Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “Dreams Come True.”
After a relaxing morning, I find myself in a quiet, small afternoon workgroup ceremony on this beautiful Thursday, May 2, 2013.
“Brenda,” Keith interrupts the silence, “I’m guided to tell you that your journey today will be another one of surrendering and following, trusting yourself, not receiving much external guidance. You are on your way to stepping up a level.”
“Thanks,” I tell Keith with a smile.
I really do appreciate the brief interaction, even if it is one telling me not to expect much external assistance. I love knowing that I am not being ignored, but that I am just being trained to further trust myself.
A Pinched Heart
I am all over the road map in this trust and surrender journey. I follow my feelings and try not to think as I engage in a silent eighth-chakra meditation – attempting to fill with as much light as possible. I feel quite a bit of nice energy in my head, but my heart feels a tiny bit pinched.
Soon, I imagine floating down a calm river in a small raft, drifting with the divine flow, not controlling the direction or currents. Then I tie a rope to the boat, climb out into the water with the rope fastened around my wrist, and I float on my back in that gentle flow. For me, all of this is an exercise in surrender and trust – in simply not knowing. Repeatedly, I add variations to the metaphor, holding a margarita in my hand, drifting between mountains of density, etc.
Through all of this, I feel a deep sense of trust, but I begin to feel impatient when the journey does not seem to be taking me anywhere specific.
Soon, one of my favorite “A Course In Miracles” quotes pops into my head, one stating: “Infinite patience brings immediate results.” I am having a hard time waiting, wanting the guidance to come now. This quote reminds me that the peace I receive from trusting and being patient in the present moment is all that I need. Again, I focus on relaxing. As I do so, my arms hurt with intense squeamys (squirming and screaming sensation at the cellular level).
I continue to listen and observe, following the processes of others. In fact, I do this for the majority of the ceremony, simply holding space while sharing energy. My heart remains quite pinched.
Lost In Apathy
Finally, I follow inner guidance, silently repeating my personal mission statement. It reads as follows:
“I am a beautiful and courageous divine daughter of God, overflowing with unconditional love and acceptance of others.
I will compose and perform the special music I hear in my own heart, creating a safe and loving environment where others feel inspired and empowered to discover and to perform their own beautiful music.
Together, we can, and we will, create symphonies.”
These words channeled through me in June 2004 while I sat seeking guidance beside a waterfall in the mountains of Utah. Many times in the past, these words have served to ground me – to remind me who I am and where I am going in my life.
But today, as I repeat these words in my mind, I am apathetic. I do not believe the words. I feel resentful and hopeless. I continue attempting to repeat my mission statement – attempting to connect with my internal truth – but I simply cannot feel it.
Suddenly, I realize that this apathy and resentment stem from a victim feeling – a feeling of not being worthy – a feeling of simply not believing any of that inner truth.
Too Terrified To Try
“I need to feel this emotion more deeply,” I ponder. “This emotion is what is blocking me from believing the truth of my own mission statement.”
I consider that this emotion might be another inner scam, and I waffle back and forth for a while, seeking more inner clarity. Soon, as another woman on the porch goes deep into emotional release, I decide to trust myself. Again, I cautiously flash back to what happened on Monday, when I went down into intense anger and ended up being lost and stuck in a painful loop. But I know that if I cannot allow myself to feel this emotion, then the light cannot transmute it for me.
I surrender slowly, gradually allowing myself to walk down into this emotion … down … down … down. At first, I do not feel much emotion at all, but eventually I begin to feel the anger, the apathy, and the victim energies … deeper, deeper, and deeper.
Finally, I reach the point of intense, overwhelming emotion, but I still sense a need to go deeper before I bring in the light. I start to quiver inside, nearing a state of panic. I begin to wonder if perhaps I might have already gone too far. I realize that I might lose control and refuse to come back, sinking deeper into another God-drama loop.
I know there is more emotion and that I need to go deeper, but I cannot venture further. I am too terrified to try.
Unworthy Of Love
As I freeze in fear, I look up and glance at Keith, desperately wanting to ask for help. I am not surprised when he is already looking at me.
“I went down into a well of emotion,” I blurt out through fearful tears. “I took the light with me, even imagining my higher circle of friends carefully lowering me down there … but now I fear I may have gone too far … afraid if I go any further that I will get lost.”
Keith compassionately acknowledges my experience and shares a few confirming words of advice before suggesting that I have gone far enough.
“Now bring in the light,” Keith coaches. “Just bring in a drop or two at a time.”
Keith understands that at this point I am balancing on a tightrope, on the edge of not allowing any light at all. I love the idea of just bringing in a few drops at a time.
I ask for the light, but do not feel what I expect. There is no tingling, no lightness, and no transmutation. After about ten seconds, I suddenly begin to cry and dry heave, in a layer of release that lasts for another ten seconds.
“There, that is the light,” Keith suddenly interrupts. “The love is triggering the emotions of unworthiness, causing you to go deeper.”
It makes sense. Right now, in this moment, I do not feel worthy of love in the energetic space in which I find myself.
Enough For Now
As I continue relaxing and surrendering, the emotional flow ceases. For the next twenty minutes or so, I gradually begin to feel better, simply breathing, trusting, surrendering, not thinking, and just trying to stay out of the way.
I eventually reach a nice state of energy – actually feeling a glimmer of joy just beneath the surface. It feels as if happiness is bubbling inside. I know I did deep work, and did it mostly by myself with minimal external interaction. I am quite proud of myself.
Part of me wants to do more, to go deeper into another layer of that putrid emotion. But another part of me says, “Back off, you have done enough for now. You don’t want to get lost in a God drama loop. Just feel the light and love that you can.”
I do not feel a huge flow of energy, but it is enough, and I feel balanced inside, with some warm vibration now calming my heart.
Where Is The Joy?
“Brenda,” Keith asks a while later, “where is the joy now?”
“It is just below the surface,” I respond with confidence.
“It is under a thin layer of more emotion, down in the same well that I just went into,” I add a minute later. “The God-drama emotion is keeping me from expressing it … but I can now feel some of it wanting to come to the surface.”
Keith congratulates me on my awareness that the joy is indeed in there … except that it is repressed and hiding under emotional layers. We do not talk much, but I feel deeply grateful for the short exchange we have – for the way he validates my ongoing inner work.
Wanting To Wallow
Soon, I go back to working alone, bringing in a continued flow of mild light and love. It is nothing extravagant, but does feel quite nice.
As the ceremony reaches conclusion, Sufi leans over and asks what I am doing tonight. She indicates that she wants to do something really fun, perhaps watching a movie together. I pause, not feeling socially confident, not feeling entirely stable with my emotions.
“I feel like I want to isolate and be alone tonight,” I soon respond.
I do not trust myself, but really feel an urge to withdraw. I begin to wonder if this is merely an old automatic habit of past social dysfunction.
But as I walk home, new emotions bubble to the surface causing me to want to sob. This emotion is unexpected and confusing. When I arrive at my apartment, I sit at my computer, feeling antisocial, wanting to be alone, yet feeling like a loser for wanting to be alone. As I further ponder, I realize that this pattern stems from the roots of being an empath – from believing something was horribly wrong with me, especially when I was around other people and taking their stuff into me.
This emotion is deep, and I want to wallow in it.
Confusing Emotion
To my surprise, Sufi soon knocks on my door, telling me she felt guided to check on me anyway. I invite her in, but again tell her I want to be alone … that I don’t want to talk about my emotion and just dig the whole deeper. I want to feel it and process through it, and simply talking about it is not a good solution.
“I’m really confused,” I tell Sufi. “I don’t know if this is a scam, or if it is real emotion that I need to process.”
“It feels like a scam that wants to take me into a God-drama loop again,” I soon add a minute later.
Immediately, the evening skies rumble with lightning and thunder, seeming to confirm my statement with a loud booming clap.
Finally, as I start to cry, I ask Sufi if she will help me release the emotion. She sits a few feet away and meditates as I do the same, expressing my inner intent to release whatever is boiling to the surface.
Into The Storm
As I process through tears and small amounts of dry heaving, I keep focusing on the light while continuing to feel what is surfacing inside.
It soon becomes quite clear to me that I do NOT want to let this emotion go – that this emotion wants to suck me into a God-drama loop, and I WANT to allow this.
Rather than give up however, I double my resolve, and bring in more light.
“I am not going to scam myself,” I ponder repeatedly.
This feels like intense, out-of-proportion fear that is coming up – like the four-year old child whose foot hurts, and who is terrified that it is going to fall off. I still feel that the fear is real, but I am not going to let it control me, or scam me.
I grab Bobby-bear and hug him tight, pushing my self forward into this release process, still crying a little. Meanwhile, the thunderstorm has caused the electricity to go off, and it is dark. I hug, and hug, and hug my precious inner child.
“Wow, I am feeling real love for the scamming part of me,” I ponder with clarity. I am feeling deep love for that child, the teenager, and the adult versions of me who struggled so much with nonstop urges to isolate and suffer alone.”
I feel this deep self-love for all of me – for all situations – and I feel it profoundly. My heart and belly shake with flowing energy as I continue tightly squeezing little Bobby-bear.
Calm After The Storm
After perhaps fifteen minutes of this self-loving experience, I begin to notice that I am almost dizzy with higher energy, and I feel it engulfing me from all sides. I feel a visual of me being surrounded and warmly held by angels and all sorts of Higher Beings, engulfing me in magical embrace.
I cry again as I feel this profound love. My heart and abdomen continue to shake and twitch with this energy, and the dizziness in my head makes me feel as if I am in another dimension.
“I need to go,” Sufi gently touches me and interrupts the silence, perhaps another fifteen minutes later.
She indicates that she herself is somewhat ungrounded, and that all this Higher Energy is overwhelming her in her own process – as is the energy from all the lightning and thunder outside.
I pause what I am doing and we talk briefly. Suddenly the thunderstorm subsides and all is quiet.
“Earlier I wanted to be alone because I wanted to isolate and cry,” I tell Sufi with deep gratitude, “but now, I want to be alone, because I want to sit and glow in this magical energy for a while.”
Soon, I am doing just that. Later, even another late-night concert in the basketball court cannot phase my magical energy. I simply put in some earplugs and drift gently off to sleep.
The Ugly Duckling
Early Friday morning, I awake in a nice energy, but as I begin to meditate, I suddenly realize that I have deep anger, jealousy, grief, sadness, and confusion – all swirling around deep inside me – all stemming from repressed childhood feelings.
“My joy is trapped in that emotional well, underneath all of these swirling emotions,” I ponder with clarity.
Suddenly, the metaphor of “The Ugly Duckling” comes into my mind with intuitive force.
“I WAS that beautiful swan, born into a world and culture of ducks,” I ponder with clarity. “And I believed that something was horribly wrong with me. I did not relate to the beautiful ducks. I did not know how to be a duck. I struggled to conform and to be accepted, believing myself to be an absolute loser of a duck for not being able to do so. At a core level, an inner knowing hinted that maybe I never would fit in. I was lost, and the thought of trying to pretend to be a duck for the rest of my life was devastating.”
“I still run that pattern today with my desire to isolate,” I continue pondering. “It often feels safer to hide out and live in a known, isolated world, rather than reaching out to others, risking involvement in ways that might further trigger me.”
As I further pursue this “Ugly Duckling” metaphor, I feel more and more emotion surfacing from the depths. It runs deep, and I cautiously ponder my tendency to get lost in such places. But I risk it, allowing myself to go into the emotion, crying, sobbing, dry heaving, feeling it all, doing so with conscious awareness that this is God-drama bait that dangles a hook in front of me. Today, I am not biting.
Hidden Swan Instincts
As I hug Bobby-bear, I imagine myself loving and holding a beautiful swan – a gorgeous, talented swan that hates herself because of the countless layers of self-loathing that she piled on for protection. It broke the swan’s heart to believe she was terribly broken, not even knowing exactly what was broken. She was so lost and alone that she dared not ask for feedback from other ducks. It just hurt too much.
“It still hurts too much,” I ponder in tear-filled agony. “I would love that feedback, even now. But I do not know if I could handle what someone else might say.”
I clearly understand that Catherine, and others, were just trying to give me honest feedback regarding that they could see – about how my dysfunction manifested – but it hurt too much, and the feedback was not delivered with compassion. I think I am ready now, wanting to be shown what remains to be healed – but I feel terrified to find out – terrified to receive any guidance that does not come with compassionate unconditional love.
This intense emotion and insecurity hangs on for a while. Soon, I surrender to the light, asking for assistance, asking the light to transmute, to take me deeper, or show me something else.
“I don’t know how to be a magical swan,” I ponder silently. “I was trained in the rational-mind ways of ducks … but ducks cannot tell me how to be a swan. Somewhere inside my heart are the knowing instincts of a beautiful swan. This knowledge is patiently waiting; it is my birthright, safely protected in the depths of my own heart.”
A Swan’s Journey
Gradually, the emotion fades as nicer energy flows in to replace it. Beautiful, yet ordinary insights begin to flow freely, guiding me on this magical journey of profound understanding.
I know that another layer of emotional healing is completed, and this fact seems to be profoundly significant. I am proud that I did not feel the least bit tempted to get lost in that emotion, even though what I experienced today was more intense than the emotions from earlier this week.
As I ponder, I feel a genuine desire for more honest feedback regarding how to drop my duck tendencies and to further embrace the honesty of being a swan. Yet I again openly admit to myself that I am terrified of such feedback. I remain fully aware that a deep bottomless well of emotion yet remains buried inside me – a well of anger, jealousy, sadness, grief, self-loathing, and confusion. Much of the confusion stems from knowing my beautiful swan-ness, yet also feeling the certainty that I am broken and cannot be repaired. Part of me continues to insist that I will die as a duck-conditioned swan, because I see no way to heal such a deep, dark well using my own meager resources.
“And all of this emotion continues to hide a deep victim consciousness,” I continue this sobering meditation. “This part of me still wants to throw a huge tantrum, because of the knowing that I am good, combined with the hopelessness of digging my way out of the well. I simply do not know how to do it.”
“I spent a lifetime having ducks tell me all the things that were wrong with me,” I explore further. “All this craziness created this well of confusion, anger, jealousy, and hopelessness. This is why I continue to rebel when other beautiful swans try to tell me what I am doing that keeps me stuck. I do not recognize them as loving swans. Instead, I see them as more of the ducks that have hurt me so deeply. I tend to see other swans as well-intentioned fixers … as being worse than ducks.”
“Maybe the solution is to learn to see other swans as divine swans,” I ponder, “and learning to trust that such feedback, whether solicited or not, is coming from a swan perspective.”
As this beautiful meditation ends, I realize that much of the emotional release and subsequent magical insights all began to flow when I asked the joy still buried inside of me to begin lighting up on the inside, from beneath the layers that still hold it trapped.
Over the course of my long healing journey, I have had repeated magical glimpses of being a swan, interspersed with the emotional journey required to make those profound glimpses more permanent and lasting.
A Fellow Swan
After this magical Friday morning meditation, I give myself permission to enjoy a relaxing morning before again embarking on the short ten-minute walk to Keith’s porch. We get a late start on this ceremony of twenty-three people – but wow, is it ever worth it.
I begin the ceremony from a state of magical expectancy, having no clue what will happen, but trusting that whatever it is, it will be amazing. Even before Keith works with the group, I begin a silent eighth-chakra meditation – a journey that takes me into delightful energies, along with pains that begin to form here and there in my body.
Almost immediately after the “Glow Meditation” finishes, a friend begins to ask for help, sharing how he has finally accessed deep reservoirs of intense anger that are holding him back. I giggle inside as the parallels become obvious – as he talks of how this buried well of anger is preventing him from accessing his authentic joy.
As I hold space from the starting moment, I experience profound love and understanding for a beautiful fellow swan – one that has deeply triggered me in the past – one raised in a completely different way, but who has extremely similar pain – pain that each of us has handled in our own unique way.
A Little Too Serious
I feel profound unconditional love for this man who has finally found the courage to face his own buried pain. As I channel love through me, asking his Higher Self to help him receive it, I realize that I too am filling with more of my own self-love. This magical experience goes on for most of the first hour. Finally, I disengage and go inside while holding Bobby-bear, basking in the self-love with my eyes closed, hugging Bobby, thinking about the profound swan lessons while healing so much of my own inner judgment and jealousy. It warms my heart to see another struggling swan from such a beautiful perspective.
Soon, Steven unexpectedly locks eyes with me, and I stare into his magical gaze for a long while, feeling massive amounts of self-love as I focus on relaxing my body and allowing the Higher Energies to flow through me. Still, I do not feel fully aligned. My own deep well of festering emotion continues to boil, and I am again experiencing the unexpected sadness that hides behind the self-love.
Several times, Steven reaches over and tickles my feet to get me to be less serious. The first time, I go into laugher and then tears, including some dry heaving. It is intense. The second time he tickles me, I again cry, but then focus on inviting more Higher Energies to transmute the emotions. The third time he tickles me, I am focused on magical swan metaphors as additional deep insights continue to flow. Through it all, I do not break my gaze.
Approaching Giggles
Eventually, Steven flashes a thumbs-up gesture and then leans forward.
“I can tell you have reached a nice energy flow,” Steven whispers.
“Yeah, but I am not done with my work yet,” I respond, fearful that he is about to disengage from this process.
“Close your eyes and continue with the process,” Steven guides me.
This feels right. I need to go inside. The energy I feel is not his, it is mine. As has happened many magical times in the past, Steven has helped me to balance again, but this is my energy flowing through me, and it is my job to finish this journey.
For the next hour, as I continue this inner meditation, I gradually increase my energy, working toward a state of inner giggles while further continuing to explore the swan/ ugly duckling metaphors. Soon, I realize it is not just me who was a swan raised by clueless ducks – all of us are swans. We are all messed up in our own unique way, each of us swimming in the same duck pond, all struggling with our childhood conditioning in one state or another. Each of us is trying to figure out in our heads how not to walk and talk like a duck. All the while, that “swan-knowing” is instinctually inside of us.
Expanding Giggles
Then the meditation gets funny as I start to imagine each swan having been raised by different animals. Some swans were raised by ducks, with others being raised by mice, cats, dogs, monkeys, etc…
Then I begin to visualize a “psychologist mouse” patiently working with a swan that is trudging around a hamster wheel. The mouse is attempting to help the swan to understand how to be a more compliant, conforming, and happy mouse. The swan repeatedly talks about how depressed she feels … how she just does not know how to fit in to this mousey world. She knows that there must be something more.
Then Doctor Monkey tries to teach the swan how to climb a tree. We can all imagine how that ends.
All of these funny images cause me to giggle as I profoundly realize, at an experiential level, that each of us really is a divine swan who is lost in varying degrees, trying to please those with whom we grew up and spend our lives. We were all taught to be those crabs in a crab basket, pulling our swan-peers back into our basket each time they try to crawl out, not allowing them to find their true identities.
Eventually, I giggle and put on a huge smile as I imagine my “Higher Swan.” I almost laugh aloud when I visualize my magical “Circle of Swan Friends” that are supporting me from other dimensions, loving me as a real swan.
Through the early stages of this inner meditation, I found myself still struggling to embrace my own “swan-ness,” still feeling the emotional sting of victimization for having been raised as a duck. But by the end, I am alive and giggling, enjoying a high-vibration energy. I love the experience. I begin to look around at several people, making eye contact, feeling the glow on my face. Each person responds with similar glows.
Unexpected Healing Perspectives
Soon, another healing scene unfolds in front of me. It is Catherine working with a new woman, helping the woman to get beneath her stories. I begin to giggle silently as I observe Catherine launch into a long round of her own stories, talking about stories as she tries to help the woman let go of a story. But I am shocked by the story Catherine shares, because I perceive that Catherine is talking about me, generically sharing a conversation we had in the early days of our relationship. I will not go into specifics, but Catherine shares things that I had said to her long ago, things that for me remain quite true and that were said in complete love and innocence on my part – yet things that continue to stab Catherine in the heart, causing her to project that pain onto me.
“Wow,” I ponder. “It now makes so much sense why she still resents me. But I also clearly see how this is HER issue and not mine. My comments so long ago were true from my perspective, and at the time I know that I said them with love. In fact, I still believe them to be true. That is all I am responsible for.”
I love how the Universe guided us into each other’s lives, to mutually trigger each other. As I listen to the conversation from afar, I feel so much more love for Catherine, but I still clearly see her unhealed pain, for which she continues to blame me. I clearly see the magic in our confusing relationship, but still recognize that the only thing I have power over is in healing my own pain related to the struggles. And I AM grateful for my related healing.
Healing Reflections
At 4:30 p.m., I decide to leave early. I feel complete, smiling inside, overflowing with a nice energy, and feel no need to remain on the porch. We are bagging another three-hundred pounds of chocolate tonight at 6:00 p.m. and I would rather go home to get an early dinner before returning.
As I type up my notes while the rice and beans are cooking, I reflect on the insights of another beautiful day. I have gained new levels of understanding regarding how rational mind is simply not the tool to do this healing work. Instead, it is all about the feelings – following the feelings, emotions, sensations, persistent thoughts, judgments, or whatever. And then, rather than denying these emotions and trying not to feel them, it is instead quite important to actually go into them, asking the feelings to expand before finally surrendering them to the light – letting them go and be transmuted by an energy of love that simply cannot be defined with rational mind.
For me, these emotions have been coming up in intense ways, throughout the week. I see them as things like anger, victimization, jealousy, etc., bubbling up in a deep well that continues to terrify me. Many of those emotions remain buried, hiding behind self-judgment, impatience, and frustration. I see what remains in that well as the core issues at the basis of my unraveling social dysfunction.
I do NOT know how to heal them with rational mind, but I DO now know how to feel them. I trust that I can do so without getting lost in them, trusting that the light WILL help me, trusting that each time I do another layer (as I did today) that I will experience another beautiful level of inner healing, light, energy, and love.
As I gobble down my early dinner, I feel hopeful and giggly. I know I am not done, but today, I did complete another painful layer, and I did it with loving ease. Each layer gets easier, building more trust and confidence. This week alone, I have done at least four, putrid, agonizing layers. I can do this.
A Weird Attack
After a beautiful Saturday, writing, and even socializing a little, I finally publish, “Power Surges And Glitches” at around 8:30 in the evening. It has been a long day, but I feel content and proud of myself for increasingly becoming more social and flexible in my schedule.
Early Sunday morning, I suddenly wake up from a crazy dream. I was high up in snow-covered mountains, exploring a newly developing residential area. In fact, I was with a few real estate agents, with the awareness that we had been looking at properties that I was thinking about buying. For whatever reason, we were all standing around on an isolated stretch of icy mountain road, on steep slopes near a dirt cliff.
Suddenly, as we are talking, I see a huge chunk of ice fall off a mountain in the far distance to my right. It crashes to the ground, rumbling like an avalanche of icicles. Then, as I watch with interest, the same thing happens in the mountains to my left. This avalanche of crushing ice and snow is not as far away as the first.
To my shock, I suddenly look up and see a similar avalanche falling from the sky, directly above us. Instinctively, I dive off the road, over the edge of the dirt cliff, grabbing onto a tree that hangs over the edge, trying to shelter myself from the unavoidable barrage. I barely make it off the road before the ice and heavy wet snow crash down all around.
When the frightening event is over, I struggle to pull myself up on the tree, trying to crawl back up onto the road. As I look around several people are still standing there, as if nothing happened. One reaches down and assists me in returning to flat ground.
At this moment, I wake up from the dream. It had been a feeling of being near death, yet the interesting thing is that I was not afraid. There was no panic. It was all just weird.
Magical Amazing Energy
Resting in bed, pondering the aftermath of a weird dream, I note that I am experiencing a great deal of interesting energy flowing through me. In fact, for the next hour or two, I remain in bed, feeling this energy churning in the back side of my lower chakras. It moves and flows, feeling very positive, but it is so active that it also makes me uneasy in a somewhat unnerving way. The energy flow focuses mainly in the lower back, but also rises up to the region of my heart. Eventually, as I focus on stretching and relaxing my legs, the magical flow actively starts to radiate throughout both legs.
At times, I experience unexpected sensations of intense panic as the energy flows in areas where such repressed fear is stored. But I embrace all the emotion with love and giggles. At one point, the energy is so pleasurable and intense that I begin to shake, and curl up without control. It is a magical flow, tantalizing me with never-before-felt energy tickles.
An Unexpected Unmotivated Mood
As I rest in this amazing energy, I suddenly remember something the teacher Abraham (channeled by Esther Hicks) said in a video I recently watched. Abraham had emphasized the importance of paying attention to our general moods – moods that we are not always even aware of.
Suddenly, I realize that a very heavy mood of hopelessness dominates my present state of being. While I bask in the middle of beautiful energy, I begin to ponder about what makes me feel joyful, and what I will do a month from now. As I do so, I start to feel hopeless, pathetic, unmotivated, knowing I am going to fail, and that I have no chance of success, blah, blah, blah.
I know I am in magical energy, embarked on a magical journey, and I do not allow myself to buy into this hopeless mood. But it is real and there, just the same. I begin to wonder if I will be journeying into this emotion, later, during the chocolate ceremony this afternoon.
I am surprised when this mood dominates my morning. I am unmotivated, sleeping in a little, but not even feeling like calling a friend. The mood lasts right up until noon when I find myself again setting up Keith’s porch for what turns out to be a large chocolate ceremony, with twenty-seven people at the peak.
A Synchronous Stage Play
Right from the start, I note that Keith is frequently bombarded by barrages of rational-mind comments and questions. In an introduction where Keith normally shares inspiring personal experiences, he barely has enough time to deal with constant head interruptions by many who repeatedly interrupt him. All the discussion remains at a surface level. It seems that those present will not allow it to go any deeper.
Finally, as Keith opens the ceremony to inner work, two women are deep in emotional release. Keith works with one, while I quietly assist the other. I focus on glowing with as much Higher Energy as I can access, sharing it with these two women, as well as a young man directly in front of me. I overflow with what feels like divine power. I love the way the ceremony is going right now.
When Keith finishes helping this first woman to release huge layers of emotion, he pulls back to a group level and starts a discussion that leads into an empath training. But to my shock, Keith is again constantly barraged with unrelated comments, greatly hampering the flow of the empath discussions. Many of those present continue to want to analyze it all at a head level.
I do not judge, but instead just observe the level of rational distraction with deep interest, pondering why I am creating such a scenario. The empath training consumes the next hour and a half, because it is repeatedly drug out by irrelevant questions. Keith patiently offers loving answers. I can tell something is up for me, because Keith would usually have deferred many of these questions for later. In fact, we never finish the full training because of all the interrupting diversions.
At every turn, this person or that wants to offer fixing, rational-mind feedback and advice to everyone else who has a real question. I am blown away by just how obvious this synchronous stage play is becoming.
Rational Mind Triggers
Meanwhile, in the middle of the training, I begin to feel intense pain in my abdomen. Intuitions tell me it is mine, but I want to be sure. The pain is so strong, I begin to slightly panic.
“Am I reading this or is it mine,” I finally ask Keith from a state of slight confusion.
“It is yours,” Keith agrees with me.
When I explain how painful it is, and that I am feeling a lot of panic, Keith tells me that today, I am processing the empath stuff at a new level, in a new way. He says nothing more than this, leaving me guessing, but also allowing me to further surrender to the curious wonder of what may be unfolding.
“Pain is resistance,” I remember a while later, causing me to again focus on relaxing into whatever I feel, still not needing to understand or know anything. In fact, I understand that “not knowing” and “not figuring things out” are quite important for me in this process. Instead, I surrender and trust that all is perfect inside – that something magical is happening. I don’t need to think about it.
After the training has been totally sidetracked by the interruptions of others, I begin to feel overwhelmed by the level of rational mind talk that seems to originate from all corners of the porch. A few of those who interrupt should know better, but most are new people who are quite lodged in rational mind curiosity.
I continue to observe with curiosity myself, feeling profoundly triggered by rational mind chatter, but still pushing down the triggered emotions, not wanting to lose myself in them.
Clogging The Joy
Finally, the young woman seated next to me reminds Keith that he promised to talk about the “payoffs” that cause us to remain dysfunctional. As Keith attempts to lead such a discussion, others again interrupt and pick everything apart.
To my surprise, Keith speaks to the main source of many interruptions, bluntly asking the man if he is aware of how inappropriate his constant comments are. I take this event as a gentle reminder that Keith remains fully in charge, and that he is permitting events to be as they are for some purpose – one that I do not yet fully understand.
As I make a quick trip to the bathroom, I quickly whisper to Keith, “Can we please go back to inner work?” A minute later, when I sit down again, Keith obliges my request and asks my friend Jim (still not his real name) how he is doing today. The ensuing inner work is deep and meaningful. I relate to Jim’s process, and then simultaneously begin to cry from all of the rational mind distractions and craziness around me. It seems that I am finally allowing myself to feel the underlying emotion.
“I am again profoundly relating to Jim’s process,” I speak up when Keith’s glance encourages me to talk. “I can clearly see how much we have in common, how much pain is buried inside of us from childhood, and how we have each dealt with it so differently.”
As Keith validates this process, engaging me in a short conversation, I briefly mention my weird dream before sharing how I woke up in beautiful amazing energy, and then later realized I was also in an underlying mood of hopelessness.
“I think the hopelessness is clogging up the emotion at the core of my God drama,” I share with Keith. “And my joy is just below that.”
That Scary Joy
“I am not buying into this hopelessness, but can you tell me how to release such emotion?” I ask Keith in deep curiosity.
“You are releasing it right now, just by feeling it,” Keith reminds me.
“But can you help me find an easier way to release it without having to feel it so deeply?” I beg for guidance.
“Look at Jim’s T-shirt,” Keith smiles back at me.
When I glance to my side, I see a very funny graphic on the T-shirt, and begin to laugh.
“What you need most right now is joy,” Keith shares with compassion.
“You know what happens when you are joyful?” Keith then asks as we banter for a few minutes.
“Yeah,” I respond with a giggle. “I get into deep trouble for being too happy, too noisy, too rambunctious, too everything.”
“It is more spontaneity than joy what was behind this struggle,” Keith again reminds me.
“And the hopelessness covered all of that, because I felt so hopeless at having my joy and spontaneity slammed out of me,” I quickly add. “I was so confused and made crazy as a child. All of the panic I feel is the fear of reopening the joy, because subconsciously I believe it will cause intense punishment all over again.”
In an ensuing conversation, Keith repeatedly questions me until I am able to figure out that in my subconscious mind, I actually do have joy hooked with punishment.
Of course, at one level, I already knew this, but I had never put two plus two together at this level. I really am terrified of joy, and that is why every time that I start to laugh, I end up sobbing and dry heaving – why I am still unable to publicly express joy.
Going Deeper
“I feel as if I am cycling at the surface and want to go deeper,” I tell Keith. “Can you give me any advice on how to do this an easier way?”
“You cannot do more than you can do,” Keith responds in a cryptic manner.
I know that he is reminding me I am in an inspired flow, and that I am doing the best I know how, as fast as I can. I am patiently loving myself through the process, repeatedly remembering that self-love and self-compassion are the main ingredient in this healing.
“Can you suggest a way to go deeper?” I again ask for something to help.
Keith tells me to close my eyes, and then asks all of the empaths on the porch to help me release what I am ready to let go of. I relax and surrender, gradually feeling lighter over time. It is nice. I really feel as if I am releasing emotion. I can only giggle as somewhere in the middle of this magical process, others again distract the group and pull the ceremony back to rational-mind conversation. The crazy head-talk continues for nearly an hour and a half.
I simply surrender, knowing that I have received exactly what I need.
Distracted Inner Work
I sit and watch as Keith simply observes the craziness unfold, doing nothing to impede the conversation. At one point, a woman speaks up, asking Keith for help. But just as Keith starts to work with her, everyone wants to pipe in and talk to her at a mind level, helping her to “analyze” what is wrong, suggesting this and that mental understanding. Still, Keith simply observes.
“Do you still want some help,” Keith eventually breaks into a silent pause.
When she says “yes,” Keith begins to guide her down into the subconscious.
When Keith then asks about where she is at and what she feels, many on the porch again jump in, interrupt, and barrage her with unwanted advice and counsel, all at the mind level, sharing nonstop story after story. This group will simply not allow real emotional work.
Childhood Clarity
As the ceremony falls apart in another interruption, everyone around me begins to chatter away in nonstop storytelling, blah, blah, blah – lasting for forty-five minutes.
I want to scream. It is crazy, intense, and overwhelming. As Keith handles a chocolate purchase, the porch echoes with loud, nonstop, simultaneous stories, most of them involving fixing and validating. Everyone else seems to be enjoying the mental onslaught.
“I get it,” I ponder inside with a giggle, clearly recognizing that all day today the Universe has provided me with an undeniable stage play. It is my own personal holodeck showing me another profound example of what happened to me during my childhood shutdown.
I am shocked as I ponder how, just a short while ago one woman who wanted help was simply not allowed by others to go down into her heart. No matter what, others were so uncomfortable that they repeatedly kept the conversation at the surface level, as if franticly obsessed to do so.
“This is exactly what happened to me as a child,” I ponder with agonizing clarity. “I DID feel the energies. I wanted my family to understand my heart experience, and wanted to talk about my energy feelings. But no one around me could relate. Every time I tried to go there, they pulled the situation back to a rational debate.”
“If I attempted to talk from an out-of-the-box level, I was scolded, punished, reasoned with, made wrong, and invalidated at every turn,” I continue. “If it could not be explained and understood with rational mind, in the confines of my religious conditioning, it was not allowed in my reality. I was made to believe I was evil for even trying to talk about what I felt in my heart.”
Time To Go Deeper
“Can we please pull this back out of the rational mind chatter?” I ask Keith when he returns to the porch.
“Just hang on and flow with what is happening,” Keith suggests.
Immediately, I realize that Keith and I are on the same page, knowing that this he is letting this happen for a reason – knowing that in my case it has already profoundly served me.
As I quietly begin to chatter with Keith about my process, two women sit down and attempt to drag me into rational discussion. I politely engage them for a minute but quickly find a way to end the conversation, indicating that I am still a little in my process.
“This is exactly what happened to me as a tiny child, and throughout youth,” I explain to Keith when he turns back to work with me. “This is at the core of the shutdown of my joy and true heart expression. It was analyzed out of me using mental stories, pushed down below the confusion, the frustration, the hopelessness, and the judgment.”
“I am feeling deep emotion and judgment about this,” I express a few minutes later. “And I just realized that rather than invalidate and push this emotion down, just like I have always done, maybe I need to go deeper into it.”
Keith smiles, as if to acknowledge agreement with my assessment, and he is then sidetracked by another distraction.
Dangerously Close To The Bottom
As I close my eyes and go inside, I almost immediately sense my inner child silently screaming via my throat … screaming out judgmental aggravation and intense confusing frustration. I am using the visual of screaming this at an angel, pushing out the intense negative energy via my throat chakra, imagining it flowing out of me as I feel it to the core. I begin to cry quite intensely, not to the point of dry heaving, but I get very close. Huge tears stream down my cheeks. I don’t care who is around me still lost in storytelling. This is my process, and I am doing it.
As I continue this inner journey, I am quite clear that this is another major God-drama hook – another entrance point into endless tantrum loops. I am feeling this overwhelming emotion to the core, and am dangerously close to not wanting to let it go. I repeatedly remind myself that I want to go deep enough, but NOT get stuck there. I do not want to become so lost that I refuse to give up the emotions.
I soon force myself to invite the light to help. I do not feel anything spectacular, but I focus on peacefully and gradually raising my energetic vibration. I imagine myself walking up a flight of stairs into my crown, and with each step, I invite higher energies to either transmute the emotion, or possibly take me deeper into another layer.
Time To Leave
Eventually, I reach a state where I know it is time to leave the porch. I am doing well, and there are so many ongoing distractions that it is driving me crazy. It is clear that the ceremony itself has run to completion. Meanwhile, most people still stand around storytelling.
As I grab my stuff and begin to leave, I am still in deep release, wanting to run away from the triggers, knowing I can better process the remainder of this emotion in private. Before I get off the porch, one of the two women with whom I had worked at the beginning gives me a huge warm hug, and hangs on tight for at least five minutes.
“Don’t take this in,” I tell her through my tears.
I am fully aware that she is an empath not yet confident in moving energies, and that I am still releasing a lot of dense energy at this moment.
Then, the other woman I had helped joins the hug. I am still crying, still deep in the overwhelming childhood agony of rational mind overload. I recognize that just two years ago, I would have enjoyed most of the rational mind discussion and sidetracking. Today, it is still driving me crazy. I have changed so much, and right now, even though I deeply appreciate the hugs, I just want to get out of the triggering environment.
Being Gentle With Self
I cry repeatedly during the first half of my homebound walk. When I finally step through my balcony door, I am just numb … stable but numb. I clearly know that I am in a profound place, and that I am skillfully tiptoeing around the entry point to another God-drama loop. I am ominously aware of this fact, and the emotion that festers inside is quite tempting. As I listen to the feelings, they are screaming, “F#ck you light … I can’t do this … I won’t let this emotion go.”
But I DO want this emotion to come out, and am determined not to sink into that loop.
As I finish taking my notes for the day, I remain quite numb. I am afraid to go any deeper into the emotion. I know I might get lost. Even now, I am unable to bring in much light.
“I can only do what I can do,” I ponder something Keith told me earlier.
I begin hugging Bobby-bear, closing my eyes, and being gentle with myself, feeling the self-love. For a while, the emotion flows with intensity as I focus on nothing more than loving myself for having the courage to do what I am doing. Finally, the emotion settles and a nicer vibration fills my heart.
I have no rational mind validation for what happened today, but I believe that when I relaxed into the “new level of working with empath stuff,” that Keith had mentioned earlier – I believe that something new did open and expand, and that this expansion is now triggering additional density release. But in essence, I really have no clue at the mind level. I just trust and surrender that this emotion is coming up, so I need to feel it, without identifying with it, and let it flow through me to transmutation.
Giggling Duck Metaphors
Later, as I ponder on my pillow, feeling much more centered and balanced, I remember that when the two women were hugging me tightly at the end, one of them had said something about me to Keith.
“Isn’t she amazing,” Keith had responded to the women, referring to me. I love the indirect feedback. I am in a very good place, doing deep inner work. Yes, it sucks sometimes, but I AM doing it, and I AM feeling a huge difference now with every putrid emotional layer I release. I cannot wait to do more.
It has been an intense week of amazing growth, several times going down into deep frightening layers of emotional density, several times getting dangerously close to becoming lost and stuck in the drama, terrified to go further, balancing and tiptoeing on a treacherous tightrope.
After waking up on Friday, with another layer of this confusing density running through me, the “Ugly Duckling” metaphors graced me as if from out of nowhere. These beautiful metaphors filled the rest of the day with intense understanding of being a swan raised by people who did not even know what a swan was, nor did they have a clue how to raise one.
Never The Same
It is only in retrospect that I make sense of a crazy dream filled with life-threatening ice-and-snow avalanches. Those crushing barrages of chilling danger nearly killed me while everyone else in the dream stood around as if nothing even happened.
It was the ceremony on Sunday afternoon that brought clarity to the dream. An unusual and uncanny “personalized stage play” took me to the depths of triggered craziness as I explored the childhood agony of having my life dominated by people who repeatedly derailed any intuitive adventures into the heart – by people deeply conditioned to live in a duck world. Even the slightest attempt to talk about heart-based, right-brain, swan-like, energetic journeying caused them to bombard me with an avalanche of more energy-chilling debate, pulling me back to the conditioning level of ducks, refusing to allow me, or anyone else to venture into the forbidden worlds outside of mental logic and reason.
After this week, I will never think of the story of “The Ugly Duckling” from the same vantage point. I have always related to that story as a child, but never gave it much thought. The more I realize just how I truly am a swan – how we are all divine swans, each in our own way – the more I know I will never see anyone quite the same.
… to be continued …
Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved