Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “Power Surges And Glitches.”
After a beautiful Wednesday afternoon ceremony, I rush home for a quick homemade banquet of rice and beans before returning to Keith’s porch to assist in bagging three-hundred pounds of freshly ground chocolate. As I return home shortly after 8:00 p.m., I attempt to watch an Abraham video, but cannot focus.
At first, I blame this distraction on a very noisy town that is preparing for the annual “Feria” in a couple of weeks (an annual festival in honor of the town’s patron Saint … Saint Mark). But as I get honest with myself, I soon realize that I am feeling annoyed, frustrated, and deeply distracted on the inside.
Still unable to focus, I retire to bed early, hoping to do some reclining relaxation and meditation. To my shock, as I attempt to relax my hips, I am suddenly overwhelmed by anxious feelings that totally consume me. As I ponder, I do not remember ever before having attempted to relax my hips in this way.
The intense anxiety keeps me awake until after midnight. On Thursday morning, April 11, I am so tired from an unfulfilling sleep that I can barely crawl out of bed, even after sleeping in for a few extra hours.
Hopeless Anxiety
As I sit at my computer, doing taxes of all things, I remain distracted and anxious. Once the annual tax ritual is complete, it is all I can do to play mind numbing computer games while hopelessness flows in my veins. Much of the hopeless feeling stems from an apathetic belief that after 58 years of extremely clenched muscles in my body, there is no way I will ever be free of the tension – and that nearly every time I attempt to relax, I feel some level of panic that frightens me away.
As I walk out to Keith’s home, shortly before noon, I feel painful pressure in my forehead. I know something big is brewing. In the ensuing afternoon workgroup ceremony, around eighteen people are present. As often happens, we get a late start, and then Keith is called down into the garden to handle a delivery of freshly peeled cacao beans.
As I sit silently, hoping for some type of energetic relief, I feel deeply stuck, simply attempting to trust and surrender, waiting patiently for something to trigger new growth. Finally, Keith glances at me, and I speak up, begging for assistance.
“I know this is all story again,” I begin my sharing, “but I am feeling really discouraged and hopeless. Last night when I tried to relax my hips, it triggered another round of anxiety. I feel like my body will not allow me to release this.”
“And I know this is bullshit,” I explain a higher knowing. “It is all stories. I HAVE made huge progress. My belly is much less anxious now and I am moving in the right direction.”
Crazy Agony
Keith works with me for a few minutes, guiding me inside to begin a journey. Meanwhile, Steven tickles my foot and tries to make me laugh. I immediately sink into repressed dry heaving, which I quickly bring under control and push back down.
“I almost started something really big,” I explain my confusion to Keith regarding how I just pushed the emotion down.
Keith moves on as I sit in this confusion. I observe as Keith asks a friend to work with a young woman. My friend ends up engaging the other woman in a long and loud session, like a private healing session. I find it very distracting. At the same time, another friend is talking aloud as he works with someone else. And down in the garden, where workers continue finishing touches on Keith’s new cacao workshop, loud hammering repeatedly shakes my bones. The noises around me are literally driving me crazy.
I recognize this intensity as being my projection, knowing that the reaction I am having is not normal – that it is my stage play, an inner drama projected outward, showing me more of my God-drama distraction curtain.
Finally, after more than an hour, Keith turns back to me and asks how I am doing.
“I am going CRAZY with distractions,” I express in tearful frustration. “The noises and side conversations are overwhelming me. I am unable to focus on anything. I KNOW it is all perfect, and that it is another intense “choice point” to enter that separation drama loop.”
“I feel like I just want to scream,” I share with honest agony. “I am so confused. I never know if I should go into the density, of if perhaps doing so is just like digging through a mountain with a spoon. I don’t want to go into delay tactics. I want to embrace the light. But I also understand that the emotion needs to be felt and transmuted.”
Accessing The Passion
“There is no right answer,” Keith reassures me. “Just trust your flow.”
I am tearing up again when Keith briefly moves on. I feel discouraged, but do somewhat trust that I am in a good place. I can feel inner blocks swelling and pressurizing, so I know that something inside is about to blow.
“Trust yourself and do what you need to do,” Keith briefly turns back to me. “Close your eyes.”
Keith then reminds me of how passionate I am about my writing … of how I go home after every ceremony to take notes … and how I spend an entire day passionately putting the pieces together in detailed writing that always shows me how perfectly synchronized every experience was.
“Go inside and connect with this same passionate energy in your process today,” Keith encourages.
I know that all is perfect and that these distractions are part of my process … but I cannot find peace in the moment and I DO want to scream.
Releasing Something Big
As I surrender to Keith’s compassionate guidance, the emotion consumes me, and I repeatedly begin to dry heave, uncontrollably, not breathing for up to a minute at a time. The emotional release is intense.
A few minutes later, Steven reaches over and begins to tickle Bobby-bear. I start to laugh as if Steven was actually tickling me. He pokes Bobby in the belly, and I laugh some more. Over and over, he and another friend do silly things, repeatedly taking me into more laughter.
But every time I laugh at these funny events, I go into another intense round of deep emotional release, doing so in the middle of the laughter. Each time, the laughter quickly fades as I gasp for breath in the midst of more dry heaving.
I feel incapable of bringing in more light during this fun-but-agonizing process. Instead, I continue to go through layer after layer, deeper and deeper. I really want to scream out as I feel real emotional density leaving my throat. Many times, I place my hand on my throat, feeling the jarred-loose energy flowing from my belly and out via my throat.
“Brenda,” Keith begins to speak with deep compassion. “Joy has been your worst nightmare since you were a child. You really did feel like screaming, but were not allowed to do so. You had to repress it and bottle it up.”
Just before the heaviest part of this release process, Keith reminded me that I am now releasing the “Something Really Big” that I had repressed and pushed down earlier. I use his words as encouragement to further surrender, not holding back just because I am tired of doing public release work.
Inner Screams
“Brenda,” Keith continues inspired guidance. “Imagine a channel opening up between you and an angel. Let an inner scream go directly from you to the angel, via that channel, perhaps seeing the channel as a tube or something.”
As I continue this overwhelming and agonizing release process, I imagine myself literally screaming at this angel, doing so physically in every way, only without the sound. Instead, I am sending the sound of the scream via this metaphorical tube. In some ways, I see it as being quite similar to throwing buckets of putrid emotional density at a group of angels, but in a way that is much more effective in this moment.
I continue this silent screaming for more than an hour, literally feeling as if I am screaming … screaming … screaming. I have my eyes closed, but somehow know that others are holding space and supporting me. I overhear as Keith tells one beautiful young woman that what she is doing in her own tears is helping me. I briefly glance out the corner of one eye and see this friend move closer.
“Brenda,” another friend soon speaks up, “I am in a good place today, and will take whatever you can give me.”
“You are already taking it and doing a beautiful job with it,” Keith reassures this friend.
At one point, she leans forward and touches my knee. I sense her genuine attempt to share love and support, but the physical touch distracts me. The old me would have been annoyed and asked her to stop. The new me just smiles as I silently continue to scream. I am too deep in the agony to care. I scream and scream and scream, dry heaving constantly, gasping occasionally to catch my breath as tears continue streaming down my cheeks.
Through it all the screams remain absolutely silent as I imagine them being redirected through a tube to a loving, patient, compassionate angel.
Filling With Light
Gradually, after what must be an hour or more, the emotion starts to subside. At this time, I begin to focus on bringing in more light. Over time, I start to feel lots of light, to the point of pleasant dizziness. I am in shock, a form of posttraumatic stress, feeling as if I am not in my body, perhaps somewhere else.
“Wow, Brenda,” Keith speaks up and giggles a while later. “You are so powerful that you made the Muni (municipal building) start to play music.”
I had noticed just a minute earlier that the city was playing enjoyable music on the loudspeakers. The melody was synchronously matching my mood, and with perfect volume. I am in a very nice energy now, but still not giggling with joy. I remain in a mild state of shock.
Steven and I lock eyes for a few minutes. I feel some energy flow. Then I glance at another young woman who immediately catches my gaze. We do not break eye contact for more than a half hour. As I focus on seeing the divine while sharing energy with this friend, I continue to gradually fill with more love and light. Finally, I simply close my eyes, meditating quietly.
I am quite emotional, shedding a few more tears as I increasingly bring in more self-love for the part of me that needed to scream … that was so intensely distracted … that was so crazy with discouragement and hopelessness. In this moment, I love that little child … that teenager … and the adult in me that needed to scream.
I literally feel as if I have just finished screaming out a lifetime of screams … yet intuitions whisper that more repressed screams remain yet unexpressed, waiting for another occasion.
Sharing The Tube
Keith and I briefly talk about the emotion and about my process. I tell him that I think what I am feeling right now is love mixed with sadness … combined with new hope, new space, and new self-love.
“I feel like I let so many screams go, but not all,” I share inner guidance with my teacher.
“You were perfect,” Keith congratulates me. “You did what you needed to do today.
Keith again shares that if I had tried to do more, that it would have created too much fear or backlash. He also hints that there might be some ego backlash or emotional counterattack as a result of the beautiful release work that I did.
“Brenda,” Keith then guides me, “share that screaming-tube with your little child.”
I spend a few minutes in meditation, telling little Bobby and Sharon that they can scream into this tube whenever they need to, but I feel as if I am mostly in my head, unable to fully feel the meditation right now. But I trust that this metaphor will come in quite useful in future inner work. I know I need to return to work with these parts of me who repressed such emotion for so very long.
Personal Higher Guidance
Finally, a friend asks Keith if he will guide a pillar of light meditation. Just after saying “yes,” Keith pauses for a minute, closing his eyes and checking in with flowing guidance.
“I’m feeling guided that we are going to do this meditation a little differently today,” Keith then shares with the group.
“Brenda,” Keith surprises me, “I am guided to ask you to please follow along with this. There is something in the meditation for you today.”
Given where I was at, I might have just sat this one out. I am grateful for the heads up comment, and excited by a spark of inner knowing that this meditation is being guided at a higher level, just for my benefit.
The meditation proceeds as normal, except that every time Keith guides us to work with the energies of various chakra regions, he repeatedly focuses quite intensely on guiding us to ask our Higher Self to assist us in opening and/or repairing energetic channels … first in the root, then the second chakra. Then he spends considerable extra time encouraging us to allow this energy to fill our second chakra. At this point, I begin to feel a tiny bit of energy expansion in the lower abdomen.
Meanwhile, I am crying a lot, because I see this meditation as personal, as if my own Higher Self is guiding this, trying to let me know that she is helping me.
“I can trust, surrender, and allow … and this WILL happen,” I ponder with confidence.
Soon, Keith moves on to the solar plexus, guiding us to ask and allow our Higher Self to assist in opening and repairing channels that connect this third-chakra region. He then does the same thing with the heart chakra.
At this stage, I suddenly begin to feel little energy tingles on my backside, just above the base of my spine. I am finally starting to relax as I allow myself to further surrender. Gradually, the tingles migrate and flow in the lower abdomen. I know I am behind a little here, but something really is moving.
Magical Tingles
After guiding us to feel the energy of Mother Earth rising within us from below, Keith then focuses on guiding us to feel the Divine Masculine energies from above, first flowing into the top of our head, at the crown.
Just like before, at each stage, Keith spends considerable time guiding us to ask our Higher Self to help open, repair, and reconnect the various energy channels in each region, especially in the Pineal gland region of the sixth chakra. At this point, I feel tingles in my crown, and a narrow channel of energy that flows to the center of my head. Then I suddenly begin to feel more energy flowing in my belly, again being quite delayed and out of order.
Soon, the meditation moves to our neck, and back to the heart, repeatedly working with Higher Self to assist in opening and repairing damaged energy channels.”
At this point, the meditation returns to normal, as Keith guides everyone to feel themselves sitting in a pillar of light, gradually expanding the pillar to the size of the planet and then eventually shrinking it back down to the size of his porch. But in this stage, I do not follow along. Instead, I am consumed by observing energy movements inside my own body.
It seems that tiny energy channels are gradually opening, randomly, everywhere – new, tiny flows in head and torso, filling the solar plexus, migrating from spine to front, moving up then down, in no rational mind pattern.
Slowly, the energies seem to be migrating in the direction of my heart. By the end of the meditation, I am mostly tingling everywhere, feeling little pin-width energy channels lightly flowing, even in my legs.
A New Planet
At the end of the meditation, the ceremony gradually begins to dissolve, but most people do not want to leave, and just sit quietly, or talk meditatively to each other.
I sit in shock, still enjoying the energy expansion, feeling as if I am in a new Universe, quite dizzy and disoriented, like in some different way I do not fully know who or where I am.
At the same time, I continue to experience a distinct feeling of posttraumatic stress, as if I have been literally screaming for an entire lifetime, and have finally stopped. After sitting in this magical daze, I soon drag myself off my cushion to participate in a photo shoot with two dear friends for whom today is their last chocolate ceremony. I do not want to walk away from this state of newness and dizziness. I am quite wobbly as I hug many people, and I frequently need to put a hand on a nearby wall to stabilize myself.
Finally, with most people still talking and hanging out on the porch I say goodnight.
“Thanks, I am doing really well,” I tell Keith as I give him a quick hug. “I am disoriented and feel like I am on a new planet.”
“Brenda,” Keith congratulates me. “You did really deep work today, doing so in a way that was much faster and easier … with less struggle.”
Long Walk Home
As I start hiking up the steep road by Keith’s home, I take off my shoes, feeling new energy in my legs. I begin to cry with an overwhelming mix of joy and sadness. I zigzag up the steep slope very slowly. One friend stops to hug me and I assure her that even though I am very wobbly, that I am fine. I actually know that I could ground myself and leave this energetic state at any time … but I do not want to.
Halfway up the hill, I bump into a local friend, a dear young Mayan woman. Again, in the midst of my tears, I tell her I am doing really well.
Soon, I am standing slightly off the road, simply staring at a distant volcano. I love the view as I walk five feet, and then stop for a minute … walking another five feet, and stopping again. Several more friends pass me on the way, stopping to hug and thank me for helping them today. It takes me a full hour to arrive at home, in what is normally only a ten-minute walk.
Self-Love And Sleep
After stepping through my front door, I realize I do not want to cook, so I take advantage of the local Feria and go back out on the street for some cold pizza and greasy French fries. As I finish gobbling down this unsatisfying meal, Sufi stops by, telling me she felt guided to check in on me.
“I just want to isolate and remain in this energetic place,” I tell my dear friend. “I feel like I hiked up and down steep mountain trails all day. My legs are wobbly and tired as if I did just that. And I feel as if I screamed for a lifetime today, physically feeling the exhaustion mixed in with beautiful energy.”
Again, I know I could leave this energy, but I want to wallow in it. It is unique, different, and feels important, even though it is dizzying and disorienting. Sufi and I hug many times and I repeatedly thank her.
“I think talking to you made me realize that I am not yet done,” I then tell Sufi. “There is more emotion that wants to come up and out … like shock and sadness that I need and want to feel. I want to curl up with Bobby-bear and just cry. In fact, I could probably cry for weeks if I allowed myself to do so.”
When Sufi leaves in a flurry of genuine hugs, I finish my notes for the day and retire to my room – feeling totally drained and dizzy. As loud music blares in the nearby basketball court, I just smile and close my eyes, connecting inside with my inner child at various ages, beginning as a baby.
Repeatedly I share profound self-love with these parts of me who released so many screams today. I tell these aspects of me how much I love them. I feel it. I mean it. There is some dry heaving, but not a lot of sadness. Instead, it is just a lot of shared love.
Year by year, experience by painful experience, I repeat this process, sending deep self-love to shame-filled parts of me, taking this process right through my adult years. I completely ignore the extremely loud music blaring outside. Soon, taking a crystal to bed with me, I fall fast asleep while beautiful energy flows. It is not a sound sleep, but is very satisfying.
Instinctual Self-Judgment
Friday morning, I wake up with a great deal of energy moving around in my abdomen. The energies are pleasant, and intuitions whisper that more areas are opening another level. I meditate in bed for an hour and a half before climbing out from under my sheets for a much-deserved lazy morning.
About twenty people are present as our afternoon chocolate ceremony gets underway. As I sit in the “Glow Meditation,” I begin to feel more pains in my abdomen.
“Oh no,” I begin to feel victimized. “More pains and more density. I am soooo tired of this.”
I feel self-love, but this constant emotional processing triggers me right now. On the one hand, I feel quite joyful. On the other, I feel very confused, wondering if this pain will ever heal.
A while later, I suddenly realize with clarity that I am reading these pains – that my heart is open, and that the pains are not even mine.
At an appropriate moment, I later mention my inner knowing to Keith, telling him how I had first begun to judge myself. He confirms that I AM reading, and that there is a lot of solar plexus pain on the porch today. The girl next to me immediately tells me that her belly is painfully churning.
“Oh,” I giggle with a smile, “I’m reading YOUR pain.”
With this realization, I go inside, feeling more joy and love for the pains. Rather than judge myself, I focus on higher energy and self-love for what I am learning and doing, dismissing the need for head understanding.
Amazing Expansion
Later, I quietly follow a hunch to go inside and do a Mer-Ka-Ba meditation. Before starting, I was already feeling mild expansion energies in my throat. As I increase my inner energies, I feel a great deal more expansion energy swarming in my throat.
“Do I need to do something to make this happen?” I momentarily dip into rational mind, trying to figure out how to proceed.
“No,” I reassure myself. “I just need to trust and surrender, loving myself.”
As I sit in this meditation, the energy engulfing my throat is amazingly strong. I simply observe while focusing on sharing energy with those around me, doing so from a distance. One young woman later tells me that she felt my energy helping her a great deal. I am blown away by how energetically sensitive some people are.
“Brenda, go for it!” Keith suddenly interrupts a while later.
“What?” I ask with curiosity.
“You know,” Keith responds, not giving me further clues.
“I am feeling lots of expansion today, and also have had lots of pains here and there…” I begin to explain.
“Let the expansion out,” Keith interrupts my story, not sharing any more guidance than this.
Embracing The Pain
For the vast majority of the ceremony, I experience this powerful energy in the throat and high-heart regions. The energy is difficult to describe. In some ways, it feels as if my insides are being stretched horizontally, while prickly sharp tingles radiate throughout the region. But this sensation is quite different from heavy density, not being painful in a bad way.
I trust the experience, blindly surrendering to the flow without knowing much more than what I feel. I repeatedly express an intent to my Higher Self to give me guidance and knowing when, and if, I need it – but such knowing never comes. Instead, I just experience a sense of being powerful, while feeling the expansion prickles and focusing on self-love.
Near the end of the ceremony, I speak up and mention to Keith a new insight that does come.
“I think it is when I feel intense pains that I slip out of love and power, falling into self-judgment,” I tell Keith. “It is like the pains are a choice point to return to my smallness, to beat myself up and to abandon my path toward the light.”
“You will keep having the pains until you learn to love them without them taking you out of the light and into the smallness,” Keith validates my insight.
I feel so close to getting this. I can clearly see the patterns. It is obvious how when I physically hurt, that I tend to sink into judgment and hopelessness. Keith’s response is very reassuring. I know that all of the pains are part of my magic … my ability to empathically experience what is happening in other people. And I know that until I embrace rather than reject this sensitivity, I will continue to experience it from a negative polarity.
Positive Pains
As I later discuss the stretching expansion experience with Keith, he suggests that I might try asking these expansions to move down toward my lower chakras.
Throughout the day, I have felt some activity in my abdomen, but I have mostly ignored it. While following the process of someone else, I had begun to feel a great deal of energy at the base of my spine, starting to flow up through the lower chakras.
Taking Keith’s advice to heart, I ask the expansion to spread downward. I feel pleasantly surprised as I experience physical sensations of this throat and high-heart expansion slowly moving down, down, down. Over a twenty minute period, the expansion energies flow through my heart, into the bottom of my ribs, and then into the solar plexus region. Soon, the feelings expand into more vibrations in the lower belly. As this happens, I again experience more sharp pains. Whatever is expanding has been so shut down that the new energy actually hurts … ouch.
“But the pains are different now,” I give Keith a play-by-play of this amazing experience. “Rather than being sharp and agonizing, the pains have a more healing and vibrating feel to them.”
Keith quickly congratulates me, pointing out that as long as I see the pains as negative, that I will manifest them in that way.
“When you begin to see them all as healing and positive,” Keith adds, “then you will manifest them in that way.”
A Budding Superhero
After silently enjoying this nice expansion for another hour, I finally leave Keith’s porch just before 6:00 p.m., enjoying a magical restful night of doing nothing important.
Saturday morning, after a restful sleep, I again lack motivation to write, dragging my feet until I finally get going at around mid-morning. Three hours later, at 12:55 p.m., a small sparrow lands on a diagonal bar in the metal gate of my open kitchen door. With this being the first sparrow to grace me with its presence in more than a year, I observe with deep interest, taking a short break from the writing.
Soon, the little winged wonder dares to venture a few feet, landing on the top of the open door. Then he begins to explore, darting here and there, from floor to ceiling, as if looking for crumbs and new food sources. After about five minutes, he begins to seem disoriented and confused, hiding out in the cracks above the wooden round beams that hold up the ceiling.
Feeling guided to do so, I walk over to the kitchen window to open it, giving the little explorer another option to leave. As I do so, the little flyer freaks out and begins to panic, twice bumping into the inside surface of the closed half of my window. As I move out of the way, he makes one last attempt to exit via the closed side of the window before finally darting out the wide-open section.
Late that same evening, I finally publish my latest blog at around 9:00 p.m. – one titled “A Budding Superhero.”
It is only in retrospect that I realize that this little winged wonder was trying to inspire me to fly, to be that budding superhero that I was writing about. Just like that magical bird, I became lost and disoriented in my life, eventually hiding in the rafters, feeling hopeless to escape the conditioning. As the windows of new growth begin to open, the journey of freedom to be my authentic self has been one filled with panic and banging my head repeatedly into an impassable wall of glass. But just like that little sparrow, I am spreading my wings and discovering that all along, there has been an open window just waiting for me to open my eyes and fly to my heart’s content.
It Really Sucks
The chocolate ceremony on Sunday afternoon, April 14, 2013, is quiet and low-key. Early in the ceremony, I again start to feel intense solar plexus pains. After checking in with my heart, noting that it is relaxed and open, I reach the conclusion that I am again reading the emotional pain of others.
As inner chatter begins to surface, I nip it in the bud, and instead focus on self-love, joy, and not judging the pain in any way. Instead, I focus on gratitude for the experience of sorting out this magic, learning to understand why I have struggled my whole life. But still, the pain persists and it really hurts.
Early on in his introductory speech, Keith explains to the new people about the process of doing inner work.
“After a while of doing this work, layer after layer, it can really suck,” Keith jokes, saying something I have never heard him say.
I begin to laugh and sigh with a huge giggle of frustration. I can deeply relate. I know that I am doing real, productive work, but it CAN really suck. Often, after a huge breakthrough, it seems that another layer blindsides me out of nowhere, feeling like the same old never-ending stuff. Keith emphasizes that much of this process is what we, ourselves, designed (at a higher level) to teach us compassion.
Powerful No-Nos
Determined not to take the bait, not to bite the hook of wallowing in more physical pain, I close my eyes, go inside, and ask Bobby and Sharon (my inner children) to take my hands. Together, I imagine the three of us walking confidently through the gates, entering my magical theme park.
But as I get just beyond the gate, distractions again keep me from going any further. Even so, I am consciously choosing the power, joy, and magic – focusing on loving myself into that place, in spite of the intense, suck-y pain that swarms my abdomen right now.
As Keith works with one young man, coaching him into the process of working with aspects of self, I decide to follow along again in my own way. Rather than judging these intense pains in my belly as bad, or even someone else’s, I begin to see them as a group of frightened four-year-old children, each of them saying “Mommy, Daddy, my foot hurts, I think it is going to fall off.”
Soon, I invite all these frightened aspects of me to join with me in an inner conference room. I see them as real energetic parts of me – parts who have been serving me for decades, protecting me, helping me to keep the magic shut down. I put those parts there to keep me safe in an era where my magic would have only caused problems in my life. But it is now time to open this magic, and to give these parts a new job. These parts of me are loyal, still desperately trying to do their old job, keeping me shut down at the same time I am trying to open. I ask these parts of me to visit with our Higher Self, learning about our process, and considering the possibility of taking on new jobs.
“Brenda,” Keith unexpectedly interrupts from across the porch. “You are bringing in too much power. You are getting dangerously close to manifesting disaster.”
I giggle as I realize Keith is complimenting my energy. He has no idea what I am doing, but knows that I am breaking the rules of my conditioning, doing a cultural No-No by raising my vibrations and beginning to open something new – something that in ages past would have caused huge disaster in my life.
A Room Full Of Puppies
Suddenly, my inner metaphor shifts. Out of the blue, I begin to see these aspects of me as frightened puppies, each desperately needing my love.
“Thank you for keeping me safe all these years,” I tell all these loyal little watch dogs who are now terrified that I am opening the gates to allow that evil light to come in.
Now, as I continue this “new-job-assignment” work with Higher Self, I have an inner conference room filled with frightened watchdog puppies, all considering new assignments.
Still, as I immerse myself in this metaphor, the inner pains in my abdomen are as suck-y as ever, hurting relentlessly.
Meanwhile, I listen as Keith works with another friend who is also doing work in her own inner conference room. Keith guides her to stand up out of her chair, stepping aside, and asking her Higher Self to sit in the chair, running the show while she just gets out of the way.
Immediately, I do the same, imagining myself leaving my seat and asking Higher Self to take over. I even go so far as visualizing myself walking out of the room, filling my heart with trust and surrender while focusing on joy.
As Keith works with this same friend, he again talks about how “sometimes this really sucks.” I start to laugh again, and ouch … a huge layer of emotional energy suddenly breaks free and rises to the surface. In less than a second, I almost lose myself in sobs, but as I ask the light to fill me, the emotion vanishes. I wonder if I just pushed it down.
Migrating Pains, Magical Expansion
Feeling suddenly much lighter, I imagine laughing gas pouring through the vents into the inner conference room. I am outside the room, just waiting, bringing in my own joy, trust, surrender, and giggles.
There is still an intense band of pain at the middle of my solar plexus. But suddenly, I feel the intense band gradually begin to migrate upward, ever so slowly. Eventually, the suck-y pain reaches the base of my heart, where it stops.
I notice with deep curiosity that the pain now feels very different. As I continue to send joy and love to the pain, it begins to dissolve and vibrate, slowly being replaced by more of what I recognize as stretching expansion pains in my heart and high-heart. I simply trust and surrender, doing nothing more than loving myself and responding to subtle guidance.
Soon, I begin to play with Bobby-bear, tickling him, being joyful and silly with him, and using Bobby to tickle a young man sitting to my left. Immediately, this young man tickles Bobby-bear, and then me. I start to giggle out loud, but quickly stop, unable to maintain that level of exterior joy.
Afraid Of Joy
Keith eventually turns and looks in my direction.
“I have been watching you today,” Keith shares when we make eye contact.
Keith congratulates me when I quickly fill him in with a summary of what I have been doing. I then ask for clarity or insights into understanding why my laughter almost always triggers intense emotional release.
“You are terrified of joy,” Keith responds, “and you are more comfortable with the tears. Tickling and laughter trigger your terror of the joy, bringing up more density.”
“But now I am afraid of the public tears too,” I express my confusion. “I am trying to do it more on the easy bus.”
We again touch on how my childhood expressions of joy got me into a lot of trouble. I was too rowdy, too spontaneous, too irreverent, etc…
I explain how I seem to be walking a tightrope – trying to allow myself to feel emotions in a minimal way, but trying not to express them in a publicly dramatic way. I tell Keith how I occasionally step into the bathroom for privacy, just to force myself to belly laugh so that a layer of density will come to the surface. I am still quite embarrassed or afraid to laugh excessively in public.
In the midst of this beautiful discussion with Keith, he reassures me that I am doing really well with my process and am much further ahead than I was in the past.
Many people today need to leave early to catch a boat to Panajachel. After 4:00 p.m., only four men (in addition to me) remain on the porch, and the conversation quickly turns into rational mind question and answer. After an hour of quietly listening, feeling quite complete in my work, I stand up and excuse myself. I want nothing more than a quiet relaxing evening and sleep.
Magical Breadcrumbs
As I reflect back on these last four days, I am once again astounded at how events so synchronously fit together to form a bigger picture. I have long understood that for whatever reason, I am unable to fully feel or express joy – and for months now, I have been keenly aware that when doing inner work, laughter almost always triggers intense emotional release. But until these last few days, the puzzle was somewhat incomplete and fuzzy.
Triggered by another anxiety attack on Wednesday night – one related to the simple act of relaxing my hips – I followed magical breadcrumbs of feeling so stuck, frustrated, and crazy that I just wanted to scream. I could never have imagined the amazing release that would come as a result of taking that urge literally by silently screaming, in a metaphorical way, at an angel on the other end of an imaginary tube. Because of the magical release that followed, I profoundly began to understand the depths of that “need to scream,” and of how my joy had become my worst nightmare as a child.
Looking back, I can see an obvious pattern throughout my life. All the way back to being a five-year-old child, I have vivid memories of sitting in the back seat of our family car, on vacation, driving to visit family in a nearby state. Someone would goad my sister into belly laughing, and everyone in the car would laugh with her – except for me that is. I felt too self-conscious to try, because for whatever reason, I believed I did not laugh right. There was a profoundly repressed fear, even at that tender age, that laughing would cause me to be ridiculed and to feel stupid.
It is a lifelong pattern that remains to this day. For some bizarre reason, I am terrified to publicly express my joy, and I have always felt deeply triggered by other excessively joyful people.
Hiding In The Box
And that pillar of light meditation that Keith then conducted – one specially modified just for me. The resulting energy flow and expansion as a result of that meditation helped me to understand at yet-another level just how repressed my joyful side remains, to this day.
The week also involved deep exploration into how pains influence my moods, taking me in the opposite direction of my joy and hope, frequently causing me to loop and wallow in smallness, self-judgment, and victimization. Further exploration and following soon showed me that it is my attitude about those pains – my beliefs about them – that makes all the difference. I now understand that most of those pains did not even belong to me. I empathically took them in from others and then felt deeply victimized by them. In some way, I helped others be joyful by taking their pain into me, and then at a subconscious level, I resented their joy, feeling left out and abandoned, as if that joy was “an impossibility” for me.
But it was on Sunday that the insights began to really come together – insights that came from working with inner resistance pains as being aspects of self, and very huggable puppies who desperately need my love. I used to believe that laughter triggered emotional release simply because it shook my belly and loosened up inner densities in a physical way. I now understand that laughter is actually an intense emotional trigger, in and of itself, causing all inner defenses to go crazy.
Prior to this week, I would never have believed that someone could actually be afraid of joy. But it seems that I now profoundly agree with Keith’s inspired assessment. As I dig into the corners of my mind, I find abundant-but-vague memories of feeling horribly stupid as a child – all during times when various unbridled joyful expressions got me into trouble, causing criticism, punishment, shame, and ridicule. No wonder there is such a subconscious terror in me, all surrounding the idea of simply laughing aloud with joy. It is much safer to be a quiet, people-pleasing robot, never doing anything spontaneous or out of the box.
I am done with being “safe.”
… to be continued …
Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved