Friday morning, March 2, 2012, I am in a very good place, but remain quite emotionally drained. The last few days have been an exhausting roller coaster ride, taking me to the brink of giving up. I am now very much back in the passion of my process, and am being gentle with myself in the ‘rest department’. Rather than push myself, I spend the morning simply playing games and repairing a few torn seams in a skirt that I sometimes wear for chocolate ceremonies.
As I sit on Keith’s porch for the Friday afternoon ceremony, I am in total surrender, simply flowing with my process, prepared to go wherever intuitions and guidance may take me. Even before starting the “Glow Meditation”, Keith begins to work with a friend of mine – a friend who struggles with being there for her very magical little daughter. This work deeply triggers my own inner issues – issues with my own magical inner child – launching me with full force, right into my own process.
Metaphorical Bread Crumbs
Intuitive guidance takes me right back to where I left off with Keith yesterday – returning to the intense sadness of a tiny child who was giving up on life – beginning to again sense the inaccessible rage that hides just beneath the surface of the sadness.
Pains soon begin to form in my upper left abdomen, in the area of my pancreas.
“The pancreas is associated with insulin and the processing of sweetness.” I begin to ponder. “This metaphor is showing me that as a tiny child, I felt no sweetness for life … and that I struggled to find the joy and happiness.”
Other pains come and go, both in my abdomen and heart regions. An interesting pattern forms. All of these pains are on the left side of my body – on the feminine side. Then, I even feel aches pulsing in my right brain regions (also the feminine side).
“My feminine side was sad, angry, and profoundly suppressed at a very young age.” I cry mildly as I meditate through these metaphorical breadcrumbs.
As these emotions surface, I feel them deeply, but through it all I remain connected to peaceful loving energies.
I also note that I am suddenly beginning to be overwhelmed with more of that swirling head confusion – the feeling of my third-eye energies being stuck in the mud.
Alien Allegories
“Remember to take the light with you.” Keith briefly interrupts the glow meditation as he speaks to me.
“I think I am doing that.” I respond through my mild tears. “I invited the light and am remaining unidentified and not-attached to the pain. I am feeling it, crying through it, but not getting lost in it.”
“Good,” Keith congratulates me, “keep going.”
Immediately after the glow meditation, Keith returns to working with my friend. I watch with keen interest as he explains to her how she was a magical little girl, born into an alien world that was not yet ready for her magic – that she chose to be born in those circumstances so that she could be the age she is now at this time in the planetary shift.
All of these are things I also know to be true about me – Keith and I have discussed them several times. As Keith continues working with my friend, he points out how, as a child, no one understood her, she did not fit in or belong to that shut-down world, not relating to parents or siblings, feeling as if she herself were the alien.
A Place To Die
As I listen to this beautiful metaphorical description of what is also my own childhood emotion, I finally begin to access that intense reservoir of hidden rage. I begin to feel the intense putrid anger quite deeply as I ponder how I too was an alien, a genuine magical child, made wrong at every turn … and how everything I did from my pure and loving heart was rejected and turned upside-down by adults in such crazy-making and confusing ways. I ponder the emotions I felt when I, as that tiny innocent child, was subjected to such an invalidating and foreign state of powerlessness.
As I cry in a subdued manner, I continue to focus on the light while allowing myself to sink deeper into the rage, intentionally using that emotion as leverage to push through the intense complacency that continues to trap me in this powerlessness, even today. While engaged in this process, I again start to see myself in that cold, dark, dank, rancid, moldy, humid, putrid cave-like room – a room devoid of all love.
I soon imagine myself propping the door open with a stick, allowing a tiny breeze of love to flow into this hopeless place. As I do so, I focus on bringing in divine love from Mother Earth, and soon feel mild-but-minimal tingles flowing through my body. Intuitively, I feel the breeze in this dark room beginning to make a slight difference. The increased light energy triggers more of the rage – and I begin to feel even more intense anger at having felt stuck in this lonely room with no way out.
As the emotions flow, I literally return to the state I was in yesterday after an almost sleepless night – a state of hopelessness, self-loathing, giving up, knowing there is no way out, of wanting to die … of knowing that I will die here in this room.
A Blob Of Mush
When Keith eventually turns to work with me for the first time, I share details of my deep and profound meditative journey.
“Is your child, or any part of your child, in that room?” Keith surprises me by his question.
“Yes, I feel an aspect of my little child is still in this room.” I respond after a few minutes of deeply searching for a heart-felt answer.
“How does this child feel while you are bringing in this light and loving energy?” Keith continues his guidance.
“As I attempt to further connect, I’m again feeling that whimpering panic that is so familiar,” I respond.
“No, wait, I feel as if I am just talking from my head.” I interrupt Keith before he can continue. “Let me go in and actually connect with this child.”
“I think my child is numb and doesn’t care.” I finally share after a few minutes of meditation. “She is hopeless and powerless … she has given up … a blob of mush that is so numb that she simply does not care what happens anymore.”
Rotting In Hell
“This is where you were when you were shut down.” Keith validates my journey.
“Yeah,” I respond with recognition, “it is the same place where I was yesterday … a place of not wanting to live … of giving up.”
“Brenda,” Keith adds, “I’m getting another metaphor … comparing this state to being like you are ‘rotting in hell’.”
“That really rings true,” I respond, “and hell in my childhood religion is reserved for only the worst offenders … for murderers and adulterers. The emotions I feel are as if I am one of them … that I belong in hell. It is a hopeless place with no way out. I feel as if I am sentenced to be stuck here for eternity … with no hope for love or connection.”
Surrendering Control
As I try to imagine Higher Energies assisting me, I visualize myself taking my little inner child Sharon’s hand with my left hand, while reaching into the glowing room of my divine circle of friends with my right hand. I whimper and cry as I visualize myself being lifted up into more divine love. There is too much fear. I cannot seem to go there. Sharon remains in that dark, putrid room.
I soon imagine a tiny tunnel – a tiny channel being formed that connects my heart to the top of this dank and moldy room. I place a metaphorical door on this tunnel, attach a string to the door, and give that string to my inner child … telling Sharon that she can pull on this string whenever she wants to allow a little more love from my heart to trickle in, and that the door will automatically shut when she does not pull. I then lovingly tell Sharon that she is in control here … that she gets to decide when and if she allows this love … that I will not push her.
As I totally surrender control, I cry and whimper for a while as I feel more and more of the love-starved emotional agony. Meanwhile, I focus on something that I can do – I bring in peaceful energy from above, mostly through my crown. As I do so, much of the emotion begins to release. After a while, the agonizing emotions have completely vanished.
Continuing to surrender to the flow, I now observe that I am back in that swirling confusion of my third-eye chakra. Rather than resisting, I surrender to the swirling confusion, asking it to get bigger while I imagine a waterfall of liquid light flowing into my crown, through my third eye, and out my nose. The swirling goes on, and on, and on … with no apparent release in sight.
Water Torture
Soon, Keith checks in on my progress. When I share what I have been doing, he congratulates me.
“Do you have any suggestions for my process?” I ask, hoping for some magical guidance.
“No, you are doing great,” Keith responds, “just keep following the metaphors and see where they lead you.”
As I continue to sit with this swirling whirlwind of confusion energy, it soon switches into a thumping, ‘water torture’ feeling as light pulsing pressure and twitching repeatedly poke me at the top of my forehead, near the hairline, like heavy drops of water dripping constantly.
“Brenda,” Keith responds when I ask for more guidance. “See those twitches as something very positive that you need to allow and embrace.”
I release all judgments, allowing myself to see all of this crazy energy as positive. Even before, I was not resisting it, but now I fully encourage this energy to do whatever … to go wherever … while I fully surrender and just observe. As I do so, I experience a variety of shifting currents, and multiple forms of pulsing sensations.
The common denominator of all these energy pulses is that they give me that yes/no/yes/no/yes/no crazy-making feeling – the feeling that I am being energetically made-wrong, being mentally tortured, and driven crazy.
Balance And Surrender
Finally, a new idea intuitively pops into my awareness. I remember energy techniques that I learned during a sacred geometry class, while studying in a two-month healing course during the fall of 2010. These are techniques to calm and stabilize the energy flow in my head, balancing the pineal gland.
For five or ten minutes, I flow energy through my hands while using my hands to balance various energy channels in my head, each of which intersects at the center of my brain. As the energies in my head begin to calm, I shift my focus onto imagining a flow of energy that runs from crown to toes – using my imagination to connect my chakras.
As I engage in this energy balancing focus, the confusing energies in my third-eye chakra mostly fade. Soon, I sink deeper into surrendering to the flow of Higher Energies, having no rational-mind agenda.
“How are you doing, Brenda?” Keith eventually checks in with me again.
“I’m doing great.” I peacefully respond.
“Surrender and allow this energy to flow.” Keith guides me.
Squeamy
Eventually, intuitions guide me to relax my forearms as a part of this surrender and allow process. For the next ninety minutes, I focus all attention onto watching and observing the crazy fearful journey unfolding in my arms. In fact, the more I attempt to relax them, my forearms literally feel as they are going crazy with resistance and fear.
“Keith,” I explain after sharing my journey, “this is not just an energy of pain in my arms … it seems to be an energy of intense distraction and confusion. It is so uncomfortable that it is trying to make me stop. But it is not my muscles that are painful … I somehow know that it is extremely agitated energy.”
“Great observation, Brenda,” Keith congratulates me.
What Keith shares next completely surprises me.
“I have coined a word for this state,” Keith shares with a smile. “I call it squeamy. It is a cross between squirming and screaming. I experienced it many times in my own process, and my teachers talked about it a lot.”
Cellular Release
“Keith,” I add with surprise at this unexpected validation. “It feels like there is extreme fear in my forearms … as if they are in a panicked red-alert state. Even my abdomen and heart are showing real physical signs of a mild panic attack as I continue relaxing. The sensation in my forearms is that this is a matter of energetic life or death.”
“This is your body consciousness telling you that this IS a matter of life or death.” Keith responds. “Your body is telling you not to allow this to happen.”
“I have repeatedly tried to relax these forearms many, many times in the past,” I share new insights. “But I always quit because of this pain-and-panic feeling that overwhelms me when I try. Now, today I am not attached or identified with it … just watching it.”
“This is actual fear being released at the cellular level without mind involvement.” Keith shares with me multiple times during this enlightening conversation. “This is how it feels to release emotion without involving rational mind.”
I love how Keith continues to grin when he uses the word ‘squeamy’ over and over.
Roaming Squeamys
“Wow,” I repeat my amazement, “I have felt this many times, but I always stopped it because it was so confusing and crazy-making … as if there were an inner desperation to abort what I was doing … a distracting, panic-filled, absolute mandate to stop.”
“Keith,” I add quickly, “this feels a lot like that crazy-making swirling confusion energy in my head … only it is in my arms. This energy is extremely desperate to confuse me and to stop me from releasing this blockage. Is it possible that my swirls of confusion energy in my head were this same squeamy sensation?”
“Yes, that is a possibility.” Keith acknowledges.
To my surprise, as I continue relaxing, observing, and allowing, the ‘squeamy’ feeling gradually spreads at what I would describe as a snail’s pace. It first spreads from the center of my forearms all the way up until it consumes my elbows. Then it begins to spread downward toward my wrists while slowly receding from the elbows.
After about an hour of non-stop observation, the squeamy feeling is now sharply focused from about two-inches above my wrists, down through my palms, and all the way to the fingertips. I love how these sensations are moving around, confidently showing me that this is real energy movement and actual cellular emotional release. If the crazy pains remained static, in one place, it would be easy to rationalize that it was merely a physical muscular pain.
Intuitively, I absolutely know that this forearm clenching is deeply related to lifelong subconscious attempts to prevent the flow of Higher Energies through my body.
Giggling Trust
After a beautiful and fascinating squeamy journey with Keith as my guide, attention soon focuses elsewhere on the porch.
Near the end of the ceremony, a well-known author stops by the porch for a quick chat with Keith. She is in town teaching a writer’s workshop. At an appropriate moment, I make eye contact and remind her that I met her a year ago, and that I would love to buy her a meal sometime, just to chat. I totally understand when she replies that she would love to get together, but that she is too busy this time around. She adds that she will be back in San Marcos later this year, and that she would love to talk then.
“You’re a writer, aren’t you?” She then asks me.
“I’m not published,” I respond, “but I am working on my travel memoirs in blog form right now.”
“You are VERY published.” Keith emphasizes with a smile as he publicly compliments my writing.
I love this brief exchange, and totally look forward to whatever future interactions the flow of my being may bring. I giggle inside, because I am in a confident place of inner trust, knowing that if I need assistance from someone such as an established author, that it will just happen – that I do not need to force anything. The only thing I need to do right now is continue passionately engaging in the guidance of my present journey. The rest will take care of itself.
Optimism Abounds
Friday evening, as I rest on my pillow, I notice that my lower back is flowing more delightful energy, and that my abdomen feels much softer than it has been in a very long time. I love how the gradual physical changes seem to validate and encourage what I am doing. On a day-to-day basis, it is often difficult to notice the changes … but if I look back a year, or even a month, I am aware of constant and impressive changes to my energy.
Saturday, March 3, is a lazy and peaceful day as write and publish “Happy, Peaceful, And Drained.” It is a long day of writing, one that does not end until shortly after 8:00 p.m. – but as usual, it is well worth it. It seems that every time I write about events in my recent past, the integration and growth are profound and powerful.
Sunday morning, I find myself alive and immersed in optimistic energy. After spending a morning reading from the “Oneness” book by Rasha, and listening to “Abraham” videos, I am overflowing with positive energy as I sit on a pillow, eagerly awaiting the unknown flow of yet-another, never-the-same, chocolate ceremony.
Flowing With Love
During the early parts of the ceremony, I hold space for others while experiencing a great deal of energy flow in my head. And then, of course, as I relax my arms, that extremely familiar squeamy sensation consumes my upper wrists and hands.
Throughout the “Glow Meditation”, I envision myself in a raft, drifting downstream in the flow of Higher Energies, feeling those energies flow through me, feeling a sensation of additional softening in my abdomen. I continue to be somewhat shut down, but for the first time in forever, I have no metaphorical pains in my belly – and I seem to be making great progress in allowing in more self-love.
Kicked In The Gut
At one point, a new man on the porch gets quite confrontational. He is confused by misunderstandings (a language translation issue), and is deeply stuck in his head. In extreme ways, I see him as a dramatic mirror of my frustration at desperately wanting recipes and instructions – insisting that I need an old Shamanic model where someone like Keith will fix me, rather than making me figure out the impossible for myself.
This man does not want to have to look inside at his own issues, and he refuses to listen. Instead, he repeatedly asks deeply frustrated questions – yet when Keith attempts to answer, the man goes into panic and resistance, refusing to listen to the responses. In many ways, he is throwing a confusion tantrum – again reminding me of how I must have looked to my parents when I went into a complete state of chaotic confusion over what they were trying to teach me as an alien child.
Eventually, after watching this confusing conflict for a while – repeatedly drawing parallels to my own journey – I begin to feel deeply triggered. I isolate and go inside as tears start to stream down my cheeks and my solar plexus swells up with inner pains. I literally feel as if I were kicked in the gut.
Regressing To Past Pain
“You either need to stop your drama or leave the porch.” Keith eventually makes a firm-but-loving ultimatum.
Repeatedly, the man begins to leave, and repeatedly Paul convinces him to stay. As I observe from a detached state, the conflict, drama, and chaos are increasingly triggering me. Keith momentarily turns to me and asks how I am doing, while reminding me to not identify and attach with these childhood emotions.
Gradually, I am able to return to beautiful energy in my upper chakras – but my abdomen continues to twitch painfully with that kicked-in-the-gut feeling. I attempt to remain not-identified and unattached to these emotions – but a part of me deeply identifies.
I know this is childhood emotion that needs to surface and flow through me, and as I give myself permission to cry, I also focus on bringing in the light and love. In fact, I bring in a great deal of light through my crown. I attempt to bring in energy through my lower chakras, but remain quite blocked to the Divine Mother.
My focus on the light seems to be softening and transmuting the intense energies in my abdomen. The peaceful vibrations of energy seem to be gradually dissolving the densities, and I actually feel a small flow as the energies leave me. By the time Keith begins to prepare the group for an empath training, I am almost peaceful again, even in my abdomen.
Conflict Triggers
But suddenly, the struggling man again flares up in frustrating and angry resistance. Keith soon shares another loving ultimatum … telling him he either needs to stop the drama or leave the porch. For a while, Keith plays ‘bad cop’ while Paul plays ‘good cop’. I find it extremely agonizing to observe the conflict as the man melts into frustrated tears. Yet the conflict continues, the man will not listen, and Keith finally shares his loving ultimatum again.
As the man starts to walk away, Keith interrupts with a beautiful idea.
“Why don’t you pretend that you left,” Keith suggests to the man, “and then come back onto the porch, sit quietly in your chair as if you were not here, and then just observe while saying nothing. If you can listen without talking, you might be able to learn from what I am going to show the others.”
By now, I am crying again. I pull a scarf over my head while mild muffled sobs express themselves through me. I cannot watch the unfolding events. They are triggering deep feelings of childhood conflict.
Empathic Conflict
“Keith,” I express when asked how I am doing, “I don’t remember this conflict with my parents … but the emotions tell me it is very real … that I had to fight to try to be heard and validated. It was an intense battle of conflicting wills, and I always came out the loser.”
“And I remember being terrified of my brother.” I add. “He saw his taunting me as innocent teasing, but I saw his behavior as attacking conflict. When he got angry at me, I panicked in terror … much like I am feeling right now. All of my life I have been terrified of conflict … I have avoided it like the plague … I have avoided even the thought or appearance of it.”
“Brenda,” Keith adds further insight, “even if the conflict was not openly expressed in your family when you were a child, you were an empath around a society of people who were not allowed to express their conflict. You would have literally felt that unexpressed conflict screaming at you energetically, even in a room full of people pretending to be happy and civil.”
“That makes so much sense based on the crazy emotions I am experiencing.” I respond with recognition.
Heavy Tingles And Moving Energy
The more I peel back my layers of resistance, the more I seem to sink into emotional terror at the start of each and every empath training. Today, I am in so much emotional pain as the training begins that I block it out and detach. Instead, I focus on the confusing journey with conflict that continues to cause tears to flow down my cheeks.
As I meditate on my own, I repeatedly go into painful emotional nightmares around the issue of conflict … experiencing deep childhood terror surrounding actual or potential confrontation. Rational mind cannot explain what I feel. Suffice it to say that right now an intense terror runs through me … agonizing fear of conflict … excruciating pain surrounding the powerless feeling of having to shut myself down because of being helplessly on the losing end of that conflict.
By the end of the empath training, I am much more stable. Most of the emotions have passed through me. I can only assume that I released them to the angels and that they have been transmuted. I still doubt my energy sensitivities, but I know that during this release process, I felt very heavy energy tingles in my hands and abdomen … and I know that this energy in my abdomen was somehow moving out of me.
Opposite Ends
As the ceremony fades, both Paul and I remain behind on the porch with Keith. Soon, Paul unexpectedly engages me in a conversation, asking me about the emotions I was feeling during part of his work where I was crying while he too was crying.
A pleasant conversation unfolds regarding our varying views of conflict. It soon becomes clear why the two of us are playing opposite ends of the same script. Paul seems to thrive on conflict. He enjoys pushing and getting angry at others, believing it to be a healthy form of speaking his truth and creating change. On the other hand, I feel deeply frightened and disempowered at even the thought of potential conflict. In the past, I rarely openly disagreed with people in my life, because of the fear that such disagreement would surely lead to conflict. Now, as I learn to courageously speak my own truth, I am learning to verbally express my true self … but doing so where potential conflict is involved continues to trigger me deeply.
“Brenda, just get your courage up and go into it when things happen.” Paul starts to give me advice about how to go into conflict.
Paul’s advice is the last thing I want to accept, because learning to embrace and eagerly go into conflict is the last thing I want to do. Instead, I want to journey deep inside to understand my fears and childhood issues surrounding conflict.
“Paul,” I respond, “thanks, but you are in your head, with head advice. What you are saying might be accurate for situational stuff where you need to face your fears, but I am wanting to go deeper into exploring subconscious patterns that cannot be handled in the mind.”
Perceived Misconception
Soon our conversation shifts into the area of pushing other people’s buttons and triggers.
“Keith has pointed out to me that I have ‘love’ and ‘button-pushing’ hooked together in some ways.” Paul expresses genuine insights.
“Yeah,” I try to explain. “I understand that you do that. I just want to say, that in my way of thinking, I would never enjoy any type of relationship with anyone who intentionally tried to push my buttons as a way to trigger my growth. That is definitely not my idea of fun, or of a loving relationship style that would work for me.”
“Pushing buttons is not a good way to trigger people into growth.” I attempt to explain to Paul.
“But that is the same thing that Keith does when he works with people.” Paul explains to me. “He connects with them and challenges them where they need to grow.”
“No, that is not at all what Keith does,” I begin a futile attempt to explain to Paul about his bizarre misconception.
Slammed For My Truth
“Brenda,” Keith abruptly and forcefully cuts me off. “You need to allow Paul to have his truth and quit trying to be right. Let him have his truth and you can have your own and I can have my own. This behavior of trying to be right has gotten you into trouble your whole life. As a healer, you can never function with trying to be right with clients. Just let it go.”
I feel deeply attacked by Keith’s confusing words. I know I am right. I know that Keith knows I am right. His words deeply stab me. I feel like a tiny child trying to explain a pure divine truth to my parents – a truth that I know deeply in my heart – yet I am being slammed by my parents, unable to feel validated, unable to be heard and understood … and desperately wanting to explain and defend the unjust and unfounded attack on me.
I feel as if Keith is telling me that Paul is right, and when I look over at Paul, I see that Paul believes the same thing. The smug look in his eyes tells me that he is delighted that Keith is validating him and slamming me.
I literally feel like a three-to-six year old child, sitting with my parents. Keith is playing my father and Paul is playing my mother. Both are now condescending and lecturing me. Keith’s tone is very authoritative and somewhat angry as he speaks in a lecturing tone. Several times, as I attempt to defend and explain myself, I actually tell Keith that he is unjustly lecturing, speaking to me as a little child.
“It doesn’t matter whether this situation is real or contrived,” Keith slams me some more. “This is a real and deep core issue that is coming up now because it is time to move it. You cannot be a healer if you have to be right about everything … if you cannot allow others to have their own version of the truth.”
Humiliated And Angry
“Keith,” I try to explain a new and sudden insight. “In most situations I have no problem allowing others to have their own truth. It is only in deeply personal situations, when trying to explain deep emotional issues of the heart that …”
Keith again cuts me off and lectures me for not listening.
“You do this with everything,” Keith insists. “You need to stop needing to be right.”
I feel horrible, like I am being unjustly reamed by my parents. It is a feeling that resonates as being deeply familiar – from childhood, during my marriage, with children, and in an occasional friendship.
“Remember how your extended family member and a former friend slammed you on Facebook.” Paul smugly throws in his brilliant wisdom. “I can see this pattern so clearly.”
Paul has no idea what I am really going through right now. I perceive him as a condescending know-it-all, coming from a place of seeing a behavior, but having no inner license to understand it, no compassion or true recognition of the underlying issues. I would love to reach out and slap Paul right now, but instead, I completely ignore his words.
He is really enjoying this scenario where he is “right” and I am “wrong”. I feel humiliated and angry at Keith for putting me in this situation.
Releasing Rightness
Every time that I attempt to simply explain my feelings to Keith, he cuts me off and lectures me some more. This process goes on for at least ten or fifteen minutes.
Finally, I interrupt in extreme protest, insisting that I be given the respect that I deserve – demanding that I be listened to and heard without my genuine statements being invalidated.
“That may be so,” Keith acknowledges my genuine statements of self-defense, “but you still need to go inside and face this issue, blah, blah, blah.”
I feel angry and victimized by my parents. I am increasingly beginning to recognize that this is not the normal Keith that I am talking to … that this has to be a role-play. It is so unusual, and is perfectly taking me back into emotions of childhood. I just want to run away … to pout and cry for days … I want closure.
In the midst of this frustrating, lecture-filled conversation, Keith actually does agree with the original point I had tried to make, but he is skillfully taking me into a real core issue, triggering my deep pain in a brilliant way that seems real and profound. Paul remains clueless of the fact that Keith is skillfully role-playing for me, taking me into childhood emotions.
I want to discuss my role-play theory with Keith, but realize it would be futile to do so while Paul is still here. Paul remains clueless and somewhat gloating. I decide I do not need to be right in Paul’s eyes, and that I can wait to talk to Keith until after Paul leaves. In the meantime, I begin to let go of my intense identification with and attachment to this crazy-making confusion.
Please Disengage
Right before Paul finally leaves, he launches into a beautiful rational-mind description telling me how I can get over my issue … telling me how deeply he understands what I am struggling with … blah, blah, blah.
First, I just put my fingers in my ears, making my point with a physical gesture. Then I realize how childish this is and simply decide to speak up.
“Paul,” I beg for some sanity, “can you please just disengage.”
Paul reluctantly stops preaching and soon vacates the porch.
A Brilliant Reenactment
“Keith,” I express with a smile, “I think I get it. What you are brilliantly showing me, whether you are role-playing or not, is that I cannot explain my truth to Paul, because no matter how many times I might try to say it or to explain it, he would not be able to hear it. It would not matter how right (or wrong) I am… he will not hear it, and there is no point in getting into that debate with him right now.”
To my delight, Keith then readily admits that has been role playing – and that he agrees with the original truth I had attempted to share with Paul.
“Paul is simply not in a place where he understands right now.” Keith smiles at me.
“That was brilliant.” I giggle back at Keith. “Thank you so much for showing me this intensely profound trigger. I literally did feel as if I were being unjustly lectured by concerned and frustrated parents … slammed for simply trying to express real truth to someone who could not hear it. It gave me first-hand understanding of the confusion and futility I felt as a child when I attempted to express my heart-based truth to my parents.”
“I can clearly see why I have ‘love’ hooked so tightly with ‘conflict and rejection’.” I continue. “When I spoke from my heart, I was powerless to defend or explain myself … to explain how I knew something. Today, this little role-play took me right into the gut-wrenching emotional pain of this reenactment.”
Rather Be Happy
“Paul really does believe that you heal people by pushing them.” I express new clarity to Keith. “He believes that you push them into changing … and that is why he continues to try to push on the porch … why he is still trying to show you how to do things better … because HE doesn’t believe that YOU fully get how to do it right.”
“But I also clearly recognize,” I admit with newfound humility, “that no amount of explaining or teaching right now would convince him otherwise. That would not serve him in any way.”
I feel so much better. I was so perched on the edge of sinking into an old loop, and then sulking about it … of feeling horrible and miss-accused. But instead, I was able to get the lesson the easy way. I felt the pain, but did not fully identify with it … not fully attaching to it. I listened to and observed what was going on, experienced the pain to the core, intuitively began to understand what was really happening, and then brought in higher energies to help me release the confusion and beliefs.
“The lesson truly is,” I express my understanding to Keith, “that I continue to get deeply attached to being right when it involves an issue of my heart … especially when confronted by someone like Paul with whom I have a long history of agonizingly painful projections.”
“It comes down to one of my favorite ‘A Course In Miracles’ principles,” I explain new clarity. “Trying to be right never is a source of happiness. I would rather be happy.”
Adult Discernment
“Brenda,” Keith shares new wisdom. “As a child, you were unable to discern when to try to speak your truth and when it would not be helpful … and so you got into deep trouble with parents and were shut down as a result. But as an adult, you now have the ability to discern when it is appropriate to try to explain a truth to someone else, and when it is appropriate to simply back away and let them have their own truth … no matter how wrong you may believe their truth to be.”
“Wow,” I thank Keith. “This is so true … I do not need to be right … Paul can believe whatever he wants to believe. This was so charged for me because of my intense history of projections with him. This has been a profound and brilliant lesson. Thank you so much for helping me to learn it at an experiential level.”
I have long understood this principle at a rational-mind level, but today I was given the profound gift of understanding it from the level of the heart.
A Winged Visitor
In the past, such a role-play experience with Keith would have left me devastated, angry, and deeply looping in emotions. I am delighted that tonight I am giggling and on top of the world. I am quite proud of myself for being so quick to recognize that the emotions that were being triggered – and the situation doing the triggering – were simply showing me old stuff that had nothing to do with the present. I am even more delighted that I was able to learn this lesson without the pain of fully identifying with and attaching to those deeply agonizing emotions.
I am in such a positive mood after this life-altering experience, that I am able to spend two passionate days writing nearly nonstop. On Monday, March 5, 2012, I write and publish “A Powerful Exclamation Point”, and on Tuesday I eagerly write, “A Humbling Journey.”
At 4:59 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, just as I begin my final editing, I giggle as a tiny sparrow flies into my kitchen and perches on the door next to my refrigerator. He then flutters around my kitchen area, hopping from place to place, before quickly disappearing back out onto the patio a minute later.
This is the first sparrow to visit me in a while. He could not have come at a more beautiful time – seemingly congratulating me for an amazing five-day journey – congratulating me for spreading my wings and letting go of what could have so easily become a reason to feel deeply betrayed.
Winged Wonder
These two days of ceremony and three days of writing have indeed been eventful and profound. I took an intense journey through childhood sadness, experiencing a deeper understanding of the confusing confusion that muddied my world, and I began to get a profound education into the concept of “squeamy” – of releasing deep emotions at a cellular level without involving the rational mind.
And then, wow did I ever take a dive into the deep-end of the emotional pool, profoundly exploring, in an experiential way, the childhood feelings surrounding that emotional nightmare called conflict. I could not imagine a more beautiful day in which conflict was first modeled for me in an external way. After sinking into the childhood emotions of terror surrounding conflict, I was then sucked head first into the currents in a crazy-making role-play with Keith – one involving conversational conflict with Paul.
That profound lesson was more valuable than anything I could have ever gotten from a book. I remembered, at a deep level, exactly how it felt to explain my genuine heart-felt truth, only to be slammed and blindsided by adults who simply were not in a place where such truth could be accepted. In my desperate attempts to be right I only made things worse – a pattern that I have played out for decades – a pattern that is finally exposed in a painful way that I will never forget.
And I am so grateful to a tiny little sparrow who again stopped by to congratulate me with winged wonder, reminding me that my time to fly is now.
Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved