It is Wednesday, December 21 – just a few days before Christmas. As I sit lightly meditating at 5:00 a.m., I revel in the memories of yesterday. I ponder the magic of actually feeling an energetic flow in my high heart region. The prickly pains continue to consume my entire upper chest region, reminding me that the whole experience was not simply my imagination, reminding me that real physical changes took place as well.
But I am in a weird emotional state as I ponder back on events in my life. I love and honor my parents, and I absolutely know they loved me … but I can only access one memory, at around three or four years old, of ever receiving such beautiful unconditional love (love having no underlying agenda) in my relationship with my dear mother. And there are only a few times with very close friends where I was able to receive such profound love.
Love for me remains hooked to (equivalent to) pain, control, manipulation, obligation, judgment, hurt, and fixing. I can give and give and give, but something inside of me refuses to receive that same pure love. My heart tells me that such pure divine love is readily available, just waiting for me, but in order to see it, to receive it, I must first undo the inner blocks that prevent me from allowing it in.
Sadness Revisited
As I again reflect on the intense heartache and sadness that I experienced yesterday, intuitions tell me that I did indeed tap into a reservoir of my own buried childhood pain – a huge reservoir of deep emotional sadness that could never haven been expressed to parents who would not understand. It was this overwhelming and inexpressible sadness that caused me to literally pull the plug on my energy sensitivities – that caused me in desperation to psychically sever the channels that reopened yesterday.
Ooooohhh the sadness hurts. As I meditate, I again begin to experience additional waves of sadness that want to pull me back to the depths. I cycle in and out of a yes/no/yes/no agitation … part of me wanting to sink back into the emotion … part of me terrified to go there.
In the midst of my emotional confusion, I wander over to Keith’s porch thirty minutes early. I do not want to wait for the chocolate ceremony to begin. I need to be around people, now!
Projection Pity Party
While waiting for the ceremony to begin, I have a deep headache and my solar plexus is painfully swollen. While staring at the ground in emotional agony, I simply ignore all who arrive on the porch. I feel no desire to attempt social interactions.
When the glow meditation finally gets underway, I am not glowing, but instead want to cry. I am again projecting onto a young man that I will call Paul. He is the same man who showed up a month ago wanting to “fix” everything that happens on Keith’s magical porch – the same man onto whom I have had such a fierce journey with projecting.
I know that I create my reality. I know it is all an inside job. I know that it is not about Paul, and it is not about what Paul is doing. And I am painfully aware that nothing will change until I find and release the triggering source of these projections inside of me.
But I am painfully human. I feel angry at myself for doing so, but today, I again project that Paul’s presence makes it unsafe for me to cry. A huge part of me wishes he would simply disappear from the porch and fade away.
An Emotional Wreck
During a brief discussion about releasing emotional layers, someone innocently mentions, “Yeah, but the more layers you peel away, the easier it gets.”
“Yeah, right.” I sarcastically respond in a partially audible voice. “The deeper I go, the closer I get to my core issues, the more frightening and painful each layer seems. The outer layers were the easy ones. It takes real guts to go deeper to the core.”
I am an emotional wreck – feeling a mixture of sadness, anger, resentment, self-flogging, and self-hatred.
Wipe The Blackboard
“Brenda, what’s going on today?” Keith asks near the beginning of his individual rounds.
“As if you didn’t know,” I respond glumly, before answering his question so that others on the porch can understand my process.
“I’m deeply stuck and clueless as to what to do.” I answer with confusion. “I’m trying to sit in a loving space with my inner child, but my head aches profoundly, I am swimming in swirling heaviness, and I am unable to focus or think clearly.”
“Brenda,” Keith responds. “Wipe that mental blackboard clear and stop thinking about what you should do. Quit trying to do anything and instead, just feel the love.”
Keith reminds me of the “Welcome to real love” connection he guided me into yesterday evening, guiding me again to ask the angelic love, when I am ready and able, to back me up with higher energy assistance. He suggests that the divine love knows what to do to help me – that I simply need to express my intent and to then surrender and allow, getting out of my mind chatter, and trusting that something outside of me knows how to help me in my state of stuck-ness.
How easily I forget!
Resisting The Process
Keith continues to work with me for a few additional minutes as I again stabilize back in this loving space. Gradually, my heart becomes more connected, while peace and relaxation begin to spread.
As I continue to observe Keith work his way around the porch, I pay close attention to everything that occurs. When he begins to work with a friend of mine, her work deeply triggers my own issues and I again lose my loving focus.
“Brenda,” Keith turns back to me, “quit trying and thinking, and go be with your headache to see what is next.”
As I attempt to meditate, visualizing myself sitting down next to my headache, I am still trying to love and relate to everything around me. I just want to be loving. I do not want to feel deeper emotions – to get angry, or cry etc…
Festering Self-Judgment
But try as I might to focus, I cannot help but observe and project all over my young projection-buddy that I am calling “Paul”. As I continually observe Paul’s behavior, his actions trigger reactions in me that make me want to scream. I watch him dramatically run all over the porch to do energy work on people. I project fixing energy onto all of it, not believing that he has the slightest real understanding of what it means to be a healer – of what it means to follow what someone really needs versus using ego to take them where he thinks they should be. (Please remember … these are all MY projections.)
I struggle to push down angry feelings of annoyance and judgment. In the midst of this, I have my hands under a scarf on my lap, each hand angrily sending a middle-finger salute in Paul’s direction.
I hate myself for these feelings. They are driving me crazy. Angry self-judgment festers.
“Why am I projecting so violently,” The festering self-judgment silently screams out.
I suddenly realize that Paul reminds me of how I might have been if I were male. I feel intense hatred toward an inner teenage boy inside of me, one who was judgmental, wanting to fix others, while hiding his own inner struggles.
Raging Projections
I try to connect with my little inner child, fourteen-month-old Bobby, while visualizing one of my childhood photos. To my shock, I feel intense judgment and anger toward that little boy. I cannot love him. I despise that toddler, and I despise Paul. Paul reminds me of that “hated child” all grown up.
“The first half of the ceremony today was really boring.” Paul speaks to Keith near the end of the ceremony. “But I focused really hard on meditating and raising the vibrations on the porch. The last half of the ceremony has gotten a lot better since I did this.”
I am shocked by the intense inner anger that again begs for release as I watch Paul while he claims responsibility for having saved the energy of the porch – while he simultaneously implies that my work at the start of the ceremony was a boring waste of his time.
“F#ck you Paul.” I silently rage with my eyes facing the ground. My projections are again going wild.
Angry Confessions
“I should not be judging and projecting.” I flog myself again and again while trying to suppress the emotions.
But my inner guidance says that “I AM angry and judgmental … I need to feel and explore these emotions rather than push them back down.” I choose to follow the flow of my guidance. I know that the emotions I feel are not really about Paul – that they run much deeper and that the only way to work through them is if I will allow them to surface into the light.
To my delight, many people soon leave the porch, including Paul, and I feel like I can express my struggles without directly offending Paul. When Keith turns to me, I confess my angry projections while tears stream down my cheeks. I confess my middle finger salutes and my anger at being told that I am “boring.”
As the ceremony fades, I quietly cry on my cushion, feeling stupid, embarrassed – seeing myself as a total jerk.
Implied Permission
When everyone else leaves, I remain on the porch, hoping to discuss my craziness with Keith, but he goes into his house and begins quietly engaging in his own evening tasks, pretending to ignore my presence.
“Is there anything you might suggest to me before I go home?” I eventually call out to Keith, begging for some type of guidance or feedback. “I don’t want to go home still being so deep in my process. I will be a functional wreck tomorrow if I do not find some closure. I am so tired of emotional processing. I want to be able to write again.”
“Maybe you do just need to cry.” Keith quietly hints. “Maybe what you need to do right now is to allow yourself to get really angry.”
I take Keith’s words as not only permission, but as encouragement to go for it – to let my anger out. It seems that I have been stuck in the misguided assumption that “now that I am trying to use higher energies to assist me in emotional release – that I should simply be all love and light – that I should not need to feel things so deeply anymore.”
Exhausting But Therapeutic
While sitting alone on Keith’s magical porch, I grab a couple of pillows and begin angrily punching away, accidently driving my fist into the concrete floor on one occasion.
I punch, cry, sob, cough, wheeze, and dry-heave angry energy out of my throat. As the energy releases, I feel the presence of angry hatred and judgment – not aimed at others, but at my own sweet and innocent inner child – at a bad, stupid, disruptive, disobedient, awkward, rebellious, defiant, dishonest, and troublemaking little boy.
It seems that I have unknowingly taken sole ownership of the adult responsibility to perpetuate this internalized and buried self-hatred.
Shock overwhelms me as I experience the intense hate that boils inside me. For nearly thirty minutes, I continue to punch, sob, breathe, punch, heave, breathe, cough, blah, blah, blah. The process is beyond exhausting, but very therapeutic.
Turning It Around
Finally, I can do no more. Intuitions tell me that I have done enough for today.
During a much-needed conversation that ensues, Keith actually validates many of my projections and perceptions – but makes it very clear that his guidance tells him that all is perfect right now – that Paul and I are playing profound scripts for each other – that there is nothing that needs to be changed on the porch.
I want to fight and resist when Keith lovingly reminds me that “It is not about Paul,” “It is not about what Paul is doing on the porch,” and that “Nothing will change until I do.”
I so wish Keith would just clamp down, put restrictions on Paul’s behavior, and make the porch be what “I want it to be”. I find it quite agonizing to turn the mirror around, to remember that I would not feel triggered if this were not really my own issue – one that I need to change inside of myself. I so badly want to project responsibility onto Paul, and even onto Keith.
A Terrified Ego
“Ego is in a panic right now.” Keith further coaches me. “The deeper that you get into the process of bringing in higher love and light, the more panicked that ego feels. Ego is very likely to try to sabotage you, to increasingly throw more wrenches into your process.”
Keith advises me that it is quite common at this stage of an “undoing ego” process for ego to “wham wham wham” someone with intensely self-sabotaging situations in an attempt to get them to cease and desist the undoing process.
“Congratulations for how minimal your projections have been onto me this last year.” Keith provides additional feedback. “I am actually quite grateful that Paul is here so that you can project all of this onto him instead of doing it to me. If you were projecting so strongly onto me, you would not be able to hear what you need to hear from me.”
Reliving The Past
At 5:30 a.m. on Thursday morning, I lie on the daybed in my living room and meditate for three hours. I continue to have sharp headache pain in my third-eye chakra, but I do not fight it. Instead, I simply focus on relaxation and love. The pain reduces to half intensity, but I continue to feel overwhelmed by a feeling of emotional cloudiness and physical dizziness. I am so exhausted and swirling that I resolve to take the day off from everything.
No, there will be no writing today. Instead, I spend the day watching movies, doing some crying here and there, as emotional movie scenes further trigger me. I have noticed that ever since Tuesday – when I opened my high heart – that those sharp pains throughout my chest have persisted. Any crying at all is now accompanied by intense bronchitis-like coughing, and my intestines are beginning to rebel as well. Intuitively, I know that these symptoms are all energetic manifestations – that there is no reason for physical concern.
I am intuitively reminded of all the intestinal problems I had as a child, constantly cycling between extremes. During my young years, I also had frequent headaches, as well as frequent sore throats and coughing episodes.
“Are all of these symptoms what happened to me as a child when I experienced these inexpressible emotions?” I ponder. “Am I now re-experiencing them because I am going back in time to heal them?”
Dizziness, Buried Anger, and Synchronous Advice
Around 4:30 p.m., I suddenly notice an email from Keith. I had forgotten that we were scheduled to bag a new batch of freshly ground chocolate tonight. As I stand up to prepare for my walk across town, I nearly fall over with extreme dizziness.
“Am I even capable of walking out to Keith’s home?” I ponder. “And once I get there, will I be able to help … will I even be able to walk home?”
By 5:00 p.m., the dizziness has relaxed enough that I begin my short stroll. Five minutes later, I bump into two friends, one of whom is an amazing acupuncturist. They ask how I am doing. I respond honestly, telling them details of my process and of all the intense inner anger and rage that continue to remain buried inside.
“I’m being guided to tell you about a pressure point on your foot,” My dear acupuncturist friend volunteers. “The liver is associated with the storage, processing, and release of toxic anger, and if you press on the L1 (Liver 1) pressure point on your foot, it will help you to release the angry energy.”
I smile at my friend and thank her for the advice, but do not give it a second thought.
Projected Nightmares
As I arrive at Keith’s “chocolate bagging” porch, I briefly ask about my physical symptoms.
“You have to relive all of this in order to move through it and to release it.” Keith confirms my intuitions. “What you are going through physically is all a part of your process.”
I find the evening of bagging chocolate to be an extremely awkward one. Paul is helping as well, and I am in a supervisory role of double-checking the weights – making sure that the edges of the bags are chocolate-free, and that there are exactly eight ounces or sixteen ounces of traditionally processed chocolate in each bag. Several times during the evening, I try to provide innocent feedback about a problem, and Paul defiantly barks back at me.
I feel the projected animosity between us. I feel his judgment toward me, and his avoidance of me. I simply pretend that all is well, while going about my tasks feeling marginalized and rejected. I am again reliving an old childhood pattern – projecting my inner nightmare all over Paul.
A Beautiful Setup
Later, after finally going to bed at 10:00 p.m., I can do nothing but lay awake while meditatively time traveling back to my teenage years.
I suddenly realize something else that is really being triggered. I am experiencing deep social anxiety and hatred – a feeling of being marginalized and ignored by peers – a feeling of wanting to withdraw, to hide in a closet, and to cry. I realize that, as a young teen, I was not free to withdraw and isolate, because there were always people and family around, and too many questions would have been asked. I stuffed my emotions of social dysfunction deeper and deeper, having no outlet to express them or to heal them.
Yes, I am reliving my teens, the feelings of being rejected and judged by the popular kids, the socially confident crowd. I felt as if I were “boring” and an insignificant waste of time and attention.
As I meditate deeper into these emotions, additional layers of self-hatred rear their ugly dragonheads. These are layers of horrendous self-loathing shame, anguish, and believing that “I am the Devil” incarnate. Throughout those years, I hid my pain so that no one could see the truth.
Tonight, all of my interactions with Paul are a beautiful setup. I recognize that I have been reliving huge loops of this painful pattern in the last couple of weeks.
A Social Nightmare
To my horror, as I continue to meditate, I begin to realize that if my buried shame and self-hatred were underground fields of black yucky tar and oil, that there would be enough fossil fuel to supply the entire United States for years. There is an unbelievably huge reservoir of pain – pain that still exists buried inside me.
The thought of having to cry out this huge reservoir of emotion in the old “do-it-myself” way is daunting – seemingly impossible.
Sitting in tears at my computer, I type the following:
“I literally would rather die than face that wall of impossibility. This is something with which I desperately need help. I do not know how to do this. I am terrified and wish I could run away. If I were not writing about this in my blog, I might be tempted to bolt and run right now.”
I clearly recognize how, even during my recent travels, I have repeatedly played out these social nightmares. I have mostly managed to withdraw, to ignore, or to run away from the “popular kids” that trigger me. But with Paul, I face a new nightmare. He has made it clear that he is not going anywhere.
I will have to face him in every chocolate ceremony for months to come, and I do not think I can survive the emotional torment of doing so. I honestly would rather run away than face this triggered dysfunction.
Physical Breaking Point
At 11:40 p.m., still wide-awake, I begin to cough uncontrollably. As I do so, droplets of watery spray come out of my lungs. I continue to believe this to be energetic in nature, related to the opening of my high heart, but begin to go into a physical panic, wondering if I have bronchitis or pneumonia. I can hear the fluid in my lungs, rattling as I breathe in and out.
“I know this is just energy,” I try to remind myself. “Water represents emotions. The fluid and pain in my lungs are energetically forcing me to realize that I am at a point where my overload of emotions is no longer allowing me to breathe.”
“This emotion is going to physically break me if I have to process through it as I have done in the past.”
Following Synchronicities
In desperation, unable to relax, I pile up pillows on my daybed and lie down in a hammock-like position with head and feet elevated on the pillows. At some unknown point in time, I finally reach a state of relaxation where I drift into semi-consciousness.
At 2:22 a.m., after my body forces me to take a quick restroom break, I am again wide-awake and coughing violently. Anger, shame, self-hatred, and self-loathing are swirling around wildly inside of me. I am feeling desperately alone and frightened. As I am about to give up in terror, intuitions suddenly remind me of the synchronous guidance given to me by my acupuncturist friend.
I quickly locate the L1 (Liver 1) pressure point on my foot, situated on the top side at the center of the “V” of the bones that connect the big and second toes.
Mosquito Madness
I primarily focus on the right foot, since the liver is on the right side of my body. The tenderness and sharp pain shock me as I begin to press on that spot. Very soon, I sense a current of energy moving from my liver area, down my leg, and out of my foot. Simultaneously, I experience a gradual draining of intensely agitated emotions.
My physical senses further get involved when I begin to experience profound itching in the right foot – itching that feels as if hundreds of mosquitoes are simultaneously biting just below where I am applying pressure – as if the some of the energetic toxins are literally leaking toward my little toe.
I continue this physical draining of energy for more than an hour. At 3:33 a.m., as I lay back on my pillow, I feel amazed by how free I feel. That putrid anger is gone, my entire body is relaxed, and I am happy again. Sometime around 4:00 a.m., I slip into a semi conscious state where I am half in dreamland, but aware that I am dreaming. At 6:30 I get up, convinced that I will remember, but before I return to bed, all memories have vanished – other than the memory that the dream involved surrender to a flow that was taking me where I needed to go – and that I felt confident and trusting that all was well.
A Dragon Behind The Gate
To my delight, as I arise and browse through Facebook, I find a beautiful message from a friend in Michigan. I had told her that I was struggling and could really use some positive space holding. Her reply blows me away. Following are the first three sentences:
“You got it girlfriend. Have been doing that for you but will specifically amp it up! Feels like the dragon is behind the gate on the path you need to travel and you want to travel the path more than protect yourself from the dragon. I am with you in spirit as you open that gate, uniting my positive energy and faith with yours!”
Left Foot Leftovers
At 8:00 a.m. on Friday morning, as I jot down additional notes about my overnight struggles, I begin coughing violently, yet again.
“I refuse to surrender to sick.” I lovingly encourage myself. “This is energy, not physical illness.”
I again repeat the pressure on my “L1” points – this time focusing on the left foot. To my delight, the leftover energy again drains powerfully, and I begin to have wild itching sensations on the left foot.
Sobering And Validating
I arrive a full hour early for the Friday afternoon chocolate ceremony. I am anxious to discus my journey and concerns with Keith.
“You are in a very powerful place.” Keith congratulates me. “And the realization that things are beginning to manifest physically is giving you major motivation to allow the higher energies to help you.”
Our conversation is both sobering and deeply validating at the same time. I come away feeling hopeful and peaceful, believing that maybe I can connect with more light and peace.
“Try bringing in the love from your own heart.” Keith gives me a little tidbit of advice. “It might be a little less threatening if you see the loving energy as coming from inside of you rather than from something outside yourself.”
An Inner License
When I explain to Keith that I literally feel that I am going psycho, his response is equally encouraging.
“This is all a necessary part of your training.” Keith shares with me.
Keith assures me that I created this entire situation to help me get this painful understanding so that I will have compassion, so that I will be ready and able to help others in the future that may go through similar processes of feeling crazy during their own undoing and inner work.
Keith has often pointed out that by doing this painful work myself, that I will acquire what he calls an inner license – a license that comes from having “been there, done that, and got the t-shirt.”
A Dragon Quest
As I sit on Keith’s porch, peacefully waiting for another chocolate ceremony to begin, I briefly review the agonizing events of the previous two and a half days – a brief moment in time that feels like an entire lifetime of emotional trauma.
I have gone into agonizingly painful projections, knowing that the issue is inside of me, but angrily wanting to project blame onto a beautiful man I am calling Paul. The dragon-like anger and rage is beyond intense – so intense that by late Thursday night I feel as if I could literally spit fire out of my mouth.
Due to a beautiful synchronous suggestion by a friend, I find temporary relief and profound feedback through the use of physical pressure points.
I am indeed bursting through the gate, and there are no doubts that my desire to travel this frightening road is far greater than any fear of silly dragons that might block my path.
With blind trust, I prepare to burst through another gate in my path. How could I possibly know that an even bigger dragon lurks nearby in the shadows?
Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved