soon takes a turn into what feels like craziness.

There is a very magical man on the porch today – one that I have been around before – one whose energy triggered me a great deal last spring – one that Keith introduces to the group as having unbridled inner child energy. Keith soon turns him loose to help a young woman access her inner child energy. Together the two of them create what I can only perceive as childlike chaos – what appears as an energetic “free for all” around the porch, with little regard for structure or what I might consider as proper boundaries.

I clearly see all of this as a magical stage play for me to observe and study the energy of unbridled, childlike joy. Many of my triggers come and go – triggers showing me things that I consider to be more child-ISH than child-LIKE. I attempt to restrain all reaction and simply observe with curiosity, clearly recognizing that I could use a lot of this energy – that I WANT to open a great deal of this energy.

I also clearly remember that as a child, I did unleash a lot of similar energy, and that I got into deep agonizing trouble as I was punished for doing so. It was irreverent, boisterous, unspiritual, distracting, etc…, and I was not allowed to go there.

For a long while, I just observe and study, pondering the difference between unbridled expression, and having the wisdom to express such childlike purity and joy while not ruffling the feathers of those still immersed in the consensus reality.

Trigger Turn-Arounds

“Does this seem like an out of control free-for-all to you?” a dear friend soon approaches me and whispers in my ear, expressing how much the ceremony is bothering her.

“Yeah,” I respond, “but I am seeing it all as my process, trying to bring it inside.”

I too have been partially engaging in this energy. Keith often encourages people to “laugh and cry at the same time.” I am continuing to keep tabs on the woman across the porch who Keith originally asked me to help. At one point, as she gets serious in her emotional release, I grab little Bobby-bear and place him on a tiny table directly in front of me, with his nose peaking up over the edge of the table and his eyes staring right at the woman. When she opens her eyes and sees little Bobby staring innocently at her, she bursts into deep laughter, taking her much more deeply into her magical process. I join in the laughter, as do many others on the porch. It is contagious.

But as I consider my friend’s words, I begin to go into my own seriousness and judgment regarding the behavior of distraction (and a great deal of fixing-like energy sharing) that I now perceive as consuming the porch.

My heart begins to cramp painfully, hurting on both sides of the sternum – on both sides of that nail-in-my-heart spot, but not in the exact center. I have never had such odd pain before. It is an intense pinching, a shutting-down sensation squeezing from both sides. As I ponder the possible meaning, intuitions whisper that this is a fear of further opening to this crazy, out-of-control joy level, or whatever level I am going to.

“If this is where I am going, I don’t know if I want to go there,” inner voices rage in judgment, finding all of the behavior on the porch as distracting, boisterous, irreverent, inappropriate, blah, blah, blah.

“I could never embrace such unbridled joyful behavior as being appropriate,” I ponder in repressed anger.

This is anger that was subtly taught to me as a child. A dominant part of me agrees with this anger, finding it justified, righteous, and called-for in this circumstance.

Warm, Magical Love

“What’s up?” Keith suddenly turns and speaks to me, as if one of my guides had whispered in his ear that I am now ready to work on something.

“My heart is really shutting down during the last ten minutes,” I respond. “I am confused. I think it is fear of opening to another level … but can you check?”

In the short discussion that ensues, Keith confirms, in a round about way, that my intuitions are on the right track.

“Connect with her again,” Keith points to the woman I was working with earlier – the one I made laugh with my teddy bear.

“She is going to send you something to help you,” Keith guides me.

After about five minutes, I speak up and comment to Keith that I feel a warm, hugging energy holding my heart. I sit in this process for a while, feeling her magical love. In this process, my heart slightly relaxes, but not a lot.

Anger At Repressed Joy

At this moment, the man and young woman who had initially triggered this joyful free-for-all walk back up onto the porch. They have been down in the garden talking. As I observe them, it all suddenly makes sense.

“I just realized that I am angry at how my childhood joy was brutalized out of me,” I blurt out to Keith. “As I watch them accessing their joy, I am deeply angry at how I was forced to lose mine.”

I quickly sink into tears, working on the inside as Keith moves on to help someone else. I feel waves of intense anger – but I will not allow myself to go into the anger in a public way. I want to sink into uncontrollable sobs and dry-heaving, energetically hurling and forcing the emotion out of me – but I cannot go there – I cannot seem to access it.

“Brenda, where are you at now?” Keith lovingly asks a few minutes later as I am bent forward with tears streaming while I attempt to access this stuck, emotion.

God-Drama Drama

“I am sensing intense anger,” I respond to Keith, “but I cannot access it. I realize that it is extremely intense “F@ck you Bastard” raging anger at God for how my joy was forced out of me as a child – triggered by the childlike energy today.”

(Please excuse my language … this is the real unexpected intensity of what came up inside.)

“With the way I feel right now,” I explain the bizarre feelings to Keith, “I don’t want that joy. I am angry about it. I refuse to go into that joy because of anger about what happened to me during the shutdown.”

“I am in a major temper tantrum, refusing to go up to a new level if that means having to let go of what feels like justified anger.” I explain a new level of God-drama understanding.

As I attempt to further describe this eye-opening journey, I realize it is just a blah, blah, blah story and I stop trying to put it to words, realizing that it does not need to be explained any further. I have accessed another core understanding of the craziness inside – the bizarre inner games being played to protect me from joy and light. Yet this understanding does nothing to release me from the agonizing angry emotions that have me by the throat.

Intense Absolute Refusal

I suddenly sink into a few layers of intense, overdue emotional release as Keith takes this opportunity to educate the group about the “craziness” of my process. He explains to them what the God drama is, helping them to understand that I am in a very powerful core process.

He explains that we all have a God drama, and shares that most people need to begin by working on their densities at the level of inner children, parents, relationships, and teachers etc. Eventually we get to a point where we are working with our separation directly with the divine – as our reason why we are still separate, refusing to allow the connection with divinity that is always available to us.

I love listening to Keith’s words as I continue my emotional release on the more-or-less easy bus. I perceive that what I am doing is deeply helping several other people. One young woman later tells me how profoundly it helped her.

But in the present moment, I keep my head down, deep in my own pain. I do not watch events on the porch, nor do I pay much attention to them. This inner temper tantrum is raging with deep anger.

“I refuse to go into the light if that means that I have to joyfully embrace what happened on the porch today,” I ponder in agony. “It was irreverent, chaotic, disrespectful, and a virtual fixing-fest for new people. Everyone was breaking the rules. I WILL NOT open to more light if it means loving and embracing this.”

High Definition Color

In the back of my mind, I listen as Keith eventually guides a young man into his subconscious mind, working with his subconscious book of beliefs – a process that I am intimately and powerfully familiar with. (See blog “A Subconscious Book Of Beliefs, February 7, 2012.)

“I have HUGE subconscious beliefs about reverence,” I ponder with clarity. “These were drilled into me from infancy onward – in the nursery at church, in children’s religious meetings, in frequent family spiritual gatherings, on, and on, and on.”

“I can only imagine that I was once filled with unbridled joy, and I clearly remember being scolded for being irreverent many times,” I continue this pondering. “All of that joyful behavior was shamed out of me with behavioral rules.”

But as I ponder these words, I do not make my own parallel journey into the subconscious. This inner temper tantrum is still raging, consuming my attention. I am literally observing the angry game that I play with God in high-definition colorful resolution.

Indignant Inner Tantrum

As the ceremony ends, I hang around to the end. The inner tantrum is so strong that it bleeds to present reality, and I am influenced by the judgments and anger. I want to briefly talk to Keith about the bizarre joyful behaviors on the porch today. I want to hear him tell me they were wrong and that he won’t let them happen again.

(Wow, I was really lost in this reality.)

Keith mostly ignores my latent presence, but finally, in a moment where I can ask him, he essentially tells me that it was “just one of those ceremonies,” stating that there was nothing wrong with it.

At one level, I clearly believe I manifested this ceremony – that it was more than perfect to take me precisely where I needed to go. But the inner tantrum continues and I walk home still quite frustrated with this angry child in me continuing to feel an absolute refusal to embrace or validate the truth of that perfection.

I am in a deep funk as I walk slowly home. I do not want to talk or make eye contact with anyone. One woman stops to hug me and I just pretend to hug her back.

Profound Fixing Understanding

Just as I reach the gate below my apartment, two women who were huge contributors to the fixing-fest today greet me and ask if I am feeling any better now.

“Actually,” I respond truthfully, “I am deeper in that tantrum now than I was earlier.”

“Would you like me to clear your energy field?” one woman asks with genuine concern.

“No, this emotion is an important part of my process,” I respond bluntly. “It doesn’t need to be fixed.”

I feel guilty as I walk up the stairs. Those rude words just came out, but I feel no need to apologize for them. I clearly understand that these women have no idea of the depth of the process in which I am journeying – and I also sense the genuineness of their offer – but I do not want this emotion to be taken from me. I need it right now.

In spite of the emotion, a part of me is actually rejoicing that I am so deeply in this tantrum. I have literally been building to this understanding for years, and I am not about to let go of this emotion until I understand a little more about it and why I put it there. It is my teacher – and a profound teacher at that. I am finally beginning to understand why I am so rebelliously angry at God – why I refuse to play the game of light and joy and magic. Of course, all of this anger is normally hiding behind my conscious blinders as I give platitude to the belief that I really want to be in the light and magic.

“No way are two well-intentioned women going to take this teacher away from me, just so I don’t have to feel what I know I NEED to feel so I can heal it.” I ponder as I walk up the steps.

Our Deepest Fear

Once in my apartment, I go straight to my bedroom, get in bed, and literally throw a physical tantrum … kicking and punching my bed while repeating numerous choice explicative phrases directed at various Higher Powers.

I am not lost in this emotion, I am doing this on purpose, to make it get bigger, to help me feel the reasons and emotions more profusely. I take it to the max, permitting myself to explore the anger and temper-tantrum refusal as deeply as possible.

Eventually, after exhaustively exploring the dark-shadow, I suddenly realize that my “joy” is my light shadow – the magnificent being of light that I am. Intuitions immediately guide me to a famous Marianne Williamson quote, one from her book “Return To Love.”

Following is that beautiful quote. Note, there are many versions of this floating around the internet, with slightly different wording or attributed authorship. This is the actual and official quote from Marianne’s website (www.marianne.com), with exact wording and punctuation:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

“Wow,” I ponder in shock. “I am terrified of my joy. For my entire life, I have kept it small, in check, and mostly hidden. I really am afraid to embrace my power, because I absolutely know it will not be welcomed by many, and actually ridiculed by others.”

I have been so powerless throughout my life, that embracing my light is a frightening thought, sure to wreak havoc in my life.

Joy With Discernment

As I ponder the ongoing insights, this inner anger, and the refusal to step into joy, is finally covered in clarity. I find repeated examples in my life where I embraced joy and where almost immediately, those around me were uncomfortable. One friend actually went into deep depression when I started getting happy – so I keyed down my behavior. At work, after my gender transition just over sixteen years ago, I was slammed when management approached me and asked me to reel in my happiness, because I was making some people uncomfortable with my new excitement for life.

“What little happiness and joy that I have expressed in my life has almost always gotten me into deep trouble or rejection,” I ponder with shock. “I have been so afraid of being ridiculed by unhappy people, that I have learned that the only way to survive without self-love and self-confidence is to be as shutdown-conditioned and unhappy as everyone else around me.”

“But there ARE inappropriate expressions of unbridled joy – child-ISH rather than child-LIKE,” I ponder my feelings about today. “Now that I am finding my power, I still want to behave in a culturally acceptable manner in most situations.”

“Yes,” I reply to myself. “But as a wise adult, if I allow myself to open this, I can learn to be joyful on the inside, and I can use my inner discernment to know when expressions of joy on the outside might be inappropriate for the setting.”

Joy is an inside job. I can be excessively joyful all the time without making others uncomfortable. I can express it in ways that are not chaotic and irreverent for the given environment.

A Beautiful Creation

To my amazement, even with all of this beautiful insight, the inner temper tantrum rages on. I am the observer, but remaining unattached and unidentified with the emotion is a difficult full time job.

Finally, I get the intuition that this tantrum has taught me enough about myself – that it is now time to raise my vibrations. As I bring in light and meditate with love, the emotions suddenly vanish. Without a second thought, I grab ALL of the crystals in my apartment and place them lovingly in my freezer to cleanse their energy. I want to move up to a new level of joy, and I don’t want any of that old energy to linger in my environment.

“I am ready to embrace more joy,” I ponder with a giggle, “even if it means irreverence and rejection. I want to feel it. I am an adult with discernment, embracing my power.”

Finally, at around 9:00 p.m., I cook and gobble down dinner to fill a starving stomach. At 2:45 a.m. on Monday morning, I wake up with more insights flowing. I ponder how, earlier this evening the prevailing emotion was demanding that I pack my bags and abandon working with Keith. I was literally wanting to puke at the thought of embracing such irreverent joyful behavior on the porch.

As I go back to bed, early on Monday morning, I first write the following words.

“Now, I clearly KNOW that this entire experience was my creation today – exactly what I needed to force me out of the box of comfort. I am still resisting in some ways, but I want to free myself from old conditioning – from conditioning that seems frightening to let go of.”

New Level Of Giggles

Monday, after an exhausting shortage of restful sleep, I arrive at Keith’s porch in a kind of energetic daze. I do indeed feel a higher level of energy, but there is an aching emptiness in my upper solar plexus region. During an initial check-in with Keith, I shed a few painful tears as I mention the agonizing emptiness sensation. He tells me that he can tell I am at a new level, and then he hints that the emptiness is something that needs to be filled at this new level.

The ceremony today begins with a radically different energy. Rather than dancing around the porch in distraction, my magical joyful friend is now doing his own inner work. I love how things change when I do.

Eventually, my young friend begins to become deeply distracted while he meditates, moving around, twirling his hands, stretching, twisting, touching his temples, his feet, doing blah, blah, blah.

I giggle inside as I am guided to find a new way to feel. Rather than the old me judging this endearing scene, I grab little Bobby bear, and have him mimic exactly everything that my friend does. Immediately, rather than judging an external distraction, I am creating a fun inner joyful experience, giggling at the silliness, finding a new level of playful energy.

Soon, I am extremely distracted as the young child-like woman from yesterday disconnects from the ceremony and comes over to stand in front of me while writing down the Marianne Williamson quote that is attached to the wall above my head. When I figure out what she is doing, I just giggle inside at the profound inner metaphor. I am feeling annoyed because someone is writing down the quote that so profoundly resonates in my life right now.

“Duh,” I giggle. “She is guided to do this to place silly emphasis on my profound lesson from last night.”

Nevertheless, I still need to face inner triggers and turn them into self-love for those beautiful and magical inner children of mine – being so creatively acted out for me today, right in front of my very eyes.

A Terrifying Thought

Still teetering back and forth in my new level of growth, I watch as Keith works his magic with a woman across the porch. He guides her to visualize herself in a childhood classroom in which a teacher is shutting down everyone’s joy, criticizing creativity, judging all magical and joyful outbursts of innocent play, etc… I follow along in my own version of this meditation.

“Now,” Keith guides her, “stand up in that classroom and tell the teacher that she is the Gestapo, or something like that.”

I imagine worse.

“As you do this,” Keith continues guiding the woman, “others in the room will stand up and support you, joining you in your understanding. Together, you will walk out of the room, down a hall, outside, and into a field, or in the woods, or some place like that. In that place, you will find a real teacher … or perhaps several real teachers … who will teach you who you really are.”

At this point in the meditation, I am sobbing. When I imagined myself telling the teacher off, no one stood up to support me, and I got into huge trouble. I remember how, throughout my schooling I was one of those annoying kids who always had to be the “teachers pet.” I needed to please and conform or I would not get the validation I so craved and desperately needed. The thought or defying the teacher is terrifying.

“I was the rule robot,” I ponder with pain. “I was the self-appointed hater of anything magical. My survival centered around outside approval. I hated out-of-the-box behavior in others, because it made me deeply uncomfortable.”

Allowing Pure Love

While I sit in the midst of this deep flowing emotion, Keith unexpectedly speaks to me.

“Brenda, look at her,” Keith points to a young woman across the porch. “She is going to help you.”

Keith then tells the young woman that an energy will come out of her third eye and it will help me with something I need. He guides her to do this several times. Each time, I provide feedback that I feel a little lighter. Some of the inner heaviness leaves me every time Keith guides her to do it.

As he continues talking, Keith tells this young woman that I am receiving her help, and he points out to her that I have a difficult time receiving energy from others, only allowing it when it is pure and unconditional. This is a great compliment from Keith to this young woman, and I do indeed feel her unconditional, non-pushing purity.

“And often you will not even allow it then,” a nearby friend jabs me with an underlying energy of sharp resentment.

This is the same young woman I called “Catherine” in my writing titled “Trusting Inner Knowing” published on August 3, 2012. It was an event that had happened in the final ceremony of the season, on June 29, 2012, right before I regressed to the most suicidal emotions of my life. In that ceremony, Catherine had confronted me in a huge encounter of make-wrong tough love. It had been a profound experience of empowering myself to stand up and own that there is nothing wrong with me or my process – standing up to her words and refusing to own them. In retrospect, I clearly see that Catherine had my best interest at heart, but her delivery was pushing, frustrated, impatient, and making me wrong – anything but unconditional.

I only mention this experience, because in a couple weeks, Catherine will do something very similar – with very different and profound results for me. She and I have been playing magical opposite ends of the same frustrating and painful script, loving each other from afar, both of us feeling quite confused. But I am getting ahead of myself … so now back to the present.

A Lifelong Childhood Friend

This young woman (the one now sending me love) continues to lock eyes with me for the next couple of hours. We are both quite serious at first. Occasionally we take turns shedding a few tears, but mostly we just continue to stare into each other’s soul. Even when people walk around the porch, briefly passing between us, we never move our eyes.

Over time, I begin to feel magical energy in my heart, but much of me is still up in the rational mind, getting in the way, trying to do a play-by-play of the ongoing events.

Soon, remembering a recent experience written about in “The Mojo,” I connect with my heart, pondering the profound inner magic inside that is just waiting to be embraced and validated by me. I access the phrases from that magical day, and add several new ones, repeating them silently in my mind, over and over.

“Brenda’s got the mojo … Brenda’s got the magic … Brenda’s got the love … Brenda’s got the heart … Brenda’s got the joy … Brenda’s got the giggles … Brenda’s got the power.”

Eventually, the words “Brenda’s got” get replaced by “We’ve got” as I include this beautiful young woman in my inner reality. I clearly see that we are one. I imagine her as a lifelong childhood friend. I see us giggling together, in a classroom with the criticizing teacher. Together, we tell that teacher off, and we run outside to play and giggle in our magic. She is me … another part of me. I feel such a deep trust with her energy.

Lifting And Supporting

As the process continues I remain deeply focused on the energy movements in my body. I begin to realize that there are pains in my solar plexus that want to be released via my throat. When I breathe out quietly, inner emotions are triggered, often leaving me dizzy when I am done with them. I allow them to flow through me, but more keep on coming, layer after layer.

After another hour of constant focus – an hour in which I have passed through repeated waves of intense emotional release – this young woman begins to move her arms around as if she is pulling something out of me.

“Brenda,” Keith soon interrupts the silence. “I just want you to know that what she is doing is helping to lift something from you, and it is not fixing.”

“Yeah,” I respond. I know that, and I feel perfect trust with her.”

This little hint from Keith causes me to relax more and more as I imagine that she is using a magical “third-eye laser” to reach into me and help me. I imagine it reaching down my throat, right into where the pains are in my solar plexus. I visualize the healing beam stirring up another layer of density that is ready to leave, guiding it up and out of my throat. As I imagine this scene, I actually feel the pains in my abdomen responding and leaving me via my throat.

It seems to be an endless supply of pain. I want to judge myself for this bottomless pit … but I do not. Instead, I focus on complete trust and surrender.

Emptiness Filled

“I see your grandfather standing behind you,” the young woman speaks her first words in two hours.

“Now I feel guided to tell you that I see your mother,” she adds ten minutes later.

Eventually she asks permission to share all of the insights that flow through her. I eagerly agree, curious and intrigued.

“What I see inside of you is almost all childhood conditioning that came from your mother and your grandfather.” She shares with confidence. “It was passed on to you, and now you can just let it go. There is no need to keep it.”

I totally know her words to be true, and I want to let it go. My head just keeps getting in the way trying to figure out “how.”

The two of us continue to stare for perhaps five more minutes. I feel a profound sense of love and gratitude. While her words are nothing new, and still slightly confusing to hear, I feel her unconditional nature in delivering them. I know that somehow I can just let this conditioning go.

When the ceremony concludes, as I begin to walk home with a friend, she tells me that she saw the very same things.

“When you walked onto the porch today I could sense the new energy in your head, and that empty, aching hole in your solar plexus,” my friend then shares as she walks part of the way home with me.

“That emptiness is now filled with what belongs there,” this energy-sensitive friend adds more beautiful insight.

“Yeah, I feel it too,” I respond with glowing confidence.

Surprise Endings

“Something magical happened today.” I later ponder in silence. “Throughout the ceremony today, I felt a tiny level of joy, self-love, self-confidence, and power gradually increasing.

But I could not possibly imagine what would happen next. Just before leaving the porch, the young man and woman who had annoyed me so much with their joy – well each of them had wanted to purchase a little chocolate, and Keith was running low. When I volunteered that I had exactly the amount they needed in my drawer at home, Keith sold it to them, with the agreement that he would replace it for me on Wednesday … and that they would come to my house later tonight to pick up their treasures.

Around 7:30 p.m., the young woman stops by and we have a delightful chat, a deep heart felt connection of genuine hugs and gratitude. Just this simple conversation does so much to release any remnants of the annoyance I had felt regarding her exuberant joy from yesterday.

And then, around 8:30 p.m., the young man stops by with another friend, and I provide him with his five pounds of chocolate. I invite them in and we talk for more than an hour, again having a delightful, healing, joyful, giggling, heart-felt conversation. I love my new energy. The two people who annoyed me so much, just yesterday, are now two friends that I hold deep in my heart.

I hate to see them each go their separate ways.

A Journey With Joy

These past four days, including three chocolate ceremonies, continue the pattern of blowing me away with unexpected growth, insight, and healing.

On Friday, I was gifted with an intense empath experience – one based on real-life grief and sadness – one taking me right back to the beginning of a childhood filled with similar experiences of unexplained rivers of sadness. It was an intimately personal experience of profound grief involving loved ones – an experience I would not wish on anyone. Yet it was an experience that also brought me cherished growth and experiential understanding regarding how repressed grief and sadness consumed my life, leaving no room for joy in a heart overrun by the external emotions of a pain-filled world. It was an unforgettable journey of deep loving healing.

On Sunday, as I focused with deep trust and surrender, simply raising vibrations and trusting the flow of my own creation to bring me what I need, I got what I least expected. It was an intense and fiercely fought lesson regarding how true unbridled joy was brutally shamed out of my life by others in a culturally conditioned world. It was a journey that then showed me how the very joy that I continue to want (but reject) is actually a core element of my light shadow – of that brilliant divine essence that we all are. The shocker, however, is that I hate that unbridled joy, I reject it, I don’t want it around me, it freaks me out, and I refuse to embrace my Higher Light if that is what it will do to me. Wow, what a revealing indignant inner temper tantrum.

And then comes Monday, a day of attempting to integrate this new understanding – of recognizing a new level of energy and surrender, while filling empty spaces and smoothing down a few triggers, topped off with magical loving connections and surprise endings.

What an amazing journey of surprises this continues to be. With each new day, more pieces of the healing puzzle just fall into place.

… to be continued …

Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved