As I arise earlier than normal on Monday morning, eagerness swells in my heart. Today I take a break from writing and inner processing. I am going with my young friend Isaias on an adventure to the mountains – a trip to visit with his Shaman teacher (Mayan Priestess).
For more than a month, I have eagerly anticipated my participation in this sacred journey with Isaias – but the adventure is not shaping up to be what I expected. I wanted the trip to be small and special … just me, Isaias, and perhaps his beautiful wife. Yesterday, I cringed with frustrated attachment when the two men from our Sunday chocolate ceremony were both unexpectedly invited to tag along.
It seems that the Universe is conspiring – almost laughing in my face – forcing me to confront my ongoing judgments and rejections of masculine energies.
Off To The Races
The first leg of our journey involves a bumpy Tuk-Tuk ride from the center of San Marcos to nearby San Pablo. With five of us squeezed into the tiny three-wheeled motorcycle taxi, we bump and swerve as our young Mayan driver skillfully manipulates his way around most of the rocks and drying mud that still cover many of the storm-damaged roads.
Once in San Pablo, we are fortunate to catch what most westerners refer to as a “chicken bus” – an old school bus, imported from the states, turned into a crowded public transport. The name “chicken bus” comes from the fact that the locals often carry just about anything in these busses – including live chickens. I can only giggle as I squeeze down an extremely packed aisle, attempting to find a place to stand. Three tightly squeezed passengers occupy each two-person bench. The middle passengers overlap halfway into the aisle, leaving little room to maneuver.
As we wind our way up steep and narrow switchbacks, I giggle and hold my breath as the bus comes to one particularly sharp corner. The driver literally stops, puts the gearshift in reverse, and backs up toward the edge of a cliff, giving him just enough extra space to complete the sharp left turn. At every blind corner, the driver honks loudly to warn oncoming traffic, while continuing to zoom ever-upward at what feel like near-racecar speeds.
Soon we are bouncing wildly over pot-hole-filled roads as we make our way down the other side of the tall mountains that surround Lake Atitlan. At last, we reach the main Inter-Americas highway.
Rural Magic
Eventually, after a period of much smoother travel, Isaias signals that we need to squeeze our way toward the front of the bus. Ten minutes later, after having scurried across a pedestrian bridge over the main highway, we find ourselves standing up in the back of an open-air pickup truck, hanging onto metal bars that form a sort-of protective passenger cage. Such pickup transports are quite common in the rural areas of Guatemala. After a gradual uphill climb on winding dirt roads, we finally reach our destination – the home of Isaias’s teacher – a beautiful little home in a tiny village – a rural area surrounded by mountains, cornfields, and magical energy.
The total cost of this two-hour journey, including a Tuk-Tuk, a bus, and a pickup truck is a whopping sixteen quetzales – just over $2.00 US.
Magical Mayan Mentor
The amazing fire ceremony goes on for over three hours as Isaias engages in learning opportunities with his beautiful Mayan teacher. Most of the spiritual conversation and ceremony take place in a mixture of Spanish and Mayan dialects. Periodically Isaias stops to translate a few things for the two men who do not otherwise understand any of the words being spoken.
It does not take long for me to drop unfounded ego projections and judgments of previously unwanted masculine energy. These two men bring with them a beautiful and loving energy – one that greatly contributes to the wonder and magic of the experience. I look inward on a journey of ‘know myself’, as I further contemplate the bizarre haste with which I originally sought to condemn their presence.
And I must say, I quickly fall in love with the beautiful energy of this Mayan Shaman/Priestess. Isaias is indeed quite lucky to have such a magical mentor to teach him the traditions of his ancient ancestors– and I feel blessed to share in the energizing experience.
Squished But Comfy
Shortly after noon, we return to the main highway in another pickup truck. This one actually has benches on which to sit – but I quickly learn that the ride is much easier on my bumping body when I stand up, allowing my knees to cushion the impact of the bumps.
At the main highway, the first transport that comes along is a sixteen-passenger minibus. I am lucky to find a spot to sit in the second-from-the-back bench – a very “comfy” spot where I sit in the narrow aisle, mostly perched between the bench and a single seat by the window. I am quite amazed by the stability and comfort of sitting on such an open-air bottomless seat – the pressure of two bodies pushing into me from either side, combined with the support of each butt-cheek barely resting on the edge of opposite seats, actually holds me up quite nicely.
Three of my travel mates end up having to stand in the doorway as we zoom down the highway with over twenty people crowded into this tiny van. By the time we turn off the main highway back toward Lake Atitlan, there has been enough turnover that each of us has managed to find a squished-but-comfy seat.
Better Than An Amusement Park
Our van ride ends as we reach the town of Santa Clara, about halfway back down the mountain toward the lake. Before catching our next transport, Isaias expresses his sense of starvation. Minutes later, the five of us sit in a small comedor (kitchen) near the town square of this small mountain town. For twenty quetzales (about $2.60 U.S.), I enjoy a chunk of chicken breast, accompanied by rice, beans, a small salad, all-you-can-eat corn tortillas, and a soft drink.
Soon, we begin our final descent toward the beautiful shores of Lake Atitlan – this time riding in the back of another open-air pickup truck. The experience is much more fun than any amusement park on the planet. Imagine standing up in the back of a pickup truck while racing down steep roads, zooming around sharp switchbacks, and often feeling the tires slightly slip and slide over loose dirt as the driver begins to tap the breaks.
The lake view below is beyond gorgeous as the wind blows wildly through my unrestrained and now-tangled hair. This dark blue lake surrounded by volcanoes is indeed one of the most beautiful in the world.
Finally, after one last Tuk-Tuk ride, I am back in my cozy apartment, energetically rejuvenated and physically drained. What a beautiful day – a day filled with adventure, spiritual growth, and magical energy.
Inexplicable Inner Urge
Tuesday, after spending the day working on “Relationship Rehab,” I find myself continuing to feel inexplicably drawn to watching a series of documentary movies that I have on an external hard drive. First, it was movies dealing with ancient Egypt, and the history of the world. But now I find myself, for no obvious reason, fascinated by an inner urge to explore an entire collection of government and world conspiracy-theory movies.
“I wonder where this unexpected movie marathon will lead.” I ponder with curiosity as I later drift off toward dreamland.
Puppy Pondering
As the chocolate ceremony gets underway on Wednesday, October 26, I experience painful prickles in my abdomen.
“Not again.” I begin to initially judge, feeling tired of this frequent and never-ending metaphor.
Almost immediately, I remember my own writing in “Relationship Rehab” – a blog that I finished editing and posting just this morning.
“Of course,” I ponder with excited clarity. “These pains in my solar plexus are frightened puppies – each being a real and wholesome energy that is literally terrified of me.”
Quickly, I begin to send unconditional love to these rejected and suffering parts of my own energy field – parts of me that I desire to reintegrate into my life.
“When you are ready,” I meditatively speak to the puppies, “I would like to invite you to join me in my heart.”
Puppy Love
Seconds later, I immerse myself in the early stages of a process that lasts for hours. It begins when I attempt to expand and fill my heart chakra so that I can share energy with another woman seated next to me. A wave of unexpected fear streams into my emotional body as I start to feel my heart expand. Having no idea as to the origin or the “why” of this fear, I simply know that the idea of heart expansion triggers these fearful subconscious emotions.
“I wonder if this fear is actually the trepidation of my own energy prior to reintegrating with me.” I ponder.
As I focus on the pains in my abdomen, I imagine each as a scared puppy. One by one, I imagine a puppy moving into my heart. As I do so, the pain disappears from my abdomen, it transmutes into a strengthening sensation in my heart chakra – a physical sensation of pressure and power in my chest. As other pains soon begin to surface in my solar plexus, I repeat the process.
Very frequently, I experience brief waves of intense fearful emotion – emotion that is precisely timed to the movement of some of the puppies. As these shaking fears consume me, I simply imagine myself holding a frightened puppy up to my heart, sending warm unconditional love, with no judgment whatsoever.
After a while, the intense pressurized-power sensation moves higher and higher in my chest, expanding into the high heart and collarbone regions.
Empty Space
This puppy meditation remains quite powerful throughout the first few hours of the ceremony, but eventually I reach a period of calm stability. The pains in my solar plexus have ceased to surface, and my heart chakra remains powerfully energized. The only way I could describe the sensation would be to imagine my chest as a tightly stretched balloon that someone overfilled with air.
After a long while, I begin to experience new prickly pains – these being in my second chakra, below the belly button. Intuitively, rather than seeing these new pains as being more puppy pains, I recognize them as the pain of inner resistance – a sense of resistance signaling to me that something wants to come in – something that I am not allowing.
“Of course,” I quickly recognize, “I need to bring in light, as well as part of my own magical self that was pushed out long ago. This part of me wants to return to occupy its rightful home in my energy field – space that is now available since the puppies moved into my heart chakra.”
Allow And Love
I work with this energy of “soul retrieval” for an hour or so, but sense that my efforts are not entirely successful. Occasionally I experience the sensation of growth, or of power returning, but the prickly resistant pain continues to poke.
“Help,” I finally beg Keith for guidance before explaining my intuitions and my inability to move forward.
“I’m getting that you need to just love the pains.” Keith responds after checking his own guidance. “Simply accept them as being part of your process, and love them for where they are right now.”
As I stop trying to do anything, and instead simply allow, the pains relax, bringing a sensation of calmness and peace.
“Good, Brenda,” Keith briefly returns to speak to me. “Now your energy is a lot more relaxed and peaceful. What you are doing is working.”
Flash Flood Insights
As the ceremony nears conclusion, one woman suddenly sinks into profound emotion surrounding her own pain, and the pain of other children who come into this life only to be shutdown by parents and society. As she tearfully expresses her intense sadness at seeing the suffering of these children – at recognizing that they actually chose their suffering – I experience a deep and intense energetic connection with her process.
I profoundly experience this pain – as if memories of my own childhood pain are being triggered in a new and powerful way. Rather than resist, I allow the emotions to flow through me, as if a huge flash flood rampages through my soul and then quickly passes.
Intuitively, I know that I just experienced Bobby and Sharon’s anguish – my own inner children suffering as I faced the decision to willfully choose my own energetic childhood shutdown. This brief emotional storm gives me an unexpected glimpse into what it must have been like to face such a difficult choice – a painful decision with so many hidden blessings.
A Strange Pursuit
Thursday morning, as I honor feelings telling me “Nope … you’re not writing today” – I am quite surprised when I instead feel drawn to resume the watching of more conspiracy theory documentaries.
I am even more surprised when I find myself driven to continue watching back-to-back documentaries throughout the entire day – from 8:00 a.m. until after 9:00 p.m. – only stopping for lunch and dinner breaks.
Something inside of me is deeply curious and yearning to observe and to understand the contents of each movie. Many things resonate powerfully as being true, while others simply resonate as interesting-but-questionable. The concepts discussed are quite eye opening, startling, and reality shaking.
But above everything, I am amazed by the powerful peace that permeates my heart throughout the entire process. There are no traces of the anger, judgment, or agitation that I might have expected.
Deep curiosity giggles in my soul, wondering just why I am spending so much time in such a strange pursuit.
Holding Space
Shortly after noon, on Friday, October 28, Keith and I find ourselves beginning a private chocolate ceremony – the setting being across the lake in San Pedro – the group being another beautiful Guatemala tour group, along with some of their friends.
As Keith begins to guide people through the glow meditation, I do what I do best. I begin to hold a powerful heart space. With each deep relaxed in-breath, I imagine my heart filling with white light, expanding my heart to the point of overflowing. Having no rational-mind explanation for what I am doing, I simply imagine my heart field expanding to include the entire group of around fifteen. Occasionally I focus my attention onto one or two specific people. Always, I focus on sharing high vibration, unconditionally loving, non-fixing, energy with anyone who will receive.
In fact, I spend nearly four hours simply using my breath to inhale energy into my heart, feeling it overflow, and radiating that loving energy to others. I am utterly delighted when none of my own emotional issues come up for processing.
Amazing Feedback
During the ceremony, one powerful empath suddenly locks eyes with me. We exchange unblinking stares for over ten minutes as I feel a deep and unexplainable heart connection between us.
After the ceremony, when I ask her for rational-mind feedback, she explains that with her eyes still closed, she had felt a powerful energy encompassing the entire group. As she opened her eyes to see where it was coming from, she immediately recognized it as coming from me, and that when we locked eyes, she felt my heart energy reach out even more powerfully, directly to her, surrounding her with loving, supportive, non-fixing, space-holding energy.
In a brief conversation with yet-another woman, she told me something very similar.
I am blown away by such amazing feedback. I know that my heart is overflowing with power, and I intuitively recognize that it is doing something beyond my understanding. But my head logic simply has no rational-mind awareness as to what that “mystery action” actually is.
Two Frogs
“Keith,” I ask later, “can you provide some type of rational-mind feedback regarding what I was doing today?”
With a smile on his face, Keith explains that in my case it is necessary to keep my head out of the equation – that I need to experience my own gifts first – that in time the head knowledge that I seek will indeed be filled in.
I again ponder my dear friend Serg’s little metaphor of the two frogs – one living in a well and one living by the ocean. The beach frog found it impossible to describe the wonders of the ocean to the little frog trapped in his “well-based” reality.
“I really need to experience the ocean in a deeply personal way.” I reassure a logical mind starved for further involvement. “It is only after I walk barefoot in the sand … after I swim in the crashing surf … that I will really understand. Then, after having had such an experience, words will never do it justice.”
Surrounded By Fire
In a beautiful completion to an adventurous week, I end Friday evening in much the same way that I began Monday morning – with a heartfelt and deeply spiritual Mayan fire ceremony.
The tour group leaders have invited “Tata Pedro” – a local shaman – to perform a fire ceremony as a way to end their last evening here at Lake Atitlan.
It is nearly 9:30 p.m., as Keith and I climb with the rest of the group into the back of a pickup-transport for our fifteen-minute ride back to the boat docks. There, a private boat awaits our arrival.
After disembarking in San Marcos, Keith waits on the sidewalk below as I walk up my steps, let myself in to my apartment, and call out “all is well, I’m safely inside.”
The clock reads 10:25 p.m. as I sit at my computer with intentions to check a few brief emails.
What’s The Point?
But to my shock, I am once again glued to my computer screen, finishing the second half of a conspiracy documentary that I had begun this morning.
As 11:30 p.m. finally rolls around, I begin to ponder, “Why am I so obsessed with watching these videos this week?”
Watching such videos a few years back would have totally agitated me. During the first forty years of my life I would never have ‘wasted my time’ in such pursuits, believing the theories to all be false because they were just “too far out there” – believing that government and business could not possibly be so corrupt as to do some of the things people were accusing them of doing.
Then, at around age forty-five, I began to acknowledge that perhaps many of the conspiracies might have some truth – but I refused to watch them because I did not want to be drawn in. I was (and still am) on a spiritual path of seeing everything as an inside job.
“What point could it serve me to look at such things in the outside world?” I had often asked myself.
As Above So Below
All week, whenever I have watched these movies, I found myself simply observing them … learning from them … remaining completely centered, peaceful, and loving … simply satisfying a curiosity … never knowing where the journey was leading me.
Suddenly a spiritual teaching taught by Hermes flashes into my mind, namely: “As above so below.”
“Could it be that this entire world of external conspiracies (above) really exists inside of me (below)?” I ponder with sudden soul-searching curiosity and honesty.
“I know that I either create or allow everything in my reality.” I further ponder. “Why would I be living in a reality where so many powerful and greedy men seek to suppress my individual power, to keep me shutdown and in the dark as to who I really am?”
Ego Conspiracies
As I begin to ponder my inner reality as it relates to the “conspiracy theories” in our physical world, the process is mindboggling.
Ego has set itself up as my hidden and secret leader, hiding in plain sight, right inside of me, masquerading as me, pretending to be me, running my inner government through deception and fraud without me even suspecting the truth.
Ego tells me I am separate and insignificant, undeserving, unlovable, not at all connected to divine Source – and that I should hate or be suspicious of anything outside of me, or that is different from me – that love is foolish and risky business – that a strong defense is the only way to go.
Ego constantly lies to me, keeping me in the dark as to who I really am, denying the magic that I possess inside, and always insisting that I must rely solely on its guidance or else I will be doomed.
Ego stirs up one terrorizing fearful situation after another, making me the victim of others, attempting to keep me consumed by terror and dysfunctional behaviors, constantly creating inner battles and wars as a way of controlling me.
Ego starves me financially (energetically), keeping me trapped in the dependence and struggle to simply survive. If any type of promising relief or solution enters my horizon, ego does everything possible to suppress that information, to belittle it, and to discourage me from pursuing that silly direction.
Ego provides me with countless daily distractions and entertainment so that I will have neither the time nor the actual desire to look beneath the surface-appearance of anything.
Ego’s fraud and deception is so convincing and cunning that I am often blinded, refusing to question my reality. It is nearly impossible to believe that such a fraudulent and powerful source of greed and control could get away with such all-encompassing deception for so very long.
And the list of ego parallels could go on for a very long time …
Energy Awakenings
As I finally retire just before midnight on Friday evening, I am alive with flowing energy – everywhere in my body – as if new energy channels are randomly waking up with tiny lightning bolts.
Intuitively I know that this process of “uncovering more inner lies” is leading to new and profound awakening of additional energetic truth inside of me. The energy activity is both exciting and somewhat uncomfortable, especially in the legs. If I did not know better, I might assume that I had Restless Leg Syndrome, as my legs repeatedly twitch with these energy spikes.
The activity is so profound and physically uncomfortable, that I finally give up on sleep, or even reclining, switching instead to an upright meditation position until the wee morning hours. Finally, my body gives out and broken sleep is forthcoming – but the insights and parallels continue to flow all night long.
Even Saturday, as I write and integrate, I continue to experience occasional waves of new insights.
Conspiracy Consciousness
So do I believe the things I have been watching in these conspiracy theory documentaries?
Actually, much (if not most) of the information resonates with me as being quite true in a physical-world sense. Having lived most of my life with perceptual blinders – blinders that were taught to me by parents, religion, and culture – I was incapable of seeing or interpreting what was going on around me through anything other than the dark obscured sunglasses that were given to me by others. Those were the lenses of my childhood shutdown.
But even though I now see things much more clearly, I will not judge the outside world as good, bad, right or wrong. Instead, I choose to see everything “out there” as being a mirror image of what is going on inside of me. I strive to remove my own dark lenses, to clarify my vision to the point that I can see the divine light and truth behind all of the external masks.
I continue to trust that I create my own reality, and that everything “out there” serves a useful purpose – showing me the lies in order to help me discover and wake up to the truth. As part of that “waking up” process, I will continue to raise the vibration of my own inner world while exploring everything in the outer world that triggers low-vibration responses in my heart.
Self-Transformation
I am fascinated by the “Occupy” movements that are forming all over the planet. The thing for which I am most grateful is that their actions have caused me to increase my curiosity and awareness– to learn more about what is happening “out there.” While my heart does not guide me to stand up and protest in the outside world, my exploration of the outside reality has caused me to peel away many more layers of the lies blocking me from seeing the truth in my inner reality. I will definitely be occupying many more of my present moments, refusing to sit idly by while ego rampages through the sacred institutions of my inner life.
Recently, I came across the following quote from Lao Tzu – one that profoundly speaks my own truth. I could never say it better myself:
“If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.”
Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved