Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “A Budding Superhero.”
Early Sunday morning, I struggle while attempting to meditate. I am unable to focus as intense distraction viciously bounces around in my head.
After a shower and breakfast, I feel guided to watch the movie “Powder.” In the last fifteen years or so, I have attempted to watch this movie twice, but was so distracted, or in such a different place, that I got virtually nothing out of it. Today, on this March 24, 2013 Sunday morning, the emotions that bubble to the surface catch me completely off guard.
From the opening scene – a hospital nursery with a crying baby and a rejecting father – I begin to sob. Of course, my birth circumstances and life struggles were quite different, but I feel the pain of that tiny baby isolated and crying in that sterile hospital basinet. I feel his hopelessness, sadness, and sense of not fitting in – of being born into a world that feels quite alien. Throughout the movie, similar emotions course through my veins as I re-experience the painful trauma of a magical child that did not, and could not, fit in to the society around him.
Wow, in very different terms and settings, this movie is essentially the story of my life. I came into this world as a sensitive and magical boy … no one understanding my true heart … not fitting in … real or imagined, feeling ridiculed and rejected for being myself … hiding, trying to avoid conflict, not talking much … drawing the conclusion that something is horribly wrong with me, possibly even evil. I was never popular … always confused and alone … hating myself, but at the same time having a profound love and desire to serve others … to prove and defend my honor.
Like Powder, I had loving support from some, but could not share my deepest pain with those who loved me. The facts were obvious and lonely. I was not normal, and I would never fit in.
Even now, as I attempt to heal the pain, the wounds of “something is horribly wrong with me,” “never fitting in,” and “hopelessness” are open, exposed, and festering. As the movie ends in unexpected emotion, new clarity fills my heart, and new “determination to heal” surges in my soul.
Giggling Revelations
After setting up for the afternoon chocolate ceremony, while sitting in deep emotions waiting for the activities to begin, a giggling fact is brought to my attention. Steven approaches me, telling me that he finally put two-and-two together in his mind. He explains how, about a year ago, he was searching on the internet for information about “Las Piramides Del Ka” – the meditation center here in San Marcos where I spent four months in the summer of 2010. During that search, Steven stumbled across my blog and began to read frequently. He had loved my story and my writing, and as Steven read about my experiences with Keith and the chocolate ceremonies, he had been deeply intrigued.
“Brenda,” Steven tells me, “it was your writing that made me really want to come here to work with Keith … and I just barely figured out that it was your blog that I was reading.”
I giggle inside as I ponder how Steven’s presence in the last few months has been profoundly instrumental in much of my own growth and healing. It warms my heart to see how things play out in such magical synchronous ways.
An Agonizing Choice Point
From the beginning of the chocolate ceremony, I see myself standing at the agonizing choice point of my God / separation drama.
On one side of the coin is the state of fearful knowing that if I continue to try to be normal – striving to fit in, to be loved and accepted – that my life will just be more of the same … more smallness, rejection, betrayal, pain, social struggle, sadness, tears, and feeling unfulfilled.
The other side of this conscious choice-point coin is to finally let go of the story, and to embrace not being normal, choosing my magic and uniqueness – the very things that got me into profound trouble as a child and throughout my life.
“I have now achieved so much transparency that I know I can withstand any judgments, disagreements, and ridicule that may surface as a result of me embracing my power and magic,” I ponder with a sense of hope.
“Or can I?” Another part of me shivers with doubt, not believing that I can really do it.
It seems that every time in my life that I have embraced joy, self-empowerment, and self-love, that I was slammed, rejected, ridiculed, or beaten down in some way … literally every time. Even now, as I further heal my reality, a few powerful people on the porch are projecting onto me, subtly rejecting me for whatever unknown reasons. It hurts. I feel like I want to go back to being a people pleaser, returning to my smallness, begging them to like me, adjusting my behavior to make them stop judging me.
“That is bullshit,” I tell myself.
“But being in my power makes me feel like I will lose all chance of being loved by family and friends,” I ponder the frightening dilemma. “And beginning as a child, it was asserting my power that caused all of this chaos in the first place, causing me to project my pain onto others, resulting in confusion, doubt, chaos, and inner tantrums – causing me to give up my power, creativity, and uniqueness – causing me to become the quintessential people pleaser without my own identity.”
Fence Sitting
I sit precariously on the fence, for the first time ever, recognizing that I am indeed faced with a CONSCIOUS “choice-with-blinders-on” – a choice of either embracing smallness, or embracing my light shadow.
I am terrified, feeling the deep sadness of the dysfunctional shut-down me, feeling the pain and absolute certainty that choosing to embrace my power is literally the same as choosing to let go of all hope of ever being normal – giving up on a lifelong goal of trying to finally fit in and feel accepted. Embracing my joy and magic will just make me more of a misfit oddball in the world.
Soon, when I explain my process to Keith, he adds that choosing the light also means giving up my story … giving up all hope of ever being able to relate to others. When I ponder ever deeper, I begin to recognize that all of my closest of friendships began with the processing of emotional density – with relating to people who had similar pain bodies or with whom I had common emotional understanding.
“Giving up my story and pain means I am giving up the only way I have ever been able to build friendships in the past,” I ponder the fearful thoughts, “and embracing the light will put that all in jeopardy, potentially returning me to the loneliness of social isolation.”
I am faced with two intense fears. Embracing my divine source involves giving up all I once strived to be, taking a frightening leap of faith into the unknown. But remaining in my smallness only ensures that I will forever live a painful life, with more of the same, leading to eventual despair and suicidal hopelessness.
The choice is obvious – but embracing the light creates so much fearful emotion right now that I want to walk out into an open field during a thunderstorm, begging the lighting to take me home now. I am lost, not knowing how to embrace the light, feeling hopelessly trapped in my rational mind. Deeply ingrained parts of me frightfully scream that embracing the Source energy within will be my downfall – the end of ever fitting in to an alien planet.
Empathic Revelations
I focus deeply on trying to bring in more light – to connect with inner power, love, and joy – but such effort only triggers more intense emotions of inner resistance and terror. I am determined to choose the light while simultaneously drowning in the pain body. In my present state, I could easy wallow in this overwhelming emotion for the remainder of the day, or for weeks and months to come.
But I have a different idea. My friend Nancy is also deep in process, and Steven is working with her. Rather than focus on my own struggle, I remember Keith’s frequent nudging, and I opt to use my power, embracing my magic, holding energetic space for the process of someone I love – trusting that by doing so, I will find more of my inner power.
“If I cannot find the courage to embrace the light for my own benefit,” I ponder, “maybe I can do it for a friend.”
I begin to consciously choose to embrace the light, love, and joy while sharing energy with my friend … but I continue to struggle, not getting very far in the journey. I feel flat, lifeless, devoid of energy to share.
Soon, another woman (I will call her Maria) goes into deep emotional release. I try to hold space for her to, but I begin to cry, struggling to hold back intense sobs of muffled sadness. I sense that Maria is experiencing very similar pains.
“Brenda,” Keith unexpectedly interrupts, “you are feeling Maria’s process deeply.”
“You mean the emotions I am feeling are hers?” I ask with disbelief. “I thought that what I am feeling was my own process.”
Keith does not respond, leaving me to ponder his original comment. But Keith’s words are enough to make me realize that what I am feeling is likely a combination of taking in Maria’s emotions as my own, and then having those emotions trigger my own reservoir of deeply buried sadness.
Sharing Energies
While still struggling with my own emotional tears, I move forward and turn my cushion to sit directly in front of Maria. The moment I do so, she starts to sob … and so do I.
I struggle not to lose myself in the sobbing, not to drown in the overwhelming emotion. I note that my heart is very open, so I am likely not eating Maria’s emotion, but am simply reading it and resonating with it. Something inside – a part of me resonating with pleasant vibrations – whispers that I can help. I hold space for Maria for most of the next hour. My emotions settle as I occasionally coach her to go deeper, to bring in the light, etc…
Finally, with Maria now experiencing deep peace and joy, I sit back against the wall and return to my own process. I am delighted to note that the deep emotion that was drowning me before is now greatly reduced.
“Wow,” I ponder quietly, “maybe a lot of what I was experiencing really was Maria’s emotion. Now that she is happy, her sadness is no longer running through me.”
“Or perhaps I just let my own emotion go to transmutation,” I consider the other possibility.
I realize that I do not really need to know, and again reassure myself that it was a combination of the two.
A Lonely Choice
“Brenda, how are you doing now?” Keith eventually checks in with me.
“I am struggling with confusion,” I respond. “Part of me knows that I want to go deeper into these emotions to release them, and the other part is encouraging me to ignore the emotion right now and to further embrace the light.”
As I share the dilemma, I begin to sob and dry heave. I sense Keith’s compassion for my current confusion – for my state of not knowing – for my being lost in the confusing place of not having much rational mind validation. Keith and I talk for a couple of minutes. He congratulates me for being in this state of “not knowing,” but then quickly moves on without guiding me further, leaving me to sit in silence with the puzzling void.
I know this approach is perfect – that this is a journey that I must follow on the inside – but the rational-mind storyteller in me is livid, distracted, and annoyed as she watches Keith work with others, guiding them through their processes, patiently helping them while leaving me to feel ignored in what seems like my hour of deepest need.
“Keith cannot make this choice for me,” I repeatedly appease the raging inner storyteller. “This is a decision that I alone must make. There is nothing Keith could say or do that would make this decision any easier for me. There is no rational-mind recipe on how to get out of the box. It is a matter of embracing the light, filling my heart with love, trusting, and surrendering to the process.”
Nonstop Distraction
There is a new man on the porch today. Throughout the whole ceremony, he is standing up, moving around, going to the garden, coming back, fidgeting, making noises, coughing, scribbling, moving around some more, getting up again, wiggling, and distracting – doing so constantly and nonstop, not engaging in the group energy in any way.
I giggle inside as I observe. He has been magically contributing to my process, being an external mirror to show me the crazy distractions going on inside of me.
At one point, while the man is in the garden, Keith speaks to the group, mentioning that some people have an agreement to play certain roles, and that today this man is playing the distraction role for all of us.
“We will just let him do this for as long as he needs to do so,” Keith smiles while sharing his guidance with the group.
For me, this is profound validation of what I already know, that this man’s intense distraction is serving me in a huge role, showing me just what is really going on inside.
Droplets Of Joy
The inner scammer in me is extremely distracting right now, masquerading as a wounded inner child, doing everything possible to keep me from choosing my power – my power that is love. Literally every time that I begin to embrace my power, I physically experience feelings of being “kicked in the gut,” as if someone had punched my abdomen and knocked out my wind. I see the scammer attempting to pull me into density release as a delay tactic – as a tactic to stop me from embracing the light shadow today, right now.
But even feeling strong inner knowing that the emotion I feel is further distraction and scamming, it is so intense that I desperately need to release some of that emotion in a physical way. Soon, I step into the bathroom, shedding a few tears in privacy, hoping for some relief – but the process is not satisfying. I still feel stuck and heavy.
I soon begin to listen as Keith works with a friend who is deep in emotional release – processing emotions that on the surface appear quite similar to my own. Keith guides my friend through the pain, helping him/her to find an easier way to release the agony using joy and increased Higher Energies. In the midst of this guidance, Keith shares a metaphor that resonates with me – a metaphor of imagining myself sitting under a tree while meditating – a metaphor where droplets of joy rain down on me, falling from the tree above.
As inner guidance encourages me to try this, I am still quite serious, continuing a deep struggle to get off the fence – to choose to embrace the light. I curl up under that imagined tree, surrendering and relaxing, visualizing tiny droplets of joy gently falling onto me, magically absorbing into my skin. I soon bring in my grandchildren, imagining them tickling me too.
As this process unfolds, I begin to feel real joy bubbling inside, but am also shocked when I realize that I continue to have deep inner resistance and actual fear surrounding the idea of allowing myself to express the joy publically. But I embrace the joy anyway, allowing it to build inside of me. I feel the changes inside, showing me now, more than ever, that what I am doing is a real, conscious choice.
Making The Choice
Gradually, I begin to feel light and dizzy in the top of my head, somewhat overwhelmed by the new joyful sensation and the accompanying energy. But still, I am not fully embracing it. I am now mostly standing on the joy side, but do not wander far from the choice-point fence on which I have been sitting all day.
Eventually, Maria again goes into deep sobbing. Surrendering to inner guidance, I move and sit directly in front of her, simply holding space. As I do so, I increasingly feel more Higher Energy … more opening sensation in my crown chakra … more letting go … more relaxing. Somehow, helping someone else is also helping me.
I again return to the movie “Powder,” feeling myself as that young man embracing his magic, helping others to find their magical connection to Oneness in telepathic ways. I absolutely know that such magic is inside of me and I feel deeply magical in this moment.
When I finish my simple space-holding work with Maria, I sit back and bask in the vibrating energy, feeling peaceful and joyful, realizing that I made the choice, and it worked … at least for today.
“I am definitely at a new level of some sort,” I giggle silently. “Whether it is permanent or temporary is of little consequence. I am here right now.”
Embracing Understanding
Near the end of the ceremony, Keith glances at me with glowing eyes. I return the glance with a giggling glow of my own.
“I think I understood the “conscious choice with blinders on” more clearly today than ever before,” I then speak to Keith. “I am really beginning to understand the deep fearful emotions behind giving up my story … needing to be normal … needing to be loved … people pleasing and caring what people think about me … and the terror of being in my power.”
“And that giving up the pain body means giving up all chance of relating to people, because you have to be in pain to have friends,” Keith adds, reminding me of what he had shared earlier.
For the next twenty minutes, Keith and I engage in a delightful, deeply validating conversation, discussing my process, my blog, my long journey on the hard bus, etc… He again validates that while most people do not need to do their inner work the way I have struggled to do it, that it was necessary for me because I need to understand every aspect of what happens to a child growing up in a normal religious home with loving parents.
The man who has been distracting all ceremony suddenly jumps into this beautiful conversation, attempting to pull it up to a rational mind level of debate. I smile inside with pure love, ignoring the interruption, not engaging in his comments, remaining in my heart.
I do not relate to the head level where this “distraction man” is coming from. I have no desire to engage or even attempt to relate to him right now.
Fear Of Forgetting
Keith and I talk a great deal about the idea of “no longer being in my story” causing a fear that I will no longer relate to other people.
“You will never forget the story,” Keith emphasizes. “You will just be in the joy while not buying into or embracing the story anymore.”
I begin to question my writing, realizing that all of my writing is about sharing the story of my journey, doing so with deep and raw honesty and emotion. I begin to wonder if my writing will no longer have the same punch if I lose the story.
“I am so grateful that I wrote faithfully during the last four years, doing so while I was still IN the story,” I giggle at Keith. “But now, I will be able to edit and publish these stories from a different perspective.”
Several others banter with me regarding the possibilities of how this will, or will not affect my writing. When this phase of the conversation is over, I am in deep trust that my writing will only improve, that there will still be plenty of stories to share – and that the only difference is that I will no longer be lost in them.
I feel profoundly complete in this moment, wishing this feeling could endure forever.
Moment By Moment
“Keith,” I soon ask for guidance. “I feel like I have to constantly make this choice every day. Does it ever get easier to choose the power and to let go of the ongoing pain body story?”
“Oh, at times it really is a moment by moment decision,” Keith surprises me.
“But eventually, it does get easier and more automatic,” Keith then answers the original question.
I feel deeply validated, congratulated, and profoundly joyful as the ceremony concludes. Something very magical happened today. I CONSCIOUSLY chose something different. It was intense as I struggled with all the same old tricks in the games I play with deity – in the games I play to distract and deceive myself – but at least for today, I saw the inner scammer, I did not buy into the deception, and I made the choice to embrace the light, joy, and power. And best of all, it worked.
I clearly understand that this choice is NOT a onetime decision – but I would like to believe that I will never again be lost quite as deeply in the old patterns.
“I now see the scammer,” I ponder with a giggle. “I understand the scam, and am increasingly becoming more afraid of NOT choosing the power and joy, than I am of choosing the smallness of the stories.”
Beginning Of The End
I love the joyful, empowered feelings that fill my soul as I slowly walk toward home. It has been a long day … at times an arduous and difficult one … but one that thankfully ended in profound magical trust and self-confidence.
I would love to dream and believe that perhaps I might be finished with the hardest steps of what has been an intense and long journey with uncovering the God / separation drama. But I also know that this same smallness-versus-light “choice point” will likely be a common occurrence in the weeks to come – being a moment-by-moment decision until it eventually does become easy and automatic.
Keith frequently shares that when nearing the end of a pattern that we often manifest opportunities to play out the pattern – doing so in what feels like a “wham, wham, wham” attack by the Universe, bringing us repeated opportunities to process the energetic pattern to full resolution. My own experience tells me that such a scenario is likely, and I am prepared to do whatever it takes in this ongoing journey.
One thing is certain. I will definitely trust and follow the flow of my own being. I can only hope that the flow will be gentle with me.
… to be continued …
Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved