Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “Disappearing Defiant Density Dramas.”
After spending the morning working on the final touches to my second blog in two days, I hurry off to Keith’s porch, setting up the chairs, rugs, and cushions for what turns out to be a large and crowded group of around thirty-five people.
Early in this Wednesday, March 20, 2013 chocolate ceremony, I recognize that I am again deeply immersed in pain. My heart feels open and alive with peaceful energy, but my abdomen aches with a vengeance. Intuitions quickly whisper that I am getting another deep glimpse of repressed empath abilities – that I am not eating dense energies from other people, but that I am reading them in an excessively painful way.
When I glance at Keith for quick confirmation, he mentions that the solar plexus pain is really strong on the porch today … and three of my very magical friends all validate that they too are experiencing the same intense pains in their solar plexus.
Stir Crazy
I focus on holding space and assisting as an empath, doing so from the safety of my seat. By 3:00 p.m., I find myself experiencing so much physical discomfort that I feel as if I am severely backsliding … wanting to run away from the ceremony … desperately not wanting to be here.
Even though I am not internalizing this density, just reading it without eating it, the agonizing pain frightens me. The shut down parts of me in the abdomen are throwing a huge temper tantrum, telling me to “eff-it all and go home.”
But I stick it out a while longer, struggling to ignore the discomfort, not listening to head chatter, deeply trusting that what is happening is for the best. I am exhausted, worn down to a frazzle. Fear and panic repeatedly demand that I get the hell out of here, but I do not judge and I do not budge from my inner knowing.
Finally, at around 4:30 p.m., I do seriously consider leaving … and running away. We are bagging another three-hundred pounds of chocolate tonight, and I need to leave anyway at about 5:00 p.m. to home to get some dinner before returning.
But when a young woman speaks up in tears, asking for assistance, inner voices tell me to remain a little longer.
Trauma-Causing Magic
The young woman explains how she is scared because she is eating a lot of density today, and she believes it is related to her God / separation drama. Keith and Steven take turns working with her in a process that deeply inspires me.
“I am so in that same scary place,” I speak up at one point, deeply resonating with the young woman’s panic.
Then Keith begins to work with another woman across the porch, one who is also in deep emotional and physical pain. Keith works with her from the perspective of her childhood shutdown … of how she ended up being punished for her painful empath experiences … for her emotional struggles that those around her did not understand … creating deep pain and fear for her magic.
I deeply resonate to all of this processing. It is very moving.
Gradually, I realize that the part of me that has been painfully struggling all day – the part that has constantly wanted to run away – is that magical little girl in me who is terrified to take another step into the direction of further opening up this trauma-causing magic.
Opening The Gate
I quickly go inside and connect with the “magical Brenda.” Together, hand-in-hand, I imagine us playing in the magical fun house of my inner theme park. As I do so, I realize that this is the first time the magically-awake part of me has ventured into the fun house in which the magic is not shut down. She had gone into the shut-down fun house, and the shut-down me had walked into the magical fun house, but I had never visualized the magically-awake me walking into the fun house that is alive with magical power and joy.
I feel joy and confidence in this place … but a great deal of fear also surfaces.
“If this really is a conscious choice-with-blinders-on, then I need to get serious,” I ponder with conviction. “Through most of my life I have chosen to remain as that shut-down Brenda … being afraid, small, and filled with pain, blah, blah, blah.”
I quickly connect with the magical, joyful, powerful Brenda, and together we decide to do something wild and adventurous. After asking her to get the keys to our inner theme park, we confidently walk up to the front gates. She puts the key into the lock, turns it counterclockwise in a full circle, and unlocks the gate.
Together, we push on the heavy bars and swing the gate open, after which we throw away the key.
As we step through the entrance, I am overwhelmed by panic and distraction, unable to take more than a few meditative steps into the wonder of my magic.
“But we are at least inside the gate,” I giggle with confidence.
I decide it is best right now to take baby steps, to not push. Rather than forging ahead in the intense fear and distraction, I sit with my inner child, focusing instead on my resolve to embrace the magical me, to choose power and joy over being that squished loser.
Glowing Love, Giggling Release
My friend Kelly, the first young woman who had initiated this recent round of processing is now in deep giggles as she progresses in some type of inner opening. I love what I see.
She soon looks in my direction and we lock eyes, sharing a deep resonance together. She starts to cry and I do the same. I am overwhelmed by an emotional mix of deep love and sadness, swirling together. I see her profound purity, innocence, love, and perfection. I see her as an external mirror of my own female inner child, little Sharon. I silently imagine her as being me, the lost, beautiful magical me, desperately pleading for her to please come back and join me, filling me with who I really am.
I want to embrace this part of me. I really, really want to wrap my loving arms around my magical child, holding her for eternity. In this pure glowing state, I cannot imagine ever having hated her … though I know for a fact that self-hatred, self-loathing, and self-judgment have been dominant themes in my life.
This external reflection of me is glowing, magical, pure, and lovable. Soon, Kelly moves and sits directly in front of me. I open and close my eyes frequently, imagining my dear Sharon when my eyes are closed. Each time I open my eyes and stare into Kelly’s reflected gaze, we both begin to giggle.
But as I giggle, I sink into intense dry heaving, allowing another deep layer of emotional density to flow out. When I come up for air, breathing in Higher Energy, I again open my eyes, briefly stare into Kelly’s loving face, and then quickly go right back into another round of emotional release.
Magical Returns
Finally, after about fifteen minutes, the emotion settles and the glowing gazes are more magical. I am now completely ignoring the clock. This is much more important than dinner.
As I stare into Kelly’s eyes, I feel warm, magical, energetic, beautiful love flowing into my heart, my high-heart, and my throat regions. Intuitions whisper that I am actually allowing lost parts of my own magical inner girl to actually return via a form of soul retrieval.
In addition to the magical energy and sensations of expansion, I feel profound feelings of inner strength returning in slow-but-steady layers.
Finally, Steven reaches over, grabs Bobby bear, and tickles me with him. As he does so, I again begin to giggle, and sink into more release. Steven does this several times, and each time triggers yet another layer of release.
But each release brings the magical flow of more love … more energy … more surrender … more feeling of profound love for my magical inner children.
When I return Steven’s glance, I see Bobby, my male inner child … recognizing his profound love, his glowing purity and innocence, the perfect image of a perfect magical child.
“How could I have ever hated him?” I ponder with shock. “I cannot imagine hating such purity and perfection. I want that magical little boy back.”
As I do this, I begin to feel the masculine strength returning to me as well … both Bobby and Sharon embracing and gifting me with a return of my true masculine and feminine loving balance.
Magical Mirrors
To my delight, Steven and Kelly soon begin to stare into each other’s eyes as I watch with amazement. This is a profound mirror for me, as Steven represents little Bobby and Kelly represents magical Sharon.
For most of our life, these two aspects of me have loathed each other.
For the first time in my life, I now feel the love that these two parts of me have for each other – recognizing each other’s innocence, purity, genuine unconditional love, and deep appreciation for our shared journey.
As I observe with profound wonder, I experience even more strength expansion in the heart and throat areas of my body. Profound love saturates my being … love for my self, for my inner children, for the magical ones who are me. I want them back … and I feel them returning … wow.
Finally, I feel complete – as least as complete as I will be today – and I give squeezes and hugs to both Steven and Kelly. I share huge compliments on their magical glow, and they mirror similar comments right back to me.
I am so grateful that I remained on the porch. There is no more time for rice and beans tonight, so peanut butter and honey sandwiches will have to do.
Healing Lifelong Feuds
“You did beautiful work today,” Keith later shares as I hug him at around 9:30 p.m., after finishing the bagging process on three-hundred pounds of yummy freshly ground cacao.
I realize that Keith knows absolutely nothing of the story details of what I actually did, yet he probably understands it all energetically. I smile inside as I walk home in the dark. I know that the story itself does not matter. What matters is that I am finally beginning to experience deep and profound self-love – glowing, unconditional love between the masculine and feminine parts of me that have been engaged in a lifelong feud.
I am magically glowing and deeply exhausted when I finally retire to my bed sometime after 10:00 p.m. – it was a crazy-making painful day, one that turned into a magical adventure of profound love.
Separation Agony
Thursday morning, I scurry down to the boat dock, zoom across the lake for banking and shopping, and somehow manage to get home by 10:30 a.m., with just enough time to finish the final edit of “Tough Love Tantrums” – publishing this second blog that I had begun on Tuesday afternoon. I barely make it to the Thursday workgroup ceremony in time to set up the porch.
By mid afternoon, I remain in a nice energy, but not feeling anything special. I am deeply curious, beginning to wonder where I might go with my own process today. Soon, a woman across the porch talks about connecting with the pain of her birth – with the sterile metal environment, the bright glaring lights, the fear, and the emptiness, etc…
Keith guides her back to the experience, and she manages to find magical love, rewriting her own history.
Then another woman, who has energetically joined this first woman on her other-dimension journey, shares her own intense experience. She was born caesarean, feeling the same agony of being thrust into a painful, disjointed, separate world, blah, blah, blah.
While I listen, emotions stir inside. I deeply relate. I too was caesarean. I have meditatively experienced that pain before. In my own journey today, I go back to that pain, experiencing the deep fear, the “I don’t want to be here” separation agony, the terror of “what the hell did I do by deciding to come here?”
At this moment, I am energetically connected to this deep fright … to knowing that right from the “get go” I had changed my mind about wanting to be here on this planet. It is terrifying emotion.
A Vertical Drop
Suddenly, as I experience an overwhelming energy rush, a visual image flashes into my mind. I see myself sitting at the frightening brink of a water slide called “The Jagged Edge” – a water slide where the first hundred feet or so are a petrifying vertical drop – a freefall that feels as if life is coming to an end.
“This is how I felt in the first milliseconds of being born,” I ponder with clarity. “It was like a vertical drop with no safeguards … a “What the hell; get me out of here!” terror. That was quite traumatizing for a baby.”
As I literally re-experience this terror, I clearly realize that I chose to get on the water slide of this life. I came here for the thrill of the journey, knowing that some of the experiences would be terrifying in the moment, but that the adrenaline rush would be amazing if I could let go of the fear and just take the leap of faith.
“As a baby, I really was in this state of terror,” I ponder with clarity. “This fear imprinted on my emotional body as a decision of not wanting to be here on this planet.”
Resonating Confirmation
At this stage in my process, I have not said a verbal word to anyone else regarding what I am doing.
“Brenda,” Keith suddenly turns to speak to me. “I am getting that for you, this process is about accepting that you chose this journey.”
When I ask Keith to clarify, he explains that I wanted to make this journey and that I set it all up in the first place, and that there is no one to be mad at or rebellious toward.
I am blown away by how acutely aware Keith is of what I am doing and feeling, sharing this insight right at the same time when I am pondering the same exact truth, even though we had not exchanged a single word before this point.
“This resonates profoundly,” I explain to Keith as I briefly fill him in on my inner journey with the waterslide.
Freefall Insights And Giggles
When Keith moves on, I take my inner waterslide metaphor to new levels – to the point of giggles. As I imagine myself repeatedly sitting at the top of that frightening waterslide, making the leap, I meditatively experience the adrenaline as I come to a giggling, skidding, safe finale at the bottom. I then imagine myself having to quickly adjust my swimsuit, so as to avoid embarrassment.
“This really is a wild and intensely fun ride that I am on,” I ponder. “Saying it is an amazing journey would be an understatement. The first thirty years of my life feel like the freefall. In the next stages, crazy water was raging in my face, the next ten years began to get better, and now, the last eight years are reaching a point of astounding growth and healing.”
“And I am really just beginning,” I giggle silently. “I am rewriting my own story of that initial frightening freefall as a child, reminding myself that I am the one that climbed those stairs and placed myself on the jagged edge of that vertical precipice – that I am the one that chose to push myself over the edge into that terrifying freefall. I wanted the ride … I chose the ride … and it is proving to be wildly amazing now that the terror is subsiding.”
“It would really be quite silly to be angry at the owner of the waterslide for creating the terror,” I continue pondering. “I chose it. No one else pushed me. In fact, I am the owner of the theme park where the waterslide is located.”
Electrifying Energy Experience
This process proves magical for letting go of more layers of childhood God-drama tantrums.
As I begin to return to the reality of the porch, I see my dear friend Kelly crying across the way. I quickly follow inner guidance to go sit in front of her. I feel such a profound connection to her. At the very moment I sit down, she goes into deep sobs. I sit in high energy and begin by simply holding space, eventually placing one hand on each knee. I focus on bringing in Higher Energy, asking our two Higher Selves to work together, asking Higher Dimensions to direct the flow … because I certainly do not know what I am doing via the rational mind.
Gradually, the energies in my body begin to reach amazing levels of vibration, with delightful openings from root to crown consuming most of my abdomen, chest, neck, and head areas. The energetic experience is so amazing that I do not want to move, and I do not want it to stop. The more I surrender, the more powerful and energized the experience grows.
I am glowing with vibration. I love the electrifying experience. Never before have I felt like this, especially when working with another person. I have approached such an experience a few times before, for brief periods when meditating by myself, but this experience goes on for an hour or more.
Mostly, both Kelly and I have our eyes closed while my fingertips remain on her knees. I feel a great deal of energy in my fingers, and Kelly herself also appears to be blissed-out in a glorious state of relaxation.
After the ceremony, Kelly confirms that she was also experiencing much the same profoundly magical, electrifying, energetic vibrations.
Solo Magic
Finally, Keith begins to talk to someone about doing work with a past life contract. When he mentions my name in the conversation, I get the impression that he wants me to pay attention, so I disengage from Kelly and quietly return to my seat.
“Keith,” I ask curiously,” are you saying that I need to go find another contract?”
Keith’s answer is more of a round-about maybe, yet I get clear inner feelings telling me to pay attention. But before we start this new meditation, two other people on the porch go into beautiful and amazing multidimensional experiences. I remain in my own magical, glowing, electrifying experience, but I love watching the process of my friends.
“Brenda, how are you doing?” Keith turns to me somewhere in the middle of this.
I explain my beautiful energetic state, and mention a few solar plexus pains that are now unexpectedly surfacing.
“Good,” Keith responds, and then turns back to work with my friends. I love the quick acknowledgment, and need nothing more, knowing that Keith is profoundly aware that I am doing very well on my own.
Journey To The Unconscious
Finally, Keith guides a couple of my friends into their past-life contract work. I follow along, doing my own parallel journey, in my own unique way, first imagining myself walking down a long flight of steps, going ever deeper into the subconscious and then the unconscious. I have done this before, so I go on ahead, imagining myself going ever deeper, taking elevators, sliding down poles, spiral staircases, continuing down until I feel I am at my destination.
Eventually, I find myself in a small room with an alcove, where I see a tiny table with a parchment scroll. I imagine myself unrolling the scroll, but I am unable to see anything written.
When Keith asks people to read the first paragraph (not doing so verbally), I ignore the visual problem and remember that everyone works differently … that some see, some feel, and some sense …
Flowing Ideas
As I confidently trust, feelings begin to channel slowly through me.
“Power corrupts,” suddenly pops into my mind.
This seems to be the title statement. I then begin to sense ideas and meaning, but no accompanying words. I myself begin to put words to those ideas.
“Power is the root of all evil. It corrupts men, causes ego, pride, judgment, and destruction,” more ideas flow.
I do not pay much attention to trying to find the right words. I am mostly just feeling the message of what is written in this contract.
“Humility is the key to salvation,” more feelings flow … feelings that come all at once in a mingled jumble … feelings like “obedience, follow the commandments, respect authority and don’t make waves, blind faith, …”
“Suffering is the key to true forgiveness and worship,” more feelings flow clearly. “Be small, insignificant, serving others, blending in invisibly, sacrificing your needs for those of others.”
“Joy is not allowed,” the contract continues. “Joy leads to pride and sin … it is irreverent, and improper.”
“Sexuality is a grave sin,” more feelings flow. “It is the path to hell and corruption. It leads spiritual people astray from Higher Powers, making them lose themselves in the evils of carnal desire.”
At times, I feel as if I am making some of this up … but it is very real. The ideas come slowly and strongly, emanating from a pool of feelings, not actual words. I trust this and know it is real, even though I want to doubt.
An Easier Approach
“Connect with your Higher Self or Higher Energies and find a way to break the contract,” Keith eventually guides the group in this meditation. “Ask them to help.”
As I do this, I remember my intense struggles, over two-and-a-half years ago, in one of my earliest private sessions with Keith. It was a session in which I had unexpectedly found a past life contract where I had committed to “work, work, work” until I reached enlightenment (See Blog “Sun Spots Episode 9,” published August 5, 2010). In that journey, destroying the contract had been an agonizing journey … one requiring intense focus … one ending when I finally understood that destroying the contract was actually fulfilling the contract.
As I focus on HOW to destroy this newly discovered past-life contract, I get the sense that, as before, this one is deeply binding and unbreakable. But rather than trying to do all the work myself this time, I ask my Higher Self to take over. I clearly understand that, while this contract was necessary and valid for other lifetimes, that it does NOT apply to this one.
To my delight, as I focus on how “easy” this can be with Higher Dimensional support, I feel the contract quickly burn up into a transmuting fire. Then the fire becomes bright light and dissolves into nothingness. It seems almost too easy.
Searching For Breadcrumbs
I observe with amazement as Keith works with several people, helping them to process their experiences. Many of them are quite mind boggling and magical.
“I am in a beautiful energy, but my gut feels as if I was kicked again,” I share with Keith as I tell him about my own experience.
“Go inside and find out what it is,” Keith encourages.
I try to follow inner breadcrumbs, but no such metaphors appear in my thoughts. No inner guidance seems to surface.
A minute later, Kelly goes into deep process. Keith asks several people, including me, to assist her while he handles an unexpected delivery of freshly peeled cacao beans. I quickly occupy the bench seat directly behind Kelly, placing my right hand gently on her neck, with my left lightly touching her high heart. I experience a great deal of energy flowing through my hands and my body as I connect and share.
Caught In The Act
“Maybe my kicked-in-the-gut feeling is coming from reading Kelly’s painful energy,” I suddenly feel inner curiosity.
“No,” Keith tells me a few minutes later when he returns. “This pain is yours.”
A while later, I get the clear intuition that feeling kicked in the gut is a sort of backlash from having opened so much more of my power recently – a type of counterattack from the part of me that insists I must remain shut down.
As I follow this idea deeper into meditation, I get the feeling that this is my shut down child trying to distract me and to pull me back into delay tactics.
When I share these new insights, Keith validates that I am right, that this is my negative ego attempting to sabotage and pull me out of my newfound power … trying to get me to stop.
“When I figured this out,” I giggle to Keith,” the kicked-in-the-gut pain just vanished.”
“Yeah,” Keith explains. “When you catch the negative ego in the act, it no longer has any power.”
I am getting so much more aware.
Feeling The Backlash
After the ceremony ends, many of my friends are going to dinner at a local restaurant, but I choose to stay home. I know my presence is welcome, and even wanted … but I also honor my inner desire for alone time. After nearly seven hours in a chocolate ceremony, I crave a quiet evening with time to ponder.
After an evening of beautiful energy, I wake up on Friday morning feeling quite weird. I dilly dally all morning, trying to ground myself, but am deeply distracted, somewhat rebellious, and annoyed. I do NOT want to go to the ceremony today … at least a very strong and dominant part of me does not want to go.
“Wow,” I ponder in the midst of this funk. “Something really big must be up. Bring it on.”
When a casual friend from four years ago unexpectedly begins to chat with me on Facebook, I begin to recognize that this funk is regarding social issues. This was a friend I had made while acquiring my Masters Degree in Counseling. I remember how there had been many social struggles with a few of my classmates during that timeframe.
Last night, walking home from ceremony, a young man had attempted to engage me in angry storytelling about what he saw as unreasonable distractions by a few people during the ceremony yesterday. I had lovingly disengaged, not validating his opinion, actually telling him that I found the distractions helpful, and suggesting he go inside to figure out why he was manifesting that in his life. That young man was not at all happy with my words.
Then, recent memories surface – memories of how a few friends have occasionally been projecting their issues onto me. It breaks my heart to see people being triggered by my very presence. I love these people, now more than ever.
“Part of me wants to drop my newfound inner power, returning to being a people pleaser, and begging these friends to please love me … trying to figure out how I can win their love back,” I ponder.
It is obvious that I am in a deep space of feeling the backlash – a backlash demanding that if I embrace my power, that I will lose more friends, that I will create more and more social chaos in my life, and that I will never again be able to relate to others.
Frantic Ego Stories
The inner conversation flows nonstop. I clearly recognize that I am in a deep depressive funk over not really wanting to own my personal power. Part of me absolutely knows that my inner truth now differs from the beliefs of many people – many of whom are my friends or family.
As one example, I know many people who seem annoyed by the fact that I do not embrace their belief systems regarding various dietary issues. My belief systems work for me, and I feel deeply guided to stick with my inner knowing, even though it differs greatly from most accepted ideas out in the world. I silently smile and simply own my personal inner knowing … but I struggle with how to respond when a friend says something to subtly slam or scold me for eating sugar, or salt, or meat, or not embracing their ideas about this or that.
Even worse is the self-slamming stupidity I feel when I refuse to validate someone’s victim story. I feel like the worst friend ever when a friend struggles, and when I cannot, in good conscience, validate their story.
“Opening to more power is just going to create more chaos and conflict in my life,” I ponder the fears that are parading in my head. “Opening to this power will cross my protective lines in the sand, causing more social suffering, more judgments and projections from others, and absolute collapse and/or betrayal in my life.”
“Letting others have their truth, and not needing to defend myself when their truth criticizes me, feels like social suicide,” I ponder these fears. “Even while trying to defend my honor throughout my life, I have barely survived what felt like the depths of betrayal. Not defending my self feels like giving up, like a guarantee that my life will forever be one of being unjustly projected onto by others.”
“Embracing my power and not defending my self makes me feel as if old and past emotional abuse will now just go on unchecked,” I continue pondering the ego fears. “Doing so feels as if I do not care about friendships. And not people-pleasing also feels as if I do not care.”
“I may as well say “eff-it all” right now and just walk away,” ego screams in my head, “because more power will attract more attack, and much worse, blah, blah, blah,”
These frantic ego stores are laughable, but very convincing.
Going Anyway, Staying Anyway
On my way to the ceremony, I bump into a young man who asks how I am doing right now.
“I don’t want to go to the chocolate ceremony today,” I share with this young friend, “but I am going anyway. I know that whenever I have so much resistance, that something big is about to happen.”
(It is only later that he tells me that he too did not want to go, but because of what I said, he had gone anyway, and had a good experience himself.)
After the chocolate ceremony begins, I note that there are only a few regular people present, and more than eighteen new people, many Spanish speakers, many of them empaths, and many of them stuck and in fear of going below the surface of rational-mind thought.
I isolate and disconnect during a great deal of the ceremony. I am unable to concentrate in any way. I am distracted, rebellious, feel like a loser, overflowing with dread, and want to just run away … but I hold my ground, trusting that something big is on its way.
A Fake Loser Fraud
“I am having another ego backlash,” I tell Keith at one point when he checks in with me. “I feel as if I am backsliding. An inner temper tantrum is raging. I am lost in the emotion, while somehow managing to be the observer … but feeling deep frustrations.”
But I am not the only one who is stuck. The energy on the whole porch is quite the same.
About halfway through the afternoon, Keith begins an empath training. I am not engaged, still lost in my own world of wanting to bolt out of here.
At one point during the training, a woman to my left is in deep emotional release.
“Brenda,” Keith surprises me, “most of her stuff is coming your way.”
I cannot feel her energy right now, but I trust Keith’s observation. Making an attempt to pull myself out of a slump, I turn and engage in my magic, faking it till I make it, supporting the woman from a few feet away. For about a half-hour, I hold space, occasionally coach her about using the light, and encourage her to trust, surrender, allow, and let herself go deep.
As I do so, I feel like a fake, loser, fraud. I understand the rational-mind stuff behind what I am doing, but I do NOT feel the magic happening inside me. As a result, I feel like my stuck inner child is getting angry. I realize that a source of my inner self-loathing is based in this same feeling, but in reverse – based on having my feelings invalidated by rational mind, having that magic bullied and shamed out of me.
Agonizing Resonance
After the empath training ends, I remain lost in limbo, still feeling deep rebellion.
I continue to listen as Keith explains to others about how when they were three years old, they took this stuff in, got no validation, and were punished for it.
“You absolutely knew something was really wrong with you,” Keith tells these new empaths in the group.
“Ouch,” I ponder. “These words kick me in the gut in a resonating, agonizing way.”
“I am absolutely terrified that if I open any more of my power, that this “something wrong with me” will be exposed in the biggest of ways,” I ponder the flowing insight.
Every time I have ever tried to open my personal power, I have been slammed, rejected, and made wrong. The more powerful I get, the more I KNOW that I will fail and be broken – broken to the point of suicidal pain, of never wanting to try again.
Choosing Freedom
As I ponder this intense emotional pain, I am determined that I am NOT going to buy into this false ego temper tantrum any more.
“I know it is a choice to loop in this tantrum,” I ponder with clarity. “The other choice is to return to the Higher Energies where I have profoundly played in the last two days.”
I remember a fairly recent experience where, while working with Keith, a Higher Being had helped me to temporarily suspend an intense inner temper tantrum. I meditatively ask for this same experience to be repeated – for the tantrum to be lifted – but it does not leave. I then focus on bringing in more light, and gradually begin to feel a little better.
Then I focus on my magical experiences with Steven and Kelly, just in the last two days. I visualize their magical glowing faces.
“I want this magical part of me back,” I ponder with deep longing.
I imagine myself returning to the entrance of my magical theme park, finding the gate still unlocked and open. The theme park remains abandoned. As I try to visualize myself walking inside, I am overwhelmed with distraction, being unable to focus, so I quickly return to recent loving memories of my work with Steven and Kelly.
Open And Exposed
Then, something very magical begins to happen.
The group around me remains quite stuck, even after the empath training. I watch as Keith follows his guidance. What unfolds is deeply magical, at least for me.
For perhaps the next half hour, I observe with amazement as Keith discusses the God / separation / deity drama. It is the most beautiful, most well-put-together speech regarding the God drama that I have ever heard. I giggle, because Keith is not even talking about it in terms of calling it the “God drama,” but literally everything leaving his mouth, every single word, is inspired and in perfect order. Sentence by sentence, Keith’s guidance takes me deeper into the emotions behind my own angry, temper tantrum with deity.
Deeper and deeper, I gain profound clarity into the childhood knowing that “I am a loser” … into the childhood temper tantrum, the utter refusal to cooperate with Higher Energies or God. I experientially feel the anger of, “F#ck you God if you expect me to open this magic up and cooperate, because this stuff devastated me as a child, and I will not do it.”
Keith’s monologue goes on and on in beautiful unfolding. Meanwhile, I am crying and crying, doing so in waves. I am working on bringing back more of magical Bobby and Sharon – but I am not doing it with my head. I am loving them, holding them with pure compassion, inviting them to come home, intending them to please return, and deeply feeling the energies opening, strengthening in my heart, high-heart, and throat areas.
The experience is profound and magical. I am mostly back to my Higher Energy state, but part of me continues to cycle back and forth, between the magical me and the shut-down part of me.
But the shut-down part of me is now out in the open and exposed. I still feel its presence, but I am not fighting this me. Instead, I am loving the shut-down me … holding it … feeling compassion for the struggles it has gone through. The only thing different, is that I am no longer validating the stories behind it.
Profound Growth, Deep Emotional Sharing
At one point in Keith’s discussion, I speak up and thank him for the beautiful personal experience that this has been for me.
“How do you know this stuff about me?” One deeply stuck young woman then asks Keith when he nears the end of his beautiful speech.
I can see that this woman resonates with Keith’s words, but is struggling to believe. I can see and sense the pain and recognition in her eyes. I really want to express the emotional insights that are begging to be shared from inside of me. This woman is deeply stuck with her bubbling emotion and I feel strongly guided that my experiential understanding can help her.
Keith soon asks another magical friend to share what she sees about this young woman. My friend goes on for a while, sharing feedback at what I perceive as a wordy and totally rational-minded level.
When she is finished, I can no longer contain myself. So much is flowing inside me with such deep emotion. Without asking permission, I start to fill the pause with my own heart-felt feedback.
“I have heard Keith’s words at least a hundred times before, and every time before today they were just words,” I speak to the struggling young woman as tears stream down my cheeks.
“But today, I finally understand at a deep and agonizing level, just how as a tiny child, beginning as a baby, I believed there was something horribly wrong with me, and I have lived with this my whole life. Finally, today, as I listened to Keith’s words, I felt them to the core, realizing that I am refusing to open to Higher Power and God, etc, because I absolutely KNOW that something is wrong with me … and that opening my heart more will just cause that defective knowing to destroy me. Any more light, joy, power, or magic will just create more pain, rejection, sadness, loneliness, and betrayal, etc…”
I say these words with genuine tear-filled emotion. My heart is wide open. The feelings leave my lips with profound self-truth and self-love. I am overcome with deep and joyful emotion at the understanding flowing through me, at the understanding I am attempting to share via always-inadequate words.
A Perfect Ending
Suddenly, the same woman who was speaking before me bluntly interrupts and turns the conversation back to herself, launching into a fifteen minute speech (one, that in my perception is very self-aggrandizing), invalidating my words by talking about how it doesn’t have to be painful, sharing her powerful story in a rational-mind way. My ego-bullshit meter is loudly sounding its siren. I know that my own story is just as powerful, as is the story of everyone else on this porch. I am sick and tired of this person’s story being touted from the rooftops. It is no more extraordinary than the story of anyone else here. Most everyone present, in their own way, has left or is in the process of leaving their old security behind. They are embracing new magic, and shifting their life with profound and often quite-blind faith.
I ignore what I perceive as the ongoing sideshow, but it stings of a lifelong pattern of being upstaged and pushed back into my place – being subtly invalidated and being replaced by a social butterfly with a popular story. (This really happened in my employment about twenty years ago.)
In a funny way, I see this interruption as perfect. I have just had perhaps one of the most profound, emotional, heart-based, experiential realizations of my life, and was sharing those experiences with genuine sincerity. Suddenly, someone reenacted my old social pattern. She jumped in to steal the limelight, invalidated me for talking about the emotional pain, and pulled the social attention back to herself.
“When will this crap end?” I silently ponder with confusion.
“It will end when I stop refusing to be powerful,” the answer flows confidently from within. “Only then will I no longer have my less-than-smallness repeatedly rubbed in my face. This is a magical stage play, created by me … for me. Ouch.”
I see this stage play as a perfect ending to profound magical growth. I feel no need to finish what I was trying to say before being interrupted. I shared my pure heart. I am quite complete with magical transparency at this point.
Celebrating Growth
As the ceremony dissolves to final chatter, Keith begins to deeply congratulate me for my growth and progress today. I do not remember the exact words, but I do remember the emotion I felt behind them. I clearly heard that he was in profound recognition and validation of what I had done today – that he was deeply proud of me for the magical growth and opening – for being at a deep “choice point” in my God drama loop, and for choosing the joy, the power, and the magic, rather than the smallness.
We did not talk much during the ceremony, but Keith now spends considerable time working with me, sitting in front of me, celebrating my day. He invites me to look into Nancy’s eyes, and tells me that she too is celebrating for me.
“We are profoundly connected,” I giggle, in reference to my friendship with Nancy.
“Keith,” I then ask for feedback. “I feel like I want to go further with this, but also feel as if I am probably done for the day.”
As I say this, I sink into a few waves of sobs.
Relaxing, Allowing, Letting Go
“Brenda,” Keith begins to work with me, “there is something now … a major part of the fear and resistance … that is ready to go.”
Keith quickly asks Nancy to assist, and tells me that if I can release it, the two of them will receive it from me. I immediately go into my head, “trying” to release this resistance.
“I just shut down by attempting to “try” releasing,” I explain to Keith.
“Go back to relaxing, allowing, and doing nothing,” Keith encourages. “You don’t need to do anything … just let us receive.”
Occasionally, Keith does something that I have often craved. He gives me an energetic play-by-play, letting me know when he senses something being released … when a slow stream is now flowing. This feedback profoundly helps, because I am able to match his words with what I am feeling in my body, learning to more fully trust what I am experiencing in my own senses.
Finally, I experience intense pains in my upper solar plexus. Holding my belly, I sink into deep tears for a couple of minutes.
“Brenda,” Keith lovingly reassures me, “these pains are the density that you are now ready to let go.”
This feedback gives me the confidence to feel pains to the core, after which I bring in the light. It seems that this is one particular layer that I must feel deeply in order to release it.
Emotions Of Gratitude
Nancy tells me that I have the magic. Steven comes over and briefly joins the party, reminding me that it is just a matter of letting go. I love my friends. I trust and believe what they are telling me, but am still feeling like a beginner compared to where they are in their sensitivities.
“I know what you are saying is true,” I share with Steven. “But it is not so simple when I am in the middle of God drama cleanup / resolution.”
“I am so grateful for having to do this the slow, hard way,” I soon tell Nancy a few minutes later, “but I would not wish what I am going through onto anyone.”
“You are doing this so you can help others,” Nancy chimes in, “so that they won’t have to do it this way.”
“I know this,” I giggle back. “I am grateful for this knowing and this experience. I am developing so much love and compassion as a result.”
Genuine, humble tears stream down my cheeks as I share this conversation with Nancy. Wow, this emotion runs very deep.
Something Huge
After sitting alone in beautiful meditation for a while, I finally get up and approach Keith, who is nearly done cleaning up the porch. As we exchange a beautiful heart-to-heart hug, he again makes a point of commenting on how profound my work today had been.
I then hug the few beautiful friends who are still on the porch, say goodnight, and begin a very slow journey toward home, baby stepping my way, stopping to enjoy the moment quite frequently. As I arrive back in town, I purchase tomatoes, bananas, and French fries.
As I finish typing up my notes for the day, I am extremely tired, still in a pleasant state of shock. As I had walked home, I again felt somewhat disconnected from my body, as if I were partly in a Higher Dimension. It is a very nice energy, yet quite disorienting and confusing.
I know that what I did today was extremely important and powerful in working with the God drama. Something huge shifted today – something in the area of owning the choice that I am making to embrace either the smallness or the brilliance – and actually making the choice with conscious intent.
The Games I Play
As I ponder back to the final half hour of the ceremony earlier this evening, one thing stands out with magical clarity.
In those final conversations with Keith, I sensed that he was glowing with compassion, gushing with unconditional support, and overflowing with beautiful patience for my process, and for how long and difficult my journey has continued to be.
In fact, the experience literally takes me back to the emotions I felt last June during a private session I had with Keith. I had been seeking desperately needed assistance during a deeply stuck stage in my process. At the time, I was struggling with the hopelessness of my stuckness, seeking rational mind clarity to rebuild some trust in working with Keith. To my delight, in a fully unexpected moment of genuine connection, Keith had channeled the same such patience and compassion to me, letting me know in no uncertain terms that he had never grown tired of my process, never judged or been frustrated with me in any way.
Then he had told me that he just had a job to do, and a role to play. That left me believing that he is frequently playing a less-than-fun role for me (under the guidance of my own Higher Energies) – doing so because I need to own my own inner power – doing so because I am deep in my God drama, in the games I have been playing with Higher Energies, and with teachers.
Today, Keith did not say the part about “a job to do, and playing a role for me,” but I felt it implied, just the same. I ponder how Keith has often said that we play these games out with many people in our lives.
Now, more clearly than ever, I see how I have been playing out these same power struggles with Keith, and because of who he is, he is willing to keep playing them with me until I am done. It suddenly occurs to me that Keith has never been playing a mean role for me, not in any way. On the contrary, I am the one that has been playing out my dysfunctional patterns with him. His main job and role has been to “not validate or enable” my dysfunction, much in the same way that I now refuse to validate or enable the dysfunctional stories in others.
Magical Morning Meditation
Saturday morning, as I meditate before writing, I suddenly receive unexpected insights regarding a movie I recently watched (Captain America: The First Avenger).
“Wow,” I ponder with giggles. “Captain America was chosen because he was a humble, dedicated, loving, beaten-down, oppressed, enduring, kind-hearted young man of perfect goodness. Even though he was tiny and physically weak, he was chosen to become a powerful man, retaining all of the beautiful, loving, humble qualities when he did so.”
“This is much like me,” I ponder deeper. “Through my life, I have been a humble, dedicated, loving, beaten-down, oppressed, enduring, kind-hearted person of perfect goodness. Even though I have felt defective, small, and socially broken, I am learning to embrace my inner power, and there is no doubt that I will do so while retaining all of the beautiful, loving, humble qualities as I continue to grow.”
“I have been at the bottom of the heap,” I ponder. “I know what it is like to hate myself, to feel like a horrible loser, to drown in shame and guilt. I am actually grateful for having chosen this path. I shudder to think of who or what I may have become if my magic and power had opened before having all of these cherished loving qualities to put everything in divine perspective.
Giggling Growth
Also during this magical morning meditation, I suddenly remember that Keith had again guided me yesterday to put my necklace back in the freezer.
“Am I going up another level?” I had asked Keith.
“Yes,” he had responded with a confident grin.
Having forgotten to do this last night, I immediately interrupt what I am doing to put my necklace and every other crystal I own back into the freezer for twenty-four hours of cleansing.
After spending the rest of the day writing, I go out for a burger and fries to celebrate with my inner children, before returning home to edit and publish, “Erupting Empath Energies.”
As usual, the writing energizes my soul – a soul that right now is flying with giggling growth.
A Budding Superhero
“Wow,” is all I can say … well not quite all.
What an amazing series of three back-to-back ceremonies, one of which I entered with deep, “eff-it all” resistance, but went anyway, experiencing profound growth and results.
After being on the “edge of stir-crazy” for most of the Wednesday ceremony, I finally forced myself to make a conscious choice to embrace my magic, opening the gate to my magical theme park, and throwing away the key. As if in a beautifully orchestrated stage play, I experienced profound healing and self-love as I embraced my inner children, first Sharon, then Bobby, and finally, the two of them lovingly working in balance with each other.
On Thursday, after again meditatively re-experiencing the “separation agony” of a caesarean birth, feeling as if I were dropped off the vertical edge of a frightening waterslide, I found beautiful peace in the understanding. I am the one who climbed the steps to that jagged edge, consciously choosing to take the leap into this lifetime, wanting to experience the adrenaline of a frightening shut down experience followed by the magic of awakening. And wow, after filling with these giggling insights I was gifted with an electrifying energetic experience while sharing energy with my dear friend Kelly.
And then, there was that unexpected past-life contract work. Real or not, the process brought deep clarity into why I continue to have so much subconscious resistance to embracing my joy, power, creativity, and sexuality. And yes, I again consciously caught ego in the act of attempting to sabotage me, to keep me in the smallness side of the equation.
Friday, experiencing yet another intense backlash of ego, after another half-ceremony of stir-crazy stuckness, I suddenly experienced something at the heart level – something I have known in my head for a very long time. A key resistance factor to healing the God drama is the lifelong belief that “something is horribly wrong with me” – a belief that I have no memory of ever NOT believing.
And it all ends with another perfect ending – a deep and profound level of comprehension and growth in understanding the games I play with Higher Powers (and with teachers). Congratulations really are in order. Compassion and self-love are deeply deserved. I clearly made the decision, once again, to embrace this perfect ending, to choose the joy and power over what was once, a habitually seductive smallness.
I think maybe I might just turn into Captain America after all – embracing all of that joy, power, and magic with a genuine, pure, and healed heart.
… to be continued …
Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved
