Brenda's Bicycles

Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “Terrified Of Joy.”

Exhaustion consumes me as I rest on my pillow, late on Sunday evening. Yet even being as tired as I am, a relaxing sleep eludes me. My body will not relax, and I am still wired at 1:00 a.m., struggling to drift off to dreamland. Suddenly, at 5:30 a.m., I wake from a broken sleep as a neighbor pounds nails in a sign right below my window. It is a sign advertising his family laundry service. I cannot imagine needing to reinforce the nails at 5:30 in the morning. Guatemalan life never ceases to amaze me.

“I know this lack of sleep is part of my process,” I ponder in exhaustion, “but how?”

After attempting to sleep in, I finally give up and follow a new thread, one based on the recent eye-opening understanding that I am indeed terrified of joy. I sit on my bed and force myself to laugh. Immediately, I sink into deep emotional release that lasts for more than a half hour. The dry heaving and coughing are intense, and my lungs are suddenly congested. (They were not congested before OR after this experience).

I continue to sob with streaming tears, while repeatedly attempting to laugh. Finally, after doing all I can do, being unsuccessful in bringing in more light, I surrender to numbness and spend the remainder of the morning watching videos, stuck in a deep funk.

At noon on this Monday, April 15, 2013, as I leave for the afternoon chocolate ceremony, I remain numb and quite dysfunctional.

Good Ordinary Space

The group today is small, with around a dozen people. I begin by holding space for others, imagining myself as an energy butler, making energy available for the taking, if people want it.

Very soon, my solar plexus again begins to hurt. I note with deep interest that the woman sitting next to me begins to hold her hand on her own upper abdomen. Intuitions clearly tell me that I am reading her stuff. I want to assist her, but inner guidance (or perhaps fear) continues to tell me to only share energy from a short distance away. This woman knows I am sending her energy, but I never talk to or touch her, usually holding my hands at least a foot away, with an occasional hand near her head when her eyes are closed.

Eventually, she goes into deep agonizing release, and then finishes her process with profound, joyful giggles.

In spite of my dysfunctional morning, I am in a very good space for most of the ceremony, continuing my “space-holding” while feeling quite ordinary. I focus on allowing more light, and the pains in my belly eventually disappear when the woman next to me finishes her process. Other than that, not a lot happens today. I simply surrender, trust, and focus on being patient with the flow of my being.

A Different Place

In the final hour of the ceremony, I focus on a new image – one of imagining rational mind taking a break as it basks on a sandy Caribbean beach under the sun of divine light. Eventually, after a long period of not feeling much, I begin to experience mild relaxation with some energy pulsing on the third-eye region of my forehead. As I relax more, trying to merely allow and observe, I begin to feel a fearful panic reaction in my solar plexus. As the panic attack surfaces, I imagine myself loving it, hugging it, and thanking it … but not buying into it. I also experience a slight kicked-in-the-gut feeling as this continues.

I do not feel as if I make much progress, but I do sense a cool slight energy flow along with a great deal of inner resistance. I remain in this meditation until the very end of the ceremony.

After not having exchanged a single word with Keith during the entire ceremony, I give him a quick goodbye hug as I prepare to go home.

“How are you doing?” Keith asks with compassion.

But the moment I begin to answer, he is distracted by someone else and walks away. My first gut reaction is to be hurt and offended, to feel abandoned and ignored. But I ignore this ego reaction and begin to cleanup the porch, putting cushions away, etc. I know that I created this distraction at some level to give myself another opportunity to look at a lifelong trigger of feeling ignored and abandoned.

“Thanks for being here today,” Keith soon tells me when he finally returns from his distraction.

“I am in a really weird space today,” I respond with a feeling of confusion. “I don’t really know what I did. I felt lots of energy, but rational mind has no idea what, if anything, I did.”

“You are in a very different place from where you were, even a few weeks ago,” Keith tells me.

A Counterattack

I really don’t know “where” I am, or what this different place is. I am quite dizzy when I stand up to walk home. A great deal of mild energy flows through me. At one level, I KNOW I did beautiful work today, but on another level, I feel as if I was simply “faking it till I make it” – feeling nice energy, imagining sharing it with others, observing others, and feeling emotions. My rational mind feels empty, as if I am a fraud for not really knowing more than this – telling stories that it was all made up.

“Even though I am confused, I know I did something very real, because real emotions were triggered,” I tell Keith as I begin to walk down the steps.

I walk home in a very emotional daze. Mental chatter consumes my mind. I recognize it as “God / Separation drama” chatter – as resistance parts of me wanting to tell and/or listen to stories.

“I know my work today was powerful,” I counter these silly stories. “I hit deep fear and I ignored it. This is that fear trying to fight back.”

When I arrive at home, I am deeply confused. I know I am massively bumping into inner scammers and delay tactics – yet I know that this emotion is profoundly real and needs to be released.

Before doing much of anything, I briefly connect with Facebook, and observe a few posts containing sketchy details about two bombs exploding this afternoon at the end of the Boston Marathon. As I read the headlines and quick summaries, a minor wave of emotion hits me, but I brush it away. I am still overwhelmed by emotional overload from the ceremony today, and feel anxious to release it. I quickly step into my room, force myself to laugh, and even before the first giggle, I sink into deep emotional release.

I do not validate the emotion with stories. I believe I know it for what it is. This emotion feels like old fear and hopelessness from a time when those emotions served me. I see no present-day reason to be feeling this emotion, and sense that it is now coming up to try to scam me. I do not buy it, but I do allow myself to feel and release it. When I am done, I feel lighter, but still quite rebellious – still in a deep hopeless funk. I want to invite the light to transmute, but I am not in a place where I even trust the light. I am now identifying with the emotion. It is MY emotion and that frickin light is somehow to blame, blah, blah, blah.

It seems that somewhere in here, I must have taken the bait. I am dancing in the beginning of a deep emotional loop, and not feeling motivated to leave any time soon. A few hours later, after watching a movie and desperately trying to focus on love – trying to own that all of this is my creation – I fall asleep, and sleep soundly.

Lost In Despair

Tuesday morning I wake up at 6:00 a.m. from a very strange dream – a dream where I was interacting with a former professor who had asked me to teach her “Marriage and Family Therapy” class at a university. For some crazy reason, I had agreed to teach the class, but had made no preparations, had no idea where it was to be held, or who the students were etc.

Just before waking up, I had been frantically scouring a University building, searching for the classroom, already late, having no syllabus, no room number, and no clue. When I wake up, the same confusing emotion consumes me. I get the feeling that the Universe is telling me that I have agreed to teach certain things to others, and that I am not keeping up my end of the agreement.

By 8:00 a.m., I am drowning in a barrage of negative self-talk, overwhelmed by feelings of, “something is terribly wrong with me,” “I will never overcome my flaws,” and “F#ck it all, I just want to throw in the towel and give up.”

Inner storytelling is raging, using my depressed mood as a soapbox to rant and rave about why I am a pathetic victim of everyone and everything.

I want to write about one of my most profound emotional growth experiences ever, and here I am at the exact opposite extreme of the emotional scale. I quickly retire to my bedroom in an attempt to release emotions, but nothing changes. I am still lost and stuck.

I start my writing preparations anyway, first beginning to reread my most recent blog as I always do before writing a new one. As I get about three-fourths of the way through, I run back into the bedroom to sob. I am drowning in deep emotions of sadness, smallness, hopelessness, and futility. I sob and sob. Each time I try to bring in the light, it does not work; I just go deeper into despair.

Eventually, I step into the bathroom to stare in the mirror. But I cannot even look into my own eyes. The reflected face is horribly ugly and distorted, sneering back at me with a pathetic scowl.

Powerful And Convincing Crap

Gradually, I find the ability to stare into my own eyes, and about twenty minutes later, that ugly scowl is replaced by a huge glowing grin. It is a major transformation, and for a while, I am filled with joyful hope. I still want to write. I still want to have a productive day, but the joyful hope is fleeting and difficult to maintain.

I cannot focus, and 11:00 a.m. comes and goes, as does 11:30, and noon, etc. Finally, at 2:00 p.m., it becomes obvious that I am not writing today. Instead, I pop some popcorn and begin a movie marathon, hoping to lose myself in something else.

As the movie ends, my friend Sufi unexpectedly knocks on my door. I invite her in. We talk, and I cry. I attempt to explain where I am at in my process.

“I am cycling in and out of emotion on a minute-by-minute basis,” I tell Sufi. “My mind is rampant with stories. I do not even believe the stories. I have been aware all day that the stories are bullshit, and not me.”

“Wow, this is profound,” I share with Sufi. I do not identify with the emotions, yet they are powerful and convincing just the same.”

Crazy Rapid Intervals

I realize that I am at a new level of awareness – still being lost in the stories, but clearly observing myself do it without believing them or fully identifying with them. It is as if I am at a new level of choice point, in a big way. I am at a place where I want the light … well sort of. I have enough experience with trusting the light that I know it can help me, but right now, such help feels impossible and hopeless.

I do not want to live in this insane emotion any more, yet a very strong part of me would still rather choose the agonizing emotion rather than make the effort to surrender to the light. I actually know this emotion is bullshit … yet I am familiar with it. It is a known and safe entity. It is NOT fun, and definitely NOT how I want to feel, yet obviously the dominant part of me DOES want to feel this way, or I would have already embraced the light and let the emotion go.

I am in a state of awareness, yet am so deep into feeling the emotions that I do not want to give them up.

These emotions really suck. In one moment, I surrender to the light and find a smile with real joy. Then, just a minute later, I am at the depth of despair, saying “F#ck you light.”

The observer part of me is fascinated by what I am seeing and learning. I know I am in a profound place – at a profound level of growth and awareness – even though I am wildly cycling into and out of dysfunction, doing so in crazy rapid intervals.

I do not feel ready to leave this wild state. I am dizzy, overwhelmed, unable to stay anywhere for a very long. I am getting a magical glimpse into my inner temper tantrum – into my pathetic, hopeless God-drama loop. At least, that is what I think I am doing.

Magically Educational

Sufi and I are both starving and we decide to go to dinner together. Through the course of the next few hours, I cycle, cycle, and cycle. It gets to the point that I repeatedly joke with Sufi, acting as if I really am psycho. (At this point, it would not take much to convince me that I am.)

“Hi, my name is Brenda, who are you?” I ask her every few minutes.

Sufi plays along by giving me a different name each time.

“How long have you been sitting there?” I might ask. “Are we friends? Do I know you?”

I feel like a crazy, insane, mental, nut case. I am extremely loopy, like a different person every twenty seconds – one moment feeling alive and divinely connected, the next feeling like a hopeless loser, drowning in despair.

But through it all, I find humor and profound encouragement. I realize I am not crazy at all. I realize that I am beginning to clearly recognize the absurdities of my life, of the insane emotional loops that have held me hostage, and I can joke about it.

The entire experience is overwhelming, but magically educational.

Sufi leaves me at my doorstep at just after 8:00 p.m.. I am exhausted, but unable to unwind or relax. Still, I go to bed anyway, focusing on surrender and relaxation. Eventually I fall asleep.

The Setup

After a fairly restful sleep, I wake up on Wednesday morning feeling slightly better, but still not functional. I spend the entire morning, again numbing out with videos. Soon, I drag myself to Keith’s home, setting up his porch for an afternoon chocolate ceremony. As I finish at 12:20 p.m., many new people are already crowding the porch. I am polite and friendly, but rather than entertain them with ongoing conversation, I close my eyes and attempt to meditate in the nonstop inner craziness.

After Keith’s normal introduction speech and beautiful “Glow Meditation,” I am lightly whimpering with my eyes closed. I feel quite hopeless as Keith announces that we are now entering the part of the ceremony where he spends a lot of time working with individuals.

“Brenda,” Keith suddenly surprises me. “You are going to be releasing a lot of density today. Trust yourself and go for it.”

I love Keith’s unexpected guidance. It helps to get me out of my own way, giving me permission to feel what I have been attempting to suppress. Almost immediately, I sink much deeper into my emotional process.

“Keith,” I speak up, “I feel like I hit a brick wall on Monday evening and Tuesday morning, hitting it at a hundred miles per hour. I took in a little dense energy from the situation in Boston, but it wasn’t that much.”

“Tuesday morning,” I continue,” I ate my chocolate oatmeal, really wanting to write. But by the time I was done eating, I was on the edge of sobbing. I went to my room for ten minutes of emotional release, hoping that I could let go of some of that emotion … and then, more than three hours later, I finally said “eff-it,” giving up and putting on a movie. I simply couldn’t function. Sufi came over around 4:30 p.m. and while talking to her I was literally into and out of suicidal hopelessness and then back to the light on a minute by minute basis, blah, blah, blah.”

A World-Class Empath

“Stop right there,” Keith interrupts me mid sentence. “You have known for some time that you are a powerful group empath. Now you are finally starting to figure out that you do the same thing at the world level.”

Keith goes on to explain that the bombings at the end of the Boston Marathon triggered a lot of repressed societal hopelessness, and that a lot of that collective emotion is now running through me … and that I am believing the emotion to be my own crazy dysfunction.

Keith’s words shock me. Prior to this moment, I had never imagined that my empath magic functioned at this level.

“I remember after 9/11, when the World Trade Center came down, that I was a total mess for weeks,” I explain to Keith with surprise. “At the time, my life was already somewhat falling apart, and I thought all of the emotions I was feeling were from my own personal struggles.”

“No,” Keith confidently reassures me. “You WERE taking in the 9/11 energy.”

Keith coaches me that I can do this much more easily. He reminds me of a belief system I still carry, a belief that “If I am not suffering then I am not doing anything.” Keith helps me to realize that right now I am deeply suffering and feeling this emotion, because I feel it is my duty … and suffering is the only way I can relate to others … etc.

Effortless and Hopeful

As Keith and I converse, I focus on relaxing and expanding my heart. As I do so, I feel my inner suffering cease, and things inside feel much lighter and smoother. In fact, I feel hope and peace.

“You are actually processing more emotion now than you were a few minutes ago when you were suffering,” Keith shares a new insight.

“Really?” I ask with surprise. “I can’t feel anything now.”

“Pay attention to what is happening inside you,” Keith coaches me.

“I feel a gentle rumbling vibration in my heart,” I share a minute or two later. “It is like a big river or something is flowing somewhere nearby. But I would never have felt this or figured this out if you hadn’t guided me to pay attention.”

Keith and I continue to talk for a few minutes. I remain in this nice, effortless energy. In a weird way, I am kind of in shock while no longer suffering.

Internalizing Unbearable Pain

“A pushed-out part of you is now ready to return,” Keith then surprises me.

He shares guidance that this part of me is mainly related to my heart, solar plexus, and throat areas, but possibly other areas as well.

I go into deep relaxation, attempting to allow and surrender to this “soul-retrieval” integration, but I feel helpless, doubtful, and frustrated. I am stuck in my head and do not feel anything, no matter how much I surrender and allow – other than some occasional tingles in the high-heart and throat area.

But rather than succumb to this inner rational-mind doubt, I “fake I till I make it.” Over and over, I force myself to let go of doubt thoughts, replacing them with belief thoughts, knowing thoughts, and positive, confidence-building “this is really happening” thoughts. Even so, I do not feel much as intense frustration festers in the background.

As Keith moves on, I start to realize that my entire life has been quite like this. I have believed myself to be the quintessential loser, knowing that something is horribly wrong with me, and that all of the sadness, pain, agony, and hopelessness that I felt were my own personal emotions.

“My life has been flooded with hopelessness, and much of it was probably not even my own emotion,” I ponder recent events. “In fact, as far back as I can remember, whenever there has been a televised disaster, I have glued myself to the television, taking in every detail, feeling everything deeply.”

Before I learned to numb myself down and detach, I was extremely sensitive to world disasters, tsunamis, earthquakes, space-shuttle explosions, riots, and wars. Through all of those times, I wallowed in heavy emotion, wondering why I was such a loser.

“I believed all of those feelings to be MY dysfunction,” I ponder with shock. “Wow! I was always hurting and suffering from sadness, pain, fear, blah, blah, blah,”

Inner Anger And Rebellion

A while later, as Keith begins to do deep educational work with a few unknowing empaths, I start to feel deep anger surfacing inside of me.

“I have spent my whole eff-ing live believing that something was horribly wrong with me,” I sink into the emotion. “I was not just taking stuff in from parents, family, or workplace, etc…, it was at the planetary level. I eff-ing hurt; I suffered; I was in betrayal agony, especially after 9/11. I am pissed that I have suffered like this.”

In the midst of this inner burst of self-understanding, I feel betrayed by higher powers for forcing me into this agonizing emotional journey … blah, blah, blah.

But I know the truth. I know I designed this lifetime and that I wanted to experience and get lost in all of this stuff, so that one day I could wake up and help heal the planet. But this crazy emotion is real and intense. The anger I feel is overwhelming. Rather than repress this, I consciously choose to allow the anger to surface. I have to feel it before it can be transmuted.

Screaming Rage

As Keith begins the experiential stage of an ongoing empath training, I imagine Archangel Michael standing in front of me, perhaps six feet away. I am determined to participate in this training for the umpteenth time, and I expect that it will likely be another frightening empath experience for me, triggering deeply buried fear and dysfunction.

But instead, my mind is drawn to a different place. I remember recent experiences of meditatively throwing emotional density at angels, and screaming through a metaphorical tube. As these memories surface, I realize that my inability to be a fully-functional empath stems from the fact that my lower chakras remain extremely clogged – plugged and blocked by a repressed lifetime collection of hopelessness, suicidal feelings, and self-loathing anger.

“I want this emotion out of me,” I ponder with determination.

Immediately, I disengage from the empath training, and imagine myself screaming out the intense rage through a metaphorical tube, sending it right to Michael. I trust that Michael is well equipped to be a temporary target of my inner rage.

Throughout the ongoing empath training, I imagine screams of anger and despair raging out of my throat. These screams stem from overwhelming feelings of being abandoned, alone, clueless, helpless, and victimized. These are feelings of resentment about how I was given such powerful magic – but without any training, that magic had become my worst nightmare, the taproot of a lifetime of self-loathing dysfunction.

The anger that spews out of me is deep – much of it more than five decades old. Some of the anger is quite recent however. It stems from the sheer hopelessness of still not feeling as if I am getting the help I need to heal this inner Pandora’s Box.

I know this putrid rage is all part of my blah-blah God drama tantrum, but I am determined to feel it to the core, as deeply as I dare venture, hoping that if I do so I can bring in the light to transmute it.

Depths Of Despair

The deeper I go into this cesspool of emotion, the less I want to involve the light, and the more I want to feel the emotion. But still, I hang onto the observer thread. I am determined to go down there and scream this stuff out of me.

“I may be scamming myself with more God-drama delay tactics,” I ponder with curiosity, “and I may be just digging through a mountain with a spoon, but what I am doing feels very real and necessary. I give myself conscious permission to go there.”

For the majority of the empath training – and even for some time afterward – I pull a scarf over my head, partially hiding from the world. Under that veil of secrecy, I am sobbing, crying, shaking, dry heaving, and screaming in silence – literally screaching at the top of my lungs, but without making a sound.

Finally, as I realize I have gone as deep as I dare go, I yearn for the light, love, and joy to fill me. I attempt to give up the anger, trying to release it, but instead, I seem to be clinging to it. I do not want to give it up.

I soon visualize myself at the top of that “Jagged Edge” waterslide, reminding myself that I chose this wild journey, and that I wanted to get lost in this agony. I made the decision to come to this planet in 1955, acquire my training by getting totally lost, and then wake up so that I would be the age that I am now during this phase of the planetary awakening.

I KNOW this is true at one level, but this awareness does nothing to soothe the fact that I am eff-ing angry at God AND at myself. In fact, I am quite clear that this is ALL self-anger and self-loathing for having agreed to get intensely lost in the NOT knowing rational mind … in the helplessness, hopelessness, and despair.

Right now, I am at the depths of that despair, not knowing what to do or how to proceed. I want to let this go. I want to love myself. But I cannot go there.

Searching for Light, Joy, and Self-Love

I hold Bobby-bear, squeezing him tightly to my chest. I invite light, joy, self-love, and whatever source of unconditional love, trying to surrender, but feeling futile as I experience my own insane resistance.

I repeatedly try to surrender, asking for the light, but when I do, a stronger feeling of “I really don’t want that eff-ing light” consumes me.

I eventually remove the scarf from my head, continuing to whimper here and there as I attempt to reconnect with present-day physical reality. Gradually, I begin to feel a little better, a tiny bit lighter. I even get the sensation that maybe some of the heaviness is being transmuted, but I get the feeling that most of the lightness is coming from having done a significant amount of emotional release via the “hard bus” methods.

I am in a state of shock, confusion, disorientation, and cluelessness. Eventually, as I continue attempting to relax into the light – trying to allow a tiny smile and a smidgeon of joy, a friend turns to look at me. We stare into each other’s eyes for about twenty minutes. Gradually, I begin to feel increasing nudges of self-love, but I am still resisting … still unable to smile or laugh. My friend smiles a few times near the end of our eye-gazing encounter, but I still cannot muster the ability to remain in the smile.

Finally, I close my eyes and go back inside.

Dysfunctional Payoffs

“Brenda,” Keith interrupts briefly, “there is a ball of light above your head, just waiting for you to let some of it in.”

I sit in frustration for the next hour, feeling stuck and unable to allow myself to feel any magical energy. The storyteller in me feels ignored by Keith during my deep state of need, yet I know I am perfect right where I am, and I know there is nothing anyone else could say or do to make this any easier. I know that I do not need outside help, and that no one can coach me using rational mind regarding how to do something that is not done with the mind.

“I have done it before,” I encourage myself. “I CAN do it again.”

But I remain stuck, feeling quite hopeless as the ceremony begins to fade. Many around me are stacking pillows and folding blankets, but I am NOT done, and I am in a state of semi-shock.

Keith continues to work with a few people, and literally, most of what he says to them feels as if it he is speaking directly to me. He is talking to a few other empaths about their journeys, talking about how they feel as if something is wrong with them. And then he talks about their inner payoffs for remaining in the dysfunction – excuses for remaining in smallness.

“I am still playing these silly payoff games,” I ponder in confusion. “I am still refusing to let this putrid emotion go, even though I know it is at the core of my dysfunction. Wow! It sucks.”

Despondent Resistance

Finally, as the porch is nearly empty, a friend asks if there is something she can do to help me.

“I don’t know,” I reply with despondency. “I am totally lost. I don’t know anything right now.”

I appreciate the gesture of support, but am too hopelessly lost to do much. Soon, this friend just sits down right in front of me and sends energy my way. For about five minutes, I am blown away as I feel a cool breeze of loving energy flowing into me, beginning to change how I feel on the inside. I sense the energy as beautiful, loving, and magical – but I remain resistant, and am unable to let most of it in. A few minutes later, this friend stops, and returns to her seat. As she does so, I feel the cool, magical energy quickly vanish, and I am back in the deep stuckness.

I later tell take a few minutes to share with this friend just how beautiful and magical her energy had been.

A Personal Journey

“Brenda,” Keith shares at the end of the ceremony. “You got a huge, eye opening awakening today regarding another level of what you do.”

I quickly explain the intense victimized anger that I have been releasing today – the intense bottomless cesspool of rage regarding how dysfunctional my life has been because of this magic.

This leads into a deeper discussion of the God drama, as Keith again explains that this is MY game, that I am still playing it, and that I need to own it.

“I do own this is what I am doing,” I defend myself. “Today I observed and felt myself refusing to give up my anger, my emotions, my ammunition, my game.”

Keith is very compassionate in the conversation, yet equally unbending in his determination to point out that I am playing this game, and that I can keep playing it until I am done.

“Can’t you give me any help in working through this?” I beg for advice.

“I wish I had more guidance to share about how it will happen for you,” Keith responds with compassion.

He goes on to explain that it is different for every person, and that we must each follow our inner process as it unfolds.

Hugely Positive Cluelessness

I feel so clueless and lost, yet I KNOW that today was hugely positive in my process. I did have massive eye-opening insights about being a world-level empath – profound understanding about a lifetime of dysfunction. Yet I also recognize that much anger yet remains repressed inside me. It is anger that has been buried and hidden. Yes, much was released today, a large percentage in fact, but I know that more remains waiting to be found and transmuted.

“I know so much more now than when I came to the ceremony today,” I ponder with hope. “I am in much less denial and a lot more inner knowing … yet I am still lost and clueless.”

“I just need to bring in more self-love,” I share my plan with Keith.

I then tell him how I have been trying for more than an hour to access that ball of light he mentioned earlier.

“Love your self for being in that place,” Keith encourages. “This is the most important thing you can do … loving yourself for being exactly where you are.”

As I prepare to walk home, I again thank Keith, acknowledging how I absolutely know that today was powerful for me – mentioning that I am in shock, but that all is good.

I walk home at the usual snail’s pace, very slow, very lost, very confused, very happy, and very sad. Yet I remain quite confident that I am in a powerful place. My entire focus right now is attempting to love myself, even in the midst of intense, not-knowing, stuckness.

As I prepare for bed, I am shocked to read Facebook posts regarding another world disaster today – one involving a fertilizer factory explosion in West, Texas. While drifting off to sleep, I do everything I can to focus on love and higher energy. I do not want to run any more intense emotion through me in a painful way.

An Inner Demon

Thursday morning, after a much-needed restful sleep, I again trudge back to Keith’s porch at noon, continuing to feel quite numb.

“How are you doing Brenda?” Keith asks as he sits down in his seat.

I begin to cry as I briefly summarize my ongoing stuckness, how I am trying just to love myself. I tell Keith how I stood in front of a mirror, trying to love the woman staring back at me, but it is very hard, and that all I can do right now is numb myself with more movies.

Keith is compassionate, showing deep interest in my journey, validating how difficult it can be.

“Many people I know are in similar states of deep God-drama stuckness right now,” Keith reminds me that I am not alone.

Again, we talk about my God-drama, how I need to love myself and own the game I am playing.

“I feel helpless and hopeless,” I beg for guidance. “I think I own that I am playing these games, but no matter what I do, the wham, wham, wham hits me so hard that I don’t feel capable of hanging on. It is as if there is a demon inside of me.”

Keith again compassionately acknowledges how hard it can be, but does not give me more advice.

Lost And Drowning

Keith then speaks to the whole group, matter-of-factly explaining all about the God/ Deity/ Separation Drama to the new people. He gives a long, detailed beautiful description of how we play out our emotional pain with inner children, with parents, with relationships, with health, with abundance, and with teachers. We do this in all areas of our life, until we eventually reach the level of realizing that it is really about healing the games that we play that keep us separate from Source.

As Keith gives this explanation, he is smiling with a huge grin, speaking with no emotion, almost laughing about the crazy journey we set up for ourselves.

“I wish I could wipe that shit-ass smile off your face,” I speak to Keith in jest.

I am shocked by my own blunt courage, but I really mean it. I feel like his smiling enthusiasm is very insensitive and not compassionate to someone in the midst of the pain. It feels kind of like walking up to a funeral and invalidating the grieving of those who have a loved one that just passed away.

Of course, I know and acknowledge the truth of Keith’s words – and of course I know the silly absurdity of playing out an inner tantrum with the very light and love that can heal me – and I see that the inner tantrum-thrower in me is doing everything to project blame outside of myself.

I know, I know … I am massively projecting my pain onto Keith. I know that it is all one big cosmic joke, and that one day I will be able to laugh and smile about it too – but right now, I am lost and drowning.

An Inner Ego Rant

Keith spends nearly a half hour in a beautiful explanation to the group, talking about the complexities of the God / Separation drama. Repeatedly, he acknowledges with compassion, the intense, deep, and advanced work that I am doing.

I feel embarrassed for my earlier comment. Keith is profoundly validating my process right now, but he is also not turning back to work with me in a direct way. I know that there is nothing Keith can do to enlighten me. Healing my dysfunctional God-drama tantrum is an inside job.

“But why can’t he give me personal assistance in better understanding exactly what are the elements of the game I play? Blah, blah, blah.” The inner ego voices chatter.

I know that this part of me is begging for rational-mind guidance to solve a dilemma that simply is not solvable using the rational mind. But this “knowing” infuriates ego.

I ignore this inner trauma and continue to trust that all is perfect. Nonetheless, I remain deeply stuck in hopelessness.

The Wrong Tool

“Brenda,” Keith turns to me when his beautiful speech is over. “You have heard that a hundred times before, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” I acknowledge with clarity. “But it is all just words, words, words. I understand all of it at the rational mind level, but remain clueless as to how to move beyond it when rational mind is not the tool. I have no clue how to surrender.”

“It is a technique-less technique,” Keith shares something I have also heard hundreds of times. “You either do it or you don’t.”

I want to slap Keith for making it sound so easy … yet so impossible.

“How do I do it if there is no way to DO it?” I ponder in exasperation. “ARRRRGH.”

As Keith works with a couple of other people, what he does with them is perfect for my process. It is not direct God-drama work, but deeply touches on my struggles.

One woman is dealing with deep jealousy issues. Keith helps guide her on a right-brain journey, during which much of what he says is exactly what I need to hear. The words later escape me, but they involve deep understanding of trust, surrender, and not being able to figure out the answer with rational mind.

As Keith works with the second individual, he triggers an understanding that, “I am hating my rational mind.” The issue has to do with an incessant rational mind that wants to do everything by itself. Keith suggests that rather than hating rational mind’s stuckness, that another approach is to give the mind permission NOT to have to do everything all by itself.

As I eavesdrop about my need to love rather than reject rational mind, I remember an Albert Einstein quote, one stating that, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

“I have been demanding that my rational mind figure this out,” I ponder with clarity. “Yet rational mind is not the correct tool to do so.”

As insane as it sounds, I feel deep anger toward rational mind for not being up to the task.

Childhood Clarity

Immediately, memories of childhood tantrums begin to surface in my mind – tantrums quite similar to present-day God-drama games. Beginning at around age five or six, I have numerous memories of throwing a fit with my mother when I was asked to do any type of creative activity for church or school. I have analyzed these memories many times, but never before “felt” them in an experiential way like I do today.

“I cannot do this,” I remember the agonizing childhood emotions. “I don’t know how to do this. If I try to do it by myself, I will do it wrong. People will ridicule me. They will make fun of me and not love me if I do it wrong, blah, blah, blah.”

Even at that young age, my right-brain, intuitive, creative side was almost completely shut down. I now realize that this childhood tantrum is EXACTLY what I am doing now. I was terrified that the left-brain logical side of me did not know how to do something. Because of that, I demanded help. I needed someone to hold my hand through anything that did not have a well-defined recipe. I was brilliant in my left-brain, yet I absolutely knew that I would fail if someone did not step in and help me. My little logical mind was helpless and incapable of doing the right brain’s job – yet I did not know how to access the right brain magic. I required extensive hand holding and constant validation every time someone expected me to take a tiny step outside the logical box.

An Impossible Task

“Wow,” I ponder with shock. “Today I am putting this same pressure on rational mind, I am throwing an intense tantrum that it doesn’t know how to do what I am demanding of it. It doesn’t know how to figure out the answers. It doesn’t know how to induce a mystical experience.”

It is clear that I am frustrated, nervous, uptight, demanding, angry, and insisting that my rational mind is a failure – a defective loser – because it cannot solve this unsolvable riddle for me. I am demanding that it do a job that is impossible for it to do. Rational mind is an expert in words, but it does not have the ability to give actual experience – and it is actual experience that I need now.

With words, my mind could describe my experience of macaroni and cheese with color and flare, but no matter how hard I try, I could never convey the actual taste and texture. To complicate matters, every person that tries to describe macaroni and cheese would use different collections of words, doing so from their own unique perspective, with their own version of the truth according to them.

Likewise, with spiritual experience, when people try to describe a mystical experience, there is a cultural tendency to fixate on the words – debating whose description is the truer one – intellectualizing spirituality with left-brain logic. The experience itself is completely ignored, while the words are often turned into dogma.

The only way to truly learn about macaroni and cheese is to have the actual personal experience. And my left brain is simply not the tool to guide me into the spiritual and emotional healing that I desire … period!

“I have been really hard on my rational mind,” I ponder. “It is time to give it a break … to give it a little love rather than criticism.”

A Much Deserved Rest

As Keith guides Steven deeper and deeper into a magical process, I am surprised when he asks Steven an unexpected question.

“Can you feel that some of your new expansion and peace is streaming over toward Brenda, and that she is letting a little of that in?” Keith asks Steven.

“Brenda, you are not letting all of it in,” Keith tells me with I glance up with curiosity. “But you are letting a little in, and the rest is remaining in your field for a future time when you are ready to receive it.”

As Steven tells Keith that he can feel a little expansion energy flowing my way, I also note that in the last five minutes I have actually begun to feel a tiny bit lighter, feeling a little more hopeful and slightly less self-loathing.

I perk up, listening more, while increasing my relaxation and focus on allowing without doing. For a while now, I have been quite gentle on my rational mind, actually asking it to take a break, to sit on a beach or take a nap – getting a much-deserved rest from all of the impossible responsibility that I have dumped onto it over a difficult lifetime of unreasonable expectations on my part.

A few minutes later, Steven turns to look at me. Almost immediately, our eyes lock in an extended shared gaze.

A Bumpy Energy Flow

“Brenda, relax more,” Steven eventually coaches me. “Allow and ask your rational mind to take a nap.”

I giggle inside as I know this is the exact same metaphor I have been imagining. With Steven’s encouragement, I again ask my mind to take a much-deserved breather.

“Please, just allow and don’t feel pressured to concern yourself with needing to do anything right now in my process,” I silently whisper to my nervous rational mind.

As I do this, I feel a lull in the mental chatter. It is nice and peaceful. Gradually, I experience some type of rough energetic vibration in my body. It is similar to the mild inner shaking that might happen while sitting next to loud speakers, or by a roaring waterfall. The inner feeling is a personal experience, impossible to adequately describe with words.

This shaking vibration is not what I expect. It is not joyful, nor is it happy or liberating. In fact, it is almost distracting and uncomfortable, slightly unnerving, like something I would have pushed away as anxious or negative.

“How do you feel now?” Steven soon asks me.

“Still sad and unmotivated,” I respond with an unknowing shoulder shrug. “But I am feeling this new energy in my heart, neck, and head.”

“This energy is who you really are,” Steven surprises me.

I feel puzzled because it is still not what I expect. It feels rough and bumpy. I sit in this space for a few minutes, continuing to feel this roughly flowing energy. Steven again tells me something quite similar.

“You are looking for this outside yourself,” Steven leans closer and whispers to me. “You are looking for it in my eyes, and in other sources. You need to find that validation directly within your own heart.”

“This is not coming from me,” Steven reassures me. “I am not doing it or giving this energy to you.”

Steven stares into my eyes for a while longer. I continue to feel this energy, increasingly surrendering into it with full trust, discomfort and all. Eventually, Steven moves on to work with someone else.

A Trusting Peaceful Journey

For the next three hours, I sit in total, peaceful silence while observing this energy as it churns and moves things in my body. It feels like an uncomfortable “Goddess’s Operating Table” where things are being worked on at a higher level. It is not painful, but there is considerable vibration, twitching, and churning, in many places.

Gradually, the energy experience expands, moving into the shoulders and upper arms, and moving down through the lower heart, solar plexus, and eventually lower belly regions. As it reaches the second chakra below the belly button, it first twitches and churns on the right side, and then later on the left.

Through it all, a deep sense of trust and inner knowing tell me that this is some type of energy expansion – one that is somewhat uncomfortable and a little painful at times. Intuitions whisper that a part of me is returning. The energy in my body feels increasingly complete and solid, but also quite ordinary – nothing especially magical in nature. But I am quite clear as the pains move around. It definitely feels like expansion and awakening rather than some type of density.

Almost constantly, I keep asking rational mind to, “Please sit on the sidelines for this one.” I ask it not to try to keep tabs, to refrain from play-by-play announcing, and to just trust without needing to understand anything.

Rational Mind Fix

As the ceremony nears completion, the unexpected, different energy continues to churn here and there. But increasing inner chatter whines and complains that I am lost and ignored, not knowing what I am doing, and that I need some type of validation, blah, blah, blah.

I sit in a weird funky energy until the end of ceremony. As music plays next door, I temporarily lighten inside, but I cannot maintain that feeling. I grow increasingly numb and lost.

“How are you doing?” Keith asks me as I am preparing to leave.

“I have no clue,” I respond in confusion.

“Good,” Keith responds with a smile.

“Keith,” I politely beg, “I would love some type of feedback to help me trust what I am doing. I have no idea if I was working with real energy or just scamming myself. I really love how Steven helped me trust myself a little more today, and I would just like more of that type of assistance from you.”

“Brenda,” Keith responds. “I have increasingly been guided NOT to give you that. It is like giving you a rational mind fix that just enables you and does not serve.”

“It is time for you to stop trying to figure things out and stop using rational mind,” Keith soon adds. “And trying to help rational mind is just prolonging the problem.”

Painful Compliments

I kind of understand what Keith is trying to tell me. In fact, in retrospect it is exactly what I was focused on working with today, but in this moment I feel hurt and rejected. I just want a simple comment to reassure me that what I am doing is valid and productive. I believe I am making great progress, but still want that hand-up here and there, saying “good job.”

As I push the issue, Keith tells me that he is guided that it is time for me to start getting feedback from other sources, from people like Steven, and from the same sources that guided me to go back to school, and to travel etc…

I am now feeling deeply abandoned, as if Keith is saying he is not going to help me anymore, and I am being told to finish cleaning up remaining struggles all by myself. I know this is not the case, but this is the emotion raging through me.

“Whether you did amazing work today, or whether you were scamming yourself big time … either way it was perfect for your process,” Keith reassures me. “It is exactly where you needed to go for your growth as your flow is designing it.”

Without verbalizing, I grumble inside, because I see other magical people getting profound help, and here I am, feeling stuck, alone, and abandoned.

“Brenda,” Keith reassures me, “you are advanced enough in your process to know that you cannot do it wrong, that all is perfect, that every experience is your creation, and that you need to quit thinking about it, quit trying to figure it out, and just trust your flow.”

Keith is giving me huge compliments, but I take them in a painful way. An inner tantrum is brewing, insisting that I am being abandoned, and that I cannot do this by myself. Sound familiar?

Angry At Rational Mind

In my present state, following Keith’s advice just to “trust my flow” feels like giving up – like saying that I am going to fail. The part of me in charge right now absolutely knows that the only way to move forward is if I make it happen. I know this is a lie, but it sure feels real right now.

Even though I am “debating” with Keith, I am profoundly impressed by his patience with me right now. In many ways, I am being like a child throwing a hissy fit, and he is giving me beautiful answers – just not the ones I want to hear. They are not answers that help soothe the rational mind. I still want to figure things out, and feel helpless and angry that I cannot.

“I figured out today that my rational mind has been frustrated and angry at all of the unreasonable expectations that I have put on it,” I then share a new insight with Keith. “My whole life, I have been demanding that rational mind be able to solve all my struggles.”

“Brenda, it is not rational mind that is angry,” Keith suggests. “It is more likely that YOU are angry at rational mind for not being able to figure out.”

An Abandoned Ego

Keith then reminds me of an article he shared with me a couple of years ago, one written by Jach Pursel – the man who channels Lazaris. Keith suggests that I read it again. But even without doing that, I remember enough to get the point.

As memory tells me, it was an article about “negative ego” – what I would normally refer to as just plain “ego” when I write. Without going back to find and quote the story, I remember that it talks of a corporation mailroom employee who was left to run the corporation all by himself. The employee does his best to complete his duties, but it is an impossible and overwhelming job. The story then compares this character with negative ego, talking about how there is a positive ego in charge of our survival in this physical body. But that, when left to do the job all by himself, with only the use of rational mind, without higher dimensional assistance, the mailroom employee can get frustrated and angry, feeling resentful and abandoned, sabotaging and throwing tantrums, fighting against the corporation. I do not fully remember the details, but this is enough for my purposes.

I clearly realize that Keith is suggesting that, “it is my ego that is angry at rational mind.” It is my ego throwing the tantrum, frustrated and angry that rational mind cannot figure everything out and take me to enlightenment. It is this hopeless and helpless ego demanding help and validation at the rational mind level. … not believing that the help can come from anywhere else.

“My childhood temper tantrums with my mother were just like this,” I ponder with clarity. “And my emotional tantrum right now is exactly the same thing. I am still angry that I cannot figure this out with rational mind. And this dominant ego part of me refuses to cooperate because it is a rigged game. I won’t do it if I cannot first figure it out, blah, blah, blah.”

Wow, it is so clear, yet I am so lost.

Raging Emotions

Even though Keith is giving me exactly what I need, I go home feeling confused and dejected. As I cook dinner, Sufi stops by for a chat. As I attempt to explain my confusing emotional state, I am shocked by the agonizing emotions that suddenly surface – deep suicidal feelings of hopelessness and failure, insisting that I am a fraud and a loser.

“Would you read my story if I write a book titled “Adventure to Suicide?” I painfully joke with Sufi. “It would be a book about four amazing years of beautiful synchronous events and growth, ending in wanting to kill myself.”

We joke with each other, because I know I will not do that, yet the emotions flowing through me right now feel just like that. The emotions demand that I am a screw-up with no future. Right now, the very thought of attempting to stand in front of a mirror, loving myself back to the truth, makes me want to vomit. It is all I can do to remain the observer of these self-hatred and self-loathing emotions.

I DO Know How

Just after 8:30 p.m., I call a dear friend back home. I am not calling to share stories and seek validation for my negative state. I am reaching out for a helping heart to guide me back into a heart-spaced knowing.

It is a conversation filled at times with sobbing emotional release, allowing heavy, agonizing emotions to flow out of me. It is a conversation of beautiful channeling, helping me remove the words “I don’t know how” from my vocabulary, replacing them with openness, willingness, and courage to surrender even further. It is a conversation instilling confidence and trust that even though I still fear the light, that the light is the very magic that will soothe and heal in ways that rational mind cannot comprehend.

“The words ‘I don’t know how!’ are what close the shutters, blocking the light out,” my friend channels beautiful words. “Then the pain seeps in and the light cannot help you, creating doubts. When all the childhood hurts, confusion, and pain flood in, and you can’t make heads or tails of it, wrap your arms around your self, and ask the angels to do it too.”

Near the end of this long and beautiful, healing conversation, my dear friend points out that I am abusing myself, like a parent hitting their own child.

“Quit holding yourself hostage,” My friend shares. “Your ego is holding you hostage, literally holding a gun to your head. Love everything about yourself, no matter what, even the self-hatred, self-loser emotions. Don’t fight it … hug it, love it, love it, love it, no matter how angry, sad, or happy.”

An Emotional Revelation

It has been a wild and educational four days, beginning in a state of exhaustion, which always makes things more humbling in the end.

The ceremony on Monday began as any other, with a nice energy and a realization that I was again reading a few pains empathically. In the process of following synchronous breadcrumbs and flowing hints, I asked rational mind to sit back and bask on a beach. Rather than control my process, I put a great deal of focus on surrender and trust, without knowing or needing to know anything.

Even before reading a few Facebook posts on Monday evening, I was already experiencing a confusing energy flow of unexpected emotion as the ceremony neared conclusion. I believed that the confusing emotions were simply part of my process, something from inside me. After briefly feeling a kick-in-the-gut while reading about the bombings in Boston, I did not connect the dots. I just continued to spiral ever downward, believing everything I felt as being my own.

And a wild emotional ride it was, taking the rest of Monday evening, all of Tuesday, and a portion of Wednesday. Tuesday was by far the worst as I lost myself in helpless, insane, rapid emotional cycling – in hopelessness that made absolutely no sense based on my present circumstances. If Keith had not said something early in the Wednesday ceremony, I may not have put all the puzzle pieces together.

But as I went back in time, reviewing countless memories from the past, it became increasingly obvious to me. I am one of those empaths who takes in emotional densities from all over the planet. So much of my life now made sense. Yet, as I pondered the chaos in my life, other emotions then raged forth – emotions of repressed anger and rage for how my life has been so screwed up. I really wanted to project responsibility elsewhere. I really wanted to be a victim of those dysfunctional empath abilities.

A Rough Few Days

After spending most of the ceremony on Wednesday, deeply exploring this repressed despair, anger, rage, and victim emotion, I hid under a scarf. I called in Archangel Michael and used a recent metaphor to scream out as much of this putrid emotion as possible, doing so without making a sound – other than the sounds of sobbing, dry heaving, and coughing that is.

It was a day of deep understanding and compassion from Keith, a day of delving ever deeper into the reasons why I continue to resist bringing in the light. In fact I was unable to drop my defenses enough to feel even a little of the divine love and light that I know is waiting and abundantly available.

After letting myself get to the bottom of an agonizing emotional layer, I struggled to remind myself that I chose all of this, that I wanted to be born in 1955, get hopelessly lost in the rational mind, get messed up by emotional chaos, and then struggle to wake up – all in the name of learning compassion. It was a day that left me in a state of shock and confusion. Even as I increasingly understand more of the payoffs, I seem helpless to stop the inner tantrum.

And ouch, Thursday is painful as I explore the inner tantrums of an ego that is deeply angry at rational mind for not being able to solve this unsolvable riddle – for not being able to come up with a useful recipe to help me slip into magical enlightenment using words and techniques all documented in a neat little recipe.

With each experience, I am blown away by the simplicity of how a childhood tantrum with my mother is exactly what I am doing still, even with Keith – demanding that this is a rigged game and that I cannot do what is expected of me without constant hand holding help and repeated validation. And the deeper I lose myself in the ego tantrum, the more the hopelessness becomes overwhelmingly real. It boggles the mind that something so obvious and simple can be so insanely complex to undo.

I am so thankful for loving, inspired friends who remind me who I am, who gently point out how ego is holding me hostage, how my tantrum itself is what closes the shutters and blocks out the very light that I so crave.

I get it, I really do. Self-love and self-compassion are key … as are trust and surrender to the “not-knowing” of things that rational mind cannot yet comprehend.

It has been a rough few days, but I am still on the path, hugging open wounds, feeling much stronger, much wiser, and much more compassionate with myself.

… to be continued …

Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved