(Note, this is part seven of what will end up being eight parts. In this writing, I share my experiences from the first half of my third and final integration period during my three month stay at the “Temple of the Way of Light”. One more part will follow …)
Eagerness fills my heart as I wake up on the first day of my final twelve-day integration period at the Temple of the Way of Light. It has been an amazing healing journey, but intuitions tell there is much more to do in my last days here – especially in the area of “finding my voice”. My final days of the last workshop set up a perfect metaphor showing me how I am like “Ariel” in “The Little Mermaid”, having given up my voice as a young child so that I could fit into the human world.
Last night was filled with torrential rains – rains that continue this morning, albeit slightly less intense. As I rest in bed, I meditate in beautiful energy for more than an hour before reading another chapter of “Oneness” by Rasha.
After breakfast and a beautiful conversation with a new friend, I return to my room to read some more. I have decided that during these final twelve days I want to read every chapter of Oneness, twice – and I want to re-listen to all of my favorite Matt Kahn videos.
It is shortly after 12:30 p.m. that four new recruits arrive at the Temple – new participants to join the next workshop that will occur simultaneously with my integration period. I enjoy what has now become a routine, twice-per-month group introduction meeting. This will be the final “people shifting” of my three months here, and I look forward to meeting these new spiritual adventurers. After the meeting, I finish out the afternoon with more reading.
Indigenous Medicines
As I continue the reading on Friday morning (April 4), I absolutely love chapter fifteen of Oneness. It is filled with statements that confirm things I have believed for a very long time – personal truths that I hold dear – truths that I still cannot adequately explain to anyone.
But it is the first part of paragraph three on page 132 that really jumps out at me.
“The use of herbal medicines as practiced by certain indigenous cultures may have the effect of accelerating the cleansing process. The implementation of substances known to heighten the body’s natural inclination to eliminate impurities from its structure is encouraged.”
Wow, I love these words. They seem to deeply encourage exactly what I am doing – working with the indigenous plant medicines of the Amazon such as ayahuasca, marosa, sharo mashu, and others. These are all medicines that do indeed have profound and natural cleansing properties at both the physical and emotional levels.
I am so grateful that I am here, doing what I am doing.
A Magical Flow
After reading, I ponder a couple of strange dreams from early this morning. In the second, I had been back in a chocolate ceremony in Guatemala. Keith had asked me what energies I felt from the woman in front of me. I responded that I felt “fear” in her. Without going into details (I don’t remember many), the dream turned into a very sad and humiliating experience as the woman in front of me essentially attacked my perception. It is only later that I realize this dream was designed to trigger intense emotions surrounding the topic of being afraid to “use my voice to speak my truth”. It is now clear that those emotions needed to be brought to the surface so they could be released.
Later in the morning, I encounter someone who just returned from Iquitos. It seems that a large week-long labor strike is in progress. There is no physical violence going on, but the strikers have covered the streets with broken glass and fires, successfully stopping all traffic and closing all the markets. The discussion reminds me that I am indeed living in a different world down here – but I am delighted that I feel absolutely no fear, and trust that all is well in the greater scheme of things.
As I meditate just before lunch, while light rains continue, I love how I can feel the energy of the rain in my body. The flow of energy that I feel seems to correspond with the flow of the storm. It is magical.
Past Glimpses – New Perspectives
Before bed, I engage in another activity. Beginning on my birthday in 2008, back in Utah, I had the first of what would eventually be ten channeling sessions with my new friend Trish. Tonight, I decide to go back and revisit the past, listening to the first of those sessions – one that had taken place when I was deeply struggling with intense childhood emotion – emotion that had arisen while attempting to write my life story.
The listening experience is fascinating. It gives me a profound glimpse into a version of me just over six years ago. It is literally as if I am reliving the past with a new perspective. As a result of this enlightening experience, I commit that I will listen to all ten of those sessions, at least one per day over the next week and a half.
I do not yet know it, but the combination of re-reading Oneness, listening to Matt Kahn, and listening to these channeling sessions, is destined to be a profound catalyst in my growth.
Later, after dinner, I can only giggle as I notice that the security guard has somehow acquired a new stash of lanterns, and has placed two on every building. This ongoing trigger has suddenly resolved itself – but only after I let go of my attachment to needing anything to change.
Silly Random Meditations
Saturday morning, while meditating in my room, I listen to the second of my channeled sessions from Trish. My heart comes alive as I remember a series of magical experiences that resulted from that session – how I had connected with three higher guides who profoundly assisted in inspiring me to begin my travels, and who seemed to provide repeated clues that eventually led me to Keith’s magical cacao ceremonies in Guatemala.
As I meditate and bask in the memories, my heart is wide open.
Soon, intuitions guide me to meditate as if I were becoming certain objects in my room. Doing so in a way that feels silly and random, I begin to do just that. First I pick up a tiny purple flashlight. I feel it – I feel its joy at being a light to serve others – its nonattachment – its purpose to illuminate for others, but not caring if anyone even sees its light. I giggle as the little light seems to tell me that his name is “Twinkle”.
Next, I randomly pick up my “Leatherman Tool” – a fancy Swiss-army-knife-like tool that also has pliers, screw drivers, and myriad other useful built-in tools. As I meditate into being this tool, I feel the energy of being thrilled to be a profound mobile toolbox that can help to get things done – having so many functions – so much joy to serve. Then, the little tool seems to tell me that his name is “Edgy”.
Soon I grab my “Uniball Vision Exact” pen. While meditating, I feel the love of creating via the mechanism of writing – to document, explain, and create with joy. The little pen’s name is “Scratchy”.
Finally, I pick up three little hematite crystals. As I play with them, asking them to help me ground and connect to other dimensions, I realize that each of these three stones is unique, separate and one. Their names are “Rocky”, “Tumbles”, and “Smoothy”. I play with them for a while, continuing to glean insights.
Suddenly, I realize that the objects I have “randomly” selected are not so random at all. It is so obvious that I am being told that I have all the tools (Edgy) that I need – and I have the light to guide and inspire me (Twinkles) – I have my ability to write (Scratchy) – and I have my grounding and guidance from other dimensions (Rocky, Tumbles, and Smoothy) – and I have them all right now.
I am blown away by the symbolism of what originally felt like silly and random meditations.
Random Issues
I spend the remainder of this “day three” of integration continuing to meditate on random issues, spending considerable time reflecting on how the ongoing “lantern issues” here at the Temple have also been quite profoundly symbolic.
What at the time felt like insane overreactions on my part were actually showing me how “my needs as a child were not being met”. My childhood conditioning left me struggling in the dark. I was not being provided with the guiding light to keep my magic growing and safe. The “lanterns-not-being-placed-on-my-building” issue metaphorically triggered these emotions.
As I later eat dinner, I am shocked by how my appetite seems to be nonexistent. Feeling quite satisfied, I barely eat a thin piece of chicken, a small portion of rice, and a half of a roasted plantain.
Caustic Relationships
I continue these same routines on Sunday. As I read about caustic relationships in chapter 22 of “Oneness” (by Rasha), I reflect back on many such difficult relationships in my life, especially the ones with Paul and Catherine, who constantly pushed my buttons in Keith’s cacao ceremonies in Guatemala. I am shocked to realize that I continue to feel fear based emotions around the idea of bumping into them. I begin to wonder how much more emotion needs to surface before I can really be free of these old patterns.
I realize that it may be time to go deeper into these issues, and that my fears are yet another example of “not having a voice” and/or “being afraid to use my voice”.
“Such people in my life have been my Ursulas (the sea witch from The Little Mermaid),” I ponder with shock. “Just being in their presence has caused me to surrender my voice and to cower in the shadows with fear.”
As I go deeper, an intense layer of victim emotion rages up and out of me in the form of sobbing, teeth-chattering, and dry-heaving.
When the emotion subsides, I again go deeper, realizing that in past lifetimes I have been like these people, doing the same things to them that I have perceived them doing to me. It becomes obvious that each of our journeys has been perfect for what we came here to do in this lifetime – they are doing what they need to do for their journeys – and by triggering me, they have served me massively in my own journey, helping me to expose and release my own conditioned patterns.
As I finish reading chapter 22 of Oneness, I absolutely love the final paragraph on page 217. It reads as follows:
“The pathways of the emotions you have worked so hard to stabilize are those upon which your consciousness will travel in connecting you with heightened levels of awareness. For it is your emotional foundation that unites all aspects of the consciousness that make up your multidimensional identity. That foundation, once cleared of the ego based need to respond to provocation, serves as the pathway upon which all aspects of your multidimensional self unite in Oneness, and recognize that common bond as one that is shared with All Creation.”
Playing With Light
In the evening, as I attempt some “lighter” activities, I listen to a Collin Raye album on my IPOD. I am shocked when the song “One Boy, One Girl” causes me to start sobbing. I play the song on repeat mode, doing so at least ten times. Over and over I sob as the words trigger necessary release – emotional release surrounding the continued guilt that I have carried regarding my former marriage, and how my gender transitions have affected the lives of others.
I feel so much love when the process finally subsides. I am emotionally exhausted, but grateful that another layer of profound and magical emotional release has graced me.
While the experience itself was “not so light”, I feel much lighter and free when the light finally fills me again.
What a beautiful day of integration this has been – a day of social interaction, great insights from reading, and deep emotional release. I cannot even begin to describe it all.
As I prepare for bed, loving shivers fill my heart when I realize it has been almost exactly five years to the day since I had my profound “Brenda’s Bicycles” dream that precipitated the amazing journey on which I continue to venture. Gratitude fills my soul. My entire reality is so different from that period so long ago, and I continue to release, heal and grow.
Excited Passion
Early Monday morning, at 3:15 a.m., I find myself wide awake. As I meditate with the intention to connect with my guides, I gradually shift into a state of excited passion.
“PLAY is my voice,” I ponder with giggles. “My lost voice is ‘heart play’ … paying attention to my moment-by-moment guidance … doing what fuels my joy.”
The passion continues to fill me as I meditate more than an hour and a half. I try to return to sleep, but remain deeply excited well after 5:00 a.m., when I finally do get a tiny bit more sleep.
Agonizing Stuckness
As I finally get out of bed on this day five of my final integration period – I listen to two more channeled session from my friend Trish, and am soon transported into deep emotional stuck-ness. In those session, Trish had encouraged me to “step back … let go of my head … get out of my head … etc…” and I had felt deeply frustrated and stuck because I did not know how to do that. As I re-listen to that experience from several years ago, these same old emotions pressurize and bubble to the surface.
I ponder back to times when people had criticized me on Keith’s porch in Guatemala (and in other places), rubbing it in about how “stuck in my head” I still was.
As I revisit these old memories, the old emotions surface with a vengeance – emotions of helpless anger – confused resentment – chaotic resistance – frustration and hopelessness of not knowing how NOT to be in my head.
When I eventually go to lunch, I feel unusually disconnected. I want to judge myself for what I am feeling, because part of me says “I should be above beyond such emotions by now.”
Suddenly, I realize that this is indeed “real emotion” – real emotion that I continue to push down in shame – real emotion that needs to be lovingly felt if I am going to release it.
Both Victim And Perpetrator
After lunch, I resolve to go as deep into this journey as possible. I already ate a half dose of cacao earlier this morning, so I consume another half dose and then re-listen to the channeled readings that had triggered the emotions this morning, hoping they will trigger me yet again.
To my surprise, I actually enjoy the first reading as I listen to it for the second time. I am now in a totally different emotional place. But with the second reading from 2011, I get extremely sleepy. I soon recognize this sleepiness as a form of strong emotional resistance. Rather than fight myself, however, I give myself permission for a short nap before continuing.
Finally, when mild emotions begin to get triggered, I stop the audio and begin to dig deep into the emotional agony that is just beneath the surface. It does not take long before I have opened up a reservoir of deep anger.
Soon, I recognize a “voice of judgment”. It is my mother’s voice from back in my childhood and youth – from times when I was throwing huge “I cannot do this” tantrums because I had lost my voice and did not trust anything that originated from inside of me.
But now, I recognize that I have taken my mother’s voice and turned it into my own voice – into my own “inner judge”. Throughout my life, I have ruthlessly terrorized myself with this self-judgment. It soon becomes clear that I am accessing what feels like a bottomless pit of victim anger and sadness.
From my present perspective, it is clear that I am both the victim and the perpetrator in this battle. I am both sides of the war, with each side hating the other with a vengeance.
To The Core
In what feels like some of my deepest release work ever, I remove all stops and go for it. In an effort not to disturb neighbors, I emotionally scream in total silence, while kicking my arms and legs to stimulate old, deep, tantrum and victim energies.
I sob with jaw-shaking intensity for a very long time. As I do so, I notice something new. I am profoundly feeling the shaking in my entire throat region. This tells me that I am dealing with throat chakra and expressing-my-voice stuff.
This simulated-but-real tantrum goes on for a long time. It is difficult not to get lost in this overwhelming emotion.
Finally, I reach out to the light, asking for help in either finishing and/or going deeper. To my delight I first feel immediate relief. But a minute later I am taken even deeper through another agonizing emotional layer.
After repeating many more layers, the “victim” in me feels much lighter. Soon, I follow guidance and imagine myself as the perpetrator. Almost immediately I go through deep waves of intense rage, judgment, sorrow, grief, remorse, and anger, doing so with more jaw-shaking sobs focused in the throat chakra.
Suddenly, as the emotion begins to subside, I realize that both the victim-me and the perpetrator-me are sitting in a metaphorical inner conference room. I note with deep interest that they cannot even look at each other. I continue meditating deeper into the experience. Finally, I am able to bring in more love and joy and the emotions fully transmute.
“Wow,” I tell myself. “That was some of the deepest and most core emotional work I have ever done … and it was profoundly related to losing my voice as a child.”
As I head off to dinner, after a long afternoon of very hard work, I revel in self-love as I congratulate myself for having the courage to do the amazing work I am doing.
After barely eating half my meal, I retire early and listen to music in bed. I note with delight that both my forehead and throat regions feel lighter than I have felt in a very long time. But so much magical energy flows through me that I find it difficult to sleep.
A Tsunami Of A Dream
I only get about four hours of sleep before waking up again at 2:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning, April 8, 2014. Almost immediately, I return to a deep energy meditation. Then, around 3:30 a.m., an intense jungle storm, with considerable wind, causes moisture to spray through the mosquito netting into the back of my room. Somewhere, late in the storm, I manage to fall asleep just long enough to have a very strange dream, also related to water (the element of emotion).
In the dream, I am with my former spouse, my oldest son, a young girl, and a baby. We are near a beach, and are aware that a tsunami is on its way. For whatever reason, my guidance tells me that we will all be safest if we run down the beach and into the water. I encourage them to all come with me. After the wave hits, my oldest son and I, along with the baby in his arms, have survived. My spouse and the young girl are nowhere to be seen. Suddenly another huge wave looms on the horizon and I wake up. As I open my eyes, I am overwhelmed with intense feelings of sadness and guilt. I feel responsible for having followed that strange guidance, and subsequently having destroyed my family.
I find it totally weird that I was guided to take my family out into the water. To the logical mind, the dream makes no sense. Racing out into the water to find safety in a tsunami is the craziest possible thing to do.
Yet, as I meditate into the dream it makes total sense at a metaphorical level. This is a profound metaphor, triggering emotions that needed to be felt and released. The dream shows me that I still feel some repressed guilt for having followed my own higher guidance to transition to Brenda – guidance that on the surface did seemingly tear my family apart with huge destructive waves. I believe that the dream was ultimately designed to make me feel that emotion so that it can be released and transmuted.
And even this dream seems to be dealing with “my voice” – with the fact that this is another example of how expressing my voice (my guidance to be my genuine self) proved to be a profoundly arduous and emotional journey.
Remaining Residuals
As I wake up for the second time on this Tuesday morning, I dive right into the emotions triggered by this dream. I quickly sink into a few minutes of intense and deep sobbing.
“Enough,” intuitions soon whisper. “It is now time to bring in the light.”
This emotion is very deep, but I have worked through most of it already. Intuitions tell me that this process today is merely helping to clean out a few remaining residuals of emotion that have continued to hide in the shadows.
Once the deep release work is complete, my heart glows with peace and joy. I spend the remainder of the morning listening to another channeling session followed by more reading in Oneness.
Hiding Under A Blanket
In the afternoon, I dive into the final channeling session that I had with Trish – one when I was visiting in Utah back in November, 2013 (just a week before coming to Peru). It was an emotionally challenging session, one that I had since forgotten, but one that is now perfectly timed to trigger more healing. In that hour long session, Trish had channeled messages about how I still become a different person when I am around my family. It is as if I hide my true self, glossing over and minimizing details about my amazing spiritual journey because I know my beliefs are quite different from those of my family, and I don’t want to offend anyone.
Essentially, I unknowingly squash my own voice and try to play a subdued role that will not make anyone uncomfortable. The end result, however, is that no one is truly comfortable.
I am blown away by how everything that comes up in this integration seems to have major connections to me having “lost my voice”.
I still harbor deep fear that being my true and genuine self (living my true voice) will result in rejection by loved ones. I am afraid that if I take off that blanket and shine my true light around my family, that I might literally lose their love.
Removing The Blanket
I won’t go into details, but in a group meeting later in the afternoon, I pick up on a great deal of “victim energy” from several others in my group. They are having a hard time with the integration period, saying they are not getting much out of it, and are verbally blaming their lack of engagement on external circumstances.
I see the meeting as perfect. Rather than judging others in my own external reality, I see this meeting as an external mirror of what continues to occur inside me.
“OK,” I ask myself. “So what exactly am I projecting onto this meeting?”
After a few minutes of honest pondering, I realize that a part of me is still feeling victimized, very stuck and lost, still hiding under that blanket and wanting to blame loved ones for not fully accepting who I am. Meanwhile, I continue to hide my true self from them – fearful to shine my light – fearful to unveil my true “heart voice” in their presence.
I am quite proud of myself when my turn to share arrives. Knowing that speaking my truth might ruffle the feathers of others, I express my own deep gratitude for the integration time being exactly the way it is. I share how profound my experiences have been in this integration period as I take advantage of the free time to meditate and go extremely deep. I can see that my words do indeed really bother one person in my group, but I am proud of myself for confidently expressing my own feelings – for no longer hiding my own light under that outdated old blanket.
Revisiting The Past
Wednesday, April 9, 2014, begins as any other normal day. After sleeping in a tiny bit, I start to meditate, going back to another event that took place in a November 2012 channeling session with Trish. It was the first session that I listened to yesterday morning. As I meditate, I decide to listen to that session again today.
Those who have followed my journey may recall that in the fall of 2012, I was deeply struggling with agonizing suicidal, hopeless feelings – old feelings that were actually from my teenage years, but that had been brought to the forefront by my inner work from earlier that summer. Every time I got close to those feelings, in an effort to heal them, I would instead get lost in them, wanting to project them onto Keith, Catherine, Paul, and anyone else who was convenient. I was literally on the edge of drowning in those hopeless emotions when I returned to Utah for a three week visit with family and friends.
I scheduled a session with Trish during that November visit, and before we began, Trish and I each drank a full dose of ceremonial cacao together. Near the end of the session, I had begun to get lost in an overwhelming wave of that putrid hopeless emotion that felt as if it were relentlessly attacking me. Trish had graciously extended that session by an extra half hour as she coached me into a place of surrender – a place of allowing the fears and energy to pass through me – a place where I was able to find centering and peace.
As I listen to that session a year and a half later, I finally begin to understand what was happening way back then. What I felt in that November 2012 session was the same type of overwhelming energy that had swarmed me in my early ayahuasca ceremonies in Iquitos – the ones in December 2013 and January 2014. It was an energy that was actually trying to help me, but one that I had fiercely resisted.
I now understand that back in 2012, I was continually fighting those emotions and energies, trying not to feel them, and rejecting them. Today, as I re-listen to the audio, those emotions and energies again surface. This time I choose to dive right into them, trusting that I will NOT get lost.
An Old Circle Of Friends
But first I go to breakfast, after which I eat a half dose of cacao. After listening to several joyful and inspiring parts of that channeling session, I skip forward to the end where I began to get lost in the overwhelming craziness.
I gently encourage myself to reconnect with that same emotion. But I feel very stuck. I am right on the edge of returning to that overwhelmed state, but something inside of me fights back with ferocity. Guidance tells me I need to find and feel this emotion in order to release it, but I simply cannot get there.
Suddenly, I remember a chocolate ceremony from my first season of working with Keith. In that ceremony, I had found a room filled with all of my Higher-Being guides and friends. I called them my “Circle of Friends”, and wrote about the experience in a blog with a similar title. But when I had tried to meditatively enter that room, I was so terrified that I was utterly unable to do so. Instead, I found myself cowering (metaphorically) down a hall and in a nearby closet. To this day, I have never been able to go back and enter that room.
A Shame Filled Screw Up
Today, I am determined to change history, and to find my way into that Circle of loving Higher Beings.
I use my present emotional state, combined with Trish’s channeled words, to re-access the terror that I felt nearly four years ago as I contemplated moving into the light of that room filled with loving beings – Higher Dimensional beings that feel nothing but pure unconditional love for me.
What happens next shocks me. It is so incredibly vivid and real. As I try to imagine stepping into that light-filled room, I simply cannot. Instead, I feel terror, fright, and intense unworthiness. I feel shame and embarrassment, as if I am an utter failure, and that I will be judged and condemned if I step into that room. Those Higher Dimensional friends will see right through me. I won’t be able to hide my shame from them.
I feel absolute terror that they will not love me because of my human foibles and my lack of perfection. I also understand that it was this same terror that caused me to build walls around my heart as a child, and caused me to block my parents out of the more genuine parts of my life … and it is this same emotion that is now causing me to hide my true self around my kids, causing me to throw a metaphorical blanket over my shining heart voice.
But even with this mental understanding of what I am feeling, I simply cannot find the emotional energy to step into that meditative room filled with my Higher Friends. Every time I try to visualize myself doing just that, I burst into whimpering tears of agony and fear.
The emotions of shame and fear course through me in unbelievably real ways. The sensations are overwhelming. I absolutely know that I have horribly failed, that I have utterly screwed up my journey into humanness. How could anyone love such a screw-up as me?
Already There
But rather than turn away, I continue the meditation. I keep baby-stepping toward that room. I know the truth of the divinity that flows through each of us. At the same time I feel the intensity of the lies telling me how horribly I have failed. I repeatedly visualize myself back in that New Years Eve ayahuasca ceremony, whimpering on the mat in front of Roman while he helped me energetically find that sweet spot in the center of the energetic hurricane.
With each layer of intense emotion that washes through me, I ask the light for assistance. Each time, the layer vanishes and another new layer quickly comes. But no matter how hard I try to visualize myself stepping into that room, I simply cannot get there. No matter how many meditative steps I take, no matter how much emotion I release, I am still right where I started, absolutely stuck and fearful.
Soon, new guidance tells me to stop trying to go into that room, and to instead visualize myself as already being there. I see myself lying in a bed, sleeping, lost in a nightmare, surrounded by beautiful, loving, divine beings who are gently offering unconditional love and support as I fearfully try to open my eyes.
I feel as if I am consumed in a nightmare of shame, and the terror is still there.
Gradually, I imagine that my “Circle of Higher Friends” are congratulating me, and hugging me. I see them as orbs of light that are excitedly bouncing into each other. This visual makes me giggle, but I continue to feel the intensely deep trauma of my human failures.
In this meditation, these loving beings continue to swarm me with love and praise. They do not validate my shame and guilt. Instead, I feel them telling me that I was amazing and brilliant … congratulating me for succeeding beyond all expectations … and at an extremely high difficulty setting (reference to a video game metaphor).
“The shame I feel is just the lingering human conditioning of failure and unworthiness,” intuitions whisper loudly.
Still, I cannot shake the feeling that I have somehow failed beyond forgiveness and recovery.
Desperation To Peace
Soon, I follow new guidance that takes me to an image of me about to be born, getting onto a theme park ride – a haunted mansion nightmare ride. As I step into the car that will take me through the maze of human experiences, I know that I will forget everything about my true origin. I know that I will get lost and believe that I belong in hell. And I know that one day I will again wake up to my true identity.
But as I imagine this very real truth, I continue to feel deeply traumatized from a frightening fifty-nine year ride through earthly human trauma. The intense shameful emotions are so overwhelming and so real that I cannot separate myself from them. I feel as if I am hopelessly chained to a lifetime of failure, and that I am totally unworthy of Higher Love from my “Circle of Friends”.
Finally, in absolute and hopeless desperation, I ask my higher “Circle of Friends” to help me transmute the emotions I am feeling.
“I cannot do this myself,” I beg for their assistance. “I don’t know how to do this myself … but if I have felt this emotion deeply enough, then please help me.”
Wow! The emotional trauma transmutes instantly. Just a few seconds earlier, I was drowning in the emotion, but now I find myself in a magical, centered, and peaceful state. I even begin to engage in what feels like a telepathic conversation with these Higher Friends. Logical mind tells me this is just silly imagination, but my heart knows otherwise.
All mental chatter seems to be temporarily gone, and I know that what I am feeling is very real indeed.
A Magical Conversation
As I meditate into this beautiful space, I silently ask repeated questions, and as I do, the answers seem to be present in my mind even as I formulate the question. The conversation does not seem especially profound, because I seem to already know what I need to know.
With tears in my eyes, I gain new perspectives on self-love. Gradually, the meditative state begins to fade, and I feel as if I am reentering the earthly holodeck, but doing so as a “new me”.
As I open my eyes, I feel like I am reacquainting myself with the stage set – rediscovering my surroundings.
“I know my mind will try to invalidate this over time,” I quickly write in my journal. “I know that my mind will try to rationalize this experience away – but I also know that I will always remember this reference point no matter what happens. I DO have a profound connection with my Higher Friends. They are now, and always have been, with me, cheering me on with praise and love. I was never lost completely.”
“I WANTED this earthly adventure,” I continue writing. “I WANTED this experience and understanding. I DID IT, and I will continue to do it, but doing so with much more love and trust. I am not sure what else to write while I am in this state. It is nothing special, except for a feeling of deep calm, and an unawareness of my body. When I do notice my body, there is not much energy or sensation of any type … which confuses me. As I ask about this, I am reassured of the reality of my state … and that I am not feeling energy because I am not presently a body meditating … that I am ‘being’ in its natural state of presence.”
“This state is so NORMAL that it feels unreal – yet beautiful too. It is ordinary, but magic … peaceful and unattached to physicality or drama in any way, accompanied by a knowing that this is all my creation, my mirror, my personal holodeck … nothing more.”
A Hidden Light
As I continue reflecting into this beautiful experience, I fill with deep gratitude at the realization that this breakthrough all came about because of my focus on a channeled reading from almost six months ago – and from exploring why I put a metaphorical blanket over my heart voice when I am around family and friends who do not relate to my journey.
As I ponder a lifetime of wanting to be understood by others, I now realize that this “not being understood” was really my own absolute shame and guilt about being me – with that shame and guilt being projected outward onto my world, causing me to perceive others as not understanding and accepting me.
It is so absolutely clear now that what I processed and released earlier this afternoon was a huge layer of self-judgment that I did not even realize was still there. It is so beautiful to let this go; I feel so much lighter, and I am excited to see what happens next in this amazing journey.
Feeling inspired, I go back and spend another ninety minutes listening to that November 2013 channeled reading all over again. This time, as I contemplate that metaphorical blanket that I have used to hide my shame and self-judgment, it is also quite clear that I have used this blanket to hide my successes, my creativity, my magic, and my brilliant shining light. I again reflect on my favorite Marianne Williamson quote, about how we are more afraid of shining our light, than we are of our shadow.
In fact, I have spent most of my life hiding my light under that blanket, all in an effort to conform and to appear normal.
Journey Into The Subconscious
As I continue meditating, I feel guided to do a “Subconscious Book of Beliefs” meditation.
I close my eyes and imagine myself walking down stairways into my subconscious mind, but I seem to make no progress. It feels as if I am walking down an upward moving escalator that keeps taking me back to the top. The faster I try to visualize myself walking down, the faster the escalator takes me back up.
Not giving up, I visualize myself jumping and grabbing a fireman’s pole. But when I loosen my grip to slide down, I feel as if I am instead sliding up to the top of the pole.
Next, I relax and imagine a ladder leaning against the pole. With all my will, I visualize myself climbing down that ladder, fighting the “reverse gravity” that wants to push me back up. Eventually, when I reach the bottom of the pole, I see myself putting on magnetic boots that hold me tightly to the metal floor. I look around, find my destination, and slowly, one deliberate step at a time, I walk to a subconscious door labeled “Light Shadow”.
As I visualize opening the knob and pushing inward, I feel as if a rush of chaotic vultures scatters out of the room, noisily flying out of the door, scaring me. I quickly close the door and carefully open and close it a few times, allowing the vultures to exit in smaller groups. Then, a rampage of frantic bats comes rushing out of the room. I do the same thing. Next, a roomful of scary tarantulas crawl by, filing past me as they too leave the room.
I refuse to be afraid of anything, and maintaining my focus, I insist that these fear tactics cease and leave. Soon, a huge number of slimy snakes also slither out of the room.
Finally, the room is empty of creatures, and I see a small lit table at the back. On top of the table is an open book.
Deeply Held Dysfunctional Beliefs
I visualize myself approaching the table. When I stand in front of it, I begin to intuit the words written on the pages.
“Expressing my brilliance gets me into massive trouble,” The first page reads. “Expressing my creativity opens me to criticism and judgment. Expressing my talents and gifts opens me to the jealousy of others, when they feel bad and play small.”
I imagine myself turning to the next page.
“Expressing these gifts goes against God,” The second page reads. “It is not humble to own these things … and only humility will get me to Heaven. Expressing my magic is evil, dark, occult, and satanic, and is to be abhorred and avoided at all costs.”
I again imagine turning the page.
“Being who I am makes others uncomfortable,” The third page begins. “It causes them to not like me … it makes me stand out in a crowd … it opens me to unwanted attention, bullying, judgment, criticism and negative opinions of others. It is critically important to blend in, to be more or less invisible so as to go undetected, to not make waves. Others will not love me if I am different. I am defective if I am different from others. I am unworthy if I do not conform and fit in.”
I do not write the above until after completing the meditation, so all words are essentially paraphrased. In total, I find six pages in this book of beliefs, with the remaining pages containing similar untrue-but-deeply-held dysfunctional beliefs.
Destroyed Three Times
As I intuitively glance at the pages one last time, I note that they appear to be signed and notarized by a man who was the leader of my birth religion when I was a child. My parents and other church leaders had also signed the pages. They had all helped to give me these beliefs … and had done so with the best of intentions.
Deep fear surfaces in my gut as I begin to visualize my self tearing these pages out of the book. As I have learned to do this meditation, I tear the six pages out three separate times, destroying them in a different way each time.
First, I run them through an imaginary shredder, one page at a time. Then I take the vertical strips and run them through the shredder sideways. Next I sprinkle the confetti in a bucket, fill it with gasoline, light a match, and let the flames explode as the pages burn to smoke.
As I tear the pages out for a second time, the process is less fearful. This time, I roll the pages up, put them in a tube, wrap C4 explosive around the tube, and insert a couple of long wires. Next, I imagine myself hiding behind a distant wall while pushing a hand plunger to ignite the explosive … obliterating the pages.
The third time I repeat the process feels almost joyful as I drench the pages with acid. They dissolve and then dry into powder, becoming brittle. Soon, they break and crumble to dust, scattering into the atmosphere as a gust of wind picks them up. Suddenly, the remaining crumbs of paper-residue spontaneously burst into flames.
New Replacement Beliefs
Responding to a sudden flash of inspiration, I then imagine picking up the book, finding some blank pages, and writing a new agreement in bold letters.
“I am brilliant,” I begin writing. “I am creative. I am talented. I am fabulous. I am joyous. I am magical. I am confident. I am courageous. I am loving. I am gifted. I am awesome. I am enough.”
Then I add a paragraph about my commitment to own and shine these gifts … not hiding them any more … but also using Higher Wisdom as to when and how it is appropriate to express them. I then sign the pages with my full earthly name, and ask my Higher Self to notarize the signature.
Wow, as I finish this magical mediation, I feel amazing. A glance at my watch tells me it is only mid afternoon. I spend the rest of this highly productive day basking in nice energy, but I am also quite tired from the level of intense emotional processing that I have completed.
On The Cusp
This seventh day of integration has been a long and beautiful day. It is hard to believe that I am just barely over halfway through the final twelve days of my time here at the “Temple of the Way of Light”.
The processing I accomplished today has been life changing. I can already feel the energy shifts. I continue, on a daily basis, to uncover new ways in which I have “lost my voice”. I am so grateful for those final two ayahuasca ceremonies (less than two weeks ago) that brought me such a magical metaphor from “The Little Mermaid” … and that inspired me to explore the metaphor as deeply as possible.
I feel so much healing and growth already, but something tells me I am still on the cusp of a major breakthrough. I am quite excited to find out what is next.
… To be continued …
Copyright © 2014 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved