Brenda's Bicycles

Early Wednesday morning, January 25, 2012, I catch a boat across the lake for what is now turning into a once-a-month trip to Panajachel to visit a bank and to purchase food items that are not available in San Marcos. After a beautiful Skype conversation with a dear friend, I catch a return boat, barely making it to Keith’s magical porch in time for the afternoon chocolate ceremony.

As the ceremony begins, I feel peaceful and centered, but notice that I am clenching muscles all over my body. In fact, I have been noticing this for much of the previous twenty-four hours. It sounds crazy, but trying to relax actually creates more pain – some type of inner resistance that fights back.

A Metaphorical Squirt Bottle

As Keith works with a woman that I will call Inez, he assists her in understanding emotional struggles she had with her mother when she was very young.

“It was not you that did not understand your mother.” Keith shares with Inez. “It was your mother that did not understand you.”

Keith explains that she was a magical child, born into a world that was not yet ready to understand such magic. I listen with keen interest as I immediately relate deeply to the unfolding conversation. I too was a magical child that did not fit in, and that no one understood.

To my surprise, as I continue listening, I begin to feel intense anger and frustration at my mother – emotions that feel very familiar – emotions that I believed to be long since healed and released. Several scenes flash into my mind, memories of times when my mother had nagged me almost incessantly. I know this is far from actual reality, but as a child, I literally felt as if she energetically followed me around with a metaphorical squirt bottle. The moment I began to deviate from the cultural box in even the slightest way, I received a quick squirt of her nagging-fixing energy to bring me back into line.

Lest someone might misinterpret me, I must again add the quick caveat here that I deeply love my mother. She was a wonderful mother, doing the best she could. I do not blame her for my issues in any way. She was simply teaching me to follow in her footsteps.

Quiet Conformity

As I ponder deeper down the rabbit hole, I clearly realize that as a child my ability to feel and express emotions – confusing emotions that were probably quite out of control at times – was squashed and not allowed in my home. I had to stuff all of my emotional pain down. If I cried, I needed to stop crying as soon as possible. Anger was not allowed. Sadness was not understood. Quiet conformity was encouraged and rewarded.

As I further allow myself to access these memories, I begin to realize that I have huge reservoirs of intense anger and rage that continue to be stuffed down inside of me – putrid unexpressed emotions still bottled up since childhood. These emotions are very agitated and beg for expression.

I begin to feel these emotions surfacing with intensity, but rather than express them, I just observe them for now. To my dismay, I also begin to note that Paul is doing lots of things today on the porch that deeply trigger me, and that I am feeling extreme judgment toward him, once again. I know I am projecting, that the emotions I am feeling are “not about Paul” – but nevertheless, his behavior is driving me insane.

I do not yet fully understand it, but I am again projecting my mother all over Paul – violently projecting my childhood judgments about my mother’s fixing and nagging – seeing his behavior as a stage-play model of how my mother fixed me.

A Helping Connection

In the meantime, my inner emotions have boiled and churned to the point that mild tears are now streaming down my cheeks. I relate deeply to the work Inez is doing, and struggle to maintain my composure.

“Brenda needs to be over here working with me.” Inez suddenly expresses to Keith.

“You’re right.” Keith agrees with her. “I’ve been waiting for Brenda to realize that. Come on over her Brenda. I’ll move over and you can have my spot.”

“I’m extremely angry and projecting all over the place.” I protest to Keith. “I don’t feel like I can help anyone right now.”

“You have no idea how profoundly you already are helping her.” Keith responds to me. “She can feel your connection to her, and how you are helping her.”

Inez nods that this is true … expressing that this is why she wants me to come over.

Deep Emotions

By this time, Paul is again reminding me of “Spiritual Doreen” … doing dramatic bizarre things on the porch that trigger my fears of a new age circus. I try to ignore him as I sit in front of Inez, but I want to scream. I am so judgmental of Paul right now.

I begin to cry and sob as Paul sits behind Inez, fills his mouth with water, and spits water all over her. I want to scream with judgment at how bizarre this is. I glance at Keith to make eye contact, having a puzzled questioning look on my face. His return glance tells me that all is well – that I just need to deal with the projections that I am feeling. I know that he knows what I am feeling and is allowing this on purpose.

Inez reaches out her hands and takes mine in hers. She leans forward with her head and touches her head to mine while we both sob together. We rely on each other’s courage to release the putrid emotions that are raging inside of us. We cry together … well maybe I should say that I continue crying for the next ten or fifteen minutes while she supports me. My angry emotions run very deep.

Rejected Projections

I feel unusually stupid and conspicuous during this process. Keith focuses solely on me for most of the next hour while eleven other people simply watch and observe. We talk about how profoundly I am projecting my mother … projecting my anger about her fixing energy.

“I do not want to project.” I beg Keith for understanding. “I am trying to stop projecting.”

“That is your problem, Brenda.” Keith explains to me. “You are fighting how you feel because you believe that you shouldn’t be feeling that way. You need to feel these projections to the core, allowing yourself to go into those judgments and issues rather than pushing them down.”

Suddenly I realize what I am doing. I will not allow myself to feel these emotions to the core, because I know I am projecting onto Paul – and I have too much integrity to slam Paul with them, so I will not let myself feel them. But I still do need to feel the emotions themselves, I just need to do it with the clarity that these emotions are not about present-day circumstances.

“Duh.” I think as I allow myself to sink further into feeling this past pain. “I have been in Spiritual Ego – believing it is wrong and not spiritual to feel the negative feelings.”

Metaphorical Beginnings

As I sink further into meditation, allowing the real feelings to surface, I begin to sense a huge reservoir of buried rage.

“Put your hands out, Brenda” Keith soon guides me into a new visualization. “In your left hand is what you have been doing, going into one dramatic healing after another, doing it all by yourself.”

I briefly interrupt and mention a recent metaphor where what I am doing feels like pulling an endless piece of yarn – that no matter how much inner work I do, there is always more.

“If you want more healing in the hard way,” Keith quickly responds, “you will continue to manifest it.”

“But I needed all of this healing to get my inner license, to find compassion, to get my T-Shirt.” I quickly add. “My healing process has been perfect up to this point, and I have been doing much better these last few weeks. Yet my projections have also skyrocketed.”

Walk To The Left

“Brenda,” Keith pulls me back to his original metaphor, “In your left hand is what you have been doing all by yourself. In your right hand is a different path – a path of pure unconditional love.”

“Walk down the left path to experience what you have been doing.” Keith continues. “How does it feel?”

“I feel stuck.” I respond. “It feels like hard work … agonizing work … tears … drama … lots of learning of compassion and understanding.”

“How many lifetimes have you spent on this path?” Keith asks an unexpected question.

“The numbers seven to ten pop into my head,” I respond to Keith after a minute or two of meditation. “But it makes no rational sense.”

“You have done this multiple lifetimes.” Keith shares with confidence. “Do you want to do it in this one too?”

“No,” I respond firmly, “I want to do it the easy way and learn to allow higher assistance.”

Walk To The Right

“Now walk down the right-hand path to the first stopping point.” Keith guides me. “How does it feel there?”

“Very peaceful and loving,” I respond. “The beings here love me … I love me … no matter what is happening.”

“Take a few steps back and jump up and down in a temper tantrum.” Keith surprises me with a strange visual. “What do those beings do?”

“They just smile with pure acceptance and love me anyway.” I respond a minute later with peaceful clarity.

I almost giggle as I share this response with Keith … but I cannot quite allow myself to smile.

“Jump up and down again.” Keith further guides me. “What do they do?”

“The same,” I respond, “with pure acceptance … with no judgment whatsoever.”

“Will they love you if you take another lifetime?” Keith queries.

“Yes,” I respond, “they will love me just the same … they will love me no matter how many lifetimes it takes. It feels really nice on this right-hand side.”

Higher Energies Don’t Fix

“Allow this love to help you with the emotions that you have agitating inside.” Keith guides me.

“As I do this, I start feeling much lighter … more joyful.” I share with Keith a minute or two later. “But another part of me feels ‘violated and fixed’ – insisting that I need to feel these emotions before they can go … that there are still lessons to be learned … that I can’t just let the emotions be taken from me.”

“Reword that thought.” Keith encourages. “Rather than saying ‘taken from you’, think of it as that you are releasing the emotions to them. This removes the concept of fixing. This energy does not fix … can you feel that?”

“Yeah,” I respond with a peaceful smile.

Unsolicited Advice

Keith and I banter in this discussion for a very long time while the group watches on. One woman eventually interrupts, asking if she can say something. When I say yes, the woman proceeds to give spiritual advice from a strong head-level of understanding – advice about just trusting and bringing in the love. It is perfect and sound advice and I simply listen politely. I have long known this wisdom in my head – but she has no understanding, no compassion for where I am actually at, no idea of the long journey of being stuck that has taken me to this place.

Right now, I am actually experiencing the love at a deep subconscious level, and her advice feels disempowering, taking it right back to mind-talk.

“Brenda,” Paul suddenly interrupts with an excited tone, attempting to help me. “It is just like the difference between high magic and low magic …”

“Paul, please stop!” I lovingly put my hand out toward him.

He too is going deeper into disempowering head advice and it does not serve me right now.

Missing License

Paul again begins to speak his wisdom, and I again firmly ask him to stop. Finally, after Paul makes several additional attempts to force his mental understanding onto me, I speak up even more firmly.

“Paul,” I calmly respond, “I cannot hear your advice because it does not come from an understanding of where I am at right now. I hear you, and at a rational mind level, you are right, but you do not get where I am at. You do not have an inner license to help me. Only Keith has that on the porch right now. He is the only one who actually understands the process I am in. Please, let him work with me and quit trying to do it for him.”

Keith quickly adds the name of one other friend on the porch who does have the inner license to understand where I am at.

“Yeah, I agree,” I respond to Keith. “I do feel his deep understanding connection.”

An Inner License Testimonial

Later on, during a brief pause in the ceremony, I get Keith’s attention.

“Can I say something?” I ask for permission.

Keith quickly says yes, and I spend a minute or two explaining a situation that I wrote about a few weeks ago – a time when I was lost in ego craziness and a friend had reached out via email to help me.

“When I read her words,” I share with the group, “I felt the energy in what she was telling me … I felt her inner license … I knew that she actually understood … that she had ‘been there, done that, and got the T-Shirt’. As a result, I was able to listen to her because she had that pure compassion. If anyone else without the inner license had said those words to me, I could not have received them.”

Projected Resistance

My words fall on deaf ears with Paul … both Keith and I can see that Paul is unable to hear what I am so attached to trying to teach him … at least Paul cannot hear it from me.

To my dismay, Keith turns my words right back around onto me.

“Brenda,” Keith lovingly responds, “that is the only help you are able to receive right now (from people with an inner license) … but if you could allow it in, you could receive that same help from the writing on a cardboard box.”

I know Keith agrees with my words, but he is not letting me get away with projecting my real issue. I am again deeply immersed in my God/separation drama – one that makes it extremely difficult to allow help from anyone right now. I absolutely know that If I were not projecting, I could receive help from many sources … and that if I were not still subconsciously rejecting God, I would not be so fearful of higher energy assistance.

In fact, I have indeed received beautiful guidance in the past from a freeway billboard sign, and from songs on the radio etc…

Keith later validates to me that healers like me will indeed need inner licenses – that with deeper core issues, many people will simply not be able to allow assistance from someone if they do not truly feel that the healer has actually experienced and understands what they are going through.

An Opportunity For Love

Feeling slightly confused, but knowing Keith is right, I back off and focus on returning to my meditation – feeling loved on that right-hand path where the higher beings that hang out there love me no matter what I do, no matter how many lifetimes I take to find my way home. Over the next thirty minutes or so, I am quite peaceful and centered.

Soon, Paul interrupts Keith, as he often does, and says he is guided that we all as a group need to do a “pillar of light” meditation together. This is one of Paul’s frequent behaviors that continues to trigger me – a behavior of trying to control the flow of the porch, of trying to teach Keith how he really should be doing things.

I roll my eyes and look toward Keith to see how he will respond. Keith momentarily glances into my eyes and grins at me when he clearly sees how triggered I am.

“Yeah,” Keith responds to Paul with a smile, “let’s do that.”

During a quick impromptu five-minute break, I manage to return to my meditation, sitting in the loving peace of that right-hand path. I allow myself to feel the anger and judgment of my projections while simultaneously feeling self-love and self-acceptance for having those projections. A few minutes later, I am delightfully glowing while bringing in divine love. My angry feelings have simply vanished.

“Brenda,” Keith taps me on the shoulder as he returns to the porch, giving me a thumbs-up. “That is beautiful energy you’re in right now.”

Hateful Angry Projections

Because of my beautiful energy, Keith and I end up talking together about my process for another half hour while Paul watches on with frustration.

“Keith,” Paul again interrupts, “Can we do that meditation now?”

Rather than doing the normal meditation, Keith instead chooses to play an hour and a half audio MP3 of one of his favorite channeled teachers – something Keith has never before done in a ceremony. I have always had a difficult time listening to this teacher. Today proves to be much more difficult than usual.

For the next ninety minutes, I feel like I am being treated to Chinese water torture as my mind pulses with distracting resistance. I try to focus on the meditation, and then five seconds later I am somewhere else. It is crazy making for the entire one and a half hours. Frequently I look over at Paul, who is swaying his body around in a way to further experience his own inner energy flow. I cannot explain it, but when I watch Paul’s body movements, I want to scream, I hate it. I want to run away. I know this is projection … I know it is not about Paul … I know it is not about his body movements … but I also know that I want to vomit when I watch him with his smug happy face.

I am so confused. I hate him. I feel rage toward him. I despise him … yet he is so joyful and innocent … and clueless.

For the remainder of the ceremony, I pull a scarf over my head and just sit numbly in my depression. I cannot watch. I am so confused and humbled by my hateful and angry projections.

True Origin

Finally, when I am the only one remaining on the porch, I call out to Keith who has stepped into his kitchen to grab a quick bite to eat.

“Keith,” I beg, “can we talk for a few minutes.”

Soon, I have Keith’s undivided attention.

“I am feeling crazy and insane right now.” I beg for guidance. “I am feeling rage and hatred … and I despise that beautiful man (Paul) … I don’t understand it … I can’t stop it … and I felt the same way about that ninety minute meditation … I felt like I was being tortured.

“Paul is playing a beautiful role for you.” Keith first reminds me for the umpteenth time. “You are projecting onto him because the real issue inside of you is still too frightening for you to be able to see it.”

Keith has my full attention.

“Yes, Paul is not getting it yet,” Keith admits, “but now is not the time to work with that … we need to work with your projection.”

“Brenda,” Keith begins to guide me, “you need to allow your projections to surface. You need to go into them, and feel them deeper. It is not about achieving mental understanding or about pushing the feelings down … it is about getting a subconscious understanding of their true origin.”

Fixing Myself

“This has to do with your absolute anger over fixing energy.” Keith shares some insights. “It is not just fixing from your mother, but from all aspects of your life … by people who professed to understand and know more than you, but that just screwed you up and did not understand you at all.”

“You’re in your head, trying to fix yourself.” Keith points out bluntly. “You have deep internal issues with fixing … and you are playing them out in reality because you can’t see them in yourself yet.”

“I want to, but I can’t.” I beg for assistance.

“This is an experience that you need to be having.” Keith lovingly reassures me. “You are gaining understanding that you need to learn … an understanding of the craziness and hopelessness that people feel when trying to solve this unsolvable problem.”

Not About The Mind

“If we take this density with us into the next dimension,” Keith adds, “we will be manifesting it instantaneously as a nightmare.”

“I am already doing that now.” I respond in frustration. “I am manifesting this density at every ceremony, instantaneously, and it is a huge nightmare for me. I do not want to come to any more ceremonies if I keep doing this. It is agonizing.”

Keith reminds me over and over that this is not about understanding anything with my mind – that it is not something that can be solved or fixed by doing anything.

“I just want to learn how to love myself and …” I begin to speak.

“No, Brenda,” Keith interrupts me, “it is not about learning in the mind. It is allowing … accepting yourself in the middle of all the craziness and dysfunction … just being in that love without any judgment that you ‘should be feeling something different’ … without believing that what you are feeling is wrong and needs to be fixed.”

I repeatedly try to pin Keith down on various points, and he continues to divert, saying that I am thinking and trying to understand … that it cannot be understood … it is just allowed.

I am so confused.

Projection Guilt

“But I feel so guilty when I project onto Paul in public.” I again shift into the issue at hand. “I want to just shut up and hold stuff inside because I am tired of making a scene with him.”

“Brenda,” Keith reassures me, “it is all perfect. You are both playing a powerful role for each other. He is not getting his side of that role yet, but that is what you need right now. It is an inside job.”

“Do you want me to speak up with my projections,” I beg Keith for clarity, “to tell Paul to stop etc…, like I did today?”

“Yes,” Keith surprises me, “Paul needs to learn that his behavior is not helping. You are playing a role for him. He needs to be frustrated that you won’t let him help you, etc…”

Inside-Out Reality

After a restful sleep, I wake up early on Thursday morning, and am in the middle of a beautiful meditation when another small earthquake sharply rattles my apartment at 7:25 a.m. – one that lasts for only about ten seconds. The earthquake is only a 4.4, but it wiggles my refrigerator with considerable force. It seems that the Universe wants me to pay particular attention to this morning’s meditation.

As I ponder the events of yesterday’s insight-filled ceremony, I contemplate how Paul is externally showing me the frantic way that I try to fix myself on the inside – doing so without having the slightest real clue, compassion, or loving understanding for what is really going on inside of me.

“I am still not loving myself,” I ponder with clarity. “I continue to frantically run around inside my own head, trying to do crazy new-age fixing in my mind, not having any true compassion or understanding for what is really going on with my inner energies – not having an inner license to understand myself.”

“It is time for me find that self-love and self-compassion,” I continue, “time to let higher energies love me too.”

Exploring The Drama

As I continue meditating, I allow deeply suppressed anger to surface.

I am immersed in my God/separation drama – the emotions associated with being abandoned and separate from God – the emotions surrounding the conditionally-loving and judgmental God that was taught to me in my youth.

As the emotions surface, I feel intense anger, hatred, lack of trust in higher energies, and a profound lack of being understood.

“No one understands me.” I repeat over and over in meditation. “God does not understand me.”

I know these statements to be lies, but to my little inner child, they were my reality, and I allow the emotions to surface so they can be released. Big tears begin to flow. At one point, as I lay on my bed, I intentionally throw a huge temper tantrum, flailing my arms and legs as I push out my repressed anger with muffled screams. As I do so, I imagine myself on that right-hand path from the meditation yesterday, with a group of unconditionally loving angels watching nearby. I feel their supportive love, holding space for me.

I do not know if I was able to release anything. I believe I did, and I feel better – yet I still have no clue how to really love myself. But I do experience a strong and profound feeling of self-acceptance. I know what I am doing. I am walking forward with confidence, trust, and great appreciation for myself for allowing myself to be on this amazing journey of self-discovery … and for taking these difficult emotional healing steps.

A Humbling Thought

This meditation does indeed bring great clarity and peace, and I soon immerse myself in a long day of writing about painful emotional dragons that entered my life shortly before Christmas.

Friday morning, after a restful sleep, I resume meditative focus.

“What if Paul really is an enlightened being that came here to play a very dense role for me?” I ponder a thought that has crossed my mind before. “I am all hung up on needing him to change before I can be happy … and in reality, the only one that needs to change is me. He is indeed playing a beautiful role for me. It is painful, yes, but it is forcing me to face deep inner issues which I would run away from under any other circumstance.”

A Penny Earned

Later in meditation, the general details of a long-forgotten Christian parable intuitively cross my mind. It is a story shared by Jesus – a story of men who were hired to work in a field. It is a parable that has always puzzled me.

In the story, the owner of the farm continuously hires men to work in his field. Each man asks about his pay, and each is told that he will earn a penny. Some men are hired and begin working in the early morning hours, many are hired throughout the day, and some are not hired until the day is almost over. As midnight approaches, and the master pays each man a full penny, the ones that worked all day are upset that those who just barely arrived receive the same reward.

“I am feeling angry about the gifted young people who just waltz into the world, having it so easy with their energetic gifts.” I begin to apply the parable to present day frustration. “Yet here I am, working, working, and working. I have been working at this since before some of them were even born, yet their reward seems to already be greater than my own …”

I am deeply humbled by the truth of this parable. I realize that the amount of work I am doing does not add anything at all to my spiritual resume.

Absence Of Grace

“This is my stage play.” I again remind myself. “Everyone on Keith’s magical porch is playing a personal role for me. There is no comparing my work to that of others. We are each on our own unique and beautiful journey.”

It seems that my whole life I have worked hard and been somewhat annoyed that others continually seem to get rewarded more than me. Paul is playing that out beautifully for me, blessed with all of his energetic gifts, running around on the porch not doing his own work, yet getting to play with his gifts while I deprive myself of such play. He is like an innocent little boy playing games while I am a fuddy-duddy old adult, continuing to work and paddle upstream.

“There is nothing to do except to ‘undo’ the lies and conditioning of my life.” I ponder. “And the strongest conditioning that has been pounded into me involves work, no-pain-no-gain, paddle-upstream, etc…”

“In fact, in my childhood religion, the concept of grace was not even taught.” I further ponder. “I was taught that grace existed, but it didn’t matter, because it was only applied after I had first done all the work that I was capable of doing by myself.”

Our True Nature

I continue to be amazed at how much unhealed buried emotion still hides deep inside me – and I continue to be astounded by how current events so easily cause me to project and to identify these rotting reservoirs of childhood anger and pain that continue to hide in my abdomen. The journey is indeed a humbling one.

I do sometimes wish that higher energies would simply wave a magic wand and make all of these inner densities simply vanish – but I deeply treasure the inner growth that is coming as a result of slogging through all of this unwanted emotion. However, now more than ever, I know it is time to let the higher energies assist me in any way possible.

It does indeed seem that most of the external triggers that I continue to beat myself up for projecting onto Paul, are really external manifestations of my own strong tendency to use rational mind fixing techniques inside of myself and of my ongoing inability to fully love myself. I now understand that the most important inner license that I need to acquire is an inner license to work with my own inner energies in a way that they can feel my love, compassion, and understanding.

The most eye-opening discovery of these last two days has been regarding the intensity of my refusal to feel the emotions of my own projections – all in the name of “I should not still be projecting.” I now understand, more than ever, the importance of allowing myself to feel and to explore every emotion that is triggered, no matter how politically incorrect the issue might be with my “spiritual ego”. The key is in allowing the triggers and in feeling the emotions, without identifying with them or attaching them to present-day events – and in then allowing the higher energies to assist once I have felt them.

And it seems that I am also baby-stepping my way into understanding the concept of grace while realizing that awakening will not be achieved on the basis of what I do – that it only comes from undoing the lies, and from allowing in the divine unconditional love that is our true nature.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved