Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “Erupting Empath Energies.”
The house is pitch-black as I wake up just after midnight on Monday morning. As occasionally happens in this part of the world, the power outage continues throughout the night, still being off when I crawl out of bed just after sunrise. I have an electric showerhead, and the water flow to my second floor apartment is pressurized with an electric pump. Because of this, I begin to prepare for the remote possibility of several days without the ability to shower with hot water – and the very real possibility that the water pressure could drop low enough that showering, washing, and flushing are not even possible at all. I am delighted a while later, when shortly after 8:00 a.m., I hear the refrigerator motor begin to whine.
Yeah, I get to shower.
After a busy morning full of last-minute errands, many of which are preparing for three friends to visit, I hurry off to Keith’s magical porch on this Monday, March 4, 2013. I cannot believe it is already March, with my birthday less than a week away.
A Social Outcast
As I sit on the porch, waiting for the chocolate ceremony to begin, I giggle when a couple of friends begin to share fun feedback. First, my new friend Susan tells me she has begun reading my blog, and she lets my know how much she loves my writing. Then, a young woman I barely know – one who had been to a few ceremonies a year ago – speaks up unexpectedly.
“Brenda,” she tells me, “your work last year really helped me.”
“But I was the porch bawl-baby last year,” I respond with surprise. “I felt like most people hated me, and that I was the biggest loser.”
“Exactly,” she responds with a giggle. “Your genuine process really helped me to see what densities I still have inside of me.”
“Wow,” I silently giggle as I prepare to hold space. “It is amazing how I was helping people even when I was regressing into feeling like a social outcast.”
“To” Versus “At”
Being a Monday workgroup ceremony, Keith dispenses with normal introductions or meditations as we all sit around in silence, meditating in our own ways.
To my delight, a few minutes later, Catherine, who is sitting in the corner, smiles at me from afar and giggles while asking me to throw a roll of toilet paper (tear tissue) AT her.
Feeling frisky and playful, I respond in a way quite typical of how I used to be at around age ten.
“AT you or TO you?” I question her instructions, being silly with words.
“AT me,” Catherine responds, clearly having fun with me.
Taking her literally in my fun silly childhood personality, I hold the roll of paper in my right hand and hurl it like a baseball pitcher might do, hitting Catherine right in the forehead. To my surprise, the soft tissue travels with more velocity than I had intended, landing with unplanned force.
“Whoa,” Catherine speaks to Keith in what I still believe to be a joking and playful manner. “See what I mean about Brenda’s repressed negativity and aggression?”
I absolutely know that I was in a space of playful joy when I threw the roll of paper, simply being excessively silly … but I begin to feel quite stupid and guilty, realizing that Catherine might actually be mad at me.
“No,” I remind myself of my pure intention. “If she has an issue with this, it is NOT my issue. Whether she is joking or not, it does not matter.”
Immediately, I recognize a profound behavioral pattern from around age ten and eleven. I used to be quite silly and playful, but very often I was reprimanded by adults or classmates for my odd sense of playful teasing, being made wrong – being made to feel absolutely stupid afterward. All such well-intentioned behavior only seemed to cause confusing trouble in my life.
It was in this vulnerable pre-teen period when, out of survival necessity, I shut down all such joyful behavior, believing myself to be a dysfunctional and utterly clueless social loser.
A Consummate Hypocrite
Soon, a young man follows painful physical metaphors that guide him into deep inner child work. The pains are in his left shoulder, and as I follow along with his process, I see these pains as related to the feminine playful side of me that was the inexplicable force behind so much of my dysfunction as a child and youth.
Following these inner breadcrumbs, I soon again find myself as a sixteen year old Boy Scout, again posing for my Eagle Scout photos, while simultaneously feeling like the consummate hypocrite loser.
“I want to send love back in time to that frightened young man in me,” I ponder with insight.
First, I fill my heart with love and imagine myself generating a “Patronus Charm” from the experience I wrote about in the last blog, “Erupting Empath Energies.” I want to use my white bird to take away that young man’s pain.
“Oops,” I immediately stop myself. “This feels like I am trying to go back in time with an attachment to fix something. I want to do this with love, not fixing.”
Finding Love, Sharing Love
Minutes later, a nearby young man goes into deep tears. When I look at him, I am overwhelmed by his youthful face, and by his genuine purity and innocence. I cannot help but imagine my own sixteen-year-old face staring back at me. Soon, this young man glances up and locks eyes with me. We stare into each other’s eyes for perhaps ten minutes. I cannot speak for him, but as for my part, I see him as me – as that young self-loathing Eagle Scout. But I see him from a new perspective – from a vantage point of seeing his beauty, his magical and always-loving heart, his hope for life, his indisputable desire to be spiritual, obedient, giving, serving, loving, and healed.
My heart swells with tear-filled love as I literally send pure and unconditional love to myself as a lost teenage boy. This process is soon interrupted when Keith asks the young man to involve himself in someone else’s process.
Soon, I feel guided to participate in holding space for Steven. I had been excited at the start of the ceremony today when Steven had appeared back on the porch after a few weeks of traveling. While giggling and greeting him with a jumping-up-and-down hug, eager anticipation had told me that he would again be playing a magical ongoing role in my growth and healing. I send powerful vibrating energy to my friend, supporting him in his own magical process. Later, when my participation feels complete, I feel much more healed and peaceful. I clearly recognize how sharing energy with others helps me to bring higher vibrations into my own reality.
Yet, when I sit back against the wall, I notice that my heart is now filling with sharp pains.
Delay Tactics
A while later, I ask for guidance about the pains in my heart, first explaining to Keith how I had started sending empath magic to my sixteen-year-old self a while ago, but had stopped because I began to wonder if I might be trying to fix him.
“Just do it,” Keith responds, reassuring me that I was doing the right thing.
“But I felt resistance, feeling as if I were pushing somehow,” I ask for clarification. “And in the last half hour or so, I have actually felt as if that young man was instead sending me love. I began to feel as if he is excited for who I have become … for who WE have become. He is no longer wounded and angry.”
“Brenda,” Keith interrupts me. “You are doing the same thing that you did yesterday … and Friday … and Thursday … and Wednesday … and Monday … and Sunday.”
Immediately, I feel as if Keith is making me wrong. I interpret his “watching my back” as sounding preachy, judgmental, nagging, and pushing. But I try to get out of my way to genuinely understand what Keith is trying to tell me.
“You mean I am scamming myself with more emotional processing,” I ask for clarification.
“Yes,” Keith responds. “It is a delay tactic.”
I feel deep resistance, but inside I truly know that Keith is NOT making me wrong for all the emotional processing I have done in the past. He and I both know that my process has been necessary to get me to where I am today. I clearly feel that he is gently trying to remind me that I am digging through a mountain of very-real density using a worn spoon, and that I have reached a point of diminishing returns when I focus mainly on emotional density. It is a point where, at least for right now, it is more important for me to move more into my power and to climb up another step on the entrance to the easy bus.
Restoring Power
“What would you do if you didn’t have all those ongoing densities,” Keith asks a leading question, one that feels as if I am being manipulated into agreeing with him. I am in a very resistant place.
“I would share my magic,” I respond hesitatingly.
I am trying to speak words that I think Keith wants to hear. But in my mind I am forming stories, insisting that if I did share my magic, it would be on MY terms, when I am the one feeling guided to do so, and NOT when feeling pushed by someone else to do it. I am still storytelling in the drama of how I believe Keith is trying to bully me into sharing more energy with others when I simply do not feel ready to do so.
I feel quite indignant for a few minutes as I ponder how I feel manipulated against my will. Suddenly, I realize this is another “stage play” opportunity where I need to own my power and trust my inner guidance. It does not matter to me if anyone else sees my process in this way. It only matters that I need to find more self-love and self-trust of my own inner knowing. For whatever reason, I clearly believe that I have manifested a reality in which I feel Keith in the nagging role – playing the role of my mother trying to coerce me into doing things her way, in a way that gives away all of my personal power to her.
I begin to breathe quietly, but with focus, inhaling deep into my solar plexus and exhaling through my throat, feeling the air pushing through my voice box with as little audible sound as possible. In doing so, I begin to feel sensations of magical expansion and strengthening vibrations in my heart, high heart, and throat regions – with a mild feeling of expansion in the solar plexus as well. Based on past experience, I know that these physical confirmations are telling me that I am bringing back more of my lost power.
Reclaiming Power
As I do so, however, I feel bitchy and defiant – somewhat guilty for resisting the guidance of my teacher. But I also reflect back on several similar situations when I turned inward and found great healing through learning to trust my own inner guidance.
As I continue to meditate, I return again to that sixteen-year-old me.
“I was a permanent people pleaser,” I ponder with increasing insight. “I had no power, and was consumed by repressed emotion, suicidal self-hatred, and overwhelming hopelessness. I had no voice. I gave all power away to everyone else, and was always seeking external guidance and acceptance.”
“I am taking this power back for him, for that inner adolescent that was me,” the inner thoughts continue. “Even though he believed himself to be the ultimate loser, he was a magical boy with profound love and powerful gifts – a boy who had his joy and life force sucked out of him by the Dementors of life.”
With this new self-loving realization, I begin to laugh quietly, and immediately start to sob at the same time. I continue trying to laugh as intense crying muffles the ongoing release of painful emotion. This release goes on for perhaps ten minutes, relaxing when I allow more light to transmute. Finally, I experience a gentle stream of love flowing into my solar plexus.
A Confusing Conversation
Just as I reach this peaceful place, Keith interrupts and tells me that I am again going down the same path that I did every day last week.
“You mean I am scamming myself again?” I ask with resentment.
“Yes,” Keith responds calmly.
“I disagree,” I firmly stand my ground. “I know that this is an exercise in profound self-empowerment.”
“It IS,” Keith responds with a huge grin.
“I know that everything I have been doing this last week was perfect and following the flow of my process,” I continue to argue.
“It WAS,” Keith agrees with a loving tone.
“And I know that I am feeling beautiful power flowing through me right now,” I insist.
“You ARE,” Keith again unexpectedly agrees.
“Are you saying that all of that, and this today, is a scam?” I ask in confusion.
“No,” Keith responds before changing subjects. “I am reminded of something I read from your latest blog, just this morning.”
Keith does not remember the exact quote, but assures me he will go back, find it, and email it to me. He does not share even a hint about the part of my blog to which he is referring. Instead, he leaves me confused and guessing. I begin to ponder while he moves on to work with others. At first, I am unable even to remember the title of the blog I wrote just two days ago. And I am at a complete loss to remember the actual content.
Power Puzzles
As I ponder with puzzlement, the title suddenly flashes into memory.
“Hmmm,” I giggle, “A Puzzling Journey With Joy. I wrote about that Marianne Williamson quote of how our light shadow is our greatest fear … and how Joy is my light, and I refuse to embrace my joy until I get the apology from Higher Energies, blah, blah, blah…”
“Keith is telling me that what I am doing right now – chipping away at more density with a spoon – is another delay tactic of my God drama refusal to embrace my light shadow,” I ponder. “And I now realize that power is also part of my light shadow.”
“I am refusing to fully own my power and share it with others until I get that apology from Deity … WOW!!!”
While deep in quiet meditation, I continue to occasionally listen to outside words drifting my way. Suddenly, I hear words that I know are totally out of context. I did not hear any of the earlier conversation, but instead only hear Keith being blunt with someone else who is also resisting the embracing of her own power.
“There will come a time when I will stop asking you to help others,” Keith tells this woman. “And when I do, you will have to get angry enough to own your power yourself.”
It suddenly dawns on me that this is where I am now – and that perhaps Keith was knowingly speaking to my frustrated ears also. Keith often used to guide me to help others, but now mostly refrains from doing so.
“What I recently have perceived as his gentle bullying is something I am manifesting to cause me to get angry enough that I will do something about it – so that I will own my power and begin to share it with genuine passion,” I tell myself.
Again I remind myself that this type of power is NOT rebellious, angry, in-your-face ego, but is instead a power coming from genuine self-love and pure surrender to trusting my OWN inner knowing. But it actually feels scary, egoic, and defiant – as if owning my own genuine inner knowing is actually an act of rebellion against others. This could not be further from the truth.
“This divine power is already mine,” I ponder. “I have to quit pushing it away and own it now … right now. God will not give me this power. It is already here, all around me, just waiting for me to own it. And “owning it” includes sharing it when I am guided.”
Powerless Metaphors
For the remainder of this magical Monday ceremony, I focus on embracing Higher Energy and joy. As the end draws near, I feel a genuine sense of joyful empowerment – an empowerment without resentment or blockages – an empowerment accompanied by self-love, self-trust, and magical transparency to triggers around me.
I can only giggle when I rush home at 5:00 p.m. to grab a quick dinner. The electricity is again off. In fact, it had been off during the entire ceremony at Keith’s house, but since we were outside in the daylight, that had not been an issue.
I giggle even more when I realize that I had left my laptop turned on, and that the battery is now entirely drained. After scribbling notes for the day using a notebook and pen, I gobble down a quick plate of rice and beans and rush back to Keith’s porch to participate in an evening of bagging another three-hundred pounds of freshly ground cacao.
And, you guessed it … the power is still off when I arrive back on Keith’s porch. For the first time ever, we spoon and weigh the slightly liquid chocolate using flashlights. Since the bag sealer runs on electricity, all bags are set out to harden without first sealing the tops – a task that will have to be completed later.
It is a fun evening … in fact a joyful evening of socializing and working with others. After a round of hugs, a dark walk back home, and some quiet meditating with candle light, I finally retire to another night of sleep in pitch-black surroundings, with the electricity still off.
I cannot imagine a more powerful way to metaphorically emphasize how I have literally been living my life without real inner power – power that has actually been quite frightening to embrace.
Power Equals Betrayal
But as I attempt to sleep, a great deal of storytelling mental chatter returns. After a while, I get out of bed, light more candles, sit on a pillow, and meditate into the middle of the mindless stories. It seems that power struggles are running rampant in my mind … chatter about this person and that … chatter of how owning my power has always resulted in destroyed friendships and family relationships … chatter of how power makes me feel like a selfish bitch.
“Betrayal is not what I thought it was,” I suddenly realize. “No one in my life ever actually betrayed me. Instead, they simply attempted to schmooze their way into my psyche, looking after their own best interests, and I lost myself in their way of believing. As the people pleaser I was, I usually went along with the wishes and beliefs of others – at least until the point where my incessant giving away of power caused me to suddenly realize that something was really wrong. It was only when I said “ouch” and stood up to defend myself, to take back my power, that I felt betrayed by such people. I had done the unthinkable. I had owned my power, taking it back, refusing to cooperate with them in an ongoing role as a people pleaser.”
“In defending my power,” I ponder with shock, “that is when the betrayal always came. In those moments, I felt attacked and betrayed by people I loved … all because I had willingly given away all of my power, and then I tried to take it back.”
“Duh,” I giggle, “defense is a prayer for attack. When I defended my power, I literally attracted an attack on my power, causing me to defend even more, taking me ever deeper into a no-win downward spiral.”
Through it all, I was pure, genuine, innocent, and just owning my truth. But in changing the rules of the relationship – in owning my power, and then trying to talk about it – I literally created the confusing scenario, digging the hole of my betrayal ever deeper.
No wonder I have been so terrified of embracing the genuine power side of my light shadow. This truly feels like the core basis of my God drama. I gave away all of my power to God and those representing Higher Authority and repeatedly felt betrayed throughout my life – especially by those to whom my power was most willingly given.
“And I am now wanting to reclaim and embrace that inner power,” I ponder with shocking clarity. “But doing so feels like impending doom.”
A Tale Of Two Missions
Tuesday morning, March 5, 2013 is a day of adventure. To my surprise, I wake up at 4:40 a.m., wondering why the cell phone alarm did not go off. I giggle when I realize I had set it to go off at 4:30 in the afternoon – but I am awake anyway, with perfect timing. Hurrying around in the dark, still without power, I cook up a quick breakfast of oatmeal and scurry down the steps at 5:30 a.m., onto the sunrise-lit cobblestone walkway below my kitchen window.
I had reserved a Tuk-Tuk to pick me up at 5:40 a.m., but when it does not come, I quickly flag down the next one that does pass by – one just ten minutes later. With perfect synchronicity, the chicken bus is just beginning to pull away as the Tuk-Tuk drops me at my first destination. Instinctively, the Tuk-Tuk driver flashes his lights and honks his horn. When the old school bus quickly stops to wait, I race off to climb the steps of that rickety old transport.
At 9:10 a.m., only three hours and ten minutes later, I climb off the bus at the final stop in Guatemala City. Usually this trip takes a full four hours. Today, the driver was especially aggressive on the sharp mountain curves, and had paused for much shorter intervals at the usual stopping places.
After a forty-five minute hike through the busy traffic of Guatemala City, I arrive at my next destination – the immigration office where I had left my passport just two weeks ago. Another half hour later, I step back onto the street with a renewed passport safely stowed in my backpack. Mission number one is accomplished.
My next destination is the airport. Research tells me that the airport is about a ninety-minute walk, taking me through parts of the city that I only know from studying maps. And I know that a taxi is a viable option, but I don’t want to spend the money. Feeling especially confident, I begin to ask questions. Soon, with satisfying answers, I board city bus number 83, and ten minutes later, I disembark less than a hundred yards from the airport terminal – all for the cost of thirteen cents.
But Mission number two is not fully accomplished until I see my friends walking out of the terminal at shortly after 12:40 p.m. – and until we finally locate the private shuttle we have reserved to take us all back to the lake.
Final Tasks
The return trip is delightful as I spend four giggling hours in conversation with my friend Greg, and two new friends that I had only met briefly while in Utah last November. They all participated in chocolate ceremonies with Keith while he was on tour in the United States last fall – and all are eager to continue their own healing journeys.
After my friends check in to their hotel rooms, we engage in fun conversation over dinner, followed by more of the same on the boat doc. Finally, I retire to the privacy of my own apartment, eventually reaching a state of relaxed surrender where sleep becomes inevitable.
Wednesday morning, I can only giggle as I spend less than five minutes effortlessly installing my new laptop keyboard – one that Greg had kindly brought down for me. It works perfectly, as good as new – and I now have a new renewed driver’s license, one that Greg had also hand delivered to me.
Shortly before 7:30 a.m., my three friends and I meet up for their first lake adventure, a boat trip to Panajachel where we all party with a local ATM, retrieving the money we each need. Next, after gobbling down a delightful breakfast at an outdoor restaurant, we rush back to San Marcos for the real reason my friends are here – to begin their first chocolate ceremony in Guatemala.
A Tale Of Two Quotes
As I spend a few minutes gathering my belongings for the Wednesday afternoon ceremony, I briefly check my email. As promised, Keith had sent me the quote from my own blog – the quote to which he was referring when he was watching my back by pointing out on Monday how I was engaged in delay tactics. As expected, the quote turns out to be right in line with my process. Following is the quote from “Erupting Empath Energies.”
“Wow,” I ponder in shock. “I am terrified of my joy. For my entire life, I have kept it small, in check, and mostly hidden. I really am afraid to embrace my power, because I absolutely know it will not be welcomed by many, and actually ridiculed by others.”
“I have been so powerless throughout my life, that embracing my light is a frightening thought, sure to wreak havoc in my life.”
Then, I open another unexpected quote, one from Rasha’s “A Moment of Oneness” quote series, this one being number 122. The message is profoundly pertinent to my process – to the process of learning to trust the truth found only in the depths of my own heart. Following is that powerful quote:
“It is pointless to walk away from one’s religious heritage because the dogmas do not ring true – and at the same time to feel guilty about it. It is equally pointless to continue to go through the motions of adherence to such modes of belief and to harbor feelings of resentment about it. Either way, the energetic contradiction between the action expressed and the emotion repressed would set up conditions that would nullify the potential inherent in the act of devotion.
In order to be truly free of the shackles of obligation perpetrated upon so many of you, it is necessary to shift one’s loyalties. Your obligation is not the so-called “truth,” that may have been handed down through generations of misguided seekers. Your obligation is to the truth that has been unearthed within the depths of your own heart – and to that alone.”
Considering Sharing
As my friends help me set up Keith’s porch, it literally feels like weeks since my last chocolate ceremony, just two short days ago.
I go into a beautiful glow, long before the actual ceremony gets underway. I find myself in a profound state of unconditional trust and detachment, trusting that everything is perfect, and that today will be a magical day. A great deal of overwhelming energy flows in my head, but I continue to relax and surrender, watching occasional pinching feelings in my heart as I attempt to further allow and follow my inner flow.
“Brenda,” Keith soon turns to me. “How are you today?”
“I’m really in a nice energy.” I respond. “But it is kind of overwhelming, as I just sit here in a state of surrender. Any suggestions?”
“You might want to consider sharing this beautiful energy today,” Keith glows back at me.
As I momentarily ponder how to respond, I giggle at how differently things are today from when I felt bullied last week. Today, Keith’s suggestion is so kind and loving, so different from that harsh “I can’t get you out of your seat” comment from last week. Yet fear still consumes me.
“Keith,” I respond in confusion. “I have so much resistance to sharing. It is God-drama anger insisting that I shouldn’t have to share before my magic gifts are first “given to me.” It seems to be a childhood panic reminding me of how I got into so much trouble as a child, and no way am I going to risk it until I know in my rational mind what I am doing.”
Baby Step Beginnings
As Keith kindly moves on, I still feel deep resistance. I have known for a few weeks that I am building toward more fully embracing my power, and I have intuitively felt that having my supportive friends here would somehow encourage me to do just that. Something tells me that today, I will get off my cushion and help others, but fear continues to jab me.
I begin by sharing energy with Greg as Keith works with him. This feels safe and not intimidating. I feel lots of energy flowing in my hands, but receive no verbal validation – only receiving inner confirmation from my own feelings and observations of how my energy is received.
A while later I follow weak guidance to go sit by a woman across the porch – one who appears to be struggling. But once I am sitting beside her, I feel her energy pushing me away, telling me she doesn’t want my help. Trusting this feeling, I quietly sit for a few minutes before feeling guided to briefly share energy with another of my friends, while also engaging in a whispering conversation regarding her empath abilities. Soon, feeling somewhat stupid and not trusting myself, I return to my own seat.
Like Pure Love
Finally, I feel stronger guidance to sit behind a new woman (I will call her Beth). She is a very magical empath who has been crying a great deal. Keith is working with her right now, and I feel hesitant to interfere in the flow, but my guidance tells me to sit in an empty chair directly behind her. Keith then surprises me when he asks Beth if it is OK for me to place my hands on her shoulders. Seconds later, I am doing just that.
A while later, Keith asks Beth to give me feedback about the energy she feels coming from me.
“It is like pure love,” Beth tells me. “I feel it entering through your hands, and it is taking me to a new level of energy rising up into my head.”
I continue to listen as Beth shares to Keith about what sounds like additional beautiful feedback regarding my energy, but she speaks quietly, and being behind her, I am unable to decipher many of her words.
But I need no more validation. As I increasingly continue to surrender into my own energy flow, I feel magical energy dancing into me. I feel it entering my head, moving down to the heart region, and then continuing on into my solar plexus. It is mild, but pleasantly overwhelming. I begin to feel and experience things that I cannot describe with intellect or words. I have some type of inner knowing that many pushed-out parts of me from infancy and childhood are now returning. It feels like knowing, magic, and power – things I had as an infant – but which I do not yet understand. I can say that it feels “full, real, knowing, firm, solid, belonging, and … frightening.”
“Whatever this is, it got me into huge trouble as a child,” I ponder with intuitive clarity.
At this point, small streams of tears drip down my cheeks. Whatever is happening, it is beautiful, and deeply emotional, in a good sort of way.
Struggle For Words
“Brenda,” Keith eventually asks at the perfect moment. “How are you doing over there?”
As I try to respond verbally, I freeze up into deep emotion and tears, being unable to speak. Finally, after about a minute, I manage to breathe and speak through the new flow of tears.
“I am doing really well,” I struggle to find words. “I really can’t describe it … stuff is coming back … things are waking up … I don’t want to try to put words to it.”
“You are allowing a new level of your power to return and wake up,” Keith validates my feelings. “You are doing a real “no no” … allowing magic to return that got you into a huge amount of trouble.”
A Gut-Wrenching Regression
“Keith,” I explain a minute later, “I am experiencing that deep ‘kicked-in-the-gut’ feeling again.”
“This is anticipatory of what you know is going to happen when you open this up again,” Keith guides me through the pain.
“Yeah, I believe that,” I respond with knowing confidence. “I got into such trouble as a toddler. I can feel that this is terror of the trouble that seems inevitable if I embrace this power. I am afraid of having power because I clearly feel how it was so rejected when I tried to embrace it as a tiny child.”
“Keith,” I again speak a minute later, “this emotion is so insanely intense. I feel joyful, but frightened and sad at the same time … make that deep and out-of-control sadness that makes me want to just go sob for hours … but I’m not going there … I am giving it to the light.”
“This is what that little girl actually felt when she shut it all down,” Keith again speaks with deep compassion.
“Yeah,” I respond with intuitive recognition. “I feel right now like I literally killed myself … that there is no happiness left … and no hope remaining after having destroyed my access to this magic.”
“And it is not just a squirt bottle,” Keith adds, referring to a metaphor that has often come into my awareness – a visual that I once came up with to describe feeling as if my mother followed me around with a squirt bottle, constantly correcting me whenever I stepped out of line.
“Ouch,” I respond through deep tears. “As you said that, it feels as if I was beaten in the gut with a baseball bat.”
Buzzing Knowing
Keith and I converse for a while as repeated waves of intense sadness intertwine with this unfolding and joyful knowing. I know that I can smile, but I feel unable to express the joy. There is too much bubbling emotion mixed in.
Eventually, Beth (the woman I was helping) turns around, grabs my hands, holds them to her face, and begins to kiss them. When she lets go, I feel guided to do energy work on her head, in various ways. I am just following hunches, having no intellectual understanding.
I feel huge amounts of energy vibrating in my hands, and I intuitively know that I am allowing powerful magic to be channeled through those hands – not pushing in any way, but allowing Beth to pull that energy through me. I have no way to validate this, but I know inside that this energy is really making her head buzz.
Group Grounds
Through this profound process, I continue to cry confusing tears of intertwined deep joy and sadness.
“Keith,” I ask at one point, “can you please validate for me that my crying is not causing any of my dense energies to flow into her.”
“Brenda,” Keith responds, “you would never allow that, because you are so pure in what you are doing.
(It is only later that Beth confesses to me that she too was afraid that I might be taking her dense energy into myself, because she so profoundly resonated with everything that I was saying and doing.)
Both of us are very powerful grounds for the empath energies of groups … both of us are deeply shut down in our own ways … we are both overflowing with repressed sadness about what happened to our magic … and we are both terrified to further embrace the power.
Beautiful And Magical
Eventually, after sharing energy for a long time, I feel complete. When Beth momentarily stands up to answer her phone, I return to my own seat.
Vibrating energy continues to flow through me, overwhelming me, and I just watch with no interpretation. It fills my whole head, softly vibrates throughout my forehead, and then extends downward through most of my body, with an especially magical and wide flow of tingles down the back of my spine from the head to the heart. There is something very familiar and very emotional about this – but words simply cannot begin to do it justice. Occasionally, I feel a block here and there. Each time, I slightly reposition my body and waves of new energy resume. I do not want to try to do a “play by play” analysis. I simply want to enjoy the overwhelming and intense joyful experience.
I sit in this state for most of the next hour – until people begin to leave. Several magical friends stop to hug me, one who takes the time to tell me how much my process helped her today. Then Beth stops to share, and we talk for a long while. In this moment, we have a beautiful and magical connection. Beth repeatedly emphasizes how magically I had helped her today.
Kid In A Candy Store
To my delight, Keith takes the time to remain on the porch for another hour with my friends. I mostly sit and enjoy my ongoing energy magic. I don’t need to know anything. I just want to feel.
At one point, Keith says that my friend is like a “kid in a candy store.” As I ponder this metaphor, I realize that I too am a child in a magical candy store – and that for a long time now I have had money in my pocket with the freedom to walk around the store and buy whatever I want. But in my shutdown, I have forgotten what candy is, and I refuse to buy anything until the store owner (Higher Energy) comes, holds my hands, takes me around to personally introduce me to every candy, helps me taste it, and then describes to me what it tastes like.
All the while, I am free to just run around the store and do whatever I want, but I will NOT consider this option because of continued childhood pain and resentment – pain that I insist must be healed before I will go shopping in that store.
Joyful, Sad, and Wobbly
At shortly before 7:00 p.m., Keith finishes working with my friends and I step over to give him a huge thank-you hug. As I stand up, I am still in waves of joyful tears, feeling dizzy and wobbly, feeling as if I am now in a new Universe, like I do not really know who or where I am.
“This deep emotion is really ‘love’ returning to that child,” Keith guides me.
He explains that I am experiencing the deep joy of feeling this forgotten and rejected love coming back to me, so much so that I am feeling the sadness leaving as the love returns.
“Take good care of her,” Keith tells my friends as we prepare to leave together.
I remain very unstable, both physically and emotionally … in a magical place of knowing that all is beautiful and perfect, but that I am clueless about what I really did today or what it all means.
I know that today was perfect, and I have been leading up to this for a very long time.
As I go to dinner with my friends, they make it clear that I am not paying for anything this week. They treat me to beautiful food and love at a local Mayan restaurant. I am so deeply grateful for the grounding and loving support and conversation of such amazing friends.
As dinner is done, I remain energetically overwhelmed – but am now quite stable. I plan to sleep soundly tonight.
Childhood Emotional Rivers
Thursday, I can only sigh when the power again goes off, this time for a scheduled outage from 7:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. – but luckily, I complete a much-needed shower just before the hot water disappears.
I somehow managed to get reasonable rest during the night … but overwhelming energy continues to flow this morning, joined by a new emotional flow of rebellious feelings.
I am dizzy and lightheaded from pleasurable energy, while emotions of sadness, betrayal, rejection, and abandonment flow through me unobstructed.
This is deep childhood emotion. It so wants to consume me, to pull me back into a swamp of victimization and betrayal. As I allow the emotion to continue flowing, remaining mostly unattached, I begin to feel terror that it just might consume me. In fact, I do reach a state of feeling the emotion so strongly that I actually WANT to keep feeling it. It is MINE.
To my shock, a very clear storytelling voice demands that it is my right and privilege to feel this emotion until I FIRST get my apology from God, and I insanely refuse to surrender and ask the light to transmute it.
This intense and very heavy emotion flows through me in waves. It is so strong and tempting, that I distract myself by choosing to get lost in a movie. Soon, Greg stops by at around 8:00 a.m. and I interrupt the movie. The emotions remain so intense that the first forty-five minutes of our conversation involve a lot of crying on my part.
“I know this is not present-day emotion,” I repeatedly tell Greg. “I know it is childhood stuff that is now flowing through me on its way out. I believe I need to simply let it flow without attachment or identifying with it.”
In the back of my mind, I still refuse to ask the light to simply transmute this emotion. I have now had many experiences where intense flows have been almost immediately vanished by the light in similar situations. Today, I continue to refuse to step into this easier state.
A Shaky Start
Soon, I guide my Utah friends on a short walking tour of San Marcos, following which we enjoy a delightfully yummy (but extremely slow) breakfast at a local hostel. By now, the intense emotional flow has relaxed. I successfully remained unattached and unidentified … and something tells me that this layer is done for now. Finally, the four of us return to Keith’s porch to set up and prepare for another magical ceremony.
Today is the first day of what will likely be a week of intermittent filming on Keith’s porch. The same filmmakers that Keith worked with twice last year have now flown to Guatemala to do a third round of filming. The porch is crowded, and the camera is somewhat intimidating, but I do my best to simply ignore. Nevertheless, as a result of the emotional rivers this morning, I begin the afternoon with a slight lack of confidence.
I am again determined to share my magic today, further embracing that fear-inducing power. I begin by sharing energy from a short distance away, sending it to support the process of a friend. I feel energized, and know that I am helping, but am doing so mostly in the background. I soon feel guided that I want to go work with a woman I will call Nancy, but someone else quickly goes to work with her and I recognize that the timing is not right.
I return to simply holding group space with a beautiful, high-vibration energy.
Feeling Fear Flow
To my delight, Keith soon comments on my beautiful energy, and asks if I will give some to Steven, telling me that it will help him in some way. I begin by placing a hand on his heart, and he does the same to me. For a while, we share energy with each other, but as the process goes on – as we stare into each other’s eyes – I begin to experience deep inner resistance. I lose my sense of connectedness – a sense that is replaced by deep inner fear.
When I attempt to talk about it to Keith, I break into tearful emotion. Both Keith and Steven lovingly guide me back into the light, helping me to relax, coaching me to trust that the fear is releasing even when I am not feeling it physically as real emotion.
“You are afraid that if you don’t do it on the hard bus, feeling it as deep emotion, that the release does not count,” Keith soon coaches me, reminding me that both he and Steven can feel the fear leaving me even when I am not crying into it.
Simply having to trust what Keith is telling me, I realize that I do not fully believe that emotional release is real if I cannot feel it happening as actual emotion coming up and out. Keith’s words cause me to completely reevaluate the way I look at emotional release, instilling in me a sense of wonder that perhaps someday soon I will have the energetic sensitivity to actually feel the energies the way I observe others feel them on an almost daily basis.
Over the next twenty minutes or so, I cycle into several such periods of feeling the fear emotionally, where I start shaking and crying. Each time, Keith and Steven coach me back into a Higher-Energy state of trusting and allowing.
Steven is beautiful in his patient assistance, magically helping me to relax into a state of energetic surrender where I soon feel my inner reality again expanding, coming alive with more confidence and trust. As with yesterday, I seek no head validation, trusting only the inner knowing that seems to flow.
Following Intuitions, Receiving Feedback
When intuitions tell me that my work with Steven is complete – work that turned out to be a help to me rather than the other way around, I return to my seat and rest for about twenty seconds.
I then glance upward and see Greg looking at me. Almost immediately, we lock eyes, staring … staring … staring. As tears form in my eyes, I note that he too is beginning to cry with me. Deep gratitude fills my heart as I remember how, in beautiful ways, my own journey and writing have inspired him to begin trusting his own heart, in his own way … and now, his two friends are being influenced by him, indirectly through me. It is so fun to see how my own journey magically spreads in a pay-it-forward type of way.
Soon, while still staring at Greg, I note a young man in the middle of the porch between us – a young man who is fidgeting and crying. He has been here on the porch several times, and I have been somewhat triggered by his behavior. But today, I feel guided to turn my focus to him. As I begin to focus on this young man, I see Greg nod, holding his thumb up in the air while donning a huge smile. I know that Greg is deeply connected to inner guidance right now, and his nonverbal feedback gives me all the courage I need.
Repeatedly, I follow random guidance, placing a hand on this young man’s heart, then in front of his third eye, then above his crown, etc. Each time I do so, not having any head understanding for what I am doing, I note feedback from two sources. I visibly see the young man react to the energy, even though his eyes are closed and I am not always touching him. And then, Greg continues to glow with congratulatory feedback, using gestures to confirm that his guidance is spot-on with my own.
Instant Bonds
When intuitions tell me again to sit back on my cushion, I briefly glance in Nancy’s direction and note that she is now by herself. She looks at me … I look at her … and we deeply connect almost instantly. I stand up … she stands up … and we start to walk toward each other. When she sees that I am coming to her, she sits back down and waits for me. Almost immediately, she begins to cry and tells me that she has been wanting to melt into my arms all day. I know I met her here on the porch two years ago, but do not even recognize her, and I feel a deep need to get to know her.
After our initial hug, I share energy with her and guide her magically through a half hour of emotional release and some inner work, touching on healing in several areas. I feel such an unexpected bond with this new friend, one who I barely even know.
Soon, just as the electricity finally comes on, at around 4:00 p.m., the porch disintegrates into a wave of nonstop chatter. Nancy and I are the only ones remaining in process. I am delighted when Keith soon joins us and spends another half hour working with her directly while I continue to hold space.
Eventually, Keith’s work is done, and Nancy and I continue to talk for another hour. I love such instant bonds of friendship. I giggle as I reminisce how I earlier felt guided to go work with her, but someone else beat me to it. I can clearly see that the timing was not right then, but that it was a setup to guide me later.
A Magical Day
“Congratulations on a magical day,” Keith glows at me as I give him a quick goodbye hug at the end of the ceremony.
Several other people approach me and tell me what an energetic powerhouse I was today. I love the magical validation … I love the realization that I am finally, at least for now, beginning to have the courage to step more into my power. I know this is an ongoing journey filled with growth and challenges, and right now, I savor the magical growth that is so long in coming.
Later, after a delightful pizza dinner with my friends, the four of us walk down to the boat dock, stare into the brilliant cosmos above us with volcano silhouettes dominating the nighttime skyline. The conversation is magical and mystical. We all love this beautiful ending to an amazing day.
But at 8:30 p.m., as exhaustion sets in, I opt to rush home for a more important task. It is time to call a dear friend back home … to wish a happy birthday to the self-adopted sister who has been such a stabilizing influence in my life for so many gratitude-filled years.
When I later check my email, I smile with delight when I learn that yet another friend wants to come down to visit me in only two and a half weeks. Wow, my life is changing in so many unexpected ways. I realize my writing will once again need to be set aside – but just as is happening this week, that writing will simply have to wait.
As I finally type up notes for the day and rest on my pillow, I giggle with joy and simultaneously crash with exhaustion. An overwhelming energy continues to flow in my head, but I am beginning to get used to it … to actually love it.
Silly Storytelling Words
As I look back on these last four days, I find it hard not to giggle with excitement when I ponder all of the power metaphors that perfectly synchronized with a journey into finally beginning to connect with more of my true self and to embrace more of the magical power inside me.
On Monday, with two separate outages blacking out most of the day, I profoundly explored childhood patterns where power and joy were surrendered to the safety of people pleasing and fitting in. And then, Keith’s initially-annoying “delay-tactics” feedback was likewise perfectly timed to remind me of profound God-drama insights about which I had just barely written, but already begun to forget. But perhaps the most important moment of the day was a late-night meditation in the midst of pitch-black “powerless” darkness – one providing clear understanding that I was never betrayed at all – one showing me that it was me, giving my power away to others, that had led to every betrayal experience in my life.
After a fun Tuesday while picking up three magical friends at the airport, I was then deeply inspired, with the support of those friends, to courageously-but-timidly baby step into the arena of actually testing the waters of sharing my newly opened magic with others.
And what amazing journeys these last two ceremonies have been – magical journeys of indescribable energy experiences – journeys of knowing-without-words that pushed-out parts of me are returning – of feeling things wake up inside of me, things for which there is little rational understanding – of experiencing confusing, twirling, regressing emotions that mixed intense joy and deep sadness at the very same time. And to top it off, the power was again off for most of today, magically corresponding with yet another day in which my inner power was turned back up to another new level. I giggle at the possibilities.
Someday, I may actually understand the significance of it all at a rational-mind level, perhaps in a way that I can fully explain through silly storytelling words.
… to be continued …
Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved