Brenda's Bicycles

Friday morning, April 20, 2012, I finally crawl out of bed at around 9:00 a.m.. It has been a long night where the fluid in my lungs again had me up and coughing several times. Even now, I know that I am not sick, that the fluid in my lungs is an energetic metaphor of emotions (represented by fluid) preventing me from flowing my life force (breath). In the midst of all this physical discomfort, I have somehow found a way to relax and enjoy the vibrating energy in my body.

After a busy morning of running errands, I rush out to Keith’s home, being slightly behind schedule.

A Fearful Flow

The chocolate ceremony today begins just as any other. During the Glow Meditation, I focus on relaxing and watching the energies in my head and abdomen. As I attempt to relax my jaw, more pains form in my head, especially in the forehead area. Later, as I try to relax my upper thighs, I begin to experience feelings of panic in my lower chakras.

When the meditation ends, at the point where Keith would normally begin doing individual work with others, he instead remains seated, indicating that he is open to helping anyone who asks. For a long while, the porch is mostly quiet. A few people assist each other with mild emotional release, but as far as my perceptions tell me, no one seems interested in doing any deep inner work.

Keith remains mostly quiet, and I simply meditate silently, continuing my focus on deeper relaxation.

“You are being taken into a place of trusting and not needing to know or understand with rational mind,” Keith turns and briefly speaks to me. “You are just allowing and trusting.”

“Keith,” I speak up a few minutes later, “As I imagine myself simply floating down a river, trusting and allowing, some deep fear is coming up.”

Just Fix it

Not letting Keith even respond, a woman I will call Jill speaks up. She is deeply psychic, but is also profoundly in her ego and not doing her own inner work.

“You have a constant storm inside of you,” Jill interrupts the conversation. “Just allow it to settle.”

I simply ignore her uninvited comment. Keith soon begins to work with me on the topic of developing more trust.

“Brenda,” Jill again interrupts me a few minutes later, “when I connect with your energy, you are deeply stuck in your left brain. You just need to let go more, and be lighter…”

Finally, after repeatedly ignoring a few other such comments, I decide to speak up.

“Jill, can I give you some feedback about the things you are saying to me?” I ask politely.

“Sure,” Jill responds, “I would love feedback.”

“What you are saying is quite accurate as to what is energetically going on inside of me,” I speak lovingly, “but your comments are coming from a place of being clueless about the process that I am going through, about why I have these blocks, and about why I am stuck in my head. You are deeply gifted about seeing what is going on in my energies, but oblivious as to my process. It feels as if you are saying “just fix it” with no compassion or understanding behind your words.”

Just Stop it

“For example,” I share with Jill a few minutes later, “I am working with a deep block to receiving love, one that I further understood on Wednesday as related to events at age twelve when I further strengthened my wall against love. You would be quite right in saying that I have a wall preventing me from receiving love, but I PUT THAT WALL THERE AS A TEACHER.”

“I have a journey with that wall,” I continue. “I am learning to understand the agony and humiliation of being so stuck in my head that I cannot move forward … and hearing people who have not experienced such stuck-ness just throw out fixing comments does not help at all. Yes, I am learning the hard way, which is how I set it up before this lifetime … to help me develop compassion for people who are deeply stuck like me. When I do open these blockages – blockages that are perfect where I am in my process – I will be able to have true compassion for the people I am working with. This will allow me to be patient and loving when offering true assistance to someone who is stuck like me rather than just telling them what is wrong with them and how easy the fix is if they will just STOP IT.”

An Ego Polarity

Jill does not appear to understand anything I am saying, and with an air of frustration, immediately defends herself as being right.

“It IS that easy,” Jill insists with firmness, “and I am just following guidance in what I am telling you. I have received beautiful feedback from others when I share my guidance.”

“Guided by your own ego,” I ponder obvious thoughts that I know are true, but do not dare verbalize.

To my delight, Keith quickly comes to my rescue and begins to work with Jill, trying to help her to understand where she is coming from.

“Is what you are saying coming from Brenda’s Higher Self, or is it something that you just think she needs to hear?” Keith asks Jill a pointed question. “If it is the latter, then it is coming from your ego.”

I am deeply grateful for Keith’s intervention. I was beginning to wonder if I was out of line, and if perhaps he might be mad at me for trying to speak up. I am thrilled that he is backing me up on this one.

Keith tries for several minutes to help Jill understand the difference between being a channel and a psychic – explaining that a channel speaks words exactly as they come from a higher source, but a psychic gets downloaded information and then interprets it through their own experience – often distorting that interpretation with ego if they have not cleaned up their own inner issues first.

“Your biggest issue,” Keith bluntly speaks to Jill, “is to learn to use your gifted magical psychic abilities from a positive and empowering polarity rather than from an ego polarity.”

On The Couch

Jill simply does not get it and strongly resists Keith’s attempts to teach her, barely stopping short of telling him he is flat out wrong.

Before her conversation with Keith is even over, several other people immediately jump into the mix to start psychoanalyzing me – asking me lots of questions that clearly imply that they believe they know more than me and want to help me see the light.

“Whoa,” I put my hand out and ask them to stop. “Please do not put me on the psychiatrist’s couch. I am deeply immersed in a powerful process right now, and what I am doing is a part of that perfectly designed flow of my process. There is nothing wrong here, and I do NOT need any rational mind analysis from others.”

For several minutes, the chattering goes on as people continue to express their head opinions. I simply disengage and tune out, retreating to deep meditation where I know I need to be. I am beginning to see the events in front of me as a powerful stage play of the left-brained consensus reality of my childhood.

Stage Play Alert

Within a minute or two, the entire ceremony begins to fall apart as one young woman expresses a desire to go deeper. As soon as Keith begins to guide her, a young man stands up beside her and begins to roll a cigarette, making a very noisy and distracting disturbance right next to her.

“Your distraction energy is your defense against going into your own issues,” Keith explains to the young man. “Please either hold space or go out into the garden with your disturbance.”

The young man immediately protests and talks back to Keith, defending his behavior as just fine and normal. Others quickly jump into the conversation, and for nearly twenty minutes, Keith just sits by and observes with a detached grin as the porch goes crazy with rational mind conversation.

Given the bizarre nature of what is happening, my “stage play alert” has again gone off. I clearly recognize that what is happening is for my benefit. I find myself in a beautiful role-play. I am an alien teenager sitting in a roomful of absolutely clueless aliens who just want to remain at the surface level and be funny … to talk and rebelliously disrupt others who want to do real work … and who are too terrified to go anywhere deep within themselves while vehemently defending their behavior as the norm.

In this role, I am the alien who is that troublemaker that no one understands. I am emotional, withdrawn, and cannot relate to anyone on the porch right now (except for Keith of course). In fact, I have no desire to even attempt to connect or relate to anyone. I see them as people who just want to judge me and fix me – as people that see me as being the one with the problem, when in reality I am the only one being courageous enough to do real and deep inner work.

Deep Pondering

“Wow,” I ponder silently. “I AM that teenager. This is a perfect setup for showing me how foreign and alien I felt as a teen … how absolutely hopeless I was about fitting in … not even wanting to fit in, while at the same time desperately wishing that I could. I absolutely knew that I could not be like the others around me – that it would kill me – that if I got close to them they would learn the truth of my inner struggle, and that would be worse than death.”

As I ponder those teenage years, I clearly feel the “this is what is wrong with you” statements – the “you need to do such and such to make yourself better, blah, blah, blah” statements. I picked up the intense fixing energy from everywhere – from family, from church, and from peers. Much of the intensity of that fixing energy came unknowingly from the fact that I could feel their emotions and judgments, whether expressed verbally or not.

My heart aches as I ponder the disempowering teenage feelings of judgmental superiority that I picked up from the more “enlightened ones” around me – while none of them had even a clue about the deep painful process that was my life … how frightening it was and how courageous, real, and genuine I was on the inside.

Crazy Continued Chaos

“This is profound,” I painfully ponder.

I spend at least the next hour in this space of deep self-observation, feeling everything while focusing on bringing in more self-love for that teenager.

Meanwhile, the porch continues to be rebellious, distracted, chaotic, and shallow – all a perfect setup to take me deeper and deeper into my stage-play meditation.

Finally, in the midst of this crazy continued chaos, one person makes a spontaneous request.

“Why don’t we all join hands and connect to help bring the energy of the group back together?” This person suggests.

Remembering the many times that Keith has told people at the beginning of ceremony that what we do here is not a touchy-feely hug pile, but instead we work on light shadow and dark shadow issues … I inconspicuously roll my eyes at this comment. The last thing I want to do right now is to join the touch-feely consensus reality of sheeple that is rebelliously refusing to do any deep inner work.

“That is not what we do here,” I quietly comment aloud as no one listens.

I find deep clarity in the fact that even this circle of hand-holding is a powerful metaphor for me – showing me how the world around me as a teen tried to make everything better by touchy-feely surface connections – something in which I simply could not participate with all of the sordid social secrets that were shamefully buried in my heart.

Courage To Be Different

Everyone on the porch joins hands – everyone except for me, that is. I lovingly refrain from participation, leaving a conspicuous gap in what is now one-person short of a completely connected circle.

I am not being rebellious or obstinate in a negative way … but instead I know I am doing this in a deeply empowered way. This is actually incredibly powerful for my process. I am being given a stage-play opportunity to follow the crowd so that I will fit in … to sacrifice my feelings in order to conform to public opinion. I instead choose to simply be in my power while I meditate and focus on my own personal connection to Source. I am refusing to go along with the consensus reality. I do not need to fit in with the others or with this process. I need to be meditating in my own.

As I sit alone, going deeper into a mild high-vibration connection with Source, I ponder a lesson from the book “Oneness” by Rasha. This book frequently talks of how each of us is on our own solo journey – that no one else can make this journey for us – that it is a journey we must make in our own unique way, following our own inner guidance. Somehow, this thought gives me the courage to be different … to be true to what my heart is telling me to do right now.

Profound Experiential Learning

After this nice quiet interlude, the group is still absolutely insistent on not doing inner work. One woman actually speaks up and says she is tired of doing inner work – that she does not want to do inner work – that instead she wants to learn how to manifest. She acts quite proud of herself for making this rebellious statement. Others in the group quickly agree.

I am not the least bit surprised when Keith lovingly complies, going along with the group energy while continuing to deeply serve my process in this bizarre personally-created episode of The Muppet Show.

Soon, Keith guides the group through a meditation related to manifestation. When the meditation is over, Keith briefly connects with me, asking how I am doing.

“I’m doing some very deep inner work,” I explain to Keith with a huge smile on my face. “I am that twelve-year-old and teenage-self in an alien world, surrounded by people who would judge, fix, and not understand me at all … experientially learning why I felt so isolated and alone … finding my own inner self-love … learning who I am and knowing that I have my own personal connection to Source.”

I stop short of verbally expressing the words, “and clearly recognizing that I was indeed the only sane one.” It is obvious to me that such a statement would not go over well in this group. It is enough to simply remember those words that Keith has told me several times … words about how, as a child, I was indeed the only one in my family who understood what my magical connection to Source was all about.

Deeply Relating

As Keith and I converse for a few minutes from a rational mind level, he congratulates me for being deeply immersed in powerful inner work. In this short conversation, he validates precisely where I am and what I am doing.

I clearly know that I do not need to hear this validation … but intuitively recognize that Keith’s words are really intended as educational statements for the rest of the group, just in case someone might actually be listening.

“Brenda,” one young woman suddenly speaks up. “Are you sure that all of what you are feeling is your own … that you are not taking it in from others?”

“Yeah,” I respond with confidence. “I am very sure that at least most of it is my own pain and emotions.”

“I ask because I deeply relate to what you are saying,” this young woman continues. “I was the same as a teenager.”

I make direct eye contact with this young woman for a while. It is a beautiful emotional connection while it lasts … until I soon decide to close my eyes and go back inside.

Resisting Depth

After Keith conducts another group meditation for the others who refuse to do personal work, he again checks in with me.

“I am still that teenager in a world of aliens who do not understand me, who just want to fix or judge and remain at the surface,” I respond without concern for who is listening.

As I finish my private sharing with Keith, Paul starts to mumble out loud in words that I cannot quite decipher – but he is obviously making fun of me and ridiculing me. I simply smile and ignore him. I know who I am, and I know that what I am doing right now is actually quite profound.

“Explore this deeper,” Keith encourages me. “Go back in time as your own future self and connect with that teenager.”

“I’ve been doing that all along,” I explain to Keith. “I’m trying to do it now but there is so much pain and emotion that I am having a difficult time focusing and remaining connected. That teen is extremely resistant to love and connection.”

Keith continues to push me to explore further, but I am extremely self-conscious, knowing that what I am talking about is an indirect slam at others in the group who are unknowingly role-playing for me. I do not want to talk about this publicly in more explicit terms because I do not wish to speak negatively of my star actors. I know it is not about them, even though they have played their parts brilliantly.

I am fine with exploring my beautiful process in silence. I do not wish to make a further scene in a group that feels extremely unsafe to me.

If You Can Allow

Keith continues encouraging me. Finally, I resist and speak.

“I do not feel safe going into emotions with this group,” I express quietly to Keith. “It is too surface-level and non-supportive of any emotional depths.”

“Most people here today are terrified to go beneath the surface right now,” Keith lovingly responds in a louder voice.

I know Keith is using me to make a point, but I feel extremely uneasy being the center of attention, when I feel as if the vast majority of those present are breathing down my neck with judgments – real or imagined on my part. I wish Keith would just back off and leave me alone, but I know that this is actually good for me, and with his support and validation, I realize I can continue.

Finally, a very stuck young woman comes over and sits in front of me, placing the palms of her hands on my knees. I allow and ignore her, keeping my eyes closed. I feel her attempts to help me … sensing that she is trying to fix me … but also sensing a genuine and caring side to what she is attempting to do. The teenager inside me cannot receive this gesture of love.

“Brenda,” Keith intervenes, “if you can receive, her love is pure and real. But if it is not working for you, I can ask her to stop.”

I have not said a word and I continue to remain silent, eyes closed … still allowing. As I do so, I begin to get quite emotional and start to cry, but I contain most of my tears on the inside. I simply do not feel safe going into this emotion right here, right now.

A Flying Leap

“Brenda,” Keith guides me tenderly, “you have created one reality after another of people who could not understand and support you in your process, as a child, as a teen, with your own children, and now with this group. It does not matter if they see you as a crybaby and judge you. You need to go into these feelings and allow yourself to feel them.”

After hearing Keith’s gentle validating words, I allow the crying to amp up a little bit, but I remain quite hesitant. I absolutely HATE being put on the spot like this, having to speak my harsh implicit truth to others that do not understand while also crying as I do so. I deeply believe that they see me with disdain and are not at all connected to what I am doing. As I ponder, I realize that perhaps three others in the group today might actually understand and care.

I can feel Paul’s deep judgment … and I can feel the same judgment from the energy of most others in the group. I am not happy with my predicament in which I am being encouraged to cry in such a hostile-feeling environment.

As I further humiliate myself, I focus on my lesson of learning to speak my truth … and to be my truth with humility and love … while simultaneously not giving a flying leap about what anyone else thinks of me. Again, I focus on increasing my self-love.

Personal Prerogative

Keith continues to work with me a little more. We are talking out loud, but by now the group energy is so distracted and scattered that most everyone else is no longer listening or holding space.

“Brenda,” Keith guides me, “as a child, there was no one that you could go to talk to. You were an alien around people who could not and would never understand. You set it up this way. There was no one like you that you could talk to.”

I know Keith is saying this for the benefit of any others who just might be paying attention. We both know that I already understand this topic. But then Keith deeply shocks me by a few quiet verbal statements related to my gender struggles. I know his intentions are innocent, but the things he is talking about are things he has never before brought up in public – and for him to quietly discuss my gender issues in front of this crazy group today makes me extremely uncomfortable.

Yes, of course, I am quite open about being transgendered, about having grown up as a little boy. But I humbly and respectfully reserve the right to share that fact with those to whom I choose to share it. I trust that anyone who feels guided to read my blog would not be reading if such knowledge would shatter them … but I do not blabber my personal situation around to everyone. I feel no need to do so. I have shared before in a few ceremonial groups, but I always share such information when MY guidance tells me to do so.

I am not upset with Keith, but I quickly scold him and tell him that he has committed a no-no in my book. I feel extremely judged by the group today and do not want most of them to have further fuel to dump on me. I am in no way trying to hide my past. I am actually quite proud of who I am and what I have accomplished in my journey. But I still do consider it a very personal prerogative as to whom I share my story. I reserve the right to share my secrets as my own heart guides.

For the record, Keith later profusely apologizes. I am so grateful for his guidance.

Ruffling Feathers

When the ceremony is over, I beg Keith for a half hour of private time to discuss one of the most bizarre ceremonies of my stay here in San Marcos.

“I know it was all perfect,” I express to Keith when we are finally alone, “and I could tell it was all a beautiful setup for my process – a beautiful process for me – one that you fed into whether you were aware of it at the time or not. But I felt extreme discomfort today at having to be the bad guy … the one that everyone else on the porch wanted to judge and hate.”

“I do not feel comfortable with you pushing me into going deeper in my projections while the people that are triggering those projections are sitting right there on the porch.” I add with anxiety.

“Brenda,” Keith responds with confidence. “First of all, I want to make it clear that you were NOT projecting. Those were real events on the porch that took you back to teenage feelings … and what you said today was very appropriate … things that they needed to hear. It was important for you to lovingly speak your truth today, and those people needed to hear your emotional feelings … your lack of feeling safe … and your feeling of being judged, etc…”

“They may not have heard any of it,” Keith continues reassuring me, “but they needed to have it said to them. What you said to Jill early in the ceremony was absolutely appropriate, and I backed you up in what you told her. She simply could not hear the truth, but she DID need to have her feelings ruffled.”

“I just don’t like being the one doing the ruffling,” I express my doubts.

“Brenda,” Keith reassures me. “This is part of healing your fear of conflict. As a healer, you will ruffle a lot of feathers in the future, and this is part of learning to love yourself, to trust guidance, to say what you need to say, and to be OK with that and with who you are.”

A Confident Response

“But Keith,” I express another deep concern. “If the porch continues to be like this from now on … if this type of behavior continues … I am not sure if I would even want to come to ceremonies anymore. Yes, it was deeply powerful for me today, but no, it was not fun, and it was not a safe space for doing inner work.”

“Brenda,” Keith surprises me by his confident response. “If there are very many more ceremonies like the one today, I will probably stop doing public ceremonies and start doing only private sessions.”

Wow, I cannot imagine a more powerful response than this. My worst fears quickly vanish into the nothingness from whence they came.

Interruption And validation

As this conversation nears completion, one of Keith’s workers stops by and I find it impossible to continue talking with someone listening in. But my heart is full, I am thrilled with my growth today in ceremony, and I recognize that Keith and I have already said everything that really needs to be said.

Keith offers to walk into town with me. I hope this will give us more one-on-one time, but his worker walks with us, and then we bump into another woman along the way.

“It was really a bizarre and different ceremony today,” Keith tells this woman.

Just hearing Keith share this observation with someone else gives me all the extra validation I need. And even as bizarre as the ceremony was, it was perhaps one of the most powerful ceremonies I have ever had, in its own unique and crazy sort of way.

A Personal Holodeck

As I type up detailed notes for the day, I remember something Keith had shared right before his worker showed up.

“This is your own personal holodeck,” Keith had emphasized with a giggle. “Everything on the porch today was your creation, with your personal script and cast of characters.”

From that perspective, I have to agree that what happened today was perfect, exactly what I needed for my growth and insight. From any other perspective, I could find thousands of reasons to be angry and upset – thousands of things to judge.

I choose to see it as a profound stage play … as my own personally created holodeck.

I find great peace in this choice.

An Issue Of Trust

Saturday morning, I awaken feeling tired and lethargic. I had felt quite content and peaceful about the ceremony last night, but this morning I am feeling extremely anxious. I still clearly recognize that the ceremony was a profoundly manifested personal gift to me – that in spite of being an extremely crazy day with an afternoon of distracting and rebellious people, I had come away deeply blessed.

“But my friend Pyper will be here next week,” I begin to panic. “She is flying all the way from Alaska to see me, and one of her primary interests is to participate in chocolate ceremonies. If a ceremony like that happens while she is here, I will be devastated and deeply embarrassed.”

I am nearly in freak-out mode as I march over to Keith’s home at 8:30 a.m. – desperately seeking something to reassure me that he will not allow Pyper’s time here to be an embarrassing waste.

“Brenda, you have a deep issue with trust,” Keith lovingly scolds me when I share my concerns. “You are not trusting Pyper, not trusting yourself, not trusting me, and not trusting that we each create our own reality – both individually and jointly. You need to trust that Pyper will create exactly the ceremonies that she needs.”

A Profound Tidbit

Our conversation soon leads further into the God Drama. As we dig deeper and deeper, I come to develop a clear understanding that as a teenager, I did not trust God. I did not understand that everything happens for a reason, and that Higher Energies were holding my hand every step of the way.

As a teenager, I believed that life was supposed to be safe and fun – yet repeatedly I was overwhelmed and beaten-down by circumstances, social ridicule, feeling abandoned, and meeting rejection. Whether it was only in my head or actual self-created events does not really matter.

Near the end of our conversation, Keith points out a profound tidbit of wisdom – one that deeply resonates in countless ways.

“What we are really working with here,” Keith casually points out, “is that when emotions are out of proportion with events, then that is a strong indicator that there is a trigger somewhere inside of you, one that you need to find and look at.”

As I thank Keith profusely for helping me to settle my “out of proportion” emotions, I can only think of one thing … my upcoming adventure.

A Guatemala Travel Adventure

At 10:25 a.m., I find myself riding in a little Tuk-tuk – a three-wheeled motorcycle with an enclosed passenger shell. My young driver quickly whisks me away on a ten-minute ride to nearby San Pablo where I climb into the back of an open-air pickup truck that then zooms rapidly up the winding mountain switchbacks with breath-taking views that lead to the ridge above Lake Atitlan. At the small town of Santa Clara, I leave the pickup truck and find an extremely crowded minivan that takes me the rest of the way to the main Inter-America highway. After an hour of traveling, my purse is now $4 emptier as I wait for a chicken bus that will take me to the town of Chimaltenango.

“Chicken bus” is the term of endearment that foreigners use to describe the refurbished school buses that carry the local people all over the roads of Guatemala – buses on which all kinds of cargo – sometimes even chickens – are transported.

A few minutes later, I flag down a chicken bus headed for Guatemala City. Two hours later, I ask the young baggage-handler/money-collector to tell me the best place to get off the bus in Chimaltenango. I have passed through this town before, but have never been off the bus. The remainder of my journey is now entering new territory for me. Once on the ground, after wandering around aimlessly for a minute or two, I ask someone where I might find the bus that goes to Antigua. He points back up the road and mumbles a few words that I do not fully understand. After walking a block, I ask more questions, and within minutes, I am safely aboard my final bus.

The Dimension Of Sleep

This final hour of winding through mountain roads and small towns finally ends when the bus stops at the end destination – a large market on the northwest side of Antigua. I have been in this market before, but it is huge and confusing. After fifteen minutes of winding through narrow pathways of vendors that sell all types of wares, I finally find my way through and onto the main streets of Antigua.

Again, I follow instincts and get quite lost. Finally, with the help of a traffic officer, I make my way to the central square of this beautiful and quite-popular tourist destination. From this place I know exactly how to get where I want to go – to a small neighborhood with many modest, reasonably priced hotels. It takes me a while, but I finally find a tiny hotel where I pay just over $10 for the night … no paperwork to fill out, no names to exchange … just a simple swapping of money for a key.

My next task is to reserve space on a morning shuttle to the airport in Guatemala City. An hour later, after finally holding a ticket in hand, I am gobbling down on a quick meal. It has been a long and exhausting day – a day of first restoring trust in my process, followed by hours of exhausting travel and settling in for the night.

At 7:00 p.m., feeling utterly exhausted, I turn off the single light bulb in this now-pitch-black barely-big-enough-for-a-bed room, surrendering to my need for sleep, only to discover that the pillows are, fat, hard, and very lumpy. It takes a while of peaceful and meditative relaxation before I eventually slip into the dimension of sleep.

An Inspired Meditation

At around 9:30 p.m., I suddenly awaken with the worst coughing fit I have had in a very long time. Every time I attempt to breathe deeply, I cough violently and uncontrollably as another small spray of fluid flees from my mouth. The coughing is relentless and unforgiving, and I am especially aware that the walls of this dark room are quite thin and not at all soundproof.

“My poor neighbors,” I ponder as I desperately attempt to relax and go back to sleep.

It is perhaps an hour later when the inner guidance finally wins – inner whispers telling me to give up on sleep, and to instead sit up and meditate. It is hours later, during the quiet stillness of early Sunday morning, when I finally end one of the most beautiful meditations I have ever experienced – one in which silent unspoken voices from other dimensions lovingly comfort a distraught and frightened twelve-year-old boy. For details, see my last blog, “Sordid Social Secrets.”

A Whole New Light

As I again rest on my pillow, I ponder words Keith had shared with me early yesterday morning.

“I feel like I want to try to put my process on hold while Pyper is here,” I had told Keith. “I want her week to be as fun as possible, and I don’t want to end up going into deep emotion and ruining it for her.”

“Brenda,” Keith had sternly-but-lovingly guided me. “That is the wrong approach. Pyper needs you to be real and genuine, doing your own work, continuing your own process.”

As I further ponder these inspired words, I suddenly realize something quite profound.

“I think Pyper is coming here to help me at the height of my own process,” I ponder in surprised shock. “Of course she is coming here for her own growth, but she is also coming here to play a life-saving role for me. This trip has been in the potential works for two years, and it suddenly happens now. I cannot imagine a more perfect time for her to join me in my process. We have both manifested this time together and it will be perfect. And right now, I desperately need the giggles that I know she will bring with her.”

“Of all the people in the world,” I ponder with a pre-Pyper giggle, “she is one of only a small handful of magical angels that I could turn to right now.”

As I drift off to sleep for the second time tonight in this pitch-black room, I feel the eager excitement of this coming week with a whole new light.

Trust And Anticipation

Early Sunday morning at 7:00 a.m., I receive a text message on my newly-adopted cell phone. As I read the message, I learn that my dear friend is now boarding her plane in Miami. Excitement giggles in my veins as I hurry out to find breakfast.

At 9:00 a.m., a minivan parks on the street outside of my tiny hotel. It is my airport shuttle. Soon we are bouncing all over the cobblestone streets of Antigua, picking up other passengers.

As I ponder the magical sights around me, profound gratitude warms my heart for one of the most bizarre and growth-filled ceremonies ever, just two days ago on Keith’s magical porch.

Eager anticipation overwhelms me as overflowing trust tells me that all is absolutely perfect. I trust the wonder of it all. I know the world as I see it is indeed my own personal holodeck. I know that Pyper and I will jointly create an unbelievably amazing week filled with powerful chocolate ceremonies, grateful giggle fests, Mayan fire ceremonies, shopping, talking, swimming … and maybe even a little sleeping somewhere in there.

I cannot get to that airport soon enough.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

After another beautiful week of inner work and growth, I wake up on Monday, April 16, 2012, again not feeling like writing. But today the issue is not one of sadness or depression. My friend Pyper is flying all the way from Alaska to visit me this weekend. There is much to do, and I am feeling quite excited.

I still fully intend to sit down to write, but after digging out an old cell phone that was gifted to me over a year ago, all hope of writing is gone. I first head to a small nearby café to put a couple of dollars worth of credit on the phone. Having not been used for over a year, I am not even sure if it will work … but yippee … it does. I now have a convenient way for Pyper to contact me when I meet her in Guatemala City next Sunday … just in case one of us is delayed and/or we have a hard time finding each other.

Given my excitement and inability to concentrate, I surrender to another task. My apartment desperately needs cleaning … bathroom, sinks, floors, table tops, countertops … all of them are quite dirty and dusty. After sweeping up large piles of hairballs and breathing whirlwinds of dust into my lungs, I begin to cough. I have done enough cleaning for the day, and fun movies soon consume me.

Confusing Emotions

During the night, I wake up with fluid and congestion in my lungs – the same type of fluid that metaphorically followed me for a month after opening my high heart in late December. I also have emotional memories from several vague dreams … faint memories of deep fear. Intuitively, I recognize the returning metaphors of “fear about not being able to breathe my life force”. For now, I simply take note of the intuitions and return to sleep.

As Tuesday morning unfolds, I surrender to several unexpected waves of gut-wrenching, teeth-chattering, dry-heaving emotional sobbing. It is almost funny, because I have absolutely no rational-mind understanding regarding the origin or nature of this emotion. I only know that it is flowing through me, so I surrender to it and let it run its course. Each time, after about five or ten minutes, I meditate and bring in light, the emotion vanishes, and I am again fine for a while. Fifteen minutes later, another wave blindsides me and I repeat the process with unattached surrender.

For whatever reason, my body is physically tired and I lack motivation to write. And because of these waves of Unidentified Flowing Emotions (UFEs), I am unable to do much productive writing anyway.

State Of Expectancy

By 11:00 a.m., I am starting to feel as if I should walk out to Keith’s home, wondering if perhaps he might have time to discuss these weird UFEs with me. Intuitions tell me to go for it, but my head tells me this is silly, that I am fine and do not need Keith’s guidance. Rather than fight myself, I opt to pull a few tarot cards to get an external energetic confirmation. To my shock, in response to the question “Should I go out to Keith’s house?” I pull three powerful major arcana cards. There is no question in my heart … I am going.

“C’mon in the kitchen,” Keith invites me in when I mention what is going on. “We can talk while I work on the computer.”

In the middle of explaining my morning, Keith interrupts me, indicating that his guidance is that I am going through a new and powerful level of doing inner work with Higher Energies without a need to involve the rational mind.

“You are in a state of expectancy,” Keith then shares a new guidance with me.

He explains that the word “expectation” can have both negative and positive connotations, where, according to one of his favorite teachers, “expectancy” has a very positive meaning of unattached expecting – expecting that new levels, new joy, and new things on the way.

“You mean like my friend Pyper coming to see me?” I ask curiously.

“No, not just that, but more than that,” Keith responds. “You are returning to a childhood state of expectancy of joy and beautiful things coming your way.”

A Good Place

“I’m feeling deeply emotional again as we continue talking,” I interrupt Keith with tears forming in my eyes. “I have no idea what these new emotions are about, but they are overwhelming and powerful.”

“Yeah, I’m feeling it too,” Keith responds with teary eyes.

But I can tell that Keith’s tears are a combination of both feeling the unidentified emotion flowing through me AND his being in a state of joy – as if he clearly senses the power and significance of what I am doing and where I am going.

“I’m getting that you are in a very good place,” Keith congratulates me.

“I’m just continuing to trust my process,” I respond with a teary smile. “I believe my cough last night was to get me into a quiet non-writing state where I will be more present … more able to allow things to flow without my head getting in the way.”

“That could very well be,” Keith does not confirm or deny my intuitions as I give him a quick thank-you hug.

Teenage Social Nightmares

I am in such a weird and tired mental state as I return home, that after scribbling a few quick notes, I simply go back to bed, focusing on relaxing my clenched jaw, arms, and legs. Ninety minutes later, when I attempt to stand up, I am extremely light-headed and wobbly – unsure if I am even capable of assisting in a rare daytime gathering of bagging freshly ground chocolate.

Literally forcing myself to walk out to Keith’s, I am soon using all of the emotional strength I can find to maintain my sanity. As I work, I am listening to several nearby people engaged in shallow conversation that reminds me of High School nightmares (my perception based on my process). Then, with about an hour to go in our group process of measuring and sealing warm liquid chocolate into plastic bags, a young woman deeply triggers me.

While Keith is occupied in other matters, she goes into his house, changes the music, and cranks the volume up to full blast. I have suddenly been involuntarily thrust into a boisterous party environment that freaks out my inner teenager’s inhibitions. I am an extremely uncomfortable fish out of water, feeling like a spaced-out freak on a foreign planet, a displaced alien teenager with no hope of ever fitting into my surroundings.

Keith soon turns the volume back down, but my inner triggers have been fully activated. I am now deeply regressing through teenage social nightmares – into intense social dysfunction, not fitting in, and not even wanting to fit in. My head continues to swim in dizziness from hours earlier. It is all I can do merely to tolerate the environment without running away. The moment we finish, I thank Keith, explain my dilemma, and head for the door.

I love these people helping today, and I absolutely know that what I am experiencing is not present-day, nor is it about them – that it is a regression to excruciating teenage emotions. But the experience and emotions are so overwhelming that I struggle to not identify or attach to the experience as being real in the now.

Alien Visitors

In my email inbox, I quickly encounter a “Oneness” quote from Rasha, one that reminds me to, “Approach with gentleness and with compassion the beings with whom you share experience in this time frame. For each of you is performing to the very best of his abilities, playing out roles that have been preordained and not without a certain measure of discomfort all the way around.”

I fully realize that, from my perspective, what happened on the porch this afternoon was a beautiful stage play, performed uniquely on my behalf to help me return to this freak-out state of social insecurity. It is obvious that I am being guided ever deeper into the issues of having been a very shut down and dysfunctional teenager.

To top off the synchronous setup of the day, I spend the evening isolating myself while watching a movie Keith had shared with me, one called “The Green Beautiful”. As it turns out, this French movie with English subtitles is all about several aliens (from a more enlightened planet) that come to visit Earth, and the humorous and crazy struggle they have as they attempt to understand and fit into a society that is stuck in left-brained logical-mind materialism.

Overloaded In Past Pain

Wednesday morning, I awake at 4:30 a.m. with another round of intense hacking coughs – coughs that launch mists of moist spray from the fluid in my lungs. Logic tells me I have pneumonia or something like it, but my heart tells me I am continuing to deal with energetic metaphors of deep emotions (water) clogging my ability to breathe life force. I finally return to bed for a couple of hours of broken rest, but again get up at 8:00 a.m., feeling tired, lethargic, and unmotivated.

After spending time watching spiritual videos and trying to raise my vibrations, I finally surrender to the Unidentified Flowing Emotions (UFEs) at around 10:00 a.m., simply asking Higher Energies to fill me and help me. As I do so, another inexplicable round of UFEs rages through me. For ten long minutes, I sob and dry-heave as my teeth chatter uncontrollably. Then, as quickly as the unidentified emotion began, it again ceases to flow.

As the unattached observer, struggling to maintain a higher non-identified perspective, I sit down at my computer to record the UFE thoughts that flow through me.

“I am so unmotivated,” I begin to type. “I hate people … I am a forever loner/loser … I am filled with self-loathing … my head is cloudy with heavy swirling energy.”

Social Stuckness

When I arrive at Keith’s porch at noon, ready to help with setup for the afternoon chocolate ceremony, I share details of this crazy ongoing journey with UFEs – emotions that are now showing themselves as related to social issues.

“After all the gossip, I am extremely hesitant to cry on the porch anymore,” I explain to Keith, “but there is a lot of emotion flowing through me right now and I don’t know how to fully release it.”

“Brenda, if you need to cry today, then please do it,” Keith encourages me. “Do what YOU need to do regardless of what others may think. This is part of your process.”

When the setup is done, I sit outside on the porch, meditating, deeply struggling, and not wanting to be social with anyone.

As the Glow Meditation eventually gets underway, I begin my own silent journey, gradually allowing myself to connect deeply with my social pains and fears … to my hidden childhood hatred toward popular, shallow, surface-level, happy, party-type people.

As I search for memories that might explain the crazy dysfunctional feelings, going deeper and deeper, I suddenly remember something that happened in August of 1967. I was twelve years old, preparing to enter seventh grade.

Sordid Secrets

At this tender age, I was an extremely naïve and innocent little boy, already struggling deeply with gender issues, desperately hating myself while trying to figure out the inexplicable feelings that flowed through me. I had a deeply rooted inner longing to be a girl, wishing some magic genie would steam out of a bottle and grant my deepest heart-wish. But alas, another part of me knew that I was nothing but an evil sinner that would surely be sent on the fast train to hell if anyone ever found out about my sordid secrets. These two sides of me battled incessantly, hating each other with a vengeance.

I was an ambitious little paperboy, delivering newspapers every afternoon as a way to stay busy and to earn some money. But another benefit I soon discovered was that while out on my paper route, I was free and alone to be myself. I soon collected a secret stash of girl’s undergarments – emotional comfort clothing that I wore underneath my jeans almost every day during my paper route. Somehow, this forbidden exploration brought me closer to the amazing feeling of being whole and complete – yet it also left me overloaded with guilt and shame.

One afternoon, while browsing through a small retail store, I saw a gorgeous little bikini for only $5.00. It took me a few weeks to find the courage to buy this treasure – a precious treasure that I kept safely hidden. I began to wear this swimsuit under my clothing while delivering newspapers. Eventually, the longings overwhelmed me. I desperately wanted to experience what it would be like to actually swim in my bikini.

One day, the inner longings consumed me. After purchasing a rubber swim cap – a cap I hoped would hide the fact that I had short hair – I mustered up the courage and did something that was destined to utterly destroy my social confidence.

Foreboding Pool Panic

After stealthily changing in a gas station restroom, I nervously venture out into the open air wearing nothing but my bikini and swim cap. Quickly mounting my trusty bicycle, I then ride nearly two miles through city streets before arriving at the municipal pool – the only swimming pool in this small rural town of perhaps 6,000 residents. Having completed the journey without incident, with no laughing faces or pointing fingers aimed in my direction, I confidently lock my bicycle up in a nearby bike rack and stroll up to the pool entrance.

There is no going back now. I am doing this.

To my horror, as I approach the entrance counter to present my season pass, a very popular twelve-year-old boy from my sixth grade class is standing on the other side of the counter. As he stares at me, he suddenly calls out my name with surprise. Without planning or thinking, I panic and run.

Seconds later, I find myself cowering behind a curtain in a small changing stall of the girl’s dressing room.

“What am I doing?” I freak out as my heart beats out of control. “I’m in big trouble. I have to get out of here.”

“There is a boy in the girl’s dressing room,” I hear someone yell out.

Feeling like a frightened and cornered mountain lion, I bolt for the front door and run like the wind.

Repressed Memories

The experience was so traumatic that I have no conscious memory of what I did after running away on that late summer day. I have blocked it all out. The only thing I know for sure is that no one ever called my parents and the police never showed up at my front door.

I can only assume that I rode my bicycle back to that gas station restroom and frantically changed into regular boy clothes … I can only assume that based on other struggles later in life, I must have destroyed and discarded that bikini and swim cap in an act of utter self-hatred, self-loathing, and sheer self-disgust.

One thing I do clearly remember, however, is going to school for the next six years, encompassing most of my teenage years, feeling like a total loser, always wondering, “Who knows about my horrible and shameful secret?”

Prior to seventh grade, I had been fairly confident in social arenas. Yes, I was already a culturally programmed sheep, but I was not yet a social loner and loser. Beginning in seventh grade, I lost all social confidence. Whether it was true or not, I absolutely believed that everyone was talking and laughing about me behind my back. I absolutely knew that one day someone would say something to indicate that they “knew” and that they would utterly humiliate me.

Hope Lost

In retrospect, I need to say a genuine “thank you” to David – the one behind the counter at the pool that day – the one that clearly called out my name in shock – the one that continued on to be very popular, athletic, smart, and on the student counsel in High School, etc…

Through all of those agonizing years, no one ever said a word to me about this swimming pool incident. I can only assume that David must have never shared my sordid secret with anyone else. In 1983 at my ten-year High School reunion – a full sixteen years after this incident – I approached David to apologize for my childhood behavior. He simply smiled and told me that he had no idea what I was talking about.

But such present-day understanding does little to help a tiny, struggling, twelve-year-old boy back in 1967 – a frightened child who absolutely knew that life as he knew it was forever over – that he had hopelessly ruined everything – that he would never again be socially accepted – that no one would ever again love him if they learned of his horrible secrets.

A Solo Journey

Back on Keith’s porch on this eventful April afternoon, while imagining and reliving these painful scenarios in my mind, I begin to cry. I keep the tears as quiet and muffled as possible while building up a pile of tissues on the ground.

Perhaps forty-five minutes after quietly entering this painful meditation, I feel Keith gently touch me on the shoulder.

“I’m working with my teenage social shutdown,” I soon share with Keith. “I am exploring intense twelve-year-old agony.”

“Keep working on it,” Keith encourages me before quickly moving on.

The next few hours on the porch are consumed mostly by rational-mind discussions about inner-work-related issues. Throughout these long hours, I sit quietly, alone, lightly crying and whimpering constantly.

I do not need Keith’s guidance right now and he knows it. And this is not an issue I would want to discuss in open conversation on the porch anyway. Just like that late summer day in 1967, this is something I need to do myself.

Help Please

A few hours later, as I manage to stop crying and bring a small amount of light into my crown and heart, a feeling of deep sadness continues to consume me.

“Help!” I quietly whisper to Keith when he glances my way during a short pause.

“I am dealing with issues of self-hatred from twelve years old,” I start to fill him in. “I have felt the emotions as deep as I can go, and I am now focusing on bringing in the light – but as I do so I am beginning to feel intense and deep sadness just below the surface.”

“You have been focused on age eleven-and-a-half to age twelve for a very long time,” Keith acknowledges that I am zeroing in on something very important.

“I don’t feel as if I can talk freely in public about this,” I ask for guidance. “Perhaps I need to schedule a private appointment with you tomorrow. What is your schedule like?”

We then talk briefly and generically for a minute or so … but do not schedule anything.

A Mother’s Love

After a while, a young woman comes over and sits by me.

“Can I hold you?” She asks with love.

“Yes, Please,” I respond, beginning to cry even before I move forward to allow her to sit and cuddle me from behind.

As this beautiful woman holds and caresses me, pressing my head into her heart, I begin to cry profusely. Deep waves of tears come and go for a very long time.

“Allow, Brenda,” Keith encourages me. “Go deeper. Her love is pure and unconditional, coming with no expectations or control.”

After perhaps forty-five minutes of surrendering to the emotion, but not really feeling as if it is taking me anywhere, I thank this woman from the bottom of my heart and tell her that I was imagining her as being my mother that was hugging me, giving me love that I was never able to receive.

“I feel the pure love,” I then speak to Keith, “but I feel as if I am still not allowing myself to receive it. I desperately want it, but am unable to allow it fully in.”

Vibrations Galore

As the young woman holds me tighter, I return to moving deep waves of tears. Soon, another friend joins us and places her head on my abdomen while embracing me right below my heart. I begin to cry harder as I mention a metaphor that is coming to me – that I have a huge wall preventing me from receiving this love. I am desperately trying to tear down this wall.

Then someone feels guided to start tapping me on the heart chakra, just above that nail-in-my-heart spot. Intuitively, I recognize that this is really helping.

“Please keep tapping,” I beg them.

Soon, I begin to tap just slightly below where they are tapping. Suddenly, I begin to sob, almost screeching and wailing – not quite, but close. The surfacing emotions are agonizing.

While this is going on, others around the porch are ohming and toning various sounds while everyone is holding sacred space for me. Intuitions and energetic feelings tell me that some energy inside my heart is attempting to flow down to the solar plexus, but is meeting blockages along the way. I want it to flow down, but something is subconsciously resisting.

I cannot explain it, but I gradually experience a softening of something hard inside – an opening of sorts. I do not know what it is or how it is happening. I then begin to feel as if more love is now coming in.

“Bring in more light and love now, Brenda,” Keith jumps in to further guide me.

I am in total surrender – at least as much as I will allow myself – feeling completley relaxed. And my heart is very strong, with a solid and powerful energetic presence in my upper chest, very much like I felt a year ago in that beautiful Valentines Day glimpse.

New Perspectives

“Brenda, after this kind of powerful work, don’t think … integrate,” Keith shares with me as the ceremony concludes. His tone is very upbeat and congratulatory.

Even though Keith is done, many people hang around to enjoy the energy of the porch. The woman who was assisting with my abdominal area sits and visits for a while. We talk a great deal about what happened with me, and about her ongoing journey with learning to understand the subtleties of fixing.

“What happened with me today was definitely not fixing,” I explain with a happy heart. “This was very empowering to my process, helping me go where I wanted to go. Fixing energy is usually disempowering, such as stopping someone’s emotional release by pulling them out of it in some way.”

“I know I have been blessed with a whole new perspective today,” I add.

The Subtleties Of Fixing

Suddenly Paul, who has been listening in, interrupts and insists that what happened to me today was no different from something I had called fixing a few weeks ago. Paul is especially lecturing and pushy in his emphasizing tone of voice. I can tell he is trying to force his point, to prove himself right and make me wrong. I can allow him to have his truth, but feel a strong need to first respond.

“Paul,” I ask him with loving courtesy, “can we please respectfully agree to disagree on this point. I can allow you to have your truth, but please, let me have mine.”

I then disengage from Paul, turning my attention elsewhere. I can tell by my inner emotions that he is still slightly triggering me, but I have no desire to further escalate and reenergize this pattern with him. I am rapidly learning that the difference between fixing and inspired assistance is often a very fine and subtle line.

A Perfect Setup

Keith is walking into town to have a dinner conversation with someone who needs his help … and I tag along for a few minutes.

“How did you like the movie?” Keith asks when I tell him about having watched “The Green Beautiful” last night.

“It was a very interesting metaphorical description of what I have felt my whole life,” I giggle back. “Just like those aliens, I did not fit in either; I have struggled with seeing many other people as shallow and strange.”

“In fact,” I continue, “ever since that age-twelve incident, I think I saw all popular kids, and those involved in party situations, as the aliens with whom I could no longer relate. I was terrified that they knew about me. I withdrew and was jealous while judging them as being sour grapes. I wanted to be one of them, but believed they were judging me – whether they really were or not – so I judged them first and further isolated myself. That is why the loud party atmosphere during chocolate bagging yesterday triggered me so much.”

“It was a perfect setup, a very painful setup.” I add a final realization.

Agonizing And Horrendous

As I ponder on my pillow, late on Wednesday evening, I realize that I built a huge wall around my heart some time after running away from that swimming pool in August of 1967. I believe that much of my muscle clenching, my rapid talking, and pigeon-toed walking also started at that same time. I cannot prove it, but I have no memory of any such behavior prior to that time.

After that endless nightmare began, I felt so much self-loathing and self-hatred that I did everything I could to stay out of the social spotlight. I began to talk extremely fast, so that if I did have to say something publicly, I could say it quickly and then get out of the way. I walked fast to get away from situations and to get where I was going without having to bump into people. I clenched jaw, arms, and legs in an effort to suppress energy flows … and as a result of my inward clenching I began to walk severely pigeon toed.

I abhorred myself at this age. It was agonizing and horrendous self-hatred.

A Clearing Conversation

As I get up on Thursday morning, I am very lethargic. Even though I feel fine, I am quite aware that deep emotions are flowing through me at the same time. It is extremely strange to actually feel quite good while simultaneously feeling very intense teenage emotions flowing through me. Perhaps unnerving might be a better word.

Shortly after 9:30 a.m., I walk out to Keith’s, knowing he is free, feeling intuitively guided to go out to spend some time talking. I have no idea why, or about what we will talk, other than that I want to share the swimming pool story with him.

I could probably do some writing today, but am feeling somewhat weird with all the emotional energy still flowing through me.

After quickly checking his guidance, Keith suggests a different possibility.

“I’m getting that you are doing just fine and do not need a session today,” Keith tells me. “All is well in your process for now. Why don’t we just have ice cream and talk about things.”

Soon, Keith has mixed up a double batch of frozen banana ice cream with chocolate – something he makes by juicing none other than frozen bananas.

For the next four hours, Keith and I engage in a beautiful, friendly, clearing conversation from a very healed perspective.

Cool Stuff

I find deep closure in discussing events on the porch from the past five months – doing so from a level of perception rather than projection and judgment. We hit on most of the major struggles and growth through which I have passed.

We talk a great deal about how I am learning to allow emotional energy to flow through me while working on finding a place of nonattachment where I can be both happy and functional while painful emotions – emotions that I do have to feel – simultaneously flow through me from the past (or from other multidimensional parts of me).

Keith reassures me that I am doing great in my transitional process of learning how to do this, pointing out that I am so focused on observing what I am doing that it appears to me as if I am attaching or identifying to the stuff flowing through me.

“But you are only observing, learning, and practicing,” Keith reminds me. “Love yourself and trust where you are at.”

“You have been doing some pretty cool stuff in your processing lately,” Keith reassures me. “You are just getting your bearings while finding a balance between working with Higher Energies and not wanting to feel the densities.”

Perhaps, one of the most useful outcomes of this powerful conversation is that I walk away feeling deeply validated for the perceptions I have had for a very long time – a validation that comes from a pure space of unconditional love without blaming or judging anyone. It is beautiful.

Rites Of Passage

As I arrive back at my apartment, I am again in two realities at once. On the one hand, I feel a peaceful connection to Higher Energies. On the other, I am nearly overwhelmed by a feeling of swirling energy and flowing emotions that flow through me. I have no idea what these Unidentified Flowing Emotions (UFEs) are even about … but they are very real and very powerful.

Just after 3:30 p.m., as I prepare to take a nap that I suspect will last me throughout the night, I check my email one last time. I find another beautiful quote from “Oneness” by Rasha, as follows: “You will be guided from within, at levels beyond your conscious awareness to navigate the depths of some of the experiential rites of passage. The keywords here are trust and surrender.”

I am definitely going through some very deep experiential rites of passage … and the levels are far beyond my conscious awareness. Literally, all I can do is to trust and surrender.

Brief Bursts Of Light

As I sometimes do, I am taking a brief jump out of linear time – jumping to a time two days later – jumping forward to late on Saturday night, April 22, 2012. I will fill in the missing gaps in my next blog.

After a long and somewhat frightening coughing fit while sleeping on a very hard bed in a tiny and dark hotel room in Antigua, Guatemala, I finally give in to a feeling telling me that I am supposed to be up meditating rather than sleeping. As soon as I sit up and focus on meditation, the coughing relaxes.

After a while, I am guided to return to an image of that young and innocent twelve-year-old boy who struggled so much in the summer of 1967. Several times in the last two days I have tried to connect with him, to send him love, to imagine myself holding and hugging him – but every time I feel as if I just cannot connect. The energy is simply not there.

Tonight, as I focus on this same task, I briefly connect to the excruciating agony and anguish of this frightened boy. As I do so, I experience bright flashes of light inside my head, as if coming from my third eye chakra. I have never been one to see many visuals while meditating, but these brief bursts of light are quite bright.

Inner Voices

As I continue attempting to unsuccessfully connect with that young boy as something “outside of me”, I suddenly realize that right now, at this very minute, I myself am regressed as being that young boy, feeling his painful and agonizing emotions.

Instead of imagining my present-day self as connecting with that frightened young man, I imagine myself as being that cornered little boy, trying to connect to my present-day future self and to our Higher Self. It is quite clear that I am all three, and that it is only a matter of linear-time perspective. This new approach works beautifully, and brings profound clarity over the next couple of hours.

Suddenly, a stream of powerful inner knowing begins to flow through me. It is as if this knowing is being downloaded into me as actual voiceless words – a profound inner knowing coming directly from my own Higher Self.

“Do you think you were alone during that excruciating time?” The words flow loudly in my head, having a very strong and powerful emphasis. “At perhaps the most frightening and crucial event of your life, do you think you went through that experience alone?”

“We create our own reality now,” The voices continue their silent download, “and we did it then too!!!!! David said nothing to others because we intervened in the situation. You never got into any trouble … you were not a victim … you were not a dumb-ass … you chose and planned the whole event as a necessary part of your childhood shutdown.”

“Not only was I there guiding and holding space for you,” I feel my Higher Self continue, “but you had a whole entourage of angels helping you too. It was crucial in your journey to destroy your social confidence. Had that not happened you would have gone on to be some type of brilliant scientist with a dynamic personality – having no motivation to turn to your spiritual path later in life.”

A Divine Plan

The channeled inner voices continue, telling me that on that dark night, and on other sleepless nights, I planned my psychic suicide, no longer wanting to live, believing my life as I knew it to be over. I get the strong guidance that at that time I psychically (unknowingly using my will) cut my energy channels , isolating energy flow from my heart, shoulders, hips, and all of my back side– which is the input/receptive side of all of my chakras.

As these insights come to me, I have several more light flashes in my third-eye chakra.

“It was agonizing, but we planned the whole thing,” the inner knowledge continues downloading “You were never in danger … no physical consequences ever occurred … it was all an inside job to develop enough self-hatred to shut you down as needed – socially, spiritually, energetically, and even intellectually. You had to be shut down, and this is how you arranged to do it. Just as you can trace how other past painful experiences all eventually led to beautiful results – this experience at age twelve was no different. It was not a stupid tragedy, but an amazing part of your Divine plan … of your own personal flow of creation.”

Life Saving Props

“The coughing right now is not your enemy,” the feelings keep flowing as midnight comes and goes. “The coughing was a necessary way to force you out of bed so that you could have this breakthrough and this profound metaphor of not being able to breathe because of your emotions.”

“There are profound parallels between what has been happening on the porch and what happened in your teen years,” the inner voices go on. “Just like you could not run away from interactions with Paul, you could not run away from that nightmare as a teenager. No matter what you tried, the nightmare only got worse and you increasingly felt that God just kept on abandoning you. This is the source of much of your God Drama. You hated God for that … for rejecting and abandoning you after all you did with your genuine heart.”

“It was all a massive stage play,” the insights just keep coming. “Just like you now see everything on the porch as a stage play, that is how your life was then too – your own personal holodeck of humiliation – humiliation designed to stifle and stop ego, just like on the porch.”

“The clenching, walking pigeon-toed, talking fast, broken nose and teeth, etc…,” the insights finally come to an end. “All of those things were just props to minimize ego, to help shut you down, to give you legitimate reasons to be dysfunctional … and to save your life from being totally lost in the conditioning of the world – so that you would eventually be in so much pain that you would have to leave the conditioning behind to search for a way to follow your heart.”

A Beautiful Teacher

Early Sunday morning, April 22, 2012, this flow of profound wisdom ends just as quickly as it began. I am left both excited and speechless. The downloading of understanding has been powerful. I no longer see that swimming pool incident as something that messed up my life. Instead, I now clearly see it as an event that created and sculpted the rest of my life – a life that has allowed me to find my way out of the box of traditional societal programming – a life that has taught me so much about the pain of human suffering, in both genders.

Were it not for that frightening day in August of 1967, there is no doubt that life today would be very different. While this lifetime of social and energetic dysfunction was not fun – not something that I would wish on anyone – it definitely has been a beautiful and amazing teacher. Each and every step of healing those dysfunctions and opening up the energetic blocks takes me one step closer to a profound inner license to shine my own inner light in a way that will help to inspire others in their own beautiful and unique paths.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

Monday morning, on the day after a beautiful Easter Sunday, I awaken with a state of inner conflict. I want to write, but as I stare at my computer, I simply do not feel it. Instead, I am heavy and sad. After meditating for an hour and twenty minutes with very nice energy, I continue to feel heavy and sad and alone and unmotivated.

“I need a break,” a very exhausted part of me demands. “I am tired of processing and writing. Please, give me a break!”

The goal-oriented part of me resists this inner protest, pointing out with alarm that I am falling further and further behind in my writing. The free-flowing part of me knows that all is well. Personal experience shows that this relaxed part of me always brings more joy and peace, so I finally surrender.

A Turbulent Break

I begin my “break” by engaging in the casual reading of a novel followed by a couple hours of listening to spiritual talks. But when I try to watch an Abraham video, deep feelings of aloneness and rebellion suddenly consume me. Soon, I am back in my bedroom to meditate.

That nail-in-my-heart spot is again quite painful, overflowing with agonizing feelings of sadness and betrayal – very much like the layer of emotional pains that flowed out of me yesterday during that beautiful Easter Sunday chocolate ceremony.

Picking up where I left off, I again focus on accessing repressed anger to loosen more layers of this betrayal blockage. For several minutes, a few brief rounds of turbulent emotions surge out of me in waves. At the end of each wave, I focus on inviting the light to flow through me, to show me what it would do with these emotional densities. Eventually, in this midst of this meditation, exhaustion consumes me and I fall asleep.

At around 2:00 p.m., I wake up with a start. I crave outside assistance with this new round of unexpected and overwhelming emotional release, but I also realize that I cannot always expect someone like Keith to be there to assist me. Still, a little hunch tells me to walk out to Keith’s porch.

“I owe him a little money,” I ponder to myself.” I will use that as an excuse to walk to his house. Perhaps something synchronous will happen along the way.”

A Timid Venture

“How are you doing?” Keith asks as I hand him the money I owe.

As I briefly summarize my unexpected-emotional morning, sharing insights about how another layer of this betrayal energy is flowing through me, muffled tears flood my already-red eyes.

“I’m getting that you are fine,” Keith gently reassures me. “This is just a part of your process.”

I feel really stupid for having walked out to Keith’s house. I crave support right now, but all of the “rumor voices” are flooding through my head … voices whispering that “Brenda is just a crybaby ninny, blah, blah, blah”.

I simply do not want to trouble Keith. I know in my heart that “I really am fine … that this is just a part of my process … just another layer of my emotion”, but this betrayed “God-Drama” part-of-me craves to be validated and understood before I will allow Higher Energies to assist me in working through this new layer of emotion.

Without even asking Keith for help, I simply thank him and walk away. As I pass through Keith’s garden, a casual friend who is doing some labor exchange stops me to share a few beautiful compliments.

“I know you are having a hard time,” this beautiful woman hugs me as she shares. “But I just want to tell you that every time I see you, you look brighter … you are lighter … and your skin is clearer … “

As this friend continues to share beautiful words, I wipe the final tears away from my eyes, thank her, hug her again, and then return to my journey home. I know I will be OK … I know that what I really need is to simply allow this emotion to flow through me while attempting to reconnect to the light. But right now, I have moved back into that metaphorical cockroach-infested house in the middle of a crime-saturated neighborhood.

Admitting Defeat

Continuing to hang out in these low-vibration energies, I skip dinner and instead feast on popcorn while watching movies for the remainder of the day, finally retiring in futile exhaustion shortly after 9:30 p.m..

But at 10:30 p.m., after another round of intense crying, I am back at my computer, typing a few notes. I clearly realize that the densities flowing through me are the overwhelmingly sad emotions of a child feeling betrayed – a child feeling helpless and powerless. Rather than fight the emotions, I surrender to the stories, trusting that the way out of them is to go deeper.

The emotions and stories tell me that if I let go of my betrayal-energy trump card with God – if I “let go” of my subconscious insistence on being validated and apologized-to by God – that I am admitting that I will forever be alone and unloved – that by no longer fighting for my identity, I am simply giving it all up – that by no longer seeking for validation as being the beautiful person that I am, that I am in essence admitting that I am a complete failure and that my life has been an utter waste of time and effort.

It is as if admitting that the betrayal was not real is the same as invalidating a lifetime of struggles in trying to survive the pain of that betrayal – that my life has been a lie – that I really am a loser – a dysfunctional mental patient in a psych ward.

Another thought that painfully pokes me is that letting go of being “emotionally victimized” makes me feel as if I am now a vulnerable open book just waiting to be trampled by those who would do so.

Rubbing Salt

As I go deeper into these crazy stories, knowing that the way out of these stories is to go right through the middle of them, this surrendering part of me is losing faith in life. I am up and down on the emotional roller coaster. I eff-ing do not care much about anything. I feel as if I am in a deep hole in the ground, with the lid pulled over the top, and I am sick of inner work. I just want to close my eyes and give up.

As I further surrender to the stories, another painful thought suddenly floods my mind.

“I hate happy people,” the voice screams through my consciousness. “I HATE, HATE, HATE happy people!”

I suddenly realize that I am filled with childhood stereotypes that originate with me being an empath. As an energetically sensitive child, I struggled to find happiness myself. As I saw through the shell of many of the “happy” people around me, and perceived their empty and painful emotions, I felt the shallowness and fake-ness of their public façade. Since I learned to stiffly judge and believe myself to be evil for having such perceptions, I was even more confused.

I was so deeply shut down that being truly happy was only a dream that betrayed me – one that I did not believe to be reachable for me – and that if others had happiness, that they were just pretending or rubbing salt in my wounds.

“It is impossible to be real and genuine, and to be joyfully happy at the same time,” A crazy belief system parades through my mind.

The sad part is that a very strong and hidden part of me believes this statement to be absolutely true. As I further ponder, my mind is taken back to a short video that Keith recently sent me … a video clip of a young baby laughing hysterically when his father repeatedly rips a piece of paper. As I watched that video, wishing I could laugh and feel that same joy, I felt nothing but anger. Wow!

Ancient History

Tuesday morning, April 10, 2012, I awaken with the same feelings running through me – feelings of “I do not like people … I do not like happy people … I do not like fake people … blah, blah, blah.”

I clearly recognize that these are not present-day beliefs – but just beliefs from the past that continue to strongly haunt and flow through me – emotions arising mostly from my teen years. In meditation, I repeatedly ponder how I have perceptions hooked with judgment – how when I perceive people’s hidden struggles I have ended up judging myself harshly, and then projected that judgment outward.

Somehow, by 9:15 a.m., I manage to center myself in this meditation, to bring in enough Higher Energy light and love to transmute all of these crazy stories – to bring myself back to the divine love of the present moment. I do not regret having regressed through the painful stories – it has been a profound part of my education – but I do cherish the moments of loving clarity in which I am able to return to my writing.

Late that same evening, I finally publish my next blog, “An Agonizing Close Call.” This is the blog that I have dreaded writing for most of the past five days. Just thinking about writing it has triggered me repeatedly, taking me back to the emotional and unhealed agony of the events about which I needed to write. I am so thrilled with the finished product. I am so grateful and healed by the integration that has taken place by going back in time to put the puzzle pieces together. It is now ancient history.

Reigning Peace

Wednesday morning, I awaken to a new panic. As I browse my emails, I discover one from a friend. I have been sharing her web hosting service, paying half of the cost – but the account is in her name.

My heart skips a beat when I read that she cannot pay the bill, so she has decided to simply let the service go. In just four short days, I will be without a blog. She waited until the last minute to tell me, and being in Guatemala with a very sketchy internet connection, I have no idea how I can possibly move my account by myself in such a short time.

To my delight, after meditating, inner guidance calmly reassures me that I create my own reality and that everything happens for a reason. I know that all will be OK. Two hours later, after being able to successfully Skype this dear friend, I have transferred the money to her, she has paid the entire bill, and I have confirmation that all is paid in full for three more years. I love the magic of email, Skype, PayPal and the internet.

Peace once again reigns supreme.

After a quick boat trip across the lake to Panajachel for banking and shopping, I have just enough time to prepare myself for what I believe will be a powerful chocolate ceremony for all involved. I am manifesting the perfect ceremony, but I have no attachment to exactly what this looks like. I am willing to flow with whatever, while simply focusing on my own loving and peaceful vibrations.

Inner Chatter

When the Glow Meditation ends, Keith asks, “Who wants help?” After a long pause, I speak up and take advantage of the opportunity.

“As you know,” I begin to share, “I have been processing a lot with this betrayal energy, plus in the last twenty-four hours I have been getting intuitively reminded just how strongly I have perceptions tightly hooked together with judgment.”

I wish I could say it publicly, but I stop short of mentioning that I am also dealing with a strong powerful feeling of “I hate people”.

“And I have this pressure in my third-eye, accompanied by that swirling confusion energy swarming my head,” I continue. “Any suggestions you can give me about how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.”

Keith says something like “OK” and then promptly goes into silent meditation for about fifteen minutes. As I observe and pay attention to my own energy, I get the feeling that I am very strongly in my head, and that Keith is answering me by not answering me.

I begin to sink into self-judgment, knowing the rumors that some people think I ask too many head questions … but I quickly ignore that feeling.

“I don’t care what people think about me,” I confidently remind myself of my journey with such issues. “I love myself for asking these questions … and they are genuine and valid questions. I do not need the validation or approval of anyone. WOW!”

A New Chance

Finally, as someone arrives late on the porch, Keith briefly steps into the kitchen to pour more chocolate – something I would normally do myself.

“Keith,” I ask when he returns to the porch. “Is your non-answer the answer that you are giving me when I asked for help?”

“What do you think?” Keith responds with his own question.

“Yeah,” I respond humbly. “I am dealing with being in my head, looking for instructions and recipes, needing someone to send me in the right direction or I won’t trust myself.”

“So what help would you like?” Keith lovingly offers me a new chance.

Left Brain Psychoanalysis

“I would like help in connecting to the subconscious to try to understand why I have perceptions so tightly hooked with judgment.” I respond.

Immediately, before Keith even engages me further, a woman across the porch starts to psychoanalyze me with rational-mind logic, trying to understand why I would have the silly and bizarre notion that they are the same.

“Of course I know they are not the same,” I lovingly respond to this woman, “but I have them hooked together in my subconscious mind. Rational talk is not what will help me. That is why I am asking Keith to guide me deeper.”

This woman asks another question at the mind level, further attempting to dig into “MY” crazy issue with logic.

“This is exactly what happened to me as a child when I tried to explain my right-brain knowing and perceptive intuitions,” I respond as light bulbs begin to flash in my process. “The others in my life would psychoanalyze me and use logic to make me a nut case, trying to show me how what I am saying makes no sense … trying to invalidate what I am doing using logic and the left brain.”

“Wow, this is a beautiful manifestation,” I think silently to myself.

The Only Sane One

“Brenda,” Keith finally jumps in, “this is how your child felt when shut down, being taught to not trust her own feelings and perceptions, being slammed and told that they were wrong, having logic used against her, being judged deeply and told that your perceptions were judging etc… You were invalidated and taught that you could do nothing right.”

“I knew I could not do anything on my own without being made wrong,” I respond with more clarity, “and any time I tried to express perceptions that I could not possibly know through the left brain, I was invalidated and judged for judging … totally slamming my self-confidence.”

“Connect with this child,” Keith lovingly guides me. “I’m being reminded of that “you were the only sane one” realization that you had a few months ago.”

“That was over a year ago,” I smile in response.

I clearly recognize that Keith is referring to a crazy-making day of unknowing role-playing where, for an entire ceremony, he approached me from the role of a domineering parent. Finally, at the end of this agonizing experience, the intuitive clarity had come that Keith was giving me a first hand experiential opportunity to remember how I had felt as a child when trying to defend my right-brain reality. At the end of that confusion-filled afternoon, Keith had lovingly reassured me that in the midst of my being made crazy, that I was indeed the “only sane one” as a child – that everyone else was shut down in the consensus reality and I was desperately trying to hang on to my own genuine connection with Source.

Inner Child Metaphors

“Share with your child how she was the only sane one,” Keith continues guiding me, “that she was a magical child born into an environment that she needed to be born into so that she would be your age now.”

I begin to meditate with little Bobby, since he is the one who primarily suffered the pain of feeling insane. I visualize myself telling this precious little toddler that he was magical, that he was the only one who was sane – that everyone else in his life was just making him feel crazy because they were not capable of understanding where he was at.

“Brenda,” Keith soon interrupts. “I would like you, as the adult empath, to also help that child by assisting in releasing that child’s confusion in her third eye.”

As I focus on meditating with this metaphor, an ice cream truck is going down and back up the steep street by Keith’s home.

“What a beautiful inner child metaphor,” Keith points out to me with a giggle.

I have a hard time focusing as profound distraction energy attempts to overwhelm me. I clearly recognize that this is an inside energy having nothing to do with the beautiful music playing on an ice cream truck.

A Stuck Porch

“I’m just faking it till I make it because I’m finding it extremely difficult to concentrate,” I share my process with Keith.

“Good,” Keith validates my approach.

Repeatedly I imagine a scenario with both Bobby and Sharon joining me in my inner conference room – one where I attempt to share my loving wisdom and support. Even while sensing a calm and cooperative environment in that inner room, not much is happening.

Suddenly, I realize that little Sharon is extremely emotional, struggling with the agony of feeling invalidated and betrayed. I begin to focus on being the adult empath for this traumatized little girl … still somewhat feeling as if I am faking it.

Keith leaves me in this meditative state while proceeding to work his way around the porch. As usual, I continue my process while also listening to the outside world. There seems to be a very resistant energy in the others… many of which are very quiet and almost sleeping. I watch this pattern as Keith moves quickly all around the porch.

An External Stage Play

Suddenly, a new trauma-drama erupts right as Keith is working with Paul. A young woman (the same story-telling powerful-empath from previous ceremonies) begins talking with deep frustration about a recent argument she had with Paul.

Things get quite tense and heated as I simply observe with pure love in my heart. It is actually quite powerful to watch the unfolding conflict, realizing that this young woman could be me not too long ago. I am now seeing my own former pain reenacted in third-party format with the same man who has once triggered so many core issues in me.

I watch as both parties push each other – as both are lost in the depth of their painful stories while blaming the other (and even Keith) for their pain.

Keith attempts to do a little relationship training, but neither seems currently capable of grasping the concepts that “it is not about the other person”, “it is not about what it is about”, “nothing changes until you do”, and “pain is resistance”.

I silently giggle, doing so only on the inside with no external smiles. I am delighted that I feel so lovingly unattached to what I am witnessing. I simply remain the observer while focusing on holding a high-vibration space for others on the porch.

I am fully aware that my own inner children are witnessing this entire scenario. In fact, I intuitively recognize that this little external stage play is facilitating major breakthroughs for Bobby and Sharon – going back in time and helping them to understand concepts of non-attachment, non-identification, relationship-rules, not needing to be right – and most of all in realizing that “they were the sane ones” in the midst of all their perceived conflict.

A Moment Of Childhood Grace

At one magical point in the middle of this drama, Keith looks at me with a huge smile – implicitly acknowledging his recognition of my glowing energy. We do not exchange a single word, but I know that he knows exactly what I am doing.

Later, when Keith finally does ask how I am doing, I respond with a giggle.

“I am working on bringing the same “moment of grace” experience that I as the adult had last Wednesday – bringing this same loving clarity to my own precious inner children.” I share with Keith.

A few minutes later, when this struggling young woman expresses further confusion to Keith regarding the relationship rules, Keith defers to me.

“Why don’t you ask Brenda?” Keith giggles at the young woman. “Brenda understands them very well.”

I spend the next half hour in quiet conversation, lovingly and patiently doing my best to share personal wisdom and examples with this young woman, helping her to understand what Keith is teaching from various other vantage points. I am fully aware that this young woman, just a few days ago, was one of those judging me as being a low-energy crybaby. I love the peace that now flows through my veins.

Glimpses Of Divine Love

As Keith begins working with someone else, he suddenly turns back to me.

“Brenda, I’m being guided to have you bring in that three-year-old angel to work with your little child,” Keith surprises me.

I know exactly what Keith is referring to. I remember how last year my inner children were terrified of Higher Energies and angel metaphors, etc… In the midst of that work, I had brought in a three-year-old angel that my inner children could play with – one that would not seem quite so threatening to them.

I soon invite this beautiful little angel to join me with my inner children. I begin to imagine this precious angel as holding Bobby’s and Sharon’s hands, as cuddling them, and sitting on the bed with Bobby when he was crying as a young child. This inner movie flows gracefully from one unfolding scene to the next, with this precious little angel comforting my inner children in beautiful ways.

As I do so, I begin to feel true unconditional love for these children. While I know my dear parents loved me with all their hearts, doing so in the only way that they knew how, their love came with conditions – even being withheld from me as a form of well-intended punishment. It breaks my heart to realize that I did the same with my own precious real-life children.

As the meditative scene continues, I get profound glimpses of pure Divine love – and begin to cry for joy as each glimpse momentarily graces my still-hesitant heart. Part of me continues to resist, and I am unable to fully open to this beautiful love.

A Clear Pattern

Over the next twenty minutes or so, Keith engages me in scattered conversation while I continue this beautiful solo process. Finally, a feeling of clarity tells me that I am done for the day – that I will go no further if I remain – that there is no need to stay until the porch is empty.

“I think I am going now,” I share with Keith as I smile and rise to my feet.

I am so filled with peace and light that I need no validation or feedback. Because of this, I am quite surprised when Keith begins to publicly share with the group, congratulating me on the profound deep work I did today, telling me I am making beautiful progress etc…

I have noticed a clear pattern today. When I am eagerly engaged in real empowered work, Keith is right there by my side, guiding me quite frequently. When I am scamming myself with rational mind talk and neediness, Keith ignores me and goes into meditation, or moves on to others, etc… And I have noticed quite vividly, especially today, that Keith does the same with Paul and others. I am learning so much just by observing how Keith works – or does not work – with me and others. He rarely pushes, and never enables self-scamming.

“That is why people who don’t do their own work gossip about me getting too much of Keith’s attention,” I giggle inside as I walk homeward. “And that is why I often feel that I myself am being ignored by Keith. The times when I feel deeply ignored are the “ego-needy” times when I am extremely resistant to connecting with the light, to going deeper inside … and Keith simply does not push me in such times.”

Suddenly, many of the gossipy rumors have also lost their sting.

Synchronous Squeaming

After publishing “Squeamys And Conflict” on Thursday, I spend a peaceful and relaxed Friday morning enjoying a mix of internet, books, and videos before walking out to Keith’s home for an afternoon chocolate ceremony.

During the Glow Meditation, I am surprised at just how strong the squeamys are in my arms today. This sometimes-excruciating sensation of “squirming and screaming” energy is becoming quite the common occurrence when I attempt to relax my clenched arms. Today, the squeaming is especially strong. I simply trust that the flow of my process will one day take me to the secrets of this very vivid metaphor.

Soon, the discomfort spreads to include a strong and physically aching feeling of intense panic in my abdomen, centered mostly in the area of the belly button. This inexplicable inner fear triggers a strong sensation of fight or flight.

Without reacting, I just observe, asking for the light to show me what it would do with this metaphor. But nothing changes, letting me know that there is still something I need to learn, or perhaps maybe the timing is simply not yet right.

Pain-Filled Intuitions

I quickly abandon my own journey when Keith asks if I would like to assist in working with an empath across the porch. Soon, I focus on bringing in more light to hold space for others.

To my delight, as I allow myself to be a channel of sharing energy with others, this also has a very positive relaxing effect on my own process. I soon feel a noticeable loosening of the sharp energetic pains in my abdomen. What was very painful twitching is now more of a mildly painful vibration.

As I simultaneously assist others while observing the energy in my abdomen, I begin to see the energy with a different light. I have been assuming that these pains are emotional density that needs to be released, but intuitions now whisper that maybe these pains are resistance to the energetic flow of my power. Following inner guidance, I start to use my will to pull these pains up into my heart.

To my delight, the pains actually move upward and out of my belly, settling down into that nail-in-my-heart spot at the center of my heart chakra. Gradually, over the next thirty minutes, the pains dissolve and vanish. The squeamys are still there, but I no longer focus on them.

Energetic Feedback

A while later, as Keith works with a young couple he again looks toward me and asks if I would like to help.

“I was just thinking that I needed to be over there,” I respond after having ignored my intuitions for a minute or two.

As Keith guides the woman to release her densities to her husband, I hold space for the process, and add my own energetic assistance. I imagine little Sharon holding a magic wand, asking the density to come toward her while then zapping it midair with her wand, dissolving it into a pillar of transmuting light that goes both up and down. I play with this fun little metaphor for at least thirty minutes while continuing to fill with light and hold space for this young couple.

“Wow, Brenda,” Keith suddenly surprises me. “You are doing really well today.”

I love how Keith can feel my energetic growth, even though we have only exchanged a few words all afternoon.

Not Knowing

As the ceremony is close to dissolving, I again feel guided to go home before the porch clears. As I stand up, Keith makes a comment about my beautiful energy.

“Do you have any observations or suggestions to help me go deeper?” I ask with curiosity.

“No, I think you are doing great,” Keith smiles back at me.

As I rest late on Friday evening, I glow with delight about two back-to-back ceremonies of loving connection – ceremonies where I continued to do my own deep work in the background, but where I was also gifted with the opportunity to take a breather from deep-sea emotional diving.

I really have no idea what I did today … and I do not need to know. Before group today, I manifested a beautiful ceremony, and that is what happened. I moved some painful energy around, experienced a few deep intuitions, and simply played with the light while looking for clues and following gentle breadcrumbs.

Heart Surrender

After spending another peaceful day of writing on Saturday, I am delighted by the opportunity to spend a few hours in Skype conversation with a couple of friends on Sunday morning. As midday approaches on this April 15, 2012 morning, I make the very familiar walk out to Keith’s porch. I am eager and ready for yet-another chocolate journey.

Soon after finishing the Glow Meditation, I sit peacefully while observing Keith work with others. I often find the theme of my own journey by paying attention to my energy and triggers while simply observing and listening. The woman with whom Keith is working is really stuck in her head. As I ponder her dilemma, I feel guided to do something inside.

“Heart,” I silently meditate, “I have no idea what to do today, but you do. Will you show me what you would do today?”

Having expressed this quiet intention, I simply sit back on my cushion, watching, observing, and breathing energy into my heart.

I observe as Keith works with a woman who is obviously a very strong empath, but is quite stuck and does not know it. I then observe the same situation with another woman, and another. Finally, after Keith completes a quick round of working with many stuck people who are not ready to go deep, he turns to work with me.

Giving Is Receiving

“Keith,” I share unfolding intuitions, “I’m getting the feeling that the stuck energy today is about my process. It is taking me back into childhood when I was so stuck that I did not know what to do.”

“Brenda,” Keith responds as he points to a woman in the corner who is deeply stuck. “If you will open your heart and share with her what you never received as a child, you will find some new healing today. This process will help to heal you as you share what you need with her.”

Keith is not specific, but I know that as a child, I have no memory of receiving pure unconditional love – and I know I have a huge capacity to share such love when I am connected to the light. Soon, I am sitting in front of this woman, focusing on relaxing and energizing my own heart, asking it to then open up with pure unconditional love.

“Please do what you know how to do,” I ask my heart.

I then step back as before, getting out of the way, simply focusing my energetic attention on my heart chakra.

Trusting And Intending

As I imagine my heart connecting with this woman, I feel a gradual and very profound heart strengthening and opening. In fact, my heart feels so strong right now, that it reminds me of that profound heart-opening glimpse I had on Valentines Day in 2011 – right here on Keith’s porch.

As I feel the strength and empowerment of my heart, I also experience many little tickling pains in the high heart region. These tiny tingling pains are quite reminiscent of how I felt for nearly a month after opening my High Heart chakra just before Christmas in 2011. Intuitions tell me that another layer of my High Heart is beginning to find new life.

To my delight, I am also feeling new prickly tickles forming in my lower throat and upper shoulder region. Inner guidance tells me that all of these little pains are also the result of slight resistance to new things that are beginning to open.

The fun part is that as I share this expanding heart power, I feel deeply guided to do so without trying to understand or control it using rational mind. Instead, I simply trust that my heart knows exactly what to do, and I express my intentions for it to do just that.

Rational mind has no idea what I am doing … yet the energetic feelings in my body tell me that something magical is in process.

An Inside Energy Connection

As the afternoon unfolds, I follow little intuitions that guide me to share energy with this person or that, but mostly I simply sit in space-holding wonder.

I observe my favorite projection buddy returning to several of his old behaviors that used to bother me, and I am delighted that these behaviors do not trigger me at all.

“This is the kind of behavior that used to drive me crazy,” I ponder with clarity. “I used to give away my power and be miserable in situations like this. Today I am delighted and keeping all of my power. Wow, I feel no desire to judge at all.”

I quickly recall a discussion I had with a friend this morning – one talking about how it is possible to be happy even when digging trenches in a concentration camp (a reference to Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning”).

“I can be happy in any environment,” I giggle inside. “What others do or do not do has no power over my own personal divine connection. Maintaining my connection to Source is indeed an inside job, period!”

A Magical Training

Soon, Keith leads the group in an empath training. For the first time in a very long time, my heart does not shut down with fear as I ponder my participation. As I follow Keith’s guidance through the various phases of the training, I intuitively know that I am actually moving real dense energy, just as I had done earlier with a new woman named Tiffany. While working with her, Tiffany had felt my energetic assistance, and had provided me with valuable feedback. Now, as I practice during the training, I feel the same sense of intuitive confidence. I know I am doing something real, but have no way to prove it.

As the training nears conclusion, Keith begins to share deep understanding about how the Archangel Michael’s number one project is working with empaths. As Keith shares from his heart, his eyes swell up with joyful tears. Several others in the group simultaneously join in the tear-fest, as do I. The beautiful energy today is magical and powerful, and deeply emotional. My heart glows with pure love.

Giggling Surprises

“Wow, you had a good day today,” Keith glows at me as people start to leave.

“It was quite different for me,” I giggle. “I was not in my head at all. I did not even know what I was doing other than asking my heart to show me while I stepped out of the way.”

“Brenda, I have been reading your blog,” Tiffany interrupts and surprises me. “I found your blog when I was researching the pyramids.”

“Really?” I question with delight.

“We are Facebook friends,” Tiffany giggles back at me.

“Oh, yeah,” I respond with a smile. “I remember now. You sent me an email in early March.”

“You are quite the celebrity around here,” Tiffany builds up my ego. “I was hoping you would be at the ceremony today.”

I love such fun surprises. I know I write my blog for one purpose only – for my personal healing and integration – but it is delightful to know that others are reading and finding my journey to be useful in some way for them.

Honest, Blunt, And Loving

Hearing this conversation, another young woman jumps in to engage me. She is the same young woman who is a powerful empath but is deeply stuck – the same one who helped me release a great deal of inner resistance just a few ceremonies ago – the same one who had a deep disagreement with Paul – the same one with whom I shared a long conversation about relationship rules.

“Brenda, I am really confused,” this young woman approaches me. “Why can I not connect with you or read your energy or feel a bond with your issues or something?”

“Probably because you came here already having a negative opinion of me,” I giggle back to her. “You were biased by a certain person sharing rumors and gossip about me being a crybaby and a drain on the group energy.”

I say my words with love, but also with genuine seriousness. I am completely unattached to her response. To my delight, Keith jumps into the conversation, smiles, and fully agrees with what I just said.

“If you only see me when I am crying as if I belong in a mental institution, that may be a logical conclusion to draw,” I continue my loving speech. “But in reality, I have been doing some very deep core-issue inner work over the last five months, and someone who wants to judge me without knowing what I am doing would likely see only a crazy bitch that cries all the time.”

The conversation is very honest and blunt, but also very loving. This young woman seems fascinated by the feedback she saw others give to me, yet deeply puzzled as to why she herself cannot feel my energy.

Surprise Aggression

Suddenly the young woman playfully punches me twice, quite forcefully hitting me with her palm in the center of my chest.

“C’mon,” she raises her voice and tries to get me into anger, “you need to access all of that inner anger and let it out.”

After my initial surprise, I smile back at her and calmly respond with love, not having any attachment at all to the crazy thing she just did.

“I have done enough of that level of processing for now,” I giggle back at her. “I have nothing to scream out today. I have no emotion to release right now.”

“You might have on another day,” Keith momentarily interrupts the conversation, reminding me that this journey is a moment-by-moment adventure of following the flow.

“Yeah,” I respond with a smile, “but right now I am processing on a much deeper level, more involved in using and connecting with light and love. It is profoundly powerful for me in a different way.”

Tarot Teasers

As I later ponder the events of this beautiful mid-April Sunday, I have no rational-mind way to fully describe what I did today. At an intuitive level, I know that what happened was powerful and profound. On a rational-mind level, I only know that I relinquished control over to my heart and I experienced powerful energy buildups and flows in my body. Keith reassures me that when I stop trying to figure things out, that that is when the knowing will come. For now, I am quite content simply to know that I took beautiful steps today into the area of trust and surrender.

Before going to bed, I feel guided to draw a few tarot cards. First, I pull the “ten of pentacles”, letting me know that I am going through a major stage of completion in the physical sense. Next, I select the “Universe” card, which indicates another level of significant completion on my spiritual path. Finally, I randomly select the “Queen of Cups”, indicating feminine reign over the emotional world.

Before putting the cards away, I feel a twinge of guidance telling me to look at the bottom card of the deck. To my delight, it is the “Queen of Wands”, indicating feminine reign over the spiritual world.

I have no attachment to what message these cards may have for me. I simply trust the flow. It does not matter whether my present state is merely a much-needed resting point, a glimpse into where I am going, or perhaps something more permanent.

Trusting My Heart

These last seven days have been an amazing journey, beginning with deep pains in that nail-in-my-heart spot as I processed additional remnant layers of the betrayal energy that had become so obvious to me in a beautiful Easter Sunday sacred ceremony of symbolisms.

In the rumor mill department, I have taken what once felt like betraying words – complaining gossip spread by others – and instead turned them into meaningless words that are actually quite self-empowering when I no longer give them my power.

And then, when my heart nearly stopped after learning that I was going to lose my blog-hosting site, I quickly found the peace in my heart reminding me that all is well … and it was.

With the unexpected assistance of a Higher-Self orchestrated stage play, I then took another experiential journey, learning how I as a young child could be so confused by the difference between perception and judgment, and so stuck in the aftermath of being slammed for perceptions and psychoanalyzed by those who could not understand them. There never was a need to fix me with logic. As a magical child, I really was quite sane already.

It seems that at every turn, each moment of every ceremony is manifesting as exactly what I need it to be.

But most of all, I end this amazing week with deep gratitude for another experience in learning to surrender to the wisdom and knowledge of my heart. I am in the process of releasing the need to understand and control things with rational mind – of learning that I can simply express my intentions and then step back, trusting that my heart really does know the way.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

The period of profound grace seems to be over as I awaken early on Saturday morning. As I rest in bed, I feel completely nonfunctional and rather rebellious.

I begin to ponder the porch, and as I do so, the image of Paul overwhelms my mind. I see him as ruining everything, screaming angrily at me, polluting the peace, and taking my power so that I cannot be happy in connecting with Source. I am projecting my God Drama all over Keith … and Keith (representing Source) is doing nothing to prevent the “evil” Paul from dominating and taking my power. What was profound peace on Wednesday has given way to a feeling of deep victimization.

(Before proceeding, I want to make one thing perfectly clear here. I love my parents deeply, and I honor and respect the religion of my youth. Both did the best they knew how to mold me into following in their footsteps … and I clearly know that both had the most genuine of intentions. The fact that I continue to heal suppressed and hidden anger does not take away from that love in any way.)

In reality, I recognize that I am projecting Paul as representing my parents and my religion – the people and institutions that stood over me with a controlling squirt bottle, using loving-but-firm teaching techniques and make-wrong fixing energy to prevent me from having a peaceful environment where I could connect to Source in my own unique heart-based way. I realize that deep down, I am not really angry at Paul or at Keith … I am angry at childhood adults and God … but the chain of bread crumbs goes even deeper. I am playing an angry game with God, refusing to own my power until I receive an apology.

Lost In The Stories

As I have realized before, I have a “personal sandbox” – and part of me refuses to play the game unless God/Source plays in MY sandbox by MY rules and expectations. I have bullshitted myself, creating bullshit stories for why I still struggle to connect with Source.

All the while, I know that Source energy surrounds me, stacked high on the butler trays of life, just waiting for me to take off my thick armor and to stop playing the resistance games. Why can’t I receive it … connect to it … bathe in it?

I am a wreck. I recognize that I am deep in ego stories and struggles – I know I am sinking in the quicksand of past emotion – and I know the truth about my God Drama. Yet these emotional stories are so strong and overwhelming that I am not sure whether I can or want to try to deal with them on my own.

At 9:00 a.m. on this Saturday, April 7, 2012, I begin the ten-minute stroll out to Keith’s magical porch, hoping to schedule a little time for a private session. Soon, I have a 10:30 a.m. appointment. An hour later, as I wait for my appointment, I sit in meditation, trying to maintain composure while trickles of energy play around in my crown and forehead. At the same time, confusing pressure and heaviness swirl around inside of my head. I know that something is going on with my energy. I am attempting to trust and surrender to the flow, desperately trying to simply love myself … but I am deeply lacking in trust.

The Rumor Mill

At the beginning of my session with Keith, I first fill him in on my crazy journey, explaining the deep self-awareness of my projections while simultaneously seeking validation for my subtle perceptions.

Keith and I soon discus circulating rumors that Paul is talking about me (and others) all over town – rumors of how Brenda is a negative-energy crybaby who drains the energy on the porch, and rumors about how the men on the porch seem to be ignored while Brenda gets all the help. Keith is quite aware of the rumors going around, many of which are critical of him as well. At least I am in good company.

I have been aware of the gossip for some time, knowing it is part of my training in learning to remain in my power while not caring what others might think of me. As I briefly discuss this “rumor” topic with Keith, I begin to get deeply lost in my projections. Keith then startles me even more.

“Brenda,” Keith tells me firmly, “some of your projections onto Paul are not based in any fact at all … they are totally your own mental creation.”

I am deeply hurt that Keith is not validating my feelings and perceptions … but I also know that this is my personal holodeck reality we are talking about here … and that what is really going on “out there” is not as important as dealing with the inner triggers. Whether my pains are all based in visible reality or not, they are real issues that I need to find and heal inside of myself.

Keith’s stern resistance to my attempts to further discus my projections causes my God Drama projections onto him to flare even more. I know I am projecting … I just want to talk about the projections so I can work on healing them.

Meditative Release

I am lost in the stories right now … so lost that rising above them seems like an impossibility. I seem incapable of allowing any type of connection to Higher Energies, not even through meditation, until I feel some type of validation for what I am experiencing.

Finally, after extensive and very calming conversation and deeply honest sharing, Keith simply closes his eyes and begins to meditate. I continue talking for a while about this and that, hoping to elicit a response … but Keith just silently meditates. Finally, I get the hint, give up, and just meditate too … doing so in complete silence for most of the next hour.

In this deep silence, I struggle to let go of the stories. Finally, I invite my inner children, Bobby and Sharon, to wrap up one of my stories in a blanket, and to go dump it into a garbage can. I repeat this visual metaphor over and over until the stories begin to lessen and relax. Gradually I begin to feel a little energy and peace in my body.

A Big Eraser

Throughout our conversation, before and after this long meditative interlude (but especially at the end) Keith repeatedly reminds me of the profound knowing I had on Wednesday when I was connected to a new level of grace and nonattachment – one in which Paul’s yelling attempts to draw me into conflict only gave me more loving energy vibrations.

“It is the next level of your goal,” Keith teaches me. “You were given that experience on Wednesday as a gift of grace, showing you what is possible and where you are going on your path. Now you are taking a step back down to clean up more of the densities that keep you from staying at that new level.”

“I’m trying to remember this,” I respond in humble frustration, “but I get so lost in the stories. I seem to have a huge eraser.”

We talk considerably about my “eraser” … about how I can erase all of the good memories and some of the bad ones … and not remember them again until I write about them.

“This is not uncommon for people to do,” Keith reassures me, “and you do this a lot.”

Validation Required

Near the end of our session, Keith and I talk a great deal at the rational-mind level … something I desperately need at this point in my process.

“You are in a profound flow,” Keith reminds me, “and whether others perceive you as a crying ninny or not, you are headed to a place where you will not be attached to such judgments.”

Keith even goes so far as to suggest that I am very near the end of this process, and that this is why I am being given the “wham, wham, wham” of having my old pains and patterns slammed in my face so that I can have the opportunity to not take the bait – to release and not reenergize such patterns in my life.

“The goal isn’t to just discover the dramas and games that you play with God,” Keith emphasizes to me. “It is even more important to understand the reasons why you play them.”

“I am often so angry that I won’t let go until I first get heard, validated, understood, and even get an apology,” I express new recognition. “With you and Paul, I get so lost in the stories that I refuse to reconnect to Source until the stories are heard and at least partially validated. Then, and only then can I let go of the judgment and develop more trust.”

“Brenda,” Keith congratulates me, “that is probably the most important thing you have said all day.”

Losing Identity

“You really are doing very well,” Keith again reassures me. “You are being deeply honest with your journey and making great progress. You are not there yet, but you are genuinely exploring the huge scam that you play out with yourself.”

“So I just need to know myself,” I ask for clarification. “I just need to explore and understand the games I play so that I will eventually make the choice to no longer play them?”

“More or less,” Keith responds.

In another short discussion, Keith reassures me that the way out of a story is to surrender to it … that the truth is ultimately found in the surrender.

“But part of me is afraid of getting lost in the story if I do that,” I slightly resist the concept.

“And then there is the fear of losing my identity,” I add more insight. “There is fear of losing the scam that defines me … losing myself to an unknown … yet if that ‘unknown’ is anything like I was on Wednesday when nothing could faze me, and when attack only energized me, then I WANT IT.”

Vibrational Neighborhoods

Keith and I then deeply discuss another concept that has plagued me – a metaphor that Keith had shared in my first ceremony ever with him back in July 2010. He had painted a vivid mental picture of a cockroach-infested house in a crime-ridden neighborhood … pointing out that there is no need to live in that house while cleaning up the densities from that environment. Instead, we can move to a new high-vibration neighborhood, and use that new neighborhood as a home base to work with our densities.

Keith repeatedly tells people that since we live in a free-will Universe, that the Higher Energies cannot simply take our densities from us – that would be a violation of our free will. While there are no absolute rules, we usually have to feel them to the core before the light can transmute our densities.

But in my case, when I strive to feel the density to the core, I usually end up moving back into the low-vibration neighborhood and then have an extremely difficult time extracting myself once I am there. The emotions and stories of that neighborhood consume me like quicksand, and I get stuck slogging through the pain on my own, without the assistance of the light or Higher Energies.

Keith has repeatedly encouraged me to take the light with me, or to access the light once I am at the core, but because of my deep God Drama resistance, accessing such light often becomes a daunting task. Since Christmas time, I have been gradually learning to remain connected with the light while diving deep, but the God Drama is so engrained and stuck in me that I often feel like a very slow learner.

It is often all I can do to remind myself that I, at a higher level, set up my own unique process in this way on purpose, that it is part of my profound education – part of earning my inner license to be able to have compassion for others with whom I may work in the future.

Deepening Depression

While I continue to feel tired and emotionally drained, I feel a glimmer of hope as I thank Keith profusely for spending so much personal time with me. I am shocked to note on my watch that we have been talking for nearly five hours. After a genuine hug, I begin descending down an outdoor flight of cascading stone steps that lead down to Keith’s garden. I have made this journey hundreds of times without mishap. To my surprise, as I reach the bottom step, I slip and fall to the ground below, skinning the palm of my left hand and staining my slacks.

As I stroll homeward bound, feeling a pensive peace and confidence, I ponder the metaphor of slipping and falling, landing on the left hand – the feminine, intuitive side of my body. I clearly recognize that I am far from stable, and that much of me continues to struggle with balance between the Higher Energies and working with the densities.

Later that evening, after taking notes and napping, I remain too unstable to even want to cook, so I instead head out to find my favorite burger and fries. But my special place is closed. After checking out several other restaurants, I end up bumping into a casual friend on the path. We share conversation while I munch down on pizza. I am completely unprepared for what follows.

Soon, I am listening to other stories of gossip and rumor that this friend has both witnessed and heard – stories that involve tearing me (and others) down – stories that further fuel my projections onto a certain person who constantly seems to trigger me.

As I listen to the stories, I sink into deep hopeless depression. My friend senses my vulnerability and begins to talk about how I am too isolated, always crying, and that it is not healthy. I try to explain that I am still deep in process … that I am not always like this … that what some people see is only the side of me on Keith’s porch when I am deep in emotion.

But I am lost in the stories again … too lost in the overwhelming emotions of being misjudged and misunderstood to be able to continue the conversation. I soon excuse myself to go home and isolate.

The Long Haul

Talking to this friend only shows me how much I want to isolate from consensus reality. I feel so alone and abandoned, so deeply lost in my God Drama, so deeply wanting validation and understanding but getting exactly the opposite feedback from the outside world.

This is not the first friend who has tried to tell me I am too isolated and dependant on Keith … too lost in looking to him for guidance. I use this feedback to fuel my inner resolve. Outside appearances and unstable emotions might give the world the impression that I am a crazy bitch who belongs in the psych ward of the local hospital … but I am absolutely growing big time right now. In spite of how my journey may appear externally, I know that I am deeply empowered, exactly where I need to be.

I am staying right where I am. I recognize the profound growth in what I am doing, and know that it may look to others like extreme self-destruct … but so be it … I am tearing down ego so that I can rise from the ashes like the Phoenix … my heart tells me to stay right where I am.

Whatever this process may look like to others (perhaps utterly crazy and insane), I trust me, myself, and I. I am playing out tons of lifetime emotional dysfunction and Keith is gently guiding me through that projection drama. I am profoundly growing. I am undoing ego and am on my way to awakening. As crazy as I sometimes feel, I am prepared to get even crazier. I am not running away, at least not today. I am in this for the long haul.

A Flowing Process

Early Sunday – a beautiful and sunny Easter morning – as I attempt to send an email to a dear friend, another freight train of emotions plow through me, raging for a few minutes before zooming off into the distance. When the sound of the train disappears, I am left feeling much lighter and more optimistic.

I feel as I am no longer “doing my process”. Instead, my process is “doing me”. When the flow of my process drags me through past emotions, it can often get quite frightening. But then I get profound glimpses of where I am going, as I did on Wednesday when Paul screamed at me, giving me just enough faith to keep digging ever deeper in the muck – just enough faith to keep excavating those increasingly scary places that a desperate ego-part-of-me is struggling to keep hidden.

I desire to carry this new sense of optimism into the Sunday afternoon chocolate ceremony, but as I attempt to further meditate and prepare myself to do just that, a doomsday feeling tells me to give up … that I do not want to go to ceremony today. The emotions are quite confusing.

But I do not surrender to this doomsday attack. Instead, I watch an Abraham video and listen to uplifting music. When I finally walk out to the ceremony, I am giggly and bubbly, smiling and interacting with people all along the way. I am eager to move forward into my process – wherever it may lead.

The Betrayal Energy

After drinking my chocolate, while Keith begins his usual informative discussion, I zone out and immediately begin my own individual meditative process. Quickly connecting with my inner children, I ask Bobby and Sharon to assemble a large pile of blankets in our inner conference room. We soon get to work.

As I go into deeper meditation, the emotional stories begin to flow. One by one, as each story surfaces, I ask my precious inner children to take the bullshit story, to roll it up in one of the metaphorical blankets, and then carry it off to an angelic dumpster. In the first fifteen minutes alone, we work together to dispose of at least twenty such stories. Every inner story that is not in harmony with Higher Energies gets rolled up in a large blanket and discarded.

After doing this for a while … meditating, listening, and feeling … I am suddenly overwhelmed with the awareness of intense “betrayal energy” in my life. Within seconds, a mental list forms containing profound examples of people who have triggered this energy in me in the past. The list includes two former friends, a man I almost married, a church bishop, two former coworkers, and a few situations from my youth. The list is not huge, nor is it totally complete … but it serves to trigger intense painful memories and bring great clarity.

Healing Is Futile

“This betrayal energy is the core of my God Drama,” I ponder profound insights. “It is the core of my feeling of lifelong betrayal by God. God is at the very top of my betrayal list.”

With every one of the people on my list, I have been mostly able to let go, forgive, forget, and move on with love … but even the mere thought of being in the same room with any one of them continues to trigger a feeling of deep anxiousness. I have never received an apology from any of them, and just like insights I garnered yesterday, I realize that until those people can validate, understand, and admit how and why they betrayed me, I am unable to allow them back into my life even on a casual basis.

“I am this way with God too,” I ponder with clarity. “The childhood concepts of God that were taught to me, along with layers of life experience where I felt abandoned by God, triggered feelings of deep betrayal. It seems that until I get that apology and validation from God, I cannot allow the Higher Energies to assist me. Even though I want this, the subconscious betrayal energies continue to block such assistance at every turn.”

“I am at the bottom of that five-meter wall of glass,” I ponder a metaphor Keith often uses. “This subconscious part of me absolutely knows that my feeling of betrayal by God is irreparable … that this is a proven fact based on life experience. Once I feel betrayed, it is almost impossible to undo that feeling.”

As insane as it sounds, this inner emotion dictates that I cannot repair my betrayal energy with God … there is no reason to even try … it is futile.

“Ouch,” I suddenly ponder with new painful clarity. “This is the same energy I have felt with Paul. I felt betrayed by him very early on when I first perceived his attacks on me and others. No wonder I have had such an incredibly difficult time even wanting to socialize with him on a casual basis, even though I have dropped nearly all of my projections onto him.”

Pure And Genuine Self

When the Glow Meditation ends, Keith asks if anyone wants do so some individual work. After a pause where no one speaks up, I get his attention and quickly share details of my journey and profound insights related to “betrayal energy”.

“Go deeper with this Brenda,” Keith encourages me, “Find more parallels on how this energy is related to your life.”

“These feelings of betrayal were always a result of being my pure and genuine self and then not being understood, validated, or accepted” I soon respond. “I always did the best I knew how, but if someone close to me stabbed me in the back with judgments, gossip, and slander … that was usually irreparable. Once the betrayal happened, there was no returning to the old relationship.”

After bantering a few questions and suggestions back and forth with Keith, he closes his eyes and goes into silent meditation. I take this as a clue to do the same. Soon, Keith begins to work his way around the porch.

A River Runs Through It

Recognizing that I do not have a clue as to how to heal this situation … and recognizing that a higher flow brought me here … I simply surrender to the process, asking for another gift of grace to take me where I need to go.

Meanwhile, I envision Bobby and Sharon repeatedly rolling up various parts of betrayal stories and discarding them. I do this with every person, every feeling, and every situation that has ever triggered a feeling of being betrayed, no matter how insignificant.

As silly as this might sound to rational mind, I clearly understand and believe that in working with these metaphors, I am giving loving instructions to the subconscious mind. I trust that my rational-mind understanding is not required to make this process work. While working in these metaphors, I sit back, allow, trust, and feel. As I do so, I experience a great deal of energetic aching in the front of my forehead. This tells me that this feeling of betrayal is also a key puzzle piece in the shutdown of my third-eye chakra.

Eventually, as I further attempt to leave rational thought behind, I remember a metaphor where Keith had me drift in a raft down a river that flows between two mountains. I envision each towering peak as an ominous mountain of betrayal, dominating both sides of my journey. I simply surrender and trust the flow of the river to take me safely beyond this overwhelming emotional obstacle.

“I am not doing this awakening,” I remind myself, “I am being awakened by the flow of my Higher Self … it is not something I do by myself.”

Cultural/Ancestral Betrayal

As Keith works with a woman across the way, I am drawn to pay extra close attention. Her issues are my issues in review. She has an inner child who cannot feel self-love … the love is all around but she cannot allow it in.

Keith guides her into a process of soul retrieval, of bringing back parts of herself that have been safely kept by her Higher Self. Immediately, I focus on Bobby and Sharon, imagining them in my heart, visualizing them opening a door just a crack so that part of my own true self and self-love can come back in to assist in working with this betrayal energy.

I do not feel a great deal of actual energy shifting, but I fake it, confidently knowing that this process is real at a subconscious level.

Keith soon guides this woman into understanding that her lack of self-love is part of an ancestral energetic inheritance that she is working with. I suddenly realize that there is a great deal of betrayal energy in my ancestral inheritance, most of it dealing with religion and God. I am at the culmination of generations of ancestral betrayal “God-Drama” energy, played out in a very unique way in which I am the focal point of at least four generations.

When I ask Keith for his feedback, he fully agrees that I am working with elements of cultural betrayal energy – an energy of not being supported and protected by God.

Agonizing Heart Pain

As I go deeper into this meditation, the familiar “nail-in-my-heart” spot begins to hurt profusely, not just physically but emotionally as well. The agonizing emotion seems to painfully pulse at this spot.

As I listen to Keith tell this woman how some spiritual teachers make it clear that you have to access anger to overthrow certain patterns of powerlessness, I suddenly light up with the realization that I am feeling very complacent with this energy of betrayal – that I am feeling quite powerless and helpless in overthrowing it. In fact, I have just succumbed to the fact that I cannot and will never be able to move beyond it.

Immediately, I access an intense armory of inner anger and aim it at this betrayal energy. I do not know if what I am working with is an aspect of my self, or if it is emotional density, or what it is – and I do not use my head to figure it out. I simply get angry and focus on pushing out the betrayal energy that is now so excruciatingly painful at the center of my heart chakra. As I focus this anger, I imagine this betrayal energy being sent in care of my Higher Self, letting my own Higher Energies sort out whether what I am releasing is an aspect of myself that needs to be loved and given a new job, or whether it is just density that needs to be transmuted.

I am amazed by the fact that I have no doubts. I just do it and fake it if necessary. As I proceed, I literally feel as if I am physically pushing pain out of this nail-in-my-heart spot. The pain is agonizing – actual pain that IS moving and vibrating.

Grace Versus Works

“Brenda,” Keith soon reminds me, “remember that when you first identified this painful spot in your heart last year, that it was related to a crucifixion metaphor – to a feeling of being crucified in the name of God and your religion.”

Then Keith quickly reminds me of the symbolism that today is Easter Sunday. As I ponder, a strong sense of intuition tells me that I am at the beginning stages of completing a lifelong and multigenerational pattern.

I try to imagine various metaphors to assist in releasing this painful energy at the nail-in-my-heart spot … but none of them works particularly well. Soon, I simply return to floating in my river, trusting that I, by myself, cannot do anything other than ask for grace and trust that the release will come as a part of my flow – that I could never undo this betrayal energy on my own, using only my personal rational-mind effort.

I am really beginning to understand the traditional Christian concept of grace – something that was not taught in my specific religion. Instead I was taught to focus on work, work, work … that it was only after doing all that I can do on my own that I am worthy of earning God’s reward.

I now clearly realize that it IS grace that will flow through me … that I cannot release this betrayal energy using work … I simply do not know how, nor do I have the ability to do it myself. I can only trust and allow.

Profoundly Self-Confident

Finally, when Keith returns to work with me, I excitedly share my full journey. Wow, it has been both amazing and agonizing.

“And you did it with very little effort, using the light,” Keith congratulates me.

“I feel as if I am at or near completion with this,” I share excitedly.

When Keith does not validate or deny this comment, I realize that I need to release all expectations and simply surrender to, and trust my flow.

As Keith and I talk for a few more minutes, I am blown away by my perception that no one else on the porch seems the least bit involved or impressed by what I am doing. They have no clue as to the amazing insights and events that are guiding me right now.

“And I do not need them to have a clue … or to care at all,” I silently giggle. “I know what I am doing … and Keith knows too … but I do not even need HIS feedback. I KNOW what happened through me today. I know how amazingly profound and life changing this experience has been. I am already feeling the release of betrayal energy that was held toward everyone for whom an emotional charge remained. In fact, the charges are all gone. I could hug every one of those people today, apologize to them for how I have hurt them by distancing myself from them, and mean it.”

A Betrayed Witch … NOT

Later in the ceremony, as I watch Paul work with someone, I immediately replace his face with the face of a former friend who had once deeply betrayed me. Suddenly, I achieve a whole new perspective – a clear understanding that I am not dealing with Paul here at all, but am instead dealing with my God Drama – with my emotions of rejection toward someone who has occasionally triggered my betrayal energy.

When the ceremony ends, I am so filled with love and peace that I need no validation from anyone, not even from Keith. After only a few people remain cleaning up on the porch, I ask Paul for his attention.

“Paul,” I express with deep humility, “I want to apologize to you for how profoundly I have been projecting all over you. I am deeply sorry. It has been a profound realization for me today.”

“Don’t worry about it Brenda,” Paul responds casually, “we all project onto each other. I scream at you. It is all good.”

“Wow,” I ponder silently, “I said that with pure love and was completely unattached to however Paul might have responded. And I have no attachment to whatever he may do in the future either. I feel like maybe I can return to that Wednesday state of grace – that if Paul does project onto me in the future that it will no longer faze me. And if he does things on the porch that annoy me, I will be more able to see them through present-day forgiving eyes rather than through the eyes of a betrayed witch.”

Synchronous Sacred Symbolism

I hang around for an extra half hour on Keith’s porch because he is driving to Guatemala City tonight to deliver a large order of chocolate, and Isaias is nowhere to be found. There is a slight possibility that I might need to spend the next eight hours in a whirlwind rushed late-night trip of driving and language-translation. As I wait, I have many opportunities to ask Keith for validation and feedback, but do not even feel the need to approach the subject.

Finally, shortly before 6:00 p.m., Isaias appears and I wander home for a relaxed evening. I am eager for a chance to take notes and integrate.

When I arrive at home, I have a snacking dinner of tortillas, peanut butter, and cold Hawaiian pizza. I feel as content as a bug in a rug. For the first time in a very long time I have a new bounce in my step … being incredibly lighter … as if a great deal of that weight of betrayal has been lifted.

I am blown away by the significance of the sacred metaphors. For a very long time I have felt the pain of this nail-in-my-heart spot, knowing it was related metaphorically to feeling crucified (betrayed) in the name of my childhood God and religion. Now, on Easter Sunday, I find great meaning, clarity, and closure to just how overwhelming this betrayal energy extended into all areas of my life.

On the day in which the Christian world celebrates Christ’s resurrection, a very dead part of me is literally beginning to wake up.

The timing of this synchronous sacred symbolism boggles my mind.

Pillow Pondering

As I pillow-ponder late on Easter Sunday evening, I feel as if I am finally letting go of the pattern of betrayal. Perhaps I will continue to have opportunities to prove myself in the future, but I hope to never again buy into or allow this agonizing pattern to consume me. The spotlight called “know myself” has been brightly shining and I am glowing on the inside as a result.

I know that when I am connected to Higher Energies, that literally nothing can betray me, because everyone is perfect, in their own unique process. In the realm of my perceptual reality, I recognize that everyone and everything is my creation. While I might create things that poke and prod me in the future, I hope to never again see something that I create as even being capable of betraying me.

I am excited to see how my life changes … eager to see how I can lovingly remain nonattached to, and unidentified with, the events of my life. Yes, the betrayal pattern has finally lost its sting. It may still come around a few times to check me out – to dangle an attractive hook in front of me – but I will no longer take the bait.

Time To Climb Down

I have recognized and understood a major part of my life theme … part of what I came to earth to work with. I recognize betrayal energy as a core element of my God drama – a pattern that I have repeatedly played out and projected onto others. I no longer see myself as a victim of anyone. Each person who seemingly hurt me was serving the higher good by helping me to further understand and refine this energy … until I finally got it.

In the last six months, Paul has served me beautifully by frequently pushing and twisting (in my personal perspective) that metaphorical “betrayal nail” into my heart, often triggering me into agonizing feelings of fight or flight. I now see this triggering as teaching me a great deal about myself – as helping me to understand one of the most painful aspects of my life – and I feel deep gratitude for it all.

As I fall asleep on this beautiful Easter evening, I think it is finally time to climb down from the cross.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

“Brenda,” Keith speaks to me as the chocolate ceremony is beginning to start. “Go into meditation for ten seconds or so, and erase everything you thought you would be doing today.”

“Are you being guided to say that?” I ask curiously, wondering if Keith is channeling something for me or simply sharing wise advice.

“Yes I am,” Keith smiles back at me.

I was already in a state of simply focusing on love, regardless of what may or may not happen today in the chocolate ceremony … but Keith’s surprising words give me a little extra motivation simply to surrender, to allow, and to focus on love. Soon, on this Wednesday afternoon, April 4, 2012, I imagine myself floating down my river, doing absolutely nothing, planning nothing, and allowing everything.

Strangely enough, I find it harder to focus now then before Keith shared the above unexpected advice.

Invite The Light

For the third ceremony in a row, as the Glow Meditation begins, I focus on returning to a blissful and loving emotional state that I experienced while once participating in a Gregg Braden workshop. As I do so, a series of pains come and go in my solar plexus. I simply observe without judgment.

“How are you doing?” Keith turns to me when the meditation is over.

“I’m just watching energy movements in my body,” I respond, “but just now, during the last five minutes or so, I have felt the sensation of shaking fear in my abdomen. I am not judging it. Instead, I am just watching it, sending love, and allowing.”

“The fact that you feel it means that it is actually moving,” Keith reassures me of something I often begin to doubt. “Invite the light to show you what it would do. Then just allow and observe.”

Overwhelming And Overloading

The energy on the porch is very strange today. One woman is tired and scared of going into her emotions, being completely resistant to Keith’s suggestion about guiding her into meditation to understand why she has love hooked as being equivalent to painfully taking in the emotions of others. Keith then moves on. The next few people are silent, not interested in talking or engaging in any work. This pattern repeats itself over-and-over again as Keith works around the porch. I perceive that there is no group energy, and that no one is engaged in wanting to go deep in any way.

“Now how are you doing?” Keith eventually asks me when he completes his first round of the porch.

“I’m feeling my childhood confusion,” I respond. “I feel like an alien in a place where everyone is shallow and reserved. I don’t fit in. I am disconnected. Every sound that I hear – the side-talking, rocks being moved in the garden, boats on the lake, birds chirping – every sound feels like an energetic stab, shaking me and agitating me. It is very strange.”

“Am I regressing into another stage of my childhood?” I ask for Keith’s observation.

After implicitly confirming my question and telling me that the sounds are a metaphor for the other energies, Keith further engages me.

“What happens when you are so sensitive to energies and noises and emotions that they all feel like an energetic attack?” Keith encourages me to ponder deeper.

“Wow,” I respond a minute later. “I was an extremely sensitive child. Everything hit me like an energetic punch. I could not handle it. It was overwhelming and overloading me.”

“Focus on that word ‘overloading’,” Keith guides me to go deeper. “This is near the source of your ‘blown fuse’.”

“Wow,” I reply, “there was so much energy bombarding me as a child that I could not function. It overloaded my circuits … literally. I cried and even screamed from the painful energetic disturbance, and as I did so I took in even more angry, frustrated, scolding energy – emotional energy from the loving adults in my life who could not understand why I was crying.”

The Higher Good

After Keith and I discus this topic at length for nearly twenty minutes, he moves on to work briefly with a man seated next to me – a man that totally relates to what I just said.

Soon, Keith is working around this stuck and resistant porch for the second time. Eventually Keith stops to work with a woman that I will call Sophie. Sophie immediately launches into twenty minutes of telling stories and sharing surface level advice with everyone in the group, telling each person how she relates to what they are doing, blah, blah, blah.

“I’m so tired of your bullshit stories,” Paul suddenly interrupts Sophie’s meaningless surface rambling.

Paul’s words are delivered in a loud, attacking, almost-screaming tone of extreme frustration. For several minutes, Paul slams Sophie for being so shallow and disconnected from the process, ruthlessly criticizing her in various ways. Sophie stops talking and listens in shock.

Paul then takes the spotlight and asks Keith to go into a “relationship training” with the group. Sophie immediately attempts to calmly provide her own feedback to Paul about her perceptions of his dysfunction in relationship issues. Paul immediately yells back at Sophie, which turns into another angry exchange of words, mostly screamed by Paul.

I sit and smile quietly as an observer. I can clearly see how Paul’s feedback to Sophie is valid, but that his heated delivery is extremely out of proportion to the events. I can also clearly see that Sophie’s attempted feedback is, in my perception, spot-on accurate – but Paul is incapable of hearing any of it. In frustration, Sophie soon gets up and leaves the ceremony.

I have no idea what is about to happen, but I feel almost giggly inside that I am observing a trauma-drama-struggle exchange between two extremely stuck people and I feel no emotional attachment in any way. I simply trust that all is well, and will serve for the higher good.

A Sophie Day

When Keith eventually works his way back around to my seat, I again lovingly mention my perceptions.

“The lack of group energy – the shallow and disconnected porch today – has served me greatly,” I giggle to Keith. “In profound ways, it has taken me into childhood understandings about how I did not fit into the energetic world of those around me.”

“Yeah,” Keith jokes back with me after I share my perceptions of the porch. “It was a ‘Sophie’ kind of ceremony today.”

Keith is not being rude with his comments. He is referring to the fact that there have been several people on the porch in the last few months who bring with them an extreme energy of shallow stuck-ness. These people are very powerful souls – so powerful that their stuck energy has a way of pulling others around them into the same resistant vibrations. Sophie is one of those people who is so frightened to go deep into her own issues that her powerful energy of resistance deeply affects others. In fact, a couple of times in the past, Keith has actually had to ask her to leave because of how she was interfering with the group.

“Sophie was not the only one bullshitting today,” I giggle and smile at Keith, not mentioning any specific names or situations.

Giggling Amidst Attack

Within seconds, Paul jumps to his feet, walks around Keith, and stands about two feet in front of me, screaming at me.

“Brenda, I am so tired of putting up with YOUR bullshitting,” Paul screams at me. “You cannot even open up your own magic. I have had enough of your bullshit … sister … or brother … or WHATEVER you are! Blah, blah, blah.”

Paul’s angry ranting and yelling at me goes on sporadically for at least fifteen minutes.

Throughout this conversation, I simply ignore Paul and smile at Keith with amazement. I am blown away by the incredible high-vibration loving energy that saturates my soul. I am literally glowing with light from the inside out, giggling and smiling with pure genuine unconditional love.

“Wow, Keith,” I quietly share with deep joy. “This is amazing. Every word that Paul screams at me seems to fill me with more loving light and energy.”

Keith and I continue to talk and banter about this amazing experience while Paul continues to verbally attack on a frequent basis.

Trusting The Giggling Love

“I love it,” I giggle at Keith, “I love how I am so detached. I feel amazing love overflowing in my heart, but I also have a strong presence of anger and victimization parading around in my abdomen, demanding that I need to be angry, that I need to lash out and to defend myself from this vicious onslaught.”

“I know the emotions I feel are real childhood anger and victimization,” I add, “but I also trust that they are flowing and that higher energies know what to do.”

“Send some of that love down there to your abdomen and ask it to help,” Keith guides me. “Ask it to show you what it would do.”

“I love it,” I again giggle at Keith. “I am filled with so much energy as I do this, that I do not need any feedback or validation. I have absolutely no need to defend anything.”

“And you don’t need me to say or do anything either,” Keith smiles back at me.

“Yeah, exactly,” I giggle.

“Come on Brenda, scream back at me, get that anger out of you,” Paul yells at me, attempting to provoke me into accessing anger that he thinks I need to find and release. His repeated words are attacking, filled with what feels like vitriol and poisonous slander, even having attacked my gender early on. I can tell he thinks he is serving me in some way – that I am just whitewashing a reservoir of anger, and that he is trying to help me to access it.

Profound Energized Non-Attachment

“Paul, please disengage,” I eventually smile with non-attachment, “I do not have any anger at all that needs to come up, and you are not serving me.”

“I am yelling at you because I love and respect you,” Paul yells out, trying to further provoke me.

I choose not to even respond to Paul’s crazy off-base comment. I am in such energetic bliss that he could punch me and spit on me and I could just giggle back at him without saying a word.

Finally, after fifteen or twenty minutes of quietly discussing this amazing journey with Keith – while Paul continues to angrily interrupt and try to provoke me – I smile at Paul and again ask him if he would please just disengage – telling him that he is not serving me in any way. In fact, I have already lovingly asked Paul to please disengage several times. Finally, he complies and returns to his seat with an angry and frustrated scowl.

I sense Paul’s anger and dejection, but I do not really care what he is doing or thinking. I am overflowing with the most profound loving state of energized non-attachment that I have ever felt in my life.

Return Of The Lightning

“Keith, I am blown away,” I share with awe. “I am not attached to a single word that Paul screams at me. I am so empowered with beautiful energy.”

Seconds later, I notice that my hands are beginning to light up with powerful energy – another repeat-performance of what feels like small lightning bolts radiating from each fingertip. This powerful energy is quite close to the power of what I first experienced in late 2010, when this type of energy flow was an amazing novelty that graced my experience.

“Can you feel that?” I speak as I look into Keith’s eyes with a feeling of amazement.

“Yeah,” Keith responds with a huge grin. “That is powerful energy.”

I sit and play with this energy for a while before again engaging Keith in conversation.

Childhood Connections

“Wow, Keith,” I begin to share new insights. “I have never felt such love while being attacked by someone … while realizing that what they were attacking me with was total bullshit … that none of it is true … that they have no clue regarding what I am really doing or going through … that they are the one who is clueless and wrong.”

“This takes me right into childhood,” I continue sharing. “I realized for the first time that this is what in a very real way happened to me energetically as a child. My parents would never have used such vicious slandering words, but their underlying energy – which was expressed in the name of love and God, with the best of intentions in the only way they knew how – felt just as attacking, intolerant, confusing, and disempowering to a child who did not understand.”

My Own Unique Process

Finally, after Keith moves on to work with others, Paul asks for assistance in going deeper. I note with interest when he eventually brings me into his work.

“I think I am triggered by Brenda because she always gets me in trouble when I get into my power,” Paul shares with Keith.

I simply listen, keeping my mouth shut while smiling with love. I even imagine my little inner children going over to play with his inner child, hoping to assist in supporting his process.

I know that what Paul calls “getting into his power” is what I perceive as a deeply distorted expression of dysfunctional masculine energy. I clearly see that there is no point in me trying to engage Paul at this time. He can have his truth and his reality. I can allow him to see me as the problem that victimizes him and makes his life hard. I know the truth about my own heart, my own motivations, my own genuine love, and there is nothing to defend. Even if I tried to speak up, Paul would not be able to hear any feedback coming from my lips, no matter how loving my intentions.

In my state of powerful loving energy, I can see that Paul has been serving me beautifully – that I have been serving him beautifully – and that I can allow him to have his own unique process of projecting onto me. I only need to worry about my own growth lessons.

Loving What Is

As the ceremony closes, I briefly wait for Keith so I can walk into town with him. He is going to dinner with several others from the ceremony today. I am invited, but feel no desire to socialize.

As we talk on the way to the center of town, I again share my profound amazement with Keith.

“I’m a little nervous that tomorrow I will wake up with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because of all the vicious things that were said to me,” I share concerns with Keith. “Right now, I am deeply loving and empowered, but this inner energy in me continues to insist that today I was deeply victimized … that I need to go home and drown in tears.”

“Just love whatever happens,” Keith reassures me.

“Exactly,” I respond with confidence. “I will just bring in Higher Energies and then love what happens … whether I remain deeply and lovingly empowered, or whether I end up as a sobbing, victimized, pile of mush.”

Profound Gift Of Grace

Keith and I talk from a place of profound empowerment as we walk together. He repeatedly praises me deeply for my experiences today, while at the same time I am so lovingly centered that I need no validation whatsoever. We talk extensively about how each person is in their own unique process, and how empowering it is to allow others to be where they are, without judging them.

“I am actually grateful for how Paul behaved today,” I express with loving confidence. “As A Course In Miracles talks about it, Paul is being my personal savior in so many ways – forcing me to face my inner nightmares in ways that no one else could have done. I know that his Higher Self is guiding him in his own powerful process … and I know that I have manifested him to play a role for me that has often been quite emotionally agonizing … all so that I could have a powerful experience like today.

As Keith stops in front of a small restaurant where he will join Paul and others in social dining, I hug him one last time, again thank him from a space of profound divine love, and turn to walk the final few minutes to my apartment.

I feel as if I have been given a profound gift of grace – an immunity to attack – a feeling that nothing can harm me and that love surrounds me no matter what. I have no idea if this grace is simply a glimpse or a permanent presence in my life, but either way I am grateful, and will allow the future to unfold as it does.

Opposite Parts

After a quick dinner of rice and beans, I sit at my computer eagerly scribing notes for the day. My emotions are deeply mixed.

Part of me continues to feel deeply victimized, demanding retribution. I send this part love, but also wonder if perhaps I need to allow myself to feel those emotions before they can be released.

This rebellious part of me is indignant, wanting to fight back and get revenge. It is angry about the public attack on my gender … about the “sister … or brother … or WHATEVER you are!” comment that Paul had made. This part is livid that such a comment was made, and then allowed without anyone defending me for such vicious and inappropriate slander.

But to my amazement, at least right now, the profoundly loving part of me remains in peaceful power, opposing nothing and loving everything that took place today, trusting that all is and will be perfect, whatever may come up in the next few days.

Tiny Tantalizing Traces

As I ponder back to the ceremony, I revel in the knowing that the amazing lightning energy that surfaced in the middle of this profound experience had lasted in a very powerful way for a couple of hours, mostly fading by the very end of the ceremony.

And a huge smile comes to my heart when I imagine the face of one of Paul’s friends who was visiting on the porch today. As she sat with Paul, supporting him in his own process after mine was over, she had made an express point of making eye contact with me, and radiating a warm glowing smile in my direction while holding her hand on her heart and gesturing an expression of profound love to me for what I did today.

As I finish up a whirlwind of note taking at the end of a very long and profound day, my fingertips continue to vibrate and tingle as I type. Tiny traces of that tantalizing lightning energy continue to flow and radiate throughout my body

Reveling In Rasha

While checking emails before bed, I come across an automated email quote from Rasha’s website for her book “Oneness”. The link is: http://www.onenesswebsite.com/.

I love the message, and carry the words in my heart as I drift off to sleep. The quote is as follows:

“Self-protective mechanisms, such as rationalizations for behavior that would justify one’s stance in a given episode, only serve to prolong the length of time that might be spent relinquishing one’s need to control the outcome of certain kinds of interaction. Eventually, there is no longer the need to react to circumstances calculated to provoke a predictable response in a conditioned way. When one is able to let go of the need to remain in command and to emerge from an encounter in a position of dominance, the accompanying energetic charge is diminished and the intensity of the interaction de-escalates proportionally. Ultimately, one ceases to manifest such levels of conflict entirely, as the energy that magnetizes them would not be present.”

Wow! These words are incredibly beautiful, and require no contextual explanation. They speak in amazing ways to the profound journey through which I have just passed. I love the synchronicities of the Universe.

Belly-Laughing Interlude

As I browse Facebook on Thursday morning, April 5, 2012, I stumble onto a link that makes me repeatedly belly laugh for what feels like the first time in decades. Months ago, I had watched the original YouTube video of a woman – a video for a dating service where she ended up crying and blubbering about how much she loves cats. Today, I find a link posted by a friend in Finland – a link where the video was morphed into a hilarious and upbeat music video.

I desperately needed the humorous break – and watch the hilarious video countless times – belly laughing each and every time – before finally sitting down for a day of passionate writing. For anyone interested, the original (unedited, not funny) video is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTTwcCVajAc&feature=fvst and the morphed music-video is at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP4NMoJcFd4&feature=share.

To my delight, I note that as I laugh, I also feel a great deal of heavy dense emotion move and leave at the same time.

Pondering Painful Writing

After spending a powerful Thursday writing and publishing “Relentless Raging Regression Rapids, Part 2”, I begin to read ahead in my notes in preparation for writing that I plan to begin in a couple of days.

As I do so, I begin to panic. My next writing task is ominous. I will have to find some way to write about an agonizing experience of being lost in angry, pissed emotions – emotions related to extreme projections onto my projection buddy Paul – and similar unhealed projections onto Keith. I cannot believe the synchronous timing of it all.

Here I am, still basking in the glow of not being affected by Paul’s behavior yesterday, now needing to go back in time to one of my most painful projection days ever – a day about which part of me continues to feel deep judgment and anxiety.

“How will I possibly ever write about this?” I ponder in painful agony.

The synchronous act of preparing to go back in time to write about an unhealed experience brings dark ominous clouds to the part of me that was beginning to feel quite healed. The nausea in my gut tells me that I am in for quite the ride. I am not quite so healed after all.

Raging Freight Trains

Early Friday morning, the ominous weight of my upcoming writing task continues to depress and drain my moods. Several times, I meditate and attempt to raise my vibrations, but each time I sink right back into the depression of my next blog.

“These are not present emotions,” I remind myself as I ponder the dilemma. “These are very real past emotions flowing through me. In fact, I am not ‘doing’ any of this. All of these experiences and my writing are flowing through me, including all of the depressing crap that is on its way up and out.”

Suddenly, as I ponder my present state, a freight train of emotion railroads and overwhelms me. I quickly sit at my computer to write, but before I can type, teeth-chattering sobs, gut-wrenching tears, and coughing overpower me, as if a tornado appeared unexpectedly out of nowhere.

Quickly, I retire to my bedroom, allowing this intense wave to flow through me while muffling the audible sounds into a pillow. I let the emotions flow unobstructed, knowing that they are not me in the present, recognizing that this barreling freight train could literally kill me if I get in its way. I continue to express an inner intent to let the emotions flow, while asking Higher Energies, light, and love to transmute the emotions when I have felt them enough.

After about two minutes of fierce dry heaving, crying, and teeth chattering, the crazy emotional release vanishes just as quickly as it arrived. I feel much lighter now – so much so that I know I will be able to write my next blog.

Reservoir Of Fear

After finishing off the morning with a variety of reading and documentaries, I find myself sitting on Keith’s porch for an afternoon of journeying with chocolate. I feel somewhat grounded and empowered, but slightly disconnected from my heart.

During the Glow Meditation, as Keith guides two others in helping them allow and surrender to the energies, I follow along. To my shock and surprise, I experience a great deal of shaking in my belly – a lot of fear that wants to surface.

When Keith starts individual rounds, he begins with me and I quickly explain the fearful shaking.

“Just below the fear,” I then explain to Keith, “I sense a deep reservoir of intense emotion beginning to surface. It is frightening, filled with anger and sadness … it is overwhelming … I am not sure if I can go there.”

“I know this is an opportunity,” I share further self-insight with Keith. “I know it is something frightening that I saved for now … something to work with by using Higher Energies to help me move this density with light rather than trying to cry it out the hard way.”

“You are in a very good place,” Keith congratulates me. “Go into this emotion and follow your process.”

Keith then moves on quickly, leaving me to face these demons on my own. Part of me feels abandoned. Part of me knows that Keith trusts me so much that he knows I can do this … and that this is something Keith cannot do for me.

A Meditating Butler

Soon, Keith is working with a very stuck and frightened woman who literally spends the next hour in nonstop storytelling … making excuses for why she is a victim and cannot fix herself, blah, blah, blah.

As others continually disrupt this process with their own interruptions, I begin to realize that I am watching a stage play of my own childhood (and life). Keith tries to help this young woman, but she will not listen … she is not asking for real help from Keith … she does not believe it to be possible … she just wants to continue telling her stories. Finally, just as Keith is beginning to focus on coaxing her to go deeper, someone moves in with fixing energy and sits right in front of her, keeping her distracted from Keith, keeping her at the humorous surface level. Keith just watches it all, allows, and does nothing.

In this unfolding mirror reflection, this story-telling young woman is “me” – a deeply wounded child who is lost in the stories of why I cannot solve my problems using Higher Energies. I was so lost in my childhood pain that I could not (and would not) listen to Higher Energies. At any moment when I might have tried to start doing so, someone or something would quickly move in to distract me and keep me at the shallow surface.

As this scene unfolds, Keith simply detaches from the situation, closes his eyes, and silently meditates – waiting and available with love and assistance on his butler tray. I ponder the scene in front of me. The person sitting in front of this young woman, distracting her, is playing my mother – keeping me at the surface – keeping me from connecting to real Higher Energies. A man holding this young woman from behind represents my father, who had my back, but really did nothing to intervene in my childhood programming. And then there is Keith, representing God, just sleeping and meditating while I suffered. I see God as having abandoned me, doing nothing to stop the crazy stage play in which I found myself.

Throughout what I see as a powerful stage-play reenactment, I profoundly begin to feel the deep anger of my childhood – anger at feeling stuck, fixed, distracted, and abandoned by those who were supposed to nurture me. The emotions deeply agitate me, but I do not attach to the actors. Instead, I just observe the scene in front of me as it is acted out in my behalf.

The inner stories that begin to flow inside my mind are intense and overwhelming. These stories sink their hooks deeply into my soul, causing me to whimper and sink into the bottomless reservoirs of anger and sadness.

Quite The Paradox

As my personal stage play continues, I struggle to maintain a connection to Higher Energies. I am seeing the truth (with a lowercase ‘t’) acted out for me, but am becoming ever more hooked by the power of the unfolding stories – struggling to remember that these are stories from the past that are passing through me in the here and now. Right now, I literally hate being on Keith’s porch. I feel stuck and dominated by the energy of my expert leading actors and actresses. I am so tempted just to run away.

“I’m getting deeply sucked in by the stories … they are overwhelming,” I soon explain to Keith when he feels guided to turn to work with me. “I am realizing that I am being shown another angle of my God Drama. I have so much anger at God for abandoning me in these stories, and it is nearly impossible to ask Higher Energies to help me release the anger that I have toward Higher Energies. That is quite the paradox.”

Tears stream down my cheeks as I struggle to maintain composure.

“Don’t get too much in your head,” Keith suggests when I begin to discuss this paradox at the mind level. “Just be in the process.”

“It is the game you are playing with God,” Keith soon reminds me. “In the God Drama, you will not cooperate with God until you get an apology.”

“Yeah, I see that I am so angry at God that I refuse to play the game until God gives me what I want by apologizing, and then provides me with the help and assistance that I deserve.” I express my rational-mind understanding.

“But I am stuck down here in the emotions. I know I am playing this game, but the emotions and stories that hold me here are intense. I need the energies to help me, but part of me simply refuses to allow them.”

“It is quite the stuck place,” I express my futility. “Do I just sit and observe and learn to ‘know myself’ right now?”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Keith smiles back.

Fixing Fears

I am deeply stuck while mild tears trickle as a token of the intense inner resistance. Suddenly, to my horror and surprise, the young woman who is the focus of my intense projections, the one who has been telling stories for an hour, comes over and moves in to help me. Right now, I see her as one of the biggest fixers on the porch, telling story after story, not allowing Keith to work with her.

“She wants to help me?” I ponder with resistance.

As soon as she leans in to physically touch me, I pull back, my emotions shift. I don’t want to confront this young woman directly. I have learned that my own resistance to fixing is often at the root of my problem, but this is simply not working for me.

“Keith, this is pulling me out of my process,” I express with confusion, hoping for guidance … hoping he will call her on her fixing and ask her to stop.

As the young woman begins to move away from me, Keith shocks me by pointing for her to move back in front of me. Trusting Keith’s guidance, I surrender.

Glimpse Of Peace

“She is moving massive amounts of resistance energy out of you,” Keith shares with me a few minutes later.

I know this woman is a powerful empath, but I have judged her deeply for not doing her own work. I am quite shocked to hear Keith’s words telling me how much energy she is moving out of me. I am still so shut down that I can feel very little of it, other than the fact that I do now feel much lighter.

Five minutes later, the young woman freaks out. She is extremely powerful and sensitive, but has not fully learned to trust and use her empath abilities. She moves away from me and indicates that she cannot do any more … that she is taking things inside and is afraid.

“Wow, I feel so much lighter,” I later apologize to her. “Thank you. You helped me so much.”

“Why am I still so judgmental and resistant to anything that looks like fixing by someone who appears to not be doing their own work?” I ponder in silence.

I do not know if this young woman “fixed” me, or if I simply released energy that she assisted me in moving, but either way, I have been given another beautiful glimpse of newfound peace.

Deeper Depths

As Keith works with another young woman on the issue of self-love, it registers in my heart that I am indeed doing extremely profound work … that I have uncovered some very pervasive and deep games in my resistance … and that I can be quite proud of where I am at in my process, and what I have done today. Rather than beat myself up, I begin to focus on my own self-love and self-acceptance.

As I stroll home from the ceremony, I eagerly note that it is time for the annual Easter procession through the center of San Marcos (and nearly every other town in Central America). After quickly running home to retrieve my camera, I let go of my process and spend a while being a tourist, snapping photos of the procession and the beautiful ‘alfombras’ (carpets of flowers laid out on the streets).

As I later take notes for my writing, I find myself in a very good space, but feeling deeply emotional. On the one hand, I know that I have gone as deep, or even deeper, than I have ever gone before – not in the level of tears, but definitely in the depth of emotions accessed. I was not able to remain there very long, but I began to access terrifying core levels where too much fear still remains preventing me from going any deeper.

Intuitively, I know that I am beginning to scratch the surface of the origins of my God Drama resistance – of the games I play with God that continue to keep me from connecting to Higher Energies.

Dining Delicacies

I am being very gentle on myself … loving myself … accepting myself … recognizing that what I did today and this week was profound. Yet at the same time, I feel a muffled emotion of hopelessness and futility as I ponder the scope of the bottomless reservoirs of emotion that I uncovered in meditations today.

“I am not going to push any of this emotion down … and I am not going to judge it either.” I ponder with self-love. “I’m going to give myself some slack … acknowledge my humanness … give myself a break … watch a movie … and dine on the delicacies of peanut butter and honey sandwiches with a huge bowl of popcorn.”

A Profound Glimpse Of Grace

As I open my email for the day, I again find another very timely email quote from the book “Oneness” by Rasha – one that resonates deeply with where I am. Following is that quote:

“By consistently reacting to conflict with the conscious intention not to “fuel the fire” by asserting your position and striving to emerge the “victor,” you affect the energy of each encounter in the highest possible way. For, when presented with a non-combative response, the adversary is not provided with the energetic tools with which to further escalate conflict, thereby diffusing the energy that individual brings to the encounter. By taking command of a potential conflict by consciously sidestepping it energetically, each individual makes a contribution, which is experienced globally.”

If I say so myself, I have taken several profound “sidesteps” this week to diffuse conflict with beautiful, energy-filled, loving, and non-combative responses.

I am actually quite proud of myself. The emotional roller coaster has shown me that what happened on Wednesday was indeed a profound glimpse of grace. I am not there quite yet, but I now have a clear understanding of where I am headed – a place so lovingly connected to Source Energy that nothing can bring me down.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

Note: this is the final part of a three-part story. If you have not yet read the first two parts, you may want to read them first …

After a restful night, I spend Friday morning, March 30, 2012, attempting to rebalance myself, to stabilize my energy and to bring in more light. It has been an intense roller-coaster ride taking me deeper and deeper into core issues – finally reaching the deep level of the God/separation drama – to the subconscious emotional games I play out with Deity.

As I read a couple of chapters in the book, “Oneness” by Rasha, two different powerful quotes jump out at me, both deeply applying to my intense processing, both reassuring me that I am on track and not as crazy as I sometimes feel. This first is from chapter 15 on page 135, the bottom paragraph.

“Once the purification process is initiated and conscious awareness of it has made purification a priority, one can expect to experience rapid acceleration in the areas where one has focused attention. It is to be expected that there is a sense of alternately progressing and backsliding, as key life issues are brought to the surface and dealt with. Like peeling back layers of the proverbial onion, the levels of accumulated toxins tied into key life themes are addressed and released, as one becomes aware of the patterns of experience that have invited repeat performances throughout one’s lifetime. By allowing oneself to experience the depth of one’s feelings on particular life themes, one is able to release sequentially, a measure of energy charge carried, and diminish the likelihood that extreme variations on given themes will manifest as life experience.”

The second quote comes from chapter 16, page 141, and discusses the vulnerability to energetic states that are being processed (the feelings of craziness I have experienced for all of the deep core emotions I have been processing).

“For some the entire process is instantaneous. For others, focused on letting go of layers of constraint, this stage of energetic vulnerability can be prolonged and agonizing. One can continue to ride the vibrational roller-coaster throughout the transformation process. Or one can choose to step off and seize control of a vibrational state of being that one comes to realize is self-determined.”

A High Vibrational State

After reading, I begin to ponder, “Just how do I step off the roller-coaster in order to seize control of a vibrational state of being? … and if I do lock myself into a higher vibrational state, am I scamming myself and hiding from the densities that continue to influence my behavioral patterns from the hidden depths in my subconscious?”

I am fully aware that I have the ability to step into these higher vibrations and hold myself there for a while, but I am equally aware that many people do themselves a great disservice by hiding their densities underneath a layer of light and simply pretending they are not there. In fact, many people would rather die than to honestly examine the unhealed pain and issues hidden inside. The last thing I want to do is to pretend my unhealed issues are not there … yet I am tired of trying to process them while living in the neighborhood of the density itself.

I soon search my heart for memories of high vibrational states – searching for one that I can recreate in the present. As I do so, I am guided back to the mystical feelings I felt while sitting with a dear friend on the front row of a Gregg Braden workshop – one that had been life changing for my friend, and deeply inspiring for me. Gregg Braden is a well-known speaker and author who has done extensive research and work in connecting ancient spirituality with principles of modern Quantum Physics.

Late Friday morning, in preparation for the afternoon chocolate ceremony, I listen to the first CD of that ten-hour workshop. While doing so, I do everything possible to immerse myself in the tantalizing emotional memories of that magical event in March 2006.

Vibrating And Observing

Repeated energetic tingles flow through me as I walk out to Keith’s magical porch. I am happy, bubbly, talking to people, and even joking a little as the porch gradually fills up. At the beginning of ceremony, Paul makes a stupid joke, and rather than being annoyed as I may have been in the past, I counter with my own silly response. I am in such a high energy that I can even laugh with someone who has often triggered me deeply … Wow!

During the glow meditation, I again focus on the high-vibration magical feeling I had at the Gregg Braden event, repeatedly remembering and re-energizing the feeling in my heart. Afterward, as Keith begins to make his way around the porch, I continue the same, simply observing and vibrating.

I observe with interest as Paul runs around the porch doing constant energy work on this person and that person. Such behavior used to drive me crazy, but today I simply smile and observe with love. I remember another teaching from the Oneness book near the end of chapter 16, one that allowed me to disconnect from “out there” and to allow others to have their own unique process.

Pain Is Resistance

As Keith is close to completing his first round of individual work, while he works with a woman seated to my left, I suddenly experience a small-but-sharp little horizontal line of pain, perhaps six inches wide, situated just above my belly button.

“I’m reading this, aren’t I,” I use gestures to draw a line across my belly while quietly making a confident statement to Keith when he glances in my direction.

Keith initially confirms that I am reading the woman’s energy, but a few minutes later, he briefly turns back to me.

“Brenda, you are not just reading … it is something more,” Keith shares quickly.

“Is it my own pain and density?” I ask.

“Send some of your own heart’s love down there and see what happens,” Keith guides me without answering the question.

“This is something that wants to open,” I share new insights a few minutes later. “And the pain is my resistance. I’m feeling energy wanting to move down from my heart into this area … and it feels familiar.”

Energetic Punching

Keith congratulates me for my energy today as we briefly chat before he again moves on. A while later —as Keith is helping someone across the porch – I suddenly begin to feel a sharp ball of pain centered beneath my belly button, deep in my abdomen. I feel as if someone literally kicked me in the gut.

Seconds after I experience this very profound pain, without me having said anything about it, Keith is suddenly guided to turn back to work with me.

“Is this something else that wants to open?” I ask with deep curiosity after explaining what I am feeling.

Almost seamlessly, Keith begins to talk about energetic punching. Immediately, I remember an experience a few months ago – one in which I was feeling sharp bruise feelings in my abdomen. Keith had guided me to connect with a Higher Being directly in front of me. As I had done so, I instantly felt a sharp kick in my gut. At that time, Keith had taught me that the Higher Being was graphically showing me the painful reality of actual energetic punches.

“Yeah, that is exactly what I am referring to,” Keith reassures me when I remind him of this recent example.

“Did this happen to me as a child?” I ask for feedback.

Rather than answering my question, Keith encourages me to go into meditation, and to explore my own memories, feelings, and insights – following the inner breadcrumbs to explore whatever comes to me.

War Of Wills

“It feels like my mother used her ‘will’ to energetically punch me,” I soon share with Keith. “I remember being in a frequent ‘war-of-wills’ with her, but she was bigger and I was small and I eventually gave up, surrendering my will.”

Keith quickly congratulates me for intuitively accessing the word “will”. He then shares a couple of stories about how some shamans actually use their “will” to manipulate and lift physical objects.

“It is kind of like the ‘Force’ in Star Wars, like Yoda lifting the space ship using his will,” I mention to Keith.

I have a great affinity with this metaphor, along with a strong belief that such powers are quite real. I need no convincing … and given the graphic examples I have felt while personally experiencing such energetic punches, I know that they too are very real indeed.

“My mother did not know she had this ability,” I intuitively add more insights, “but she did it to me constantly when I fought back, or acted out, or rebelled, etc.”

“She literally punched you with her will,” Keith then confirms, and it was physically painful inside.”

“Like I had my breath, my life-force, and my power literally knocked out of me,” I add with clarity.

Keith then spends a while sharing wisdom and examples about how this is not only possible, but very real. For me, this time spent is quite unnecessary, but I can only assume the conversation is profoundly helping others who are listening in.

Third-Eye Sensitivities

“Go deeper with this,” Keith soon encourages me to meditate further, to follow the breadcrumbs to see where they might lead.

As he works with others, Keith periodically glances in my direction. When he does so, I share ongoing insights, going ever deeper.

“I gave up all of my power to my mother,” I share a new insight with Keith.

“Is this how I lost my power?” I ask for new clarity.

“No Brenda,” Keith responds. “But you are on the right track. It is not that simple. Go deeper.”

As I meditate ever deeper, I clearly remember actual-but-muddled examples of frequent “battles of will” with my mother. I now realize that my rebellious mouthy behavior was my attempt to stand my ground in such battles – that the punishments of cayenne pepper on my tongue and soap in my mouth were only a small part of such internal struggles to maintain my inner power and will. Soon, I begin to get a headache at the front of my forehead.

“I was psychically punched in the third eye too,” I share a hunch with Keith, “right along with all the emotions I took in from my mother when she was frustrated and impatient with me … trying to keep me in line.”

“I’m getting that the third eye headache is more about those emotions you took in,” Keith responds with confidence, “but that the energetic punching was mostly in your abdomen.”

“You do take the emotions in via your third eye,” Keith then confirms.

“I thought so, because I felt that strongly once in ceremony,” I respond. “But I have not had confirmation since … and I had begun to doubt … but that is why I am still so shut down here isn’t it? Part of me is still deeply afraid to open the third-eye sensitivities.”

Keith quickly confirms my statement.

Self-Inflicted Teenage Terrorism

“This punching literally bruised me,” I later share with Keith. “It feels as if it were tens of thousands of layers deep, obliterating my connections to things like my will, my power, my creativity, my sexuality, and my feminine nature.”

“You are doing great,” Keith confirms with a smile. “Keep going deeper.”

As I sit with this meditation, I excitedly feel wave after wave of energetic pains – and I do not feel any fear, attachment, or identification with any of them. In fact, I love that I can feel these pains as my teachers.

Soon, I express my intent and ask Higher Energies to help in releasing what I mistakenly believe to be densities.

I even connect with my inner children, asking for them to use me as an empath to help them release any emotional pains that are ready to release. This seems to work a tiny bit, but I feel considerable resistance, telling me it is not really the right approach.

Finally, as I meditate into this ‘not-working’ state, I feel strong guidance telling me to work with my inner adolescents – to take this journey forward into my teenage years.

Suddenly, the pains in my abdomen multiply and intensify to what feels like at least one-hundred times the punching that I previously felt. Intuitions then strongly remind me that, as a teen, I psychically punched and abused myself, viciously attempting to keep myself in line with my cultural programming, punching myself with all kinds of controlling and fixing energies, inundating myself with shame, self-hatred, guilt, and self-loathing.

Bringing In The Light

As I discuss these new insights with Keith, he congratulates me on the connection to teen years, and on the recognition that I had self-inflicted myself with deep energetic punching that was actually quite physically painful.

“You did all of this in the name of God, didn’t you?” Keith points out.

“Wow, yeah,” I respond with increasing insight. “This is a main source of my anger, rage, and hatred at that counterfeit version of God. All of my pain was inflicted in the name of God as I attempted to honor and follow him. It is all part of my God Drama.”

I work with this metaphorical journey for a very long time while feeling the inner energies constantly churning. Gradually, I begin to feel as if the inner knots are loosening and untying in and around the painful region surrounding my belly button. It feels as if all of that punching energy is relaxing while simultaneously dissolving those tens of thousands of layers of bruises.

“Bring in the light to help you dissolve them faster,” Keith soon encourages.

Quickly, I again return to the energy of that Gregg Braden workshop, using that feeling to help me access deep, magical, loving emotions. Shivers and chills run up and down my spine as the energies continue to move and relax. There are still lots of mild, moving, agitating pains … but they are not as sharp or painful.

Giggling At Pain

Suddenly, I begin to feel the pains rising up the back of my shoulders. In response, I simply relax and allow. Over the next thirty minutes, these unexpected pains sharpen and spread throughout the tops of my shoulders. As I surrender to these deeply hurting shoulders, I intuitively know that this is a combination of self-hatred and a feeling of carrying the emotional weight of the world on my shoulders – especially the emotions of family and loved ones. I cannot say how I know this, I just know.

After I share new unfolding elements of my journey, Keith again congratulates me for what I am doing, and for how the metaphor is expanding. I am almost giggling at the agonizing pain, in a state of pure, loving, energized peace with some extremely painful energy in my shoulders … delighted by a sense of knowing that it is coming up and on its way out.

“I have been storing huge amounts of density in my shoulders,” I ponder, “refusing to let it go, piling it on so thick that my shoulders have been literally dead-to-the-world as far as energies go … and even beginning to lock up physically.”

True To My Process

At one point, the rest of the porch is quite quiet while Keith engages me in repeated conversational bantering regarding my unfolding process and insights. Keith seems to be deeply encouraging me to continue sharing details as my process unfolds, and I am in such a beautiful energetic space, that I eagerly respond with frequent feedback about what I am experiencing.

Meanwhile, there is a woman on the porch that is having a very hard day.

“All of this talking is driving me crazy,” this woman interrupts and stares at me in the middle of my beautiful process. “Can you please stop talking and give me some quiet time to just meditate.”

“I am sorry,” I lovingly respond, “but I am in a very deep process with Keith, and he is encouraging me to continue this conversation. If this is bothering you, it is probably because you are being triggered in your own process. It is not about me.”

“Thank you for showing me how my mother tried to make me wrong for doing my emotional processing,” I soon share another statement meant with pure love. “But now, it is time for me to follow my heart and to do what I need to do.”

I continue sharing with Keith for a few more minutes, and then begin to be slightly self-conscious. Nevertheless, I am quite proud of myself for honoring my process despite the protests of another. I too become quiet for a few minutes, but am delighted when Keith again begins talking with me, again congratulating me on my continued process.”

“Wow, that was powerful for me,” I respond to Keith’s encouragement. “I feel deep self-love and self-acceptance right now.”

“You would have felt guilty before,” Keith suggests.

“Exactly,” I respond with giggles. “I would have flogged myself with guilt for being out of line and bothering or ruining the experience of others … choosing to sacrifice my needs for the sake of others … but now I love myself for being true to my process and for being loving about it too.”

Basking In The Love

Keith and I talk for a while longer as additional insights continue to flow. He seems totally interested and encouraging me. I am honored by his space-holding permission.

At 4:30 p.m., seven people arrive and inquire about participating in a ceremony. Soon, Keith is serving chocolate to them while most of those already on the porch are done for the day and choose to leave. As for me, I continue to sit peacefully in my amazing process, still feeling the density in my shoulders while now experiencing quite pleasant energy vibrations in my abdomen. Soon, I am joined by a repeat experience of the sensation of “squeamys” (squirming and screaming) in my forearms, while also noting that the rest of my body continues to become delightfully relaxed, including my usually clenched jaw.

I continue to anchor in high-vibration energy while simply allowing my process to flow as Keith talks to the new folks. I frequently ask the energies to ramp-it-up a bit, taking me to a higher level when I am ready.

At around 7:30 p.m., recognizing that I am done for the day, I pick up my belongings and decide to excuse myself from the porch. As I hug him goodnight, Keith again “wows” me with repeated congratulatory comments about what I did today.

“I think it was one of my most powerful days ever,” I respond with a glow.

“I hope this doesn’t result in another energetic backlash that sometimes happens after a major breakthrough,” I giggle, “but I will go wherever the flow takes me.”

As I prepare for bed, late on Friday evening, I bask in the profound feelings of self-love and self-acceptance – more than I have felt in a very long time. I have returned to the higher energy, at least for today, and I hope to remain in this space as much as possible in the future.

“Thank you Gregg Braden,” I whisper as I rest on my pillow. “And thank you Higher Self for the guidance to follow my heart with such beautiful energy today.”

April Fools Shivers

After spending a long Saturday writing and publishing “Imaginative Subconscious Play”, I am quite surprised when the power goes off at 9:30 p.m., less than an hour after hitting the publish button. I am delighted by the prospect of spending Saturday night, the last night of March 2012, in blissful silence – but it seems that someone at the basketball court has a generator to power the sound system and speakers. Soon, a loud religious concert/rally continues. I simply smile and go to bed.

The power remains off on Sunday morning – a beautiful April Fools day that begins with power-filled jokes. Finally, when all hope of a hot shower has vanished, I force myself to shiver under a cold spray while rapidly washing and drying my hair. I can only giggle when the power returns at 10:30 a.m., just a few minutes after I finish drying off with my towel. I am half-tempted to step back into the shower to warm myself under the electric showerhead. But alas, I have other plans.

After a quiet, relaxing morning, I again listen to another CD from that magical Gregg Braden workshop, filling my heart with more radiant heart-based vibrations, hoping for another powerful day on the porch.

Ignoring The Bait

During the first part of the ceremony, I observe with interest as Paul runs around the porch, reminding me of my mother trying to put out all of the fires before they are even lit. I simply observe with loving peace. I do not take the bait.

I watch as two women engage in obvious fixing-based energy work on others … but I simply observe with loving peace. I do not take the bait.

I again watch as Paul encourages people to detach from the group energy, asking them to instead work on each other – a behavior that has triggered me deeply many times in the past – but I simply observe with loving peace. I do not take the bait.

I watch as Keith observes all of this same behavior, doing nothing to intervene, simply allowing people’s processes to unfold in their own unique way. I simply observe with loving peace. I do not take the bait.

I watch as Paul engages in several other behaviors that have often triggered me deeply in the past. I observe with loving peace. I do not take the bait.

I then watch as Keith works with a man who had been learning to work with his triggers – not taking the bait, even when the triggers are intense. As I listen to the beautiful unfolding discussion, I clearly realize that he is talking about my process. I continue to experience the overwhelming demand of various inner voices insisting that I need to get upset … that I need to take the bait … but instead I just smile and tell myself that I am on the stage of The Muppet Show.

The bait is not even tempting.

MY Rules

Suddenly I realize I am being shown the most profound visual of my God Drama that I have ever realized or admitted to myself. I have been deeply angry at God, refusing to play the game until things are the way I want them to be, operating within MY rules … within MY comfort zone. As I ponder about the porch, it becomes clear that every judgment I have ever had about Keith, the way he does things, his tolerance for interruptions and distracting behavior by others – every bit of this is MY resentment at GOD for not playing in MY sandbox by MY rules.

“If God will just do things the way I know that the REAL God would do them, then I could be happy and play the game,” The inner ego voices have demanded. “But a REAL God would never miss an appointment, double-book another, take a break in the middle of a ceremony to change money for the kids, do a heart-breaking role-play with me, allow others to offend me, blah, blah, blah.”

“I have been massively projecting my God Drama onto Keith for a very long time,” I continue to ponder. “It seems that I won’t allow God/Higher Energies to help me until the Higher Energies come along and play in MY sandbox in the way that I believe it should happen.”

As I process while listening to the work of others, I realize that every time the porch is not the way I think it should be (based on my past conditioning), that I give away my power. I tend to lose my energy, begin to judge silently, go into my triggers and issues in profound ways, and often lose my connection to higher vibrations in the process.

A Powerful Paradox

“But, but, but,” a non-trusting part of me protests. “What if I simply observe with non-attachment, love everything that happens, and then no external changes actually do take place?”

“I know that nothing changes until I do,” the fear-based voices clamor, “but what if nothing changes AFTER I do? I do not really trust Higher Energies or this crazy create-my-own-reality stuff.”

In this portion of my God Drama, it seems that the inner liar is demanding that God give me an irrefutable showing of good faith before I will comply and allow Higher Energies to assist me. This part of me refuses to open further until outside demands are first satisfied. Basically, I want my surroundings to change or I will not play the game.

With clarity, I recognize the overwhelming tendency I have to refuse to be in the light if conditions in my surroundings do not meet my approval. I tend to give away all of my power to the surrounding conditions, when in reality, if I were to remain in my power, the surrounding conditions would not have any effect over me – whether they change or not.

This is quite the powerful paradox. Even if I pretend that certain behaviors do not bother me, it seems I have been waiting for the day that those behaviors will stop … so that then … and only then … I can be happy and actually enjoy playing the game.

“The rules have indeed changed,” I ponder with deep clarity. “It is time to learn to enjoy the game – to realize that the game is designed perfectly for me.”

Baited Reflections

As I engage in a short discussion with Keith at the end of ceremony, he is quite congratulatory, seeming very pleased with my energy and progress today. What is fascinating, however, is that I do not particularly need or crave Keith’s praise and approval tonight. I am feeling so much self-love and peaceful energy that I already have all the reward I need.

I clearly recognize that today I have again been in a very high-vibration energy state – but I also note that the baited hooks that repeatedly floated by were often tempting.

It would be foolish to think or believe that I am done with taking the bait. Today has been a powerful glimpse into where I am headed – a powerful unfolding of self-awareness and confidence that I am indeed making great progress – but I also know that until the hooks no longer tempt me in the slightest, that until those hooks and lures lose all appeal, that they will continue to dangle in front of me, waiting for my lower-energy moments.

On this April-Fools-Day evening as I prepare for bed, I no longer feel like a crazy loony bitch. I think I am going to love these new rules, once I get used to them, once I anchor myself in at higher vibration levels.

A Powerful Rulebook

Monday morning, April 2, 2012, as I meditate in my living room, I sink deep into the clutches of my God Drama. It seems that I am facing deep fear at the thought of giving up control of my sandbox – giving up control of needing things to be done my way before I will play the game.

Following a hunch, I connect to my inner children, little Bobby and Sharon, asking them to join me in meditation. After walking down into my subconscious, we locate a book of rules – a rulebook that provides structure to our sandbox. I ask my precious children to help me by taking turns ripping pages out of the book, one at a time … but as I attempt to imagine Sharon taking one of these pages to my Higher Self to be released and transmuted, I hit deep fear.

“I feel as if I am sacrificing the truth of my heart by doing this,” I ponder with deep panic. “It feels that accepting and fully loving ‘what is’ is like no longer caring, no longer trying to do things the way my heart wants to do them.”

“It feels like I am giving up and losing a genuinely fought battle,” I ponder ever deeper. “It feels like destroying these pages is like surrendering and folding … like if I do so I will lose all hope of joy and happiness in following my heart.”

A Defeated Heart

I struggle in this meditation for most of an hour, repeatedly attempting to rip a page out of the rulebook and give it to Higher Self – but repeatedly experiencing a wandering mind hampered by fears and resistance at near-terror levels. The terror is that I will lose myself if I do not maintain my sandbox.

“Wow,” I ponder in shock, “ego is strong on this one.”

I bring in light and focus on asking the light to release or transmute any density, fears, and belief systems that are ready to go. I do not judge, push, or attempt to fix myself. Instead, I simply observe what happens. I feel a great deal of energy flow, causing tingling and prickly feelings in various places, but I continue to feel intense emotional resistance to this process. It is literally as if I am losing my heart.

I actually feel pains in my heart as if it is trying to shut down, as if it is feeling defeated and giving up. I know this must be ego, an inner liar, but it feels very real and I struggle simply to observe without attachment. Finally, I give up, postponing this meditation to another time.

Light Learning

Later, as I prepare to write, I feel guided to reenter meditation – to visit just a tiny bit more with the voice of resistance that so fiercely fights this letting go. To my utter surprise, I soon begin to swear at the voice.

“Get the F@ck out of me,” I get angry at the voice. “You are not serving me anymore by refusing to allow me to play outside the sandbox. Get the F@ck out of me … go the F@ck away.”

I then imagine Bobby and Sharon approaching this voice, picking him up, and throwing him into an angelic garbage can. As I do so, I begin to cry with gut-wrenching sobs, noisy teeth chattering, and intense dry-heaves, as painful energy leaves my heart. This process is very intense for a few minutes while I simultaneously focus on remaining connected to the light – asking the light to transmute whatever is ready.

Suddenly, after one last round of coughing and dry heaving, the emotion abruptly ceases. I am not at all sure if I trust what I just did. I can only assume that at least a major layer of this energy is gone, having been transmuted to light. I know the emotion was profoundly real, I felt it to the bottom, asked the light to help, and now it is totally vanished. I am blown away with how easy that was. I am still in the process of learning to trust such a process, but there is no other viable explanation.

Finally, shortly before 10:00 a.m., I begin writing, doing the same on Tuesday, April 3. It feels delightful to be back in the mode of writing and integrating – and it feels delightful to publish two more days of back-to-back blogs – “Turning Up The Heat” and “Relentless Raging Regression Rapids, Part 1”.

New Rules, New Team

These last five days have been both intense and beautiful. Taking the words of “Oneness” to heart, I tried something new … I focused on stepping off the vibrational roller-coaster and seizing control of a higher vibrational state of being, doing so with great care to not scam myself by hiding density under a blanket of light.

With the help of blissful memories from an amazing Gregg Braden retreat, I repeatedly took myself back in time to emotional memories of vibrating magical wonder, using that state to approach and surround two amazing chocolate ceremonies. To my delight, not only were the ceremonies filled with light, but they were also filled with deep inner journeying.

I have gained deep insight into how a “war of wills” with my mother was so profoundly real in the energetic-punching department, and how I myself later took over the role of punisher, continuing to terrorize myself with real energetic punches throughout my teenage years, and even longer – doing so in the name of pleasing God.

I have also gained many profound insights into the games I play with God – delving ever deeper into the God Drama. Perhaps the most profound insight of all is that I have my own personal sandbox, my safe rule-based area where I have expected Higher Energies to play MY game by MY rules. If they refused – if the sandbox was not to my liking – I gave away my power and simply refused to play the game.

The rules really have changed, and the old world … the old game … is gone. I cannot go back and I cannot expect Higher Energies to join me when I maintain thick walls and refuse to play the new game. I do have a new team – a magical team shown to me in a very vivid dream – an amazingly supportive team of Higher Beings that have always been there for me – always making love readily available to me for the asking. But I have been so stuck in my God Drama that I refused to ask or allow.

The trick is to raise my vibrations and to remove all of the internal blocks that continue to insist that I will only play in my sandbox, on my terms.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

Note: this is part two of a three-part story. If you have not yet read “Part 1,” you may want to read it first …

Tears continue to stream down my cheeks as I ponder a vivid dream of playing on a very strange basketball court, profoundly showing me that the rules of the game have been changed – a dream showing me that I am no longer living in the same world in which I grew up, and that there is no going back. I do indeed feel alone, like a fish out of water.

Weeks later, as I prepare to continue writing about this difficult final week of March, I come across a profound quote in the book “Oneness”, channeled by Rasha. This quote is found in chapter nineteen, page 180, the third complete paragraph.

“There is simultaneous presence of every being at countless levels. And it is as natural as the flutter of an eyelid, to emerge with consciousness at the next lighter level of density, once the work has been achieved. One’s awareness of the transition may not be apparent until it becomes blatantly obvious that the rules of “the game” have been radically altered. Ultimately, one realizes that one is not now present in the same world as one once was.”

I love how the synchronicities of life seem to team up to share such beautiful messages in magical ways.

Pre-Ceremonial Chat

It is shortly before noon on Wednesday, March 28, 2012, when I arrive on Keith’s magical porch to assist in the setup for an afternoon ceremony.

“How are you doing today?” Keith casually asks.

Seconds later, I break down into tears as I explain my stuck-ness.

“You are further regressing into the anger and rebellion of your childhood,” Keith lovingly guides me. “This is something you have never fully processed … the rebellious part of you that wants to say F@ck you God, mom, dad, church, etc. … It was never allowed … you have never fully gone there.”

Soon, after I share this morning’s amazing dream, Keith further congratulates me on my progress, telling me that the part of my crown chakra that remains semi-connected is what brought that dream to me, along with all of the beautiful symbolism.

Numb Resistance

A large crowd gathers for the afternoon ceremony, peaking at around 28 people. When the glow meditation is over, Keith turns to chat briefly with me. I mention to him how I had again started to access the anger, rage, and rebellion of my child – but then I just slipped into a feeling of numbness and apathy.

“This would be the natural progression and reaction for a child … to just hit the futility and go numb,” Keith points out.

“I don’t know if I can do what I need to do with this large of a group,” I respond to Keith. “Perhaps I should schedule a private session.”

I really want to go deeper, but I am tired of publicly humiliating myself with intense displays of tearful processing. As I mention my hesitancy, Keith simply moves on to work with someone else. I again feel abandoned, but I also know that this is my creation. I put up a wall of numb resistance, and it is not Keith’s job to tear down that wall for me.

A Disconnected Blubbering Fool

As Keith works with the woman to my side, I recognize myself in the discussion. She too is an empath who was deeply shut down in childhood. Listening to her talk about her pain profoundly triggers my emotional walls, and I give myself permission to begin stepping into my own journey.

I make a small fist and lightly punch on a pillow, trying to be as discrete as possible. The rampant buried rage begins to surface with deep intensity – yet I continue to keep the externally visible emotion as low-key as possible, shedding a few exterior tears while feeling as if I am vomiting agonizing energy out of my throat. I focus on bringing in some light to assist me while at the same time struggling to remain as the unattached observer.

I feel so disconnected from the group energy – so like an alien who does not belong – a blubbering fool that does not want to connect with anyone, believing that no one wants to connect to me either. The emotion of agonizing isolation and separation is intense. I know it stems from childhood futility and disconnection.

As I continue to observe the group around me, I perceive that the whole porch seems to be a display of what I feel inside – a perfectly created stage play of how my life felt as a child. For all I know, the reality of others is probably very different, but in my self-created perceived reality, I see a shallow, disconnected group heavily focused on fixing energy. I do feel slightly less crazy when Keith, on two different occasions, feels guided to ask people to disengage from what he himself points out is a fixing energy.

A Disconnected Alien

I am not the least bit surprised when Keith eventually works with a woman across the porch. She too is feeling very disconnected from groups and from Higher Energies. As Keith begins to guide her into a deep subconscious meditation, he asks several people to physically disconnect from doing energy work on her, pointing out that their fixing energy, while well intentioned, is disempowering her process.

As this woman sinks down into her subconscious, she finds herself at around age three, feeling like an alien that was not understood. Everyone else around her is connecting and fitting in – but she does not fit. As an empath, she feels the pain of others’ emotions, causing her to push such connections away.

As I follow along in my own inner journey, deeply relating at an emotional level, I again begin to cry and blubber as another round of deep dry-heaves causes me to involuntarily force more energy out of my throat. I too am feeling the agonizing emotions of being a child alien, knowing that I do not now and will never fit in to this world into which I was born. The emotions are so profoundly strong that I feel attached to them, identified with the pain – deeply struggling to remind myself that I am merely regressing into my own childhood pain and that what I feel is not present day stuff.

Troublesome Magic

Soon, someone else on the porch starts to go into tears of vulnerability. I feel quite guilty when my internal “fraud alert” goes off, telling me that this person is into fake trauma-drama. Immediately, I recognize this as one of my biggest triggers beginning in childhood.

First off, because of my own intense emotional journey, I was probably accused of such fraudulent trauma-drama throughout my own childhood, slammed for my own tears even when I absolutely knew that my expressed pain was fully real and genuine. My own treatment taught me to judge and reject others who were equally emotional.

Second, when I perceived manipulative attention-getting behaviors in others – and then talked about it – I was scolded for my being judgmental, being told that there was no way I could possibly know what I claimed to know. I began to deeply doubt everything I felt and perceived, believing it to be evil.

Finally, I repressed and slammed myself for such perceptions, believing myself to be a stupid fraud, believing that if I genuinely perceived emotional sabotage in others, that I myself was a horrible judgmental jerk.

I have been given another deep glimpse into why I have shut down my magic – it always got me into trouble, and I hated myself for it.

Simply Sulking

After the ceremony ends at around 5:30 p.m., I step into Keith’s kitchen to give him a quick hug. As I wait for the opportunity to thank Keith, I overhear him tell someone else “What an amazing ceremony!”

“That is not my experience,” I tell Keith in private. “I had a very difficult and disconnected time today. My perception was that it was a very superficial, scamming, and shallow ceremony. There was a lot of touchy-feely fixing that kept people from exploring their real issues.”

I then express a few other concerns about behaviors I observed.

“I think you just need to keep talking about this,” Keith sternly brushes me away as he walks out of his kitchen to talk to someone else.

As I walk home, I feel depressed, alone, rejected and dejected. I avoid talking to others and simply sulk, wallowing in my rejection. I feel like I am living in a hated nightmare and that Keith is intentionally nourishing the existence of that horrifying dream.

“I cannot possibly be creating this reality,” I attempt to deny personal responsibility.

Yet at one level, I know that Keith is right. I do not know how to get out of my hole, out of needing to beat this dead horse when the horse continues to stink and rot – and no matter what I do, no matter how I try to talk about the issue, I just stink and rot more right along with the horse.

On the one hand, I know that all is OK, but another part of me wants to be angry.

I am tired of being slammed for trying to express genuine feelings and concerns, I am pissed and angry. I WANT to be upset. I CANNOT drop this and give up needing to be right. Why?????

A Rejected Gift

In retrospect, as I write about this nearly two months after the fact, I can clearly see that Keith was profoundly serving me in another role-play. It is blatantly obvious to me that my childhood feelings were recreated for me in this powerful ceremony – I felt like a disconnected alien living in a shallow and fixing world. Whenever I tried to express my concerns to others, I was slammed and judged and harshly rejected – only serving to further strengthen the nightmare in which I found myself.

As a tender-aged child, I believed that the only way to heal myself was to explain and defend my honor – my genuine intentions. Yet every time I tried to do so, I only dug the hole deeper, getting into even more trouble, being further slammed, judged, and rejected by the consensus reality.

Now, as an empowered adult, I realize that I was trying to fix the dream from within the dream. I was trying to change reality by seeing it as an “outside job”. As a tiny child, I did not have the understanding that everything is an “inside job”. I did not have the maturity to recognize and accept that “it is not about the other person … it is not about what it is about … and nothing changes until I do.”

As I regressed deeply into the childhood emotions on that painful last Wednesday afternoon in March, I was lost in the childhood pain, lost in the childhood behaviors, lost in the childhood way of dealing with things. I can clearly see that Keith gave me a profound gift that day – a gift that I rejected at the time – a gift showing me exactly how I felt when I tried to explain my genuine feelings to my parents. It was a gift showing me that by trying to solve the problem through talking about it, I only met impatient frustration and rejection from those who, in a child’s eyes, should have loved, supported, and understood my genuine and pure intentions.

Inner Education

As I ponder before bedtime on this painful Wednesday evening, I feel totally lost. I have an appointment for a private session with Keith tomorrow afternoon, yet I feel stupid for even considering going after the way our conversation ended earlier this evening. I feel like I ruined things, like I am responsible for Keith being angry with me, like I will never again be able to return to the healing friendship that I cherish so deeply.

“I want to do real work,” I ponder with genuine sincerity. “I want to stop my painful childhood loop … but I want validation too … I need to talk about this … I was never allowed to talk this way as a child … never given the validation I desperately wanted … always scolded and abandoned if I challenged authority and spoke my rebellious truth.”

“I know that the validation needs to come from within,” I ponder an inner truth. “But why can’t a teacher provide some validation too?”

Part of me knows that such validation will come … that right now I am deeply regressed in re-experiencing the childhood pain from a new level of perspective … and that I came to this place as a profound part of my inner education.

A New Perspective

I am so lost and frustrated that sleep seems impossible. Instead of even trying, I stay up and lose myself in two movies. Finally, at around 1:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, I go to bed, getting perhaps four hours of restless sleep.

When I again stare at the ceiling at around 5:00 a.m., I begin to ponder things from a new perspective. I clearly see that as a tiny child, I probably drove my parents crazy with my struggles, with my inability to fit into the world they lived in … with my inability to function and understand life as it was being taught to me. I recognize that my parents probably struggled profoundly with not knowing how to help me, not being able to get me to stop crying and resisting etc…

“What I am struggling with is probably quite difficult for Keith to deal with as well,” I begin to ponder. “When I am regressed into that childhood state, he probably feels like my parents, wanting to pull his hair out while trying to figure out how to help someone like me who is so stuck in my confusing childhood world.”

“Keith is probably projecting his own issues onto me too,” I further ponder. “He is human just like I am. I need to respect that he cannot be God for me … that he cannot play that role of perfection … of supporting and holding me up through every struggle. He is doing a wonderful job of helping me, but my struggles are probably extremely frustrating to him.”

“I have tried to use him as a psychological sounding board for all of my projections,” I ponder. “But what I have not considered is that my projections are most likely triggering him in some deep way as well. If he acts frustrated with me, he is probably feeling the same frustration that my parents felt, being taken on his own healing journey while deeply attempting to remain present to help me.”

No Hope Now

After a morning of computer games and emotional avoidance, I manage to establish a short-duration Skype connection to a dear friend back in Utah. In the beautiful conversation, my friend deeply connects to my pain and then channels some wisdom to me.

“This is teenage pain that you have to feel and release,” Michelle tells me. “You will not like to hear this, but it will take another day or two before you have a major ‘aha’ that makes it all make sense. This is important healing that you need to go through for a purpose.”

As Michelle hugs me through the phone, she encourages me to cry and sob and vomit out the energy – and this is exactly what I do, mostly in uncontrollable coughs, tears, and dry heaves. The release is excruciatingly painful.

“I just don’t want to go on,” I explain to Michelle through blubbering sobs. “I am a loser and have messed up my life one too many times. I am not suicidal, but I feel as if my life is over, like there is no hope for me now … no point in continuing to even try.”

As she feels my pain, Michelle also begins to cry.

“Please, do not take my pain into you,” I beg my dear friend. “Please, please, please do not take it in.”

As these intense teenage emotions of absolute and utter futility run through me, I am experiencing my teenage social crisis in its full intensity.

“Wow,” I exclaim to Michelle, “as I feel these emotions flow, I recognize and remember them. I had forgotten how excruciatingly hopeless I had felt during those agonizing years as a dysfunctional gender-struggling teenager.”

Deep Gratitude

To my dismay, my internet connection deteriorates and then dies in the middle of this conversation.

“I guess we are not supposed to talk anymore,” I barely make out the final words from my dear friend.

After a couple of hours having no internet at all, I finally receive a beautiful email from my dear friend and “adopted” sister. I know she will be OK if I share portions publicly. Her words are so beautiful, so profound, that even now, nearly eight weeks later as I transcribe them here, they bring deep emotional loving tears to my eyes. Following are her words – words that I know are channeled. The punctuation and emphasis are hers.

“You are one of the most inspirational people in the world. […] You need to take care of the two-through-teen inside of YOU!!! That’s right, inside there is a young girl just wanting to be free. Live for her. The dreams and hopes. No guilt no shame. Just total fun and whatever comes up. For that lost little boy, hold him, hug him, dance with him. Tell him all the wonderful things she, you, have become. Thank him for surviving. Show the young man that all the struggles were very painful. Cry with him, thank him for holding on. Then all of you, two to teen to now, all the girl, that was hidden in a disguise, rejoice, rebound, claim your right to be. Claim your right to evolve and triumph over suppression. Let out all the old anger and hurt. Cry till you cannot cry any more. Do what you need to do. […] May your Higher Beings be with you at this difficult time. I ask the Universe to give you love, understanding, and most of all peace and assurance. You are. And therefore you shall be. A great wisdom will arise from all of this. I promise you that all will be OK very soon. Keep your beautiful self safe and in a higher place. […]”

My heart swells with gratitude for such a deeply loving and inspired friend.

Journey With Fixing

After running a few errands, I retire to my bed to meditate, sulk, ponder, explore, and observe myself – killing time until my 2:00 p.m. private session with Keith.

“I’m sorry for projecting my God drama so strongly onto you,” I immediately apologize to Keith at the beginning of our time together.

“Where are you at?” Keith asks me to fill him in on my journey.

“I wish I knew,” I respond with confusion, “I wish I could explain the craziness I feel.”

“Find a basket in front of you,” Keith guides me into meditation after I fill him in on my journey.

“I feel like I am just making it up,” I answer hesitatingly, “but the first thing that comes to mind is a screwdriver.”

“So what is this trying to tell you about your journey with fixing energy?” Keith queries.

“I have a journey both with wanting to be fixed by God, and with trying to fix myself and others,” I respond after a few minutes of deep soul searching.

Filter Feelings

“Bask to the basket,” Keith quickly guides me. “What is in there now?”

“A window screen or filter screen is what comes to me,” I respond with more hesitation. “It is not a visual, just a very strong feeling.”

“What does that tell you,” Keith continues guiding.

“Well, a filter is used to let pure things through and to keep out all of the impure,” I begin sharing feelings after a few minutes. “A screen lets air through, but keeps out the bugs. A filter lets water through but keeps out the dirt, bacteria, and viruses etc…”

“How does that relate to your journey?” Keith probes deeper.

I repeatedly come up with several lame answers, but after each, I respond that I feel as if I am just making this up, scamming myself with left-brained thinking.

“I am trying to filter out the pain and fixing,” I eventually respond. “But when I do that, it also keeps out the love.”

“Maybe the filter is the other way around,” Keith suggests another possibility. “Maybe it is trying to filter stuff from leaving you.”

I do not quite understand what Keith is saying. As I ponder, however, I begin to feel that this filter is plugged, possibly from emotional densities such as the intense anger and rage that I am carrying from teen years … keeping my power from getting out to my heart.

Back To The Basket

“As I often do,” I share with Keith, “I am experiencing lots of doubt … but I am not going to buy into the doubt … I am not going to believe that I cannot meditate in this way. I have done this so many times before and I can do it again.”

Still, however, I feel as if I am grasping at straws, making things up while still trusting that all this is taking me somewhere. As I continue to meditate, I begin to feel some pleasant energy flow in my crown and third-eye regions.

“Back to the basket,” Keith soon guides me.

“This time I find a tangled ball of fishing line,” I soon respond with the first thing that pops into my imagination. “It is hopelessly tangled and beyond fixing. There is so much emotional density … so many tangled webs of hatred and social dysfunction etc … that I will never clean it up, never untangle it all … it is a futile task.”

“Back to the basket,” Keith again tells me to close my eyes. “What is there now?”

“What pops into my mind is a hose,” I soon respond. “It is not a garden hose, but is a smaller clear plastic hose. It makes no sense.”

“I’m getting that it has to do with a channel for energies,” I add a minute or two later.

An Abandoning Delay

I meditate on this for a while. Soon, a little boy comes to Keith’s gate wanting to change some money. Keith often gets several such interruptions on a daily basis. He has created a fun second job for himself, being the moneychanger for little boys that are given US and Mexican money by the tourists. These little boys hang out by the boat docks and in the center of town, helping tourists find their way, receiving tips of varying currencies in return. Then another man stops by to purchase chocolate. Rather than judge such interruptions as rude, I have learned to recognize them as part of my process and take advantage of this opportunity to meditate even deeper.

As I meditate alone, I figure out that the hose represents my channel of life-force energy, perceived as sexual energy when trapped in the second chakra. I recognize that this hose has been clogged, pinched, and tightly clenched since my gender struggles began at around age eleven – a painful journey of self-hatred resulting in struggle, guilt, shame, and self-loathing.

Finally, after yet-another ten-minute delay – having been left alone for nearly a half hour – I have an opportunity to share my insights with Keith.

“I’m realizing from the long delay that I am extremely angry at God for how I felt abandoned as a youth,” I share profound insights. “I begged God for help, plead for him to FIX me, but never received what I asked for. I did absolutely everything possible to fix myself, but failed miserably, getting myself into horrible social dysfunction because of that life-force and my attempted shutdown of it all. All the while, I felt completely ignored by God … abandoned as if God did not care. I believed I was working harder than most everyone around me … and that I deserved to be helped … but I repeatedly watched as others seemed to flourish while I failed miserably.”

Beating Around The Barn

“Go deeper Brenda,” Keith does not let me stop here.

I attempt several metaphors to help me go deeper, but none of them seems to work. As I imagine myself walking down steps, I feel as if I am simply walking in place, not descending at all.

“This is showing you the intense fear and resistance that you are now bumping into,” Keith shares his guidance.

I again try to descend, but fail to move. I refuse to listen to my doubts. I refuse to buy into them. Gradually, as I ignore the doubts and feelings that I am not moving, I simply fake-it, ignoring the inner resistance. As I engage in this inner journey, stepping ever deeper, I begin to talk out loud about the various things that pop into my mind.

Out of nowhere, Keith begins to respond to my comments using the metaphor of a barn.

“That is on the outside of the barn,” Keith tells me after I repeatedly make such comments, many of which come with deep emotion.

I repeatedly share more and more insights. To each, Keith’s response is “that is still on the outside of the barn.”

I talk about my self-hatred, my self-judgment, and my anger at feeling abandoned by God.

“That is one of the puzzle pieces, but it is still outside the barn,” Keith frustrates me.

I talk about having to hide underneath fake costumes, my resistance to love, fear of love controlling me … all obvious stuff … but the response is still that I am walking around the barn.

A Puzzling Journey

“Back to the basket,” Keith again guides me. “What is in it?”

“A knife,” I soon respond. “I used it to sever my energy connections … my connection to divine source energy.”

“Another puzzle piece,” Keith responds, “still outside the barn.”

This goes on for nearly an hour as I repeatedly beat around the bush without coming up with an answer to satisfy Keith.

“Do you have something you see that I do not?” I beg Keith go give me a clue on what he is looking for.

“I see something there,” Keith responds, “and much of what you have found are pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together.”

Finally, Isaias brings a large bundle of bananas up to Keith’s porch. They are from Keith’s lower property, and need to be hung up on the porch to keep them safe from the birds while they ripen. I pay very close attention to the interruption and to the metaphors involved.

A Rigged Game

“I feel like God left me hung out to dry,” I express with angry emotion when the twenty-minute interruption is over. “I tried and tried and deserved help … but I never received it.”

“That is one of the doors of the barn,” Keith responds, indicating that I am getting warmer.

As I hit several more deep issues, Keith again occasionally tells me that I have found another door … but I am still not inside … I still need to go deeper.

“I am feeling cheated,” I express deep feelings to Keith, “I feel righteous indignation at God for rigging the game, for making it impossible to use my mind to explain how to bring in love, etc.”

“Now you’re inside the barn,” Keith smiles at me.

Keith reminds me of a metaphor I have once used … one where several classmates in my Master’s program took us on an experiential exercise where we were blindfolded and told to find the end of a rope. It soon became obvious that the rope was circular and that there was no end. But in my refusal to admit that the game was rigged, I had gone around that looped course repeatedly for over a half hour, trying to figure out the riddle with my head. In the end, when I finally succumbed to frustration and asked for help, I was told that I was done … that all I needed to do was to ask for help. I was fuming inside at how stupid that course had been … at how stupid it is to create a game that cannot be solved.

“But I HAVE been begging God for help,” I respond to Keith’s reminder, “and I still feel stuck and frustrated by what feels like a rigged game.”

Inside The Barn

Keith and I continue this exercise in what feels like an endless journey. I finally come up with several more answers that Keith also confirms are “inside the barn”. Following are several of those answers.

“If I was not confused and pathetic enough, I would not get help.”

“If I was strong and self-sufficient, I would not get any help.”

“The game is rigged. It does not matter what I do, whether I am needy or strong, I cannot win. I cannot get the help I need.”

“I am at the bottom of that five-meter wall of glass. I have done everything I can and am still stuck.”

By now, it is obvious to me that what is “inside the barn” are all of the core issues surrounding my God/Deity/Separation drama. Soon, we end the barn metaphor and turn to a deep discussion regarding the God Drama itself.

Digging Deeper

“I was trained to not trust myself with anything creative,” I share with Keith. “When I was expected to give a talk in church or to write a paper for school – whether as an older child or as a teen – I demanded assistance from my mother (representing God), throwing a tantrum, and insisting that I could not do it by myself. I absolutely knew that I would be criticized and subsequently devastated if I did it by myself. If someone did not like my creative work, even in a minor way, I would be depressed and deflated.”

“That is inside the barn,” Keith congratulates me.

“I recognize that I am subconsciously doing the same thing with you,” I continue sharing with Keith,” Even after already having learned the answers, I constantly forget them and beg for help every time that I need it – refusing to do it by myself because I might do it wrong. I should not have to do it by myself. I have done all of my own work. I did it beyond expectations. I deserve help from God.”

“Inside the barn,” Keith smiles.

“Go deeper still,” Keith encourages me.

For at least an hour, we deeply explore the God drama together. I wish I had a recording device, because I want to remember everything. It seems that my old patterns of confusion and chaos are still with me, desperately attempting to sabotage my memory, doing all the usual tricks to keep me stuck in the game.

Enabling Panic

“So I just need to fully understand all aspects of the crazy game I am playing with God, and then stop playing out those games?” I do my best to summarize what Keith has repeatedly told me is the ultimate way to undo my drama with God.

“Basically,” Keith responds, “but I’m getting that you will have a few more emotional issues come up in that process as well.”

“A subconscious part of me insists that God helps everyone else but abandons and scorns me,” I share another God-drama insight with Keith. “This part of me is pissed and angry about this, saying I shouldn’t have to do it myself, that I have already done my part, that I want my energy openings now, that I am angry and jealous to see how others seem to open up so easily. I want my own magic to open up … in the way I want it to open.”

Keith quickly reminds me that my own tedious path of learning much of this the hard way is preparing me as a healer, helping me to have the inner license … the “been there, done that, got the T-shirt” credentials.

“I am no longer enabling your forgetting what you already know by answering repeated questions that I have answered time and time again,” Keith then shares with me.

“But a loving God would always give me the answer, no matter how much I forget and have to ask again,” I insist.

“No,” Keith points out. “That would be enabling, allowing you to keep depending on assistance from others, when you need to do your own work.”

I feel a sense of frightened panic as these words leave Keith’s mouth … as if my mother told me she is no longer going to help me with school papers or church talks. Ouch … kind of frightening to the inner liar that still does not fully trust my right-brained creativity.

Undoing The Blocks

As I listen to Keith’s firm words, a new round of panic and God-drama anger swells in my soul. I feel a new surge of anger toward traditional religion – towards the teachings that drilled separation and duality into my logical mind – teaching me that “God is out there”, a separate being that will only reward me if I am good and obedient to the rules.

This “out there” mentality has me so stuck in old conditioned logical ways. It seems so difficult to take responsibility, to remember that God is inside, that it is all an inside job and that we each have our own unique journey that no one else can make for us.

My anger then shifts to all the unsolvable riddles that “God” puts out there – riddles that cannot be solved with logic. And then there are those who claim to have solved the riddles that give out trite answers that infuriate my stuck logical mind – making it sound so easy to just surrender, to be present, and to bring in love, etc… I totally believe all of these statements to be true, but the conditioning from childhood that was drilled into me in the name of a separate God has tied my mind up in so many knots that the tangled blob of fishing line seems impossible to unravel.

This part of me feels damn angry at God for this rigged and impossible game.

I know it is about “undoing the blocks to loves presence” … but how … how do I DO that? I feel like such a stupid and incapable loser.

Cookie Craving

Keith and I talk and talk and talk. I realize that every time I have felt angry at Keith and threatened to pack my bags and leave San Marcos – every time was my God Drama surfacing – a drama saying “If I can’t get the help in the way I want it, then I’m not playing the game.”

“I am tired of doing all my deep and painful inner work,” another voice pipes in. “I want to receive my validation and reward for what I am doing or I won’t keep going. It makes me really angry to see others opening up in increasingly magical ways while I continue to struggle, blah, blah, blah.”

“It is too much work … too hard … it shouldn’t be so hard,” the scamming voices continue. “God needs to take more control, to teach people what is right, to quit leaving them to struggle with figuring it out for themselves, to quit allowing negative people to interfere …”

“I want my cookies!” the inner liar screams out. “I want my rewards for all the hard work I have done.”

How I wish I could remember all of the crazy games-I-play that Keith and I discuss calmly and frankly. It is becoming increasingly clear as to why I am the one who refuses to allow God to assist me – it is not the other way around.

And as many spiritual teachers point out, I am afraid of the responsibility of having the light … of losing control of my life if I am connected and powerful … of being burdened with everyone else’s problems.

Refusal To Cooperate

Keith soon points out another complication in my process – that I have life-force confused with sex and self-hatred, guilt, shame, and dysfunction – and that I have all of that equally hooked with my teenage struggles of being a social idiot, a misfit, and a reject.

“So I have God and Higher Energy hooked with absolute social disaster,” I reiterate the insights to Keith. “No wonder being a leader in a group has always terrified me so much.”

“Technically these are separate issues,” Keith quickly points out. “They are related to the God Drama … but not the God Drama itself.”

“Right now, Brenda,” Keith guides me, “you need to work on undoing the God Drama.”

“I have never grasped the concepts of the God Drama like I do now,” I explain to Keith. “You often talk so abstractly about it that I have never understood until we went into the details today.”

“You either did not want to understand, or you were not ready to understand this before,” Keith responds. “Now you are. You have been playing it out very intensely lately. It is now time to go into it.”

“It is the trauma-drama you play out with deity that prevents you from allowing assistance from the light and deeper connection with God,” Keith points out with clarity. “It is why you are so angry at God and will not cooperate with Higher Energies until you get what you want first.”

Personal Projections

Keith and I continue talking for a long time, with our conversation turning to more generic matters. I find great closure in realizing that I am not crazy, and that Keith agrees with my various perceptions about situations on the porch, including those that took place yesterday. He has been consciously allowing the things that annoy me because they serve a higher purpose to me and others.

“I am so deeply grateful for how much patience you have with me,” I express to Keith. “Thank you so much for not getting angry when I project all over you and others on the porch.”

“It took me over three years to understand what a feeling is,” Keith reassures me that he knows how it feels to be stuck in his own way.

“I don’t take things personally,” Keith continues. “I know that when you project onto me, that it is not about me.”

“And you are probably not done projecting onto me,” Keith further stirs the pot.

“Oh, please don’t say that,” I cringe at the thought. “I want so badly to be done.

“Remember that when you near the end of a process, that you often get that ‘wham wham wham’ to help you finish up all the loose ends,” Keith reminds me. “You will have more opportunities to go there until you are done.”

Not Tonight

“Most people on the porch probably think I am a crazy bitch,” I smile, recognizing how dysfunctional I have sometimes been recently.

“Brenda,” Keith again reminds me. “Most of them do not even understand what a core issue is, let alone go into it.”

“That is amazing,” I respond eagerly, “I was just about to point out to you that one of the most helpful feedbacks you ever gave me was to point out that I am going into repeated core issues, and that most of the others have never done so. I am doing very deep inner work and I can hold my head high without beating myself up as a crazy loony bitch.”

As I give Keith a huge genuine hug, it feels very sincere for the first time in a few days. I repeatedly thank Keith over and over for his profound patience in helping me through such crazy-making core issues.

“I know I am not done,” I call out to Keith as I walk up the steep road by his home, “but I am so much more stable now, and I am so grateful!”

As I prepare for bed on Thursday evening, I feel stable, but tired and exhausted. It is quite clear to me that putrid emotions continue to rot inside … but another thought calls out with equal clarity, clearly insisting “but I don’t need to worry about them tonight”.

Center Stage

These last six days have been intense, and are far from over. Pain and projections brought with them the beginning clues to the fact that my God Drama was up, center stage. But I had no idea just how bright and intense the stage lights would be – and I am the star of the show. No one else can do it for me.

A beautiful dream – a dream about a confusing, rule-breaking basketball game – set the stage for recognizing that the carpet of the world I once knew has indeed been yanked out from under me. I love the “Oneness” quote that clearly confirms that as one heals and shifts, that it becomes increasingly clear that “the rules of the game have been radically altered”.

With skill, Keith guides me in meditation after meditation with baskets and barns, coaxing me to go ever deeper. Finally, it becomes intensely clear. There is no more hiding from that center-stage spotlight. It is time to perform – time to own the dysfunctional games I continue to project – the games I play out with Higher Energies and Deity.

Yes, the pain in my life has been agonizing, dragging me to the depths of hopelessness and futility at times – and yes, I designed the stage, and I skillfully cast the leading actors prior to my own birth – but it is now time to own the script as being my own. If I can do that … if I can wake up to the fact that I am the scriptwriter and not the victim of some ruthless and unjust God, just maybe I can make it through these ever deepening core issues.

After catching a few zzzz’s, I hope to continue the journey … a journey that is far from complete.

… to be continued …

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

It truly has been a wild ride over the last few days – a ride filled with unexpected role-plays in my personal holodeck of self-created reality. I have learned that I need not concern myself with whether the person at the other end of my script is consciously or unknowingly triggering me. What really matters is that I recognize that any emotions that may be triggered are my own. I would not have an emotional trigger, and my buttons could not be pushed, if I did not still have unhealed issues residing inside of me.

I love how both Keith and Paul have played roles for me this week, taking me deeply into the understanding of how I felt as a child when my mother, and others, were frustrated and impatient with me. I was not given an opportunity to feel and express the painful emotions that flowed through me, and I was invalidated for even having the emotions.

But as I rest on my pillow, late on Friday evening, March 23, 2012, all the peaceful knowing in the world takes a back seat to ego as the stories begin to flow. These are persistent stories about the crazy projected anger and resentment I feel toward Keith and others who would treat me the way I have been treated – invalidating me, being impatient and frustrated with me, accusing me of doing things I did not do.

Crazy Making

“How dare Keith imply I was lost in my confusion in the middle of ceremony today!” inner ego voices begin to complain. “And how dare he talk to me with such frustrated and impatient emphasis in his voice! I don’t care if I struggle a thousand times on his porch. Each time I do so, I deserve his kind and loving patience.”

“But he was role-playing for me,” my loving heart answers. “He was skillfully showing me how I felt as a child when I desperately sought validation, but instead was met by frustration and impatience. It does not matter whether Keith knew he was role-playing or not, what matters is that what he did and said is exactly what I needed for the profound growth and insights that came about as a result.”

“But I deserve better,” the ego voices demand. “I deserve to be treated with love and respect! I deserve to be gently assisted when I ask for help. Instead, I felt as if Keith was crazy making with me.”

As I take a step back, I recognize clearly that my parents unknowingly did crazy making on me as well. They had a cultural mandate to teach me how to fit into a tight little box – a box that they believed was for my own good.

Remaining The Observer

As 10:00 p.m. comes and goes, my inner agitation only increases. I am unable to sleep and the stories continue to intensify. I am having a difficult time separating triggers from reality – separating how I felt while talking to Keith this afternoon from how I felt as a vulnerable and lost child.

“This is actually my God/separation drama projected onto Keith,” I suddenly realize. “I am projecting deep subconscious anger at Higher Energies that in my limited perception seemed to abandon and ignore me during my darkest nights.”

Recognizing that the emotions and stories are not in alignment with present-day reality, I attempt to remain the observer, to not give them power, and to simply allow the feelings to flow through me. Finally, shortly after midnight, I manage to fall asleep for about an hour – and again, I manage to snag a small amount of sleep between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. – but for the remainder of the night and morning, I simply stare at the ceiling.

Yet, to my amazement, I do not feel angry or upset. I somehow manage to accept what is, to find self-acceptance for my stuck state. In the midst of my sleepless hours, I feel a great deal of trapped energy movements around my body – especially involving energetic twitching on my back.

Holding Back The Sobs

Finding myself unable to focus or write, I make a decision to walk out to Keith’s porch at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. He is teaching three classes today as part of a local San Marcos Festival of Consciousness. I am exhausted and just hope to hang out in a high-energy environment – hoping to possibly learn something in a discussion about “Sound Healing”, while doing so as an inconspicuous fly on the wall.

To my dismay, after about thirty minutes of discussion, Keith asks each person in our small class to practice making various sounds.

“Brenda, it is your turn,” Keith soon turns to me.

“Can I please pass?” I respond without even looking up, attempting to suppress bubbling emotions.

“Brenda,” Keith asks a few minutes later, “would you like to sit in the middle and be our guinea pig?”

“Sure,” I respond glumly, “I can’t do anything else. I am exhausted from having only gotten a few hours of sleep last night, and right now I am swimming in deep childhood emotions.”

For several minutes, this small group of six makes continuous sounds – sounds ranging from toning, ohming, humming, and even singing. When they stop, I am crying, desperately attempting to maintain my composure. I appreciate the help being offered, but feel utterly stupid for being the center of attention in this context.

“I’m not supposed to be here doing my inner work,” I protest to Keith. “I am feeling guilty for doing this in the middle of your class. I didn’t come here for a private session. I just wanted to meditate quietly in Higher Energies. I am regressed deeply into childhood emotions, exhausted, highly emotional, and desperately trying to hold back the sobs.”

Sound Surrender

“There is no reason to hold anything back,” a woman immediately responds. “You are blessing me by showing how the sound therapy works.”

With the group’s reassurance, I surrender while they do another round of sounds. As they do so, I allow myself to cry even more. When they finish, I feel somewhat lighter … yet I am experiencing a swarm of deeply heavy and confused energy that swirls in the top of my head.

As the group again engages in another long round of vocalizing a variety of sounds, I begin to feel slight energy tingles in my head and shoulders – tingles that continue to integrate after the sounds end. To my surprise, the emotions are gradually evaporating to nothingness, and I soon move back to my seat – zoning out for the remainder of this two-hour workshop.

At noon, as Keith begins leading a “Connecting to Higher Energies” workshop, I begin early and simply meditate for the next two hours. The heavy swarming confusion energy remains quite intense.

Confusing Chaotic Energy

I spend the entire two hours engaging in one energy meditation after another, attempting to leave rational-mind behind while focusing on various methods of balancing this confusion energy. First, I play with the energy channels surrounding my pineal gland. Next, I engage in a “Mer-Ka-Ba” meditation. Even so, the energy in my head remains intense.

“Just show me what you would do with this energy,” I finally surrender to the light.

Eventually, as I quit attempting to do anything, the energy seems to pool at the front of my forehead, in the region of the third-eye chakra. Then the energy moves lower, plugging up the bridge of my nose. Finally, with patient intention, without pushing or judging, the energy seems to relax and flow down my nose … then it comes back … then it flows again … then it comes back.

As I play and observe, I begin to capture glimpses of understanding regarding this strong and swarming confusion energy. The fact that it moves around from place to place provides significant evidence that the issue is energetic and not physical. Over the last year, I have also clearly noted that the confusion energy surfaces primarily when something takes me deep into the frustration and impatience of my mother or another authority figure – such as when Keith role-played with me last evening.

When triggered, this energy is so overwhelming that it literally confuses my ability to focus and to think about or remember anything from short-term interactions. Keith has often reassured me that, as a child, such energy was my only way to protect myself from cultural programming. What shocks me is that, even now, this energy continues to get triggered in such intense ways.

A “Light” Day

As Keith prepares to lead his third workshop for the day, I excuse myself at 2:00 p.m., utterly exhausted and unable to focus. After a quick lunch, I sleep for over four hours. When I awaken, I watch a quick movie and then return to bed. Exhaustion continues to consume me.

Sunday morning, after a much-needed restful sleep, I spend several hours watching an assortment of Abraham videos. As I ponder the importance of maintaining my connection to Higher Energies, I also ponder how I used to make a weekly trek into the mountains, hiking and meditating solo, reconnecting with my heart, reconnecting with the energies of nature. I realize that over the last few months I have been so focused on deep inner work that I have severely neglected that link to the light.

As Keith has so frequently pointed out to me, I have continued to do a great deal of my inner work by “slogging through the trenches”, still not being fully able to bring in the light to help me.

Prior to the afternoon ceremony today, I make a deep concerted effort to meditate into a powerful state of heart energy. I am determined to try something different.

As the glow meditation begins, I focus on many blissful memories – memories of times when I have felt deeply connected to light and love. Then, I spend the next four hours basking in this energy, often sharing it with others as I assist in their deep inner journeys.

It proves to be a deeply satisfying afternoon.

Exploring Judgment

Around 5:00 p.m., as I sit relaxed and focusing on my connection to the light, Keith reaches over, gently touches my leg, looks into my eyes, and congratulates me on my beautiful energy today.

I giggle inside, because this is literally the first words he has said to me since beginning the ceremony. I have been totally in my element, trusting myself, not needing or asking for any guidance or reassurance.

“I’m working on bringing more love to my inner children and inner adolescents,” I fill Keith in on my process. “I’m beginning to feel some fear and blockage in there, but I am just holding space and loving it all.”

“How about if you work on loving the judgment,” Keith suggests.

“This is kind of what I am doing,” I respond, slightly puzzled by Keith’s words.

But as I meditate deeper into this concept, I realize that focusing only on the judgment removes a need to focus on the origin of that judgment – whether it be parents, church, self, or from others – and instead, I am simply loving the judgment that seems to be deeply entrenched in hidden vaults.

Loving The Make-Wrongs

As I meditate ever deeper, I begin to clearly recognize that my painful solar plexus, being my power center, is what got me into most of my trouble as a child who often fought back in rebellion at rules that felt stifling, being mouthy and rebellious when feeling unjustly attacked by those who might judge me. Finally, in hopelessness and futility, I surrendered my power, severing my solar plexus energies, shutting down my will until I felt like a broken and obedient horse.

I soon begin to focus on loving the power struggles of my childhood. As I do so, deep emotions and trickling tears start to surface. Gradually, I feel some of the heaviness and blockages in my abdomen begin to vibrate and loosen – especially throughout my lower back region. Something inside is definitely shifting.

“Love the ‘make-wrongs’,” Keith soon guides me after I again fill him in on my journey.

I am delighted how I am able to go even deeper with such a subtle shift in meaning. Removing “judgment” from the equation also removes the feeling of “blame”, helping me to realize that I was simply an alien child who could not and did not necessarily want to understand the religious culture of the era. Yet I clearly recognize that I chose my parents and birth circumstances – that all of this was part of my plan – that it was something in which I needed to become profoundly lost.

“What I went through hurt deeply,” I ponder with peace, “but I can indeed love that hurt.”

Giggling Feedback

I sit in this meditative space until the ceremony finally fades. As I begin to walk away from a now-empty porch, I can only giggle when Keith gets silly. After putting his fingertips to his mouth, Keith gestures with a “mmmwwaaaaa” as if he were at an Italian restaurant congratulating the cook on a marvelous meal. Keith then shares how proud he was for my energy today, for my being “in the love”, for not needing feedback, and for trusting myself the whole time.

I too feel quite proud of myself today. I am eager to go home to integrate the beautiful experience and to bask in that much-needed energy of self-love.

Power Equals Alone

In an inexplicable turn of events, Monday morning begins with a deep lack of motivation. I did not sleep well, I feel lazy, and nervous unsettled energies twitch throughout my body, letting me know that something is still shifting inside of my field – something quite outside of rational-mind understanding.

As I attempt to focus on Abraham videos, I suddenly overflow with uncontainable emotion – emotion that results in deep teeth-chattering sobs. There is no valid present-day reason for this emotion, but it is real and profound, and I have long-since learned to simply let such emotions flow through me.

Along with the emotions come feelings of being profoundly alone and isolated … of just wanting to be held and loved … of being deeply alone even when surrounded by many people.

“Am I regressing?” I question myself, suspecting that I am likely just releasing old stuff that is now bubbling to the surface for release.

As I ponder and meditate about these strange emotions, however, I remember a feeling I had yesterday at that powerful Sunday afternoon ceremony. I realize that I was not as deeply connected to empowering divine love as I might have wished … and I recognize a very clear feeling that has surfaced throughout my life.

“When I am strong and in my power,” I ponder as the feeling flows, “that is when I feel most alone. Being strong means being alone because people know that I do not need their help. That is exactly what happened yesterday … I was so in my power that I received almost no personal guidance.”

“This sounds like my God drama,” I ponder.

But in an act of control, I force all emotions aside and instead focus on whitewashing those emotions with a blanket of Higher Energies. In just a few minutes, I will be assisting in an afternoon private-group ceremony on Keith’s magical porch, and I do not want to show up with tears in my eyes.

Mysterious Overbooking

A very awkward situation is unfolding. I am on the edge of anxiety as I wonder how Keith might resolve it. Yesterday, about an hour before the Sunday ceremony, I had been talking to Keith when he scheduled a private session with two women, one of which I will call Julie. The session was primarily for Julie’s friend. Julie was going to be there too, and at Keith’s suggestion, the friend indicated that it would also be OK if I were there to assist. The women made it quite clear however that they did not want any men there (except Keith that is).

In the midst of scheduling, Keith had noted that he had another private session already scheduled at the same time with another woman that I will call Sarah.

“I will try to move Sarah’s session to a later time,” Keith had told Julie. “Why don’t you tentatively plan on 1:00 p.m. and I will let you know via email if that is not going to work out.”

When the two women leave, Keith goes into his house to send a quick email to Sarah, hoping to reschedule her.

“Brenda,” Keith suddenly calls out with surprise, “my internet modem just expired a few minutes ago. I have no way to get online.”

An hour later, just as we are finishing preparations to start the Sunday ceremony, Sarah walks onto the porch. I try to get Keith’s attention to suggest that he should talk to her about changing her session time. Keith looks at me as if I am an alien, acting extremely confused about what I am trying to tell him. Meanwhile, in the middle of the ceremony, Keith begins telling a few people that several women are gathering for a small private group session tomorrow afternoon, suggesting that they might also want to join us.

I just bite my tongue and trust the process. As it turns out, later that evening, when several from the Sunday ceremony shared dinner at a local restaurant, this person invited that person, and that person invited another. What began as two double-booked private sessions had now randomly expanded to an entire group of people being invited – including several men – and neither Julie nor Sarah knew of that fact.

An Awkward Group

As I walk out toward Keith’s home, this complicated overbooking scenario is hot on my mind when I bump into Julie who is also walking in the same direction. In the course of our walk, Julie mentions that the reason she wanted a tiny private ceremony is that there was way too much “fixing energy” on the porch, and that she did not want people there who would try to fix her.

While conversing with Julie, I opt to say nothing regarding the double booking because I have no idea what Keith may or may not have done to resolve the issue. I trust that Keith will resolve everything when we arrive. When we sit on the porch, I can tell that Julie is noticeably confused by the fact that seven or eight other people are also gathered. When Keith steps out onto the porch, he says nothing to Julie or Sarah regarding what is happening, and instead begins to conduct a group ceremony.

I am feeling intense frustration. I assume that Sarah must know what is going on, but I can clearly see that Julie is confused. I feel her awkwardness – and her awkwardness becomes my own. As much as I have learned to “trust the process”, this is one time where I feel a great deal of unexpressed judgment and anger toward Keith.

Bait-And-Switch Regression

Julie does not even drink chocolate, and seems quite defensive when anyone else engages her in conversation.

Meanwhile, I silently sink back into my God drama, further fuming in unexpressed projections onto Keith. I feel angry about what I now perceive as his “crazy making” onto me yesterday when I had tried to point out the developing awkward situation. He had shut me down and had literally refused to listen to my concerns.

I am fully aware of my projections and fully aware that such crazy making happened to me frequently as a child – but I am so lost in the emotions that I am unable to disengage from the power of those projections.

I am also quite angry that two men are present. Julie had made it quite clear that men were not to be there. In my mind, the situation could not be more disastrous.

Yet in the midst of my stewing and fuming, part of me knows that this whole situation must be a “create-my-own-reality” setup … that I am here to be an observer as these emotions surface. Yet a huge part of me wants to stand up right now and simply walk away from the situation, wanting nothing to do with it.

I know this situation is not my fault … but just the fact that I am here and had initially tried to help resolve it makes me feel as if I am internalizing all of the guilt. I am unable to connect with Higher Energies from above or from Mother Earth.

I am regressed to childhood … a little child who is angry about God/church saying one thing while the energy/reality that I feel is another. I am a tiny child angry with God and with my dear mother … angry about the bait-and-switch crazy making that took place with both.

This tiny child is very angry.

Fixing Fest

“The energy is with you,” Keith soon turns to speak to Julie, who appears quite surprised.

Seconds later, in the midst of the conversation, a young woman on the porch bursts into deep tears. Three women rush over to hold and comfort her. I perceive the whole situation as profoundly fixing … as saying “Oh, you poor thing, you are hurting. Let us hold and comfort you so you do not need to cry.” I watch with deep interest as the situation unfolds.

I find it quite fascinating as Keith point-blank tells the emotional young woman that she is an empath, and that as a child, people tried to fix her, not allowing her to feel her emotions, etc… Keith then spends several minutes teaching the whole porch about fixing energy, about what it is and why it is so disempowering. The three women listen with deep interest, but do not seem to draw any parallel understanding that Keith’s words are subtly directed at them.

Meanwhile, I squirm as I observe, knowing that Keith must have a reason for not intervening more directly. Finally, Keith turns back to work with Julie.

Dancing Expression

For ten minutes, Julie dances around the issue and struggles to find a way to express her frustrations about fixing energy, while at the same time desperately attempting to do so in a soft generic manner that does not directly offend anyone. Finally, after others on the porch repeatedly challenge and badger her to be more direct and honest, Julie admits that she has a very strong aversion to the fixing that just took place in front of her.

“I’m right behind you,” I quickly and publicly express my support and understanding for Julie’s bold words. “I have had my own lifelong journey with fixing energy, and I totally understand what you are sharing.”

I can see that the others are annoyed by my support of Julie. Without backing down from my own position, I take a back seat and observe what happens next. The awkwardness increases dramatically when the three women begin to debate and reason with Julie, practically psychoanalyzing her as they insist that no fixing was taking place, that instead Julie is angry, resistant, and projecting onto them – that the issue is all Julie’s and has nothing to do with them.

“Please stop,” Julie requests, “I am not here to work with you. I want to work directly with Keith.”

I totally relate to Julie’s request. There have been so many times on the porch that people have interrupted Keith to try to give me advice. Every time I have felt annoyed, and rarely does their advice or counsel even come close to resonating.

Story Of My Life

What I am witnessing resonates deeply with my own process. I recognize myself in Julie and in what she is doing.

In my perception, it appears to me that Julie is doing profound inner work, facing her fears, and boldly expressing her truth … and her reward for doing so is that she is the one that others want to blame for being the troublemaker. Her perceptions are real and valid, yet she is being badgered and psychoanalyzed for expressing them.

For me, this is the story of my life … desperately attempting to be true to myself while constantly having stones tossed in my direction.

I only smile when, as Keith resumes working with Julie, he does the “relationship-rule turn around” with her, pointing out that nothing changes until she does, that she is the one that needs to go inside to heal her sensitivities to the “new age circus” and “fixing energies” out there. Keith may as well have been speaking to me.

Sharpened Knives

Meanwhile, I am sinking deeply into a feeling of intense hatred toward the “energy of fixing” that was a frequent occurrence with my beloved mother when I was tiny. I feel the energy of me doing my own genuine processing as a child, trying to explain and defend myself, while the adult fixers in my life got out their knives and sharpening stones, determinedly preparing to cut out my flaws and dysfunction so that I could be more like them – so that I could be saved in God’s Kingdom.

It is clear today that I feel the “fixing energy” as being a significant portion of my God/separation drama. I realize that the resistance that I feel when trying to send love to that little “child-that-was-me” – that the emotions of heavy thick resistance that always prevent me from doing so – are actually emotions of deep hatred for that rebellious brat (me) that desperately refused to be broken … until I finally gave up and succumbed, that is.

As I attempt to send love to my inner child, my eyes instead fill with tears as I sink deeply into the pain. I am trying to love that anger … trying to love the judgment … trying to love the make-wrongs.

I know that the painful emotions flowing through me must be yet-another childhood regression, and I attempt to not identify with these emotions … yet the experience is so overwhelming and powerful that I find it extremely difficult to not get lost. I am barely hanging on as the observer.

I know that what I am feeling is a projected form of my God drama, but I also know that this childhood pain is quite real, and I need to feel it to the core. I simultaneously try to bring in love to assist, but the more I try, the more I feel confused and lost.

Uninvited Advice

Julie soon looks over at me and asks what I am feeling. I begin to blubber as I share details of my inner journey – details of how I was so profoundly fixed as a child – details of the intense anger that is flowing through me.

A few people immediately jump in to interrupt, attempting to add supportive feedback and suggestions to me, but I ignore them, ask them to please stop, and lovingly point out that their feedback may be well intended, but that it is not serving me.

No Way Out

By now, I clearly recognize that this whole ceremony has been a beautiful setup for my process – but it is also quite obvious that the ceremony is beautifully serving others, including Julie and Sarah.

I am so deeply stuck in my emotion that I see no way out … no hope of returning to love and light. I want to release my anger, but do not feel safe doing so in this group. I am not even sure it would be productive if I tried. Instead, I sit quietly on my pillow, feeling the emotion to the core while attempting to stifle all external expression. I know Keith is aware of what I am going through, but he skillfully ignores me. Intuitions tell me that he is waiting for me to make the first move.

Finally, I look at Keith, make eye contact, and express how stuck I am. I stop short of actually verbalizing a request for help. As I sit in my pain, Keith does not respond. Soon, I lower my head and return to my muffled tears, letting the emotion flow the hard way. Unbeknownst to me, Keith has been motioning to Julie for her to come over to help me.

As Julie finally sits in front of me, I briefly glance into her eyes but quickly return to resistance, lowering my head and returning to my tears.

“Look in her eyes,” Keith guides me.

I raise my head, briefly making eye contact before again returning my gaze to the ground.

Fixing Versus Assisting

Keith repeatedly nudges me to further connect with Julie. Finally, after considerable resistance, I reach out and hug her. Seconds later, I am sobbing while Julie holds me.

When my emotion finally subsides, Julie and I engage in a beautiful conversation. She explains how Keith kept pointing to her to come over and help me … and how she had resisted because she did not want to be guilty of the same fixing energy about which she had just gotten upset.

“What you are doing is not fixing,” I quickly share with Julie. “You are holding space for me and sharing loving support while assisting and empowering me to go deeper in my process.”

As the ceremony quickly dissolves into small social conversations, Julie and I sit and talk for more than an hour.

Life Parallels

“It seems like whenever you begin to go into deep emotion,” Julie shares her observation, “that you get interrupted and left alone.”

“Yeah, I feel like Keith is doing that to me on purpose,” I explain to Julie, also pointing out that this has only been going on for a few weeks.

“I think it is related to my God drama,” I add. “I have been clinging to a need for outside help and have not been trusting myself … and I have this deep belief that when I am independent and in my power, that God will no longer have a need to help me. I really believe that Keith, whether he is aware of it or not, is graphically showing me my God drama in a stage-play format.”

Soon, I am sharing much of my life journey with Julie, exploring how my God drama so deeply parallels real life experience – experience repeatedly confirming to me that the more self-sufficient I am, the more alone I end up – the more abandoned I feel.

Perfect Triggers

Eventually Keith sits down to join our conversation. In our loving and light-hearted discussion, I get bluntly honest with Keith regarding my frustrations about feeling ignored for the last week or two.

“When you need help, ask for it,” Keith responds with a smile.

“Keith,” I respond, “I have rarely needed to ASK for help in the past. You always jump in to work with me exactly when I need it. Now it seems that you ignore me a lot … and when I do genuinely ask for help, you either continue to ignore me, point out how stuck-in-my-head I am, or else you get impatient and frustrated with me as you did when you role-played my mother a few days ago. It seems like when you do talk to me, it is done with extreme vocal emphasis, as if you are frustrated and impatient, trying to trigger me. My heart is pure and I need loving patience and compassion.”

“Brenda,” Keith responds with a smile. “Whether I am doing it on purpose, or whether I am a dense jerk asshole does not matter for you. It is the same from your perspective … you need to see it as your creation. You need to look at that. It is not about me and it is not about what it is about … and nothing changes until you do.”

“And if I AM being a dense jerk asshole,” Keith adds with loving confidence, “then that is my own issue to look at.”

I just want to slap Keith. I know he is right, but the ego in me wants him to admit he is mean and wrong. I want an apology. In actuality, I know that everything he has done, and continues to do, is quite perfect … triggering me in exactly the ways I need to be triggered.

“I think I am triggering a lot of growth in you,” I lovingly share with Keith.

“Everyone does,” He responds with a smile.

A Suggested Vacation

It is shortly before 7:00 p.m. when Julie and I give Keith quick good night hugs. Julie needs to catch a night boat to San Pedro, so I walk with her back to the boat dock.

“Brenda,” Julie lovingly suggests at one point in our delightful conversation, “you need a vacation.”

“How I wish I could,” I respond with a glow in my eyes, “but my heart tells me otherwise. As difficult and often frustrating as this deep inner work is, I am right where I need to be, doing what I need to be doing.”

“But your eyes lit up when we talked about it,” Julie pushes a little harder.

“I have to admit, a vacation would be really nice,” I ponder with a smile. “Right now, I am deeply burned out on inner work, but it really does not feel right.”

A Day Of Rebellion

Tuesday morning, March 27, 2012, I awaken feeling quite rebellious. That vacation idea is sounding extremely attractive right now. Giving up on my journey feels like a very viable option.

I am so exhausted from incessant inner work and from having my painful buttons pushed. It has been four months of being intensely triggered by Paul and others – six nonstop months of digging through emotional pain that I had no idea continued to hide inside. I am frustrated to the max, running on empty, and my brain feels as if it is ready to fry.

For breakfast, I eat an ice cream sandwich. For lunch I dine on popcorn, a slice of cheese, and an apple, and for dinner, I treat my rebellious inner children to a burger and fries.

The rest of the day is filled to the brim with rebellious emotions and six back-to-back movies on my computer.

I feel utterly alone. I have no desire to go outside or to socialize with anyone. I am disconnected and deeply disoriented. I wish I could dig a hole and just crawl inside.

The strange thing about all this is that, even in my rebellion and refusal to do anything at all, that I still felt Higher Energies flowing today – I still felt a continuous glimmer of inner peace. An observer part of me was conscious throughout the day, lovingly giving me permission to rebel and do absolutely nothing, confidently knowing that all is well, that today is actually precisely what I needed.

In retrospect, it is quite clear that another profound layer of God drama emotions was flowing through me – emotions triggered by the profound dysfunctional belief that being strong and empowered – being connected to Higher Energies – is always met with abandonment and aloneness, with being left to fend for myself and never again receive the help I think I need.

A Team Dream

Around 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning, I awaken with a start. Memories of a very vivid dream continue to flood my consciousness. I quickly get up, scribble a few notes, and begin to ponder.

In the dream, I was playing in a basketball game on what feels like an all-female team. In a chase for a loose ball, an opposing player tips the basketball out of bounds. I run to retrieve the ball and turn to throw it back into play when an opposing player challenges me, insisting that the ball belongs to the other team. Finally, the referee hands the ball back to me and blows his whistle.

When I look out onto the court, deep confusion suddenly overwhelms me. Rather than the expected sight of two teams of five players each, I see a basketball court crowded by hundreds of people. Most of them women, all of them dressed in random non-uniform clothing, and I do not recognize a single face.

My team has been switched and I am in a state of near panic. I do not know to whom I need to throw the ball. In an effort to get my bearings, I pause and ask everyone on my team to please raise their hands. In response, perhaps ten hands go up in the air scattered throughout the crowd, one being quite near to me. I still do not recognize any of the faces, and know that I will never be able to remember who my teammates are.

“How can I possibly play this game when I do not even know who I am playing with?” I ask in frustration as I suddenly wake up from the dream.

New Game, New Rules

After brief meditative pondering, the deeper meaning of the dream seems intuitively obvious.

I am extremely lost and frustrated right now. I am refusing to play the game anymore because it suddenly feels as if all of the rules have changed behind my back. I do not know any of my new teammates (Higher Beings), and I am terrified to continue playing while in such a state of disconnect and not knowing. My rebellion of yesterday is a natural pause in my process … my basketball was knocked out of bounds. It is now time to step back from the rulebook … to quit playing by the old rules … to realize that I do not even begin to understand the rules to this new game. I need to step back from the trauma and drama; I need time to regroup; and I need time to get to know my new teammates.

Teeth-chattering tears stream down my cheeks as I scribble my insights. I feel so alone, so lost, so like a fish out of water, so wandering into unknown territory. I want to run away … to run back to the familiar … to what I know … back to what was safe in my old world.

But I know that, at least for me, the old world is gone. There is no going back.

… to be continued …

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

After two long days of delightful writing in my blog, I am up quite early on Wednesday morning, March 21, 2012. It is going to be a very long day – a day beginning with an early-morning private chocolate ceremony followed almost immediately by an another afternoon public ceremony.

At 7:00 a.m., I find myself on Keith’s porch, eagerly helping to clean-up and set-up. A group of us had been on the porch late last night, tediously bagging over 250 pounds of freshly ground chocolate. When I arrive, there remains much work to do to straighten up and organize before the tour group arrives at 8:00 a.m.. I am deeply excited by the opportunity to assist in a ceremony with this group. Twice before, I have participated with similar groups, and they are always amazing.

Love, Confidence, And Peace

This early-morning ceremony is a much-needed breath of fresh air. After months of painful projections, regressions, and digging deep into emotional processing, parts of me have gotten quite lost in the pain of a lonely and disconnected past. As I visit with the group before we begin, a much needed burst of confidence reminds me that I do still have a fun social part of me that loves working with people. I seem to come alive as I laugh and giggle while the chocolate is served.

For most of the ceremony, I simply hold energetic space for others, imagining my heart as developing a personal connection with each of their hearts. Several times, I also assist Keith, participating as an empath, assisting in beautiful processes of emotional release.

This collection of amazing people has been traveling together for three weeks. They have developed a strong and cohesive group energy, which creates an environment of profound shared support.

By the time the afternoon chocolate ceremony begins, my heart is overflowing with love, confidence, and peace.

Pondering Pains

As a group of seventeen magical beings crowds Keith’s porch for an afternoon of inner journeying, it is soon quite obvious that the porch is filled with a large percentage of empaths.

I quickly find myself facing my own inner fears as I observe the work of others. It seems that every time Keith works with someone else, their work deeply resonates with me, deeply triggering my own process. I watch with special interest as a woman regresses into agonizing pains from when she was five or six years old. As her work unfolds, I experience deep pains in my own solar plexus. Intuitively, I know that the pains I feel are not my own – that I am simply “reading” the pains of my friend. Keith quickly confirms my intuitions, reminding me that my heart is open and strong, and that I am simply learning more about my own ability to literally feel the pains of others inside my own body.

“Wow, this really hurts,” I ponder silently. “It really, really, really hurts. If this is what I felt as a child, how could I possibly have survived that onslaught of pain? How could I have allowed myself to be joyful when doing so caused me to feel so much of the pain of others? Not only did I have love hooked together as resulting in pain, but I did the same with joy and play. Whenever my magical heart was happy and open, I took in this type of agonizing emotional pain. I then cried or acted out in some way– and was punished for doing so – causing me to take in more pain, self-hatred, self-judgment, and self-flogging.”

“No wonder I cannot remember being joyful as a child.”

The Sword Of Truth

As I drift through meditation, I find myself playing with Archangel Michael’s Sword of Truth … asking Michael to cut me free of my doubts, my fears, and the dysfunctional emotional hooks that no longer serve me. But I do not attempt to control or fix anything. Instead, I simply ask that “whatever I am ready to let go of be taken from me”. I remain in the back seat, watching as an interested observer.

After a while, I begin to feel a really nice energy opening up in my head, especially on the back side from the top of my neck up to my crown chakra. I love such energetic reassurance that all is well.

As Keith conducts an empath training with the many gathered empaths, I zone out and continue to explore my relationship with Michael, just playing with visualizations of the Sword of Truth. To my surprise, even without consciously participating in the training, my solar plexus begins to fill with sharp pains. Again, I believe I am “reading” the emotions of others rather than actually eating them and storing them inside of me.

My Personal Sword

As the empath training concludes, Keith breaks with normal routine and quickly moves into a subconscious basket meditation. To my shock, as I imagine a metaphorical basket suspended in the air in front of me, I get a brief-but-very-clear intuitive image of the Sword of Truth that unexpectedly shows up as lying across the edges of the basket.

In meditation, I imagine myself picking up this sword, grabbing the handle with both hands, with the tip pointing to the sky above me.

“I am the owner of this divine sword,” I ponder the magic that is being shown to me. “It is my own personal Sword of Truth … my magical gift from the Universe.”

Soon, I quietly slip into Keith’s house to retrieve a long pointed quartz crystal that Keith occasionally brings out during ceremonies. I hold it in my hand for the remainder of the ceremony, imagining it as physically representing the empath magic that I am gradually opening.

I do not share my metaphor with anyone, so I am quite surprised when a man across the porch asks Keith for guidance. He too found the Sword of Truth in his basket. In all of the times that I have done this meditation, I have never seen anyone pull this metaphorical sword out of their basket. Today, as I quietly bask in my own meditation, I am blown away by the energetic confirmation – a synchronous message telling me that my own meditative experience is very real indeed.

An Uncomfortable Pause

I soon find myself delightfully enjoying a long period of silent meditation on the porch – something that occasionally just happens when Keith feels guided to disengage and wait for more guidance. Peace fills my heart as I simply breathe.

Suddenly, Paul interrupts the silence, suggesting that we should do a “Pillar of Light” meditation.

“Quit trying to run the ceremony,” is the first unexpressed thought that runs through my mind as I begin to automatically project “past stuff” onto my projection-buddy Paul.

“When there is a quiet spot in the ceremony,” I continue silently projecting, “just let Keith do what he is guided to do.”

Suddenly, I remember that I have recently been projecting my mother onto Paul, and I make a deep intuitive connection about what is really going on in my process.

“My mother never let me have a quiet moment to myself,” I begin to ponder with clarity. “Whenever there was an uncomfortable pause, she interrupted me and tried to fill my life up with busywork.”

An All-Consuming Face

Rather than resisting Paul’s timely suggestion, I eagerly immerse myself into the meditation – but to my dismay, I meet fierce internal resistance at every step.

First, I am unable to imagine myself as sitting on a thin layer of light. Then, I struggle, trying to fake-it-till-I-make-it, barely able to imagine a support layer of this same light as it curls up around my hips. When Keith then guides us to send down roots to the earth – to the center of the Divine Mother – I find myself in extreme difficulty as I attempt to imagine such roots growing and descending from my root chakra.

Then, to my shock, as I continue in deep-but-distracted focus, I begin to shake with fear as my dear earthly mother’s face suddenly consumes my meditation. I am trying to connect and root myself to the pure unconditional love of the Divine Mother, but this visualized face has a different agenda.

I feel deep fear as I ponder sending down roots into the conditional nature of my mother’s love. She loved me deeply in the only way she knew how – in a way that literally put a leash around my neck.

Emotions of terror flood my body as I experience sudden brief-but-nightmarish regressions. A feeling of red-alert causes my body to physically shake as I involuntarily regress into the energies of control, manipulation, fixing, and loving judgment that clouded the perception of love in my childhood.

I cannot send those roots down … not now.

Waves And Cycles

The level of this regressed terror deeply catches me off guard. I quickly wield my imaginary Sword of Truth, asking Michael and my inner energies to release me from that which no longer serves me – to release me from the doubts, fears, panics, hooks, etc. As I do so, I begin to feel peaceful energy slowly lowering from my heart, filtering toward my solar plexus.

But then, my dear mother’s face again unexpectedly enters my visualization, and I once more I start to shake with inexplicable terror.

“I know that my mother’s love will control me,” I ponder in this craziness. “Her love will try to fix me … and micromanage my life.”

For more than a half hour, I sit quietly in this bizarre emotional meditation. I shake and cry in waves and cycles as the loving energy descending from my heart gradually approaches my belly button. Each wave of emotion begins with another visualization of my mother’s love. Between the tears and shaking, I find brief moments of peace and calm.

It feels as if something in my solar plexus is healing, or perhaps opening, but I attempt to stay out of rational mind – to stay out of the way – and instead simply watch and observe this completely unexpected journey unfold inside of me.

Ignored And Abandoned

Finally, after an unusually short session, people begin to filter away from the porch. Soon, I am left alone, still in the middle of my process, continuing to allow this bizarre and painful emotion to flow through me.

“You did great work today,” Keith briefly shares in passing as he walks into his kitchen to begin evening chores.

I want to finish my inner work. The hour is still early, and I suddenly feel deeply annoyed, abandoned, ignored, invalidated, and cut-short … as if who I am and what I am doing is not important to anyone else.

“Keith,” I call out into the kitchen, “can you please help me with my process?”

“Brenda, you are doing beautifully,” Keith responds with what I perceive as an extremely impatient and frustrated tone of voice. “You wait until the very end to begin your work, and then you want help.”

“Keith,” I again call out through the doorway, “I did NOT wait until the end. It is not even the normal ending time yet. I have been following my flow all day, and this is where it took me. I have been lost and alone in this emotion for a very long time.”

“Well, let me check,” Keith responds in what I again perceive as a frustrated and impatient tone.

“I’m getting that you are just fine,” Keith responds a few seconds later. “You are doing powerful work.”

Again, the kitchen goes silent. No help is offered.

Caught In The Act

As I ponder my deep annoyance at feeling invalidated, ignored, and abandoned, I begin to realize that I am profoundly reliving emotions from childhood.

“This is exactly what my mother did to me when I experienced deep emotions,” I ponder with clarity. “She was frustrated and impatient with my tears and need for assistance. She put me down, left me alone in my room, and ignored me … making me feel as if my tears were not important … as if I were bad and wrong for asking to be helped and understood.

“You are sounding and acting just like my mother treated me,” I call back into the kitchen with growing clarity. “You are modeling her frustration, impatience, and refusal to help me.”

“In fact,” I quickly add a request for confirmation, “this whole scenario of feeling ignored and abandoned at the end of ceremony, which has recently happened several times, is exactly what happened to me as a child, isn’t it? As a child, I was never given an outlet to process my emotions. When it was my turn, the support vanished. I was invalidated, my parents were impatient and frustrated with me, and I was told to just quit crying.”

To my delight, as I begin to find clarity, Keith soon steps back out to the porch.

“You are role playing and channeling my mother right now, aren’t you?” I suddenly challenge Keith with a big smile of recognition.

“Brenda,” Keith grins back at me. “That is what I am here to do.”

No Reason To Cry

“If you insist on crying, I’ll give you a reason to cry,” I soon blurt out a painful phrase.

“Ouch,” I begin to cry as Keith watches on. “That is what I did to my own children. It was done to me when I was tiny, and I passed along that invalidation and emotional abuse.”

“The piano really was one of the only outlets I had to release emotion in a safe way,” I share with Keith in newfound clarity. “It was difficult for me to release my emotions any other way, without creating more problems.”

Profound clarity continues to unfold as Keith and I converse. I realize that as a tiny child, I really was an alien, labeled as an emotional crybaby, not understood, and not validated. People were frustrated with me, impatient with me, and I was not allowed to process my confusing empath emotions – because there was no visible socially acceptable reason for me to even have those emotions in the first place. I was invalidated for trying to talk about my feelings, cut short if I began to share, abandoned and left alone by the very people that I needed to understand and help me.

“And today in the last part of the ceremony,” I share with Keith, “my mother’s face represented all of that love that should have understood and helped, but instead came with conditions that literally invalidated me and my magical essence … nagging, controlling, and micromanaging my life until I finally gave up and joined the cultural herd.”

A Controlling Collar

Keith soon walks back into town with me. He is having dinner with several people from the ceremony today. I have been invited to join them, but am exhausted and drained … and I am actually eager to isolate myself, to continue integrating the emotional insights that are flowing through me like a river. Part of me knows that what I need right now is to be alone … to have time to think and just be.

As I sit in my dark living room, I ponder the deep love that I have for my mother … and I know that she also loved me in genuine ways. Yet, I am blown away by the image of her stern face that continues to pop into my mind as I ponder that bizarre “Pillar of Light” meditation earlier this afternoon. That terror and shaking fear were real.

I do, and always have loved my mother … but I am profoundly clear that the conditional nature of her love did indeed traumatize me deeply when I was a young child. Her motherly love actually felt as if someone put a tight controlling collar on my neck … as if my own right to be an individual were being sacrificed. The only love I knew at the time was forcing me to give up who I am and to instead join the collective – a collective that made me feel as if I were an alien.

A Growing Inner License

As I lay on my pillow, late on Wednesday evening, I ponder something Keith had shared during the ceremony today. He indicated during the empath training that some people open up their magic very quickly.

“But some people have so much dysfunction inside because of how their magic caused problems,” Keith had added, “that they need to spend considerable time in cleaning up that dysfunction first.”

As sleep begins to consume me, I clearly recognize that I am among the latter group. And I am actually grateful for my dysfunction. I am learning so much compassion for others … and the experience of healing my own inner issues is ever strengthening my growing inner license.

Powerlessness

Thursday morning, prior to beginning another long day of writing, I take the time to watch a full length Abraham video … one titled “The Secret Behind the Secret, Part 1.” As I devour the beautiful messages in this video, I begin to find great clarity behind a few of my painful projections onto Paul from the past few months.

Following is a powerful quote that happens about thirty minutes and thirty seconds into the video.

“When you see someone who behaves in a way that is upsetting to you, and you cannot do anything about it, that feeling of powerlessness that comes over you is the strongest factor in disconnecting from your Source Energy.”

As Abraham talks about “powerlessness to change a situation”, I realize that this issue – which I have been profoundly projecting onto Paul as “powerlessness to protect my sacred space on Keith’s porch, and Keith doing nothing to change it” – was actually one of my most profound core issues as a tiny child.

“I was absolutely powerless to change my life situation as a child,” I ponder as tingles consume my body. “I felt the hopelessness and futility of being stuck in a place where events around me were painful and not to my liking, but as an innocent child, I was powerless to change a thing. I finally just gave up and disconnected from Source. I felt as if God had let me down, and that I would never receive help from the one source that should have had my back.”

An Exciting Start

Friday morning, March 23, 2012, begins in an exciting way. I begin by pulling a beautiful Tarot card. Then, in a beautiful Skype call with my dear friend Pyper in Alaska, we giggle with delight as we confirm plans for her to come visit me in about a month. Next on my magical list is picking up my two new debit cards from a friend who just returned to San Marcos late last night. Finally, after reading a powerful chapter in the book “Oneness” by Rasha, I pull another powerful Tarot card.

I could not imagine a more beautiful way to begin what I hope will be a profound Friday afternoon chocolate ceremony.

“You have really nice energy today,” Keith makes a passing comment at the beginning of the glow meditation.

As the meditation progresses, my heart feels alive, opening, and strong. I invite higher love to fill me, and as I do so I feel beautiful energy in my crown, but I also note that my lower chakras continue to feel dead. As I invite energy from Mother Earth to fill me from below, the resistance from Wednesday begins to fight back. I quickly abandon attempts to connect with the Divine Mother, and for now, choose to receive the love that I am able to allow.

Reframed Perceptions

As Keith begins working with individuals, I note with curiosity that this is one of those days where Keith seems deeply guided to focus a great deal of attention on certain individuals who are ready for some type of major growth. As I observe the unfolding scenario, strong inner guidance tells me that I might be journeying mostly on my own today. I quickly get right to it, returning directly to the resistance from Wednesday – to the place where I was unable to connect with the Divine Mother – to the place where my dear mother’s visualized face caused me to sink into inexplicable waves of tears.

As I sit in this painful place, tears begin to trickle down my cheeks. Soon a young Spanish woman comes over and takes hold of my hands, attempting to console me and make me feel better. Immediately, my emotions vanish, and I am about to ask her to please stop.

But instead, I realize that her intention is genuine, that being pulled out of my process is a choice over which I have power, and that I can choose to instead reframe my own thoughts – seeing her as an angel feeding me with powerful space-holding unconditional love. Soon, I am able to reconnect with my intense emotions. I am quite proud of myself for how I am able to take what I could easily have labeled as fixing energy, and turn it into a powerful metaphor that supports me while I release a great deal of emotion.

An Un-climbable Wall

As Keith works with a young woman across the porch (I will call her Stephanie), I watch with curiosity as some of what Stephanie does relates to my own process. She is deeply stuck in a mental blockage that keeps her from moving forward.

Soon, I find myself in a very familiar place, stuck at the bottom of my own wall of glass – an impassable obstacle of thick un-climbable glass that is five meters tall. My obstacle today is that I am unable to connect with the Divine Mother. I desperately want to get over that wall, to connect with this loving energy, but I clearly realize that my rational-mind does not have the slightest clue as to how I can possibly do that.

I attempt to surrender, to simply allow, letting myself freely feel what little love that I can feel. I imagine myself standing in the hallway next to that metaphorical “circle-of-friends” room where all of my divine-being friends hang out … but I still cannot enter. A huge hidden part of me remains too frightened to feel that profound love. In my conscious mind I desperately crave that love, but something inside is terrified of receiving it, absolutely knowing that I do not deserve it, that connecting to it would overwhelm and destroy me.

I attempt to imagine a group of beautiful earthly friends filling me with love. I know that such divine love is freely available, that it is everywhere around me if I can simply remove the blocks and allow myself to receive it. But I am stuck … hopelessly stuck … so stuck that fear-filled tears begin to trickle.

Help, Please

While focusing on allowing pure divine love to join me in my stuck place, I notice someone on the porch holding a crystal. Seconds later, responding to intuition, I return from Keith’s kitchen, holding his large wand-shaped quartz crystal – the one that reminds me of my own personal “Sword of Truth”.

I quickly close my eyes and imagine myself as a young child, using this sword – my own magical sword – to cut away the lies and conditioning – to cut away my resistance and fears that prevent me from allowing the love that another part of me craves.

Soon, Keith surprises me when he pauses and asks if anyone else needs help. After a long pause, I speak up.

“Yeah,” I respond, “I could use some help in my stuck-ness.”

I quickly fill Keith in with a brief summary of my metaphorical and emotional journey.

A Puzzling Paradox

Suddenly, as I share about how I am holding my “Sword of Truth” at the bottom of my wall, Stephanie interrupts up with a question.

“What if those Divine Friends and your Sword of Truth ARE the wall that is blocking you from moving forward?” Stephanie asks.

I deeply resent Stephanie’s question. It makes no sense to me, and feels like she has no understanding whatsoever about the metaphorical journey on which I am traveling.

It is only as I write, nearly seven weeks later, that I semi-understand what Stephanie was trying to tell me – that the act of trying to do something so that I can get over the wall is the very act that is keeping the wall in place … making the wall real and impassable. As I ponder while writing, my mind returns to a quote Keith often paraphrases from the description of the Osho Zen Tarot Burden card – one that talks about the truth not needing to be found … that the truth already is … that seeking after the truth is the lie’s way to hide.

“Am I really creating that block to love, simply by trying to find a way to receive it?” I ponder the puzzling paradox. “Is seeking after the love, the love’s way to hide?”

A Confusing Touch

“Can I come over and touch you?” Stephanie surprises me with her next request.

To my surprise, after I say “yes”, Stephanie walks over to my pillow, briefly touches the fingers on my left hand as she takes the crystal out of my hand, and then returns to her seat on the far side of the porch, taking my crystal with her. I am quite annoyed about losing my (Keith’s) crystal, but deeply curious as to where this joint flow might be taking us.

I simply stare across the porch, making deep eye contact with Stephanie.

“How are you feeling now?” Keith asks after a few minutes of silence.

“I’m feeling a little lightness spreading in my heart,” I respond with confusion, feeling somewhat amazed by how Stephanie’s brief touch is energizing me.

Soon, Stephanie sits directly in front of me, takes my hands, and we share energy for most of the next hour or two.

Energizing Energy

Stephanie seems deeply energized by my energy … and I feel the same effect from her energy. Intuitively, I recognize that I am using Stephanie as a transparent channel for the divine feminine energy that flows through her into me, and that I am a similar channel for her. Keith has moved on, while Stephanie and I continue in this beautiful process. We talk quietly between us in what is a profound experience for both of us. Stephanie shares about how she is terrified of giving love to others. I respond by sharing how I am terrified to receive pure divine love.

We are talking quietly, in what is actually a very deeply shared joint process/healing exploration together. I find it almost humorous when Paul soon interrupts Stephanie, asking her to please be quiet and to hold space for what is happening across the porch. We are not being the least bit disruptive or inconsiderate.

“Just ignore him,” I smile with confidence as I continue talking to Stephanie.

I find it quite fascinating how someone who is still an occasional disruptor on the porch is now attempting to play the other end of the script, scolding us for softly chatting during a very deep life-changing process – at least for me. On a side note, I clearly see my projected mother in this perception of Paul’s behavior.

A Painful Wall

As Stephanie and I continue working together, I soon feel a sharp and painful wall form across my heart chakra, feeling as if it is near the surface, just beneath my ribs. Intuitively, I know this is my resistance to bringing in the Divine Mother energy … I know that part of me erected this wall to stop me from doing so. I begin to cry lightly in small tender waves.

As we continue to whisper our profound insights to each other, I recognize that I am gradually, ever so slowly, bringing in some pure divine love to my heart. This energetic wall across my heart is painful and obvious. I do not judge it and I do not attempt to fix it, but instead simply observe and trust that all is well.

Soon, the empty cushion beside me to the left becomes occupied by a woman (I will call her Beth) who has been on the porch a few times before – a woman who is deeply stuck in her stories, and who has a very stubborn feeling to her.

Honoring Me

“Will you please be quiet,” Beth angrily whispers to me with a serious scowl in her face. “I am trying to hear what Keith is doing across the porch.

“I’m sorry, but I am in the middle of a very deep and profound process for me,” I respond lovingly. “We need to keep talking about it, and we are whispering. If you want to hear Keith, why don’t you just move closer to where he is working?”

Beth scowls back at me and begins to go into a dramatic vocal expression.

“Me, me, me, selfish, selfish, selfish, all about you, me, me, me,” Beth taunts me with childish, self-righteous, ranting, criticism about how I am so horribly inconsiderate and selfishly victimizing her.

As I observe this scene, I am quite delighted about how lovingly empowered I am, and continue to be. I feel no judgment or resentment whatsoever towards Beth, and I am quite clear that my process right now is beautiful, profound, and deeply important for me.

For the first time in my life, I clearly feel no guilt about knowing that I need to honor myself and my process, that I need to give myself permission to heal, regardless of any criticisms that naysayers around me may throw in my face.

Unconditionally Loving Empowerment

Suddenly, new and very profound recognition and insights flood my awareness. With a huge smile and pure love in my heart, I respond to Beth.

“Thank you so much for showing me what my mother did to me,” I lovingly whisper to Beth. “This is really quite powerful for me.”

“Me, me, me, selfish, selfish, selfish, all about you, me, me, me,” Beth again goes into trauma and drama as she repeats her angry words about how horribly inconsiderate I am.

“Wow, this is really powerful,” I again respond with pure love. “Thank you so much for showing me how much my mother tried to shut me down in the middle of my emotional processing as a child.”

As I stare into Beth’s angry eyes, with no judgment felt or intended, I literally feel as if an angry witch is staring back at me, attempting to control and humiliate me into conformance with her wishes. I simply continue to smile as my heart radiates with profound loving clarity and awareness. I hardly even notice when Beth storms off to a different seat and soon exits the ceremony entirely. She has done so before, and she will be back … or not.

“I cannot believe how profound this is for me,” I ponder with delight. “I have lovingly stood up for myself, my needs, my childhood self, following my heart, doing what is right for me, without letting an angry witch shut me down with guilt. And I did it from a state of calm, unconditionally loving empowerment … not having any type of in-your-face attitude, no emotional charge whatsoever … just a smile and a gentle suggestion that Beth might consider moving seats.”

A Quiet Release

Continuing to feel nothing but love in my heart, I sink into inner excitement about the profound insights that were just triggered. I realize that, in a very huge way, I have just been given an amazing gift – a gift of deep understanding regarding how I, as a child, was rarely allowed to process emotions without having guilt and resistance dumped on me for being a disruptive child. My needs did not matter. All that mattered was that I keep my mouth shut and not disturb the peace of those around me.

As I further disengage and go inward, giving myself permission to feel intense anger at my beloved mother, I begin to cry quietly. For a long while, I go into intense release while doing so extremely quietly, still remaining quite aware that an important process is also taking place across the porch.

My process includes a variety of deep muffled sobs, quietly whispered swear words, and gut-wrenching dry heaves of energy that I literally feel leaving my chest region.

Lightning Love

Soon, as this intense-but-quiet release subsides, I begin to experience a noticeable lightening of the energy in my chest as mild lightning bolts begin to run through my hands and fingertips. It seems that the more I release the internal blockages, the more such magical energy begins to wake up in my hands and elsewhere. I still remember the first time such energy spikes dazzled me as they surged out of my fingertips back in November 2010. Today’s energy show is powerful, but nothing like that initial experience.

“Can you feel that?” I ask Stephanie with a look of delighted surprise on my face.

“Yeah, I can,” she responds with a look of awe on her own face.

Keith soon takes note of what I am doing as he prepares for an empath training.

“Share that lightning energy with yourself,” Keith encourages me.

Soon, I place my fingertips at the center of my heart. As I do so, I begin to feel weak abdominal pains that migrate throughout my abdomen. These pains feel different from those I have felt before. At one brief moment, I feel a strong beautiful flowing channel of energy form between my belly button and my heart. When it soon subsides, I recognize that I have been given a quick glimpse of grace, showing me what it feels like to have energy flowing from my power center to my heart.

Frustration, Impatience, And Confusion

When the ceremony is over, I remain behind for what I imagine will be a very short and beautiful discussion with Keith. I want to ask about what happened between me and Beth.

“You were right to continue your inner processing,” Keith reassures me. “She was just looking for an excuse to leave early, and you gave her that excuse.”

“Can we talk about the work I did today?” I ask Keith for a few more minutes. “I do not feel done … I do not feel closure with my process.”

“Brenda, you know what you did,” Keith responds, “but we can talk about it if you want.”

As Keith talks, I pick up on what I strongly perceive as a deeply frustrated tone in his voice. Almost immediately, I feel triggered by what feels like his impatience with me – as if he is telling me something for the hundredth time and is tired of having to say it. Keith denies being impatient or frustrated when I ask him about my perception, but the exaggerated emphasis in his voice does not change. I perceive it very strongly. I feel unjustly attacked and judged and begin to sink into deep confusion regarding why Keith would be treating me this way.

It feels as if my mother is being profoundly impatient with me. I am simply wanting and asking for a little understanding and validation.

Palliative What?

In retrospect, I clearly recognize that Keith (knowingly or unknowingly) beautifully played the role of my mother for me – not slamming me with words, but instead triggering me through the subtle tones of his voice.

It takes me a minute to figure out that I have deeply sunk into my all-too-familiar loop of childhood confusion – one that I first wrote about over a year ago. I try to discuss this confusion with Keith, begging him to be patient with me, explaining that no matter how I struggle, I need him to be patient with me. But try as I might to defend myself, I feel as if Keith simply scolds and slams me … not necessarily with words, but with the way I feel about his overall way of talking to me.

“You have looped in this doubt and confusion over and over,” Keith firmly refuses to honor my request. “At this point in your process, continuing to give you what you want is no longer helpful. It is just palliative.”

“Huh,” I ask Keith to clarify that last word – a word that he has used before.

“It just fixes symptoms and gives you a non-solution, not solving anything,” Keith plays the tough role for me. “It just enables you to go around and around this same loop, over and over again.”

“But I was not in this loop when we started talking.” I protest. “You triggered me into it. How do I stop this? How do I break beyond this pattern?”

“You love yourself for being right where you are, for being stuck,” Keith responds with a loving tone.

Deep And Pathetic Confusion

“But I just need some rational-mind assurance to help calm me down from this confused state,” I again beg Keith to be patient with me.

“That is palliative,” Keith responds with a firm no.

“But I need it,” I protest.

“Brenda, I have given you that reassurance over and over,” Keith speaks in what I continue to perceive as a very impatient and frustrated tone.

“Please,” I beg Keith, “when I slip into this regressed childhood state I cannot help it. It does not help me when you are impatient and frustrated with me.”

“I’m just talking like I always do,” Keith insists.

“No you are not,” I respond with certainty. “Your tone is extremely impatient and frustrated.

“You’re just triggering this loop on purpose, aren’t you?” I suddenly have a flash of insight and clarity.

“That’s why I am here,” Keith responds with a grin.

A Confident Response

“You sunk down into the dense emotions and went into this confusion during the ceremony today,” Keith continues his apparent role play, again trying to see if he can suck me into more confusion.

“No, I did NOT,” I respond with unconditionally loving empowerment. “I was confidently following the flow wherever it took me – doing so throughout the whole ceremony. I intuitively knew very early on that I was not going to get a lot of guidance today, and I was great with that. I knew that I was going to be journeying mostly by myself today.”

“When I was at the bottom of that wall,” I continue in confident expression, “I was not doubting myself. I was following guidance that whole time, doing things to love myself and to help soften my resistance using visualizations etc…”

I continue this speech for a few more minutes, sharing beautiful details of my process, explaining how confident I had been in simply doing my own thing.

“It was only during this conversation that I got lost into this childhood confusion loop,” I lovingly share my truth. “I just wanted to discus my interactions with Stephanie and Beth, and to talk about the lightning energy I had felt again. And I was just hoping for a kind acknowledgment about what I am doing.”

God Drama Revisited

By now, I clearly realize what is happening. Keith has brilliantly triggered my loop of childhood powerlessness and helplessness – my loop of needing approval and needing a recipe – my loop of how asking for help only makes things worse. Whether he knows he is doing it or not, Keith has played his role quite well.

I am also quite proud of myself. I initially got lost in the crazy confusion, but am quickly finding the clarity to exit the loop … doing so with loving empowerment.

“This is your God/separation drama,” Keith reminds me when I share my insights. “You were not really angry at your mother, but were actually angry at God.”

“Processing this emotion with your mother,” Keith continues teaching, “is a step in understanding that ultimately takes one to what is behind all of that at the Deity Drama level. These arenas are where we gain experience and understanding in the core dramas that we came here to work with.”

I Took The Bait

For a few minutes, I sink into a round of deep emotional release surrounding the feelings of futility, powerlessness, and hopelessness that had been the theme of my childhood – the theme of feeling as if I was an alien who was forced to live in an environment that did not resonate with my soul. I recognize that I am right back into the realizations that were beautifully shown to me while watching that Abraham video yesterday morning.

“Thank you for taking me to this crazy place,” I share my gratitude with Keith when the emotions soon subside. “Thank you for helping me to deeply understand the pain and futility of myself as a tiny two-year-old child.”

“You probably tried to express yourself, to explain yourself, and to ask for help,” Keith shares his insights. “And every time you did so with your parents, it just backfired, making things worse. And then, being the empath that you are, you took in all of your parents’ frustration and stuffed it inside of yourself.”

“Yeah,” I respond with deeper understanding, “I really was an alien who had to simply give up like a broken horse. Resistance was futile.”

Again, I briefly discuss Keith’s skillful role-play with me. As difficult as it has been, I clearly see how I needed him to do that with me … how I needed to be triggered as part of my healing and “know myself” process.

Keith lovingly reminds me that future opportunities to enter this loop will continue to present themselves … until of course I no longer take the bait. It seems that this time I did nibble on that hook for a while, but I am actually quite proud of myself for letting go of the hook before it was completely set.

Real Life Metaphors

After A quick hug, I again thank Keith for taking me to such a profoundly difficult place.

“You are making wonderful progress,” Keith reassures me as I begin to walk away.

Upon arriving at home, I discover that my internet connection is down for the night. In a very real way, just as in childhood, I am alone and disconnected.

As I cook my usual rice and beans, I ponder how close I felt today – close to actually receiving some type of increased love. I know I am still in process. As the observer, I know that something quite profound is gradually shifting inside, and that rational-mind is not the tool. Nevertheless, rational-mind is somewhat frustrated and annoyed that it cannot figure out what to do.

Shortly before 10:00 p.m., as I rest my head on a fluffy feather pillow, the mind-chatter begins. It seems that even though I have found profound peace regarding the inspired role-play between Keith and I earlier this evening, that a little fellow called EGO has a very different idea about what took place tonight. As the endless stories begin to parade through my head, all hope of sleep begins to fade.

But such a crazy journey is best saved for another day … another very painful day.

A Wild Ride

The roller coaster ride of these last five days has been an adventure with fun thrills and blind frightening curves, involving three very different chocolate ceremonies and three long-but-rewarding days of writing.

On Wednesday, after a beautiful morning ceremony, I am shocked by the sharp turns in an afternoon ceremony as I learn just how deep my resistance remains toward receiving love from the Divine Mother, from Mother Earth herself. Even more intense is the terror and shaking that rocks my inner world when the image of my mother’s face pops into my visualization. It is an image reminding me of the “love is a leash” feeling of love being equivalent to control, manipulation, and being forced to join the collective cultural reality.

Thursday brings beautiful insights through a powerful quote from Abraham – a quote that helps me profoundly understand one of the main reasons I completely disconnected from Source – one of the main reasons for my ongoing God/separation drama. I experienced a childhood where culturally-normal circumstances deeply upset and traumatized me – a childhood where I was powerless to do anything about the pain – a childhood where I was forced to simply give up and conform.

In a very innocent way, Friday begins as a calm and relaxed continuation of Wednesday’s turbulence, but soon, pulls me into another blind curve of confrontation, loving empowerment, lightning bolts, and deep confusion as Keith’s perfectly-orchestrated behavior guides me into a profound “know-myself” process.

The ride is far from over, and I am totally unprepared for what lies around the next bend, but for now … just for now … I have found peace.

Riding this wild roller coaster, at least when viewed in retrospect, is turning out to be quite fun.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

Wednesday morning, March 14, 2012, I receive a disturbing email from my son. It seems that my bank has sent him two new debit cards for my account, and he wants to know what I would like him to do with those cards. After a quick request for more information, I learn on Wednesday evening that two of my old cards have been reported by Visa as “potentially compromised” so they will be closed out on March 22. A quick Skype call to my bank confirms that even though no suspicious activity has occurred on my account, the bank refuses to keep the old cards open.

The dilemma is that secure and reliable mail delivery here in Guatemala is quite difficult and expensive. I have an important issue to resolve, and I need to do it quickly. If not, I will be unable to conveniently withdraw cash for rent and daily living expenses.

Thursday morning, after walking around and asking for advice from several friends and business owners in San Marcos, a new idea pops into my head … use Facebook. Without hesitating, I logon to Facebook and send messages to all my San Marcos friends, asking for advice on how to safely receive mail. A little while later, as I busily write away on my next blog, one Facebook response hits the jackpot. A friend from San Marcos just happens to be in Arizona, and will be returning to Guatemala next week. If I can get the cards expedited to her Uncle’s address by Monday, she can bring them back to me.

I send a quick email to my son, giving him all the information, asking him if it is possible to get the cards in the mail sometime on Friday. I get no response … nothing … nada. Yet the peace in my heart tells me that all is well. I know that if this does not work out, other options will present themselves.

A Verbal Slam

Early Friday morning, I find myself on a boat, zooming across the lake to Panajachel, making a quick trip to a local ATM to withdraw as much cash (daily limits) as possible before my old cards are cancelled. By midmorning I am back home, stowing about two-month’s rent away for safekeeping. I know that if my situation does not get resolved, I will be able to make several more such trips before the cards expire next week.

Soon, I walk over to Keith’s magical porch in preparation for an afternoon chocolate ceremony. After explaining my debit card adventure to Keith, telling him that my son has not yet responded to my email, I am totally unprepared for the shakedown I receive.

“You should call your son,” Keith gives me stern advice … advice that feels as if it is coming from a place of fearful urgency.

“I can’t do that now.” I respond calmly. “It is time for the ceremony, I don’t have his number with me right now, he is busy at work, and it is his daughter’s birthday today. I don’t even know if they are home this weekend.”

“See how you are just making excuses for what you cannot do?” Keith verbally slams me in what I perceive as a condescending and attacking tone of voice.

Projected Fears

Before continuing, I need to briefly regress to the past.

A few months ago, after a ceremony across the lake, one of the participants (I will call Judy) had asked if she could share our private lancha for a quick boat ride to Santiago, a small town just a short hop across the bay. She and a friend wanted to go to dinner and would return to their retreat center later that night. When Judy had mentioned that the boat driver told her he would not be able to pick them up later to bring them back to the retreat center, I allowed my own fears to surface.

“I don’t think you should go unless you have a way back later tonight.” I had told Judy. “If you can’t get a boat, you will be stuck all night in Santiago.”

As these words left my tongue, I was feeling my own fears … fears of what I would do if I were stranded at night with no way to return home.

A few weeks later, when asking Keith for feedback in another difficult situation (one in which I was on the edge of giving up and running away from San Marcos), Keith had reminded me of this incident on the boat. He let me know in a firm way that I had been way out of line in projecting my personal fears all over Judy … telling me that I was trying to control and manipulate her behavior because of my own insecurities … telling me that it was not my place to worry about her choices and decisions.

Stuffed Resentment

“What is the difference between what I did to Judy a few months ago and what Keith is now doing to me?” I ponder in annoyed and defensive frustration.

I feel somewhat angered by what I perceive as Keith’s hypocrisy. I feel as if he is projecting his own fears and insecurities all over me, trying to control and manipulate me into doing things his way … even though I feel completely trusting and peaceful about doing them in my own way.

But rather than make waves, I just stuff my resentment down and prepare for what I hope will be a beautiful healing chocolate ceremony.

Terrified Of Losing Control

During the glow meditation, I experience some peace in my heart … but am also intuitively aware that fear is bubbling in my abdomen. I do not know how I know this, I just do.

I am totally focused on flowing with nonattachment to my process … simply allowing the river of my flow to take me wherever I need to go … through the rapids of pain or the calm of bliss … trusting my Higher Self to guide me.

When Keith begins working with individuals, he first asks if anyone would like any personal assistance. After a few minutes of silence, I finally speak up, explaining that my heart feels mostly strong, but that I have a sensation of fear in my abdomen.

“I think it has to do with surrendering control to the flow of my river.” I express my feelings to Keith. “I think that part of me is terrified of losing control … not trusting that flow.”

After Keith validates my feelings and encourages me to keep following the inner metaphorical bread crumbs, another man on the porch interrupts with some rational-mind head advice … advice about how surrendering control can be a scam.

I simply smile, acknowledge his words, and then continue my process … remembering how Keith once reminded me that I can receive divine guidance from the words on a cardboard box. This man’s words do not resonate with me – and they are totally out of context with my own process – but I choose to allow him to have his own truth.

Shared Fear

Soon, I watch as someone (not Keith) begins to encourage and verbally push a friend who seems to be stuck in deep fear … trying to coax him into forging forward through his fears. I note that my friend seems terrified to go deeper into his own process.

I feel my friend’s fear … feeling it quite intensely … and begin to wonder if perhaps some of the fear I was feeling earlier in my own abdomen was in fact, not even mine. Intuitively I know that much of what I feel is indeed my own fear, but I also recognize that feeling my friend’s fear has facilitated me in feeling my own.

A few minutes later, I note with nonattachment that my friend stands up and leaves the porch. He is too afraid to go deeper right now … too afraid to face the inner demons that lie on the other side of those fears. A sense of peace resonates in my heart that all is well … that my friend is doing exactly what he needs to do. I trust that whenever two people share an interaction, that each is a willing participant in either creating or allowing that reality to unfold.

I love how clearly I am beginning to trust the flow, not just of my own process, but also trusting the flow of other peoples’ processes.

Unable To Hop

I begin to recognize a clear unfolding theme. As Keith works with a woman next to me, she is dealing with fear and control. Everything Keith does with her resonates deeply with me as well.

But it is the next woman’s work that begins to trigger my own deep journey. She is a powerful empath who does not yet even know what an empath is. As he works with her, Keith glances at me because he knows that I am deeply connected with her process. When my eyes meet Keith’s, I smile my acknowledgment. No words are necessary in this exchange.

The woman describes a recent dream in which she was a grasshopper who could not hop.

“As a child, you were not allowed to hop.” Keith shares wisdom with this woman.

Keith’s words take me into my own meditation. I do not know how I know it, but I am now regressed to two years old as I consider my own inability to “hop” … subconsciously remembering how my innocent toddler explorations were severely controlled and restricted because a child in their “terrible-twos” is too active and gets into too much unbridled mischief.

In fact, I spend the remainder of the ceremony deeply knowing that I am regressed to the tender age of two.

A Knowing Ground

“I was not allowed to cry,” this woman shares with Keith as she now begins to cry quite profusely in the ceremony today.

“I was not allowed to cry either,” I ponder clear emotional and physical memories. “Crying got me into trouble. I could not be a bubbly, bouncy, hopping child, and I could not cry when I was sad. Both got me into trouble.”

To my surprise, I begin to feel a deep sense of anger and rage flowing through me as Keith continues working with the woman.

“You were unable to express anger to your parents,” Keith almost simultaneously tells this woman who continues to explore deeply into her own childhood shutdown.

“I can feel her anger,” I interrupt Keith at this phase of the process. “She cannot feel it right now, but I sure can. It is nearly overwhelming me.”

In fact, the anger I feel flowing through me is so strong that I am beginning to wonder if it could be my own. But somehow I know that what I am feeling is the anger that this woman has inside, but is not allowing herself to feel. Since I am a “ground”, and since I am deeply connected to her process, her emotion is flowing through me.

When I ask for guidance, Keith confirms that I am indeed feeling her emotion and not my own.

A Punishing Dilemma

As Keith moves on to work with someone else, I sink deeper in my own process. My heart remains connected and loving while fear continues to bubble inside me. I am pondering my own status as a two-year-old alien – a young magical child not fitting into a 1957 world.

“As a two-year-old I was punished for feeling everyone else’s pain,” I ponder with clarity. “And I was punished for crying about the pain I felt … punished for being angry when I was unjustly punished … and punished for being too active, and for “hopping” too much.”

“And I cannot blame my parents,” I further ponder. “They were doing the only thing they knew how to do … honorably loving me and training me as best they could. I literally was an alien child, going through a shutdown that was a necessary part of my process.”

Whitewashed Wonderings

As Keith works with others, most people are stuck in some type of deep inner resistance. While one man is sarcastically joking, Keith points out that he has a layer of whitewash smeared over his issues, keeping them hidden.

“Go below that layer where all of this stuff is whitewashed,” Keith guides this man.

“Wow,” I ponder my own process ever deeper. “Am I still so stuck in denial that I have all of my shutdown pains hidden by a layer of whitewash? Is this why I am still unable to open my power connections? Am I still too frightened to know the truth about my own childhood?”

A Traumatized Toddler

Eventually, Keith returns to check-in with me, and we end up talking for a half hour as I share and discuss all of my deepening insights from the last two hours.

“I am a stuck two-year-old who could not hop, cry, or be angry … and I have a whitewashed cover over the pain that keeps me from moving forward.” I summarize my insights to Keith.

Keith quickly takes this opportunity to remind me of how I am regressing into childhood emotions … and he spends a few minutes educating the group on the way such regressions work, while also explaining how it is important to allow regressed emotions to flow with nonattachment … without identifying them with present-day reality.

I am blown away by how intense my own emotions have become. I feel this two-year-old toddler’s crazy fear, his overwhelming desire to cry, his anger, stuck-ness, and denial. But as I do so, I am also lovingly and peacefully holding space as the adult observer, making no attempt to judge, to fix, to make-wrong, or to heal. Instead, I simply hold a butler-tray of love for this traumatized toddler.

But I feel as if my process is stuck and going nowhere fast.

Waving Flags

Soon, another man starts to do some work, but he too is stuck. Keith gently tells this man that he is scamming himself.

“Your inner metaphors are a flag waving in the breeze, saying dig here,” Keith shares with the man who is refusing to listen.

“Brenda does this a lot,” Keith then shocks me as he continues. “She has flags waving faintly to get her attention and she often does not trust them.”

Keith’s words cause me to stop what I am doing and to pay more attention. I know that I often do not trust myself, that I frequently need validation from Keith before I will trust my own waving metaphorical flags, but I begin to wonder if there is something I might be missing right now.

I feel slightly triggered by the fact that Keith is not pushing me to see my own flags. But when I observe that Keith also does not push this man beyond what he, himself, is able to see and admit, I am lovingly reminded of the beauty of the way Keith works. Unless otherwise guided by their own Higher Energies, Keith never pushes anyone into a place to which they are not ready to travel.

Spinning Confusion

I almost giggle when another woman shows up on the porch in a deeply stuck state. I will call her Leslie. It seems that “stuck in fear and control issues” is very much the underlying theme of today. As Keith works with Leslie, he begins to guide her into a subconscious meditation. I decide to follow along in my own way.

To my shock, as I try to follow Keith’s guidance, I am overwhelmed by crazy swirls of energy in my head … a dizzying confusion that has now become quite common in my process.

“I am feeling the swirling confusion of my two-year old,” I begin to ponder with intuitive clarity. “It was at this tender age when my inner magic began to severely clash with a left-brain culture of logic, literally causing my head to spin in confusion as it is doing right now.”

Painful Puppy Metaphors

Soon, as a part of this same guided meditation, Keith encourages Leslie to use the love of her own heart to love and assist her inner child. When Leslie and another person on the porch begin to sob, I ride their wave. I am attempting to use my own powerful love to help my two-year-old inner child feel loved – not in a pushing way, but as a butler, making unconditional love and metaphorical hugs available to my precious child.

To my shock, as I begin this process, I feel deep heel-dragging resistance toward loving my own inner child. A part of me hates this crybaby rebellious child. Wow.

Simultaneously, I am reminded of a YouTube video I recently watched about a frightened puppy that just needed to be loved. Intuitively, I realize my own little inner child is that terrified dog and I am the judgmental adult that wanted to send the dysfunctional puppy to the pound.

As I ponder this scene, I break down in muffled sobs. I feel my inner child in anguish and screeching as the love is offered. And I remember my own emotional reaction in recent times when others have held me in their arms me on the porch – recalling several times when I have broken down into screeching wails as someone held me with pure love.

For anyone wanting to view the YouTube video, it can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8KwKgumceM

Riding The Wave

As Leslie’s emotions settle, so do mine. Keith guides her to bring in light, and I do the same. I am momentarily stable.

But a few minutes later, when Leslie returns to agonizing sobbing, I profoundly feel her emotion and again sink into my own two-year-old pain … right back into my own teeth-chattering muffled sobs.

When the meditation is over and the emotions settle, Keith turns to me to acknowledge verbally how I have been profoundly riding Leslie’s energetic wave.

“Wow,” is the only way I can respond. I am nearly in shock.

For the remainder of this amazing chocolate ceremony, I focus on bringing in love and light while meditating, simultaneously expressing my intent for this light and love to be made available to my inner child. Later, I also begin to visualize my mother’s higher essence as I imagine her sharing the purity of her real love for this tiny child.

A Flow Of Guidance

As the ceremony concludes, I am delighted by the opportunity to engage in a short “wow-filled” conversation with Keith regarding my experiences in the ceremony.

“You achieved a new level of trusting and following your flow today,” Keith congratulates me.

“But I really think you should have oars in your raft,” Keith suggests, referring to the fact that I always talk about floating down the river of my flow in a raft with no oars. “You need to look ahead and make minor course corrections to avoid the big rocks, etc…”

“I don’t want to have oars,” I respond. “I want to be able to trust the flow to take me to exactly the right places at the right time.”

“But you need to be able to respond to guidance,” Keith suggests why I might need oars.

“Of course I do,” I clarify, “but to me, the guidance is part of the flow. When I think of oars, I picture that as me trying to be in control. But if you are suggesting oars as a means of following guidance then I absolutely agree.”

As I walk home shortly before 6:00 p.m. on this beautiful Friday evening, I giggle at how words and differing perspectives can complicate communication.

Confronting Conflict

After a beautiful Saturday of writing and publishing a blog titled “Confronting Conflict”, I am again blown away by how my inner work and writing seem to line up so synchronously together.

Early Sunday morning, March 18, 2012, I find an email that was sent to me by my son. I am shocked when I read the words and then check the date and time when they were actually sent. It was an email clearly sent into the system on Thursday afternoon, confidently stating that “I believe that we can get the cards sent out tomorrow” (referring to my two debit cards). The email had been mysteriously lost in the system for two and a half days before finally showing up in my inbox.

As I ponder the weird synchronicity, I realize that the entire situation with my debit cards, right down to the fact that an email was strangely lost in limbo for two and a half days, has been a clear and unusual setup by the Universe.

I have been learning to work with conflict for several months now, and right in the midst of writing about it, I am synchronously given a scenario where intuitions tell me it is time to have an interesting conversation with Keith. I am still quite annoyed by the manner in which he had badgered me before the ceremony on Friday. Something tells me that Keith was knowingly following guidance when he triggered me in that conversation. I really want to explore the situation in a loving and honest way – in a way that will take me deeper.

Partying With Doubt

The Sunday afternoon chocolate ceremony starts out quite small, but we soon end up with fifteen people crowding the porch. When Keith checks in with me after the glow meditation, I fill him in with where I am at.

“I was beginning to struggle with doubts,” I share my journey, “so I invited all of my doubting energies to join me in my inner conference room, along with my inner children. I am asking all of these energies to throw dramatic temper tantrums like you had me do in a meditation a few months back. I am working on releasing these doubts through the silliness, and it seems to be working somewhat.”

“Brenda,” Keith suggests a different metaphor. “Why don’t you set it all up as you would set up a childhood party, with party favors, goodies to eat, hats, horns, toys, etc, and ask them to all play at the party?”

As I focus on this party scene for a minute or two, I experience deep inner resistance to the concept of partying. These energies absolutely do not want to party.

A Forbidding Mandate

A few minutes after Keith moves on, he turns to work with me again.

“I feel like the adult energy in me is preventing me from being able to party or play,” I share unfolding insights.

“Explore the metaphor itself rather than the concept of play,” Keith quickly suggests. “The idea is to be joyful and in your magic. These energies are not allowed to be in their divine joy.”

“Wow,” I respond. “That feels so much more in line with what happened. My parents had boundaries on my play, but I did play hard as a child. However, I was not allowed to be my genuine, divinely joyful self.”

“The deep resistance I feel right now is strongly showing me that I was forbidden to be in my joy, to be in my divine magical self,” I further clarify.

“Brenda, I’m getting a stronger word,” Keith interrupts. “I’m getting the word ‘mandate’. It was a mandate that you could not be in your divine joy and magic.”

Love Is A Leash

I continue to meditate quietly in these metaphors while Keith works with others. At one point, I am deeply resonating with the work Keith does with a woman across the porch. Suddenly, Keith turns around to work with me.

“Brenda,” Keith surprises me, “she is working on the same thing that you are.”

As I shift gears to focus on what Keith is sharing, a new series of ideas suddenly flood my process. I am again intuitively guided to memories of that frightened-puppy video – the one to which I shared a link earlier. As I review my terrified love-starved state, combined with images from the video, I sink deep into the childhood terror of being my real self.

“I have love hooked as being equivalent to a leash,” I suddenly blurt out to Keith as I imagine a scene in the video where a puppy screeches with fear as a leash is placed on her neck.

“As a tiny child I learned that love was a leash that would drag me around to do whatever my parents wanted,” I begin to share insights. “That leash controlled me, prevented me from following my heart and doing what I wanted. That leash was a prison … love felt like a prison.”

As I imagine myself at age two, I see that every person that represented love to me was clearly, with genuine intention, trying to put such a leash around my neck. At such a young age, it was impossible to separate the concept of love from the concept of being controlled by those who loved me.

To my surprise, as I hold space from the observer perspective, I begin to feel as if my inner child is crying deeply inside, screeching in agony, screaming out “No, don’t love me that way … I don’t want that type of love.”

Empath For An Energy

Soon, Keith returns to work with me. After filling him in on more details of my journey, he suggests that I, as the adult empath, connect with one of those terrified, love-starved energies.

“Ask that energy if it would like to release its pain to you,” Keith suggests.

As I follow Keith’s guidance, I suddenly begin to sob and dry heave.

“Yes, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to feel it.” Keith reassures me. “As this emotion passes through you, you will feel portions of it.”

After perhaps ten minutes of intense emotional release, the dry heaves cease and the tears fade.

“I don’t know if I am done,” I express my shock to Keith, “or if I just shut it down … but it has stopped.”

“Trust yourself,” Keith reassures me. “If there is more, it will come back. Now, reverse that channel and bring in divine love. Make it available to that frightened, love-starved energy, whether it is accepted or not.”

Divine Joy Equals Pain

Almost immediately, I intuitively sense a stiff resistance to receiving this love. I feel a great deal of loving energy in my head and chest, but only a trickle of this flow makes it into my tight and painful abdomen.

I focus on this process for a while as Keith moves on. I bring in a nice vibrational energy of loving peace. The energy swirls delightfully in my crown area, my heart glows with peace, and an ever-so-gradual flow begins to fill my still-resistant lower chakras. The process is very slow and limited, but I clearly recognize that I am in a trust-building process. Many aspects of my inner child energies (and other love-starved energies) remain quite frightened of receiving such love – love that remains hooked as being equivalent to a leash. I trust that over time these energies will relax and allow.

When Keith begins to guide the group in an empath training, I remain deeply in my own process, but do partially participate with the group. But about halfway through, panicked inner energies cause me to stop. These parts of me remain quite terrified of further opening to my magic.

As the training continues, a new understanding suddenly unfolds in my heart.

“It was not necessarily the adults or parents in my life that would not let me play or be in my divine joy,” I begin to ponder. “Instead, I had learned that more divine love meant more magical connection … and when I was more magically connected I internalized more emotional pain from others … and when I experienced that emotional pain I cried and attempted to explain myself and/or seek validation. Eventually I was punished in some manner for my behaviors related to those pains.”

“I suppressed my divine joy in order to control the pain that always came as a result,” I ponder with clarity.

A Room Of Leashes

Later in the ceremony, Keith guides a woman deep into her subconscious. As I usually do, I choose to follow along in my own way.

After climbing down a ladder, sliding down a fireman’s pole, riding to the basement in an elevator, and finally walking down a spiral staircase, I reach what I intuitively feel as being the end of my descent into the subconscious mind.

Soon, continuing to adapt Keith’s guidance for my own individual process, I walk down a hallway and find a doorway that reads, “Love equals leash.”

As I stare at the words on this doorway, I suppress muffled tears as a few tissues begin to pile beside me. This door is extremely intimidating.

Finally, when I find the courage to open the door and step just under the doorframe, I am unable to go any further inside. The entire room is filled with leashes that dangle from all areas of the ceiling.

An Uncut Hook

Meanwhile, Keith is talking to the group about the truth energy and how it relates to the Christian/Jewish metaphor of Archangel Michael, the angelic being who represents this truth energy. Keith teaches that the number one project of Archangel Michael is empaths – people who use the sword of truth to cut people free of their inner lies and densities.

“Use Michael’s sword to cut you free of ‘love-equals-pain’,” Keith encourages the woman for whom he is primarily guiding the meditation.

As the woman begins to sob, Keith points out that cutting this “hook” of “love being equivalent to pain” can be quite intimidating – making you feel as if you will never again receive love if you cut this hook. For many, receiving love through such dysfunctional hooks is the only way they know how to be loved – and undoing such a hook means losing all hope of future love.

The woman is eventually able to cut her hook, and as she does so, she begins to laugh with joy. I am very jealous. It seems that in my own process of attempting to cut my “love-equals-leash” hook, I am still unable to even enter the room.

“You made great progress though,” Keith congratulates me after I express my insecurities about not being able to complete my journey. “What you did today is perfect. There is no need to push the process.”

Facing The Fear

As the ceremony concludes, my heart skips a beat as I express my desire to Keith to have a half hour of personal conversation before I go home. I still need to discuss my festering feelings of conflict, and fear of expressing myself. I am honored when Keith agrees to my request for some one-on-one time.

I begin by sharing my fears, expressing that what I want to say feels as if I am about to engage in intense conflict and confrontation.

“I have a lifelong pattern insisting to me that directly speaking my truth always leads to rejection and loss of friendship,” I express my nervousness to Keith while my heart thumps loudly in my chest.

Soon, I lovingly lay out the entire scenario through my perspective … sharing how I had felt bad when he told me a couple of months ago that I was out of line for projecting my fears onto Judy. I then hesitantly add how much I was annoyed and bothered when he did the exact same thing to me on Friday morning when he projected fear onto me by telling me I should call my son, and insisting that I was making excuses when I attempted to explain why I did not agree with him.

Love And Hate

“Keith,” I giggle as my sense of peaceful trust begins to return, “this morning when I received that delayed email – the one lost in limbo for two and a half days – I clearly realized that this debit-card thing was all a setup to trigger the need for this very discussion. I realized that it is time to break my pattern and to learn how to have such a frightening conversation.”

“Brenda, it doesn’t matter if what I said to you on Friday morning was staged or real,” Keith then admits that he was indeed aware of the energy when he shared his words on Friday. “What you need to do is to figure out what you want to do about this issue inside of you.”

I both hate and love how Keith always keeps me guessing, not quite admitting whether he was or was not following guidance on Friday – whether he was or was not role-playing for me – and how he always reminds me that my reaction is an inside job.

Pattern Recognition

Once the ice is broken, Keith and I engage in a delightful discussion and exploration of my lifelong pattern – the one telling me that speaking my truth always results in conflict and loss of relationship.

I love how the incident with Judy (a few months ago) gave me deep understanding of how I tend to project my fears and limitations onto others. I love even more how the delayed email caused me to profoundly experience how it feels to be on the receiving end of such projected and controlling fear from others.

But what I love most is that Keith is showing me how I can speak my truth in a loving way. In the course of our conversation, I share several real-life examples from the past ten years where I have been deeply troubled by the behavior of others, yet I stuffed and repressed my feelings until they finally reached a boiling point. I now clearly realize that the reason speaking my truth resulted in rejection is that by the time I found the courage to speak up, I was so filled with angry repressed emotion that I could not share my truth without projecting torrents of emotion as well.

Healing And Preparing

“I have changed so much over the last few years,” I share my delight with Keith, “but it is still sometimes a big stretch for me to find the courage to talk about such feelings.”

Keith reminds me that there are no rules for when to speak up and when to process the emotions in another way.

“Just follow your inner guidance,” Keith encourages me. “Sometimes you need to talk to the person. Other times you may just want to write a letter and burn it. It all depends on the situation.”

“Bring in a generic friend in front of you,” Keith soon guides me into meditation. “If you cannot speak your truth to this friend without it creating a conflict, is this person really your friend?”

“Of course not,” I easily respond a few seconds later. “I do not want to be close friends with someone who will not allow me to lovingly speak my truth. It has only been in the last ten years when I began to attract friends with whom I could be completely honest without such fear. But even with those dear friends, I still sometimes panic at the thought of sharing something that may be rejected.”

“Brenda,” Keith guides me further, “this whole process is preparing and assisting you to heal these issues so that you can have more real friends, and maybe even an intimate relationship, where you can speak your truth.”

As I stroll homeward around 6:00 p.m., I again ponder the beautiful sequence of events that have guided me to this profound lesson – events from three different time periods all flowing beautifully together, topped off by a mysterious email delay. I giggle how such synchronicities are becoming ever more frequent … and I love how I am learning to confidently speak my truth while doing so from a space of unconditional love and nonattachment.

A Tale Of Three Journeys

Three separate journeys have intertwined my process this week, each seeming quite different and separate on the surface.

The first seemed to begin with two debit cards that were being cancelled. But that journey quickly pulled in a multitude of synchronously-related situations, two of which were months old. The tantalizing event to top it off was a magically-delayed email. The culmination of this journey ended with a fear-inducing need to speak my truth and face potential conflict.

The second journey took me through profound emotional regressions to a time that I clearly recognize as being around age two. Events of that Friday afternoon chocolate ceremony helped me to deeply understand the twisted and confusing emotions of my young childhood – emotions that found me puzzled by the rules of the world around me – a world that would not allow me to hop, to cry, or to get angry – a world that literally punished me for feeling and expressing the emotions that were at the very core of my being.

The third took me deep into the understanding that I have had a lifelong journey with the feeling that love is like a leash around my neck – a leash that is meant to control me and keep me in line so that others can be happy.

Interestingly enough, these three journeys tightly overlap. The “love is a leash” journey taught me that disagreement and disobedience would be punished, and that humble compliance is the only way to be loved by others. The journey with a two-year-old regression taught me that being my true self, and expressing my true feelings, was sure to cause the leash to be tightened and pulled in extremely unpleasant ways. And the trek with conflict itself … well that makes perfect sense given my journeys with the other two.

I know it is time to let go of my “need for the leash” … but a very frightened energy inside me continues to subconsciously fear that if I release the belief that “love is a leash”, that I am also ultimately giving up all hope of ever receiving love.

While I am not quite there yet, a little sparrow flying above me tells me that the end result will be just the opposite.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved