At just after 4:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, a loud rattling noise disturbs my peace. Someone downstairs is shaking the door of a local business – a business that occupies the space just below my apartment. Intuitions tell me it is someone trying to break in. Quickly, I open my window and shine a light down onto the sidewalk below – but my window is just around the corner so I see nothing. Immediately, all sounds go quiet. I can only assume that whoever it was has now left.
With bold confidence, I open my front door and step out onto my patio in pajamas and bare feet, leaving the door wide open and unlocked. Seconds later, I am scampering down my steps with my flashlight, walking all around my building in the dark.
“What was I thinking,” I giggle as I return to my apartment and walk through my wide open door. “If there really were burglars still hiding downstairs, I left myself vulnerable and wide open to assault and attack.”
Feeling no fear at all, I return to bed, meditating as to, “Why did I create this scenario of someone trying to break in downstairs?”
Intuitions quickly draw a metaphorical parallel of how the egos, opinions, judgments, and misunderstandings of others used to attack me, robbing and draining me of my power … and that I had needed to keep my walls high to protect myself from such “energy burglars.” Now, after an amazing ceremony yesterday, my instinctive behavior shows that I feel safe in being completely vulnerable, literally and metaphorically walking out onto the street in the middle of the night, barefoot, in my pajamas, and with the door to my valuables left wide open.
“Yup, that feels right,” I ponder as if peacefully drift back to sleep.
Basking In The Glow
Shortly after 7:00 a.m. on this final day of June 2012, I again hop out of bed. I am giggly and filled with peaceful energy. On a whim, I pull a single tarot card, and smile when it is the “Hangman” card – one of my favorites – a card showing a man hanging upside down on the gallows, but he is not suffering, he is peaceful and smiling, glowing with light.
“It really is an upside down world,” I ponder the profound meaning this card brings to me. “And the truth really is an undoing of the reality we have been taught … seeing everything through the glowing light an upside down perspective.”
To my delight, I then open my email and find a “Wisdom of Oneness #50” quote. The words profoundly back up my lesson from yesterday – a lesson teaching me to trust my own experience – to trust the inner guidance that resonates within.
“It matters less what you may or may not have read, or heard, or been taught as to what is the correct way to proceed on the spiritual path, than what your own experience has shown you to be so.”
“I am doing the best I have ever done,” I ponder present-moment feelings. “I had a beautiful meditation this morning, lasting nearly two hours, basking in continued magical energy from last night.”
As the delightful energy tickles my soul, I clearly know that I am in the infancy off this new experience … and I trust that this too shall pass … that more ups and downs of growth will certainly follow. But right now, I love where I am at.
A Pain-Burdened Child
As I further meditate, I soon begin to get in touch with that “nail-in-my-heart” pain – the same pain I was feeling yesterday – a pain that has repeatedly held a metaphorical meaning of my betrayal energy. Soon, the pain is again quite prominent.
At first, I attempt to move it out of me, and then, as I ponder that it might be related to ego, I try to get firm and heavy-handed with the pain. After neither approach works, I choose a third option – choosing to get to know the pain more intimately – as I had done yesterday – choosing to put myself in its shoes.
Over time, I begin to feel the pain in deep emotional ways. The pain is an angry child, hurt, betrayed, profoundly frustrated at having felt rejected, ignored, made-wrong, and fixed when he was not even broken.
“Wow, I was NOT broken as a child,” I ponder with clarity.
As I continue, I clearly feel my inner child’s pain at having been slammed for being an empath, for feeling the pain of others, often feeling slammed for whatever I did, feeling as if I could not do anything right.
“This victim child in me wants to be in a tantrum … to be pouting,” I ponder the clarity of what I feel. “He wants to be angry, wants to push people away, and he wants to be heard, understood, validated, respected, and allowed to express himself. He wants an apology, and will not allow anyone to help until he feels understood by mother, God, and anyone else who offers assistance.”
As I continue this meditation, I clearly understand why this pain-burdened child has repeatedly manifested stage-play reenactments on Keith’s magical porch, desperately causing me to re-experience every drop of this unhealed pain so that I will explore and learn to love myself – eventually taking me to the profound growth of yesterday.
A Work in Process
Not wanting to ignore or further repress this layer of emotion, I begin using the “reverse psychology” approach – imagining this inner child as literally throwing a tantrum, speaking angry words as he pouts.
Twice during this process, I sink into deep waves of emotional release, feeling intense anger, sadness, frustration, and betrayal. The release involves a great deal of intense dry heaving that seems to originate from the throat region – a metaphor that tells me I am now working with the child’s agonizing inability to express his truth.
“Wow, I am getting really close,” I begin to ponder as I feel inner resistance start to swell. “I want to share love with little Bobby, but I feel him pushing me away with deep resentment.”
Recognizing that I am at an impasse, I meditatively invite my Higher Self to get involved, asking that my Higher Energies work with this wounded child. I feel energies shifting and releasing, but intuitions also tell me that this is actually an ongoing “work in process.”
A Perfect Setup
Shortly before noon, I follow guidance and stroll out to Keith’s home with my USB memory stick. He has offered to share a few video files with me, and right now feels like the perfect time to see if he is available for such an endeavor.
Keith welcomes me with eagerness, briefly interrupting his work to copy files for me. The vibe is high, filled with positive and happy energy. But at one moment, when I mention my morning process, Keith only smiles, not responding or providing any hoped-for feedback. A few minutes later, I suddenly experience a deep rush of energy flowing through me. I am not sure if it is emotion or what – but it is strong and overwhelming, quite similar to what I felt earlier in the week when I experienced a river of emotional sewage flowing through me while learning to remain nonattached.
“Well, I need to go check on the workers now,” Keith unexpectedly speaks as I am about to ask about this river of energy that is suddenly overwhelming me.
Keith quickly excuses himself, and I begin to walk away feeling somewhat puzzled by my swirling emotions. Rather than listening to inner voices that are suddenly demanding that I need to feel rejected and abandoned, I smile and realize that everything is perfect – that I need to work with this energy on my own. It is the perfect setup for my God drama – another scenario to test me, to give me an opportunity for a new choice.
As I walk home, I meditate with every step.
“This is that inner child’s pouting energy wanting to create problems again,” I ponder. “I want to let this emotion run through me without attaching to it, without identifying with it.”
A Glee Marathon
As I later sit in my living room, I clearly recognize that I am experiencing very familiar emotions from the past – emotions of feeling deeply alone while in the presence of someone else. As my roommate Sufi scurries around my apartment, such childhood (and adult) feelings rage through me.
“If I was totally alone I would be profoundly happy,” I consider the absurdity of it all. “I know that what I am again experiencing is childhood emotion from a reality in the past … but it feels extremely real.”
With the childhood emotional rivers running so intensely, I surrender to an inner voice that whispers, “Just spend the rest of the day watching more episodes of Glee.”
As strange as they seem, I have learned to pay attention to such “hunches.” Invariably, the experience turns out to be a part of my process. It seems as if I am deep in the throws of exploring and experiencing another river of childhood and teenage emotions as they surface and flow out of me. Watching more videos feels like the perfect way to connect more with such emotions.
I have been on a marathon of sorts lately – a marathon of watching the first two entire seasons of the television series “Glee” and I am in the middle of season three. As fate would have it, my long day ends with episode fourteen of this season.
I could never have foreseen what was about to happen next.
The Setup
As episode fourteen unfolds, the general storyline is as follows. A young high school football player (David) is deeply struggling. He is gay, but remains tightly sequestered in the closet, feeling terrified of the thought that his classmates might learn his shameful secret. In season two, David had bullied and harassed another gay student from the glee club – doing so until that other young man eventually figured out David’s secret.
Now, in season three, David is in a new school, desperately trying to keep his personal horror to himself while simultaneously attempting to figure himself out in other ways.
As I watch this part of the video, I deeply relate. I am not gay, but being transgendered and trying to hide that fact carries almost identical emotions. I too was ashamed of who I was, desperately denying it to myself and to others. While struggling to figure myself out, I did things that, in retrospect were quite reckless and stupid – but I did them from a place of genuine struggle in my heart. It was the only way I could figure myself out while hiding in a culture that was not ready for someone like me.
Suddenly, one of David’s football teammates observes David in a restaurant, engaged in animated conversation with the gay glee-club boy from his former school. The football teammate puts two-and-two together, and figures out that David is gay too.
The next day, as David walks into the football locker room, the word “faggot” is written in large letters across the front of his locker. All of his teammates are standing around with huge taunting grins on their faces, waiting to find pleasure in David’s horrified and humiliated reaction.
Unexpected, Overwhelming Emotions
The story takes a very painful twist. After a week of ridicule by former friends at school, harassment on the internet, and of being told by his mother that he could be “fixed”, David is distraught, having given up on life, terrified to go on, knowing that life as he knows it is over.
It is at this point of the video that I begin to get unusually emotional. At various points in my life, I have been exposed to suicidal situations – having experienced such suicidal feelings myself, having been around others who threatened suicide, and having been exposed to stories of those who actually did kill themselves. In all cases, while emotions were strong, I had never lost myself in the agony.
The camera shows David in his bedroom, crying as he lays out a nice suit of clothes. Then he grabs a belt in his hands, and glances up at the rafters above him. By now, I am bawling in excruciating emotion, as I know what is happening. I thank the scriptwriters for omitting footage of the actual suicide attempt. But even more agonizing are the emotions I feel as I observe David’s father, sobbing in terror as he holds his son’s seeming-lifeless body, all dressed up in his nice clothes. Luckily, David fails in his attempt, and after a long stay in the hospital, he finds healing, and a new start.
As I watch the scene showing David’s father, sobbing while holding his son, I completely lose all composure, melting into a blubbering mess of excruciating, overwhelming, agonizing pain. Such intense unbearable pain makes no sense. Such heart-crushing distress seems extremely out of context with the healing through which I have already passed.
“Where is this profound and unexpected emotion coming from?” I ponder with confusion as the emotions overwhelm me.
Unfelt Agonizing Pain
Suddenly, I realize that what I am feeling is my OWN “never-before-expressed” emotion – emotion from age sixteen and seventeen – emotion that I never permitted myself to even feel. At that time in my life, I was drowning in hopelessness and futility, but I felt compelled to present the external image of a “happy, young, righteous-and-religious boy,” an Eagle Scout, a brilliant student, a hard worker, etc…
And at that age, other than a few clues that my parents were aware of, absolutely no one knew of my gender struggles. I could not allow myself to feel or express such emotion. If I had, I would have been exposed, found out, and further subjected to relentless ridicule. As a result, the emotional side of my heart became a rigid repressed stone box. I did not allow myself to feel or express any emotion in a way that someone else might witness it. Doing so was akin to my worst nightmare.
Naïve Curiosity
But the story goes deeper than that. The following story is one that, until now, I have only shared with perhaps three or four people. To this day, these events continue to be a source of deep inner humiliation and shame. Perhaps the only way to eliminate that shame is to share it with the world. Maybe no one will read these subsequent words … or if they do, they will see through personal judgment and connect with the innocent heart of a naïve and frightened sixteen-year-old boy.
If shaky memory serves me, I was a junior in high school, being one of the nerdy, less-popular boys. I competed that year on the high school wrestling team. It was one of my ways of trying to fit in – a way to appear macho so that no one, including me, would suspect my shame. For the most part, such masquerading was successful, and I managed to hide out, under the radar of my classmates.
But one day, as I walked through the gymnasium while taking a shortcut to the small wing of the building where my locker was, I passed by the back door of the girl’s locker room.
At the time, I was struggling with intense curiosity about girls’ bodies. Being the youngest child in a sexually repressed culture, I had no exposure to girls’ bodies, other than knowing that a crazy and strange obsession existed inside me – an obsession of wishing – with all my heart – that I actually was one of those forbidden girls. This insane-and-unasked-for obsession made no sense to me. I felt dirty and evil, knowing that I would surely go to hell if I did not somehow cure myself. My curiosity was not sexual – it was innocent, genuine, childlike body-curiosity.
As I walked by that locker room door, deeply repressed parts of me began formulating other plans.
A Horrendous Discovery
Within a few weeks, that naïve, curious, wishful part-of-me became so obsessed and consumed, that I seemed to have no other conscious choice. A very determined part of me was going to stop at nothing to discover what girls’ bodies were like.
I brought a camera one day and hung around until the school was nearly empty. With shame and trepidation beating wildly in my heart, I walk carefully to the back door of that girl’s locker room, taking great care to be sure that no one sees me. The back door is propped open, and a short flight of steps descends downward, ending at a metal divider that blocks the view for passers-by. But if I venture down four or five steps, the bottom few steps have a clear and unobstructed view through a gap below the divider. I dare not put my face down there for fear of being seen, but very carefully and quietly, I place my camera on the bottom step, aim it into the locker room, and snap the shutter button … once … twice … three times.
“Hey?” I suddenly hear a startled gasp as the lone girl inside suddenly hears the camera clicks.
In utter terror, I grab my camera, run away before anyone sees me, hurry to my locker to hide the evidence, and reach inside to grab my schoolbooks.
“Oh no,” I cringe and gasp with horror. “I left my books at the top of those locker room steps.”
Paralyzing Terror
To make a long story short, I swallow my pride, feeling quite desperate, and sneak quietly back to the girl’s locker room. I breathe a sigh of relief when my schoolbooks are still there. I quickly grab them and follow an instinctive hunch to take another shortcut to freedom, quickly walking up some stairs and proceeding through a large hall above the locker room.
Terror suddenly paralyzes me when, as I walk through that hall, an unhappy girl approaches from the other side. This popular cheerleader angrily calls out my name, stops me in my tracks, and proceeds to search my pockets for that horrible camera – a camera that is safely hidden in my locker.
But the palpable, pale-white, terror-filled look on my face gives me away. I cannot keep a secret.
To make a long story short, on the very next day I find myself sitting with my parents in the principal’s office. I have never had a more awkward moment with my parents … but for some reason we do not, and never do, speak about the events of that day. As I plead for leniency, the high school principal honors my history as a good student who has never been in trouble, agreeing not to suspend me, and not to add any commentary to my school records.
I have dodged a huge bullet at the academic level, but am just beginning to eat humiliating crap at the social level.
On the very next day, as I walk through the cafeteria, a popular football player approaches me, calls out my name and jeeringly asks, “Hey, have you taken any good photos lately?”
A Hidden Death Wish
I thought I had committed social suicide after that age-twelve swimming pool incident – the one I recently wrote about in “Sordid Social Secrets” – but that was child’s play compared to what is happening now. This time, people really are talking and gossiping at school. For months, I completely avoid the school cafeteria and all other common hangout areas of the school, hoping that the harassment will eventually end. I go to class, ignore the gossip, and do my best to isolate myself from the social horror.
I have no idea how far the gossip spreads, but I no longer trust anyone, hanging out only with other unpopular nerds who are kind enough to still speak to me. I continue to wrestle on the Varsity Wrestling team during my senior year, and I even participate in an honor role club, but for the most part, I have destroyed all hope of ever being normal. I have no actual friends … only acquaintances.
I hate myself … I loathe myself … I am humiliated … I feel a profound sense of futility and hopelessness … I am the social pariah of the century … and I clearly believe that my life is over. I want to hide from God and parents … I cannot let anyone know what is really going on with me … I am doomed … there is no hope … and I JUST WANT TO DIE.
But I have a happy image to uphold. At church, everyone believes I am still this perfect young man. I must act proper, righteous, and present an appearance of perfection.
In this cloud of perfection, I am not allowed to explore my pain or to feel my emotion in any way. If I were to do so, too many questions would be asked. I bury every last drop of that pain under layers of white fluffy masks for my family and religious community to see.
Suicidal Agony
And now, back to the story of Saturday night, June 30, 2012.
I sob while watching young David numbly prepare to commit suicide. Then, the agonizing sobs skyrocket as I later observe David’s father panicking and sobbing with horror while holding his son’s limp body.
I never fully understood it until now, but that teenage boy who was me – that lost and transgendered sixteen year old – that younger me who had also been horribly harassed at school – really did want to die – and I mean really, really, really wanted to die. But in my religious beliefs, suicide was the worst possible sin. I could not allow myself to go there.
(Even now, as I write about this experience in early August 2012, I uncontrollably sink into yet another layer of profound emotion. This emotion runs deep, and it seems that writing and integrating has opened yet another layer of unfelt, unreleased emotional pain. Now, after about ten minutes, the emotion is settling. Perhaps I can resume my writing.)
In agonizing clarity, I begin to remember the suicidal emotions of my sixteen-year-old self. I push the “pause button” on the episode of Glee and spend much of the next hour, allowing myself to finally feel and experience that forbidden emotion, losing myself in the most intense, deep, gut-wrenching, dry-heaving, sobbing emotional release that I have ever before experienced.
“Ouch,” I ponder through the horrifying emotion, “this suicide thing is real, overwhelming, and intense. How could I have forgotten this? It feels like it happened yesterday!”
Finally, as the emotion fades, I find the courage to push the play button, watching the remainder of Glee, season three, episode fourteen. Several times during the final part of the episode, I again burst into additional rounds of emotional release. When it is all over, being a glutton for punishment – being determined to feel this emotion to the core – I watch the episode again, once more going through additional rounds of intense release.
Pandora’s Box
Saturday night, as I later go to sleep, I am almost in shock as the emotions continue to flow. I clearly recognize them as being very real emotions from a past reality – and I do my best not to identify with or attach to them – but these emotions are intense and overwhelming.
The emotions are so real and intense that, if I did not know any better, I would actually believe that I want to kill myself – today – in this present reality.
Early Sunday morning, July 1, 2012, I wake up at 2:00 a.m. with feelings of intense social futility drowning my life force. I want to isolate and ask my roommate Sufi to move out. I absolutely hate myself and I loathe the spiritual path I am following. Overwhelming suicidal feelings are pulsing through my veins.
“This is just an unhealed teenage reality that is flowing through me,” I repeatedly reassure myself.
But this reality is literally ‘running the show’ right now. The lid to Pandora’s Box has been removed, and those dastardly emotions have been released. All hell seems to be breaking loose.
An Unstoppable, Frightening Reality
These unfelt and unhealed emotions are in full-fledged self-defense mode, trying to take me down with them. Right now, those emotions are winning. I struggle through the remainder of the night with little to no sleep.
Finally, as I begin to feel some energy at around 8:00 a.m., I crawl out to my computer to take a few notes. As I do so, additional rounds of sobbing, self-hatred, futility, and hopelessness viciously consume me.
Only a tiny thread of observer stands between me and an absolutely knowing – a knowing that impending self-destruction is inevitable – that there is no point in proceeding with my journey in San Marcos – that life, as I know, it is over.
“It is time to pull up my roots – to bail and run,” I ponder the overwhelming feelings. “Right now I really am that distraught sixteen-year-old-me. I do not want to live. I want to just give up.”
What is frightening is that the emotion simply will not stop. It is an entire reality – an extremely convincing reality – a reality that has me feeling paranoid and projecting a feeling of rejection and abandonment onto everyone and everything, everywhere around me.
A Paranoia Projecting Pariah
Finally, at 10:18 a.m., having fought the overwhelming feelings to a point of utter hopelessness, I follow inner guidance and walk out to Keith’s home.
“I know you are busy preparing to leave,” I apologize to Keith for bothering him, “but I’m having a really hard time, and I wondered if you might have any time later today to talk …”
“Come in and sit while I work on my computer,” Keith quickly interrupts me.
“I just want to make sure I am not scamming myself or something,” I blurt out after quickly explaining what is happening to me.
“I get that you are doing the same thing you always do,” Keith tells me.
Immediately, the hopeless teenage-pariah-loser in me hopelessly replays what happened yesterday – making it real. I imagine Catherine slamming me about how I always just cry and lose myself while looping in silly emotions that are not taking me anywhere, blah, blah, blah …
“You are going through another layer,” Keith finishes his thought.
“Oh,” I ponder quietly. “Keith is simply agreeing that I am going through another deeper layer of emotion.”
I deeply appreciate Keith’s loving vote of confidence.
God Drama Projections
But as I sit in silence while Keith continues to work on his computer, I feel quite stupid and out of place. I know Keith invited me in to meditate while he holds space for me … while he keeps working on his computer. But we are not speaking at all, and I feel like I am an unwanted guest that is invading his space. Again, my teenage social-paranoia starts to take over.
I sit meditating for perhaps thirty minutes while desperately attempting to balance myself. Finally, I do feel a small amount of light energy – of slightly comforting energy. Nonetheless, I remain deeply unstable.
It seems that I am projecting teenage emotions of God-drama rejection all over Keith, and I totally feel as if I am just wasting my time – that Keith is not really interested in helping me today. Finally, feeling a tiny bit more stable – I stand up and walk toward Keith’s kitchen door.
“Thank you for your help,” I tell Keith as I start to walk away.
“You should stay longer,” Keith quickly interrupts in a firm tone. “I don’t think you are done yet.”
Love Equals A Covert Attack
In my present state of suicidal struggle, I am shocked that Keith even cares. I did not feel wanted, and had set myself up for rejection. Keith’s firm guidance to stay clearly puts my teenage projections into context.
Again, I sit and meditate – doing so in complete silence – still having no interaction with Keith.
Gradually, I begin to imagine being my sixteen-year-old teenage self – visualizing myself in every agonizing scene of that terrifying lifetime stage. First, I realize that my mother would have been about the same age as I am now.
“Wow, that really puts the age difference between my mother and I into profound perspective,” I ponder in shock.
One by one, I feel myself in every scene of those frightening high-school times. In each scenario, I feel emotions of intense paranoia, painful projection, horrifying rejection, agonizing terror, and a desire to isolate and push everyone away. I could not share my feelings with another living soul – and the very presence of any loving adult, friend, or family member – the very presence of any love at all – was a dire threat.
“If I let someone love me, then they would get close enough to see the absolute freak that I am,” I ponder how that young boy felt. “The realization is eye opening. No wonder I have pushed away love of any kind. I saw it as an invasive threat – one that would expose my sins, causing further rejection and humiliation. I believed that my very survival depended on blocking out all invasions of outside love – love that I absolutely knew would be a covert attack on my shameful privacy.”
Even now, sitting and meditating in Keith’s kitchen, deep suicidal feelings rage through me in convincing fashion.
Painful And Believable
“How are you doing?” Keith finally asks after more than an hour of complete silence.
As I try to share details of my meditation, another wave of emotion surges for release. Speaking between the sobs, I share the whole story with Keith – discussing details of all the suicidal feelings that were repressed and never felt.
Again, Keith returns to his computer and I return to mediation.
“This is happening to show you how many deep and painful layers of emotion that you still have inside of you,” Keith briefly interrupts the silence. “You have to go into them and feel them in order to release them. You were never allowed by others – and you never allowed yourself – to feel those emotions in your youth. They were just repressed and suppressed. You must feel them now in order to release them.”
As Keith returns to his computer, I finally give myself permission to feel more deeply, quickly sinking into more tearful sobs. A minute later, I begin to punch my fists into a nearby cushion. I am desperate to get this repressed emotion out of me. It is poison. I do not want it in me any longer.
Sobs quickly become agonizing dry heaves mixed with coughing and a sensation of choking. Eventually, as the emotion subsides, I sit feeling numb – still experiencing the utter futility of this teenage reality as if it were real in the present day. I absolutely know that my life today is over. It is painful and so believable.
From Darkness Into Light
“Keith,” I finally interrupt the silence. “I am terrified right now. I once suppressed this emotion, covered it over, and built a life on top of it. Now that I am processing into it, I am in so much pain that I am terrified that I will get forever lost in it … that I will lose my life. I cannot function. I am projecting this nightmare onto present-day reality. It does not make any sense, but it is real … and I am paranoid … and it is frightening me.”
Keith listens intently, but then returns to his computer, without further engaging my process.
I sit in this meditation for a very long time. Finally, I feel a glimpse of hope that maybe I can connect to that fleeting light and love. I begin to invite Higher Energies to assist me, to love me, and to hold me.
After perhaps fifteen minutes of focusing on the light, I suddenly realize that the emotions have literally lifted.
I almost have an external giggle (not quite) as I ponder the amazing difference. I no longer feel any of the hopelessness or suicidal feelings … not even a tiny drop of them.
I am literally in shock at how one emotional reality from the past can, in one moment, be so overwhelming and all consuming – and then in the next moment it can just be gone, having no power or influence whatsoever.
For six months I have been playing with allowing past emotional realities to run through me – and once or twice have even transmuted them in profound ways without having to feel them until the bitter end. But what happened today is the most profound reality shift that I can possibly imagine. I was so deep in the suicidal reality that all hope was literally lost – and then in a period of perhaps fifteen minutes that entire reality simply transmuted and vanished.
It is a profound experience – one that I will never forget.
Blown Away And Grinning
I sit in this beautiful space of light and peace for at least another hour while Keith continues to work on his computer.
I feel shocked by the amazing transformation. Exhaustion consumes my body, and a headache buzzes in my third eye chakra, while my crown fills with loving energy. As far as my physical body goes, I am a nonfunctional blob right now – but in my emotional body, I am dancing in the clouds, delighted at how the overwhelming “filters of doom” have simply vanished.
Finally, at around 2:00 p.m., after nearly four hours of meditation, I stand up.
“I think I am done,” I tell Keith with a huge grin on my face. “Thank you so much. I am blown away by the transformation … and all you did was occasionally listen, offer brief feedback, and hold a powerful space for me.”
After going out for a burger and fries to celebrate with my inner children, I spend the remainder of the day either napping, or finishing off the final seven episodes of season three of Glee. My body is still drained, but I have not felt this good in a very long time.
Lessons Learned
Late Sunday evening, as I prepare for bed, I take a couple of hours to reflect on one of the most profound experiences of my life. My heart swells with gratitude. I am actually smiling on the inside. I cannot describe how much lighter I feel.
Prior to last night, I had no idea that emotional regressions could consist of entire projected realities – and that they could have such an incredible and overwhelming pull.
“Keith played it beautifully today,” I ponder. “He invited me into his home as a sign of respect and honor – but he did not validate or enable me in a disempowering way. He kindly acknowledged that I was processing another layer, gave me permission to go there, and held space for me. Through it all, he did not push, pull, or do anything for me. He simply trusted that I knew what to do and held space for me.”
When all is said and done, I learned several lessons. First, I have a new respect for the power of repressed emotions, and why it is important to go into them before they can be released. Higher energies can only transmute them after I go into them, and after I learn all of the reasons as to why I put them there in the first place.
Second, I clearly recognize that each of us is on our own schedule, engaging in our own unique journey. The only thing I need do is follow my own process while allowing others to be uniquely where they are. I would not wish what I have gone through in the last twenty-four hours onto anyone – but wow, am I ever grateful that I went through it myself (at least I am now that it is over).
Finally, I gained more profound understanding of my personal version of the God drama. What I experienced today was real. I wanted nothing to do with any source of love – earthly or divine. All love was a threat, something that would attempt to fix and expose me, something that I felt an imperative to reject. At that stage of my life, blocking out love was literally a form of self-survival – and those protective shields were never lowered. That would have left me far too vulnerable.
And after feeling so suicidal and so betrayed by life, no wonder the God-drama demand for an apology remains so elusive and powerful.
Intense Respect
“Are these horrifying feelings gone forever?” I ask myself.
I do not know. Only time will tell. I do know that they are gone for now, and yes, it feels wonderful and amazing to feel the inner transformation – the profound difference between now and earlier this morning.
I have a newfound hope for life and a giggle in my heart. For once, I even feel a glimmering sense of budding joy and new possibilities in my life.
I am no longer fighting my process. Last night I surrendered to an insanity that I feared would swallow me. And today, I somehow came out different. That old reality literally dissolved, as if by magic – and it was magic – divine magic.
Last night, I experienced a very real “dark night of the soul” … one that, in all aspects, literally took me to the core of that original suicidal reality from forty years earlier.
I have an intense respect for the awesome power of emotional realities – an undeniable respect at how a reality from the past (or from another past-life) can flow with such realism, and then transmute in a heartbeat with the assistance of light, love, self-love and surrender.
Just like that ceremony on Friday, I deeply trust my inner knowing telling me that I need to go through every one of these layers – agonizing tears and all. They are my teachers, my saviors, and my healers.
Giggling Possibilities
As I write about this beautiful experience, now five weeks later, I feel guided to share a few quick updates.
In all these weeks, I have never once lost that amazing sense of wonder for what happened – for how two realities can be so real, and how one can shift to the other in a matter of minutes. Except for a few processing days between then and now, I have never let go of that newfound feeling of giggling hope. Even when writing today, as I burst into a new layer of emotion – it was just that and only that – a new layer of emotion. I never lost that sense of hope and trust.
This profound experience has given me deep confidence in sharing this wisdom with others. Since that day, I have been guided into many opportunities to assist several friends through similar emotional-reality transitions, and the results have been mind boggling for all involved. I love my life … and I love the lessons that these agonizing experiences have brought me.
In mid July, shortly before Keith finally drove his little truck north, through Mexico, and on to Texas, I had the opportunity to question him about that day. When I again shared with him how blown away I was by the amazing shift that took place – and how all he had to do for me was to hold space for me, Keith paused and then responded.
“Brenda,” Keith grinned back at me. “I may not have been working with you in this dimension, but you need to realize that I work in many different dimensions.”
Keith never did explain what he meant, but shivers went up my spine when he spoke those words. I can only giggle at the possibilities.
Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved