Saturday morning, on the day after an incredible experiential adventure into the actual shutdown of my own inner magic, I enter a meditation with that beautiful little boy of my childhood.
“You were indeed the only sane one back then.” I repeatedly and lovingly reassure him.
Over and over again, I send my deepest love and apologies for the pain through which he was required to pass, reminding him that he was right all along.
A Right-Angle Turn
Suddenly, the process takes a wild turn in a completely unexpected direction. Rather than further consoling that lonely child of so long ago, I end up regressing deeply into the pain that he felt, sinking again into the inexplicable confusion he experienced when being told by parents and church leaders that he needed to think and behave in a certain way – a way that greatly differed from the inner whisperings of his own heart.
The emotions are so overwhelming and powerful that I cannot seem to extract myself back to present-day reality. An attempt at writing quickly becomes an act of futility. I am rebellious and tired so I surrender and go back to bed, sleeping for most of the remaining daylight hours. Finally, I do manage enough strength and motivation to at least watch a movie on my computer.
Depression eventually consumes my entire Saturday. Yes, I do succeed in eating three meals and drinking a little water, but other than food and a movie, the entire day disappears into a black hole. Saturday night also fades into the same darkness.
A Deep Hole
Sunday morning begins much the same, but by mid-morning I at least motivate myself to study a little Spanish.
As I walk onto Keith’s porch, feeling dead to the world, I am greeted by a smile.
“Congratulations,” Keith tells me proudly as he gives me a quick welcome hug.
“For what?” I ask glumly.
“Well, you wrote me such a beautiful email on Friday night that I assumed …” Keith begins to expound.
“That was Friday night,” I interrupt, grinning and frowning at the same time.
I briefly fill him in on the deep hole in which I now find myself trapped; it is a place of stuck-ness, depression, and inability to move forward.
Angry At God
“Brenda,” Keith speaks unexpectedly as the ceremony gets underway, “your guides are sympathetic with your pain, but they are sorry to inform you that there is more that you must learn before you can be free of this childhood pain. There is something more that you must uncover and deal with first.”
“In your left hand, imagine your pure, genuine and happy child.” Keith gives me a little nudge of guidance. “In your right hand, hold the suppression received from your parents, and the suppression that you did to your own children.”
“Sit with it,” Keith continues, “feel and experience both sides … explore your emotions for a while.”
I begin to whimper as I delve deeper into the suppression side. I continue to feel so shutdown, so helpless, and so futile.
“I’ve been stuck back in the darkness ever since Saturday morning.” I remind Keith. “I feel unable to free myself … in fact I am feeling quite rebellious, as if I don’t even want to try to pull myself out of this … like I deserve to be trapped down here.”
“Brenda,” Keith nudges me further, “you are deeply immersed back in your God/separation drama … you are angry at God.”
Something Else
Keith proceeds to tell me a few personal stories about his own childhood shutdown process – realizations that he came to, struggles through which he passed. His beautiful loving words give me a great deal of comfort, helping me to find increased compassion for myself, increased self-love and decreased self-judgment for again being so stuck in darkness.
“Is my own situation like what you just shared with me?” I ask Keith curiously.
“That is not where we are going today.” Keith lovingly redirects. “Your guides want you to discover something else.”
The Pleasing Game
As I sink deeper into meditation, I finally begin to access anger – anger at God for allowing me to be so brutally shutdown (energetically of course) – anger at my mother for being the primary architect of that loving programming – and anger at my father for having modeled a manner of being much more intellectual than emotional – and anger at myself for doing the same thing to my own children.
I recall frequent and countless times in my childhood where my mouth was washed out with soap, or where I was spanked on the butt with a hand or a belt. I remember the mouthy rebellions, fighting back at being forced to do things, at being forced to embrace ways of being that didn’t feel right or make sense to me.
Again, I have no physical memory of exactly what I was rebelling against, but I strongly remember the profound emotions of feeling rebellious, desperately misunderstood, and having to helplessly surrender to the will of those in authority. After all, they were my parents, they were bigger, they knew more, and as most children do, I saw my parents as knowing everything, as being akin to God.
Like a good little child, I knew my parents were right and that I must be wrong. I suppressed my evil feelings of rebellion and soon learned to be happy by playing the pleasing game.
Inner Arguments
“How does a child feel when they are psychically abused,” Keith asks pointedly, “when they have no voice to defend themselves?”
I now deeply understand why I have always had an innate feeling of: “I just want to be understood and loved for who I am.”
For most of my life, I have believed that such a deeply rooted desire to be understood only originated with my recognition of gender struggle in my early teens, but now I vividly recognize it as already existing at around age six.
As I look at my first and second grade photos, I see and feel a sad and depressed little boy. I recall strong, vivid memories of how I felt while posing for those photos. I clearly remember being horrified by the thought that I might smile wrong, being profoundly self-conscious about my ugly appearance, of the fear that I would not fit in unless I could put on a proper outward appearance.
“But I remember being happy as a child.” I argue with myself. “My parents loved me, I had everything I wanted, I obeyed, I played with friends and siblings, and we did many fun activities as a family.”
“Yes, on the outside I appeared to be quite happy.” I remind myself with certainty. “I did everything to please my parents …, but if I am truly honest with myself, I also have powerful memories of an underlying thread of sadness and self-doubt, of never really fitting in – of absolutely knowing that I would not be loved if people knew the real me.”
Overwhelming Anger – Overwhelming Nausea
Again I begin to focus on the self-anger – the anger at myself for having thrust the same love-motivated shutdown process onto my own beautiful children. The very religious doctrines that I helped to teach them in their formative years are now the beliefs that cause them to struggle with fully accepting me today. We all know that a deep bond of love joins us together, yet a deep religious canyon keeps us awkwardly apart.
As I further slip into the anger, both inward and outward, profound nausea again consumes me. I desperately want to vomit. I even slip quietly into the bathroom in an attempt to gag, wanting to force myself to get this emotion out of me in some physical way.
While in this process, I overhear portions of a muffled conversation.
“Is Brenda OK?” a female voice asks Keith.
“Yes, don’t worry about her,” I hear Keith reply, “I am keeping close track of her process, and I already have a plan to work with her.”
I smile inside as I step back onto the porch, returning to my seat, having been unsuccessful in my attempts at physical release, still feeling overwhelming nausea of the emotional variety.
A Useful Metaphor
Soon, I dare to gather a few foam cushions and take a few swipes at them with my fist. The putrid life-choking anger is so deeply buried and stuck that I cannot seem to access it.
“Yes, Brenda,” Keith acknowledges, “the anger IS stuck, but you cannot release it that way today.
“Come up with a metaphor to help you release just a few drops of it.” Keith soon guides me.
After a few minutes I am still so mind-boggled and cloudy that I have not felt capable of thinking up a single metaphor. I am not even sure that I understand what Keith wants me to do.
“Will you please help me or give me a hint of some type of metaphor to use?” I beg Keith.
“See that huge water tank over there?” Keith points at a large storage tank on his property.
“Use that metaphor.”
Subconscious Symbolism
I totally understand that the subconscious mind does not function in the rational-mind arena. Instead, as Carl Jung taught, the subconscious mind communicates with the conscious world using symbols, images, and metaphors. As we work with those metaphors, we are actually working with real energies in our subconscious. These symbols and images allow our rational mind to interact with subconscious energies in a way that allows us to bridge the communication gap.
It is as if rational-mind speaks English and the subconscious speaks some ancient form of hieroglyphics, long forgotten to the educated world.
I am anxious to move on with my process, utilizing a brand new metaphor – one that I hope will help me release some of the deep nausea and pain that plague me.
The Water Tank
I envision myself as having a large water tank in my body – a tank filled with putrid, unexpressed, and bottled-up toxic anger. At the bottom of the tank is a tiny faucet.
Deep in meditation, I feel myself approaching the tank while holding the plastic cup from which I earlier drank my chocolate. I casually place the cup below the tiny faucet and gently turn the handle – just barely enough to allow a few drops of toxin to ooze out into the pink cup.
As I try to imagine pouring these disgusting drops onto the ground I experience a powerful and surprising reaction. Panic and fear immediately consume me, causing me to freeze in terror. Within seconds I am crying profusely and my belly is shaking.
Finally, as I face these inexplicable fears, I force myself to imagine myself pouring this tiny amount of toxic waste out onto the pure soil of Mother Earth.
Disgusting Discarded Toxins
Slowly, I walk back to the tank, this time filling my glass up to half full. Again I experience the same tear-inducing terror. Again I finally force myself to pour the putrid solution out onto unspoiled earth.
Over and over, I repeat the same process, each time pushing through the fears – each time checking in with Mother Earth to make sure that what I am doing is OK, that she is not being poisoned.
After what must be at least ten repeats of this slow process, I even visualize myself pouring a few drops onto a flower to verify that I am indeed not harming the earth. To my surprise, I feel the flower grow bigger and stronger. In fact, as I look around in my meditative world, I sense the presence of flowers growing in every previous hole in which I have discarded the disgusting toxins.
Speed It Up
Even with repeated success, each and every act of pouring this toxic anger onto the earth triggers deep fear in my soul.
“How are you doing, Brenda?” Keith soon asks.
“Really, well,” I begin as I fill him in on my metaphorical journey, “but it seems to be an extremely slow and tedious process.”
“Find a way to speed it up.” Keith gives me an obvious hint.
A Light Show
After a few minutes of pondering, I come up with what feels like a clever idea. I imagine a small garden hose hooked up to my belly button. With the power of my imagined intention, I ask the toxic anger to flow directly out of my belly button, through the hose, and into the earth, without needing my constant intervention to manage it.
Almost immediately, I find myself back seated on the edge of a bottomless pit with my little inner child, Sharon – a place that metaphorically entered our lives just a few weeks ago. We are both seated on lawn chairs while we giggle and watch the waste disappear down the deep dark hole. Surprise and delight consume us both as we begin to see flashes of bright light in the depths below. The density is transmuting into pure light, gradually beginning to fill this bottomless pit with loving energies.
Simultaneously, I begin to imagine that the empty space in my large storage tank is also being replaced with light and love.
Hoover Dam
Suddenly an overwhelming image pops into my mind. I see all of Lake Mead backed up behind Hoover Dam. I am standing at the bottom of the dam with my hose, attempting to drain an entire reservoir of emotional density through a tiny garden hose.
A sense of futility begins to consume me as I am metaphorically shown how much density continues to be stored in my energetic field. I quickly imagine that my garden hose is upgraded to a fire hose.
I can actually feel the flow in a very physical way as a sensation of agitated energy pours out of my abdomen. It is tingly and active, definitely moving from inside to out. Occasionally I experience what seem like temporary clogs. Rather than trying to push anything, I simply observe, waiting for them to clear, allowing the energy to drain at its own pace.
Spotlight Of Energy
“Bring in an angel with an advanced engineering degree.” Keith soon interrupts with a clever metaphor. “Ask that angel to design and create a faster flow system for your densities.”
Soon, I am feeling an increased flow of energy, approximately eight inches in diameter, leaving my abdomen from slightly left of center. The physical sensation is both weird and amazing.
As I passively observe, I experience considerable dancing and movement in and around the belly button area – much of it being quite painful – all of it definitely flowing noticeably faster. I literally feel as if I have a small spotlight of powerful energy bursting out of my abdomen, rushing out and down into the earth, arching into the depths of my bottomless pit.
Firework Show
“Go get your little girl and tell me what she thinks of this process.” Keith guides me.
“I already have her sitting in the lawn chair beside me,” I respond with a giggle, “and she really likes it. She is happy and excited by what I am doing. The light show in the depths of the pit is like a huge display of fireworks, entertaining us both.”
For more than an hour, my little Sharon and I simply sit on lawn chairs while a large spotlight of toxic energy spews out of my body, creating a fascinating firework show below.
Heart Power
“Brenda, how much of your reservoir have you drained?” Keith finally asks.
“It feels like about thirty percent,” I respond intuitively with the first figure that flashes into my mind.
For much of yet another hour, I again merely observe while frequently inviting my angelic-engineer to adjust the flow, gradually increasing over time.
“Speed it up by engaging your heart center.” The now-obvious thought finally floods my mind.
Almost immediately after fully engaging my heart, I physically experience the increased flow of energy, and to my delight, it is also much less painful.
Trusting Higher Self
As sundown rapidly approaches and people begin to scatter from Keith’s magical porch, intuitions tell me that I am about ninety-eight percent done. Finally, a few minutes later, the magical completion number floods my intuitions.
“Keith,” I inquire with a puzzled tone, “I now feel that I am one-hundred percent done in draining that reservoir of toxic anger – but my abdomen still hurts a little. Is there anything else I need to do tonight?”
Intuitively I know the answer without needing to hear Keith’s words – words that backup exactly what I feel.
“No Brenda,” Keith lovingly replies. “It is time to go home, to integrate, and to write. If there is more to do, it will come up later.”
And then Keith says something that deeply reassures me in my process.
“Your Higher Self will not let anything go undone.” Keith adds. “If you miss something today, you can be sure that it will come up again later.”
A Tightly Wrung Rag
As I go to bed early and exhausted on Sunday evening, I begin to work on relaxing the blockages in my head.
Intuitively, I am drawn to imagine an old rag in my head – as if it had been tightly twisted in an effort to wring out all the water after doing laundry. But I instinctively know that this rag represents the muscles in my head – muscles that are tightly wrung and twisted in an attempt to squeeze out every last drop of energy flow. Somehow I know this is what happened – that my little inner child literally clenched every possible muscle in a desperate effort to restrict the flow of divine energies – in an effort to stop the magical energies that got her into so much trouble during the shutdown process.
To my amazement, as I imagine myself actually untwisting this metaphorical rag, I begin to feel a considerable flow of healing energy tingling in my head, neck, and upper chest – as if it is forming the beginnings of an energy connection that will join my head and heart together in cooperative partnership.
This magical tingling process takes me deeper and deeper into relaxation as exhaustion and tiredness gradually transform into dancing sleep.
I love how each little step of the emotional release process always seems to bring with it a new treasure, a new experience, and a glimpse of new energy possibilities.
Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved