Brenda's Bicycles

I was eight years old when Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., and barely thirteen years old when this beautiful and inspired man was assassinated while standing on the second floor balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Being young and disconnected from politics, I received most all of my limited information from parents, siblings, friends, and some media. I am sorry to say that based on my available input at the time, I saw Dr. King as an angry rebel who organized huge riots and marches during the turbulent civil rights movements and anti-Vietnam-war protests. I judged and hated him because of the trouble I believed him to be causing in our country.

In 1986, while still locked into the influence of my former childhood beliefs, I secretively felt shocked and appalled when Martin Luther King’s birthday became a U.S. Federal holiday.

It took me the better part of the next decade to open my heart and mind, to learn the truth, to drop the lies that clouded my jaded vision, and to recognize Dr. King as a true and inspired hero. He was a man who represented Christ-like principles while leading a non-violent movement – an incredibly difficult movement to bring new elements of awakening and awareness to a still-sleeping society.

Necessary Caveats

I have done this in the past, but before proceeding into what for some may be seen as a very controversial piece of writing, I need to again spell out some of my profound core beliefs. I have no desire to convince anyone else of the truth of these beliefs. These are simply my beliefs – beliefs that come from deep soul searching, from profound spiritual experiences and inner guidance. Call me utterly crazy and laugh at me if you will.

It is impossible for me to preface every piece of writing, or Facebook comment, with these caveats. No matter what I say or do not say, I have no control over how others may choose to perceive my words.

Each of us sees our own unique version of the world around us. We see it based on our past experiences, our unhealed emotions, our love, our lack of love, our past traumas, our hidden judgments, our unstoppable joy, our feelings of powerlessness and depression, our feelings of unbridled freedom, and everything in between.

Caveat One: Reality Creation

I believe that everything I experience in my reality is either something that I create or allow.

There is no fine print to this belief. For me, this is not just a perceptual creation – it is literal. I now experience this literal creation on a daily basis. I believe we each live in what might be metaphorically compared to a holodeck-like reality. Not only do I see the world around me through my own filtered lenses, but also, at a level just outside of my conscious awareness, my energy vibrations literally attract, at a physical level, exactly what I need for my growth.

The world is literally an energetic mirror, showing me a reflection of my inner state of consciousness. If I have an inner issue of feeling that “love always brings rejection,” then I will continuously attract people into my life that reject me, proving this belief to be true.

Caveat Two: Life Circumstances

I believe with all of my heart that I set up the circumstances of my life before coming to this physical realm. I carefully selected my parents, my birth location and time, and all of the struggles that I would initially face.

I intentionally chose to be born into a deeply religious family … I personally chose circumstances that would invalidate my inner magic … I chose to be faced with transgendered feelings … I chose to get lost in a life of strict conformity that would invalidate my uniqueness, my creativity, my gender issues, and my energetic sensitivities.

I continue to energetically attract everything in my entire life to teach me what I came to this earth to learn. I hid my biggest treasures behind my greatest struggles, so that once I lovingly transcend these struggles I will have the inner license to use those gifts to shine my own light – my own unique and magical inner light that I came into this world to shine.

I have no need for anyone else to see that light. I do not seek approval or permission to follow my heart. I will shine my light freely whether I am alone or in the midst of thousands – whether people love me or despise me.

Caveat Three: My Parents

I love and honor my parents with all of my heart. They, and all of my ancestors, were wonderful people, doing absolutely the best they knew how, following their hearts, striving to be righteous, working hard to raise their children, and faithfully honoring their God with Christ-like devotion. I had the absolute best parents in the world.

The genuine intent of my writing does not invalidate that love and honor in any way. If someone perceives my writing as such, that perception is beyond my power to control.

It is impossible for me to discuss my healing journey without also talking about my interactions with parents. When I do discuss childhood interactions, I am talking about the perceptions of a frightened and confused child who did not know then what I do now. There is no blame in my heart – only a genuine desire to undo hidden childhood pains that continue to secretly control my subconscious mind – buried emotions that hide and feed into dysfunctional belief systems that I wish to heal.

The more I heal my life, the more I deepen the love and appreciation for my parents. Yes, of course, I experienced intense emotional trauma, some of which involved the participation of my beautiful, loving parents. No, I do not blame them for the trauma in any way. They were simply well intentioned and unknowing participants.

I strive to frequently explain these caveats where appropriate, hoping to clearly elucidate these facts, but I can never do it enough to satisfy everyone – especially the casual reader who only reads the occasional blog or scattered paragraphs of a blog.

Caveat Four: An Inside Job

I frequently explain Keith’s rules for relationships – rules that apply to every type of relationship. Whenever I feel emotionally triggered, I know that the real issue is not “out there” but is instead inside of me – being an “inside job”.

Rule one states that, “It is never about them.” When someone says or does something that makes me angry, it is not really the present-day messenger that triggers me … it goes much deeper, usually being traceable back to events very early in my life.

Rule two states, “It is not about what it is about.” If someone does something that hurts my feelings, the present event is simply showing me an inner button that gets pushed over and over again. It is only when I dig deep inside that I am able to discover what that button is all about, so that I can then release it.

Rule three is, “Nothing changes until I do.” Reality is a mirror of my vibrational consciousness. I cannot look in a mirror with a scowl and demand that the mirror smile back at me. It is only after I change myself that my reflection will show a different world.

While I passionately embrace this belief that everything is an “Inside Job,” I am still human, and sometimes initially struggle to apply the concept. My heart, however, is genuinely focused in this endeavor.

A New Perspective

In the last four months, I have watched with amazement as grassroots “occupy” movements sprang up all over the world. As I observed the unfolding events from afar via Facebook and YouTube videos, I was quite surprised to witness the intense polarity.

When looking through the eyes of the occupy protesters, I could feel their love and their passionate desire to help the sleeping masses wake up to the reality of what they see happening in our world. I deeply resonate with their desire for non-violence, with their desire to help the world awaken to a new level of truth – a version of truth that the media refuses to broadcast.

When looking through the eyes of online newspapers and television clips, I saw an entirely opposite perspective – one of belittling the occupiers, making fun of them, slandering them, joking about them, portraying them as lazy, angry and violent, justifying turbulent reprisals by law enforcement – an obvious attempt to sway public opinion against them and to discount their message.

When watching through the eyes of friends and family on Facebook, I saw extremely polarized opinions – ranging from passionately embracing the movement to intense judgment and anger at those participating.

Prior to 1986, while living in my old cocoon – while still judging people like Martin Luther King – I would have been at the forefront of that judgmental angry opposition. It is amazing how perspectives can change when examining reality through different filters.

Crab Baskets

Much of my writing of this past year has focused on my unfolding clarity about the conditioning process that happened in my life – conditioning that happens to most all of us in one way or another – conditioning that happens in beautiful, loving, normal homes – conditioning that teaches us to quietly and obediently conform to the way things are, never questioning.

Most of the conditioning happens in our families, in the media, in video games, in movies, at church, and especially in our schools. We are trained that intelligence means memorizing the answers, and in then being able to recite the answers back exactly as they were given to us. Anything “out of the box” is almost always discouraged and even reprimanded.

A metaphor that frequently comes to mind is that of the fishermen who put crabs in an open basket – a basket that does not need a lid. As soon as a crab begins to crawl out of the basket, the others will reach up and grab him, pulling him back down inside.

Attempting to climb out of my own basket has been tedious and emotionally painful. It is quite frightening to leave the conditioning behind. Those who are happy remaining in the basket often seem quite horrified or angry to see someone trying to climb out. In the past, many have used love as a tool to shame and manipulate me – to instill guilt for having the horrible audacity to even think about doing things a different way.

Loving Training

Don Miguel Ruiz, in his well-known book “The Four Agreements,” talks about it extensively in a chapter titled “The Domestication of the Planet.”

Dr. Wayne Dyer, in his beautiful little book “Ten Secrets for Success and Inner Peace,” devotes the entire first chapter to helping people understand the conditioning process through which we all pass.

As a child in a happy and loving home, I was taught what language to speak, what religion to follow, what political party to believe in, what type of education to get, how to dress, to eat, to behave, to think, to judge, to react, and how to feel (or not feel). We were all given similar boxes in which to live.

Just last week, I watched a beautiful YouTube video of Ester Hicks channeling Abraham. (Abraham Hicks – You Were Born With a Guidance System) At one point in the video, I was quite surprised to hear her use a metaphor I thought I cooked up on my own – a metaphor of how many of us as adults “break our children” just like we might “break a horse” – that eventually the child will give up and simply surrender to the parental authority. The child’s feelings are not even considered.

I am astounded at how I am now constantly running across quotes, videos, and teachers who talk about the same type of thing.

Wham Wham Wham

To loosely paraphrase “A Course In Miracles”, the process of enlightenment is not one of doing, but of undoing the things in our mind that keep us trapped in seeing only the past and in protecting ourselves from a fearful future.

A description of the burden card of the Osho Zen Tarot deck describes the undoing in a different way, saying that: “The truth has not to be achieved… it is already the case. Only the lie has to be dropped… Striving after truth is a distraction and a postponement. It is the lie’s way to hide.”

The negative aspects of ego that run around in my mind, masquerading as me, are constantly trying to drag me into doubts and beliefs of the past, or fears of the future. I am currently passionately engaged in a journey to find all of those crazy-making ego beliefs. The journey of facing inner demons is not always pleasant, but the intermediate pauses always bring great peace and clarity.

The closer I get to shining a light on the ego lies, to undoing them through “know myself,” the more crazy and agitated those little energetic beliefs become.

Keith tells me that when one nears the end of the process, they literally attract the “wham wham wham” of ego tricks – of an ego that is frantically attempting to retain power and control.

Making Darkness Conscious

In the last two weeks, I have been going through just such a “wham wham wham” process. It has been a beautiful-but-agonizingly-painful process. There have been times where I clearly recognize that if I were living in the United States – living around people who do not understand my process – that they literally may have tried to commit me to a mental hospital.

I must make it clear that none of the emotional processing I am working on has absolutely anything to do with “decisions” I have made in my life. I am absolutely content and perfectly happy with the guidance that has taken me where I now find myself.

This processing is much deeper. In our chocolate ceremonies, we use meditation to connect with both our dark shadow and our light shadow – connecting with our caring subconscious mind and connecting with the even scarier light being that we really are.

Keith often says, “Most people would rather die than go into their inner issues.”

Carl Jung once said, “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.” (Contributions to Analytical Psychology (1928) P.193).

Carl Jung also said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” (The Philosophical Tree (1945). In CW 13 Alchemical Studies. P.355).

My own personal experience validates these statements. There have been times in the last two weeks that my fear of going deeper was so great that I can honestly say that part of me would have rather died … and my process is yet far from complete.

Lost And Bewildered

On Tuesday morning, January 17, I reached a point in my process where I was feeling very lost, confused, and vulnerable, a low point in my process of “craziness undoing.” Right at the perfect moment (as always seems to happen now) I find a quote on Facebook.

“The spiritual journey has nothing to do with following the map of another person’s findings. It is the simplicity of realizing, those who are willing to be lost and bewildered are the ones who find the truth.” Matt Kahn, Facebook Page: Sacred Heart Wisdom from Matt Kahn.

Loving this quote and deeply resonating with its wisdom, I share it on Facebook for all to see, adding my comment of vulnerability: “Today, I am right back in that space of being lost and bewildered … I love this quote. It gives me a little hope and sanity …”

Vulnerable Setup

After a couple of friends make supportive comments, I innocently post a follow up comment, “Yeah … it is all part of my deep processing to learn about the voices in my head and to unravel the ego loops that trap me. I got into a place last night where I realized that from day one (as a newborn) I had been taught and conditioned by people that invalidated the true voice of my heart … I got into another crazy state of questioning every voice in my head and questioning reality ever deeper. I’m doing much better for now.”

It does not even occur to me to add a caveat of how much I love and honor my parents – a caveat that the “invalidation” I am referring to is all of the every-day societal conditioning, beginning with loving parents, but also including church, teachers, friends, media, etc… Adding clarifying caveats at such a vulnerable point in my process does not even cross my mind. Blame is not even in my vocabulary.

Wishful Thinking

By Thursday, in the middle of continued deep processing, I reach a profound and deeper understanding of how I have the concept of love subconsciously hooked with pain.

I recognize a lifelong pattern playing out – a pattern that whenever I open my genuine heart, I seem to attract those who want to step on it, thus encountering pain, rejection, and abandonment.

This is not a statement of victimization – it is simply a blameless realization that something inside of me energetically continues to attract such pain whenever I bare my soul. I am determined to dig deeper into that inner darkness.

Both Wednesday and Thursday, I also reach a state where I am finally able to start allowing much deeper levels of self-love energies – something I thought I had all along, but that I now realize has only been wishful thinking.

Bad Gets Badder

Another tidbit of wisdom that Keith frequently shares is that “When the good gets ‘gooder’, the bad gets ‘badder’.” In other words, our reality is a projection of our inner state of consciousness. If we increase the light in our inner projector, we increase the intensity of everything projected from inside of us. If we have unaddressed/unprocessed emotional issues, then, as we bring in more light, the projection of those inner issues in the mirror of reality will also intensify.

Validating this statement, I am surprised that both times I succeed in allowing in more profound energies of divine self-love, that I then wake up in the middle of the night with intense anxiety in my abdomen – anxious energy that seems to be screaming “STOP, we don’t want to further open our heart. There is a reason we shut it all down.”

A Blame Attack

In a beautiful twist of “creating my reality” and attracting that which I need for my growth, just twenty minutes before leaving for the Friday chocolate ceremony, I open my Facebook account and find a scolding comment from an extended family member – a beautiful soul that I love with all my heart. In the comment, I am deeply (but lovingly) reprimanded for blaming and faulting my parents, for not honoring them and their memory, for making all of my problems be “everyone else’s fault.”

It seems that I have been given a perfectly timed, real-life opportunity to heal the very deep emotional loop that I am beginning to work on – a subconscious belief that when I open my heart in a genuine and vulnerable way, that I will just meet pain, rejection, and abandonment.

The belief goes even deeper – a profound sense of knowing that whenever I have felt attacked by a loved one, that I have desperately attempted to explain myself – a process that has only met deeper misunderstanding and further attack.

When In Doubt, Don’t

I am stuck, spiraling in emotional pain, feeling helpless as I ponder that I do not have a clue as to how to respond – I’m feeling an old “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” sense of futility and powerlessness.

I know I energetically invited this encounter of words – I profoundly understand that it is a perfectly timed part of my healing process – but I feel terrified to respond in any way.

If I defend myself, I only make things worse and I am not honoring my own spiritual beliefs of everything being an “Inside job” and of “Creating my reality.”

But if I simply do not respond, that also will be seen as a copout. I know I must respond, but the experience has launched me so deep into my old familiar emotional loop that I dare not say anything.

“When in doubt, don’t” Keith reminds me when I ask for his advice.

Synchronously Sinking Heart

It takes me all the way until Sunday morning to establish a beautiful and balanced space of inner peace where I know I can finally compose and send a beautiful, humble, and loving response to my extended family member.

But before doing so, I spend two hours watching a movie, then take a shower and finally cook up a quick batch of oatmeal.

In another precisely timed twist of “Create my own reality” synchronicity, at the exact instant that I sit down at my computer to begin composing a heartfelt, apologetic response, I see a “so-and-so has liked your comment” message momentarily pop up in the lower left hand corner of my screen.

The name on the message is that of someone who used to be a very dear friend. Our friendship ended in painful flames over seven years ago. I had believed my pains to be long healed … but when I note that this former friend has “liked” the blaming comment from my extended family member, my heart sinks through the floor.

Public Private Public

Immediately, I realize that I had unthinkingly made my entire comment thread public, available for anyone to read and comment. Instinctively, I quickly flag the thread as “Facebook friends only” but then another thought reprimands me.

“No,” the Jedi voice shouts silently. “Put it back to public. This is part of your healing journey and you need to face this.”

The very instant that I switch the thread back to “public,” a comment from this former friend instantly shows up on the screen. My heart sinks even lower as I begin to read.

Pulsing Anxiety

This former friend mysteriously talks and warns me of how she came to check on me … and then ends with a slam couched in love.

“Hope you are having wonderful experiences where you are and that in your growth and learning you can find a way to come to grips with your own life and choices without continuing to slam and hurt those around you who love you.”

If the words did not come with such a painful emotional charge in my belly, I would almost burst out laughing. The synchronous timing of this communication is uncanny. After over seven years of silence (except for a couple of chance encounters around five years ago), for this comment to show up at this precise moment, I am flabbergasted.

The shocking part is that the very instant I read this friend’s words, my abdomen rages with pulsing anxiety and hurtful emotions.

I know I will be unable to focus at home, so I immediately pack up and wander over to Keith’s house, showing up at the Sunday chocolate ceremony an hour early.

Needing To Be Right

“Help, Keith.” I beg for guidance. “The timing is unbelievable. There is no doubt that I created this reality – that it is perfectly timed to take me another level deeper in this emotional loop of “love equals pain, rejection, and abandonment. Do you mind if I just sit here and meditate on your porch before the ceremony? I can’t be alone right now.”

For the next hour, I meditate while Keith periodically steps out onto the porch to give me inspired guidance and feedback.

“Brenda,” Keith lovingly coaches, “this is just another step in teaching you how to let go of needing to be right, and to let go of caring what other people think.”

Hanging On The Edge

Keith and I banter many ideas back and forth, as I share various metaphors and thoughts that pop into my head.

“I’m remembering a David Icke conspiracy video I watched last fall.” I share with Keith. “He talked about the intense pain in his life as people hounded him and made fun of him for his crazy theories. He mentioned how profoundly healing and peaceful he felt when he finally reached such a state of inner strength in which he no longer cared what other people thought of him.”

“That is where I want to get.” I tell Keith. “I have a foot in both worlds … not in a good way but in a stuck way. I am terrified of completely leaving my old crab basket. I seem to be tightly gripping one pincher to the top edge of the basket as I am hanging on the outside. I will not let go until I know I will not lose my family and all that I love. Yet, while I am hanging here, I cannot be in my new world either.”

Shining My Light

“Keith,” I begin to cry, “I’m terrified that if I let go I will indeed loose all my loved ones. They will think me so absolutely crazy that they will have nothing more to do with me.”

“Brenda,” Keith guides me, “connect with them energetically. If you connect with their higher essence, what do they really want from you?”

“They need me to be free and to shine my own light.” I eventually respond with confidence. “They may or many not follow me – that does not matter – but they need me to shine my light.”

An Empathic Friendship

Later in the Sunday afternoon chocolate ceremony, as Keith is conducting an empath training, I am especially emotional as I contemplate yes/no/yes/no fears of opening/not-opening my empath sensitivities even wider. Suddenly, Keith says something that triggers profound memories of my friendship with the former friend who synchronously commented this morning.

Our friendship had been beautiful, but throughout that relationship, I had always been the quiet listener and the sounding board. This friend, who I loved (and still love) very much, struggled deeply with profound and often volatile mood swings. Most of our interactions involved me listening while she repeatedly unloaded emotion after emotion caused by other situations in her life.

Invariably, after such conversations, many of which took place on the phone while I was at work, she would graciously thank me for listening and helping her to feel better. As we ended the conversation, she would be happy and bubbly, and I would go away emotionally drained, requiring a couple of days to recover and re-center myself.

“I was an unknowing empath in that relationship.” I suddenly realize with shock. “I took it all inside of me, believed it was mine, and struggled to let it go.”

Beginning To Understand

“Keith,” I interrupt the empath training. “All of that deep emotional charge that I suddenly felt this morning after opening my friend’s comment … was that my own emotional stuff … or did I unknowingly suck in her emotions from thousands of miles away?”

“What do you think?” Keith asks, making me find my own answer.

“It wasn’t mine at all. I did the same thing with her this morning that I did throughout our friendship. I connected with her – I felt her judgment, anger, and pain – and I sucked it inside of my belly, believing it to be my own.”

“Now you’re beginning to understand.” Keith congratulates me.

Personal Saviors

Last night, as I once again agonized over “how do I respond to these two depressing comments?” I am suddenly overwhelmed with new realization.

“I can respond by simply documenting and integrating my own healing process.” I begin to giggle with delight. “I don’t need to be right or wrong, and I don’t need to make them right or wrong either. While I do not wish them to hate me, I have no need for them to love me either. That is their choice.”

I clearly see how both comments, in profoundly synchronous ways, contributed deeply to my healing process. The timing is so blatantly obvious that I could never deny that everything happened perfectly. This “create my own reality” stuff is blowing me away.

If I truly believe that I create my own reality, that everything is an inside job, and that nothing changes until I do, then I need to see these comments as a Godsend, as my personal saviors – as something giving me another opportunity to heal and grow.

Clinging To The Chrysalis

As I have learned about the childhood conditioning process through which I passed, I have often thought of that conditioning as being equivalent to having been put into a restrictive box. This morning, the metaphor of a cocoon flashed into my mind – but then quickly transformed itself into that of a chrysalis.

Yes, I did indeed choose my birth circumstances before coming to this earth, and I deeply love and honor the parents that I selected to “program me” for the first part of my journey through this physical reality.

Like most of us, I was indeed taught to live in a tiny judgmental box. I was guided to believe that in order to be loved and rewarded in heaven, I must remain in that box as a caterpillar for the remainder of my mortal life. This is the only type of love I knew … a love insisting that I, “Obey and conform, or be judged.”

I now suddenly realize something new. This tiny little box was not a prison cell at all, but was instead a chrysalis. I am a magical butterfly who has chewed her way out of the chrysalis and is finally preparing to spread her wings to fly. The only thing holding me back is a strange subconscious belief telling me that I must cling to that chrysalis … screaming that I will lose all hope of love if I actually fly up into the sky and expand my horizons.

There are many in the world who will judge me harshly for spreading my wings and for taking to the skies. If I were to travel back in time, I would most likely be one of those pointing the angry finger in my direction. But I am finally reaching a point where I am beginning to realize that clinging to my chrysalis serves no one. I cannot control who will love or hate me. I can only continue to heal myself.

And the more I heal, the more the truth becomes increasingly obvious. As I truly learn to love myself – to allow myself to fill with that divine unconditional love – I will always have ample overflowing love to share with everyone in my life. The act of flying simply expands my capacity to love.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

The weekend was extremely intense. Saturday had been an agonizing journey of writing “Hot Sauce Horror” – a journey into understanding and acknowledging the emotional and psychological trauma of what I always thought had been a happy and normal childhood– a journey that finally took me from surface-level mental understanding down into the agonizing depths of pure emotional understanding.

Sunday, still raw with projected childhood emotion, wishing I could simply hide out in the corner, I instead lashed out on Keith’s porch, desperately attempting to take back my power from those who would suppress my right to feel – from those who would judge my right to be an expressive emotional being.

Today, on Monday, December 12, I am finally feeling a sense of renewed spiritual peace – a peace that allows me to spend the day wrapping up the story of one of the most agonizing healing journeys of my life. A sense of deep closure peacefully resonates in my heart as I click the publish button of “Loving The Ending.”

In a desperate wish for a period of emotional stability, I finish that blog by writing: “I only pray that this “temporary breather” is not just the eye of another hurricane.

It seems that the Universe does have a strange sense of humor. Unbeknownst to me, more violent storms are indeed hiding in the near future, just off the radar screen.

What Babies Want

On Tuesday, I allow a state of emotional-processing burnout to consume me – spending the day watching movies, taking naps, and engaging in meditative relaxation. But the more I relax, the more I notice that my body resists – as if a subconscious energy hidden inside of me fights to remain clenched – as if this part of me literally fears relaxation. The simple act of relaxing my hands and arms results in painful aches in my forearms.

Wednesday morning, I continue in the energy of pseudo-rebellion toward emotional processing. Even though I am awake and out of bed at 5:00 a.m., I refuse to meditate. Instead, I pass mind-numbing time on my computer, engaging in random internet browsing and playing games.

Finally, at around 10:00 a.m., I feel an inner urge to watch something from a collection of videos that had synchronously landed in my lap just two mornings ago. As I browse through these yet-unknown mystery videos, one title jumps out at me, sparking my intuitive interest. It is a documentary titled “What Babies Want.” I have no idea what is about to transpire.

Conscious From The Start

The documentary grips my soul from the very beginning. It is a film produced by Debby Takikawa and narrated by actor Noah Wyle. For further information, please feel free to browse the website: www.whatbabieswant.com.

Early in the discussion, Noah Wyle (Dr. Carter on the television series ER) shares personal stories about his own son Owen.

“There’s something about that sparkle in his eyes that I never want him to lose…” Noah shares. “What babies want is to be loved and respected as human beings, right from the start.”

The film does a beautiful job of summarizing knowledge (both scientific and cultural) that paints an intricate image of a baby coming into this world as a living, conscious, creative, divine soul. While a baby’s brain might be still developing, his or her higher consciousness and awareness are fully functioning right from the very beginning.

Deep Inspiring Quotes

As I immerse myself further into the video, I begin to cry as I relive glimpses of my own infancy – questioning everything about my reality and what happened to me during such a tender and vulnerable state – pondering this overlooked period where initial belief systems were formed and deeply imprinted.

I could literally write several blogs about the deep insights I glean from this documentary – but that is not my objective here. Instead, I simply want to share a few quotes that trigger deep thoughts in my process.

“Babies learn very early, children learn very early to not listen to their hearts, to not trust their feelings, to not express their feelings, and they shut down the love that they have to give, and they live in a hyper-vigilant stance, always wondering what should I be, what did they want from me, or what do you want from me, and people spend their lives that way.” Barbara Findeison, MFT.

“From the very beginning, we’re building the capacity to trust, and if the baby isn’t held and treated gently, if the baby is taken away and mom and baby are separated, the very first impression the baby has is: where’s my mom?” Marti Glenn, Ph.D.

“I think for most people birth is a nightmare; it hasn’t been what a baby would want, because we didn’t consider that there was anybody there who could care. But its generally violent, it violates all the senses of the baby, the light is too bright, the room is too cold, there is rough handling, they don’t want to be washed and wiped roughly, they don’t want to be injected with anything, they don’t want to be held up by the foot upside down, they don’t want to be slapped if slapping is necessary to get them breathing, … it’s a crazy experience for a baby … it’s a terrible way to start.” David Chamberlain, Psychologist.

“Ironically, the hospital, which we consider the safest place to have a baby, can implement protocols that in fact impose certain threats to the baby’s healthy development. Many experts believe that separation of mother, family, and baby, unnecessary procedures, and a lack of sensitivity, disrupt bonding and are all serious concerns.” Noah Wyle, actor, narrator.

“It’s only in the last decade or so that we’ve been serious about the fact that newborn infants can actually have pain. We used to stand and watch them scream and yell and smile about it in a delivery room.” David Chamberlain, Psychologist.

“These processes that happen early on, sometimes in utero, sometimes before birth, or during birth, or right after birth, set up a pattern that we live over and over and over again until we discover what it is.” Marti Glenn, Ph.D.

“This feeling of belonging is so important to everyone. Cutting edge research is revealing that infants are awake and aware, and they know if they are wanted. They need a nurturing environment. They want to know that they are coming into a place where they belong, where they are loved, and where they can give their own love. We see the psychological damage in too many adults who are not met in this way and who have spent their adult lives searching to heal their loss. If we offer babies and children a world that wants them, believes in them, and trusts them, if we change our own ideas about what babies want, about what people want, perhaps we can bring more hope, more love, and more healing into the world.” Noah Wyle, actor, narrator.

Backwards, Cut Out, And Abandoned

As I prepare to walk out to Keith’s porch for a Wednesday afternoon chocolate ceremony, my mind overflows with whirling insights.

“My mother used to tell me that I was born breech, positioned bottom-first in the womb.” I ponder early memories of conversations with my mother.

“I really did come into this world backwards, in more ways than one.” I tease myself with new clarity.

“My brother reminded me that I was born Caesarean section.” I reflect on a conversation I had with my older brother, just this past summer when I was home in Utah.

“And I had been scheduled for delivery on the next day.” I contemplate something I once learned while scanning old family letters. “There must have been some type of trauma that caused us to be rushed to the hospital on the night before that scheduled surgery. There must have been fear, excitement, urgency, and a sense of heightened emotion all around.”

“My mother and father told me several times how, in the 1950s, women used to be required to stay in the hospital for extended periods after delivering a baby.” I ponder more faint memories. “In fact, my father told me that my mother had to stay flat-on-her-back in bed for two weeks after I was born.”

“Just exactly how did I feel as a consciously-aware baby, stuck backwards in my mother’s womb, being cut out of her tummy using a knife, in a cold, sterile, brightly-lit surgery room?” I ponder during my slow stroll to Keith’s porch.

“How did I feel being grabbed by nurses in masks and gowns, roughly washed and scrubbed, poked with needles, and whisked away from my mother’s presence while she was most likely in deep pain … then being isolated away from her for most of the first two weeks of my life during her recovery?”

An Energetic Journey

When I arrive at Keith’s porch, I am on the edge of sobbing – but I hold the overwhelming emotion inside, not wanting to allow the floodgates to burst prior to the beginning of the chocolate ceremony.

As the glow meditation unfolds, a sense of nausea consumes my abdomen, and my solar plexus feels as if I was literally kicked in the gut. Soon this kicked-sensation migrates to my belly button. As I ask the light to fill me, to show me what it would do with this painful emotional density, the pain begins to move again, first migrating to the center of my heart, and then into the lower regions of my second chakra, well below my belly button.

It is a crazy journey with the metaphorical pain – but a profound one as well. The transitory nature of the pain leaves no doubt that it is energetic and not physical.

As Keith finally turns to work with me, I fill him in on my unfolding journey – every detail.

An Empathic Baby

“Where was I during those two weeks?” I ponder out loud. “Who was I with, and what was I feeling?”

“Right now I am experiencing crazy, overwhelming, inexplicable emotions.” I share with Keith. “There is intense anger. There are feelings of having felt deeply traumatized, fighting for survival in a frightening world … feeling powerless … and feeling the agony of an abandoned and broken heart.”

“Close your eyes and go inside.” Keith interrupts my sharing. “Think about how your being an empath contributed to what you felt with your mother.”

“Ouch!” I begin to cry more profusely. “That hurts! I was deeply connected to her, at an energetic level, and as a newborn I was not just traumatized by the birth and separation and sterile instruments and needle pokes etc…, but I was connected to and feeling my mother’s pain as well … and I was feeling guilty for her pain. I felt like I was the cause of why she was suffering.”

As these words come out of my mouth, I cannot explain my feelings and emotions with rational mind, but another part of me knows these insights are real and not just fantasy made-up feelings. Deep gut-wrenching sobs again burst from my soul.

Doubt Patterns

“Bring in the light and let it help you with this process.” Keith guides me as I continue to sink deeper and deeper into this bottomless pit of pain.

As I try to feel the light, I do feel some mild energy tingling in my crown, but huge doubts quickly consume my mind.

“This is stupid.” The doubts scream in my head. “How could I possibly remember my emotions as a newborn? I am just imaging all of this, making it up.”

“Bring in the light and see what it tells you about those doubts.” Keith again coaches me.

As I ponder Keith’s words, and try to follow his guidance, I remember many past experiences where I was able to move beyond the doubts – experiences that repeatedly taught me that such doubts and self-criticism are one of the ways that ego sucks me into a loop that prevents me from moving forward.

“I am having powerful meditative experiences.” I lovingly reassure myself. “The experiences don’t make sense to rational mind, but I do know they are real.”

Resistance To Light

“Now, connect with that newborn.” Keith resumes his guidance. “Bring in the light and allow it to assist in releasing some of that pain.”

Even with all of the profound and beautiful inner work that I have done, I feel like a child on the first day of kindergarten. I struggle to bring in higher energy assistance – to get out of my head – to stop “trying to think” and to simply allow myself to surrender to a state of “not knowing.”

I relax, focus on my breathing, and imagine watching some of the emotional pain magically flowing out of me into a ball of light about two feet in front of me. As I do so, I notice many people around me beginning to cry. I am profoundly aware that my deep work is triggering others, enabling them to go into their own issues – but I continue to focus on my own process.

I work with this energy, employing the standby “fake it till you make it” technique. The more peaceful I become, the more energy I am able to feel beginning to fill my body, and the more intense become the waves of tears that also flow through me. It is as if the comfort of the energy simultaneously gives me permission to go even deeper.

Popcorn Popping

After Keith moves on, I feel intuitively guided to bring in a metaphorical three-year-old angel to visit my little newborn self. As I try to imagine this tiny innocent angel sitting in the hospital with me, comforting me, I visualize the nametag on my sterile, metal, nursery bassinet. To my shock, I suddenly feel a surge of intense resistance and profound stomach churning – a sensation of wanting to hold up my middle finger to “flip the angel off.”

I feel the energy of that brand new baby saying “Go away … I don’t trust you … this hurts too much … I can’t do this … I don’t want to do this.” As bizarre as it seems, it is clear to me that even as a baby I was already frightened and blaming higher energies for the emotional and physical pain that I was feeling.

As the meditation proceeds, the real physical pain in my adult body is intense and agonizingly painful. I feel as if angry popcorn is popping wildly in my abdomen.

Trusting The Flow

I repeat this meditation over and over while listening to Keith work with others. Quite frequently, the words I hear elsewhere on the porch trigger me into more profound emotional realizations – causing me to go into additional waves of tears, approaching ever-nearer to the core of my own pain.

Eventually, after what must be at least an hour or more, I grow frightened of the intense abdominal popcorn that continues to agitate my belly. I recognize that I am forcefully trying to push my process forward – to push the healing of that tiny innocent newborn.

As I recognize this metaphor of “pushing the river versus trusting the flow,” I intuitively sense my three-year-old angel as she takes me by the hand and guides me into a peaceful waiting room. This precious little angel is metaphorically reminding me that I simply need to wait and allow … that everything is unfolding with perfect synchronicity and timing … and that pushing will not get me there any quicker. It will only make me feel crazy.

Much-Craved Feedback

When Keith finally completes his first circle around the porch, returning to work with me, he guides me into doing more emotional release with higher energy assistance – but he also guides me to do it as my adult-self, while my newborn-self simply watches.

“Observe and pay attention to that newborn’s reaction.” Keith coaches me.

“I cannot expect my newborn to do this if I as an adult am not even able to do it.” I ponder quietly. “By doing it this way, I am building trust with my little inner child, setting an example of unconditional love rather than one of pushing.”

As I slowly flounder with the process of mentally trying to surrender, I experience a gradual and progressive lightening of my energy. With my sensitivities being quite blocked, my confidence spikes when a woman next to me comments that she can indeed feel my emotional pain flowing out of me – quite a lot of it in fact.

Baby Steps

Throughout this process, I ponder an ongoing dilemma. I desperately want help in getting out of my head and opening up my energy sensitivities. I crave higher-energy assistance. Yet a subconscious part of me absolutely refuses to allow such help. I am engaged in an inner battle, crazily fighting that which I crave.

What I am doing right now with Keith might be compared to allowing in tiny drops of such higher-energy help as an introductory step in building whispers of trust. I do indeed feel energetically lighter – yet it is clear these are baby steps, in more ways than one.

Unanswered Questions

When the ceremony ends, I am far from complete, yet I know I am done for today – that I simply need to rest patiently in that angelic waiting room. My forearms literally hurt. I intuitively feel myself as a baby, clenching, clenching, clenching – trying to stop the flow of higher energies. My newborn baby remains angry, bitter, pushing energies away, trying to stop all the energy flow because it simply hurts too much.

“I’m honestly getting that much of my shutdown occurred during that first two weeks.” I share with Keith during a short post-ceremony discussion. “It was such an intense experience that I did not want do be here on this planet … I didn’t feel that I could do what I came here to do … it terrified me.”

“Perhaps you were born with this intense resistance to higher energies.” Keith throws out something new to think about. “Perhaps you brought this resistance with you from a past life.”

“How much deeper can this go?” I beg Keith for clarity. “I’m blown away by the depth already. I am now at the day of my birth. Will I go back into past lives, or is this far enough back to resolve this?”

Keith simply smiles and does not give me the easy answer that I seek.

“Trust the process.” I remind myself as I walk home. “I am in a beautiful flow of self-discovery. I continue to be astounded by how each step unfolds so synchronously and so effortlessly.”

A Peaceful Waiting Room

Thursday morning, I awaken with a beautiful peaceful energy in my head – a sensation of mild loving vibrations gently massaging my mind and heart. The differences are vey subtle, but I definitely feel a distinguishable increase in peaceful energies flowing throughout my body.

In meditation, I imagine myself being held in the unconditionally loving arms of higher energies – not doing anything, just receiving the love that I have always wanted. I am in that peaceful divine waiting room, feeling the light tingling, sensing a tender three-year-old angel nearby, simply trusting that all is well.

After spending a couple of hours writing, a new friend from Canada stops by. We end up visiting until nearly dinnertime – the writing will simply have to wait. I love this newfound sense of peace.

Emotional Surrender

As I get up early on Friday morning, December 16, I continue to feel nice peaceful energy, but something is off. I am in a weird and unusual mood – feeling extremely resistant to meditation – having no desire to try to further connect with higher energies. What little meditation I manage is empty and quite meaningless.

Likewise, as I attempt to resume my writing on the morning of what will be our first Friday chocolate ceremony of the season, I sink further into those confusing rebellious emotions. The sensations are profoundly weird. My arms are again tightly clenched, and there is a feeling of slight external pressure on my third-eye chakra, accompanied by inner headache. I am simply not into writing.

My old tendency would be to follow society’s conditioning – to invalidate my feelings and emotions – to push them back down – and to force myself to feel better and get on with my plans. But I now believe with all my heart that such behavior is equivalent to throwing a blanket of light – a fluffy disguise – over my best possible teacher.

No, I will not push this negativity down. Instead, I surrender to the emotional rebellion, set my computer aside, and meditate further into my dysfunction.

An Agitated Ride

By 10:00 a.m., I feel guided to choose another mystery video selection. The one I watch turns out to be extremely chaotic and agitating. I love some parts, while others trigger me deeply. By the time I prepare to stroll out to Keith’s porch, I am in an extremely weird energy state – filled with emotional instability. The crazy thing is that my agitated emotions make no sense. I have no idea what they are about – I just know they exist and are ready to explode. I want to distract myself, to simply push the feelings down, but instead continue to surrender to the crazy dense ride.

“It’s going to be an interesting chocolate ceremony.” I ponder as I sit on my usual pillow.

Stay Put

“I don’t want to be here.” The rebellious emotional voices scream in my head as I attempt to focus on the glow meditation. “I am F-ing tired of emotional processing. The emotions I feel right now are stupid and unrelated. It is crazy to simply surrender to them. I just want to be happy and PUSH THEM DOWN. There is absolutely no reason to feel them.”

“This is just driving me crazy,” I further ponder the absurdity of allowing unknown emotions to consume me. “It is taking me down the vortex of an emotional toilet.”

My societal conditioning (ego) begs me to run away, to put on some cheerful music, and to stuff the emotions back down.

My heart tells me to stay put – to remain right where I am.

A Conditioning Twist

“Keith, help me.” I beg when the glow meditation is finally over. “I’m feeling extremely rebellious and resistant to the emotions raging inside of me.”

I quickly fill him in on my crazy journey with emotional surrender … of my desperate desire to suppress and bury these emotions that make no sense.

“These feelings of rebellion and resistance to emotion come from your societal conditioning.” Keith tells me the obvious. “As a child, you were taught and conditioned to push them back down.”

“I am getting that what you are in the process of moving is that conditioning and belief system itself.” Keith throws in a profound and unexpected twist of wisdom.

Love Equals Pain And Rejection

Keith quickly turns me loose to work by myself. With newfound motivation, I imagine a ball of light in front of me, while pretending that these conditioned belief systems (or at least portions of them) are moving out of me. To rational mind, it is all silliness, but part of me whispers that this is very real.

While doing this, I listen to Keith work with a woman who is obviously an unknowing empath. As Keith explains to her how she has the concepts of love and pain hooked together, as love being equivalent to pain, light bulbs flash and sirens sound in my intuitive receptors.

“This is my true issue for today.” I immediately recognize. “I have hooked the concept of love with deep pain – with being rejected by those that should love me back – with feeling misunderstood and alone because I will not conform to the confines of my birth box.”

A Perpetual Pattern

“I thought I had healed these emotions seven years ago.” I beg Keith for clarity.

Keith confirms that I healed a major layer of this pain, but that what is coming up today is a new and even deeper layer. The emotions I now feel are real, profound, and powerful – and I go into them with full surrender, completely ignoring any urge to stuff them back down.

Keith goes on to work with others, while I take my meditation a notch deeper.

Immediately, I intuitively feel myself as a newborn, back in my hospital bassinet. I sense the empathic connection with my mother – and I feel guilty and responsible, knowing that my love and my birth is the cause of her pain.

I begin to recognize a seeming perpetual pattern in which the moment I stepped out of the box – the moment I showed my genuine loving authentic self – I met rejection, shame, pain, guilt, or some other reaction that reinforced the mandate: “conform or be harshly judged.”

I can see the pattern in childhood, youth, school, marriage, work, and family relationships. Even just recently, as I wrote my blog “A Profound Reality Check” I found myself cringing with fear of rejection when a couple of extended family members sent me comments.

Agonizing Regression

It does not take long for me to sink into the vulnerable pain and heartache of absolute “truth with a lowercase t” that surrounds my lifelong victimhood. I temporarily suspend my knowledge of the real “Truth with a capital T” and instead allow myself to feel this anguish to the core. I want to heal these buried emotions, and the only way to do that is to dive right into the swirling cesspool with my observer-eyes wide open.

Keith briefly turns to work with me, encouraging me to bring in more light to see what happens. As I focus on more light and love, my sense of painful victimization intensifies greatly. I feel as if I am having an emotional breakdown, as if I belong in a mental institution, but I courageously swim forward, further into the swirling cesspool.

When Keith engages the group in an empath training, I completely ignore my surroundings, continuing to focus on what I am doing.

Soon, I curl up in a fetal position on my large pillow, literally regressing into that hospital bassinet, allowing waves of tears to flow through me. My forearms are again so tightly clenched that they ache. I am not the one doing the clenching. I desperately attempt to relax them – yet my subconscious mind, my little newborn infant-self, responds by clenching harder than ever. I have no choice but to just observe.

A Dance With Deserving

As I remain curled-up in fetal position with a shawl over my face, I hear Keith ask if I would like to move to the middle of the porch for the final phases of empath training.

For at least thirty minutes, I sit in the middle and allow the group to assist me in releasing the emotional densities in an easier way. Gradually I begin to feel a beautiful and peaceful energy replacing the dark and dense emotions of agonizing victimization. I am beginning to feel free and light, vibrating with inner love when I finally speak up with my new story.

“Keith, I’m fighting a feeling of ‘I don’t deserve this.’” I expose the next layer or resistance.

“I have a lifelong pattern of sharing love and service to others,” I add, “but I have a history of sabotaging the receiving process – of not allowing myself to receive such love, unless it is from people I deeply trust.”

“Never in my life have I received so much unconditional love from a large group like this,” I continue, “where I feel that everyone is so genuinely connected and coming from a place of pure compassion.”

A New Dilemma

“Look at her.” Keith points to a woman in front of me.

As I stare into the eyes of my new friend from Canada, I see her tears of deep love for me, for what I am going through, and for how I am helping her. The pure love is overwhelming and I again burst into tears – but these are now tears of joy.

As I further immerse myself in the joy and gratitude, I feel my inner densities moving out of me even faster. Eventually, all of the current layer of my victimization and sadness has left my body. The original emotions are now totally gone, but a new dilemma – a new metaphor – suddenly consumes me.

“Keith,” I proclaim with confusion, “Now that the emotions are gone, my heart feels like it is deeply squished and scrunched up. It physically hurts … it really hurts.”

A Broken Heart

“Brenda, this is big time.” Keith congratulates me. “You are now experiencing the broken heart of that tiny child that felt so rejected and betrayed by life. It is the broken heart that accompanied your shutdown.”

Immediately, I focus on releasing the emotional pain of that broken heart … but nothing moves … nothing changes … except for the fact that I now have an even sharper pain focused directly on that nail-in-the-heart spot, right in the center of my heart chakra.

Keith quickly diverts me away from this new metaphor, assuring me that all is perfect as he instead begins the next experiential exercise of the empath training – a phase where the group energetically joins me in my private, personal hell.

Conditional Control

With the group’s energetic space-holding support, I imagine myself in a personal hell of absolutely knowing that love is equivalent to pain, rejection, and heartache. I do not visualize a specific place, but instead imagine myself lost in this belief.

At the appropriate moment, Keith asks the group to energetically begin walking out of my hell, inviting me to join them as they show me the way out, but not pushing, pulling, or disempowering me in any way.

At the thirty-percent mark, Keith stops the process and asks me to energetically turn around and look back at where I have walked from. I already feel quite different, experiencing a sense of deeper recognition that the love I experienced in that place was not even love at all. It was a fraud – a fake counterfeit of love – a tool of conditional acceptance, manipulation, and control – a statement that “If you do what I want then I will love you back.”

Unconditionally Connected

As we reach the eighty-percent mark, Keith has the group stop again, this time asking me to walk back into that personal hell all by myself.

As I go back into the heart of that crazy belief system about love equaling pain and rejection, I have a very different experience. That old belief no longer has much power. In fact, it seems quite absurd. I know that the only thing that matters is my own pure unconditional love for self and others, regardless of how they might respond to me. Pure love has no attachments or conditions.

“Keith,” I then speak up. “This is beautiful. As I begin walking back out, a part of me is trying to convince me that leaving this place behind means that I have to cut all ties to the past in order to move forward. Yet I am getting profound clarity that cutting these conditional ties in no way affects the unconditionally-loving bond that connects me to family and friends. The two are completely unrelated.”

Hope Fills

“Thank you for being here.” Keith speaks up at one point near the end of this process. “Thank you for letting us all share this energy of you making a huge crack in the profound wall of resistance to higher energies that has been surrounding you.”

Keith’s words fill my heart with deep, genuine gratitude. It was not too long ago that I put a tiny crack into this wall during a small private ceremony across the lake. To hear Keith now describe it as a huge crack is a welcome and much-needed confidence builder.

I have no illusions of having reached my goal. I know there is a significant difference between a huge crack, and actually tearing down a wall – yet hope fills my heart.

A Protective Bubble

A new metaphor suddenly fills my imagination. I see a scene from the final hour of the last Harry Potter movie – a scene where a huge force field bubble was erected around Hogwarts in a last ditch effort to protect the magical school from the dark forces of Lord Voldemort.

I imagine my magical little self, as a small child, using my own inner magic to erect such a force field to shield me from the heartache and pain of having my loving magic attacked by an unknowing world. That force field served me well, keeping me alive and sane in a world of muggles, but it also prevented me from connecting to the magical world outside of my protective bubble.

A giggle momentarily fills my face as I imagine a large crack in that force field, knowing that a large crack is the first step toward a major crumbling.

She Is Me

For the next hour, as Keith makes another pass around the porch, I silently meditate with my new metaphor, imagining a tiny bubble-like force field around my heart.

It is a very slow process, but every so often, I feel a tiny drop of light and love squeeze its way through a crack in that bubble. I try to make the cracks and holes larger, but realize that I am pushing, that the process does not work, so I return to simply allowing tiny drops of love to filter through as they are able, trusting that the rest will happen with synchronous timing.

Slow and steady, I feel my energy gradually rise. I connect with my little three-year-old angel and again visualize her sitting with me in my hospital bassinet. Soon, a new intuitive awareness tells me that this little angel is not something outside of me. In fact, she is the magical side of me that I pushed away. She is me.

Patience And Trust

As I listen while Keith guides someone in a soul retrieval process, I ask this little angel to rejoin me in my heart. I first attempt to visualize her simply entering my body, but that does not work. Then I attempt to imagine tiny parts of her energy flowing through the small cracks in the force field around my heart.

My efforts result in the intuitive knowing that a few drops of her essence do make it through into my heart, but my wall remains quite strong, quite resistant. I cannot push the river.

After one last attempt to metaphorically wave a magic wand, trying to force the process, I feel guided to cease and desist, to take the little angel’s hand, and return to my metaphorical waiting room. I am starting to get the hang of this. I remember that patience and trust are the keys to remaining in the flow of my own being.

Confidence Building

For the remainder of the ceremony, I simply sit in the loving glow, peacefully meditating in this magical waiting room. Eventually, Keith stops by to check on me. When I ask for advice, his response warms my heart.

“Just keep doing what you are doing.” Keith reassures me with confidence. “You are doing really well. There is nothing more I could add.”

I remain behind after the ceremony finally fades, hoping to touch base with Keith regarding a few group-related issues – hoping to pick his brain and learn from a master.

“You really did put a huge and important crack in a foundation wall to your resistance.” Keith again reassures me as I prepare to walk home.

I never tire of such feedback.

Intuitive Insights

It is rare these days for me to get my tarot deck out, but prior to today’s ceremony, I felt guided to do just that. To my surprise I had pulled three cards that all dealt with emotions (cups) – one representing new emotional messages, one representing powerful new beginnings in the area of emotions, and one representing emotional celebration.

Having had such a beautiful emotional journey today – one that did indeed bring new messages, profound new beginnings, and peaceful celebration – I decide to pull three additional cards after finishing my notes for the day. I am blown away by the cards that come up. The first two are both sixes, one representing spirituality and the other the mental realm. To me (and in the Mystical Kabala), sixes represent the heart center of Christ Consciousness. The message is one of balancing both spirituality and rational mind, uniting them in an unconditionally loving heart. The third card that I pull represents powerful new beginnings in the area of spirituality.

I do indeed feel profoundly hopeful that I am beginning a new level of heart opening today – a powerful step toward balancing the spiritual and mental sides of my being – one that I hope will indeed open new beginnings of spiritual awareness and transformation.

Bird Magic

Saturday, December 17, becomes my first fully peaceful day since leaving the eye of that hurricane on Wednesday morning. I spend the entire day writing a blog that ends with a story of two beautiful and innocent little birds that came to visit me – two magical little winged beings that simply wanted to fly and explore.

I had mistakenly seen them as being trapped in the cage of my apartment, and had hastily chased them away. Now I realize that they were simply coming to visit me in my own cage of conformity, trying to motivate me to spread my wings, to break through my walls of resistance, and to fly into the magical realms that await me.

Could it be that one of them was masculine and one feminine, trying to tell me that it is also time to bring balance to my masculine and feminine energies – to equally embrace the magic of both my rational mind and intuitive/creative sides?

It has been a crazy-but-beautiful week of inner growth – a journey that took me back into hurricane-force winds – that has taken me to my very beginnings in this physical existence. I would like to think that I am in the process of learning how to spread my wings a little wider – but full flight will need to wait until the hurricane season is over. Unbeknownst to me, an even stronger emotional hurricane looms in the not-to-distant future.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

It has been two and a half weeks since my last post. Several times since mid December, I have attempted to force myself to write, but my emotions have been so raw and fragile that I was unable to focus for one reason or another.

I am now three and a half weeks behind in documenting my healing journey. It has been a wild roller coaster ride of emotional inner work – one that has found me either in a chocolate ceremony, doing my own emotional processing on the side, or being so emotionally drained that all I have been able to do was crash in a heap of exhaustion. While I would have loved to communicate more during this intense period, the thought of even attempting to email a friend seemed to require more effort than I had strength.

Newborn Insights

In this journey, I go back to the very beginnings, experiencing the emotional pain of myself as a breech-positioned newborn, cut from the womb via cesarean section, and mostly isolated from my mother’s embrace during her two-week hospital recovery. Profound meditation finds me experiencing the personal hell of an alone and brokenhearted baby – the agonizing pain of a tiny child who felt abandoned and betrayed by life.

The journey then takes me to a discovery of how I have hooked the concept of receiving love as being equal to bringing in pain, heartache, and rejection by those who I believed should love me back.

New Love And Hidden Sadness

Two days later, in a series of unexpected events, Keith is guided to dedicate a large portion of a chocolate ceremony in helping me to open up a beautiful energy flow in long-shutdown energy centers in my high-heart chakra. As I feel the energy begin to burst through these dormant areas, I experience actual physical pain, like iodine splashed on open wounds. It is an experience of joyful tears and amazing peace, combined with physical shock.

Later that same day, I suddenly sink into some of the most profound buried sadness that I have ever experienced in my life – sadness that makes no sense to logical mind – sadness that seems to have been buried before age three or four. This sadness consumes me for several days. That evening, and again the next day, Keith helps me to ground myself in peaceful love, but the daunting emotions remain lurking in the shadows.

Certifiably Crazy

On another day, I find myself feeling extreme judgment toward an energetically gifted young man, fully knowing that I am projecting all over him. It is only later that I realize how he reminds me of how I might have been in a male body. It seems that I continue to harbor intense judgment and self-hatred toward my own magical-but-awkward little boy. This young man powerfully represents my hated inner child, Bobby – all grown up.

In the middle of the night, on the Thursday before Christmas, I spend ninety minutes sobbing, feeling intense self-hatred, re-experiencing the intense emotional agony of my teenage years. If my buried shame and self-hatred were underground fields of black yucky tar and oil, there would be enough to supply the petroleum needs of the entire United States for years. Were it not for my intense commitment to self-exploration, and to writing about it, I may have packed my bags and given up my quest during these dark nighttime hours of fear and trauma.

On Friday, during one point of agony, I beg Keith for guidance over my intense mood swings. His response brings little relief, as he assures me that I am actually doing great, and that I have to relive these emotions in order to move through them and release them.

“I feel as if I belong in a mental institution.” I share my crazy agony with Keith. “If I were around friends and family right now, they might just send me away to an insane asylum.”

Fearful Comparisons

Ever since the painful-but-exhilarating opening of my high-heart chakra, I have experienced fluid (metaphor for emotion) in my lungs – fluid that has me repeatedly waking up in the night with periods of intense coughing. A part of me fears that I may be on the way toward developing full-fledged bronchitis or even pneumonia. I know that my symptoms are energetic – caused by repeated intense emotional release and new energetic openings – yet the physical manifestations are beginning to scare me.

“I am at a point where I am now more afraid of NOT learning how to trust and use higher energies than I am of allowing higher energies to help me.” I finally share with Keith in desperation on the day before Christmas Eve. “Trying to do the emotional release process all by myself is literally killing me – in a physical way.”

My Way Please

Friday, Keith’s inspired behavior takes me right back into the role of being a child – a child being dominated by controlling parents. Immediately I get lost in a state of childhood confusion. It only takes me a few minutes to realize what is going on – to take back my power – but it is enough to whisk me back to a profound reawakening of anger at my parents for using rational mind and common sense to squash and destroy my inner magic and creativity. But I go home lost and confused, swimming in my need for understanding and validation – validation that no one seems to want to give me.

On Christmas Eve, after my begging for a private appointment with Keith and a dear friend, I ask them to play the role of my parents while I do things my way – in a way that I trust. Part of me has lost confidence in higher energies and Keith’s methods. I desperately wish to engage in some self-directed experiential processing and rational-mind discussion that I absolutely believe will help me. I know such discussion will help me restore some semblance of sanity.

But when I ask Keith and my friend to play the role of my parents, allowing me to direct the flow of the session, I meet stiff resistance. Keith tells me that it is ego that wants to do it my way – that it will only serve to further strengthen ego if we proceed.

An Ego Showdown

Lovingly but firmly, I resist and debate Keith’s meditative guidance for three and a half hours. I know I am right. I am angry at his (and my friend’s) refusal to do things my way – angry at feeling disempowered during a time when I desperately need validation and recognition. I know I am projecting “my parents” all over them. I know that I am literally re-experiencing a face-to-face “standoff of wills” with my parents.

As the session ends, I have lost all confidence in Keith. I stand up, tell him I appreciate his assistance, but that I see the whole session as an opportunity to take back my power – the power to trust my inner guidance over the external guidance of someone else – the power of a little child that could never stand up to his parents.

“I am going home with the profound awareness that I stood up to my parents and did not back down.” I tell Keith as I prepare to walk home. “I know I am right, and I know that you are refusing to acknowledge that fact so that I will have the opportunity to take back my power.”

“Brenda,” Keith warns me, “by doing this you are only strengthening your ego.”

As I walk home on Christmas Eve, a huge part of me demands that I just pack my bags and leave – insisting that Keith has rejected and failed me, and that it is time to move on.

Impermeable Walls

As I sit on Keith’s magical porch for a Christmas Day ceremony, I really do not even want to be there – but an inner part demands that I swallow my pride and show up anyway. For the first two-thirds of the ceremony, I simply watch as a detached observer, desperately trying to rebuild my trust – looking for any evidence to give me courage to trust Keith once again.

By the end of this ceremony, I have humbled myself, realized that I am indeed locked in a journey with ego – ego that is masquerading as my inner child – ego that was terrified of giving up control. I have found a beautiful and peaceful realization about a lifelong belief – a subconscious belief that has insisted that “taking back my power” meant putting up impermeable walls of protection – walls to protect me from authority figures that might hurt me again – walls that also kept out divine higher energies from being able to help me.

A Borrowed Metaphor

Tuesday, while assisting in a private group ceremony, I borrow a profound metaphor from another participant – a metaphor where her personal hell is a dark cave that she is trying to leave. She somehow manages to turn on her own inner light to light the way. As she walks out of the cave, all of her old teachers line the walls, taunting her.

As I imagine myself in my own cave, trying to find my way out of the lonely darkness, the first person I must pass is my mother. As I metaphorically stand in front of my mother, I try to imagine myself turning on my own inner light. Intense fear consumes me.

“I am still, to this day, terrified of shining my beautiful inner light in the presence of my mother.” I ponder with shock.

This metaphor dominates my daily processing for the next week.

Energetically Stuck

In that same ceremony, my forearms are aching with pain as I attempt to relax them. Keith reminds me of the “lightning bolts” of energy that flowed through my arms during a ceremony just over one year ago. It suddenly hits me. The clenching in my forearms is a desperate attempt to prevent energy from flowing into or out of my arms – and the throbbing pain I experience right now literally feels like lightning bolts of energy attempting to free themselves – attempting to flow past the painful blockages of my clenched muscles.

I continue to wake up coughing during the night, while during the day, my head is often congested with so much blocked and dizzying energy that I find it hard to concentrate, and impossible to write. I do find strength to do additional “cave meditations” with my mother – but deeply struggle with an inability to connect consistently with higher energies.

Time Travel

On the final Friday of December, in the midst of a very unusual chocolate ceremony, I experience a profound breakthrough in working with higher energies during a deep emotional release. I finally find a space of holding a powerful and loving presence as the conscious observer – while at the same time experiencing the deep inner emotional agony related to teenage years.

It suddenly seems so easy. I am loving and powerful, almost giggling on the outside, while holding energetic space for a deeply troubled teenage-me who struggles to let go of beliefs that have him trapped in shame, self-hatred, and in an inability to play and enjoy life. I even manage to have some fun by sending my present-day loving energy back in time, as my future self, comforting that little boy, and helping him to begin rewriting history.

A Blown Fuse

On New Year’s Day, other insights begin to gel with power. I am starting to realize that the energies that remain stuck in my lower chakras – the centers of sexuality, creativity, and power – are not energies that need to flow down and out to mother earth. They are energies that I still prevent from flowing up to my heart. I begin to realize that the “blown fuse” that prevents power from being supplied to my “magical theme park” is somewhere between the power center of my solar plexus and the love center of my magical heart.

I also begin to realize that age “eleven-and-a-half” has been repeatedly surfacing in my life metaphors as of late. Ever since my scorpion experiences last May, and again this week as I meditated with my mother in that dark cave, I have been unable to shine my light beyond that difficult age.

“That blown fuse hidden in me has to do with something early in my sixth grade year.” I ponder. “I was so overloaded with dysfunctional belief systems, shame, and self-hatred – so unable to receive love – that I simply committed energetic suicide to protect myself – blowing a fuse to a powerful heart that deeply ached with shame and guilt.”

A Disapproving Mother

Just a few days ago, during a Tuesday chocolate ceremony, my solar plexus was overflowing with emotional nausea and churning energy – so much so that I literally went into the bathroom, attempting to vomit out the stuck, stagnant energy.

Later, after Keith helped me to make peace with this inner resistance, I meditatively found myself in my inner conference room – an eleven-and-a-half year old boy, standing on the conference table, staring at a room full of resistance energy that was seated in chairs around the table. Every energy being in the room stared back at me with the face of my disapproving mother.

For the last two days, each time I have attempted to resume my writing, I have ended up going back to this meditative scene. I have meditated deeply into a series of unconscious beliefs that still dominate and influence my life – beliefs that came from my mother – beliefs that she got from her mother, and so on.

This meditative journey is ongoing and intense. Just this morning, I experienced profound sensations of having my heart painfully squashed as I again pondered beliefs around rules, obligation, and sexuality.

I am making great progress, but it seems that the beliefs of my childhood – beliefs taught to me by my mother – continue to remain as chains that tightly bind and restrict my heart from fully functioning.

An Inspired Quote

This morning, as I browsed Facebook prior to attempting some writing, I came across a beautiful quote – one that deeply applies to what I am working on. The quote comes as the posted status of a man named “Matt Kahn,” from the Facebook page “Sacred Heart Wisdom from Matt Kahn.”

The quote reads as follows:

“It’s amazing how you can travel endless amounts of miles around the world and never take a single step outside of your point of view. You can even spend an entire lifetime exploring every dimension, country, and culture and still never experience anything other than your own beliefs and assumptions. On the other hand, you can take a single step outside of any viewpoint and a brand new universe of possibility miraculously appears in view. This remains the easiest way to experience the literal meaning of time travel.”

Wow – as I work on stepping further outside of the restrictions of my own ingrained childhood beliefs, I do indeed feel new possibilities miraculously appearing. I do feel myself traveling back in time, changing my entire life from the past forward.

A Universe Of Possibility

I love this quote so much that I “LIKE” the page and post my own comment, as follows:

“It is a journey of undoing … of literally questioning my reality at every turn … of learning that almost everything I thought I knew was simply something that was taught to me by someone else who was equally asleep at the time … it is a journey of awakening, and of realizing that my mind had been chained and imprisoned by a process of subtle conditioning to which I was blind and complacent. I want to see the Universe as it really is … I want to step out of every belief, assumption, and viewpoint … I want to see the true oneness and divinity that is each of us. All of that is impossible if I believe that I already know the truth.”

These past few weeks have been intense. Several times, I have resisted strong inner urges to simply pack my bags and run away. Keith has often said that most people would rather die than face their own inner stuff. I am really beginning to understand that fear. Yet I am not about to give up.

I am on the most amazing journey of my life. I am so close to a brand new universe of possibility – so close to freeing myself from the mental and emotional bondage of beliefs that cripple me – so close to new breakthroughs in consciousness that I can almost taste them.

No Turning Back

Very soon, as time permits, I will resume detailed writing, returning in time to December 11, 2011 and sharing the full journey that I have only briefly summarized today. I may not be fully caught up again until this summer – but my writing is every bit as important to me as my journey itself.

I am not about to turn back now.

Copyright © 2012 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

Early Sunday afternoon, December 11, I sit quietly on an overstuffed pillow, next to Keith’s kitchen door. Peace fills my heart, and trust permeates my soul. Yet, a part of me is on edge – continuing to sit in the nagging worry about whether or not I will ever again feel safe in expressing emotions on Keith’s magical porch.

During our initial porch discussions – a period when Keith spends thirty to forty-five minutes setting the stage for our process – Keith goes out of his way to spend at least ten minutes discussing the power and importance of creating a safe space for emotional release. In beautiful words, Keith gently teaches about what is and is not in alignment with the purpose of his ceremonies. I love Keith’s words. They make it clear to all involved that emotional processing is not only safe here, but that it is encouraged – that it is an integral part of what we do.

As the glow meditation proceeds, I do everything I can to bring in and radiate light. The only thing I want to do today is to fill myself with light and then shine it for others. It seems the Universe has a strange sense of humor – taking me in a totally different direction.

A Demanding Heart

With each breath I take, my belly grows more painful. My entire abdomen gradually swells, becoming increasingly bloated. As I attempt to relax and to inhale more light into my heart, the response seems to be like the sensation of a dull knife being jabbed around inside of my solar plexus – my power center. By the time the glow meditation concludes, I am in painful agony. I know that what swirls around inside of me is none other than repressed anger.

“Brenda,” Keith turns to me soon after the glow meditation is over. “What’s up today?”

How I wish I could simply fade into the woodwork – to just smile and keep my mouth shut. But my heart demands a more emotionally honest response – my heart demands that I speak my truth.

Power And Truth

Swallowing my pride, along with all sense of social propriety, I just go for it.

“I had no intention of going into any emotion today.” I blurt out in pain. “That is the last thing I wanted to do. I am still not even sure if I feel safe going into emotion here on the porch anymore.”

“My abdomen is swirling with agonizing anger.” I continue to share through streams of tears. “It seems that for several weeks I have been manifesting a strong fixing energy here on the porch. I know it has been perfect for my process – a process of understanding and healing my projections about unhealed healers – especially with my mother. I know it has been a powerful process in learning to find my power and to speak my truth – to take back my creativity and genuine expression.”

Courageous Words

“But, if anyone here on the porch professes to be a healer … and if you are simultaneously trying to suppress the emotional expression of others,” I forcefully share my anger, “I have something I need to say.”

“F@ck you and shame on you!” I exclaim powerfully through my sobs.

I cannot make eye contact, and my head is bent forward as huge tears continue to stream down my cheeks.

“This type of emotional release is one of the most profound types of healing here on the porch,” I continue, “and it needs to be safe and encouraged. I know I am projecting, that this is all a part of my own powerful process, and I want to be clear that my words are not aimed personally at anyone on the porch. I know that this is all part of my own manifest creation – that I have been attracting fixing energy like flies to meat – and that it has all been perfect for my growth.”

An Empowered Speech

“It has taken me a full year to get to the point where I can profoundly feel and deeply acknowledge the psychological and emotional trauma through which I passed as a child.” I tearfully continue. “And I had to cry my way through most of the blockages that kept me from getting to this point. My childhood shutdown was so severe that I have found it extremely difficult to trust the higher energies … I have had to do much of my process the hard way.”

“I am angry at those who have attempted to suppress such emotion over the last few weeks – a period where it has felt increasingly rejected by certain people.”

“For some of you, I get the feeling that you believe that what I am doing – the tears and emotions – are weak and wimpy. I am tired of being suppressed by such cultural attitudes. I am not weak in crying – I am taking back my power. Right now, as I bawl my eyes out, I am more empowered than I have ever been in my entire life – in fifty-six years.”

Eye Contact

As my emotional tirade concludes, I sit whimpering quietly. My head faces the ground, where saturated tissues are scattered all around me. The pain in my solar plexus remains intense. It is a pain that has now been forcefully joined by churning and shaking.

I try to connect to higher energies – to release the emotion that is inside of me with higher assistance – to do so in a way that is less work – but I struggle. I cannot focus and I cannot look at anyone.

“Brenda,” Keith lovingly coaches me, “I want you to look in the eyes of that beautiful woman across the porch.”

As I glance up at a new friend, a woman who recognized me on the street after reading small parts of my blog, I see a compassionate, understanding, tear-filled face glowing back at me, radiating pure love.

She expresses a few words of deep gratitude and complete agreement, backing up my courageous words with her heart and glowing support.

Peaceful Emptiness

Keith talks to me for a while, supporting me, acknowledging what I have said and done, and lovingly helping me to reconnect with those around me.

“Look around the whole porch.” Keith guides me. “Look at how people are holding space for you.”

As I briefly make eye contact with most people in this very-crowded Sunday chocolate ceremony, I see the many tear-filled eyes of others who have been deeply moved by my courageous words – of others who now feel safe to further engage in their own healing processes.

But I remain so deep in my own pain that I cannot do much more than cry and whimper while interacting with Keith’s gentle guidance. As I later attempt to remember this phase of my process, the memories seem to have vanished, being replaced by peaceful emptiness.

Permission To Process

More powerful emotional release takes place today on the porch than I have seen in the last several weeks combined.

When working with one woman, as Keith asks her what is up for her, she gratefully acknowledges my courageous process, indicating that her issue has also been one of struggling with the “unhealed healers” of the world. “It is time to take my power back,” she shares with Keith during her deep emotional processing.

Another friend later tells me that because of my work, she had finally felt safe in going deeper into her own stuck process – lovingly telling me that by doing what I did, it gave her powerful permission to go where she needed to go.

Yet another woman – one with whom I have repeatedly exchanged projections – hits profound emotional release during the ceremony. I have no memory of ever seeing her cry before today. To my delight, she releases an entire lake of repressed tears, finally opening the vault of bottled up pain. I feel nothing but radiant love for her.

Even several of the men seem suddenly transformed, giving themselves permission to express and feel varying degrees of emotional release. One man who had previously resisted emotional work ended up holding a profound powerful space for the entire porch through much of the ceremony, radiating huge quantities of light and love.

Chaotic Challenge

But all is not necessarily fun and games. One woman seems offended and terrified by what has taken place, bolting quietly out of the ceremony quite early. I can empathically feel the intensity of her repressed emotions. I also observe as one man behaves quite strangely and resistant to the emotional processing that is now so prevalent.

My heart tells me that the emotional reactions of these other people are also critical for their own healing and growth – that these beautiful people are feeling threatened by having their own world views put into chaotic challenge – that all will work out beautifully in the end.

New Levels

After my initial outburst, I do not outwardly participate much in the ceremony – other than to continue my own deep inner journey of feeling pain, shedding various forms of tears (from whimpers to sobs), and attempting to bring in more light.

At one point, as a casual friend sinks deeply into her extended release of agonizing tears, my heart overflows with loving compassion and forgiveness. When I look into the eyes of this woman, I see my own mother – I feel my mother’s pain – the pain of the woman who was chiefly responsible for suppressing my childhood magic. As I observe with love, I feel my mother’s agony and the emotional trauma of her own childhood shutdown.

As this process continues, a new level of forgiveness and unconditional love opens up in my heart.

A Love/Hate Relationship

Yet my heart remains stuck during much of the ceremony. Once my own painful emotional release process subsides, I do manage to hold a powerful space of love for the work of others – but my heart is handicapped – restricted – not running on full power.

When all is said and done, I am exhausted. I remain for a few minutes after ceremony to touch base with Keith – gleaning his wisdom, while asking for understanding, advice, and feedback regarding various observations of my own.

As I finally prepare for an early bedtime, I am in a love/hate relationship with emotional processing. I am so utterly tired of baring my soul – so tired of crying – so tired of surrendering to random emotions that I know I could easily suppress and ignore. Yet on the other hand, I am deeply grateful for the ever-increasing energetic awakening that is taking place throughout my body – grateful for the insights and understandings that continue to blow me away in the area of “Know myself.”

Consuming Peace

I am deeply proud of my courage today. I know that my actions really did open the door for many people, giving them much needed permission – permission to venture more deeply into their own frightening emotional processes – permission to courageously speak their own truth.

While meditating on my pillow in the darkness of my room, I revel in the glow of the flow. As much as I did not even want to open my mouth today – as much as I resisted the thought of expressing any emotion at all – I am so grateful for the synchronous flow.

The Universe did indeed have a strange sense of humor in the ceremony today– not allowing me to simply sit back in peaceful repression – forcing me to be in so much emotional and physical agony during that initial glow meditation, that speaking my truth seemed to be the only way out – the only way to return to peace.

I can now only laugh with joy at the result – giggling in the peace that now consumes me as I drift off to sleep.

Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

As Sunday, December 4, slides into the history books, my heart finally resonates with powerful peace. The past ten days have been a beautiful stage for profound experiential healing. It is now time to move forward through the integration process – and for me, the most powerful integration I do is to ponder, meditate, and write about the events through which I have courageously dared to venture.

But then again, I am always aware that writing about processing often brings new emotional release as well as further growth. With a giggling heart, I say bring it on. I am ready to write, ready to face whatever surfaces, eager to record the raw and intimate details of what has indeed been one of the most excruciating healing journeys of my life.

Resumed Writing

I begin by writing a loving treatise about my first ever hate comment – a courageous adventure into baring my soul and further speaking my truth. The experience deeply empowers me, but does result in a few heart-thumping twinges of fear as late Monday evening I receive two comments from extended family members – one online and one offline. Both are beautiful loving exchanges – yet both show me that I continue to harbor hidden inner fear regarding just how my closest of family might react to my stepping so far away from the family’s cultural and religious roots.

Tuesday, I spend the day writing, but also joyfully embrace several social interruptions that prevent me from publishing. I love how I am beginning to further embrace the flow, even when it comes to things that “seem to interrupt” my writing. Peace and giggles reign supreme.

It is not until Wednesday morning, right before my next chocolate ceremony, that I prepare to click on the “publish button” – but alas, I can only giggle again when I learn that my internet is temporarily down and will not return until early afternoon. Joyful trust and peace simply remind me that, “everything happens for a reason” – that I will simply wait until nightfall to post “A Crash Course.”

Manifestation Giggles

As a friend and I sit on our cushions, waiting for the chocolate ceremony to begin, we giggle at each other regarding the fact that out of the eleven people present on Keith’s magical porch, seven are men.

“I wonder why my higher energies created a ceremony with so much masculine energy.” I share with my friend. “It will be interesting to find out why we manifested this reality.”

Confusing Chaos

“I’m in a weird state.” I eventually explain to Keith as he begins to work with me after the glow meditation.

“My heart feels connected and alive, “but my solar plexus is consumed by pains that at times are quite strong as they phase in and out. And I am profoundly aware that my forearms are extremely clenched – so much so that as I attempt to relax them, they actually hurt. I seem incapable of relaxing my muscles, as if the clenching is happening at a level that is out of my power to control.”

Intuitions tell me that I am in a state of further wanting to open up my empath abilities, but a subconscious part of me is expressing intense fear by physically refusing to relax. As I contemplate this thought, a sensation of dread begins to consume me – and it is indeed a profound fear about the possibility of returning yet again to a state of confusing chaos with regards to inhaling the emotions of others.

Increasing Awareness

For twenty minutes, Keith sits in front of me, guiding me once again to imagine a small ball of light, two feet in front of my heart.

“Send all of this emotion to the ball of light for processing.” Keith lovingly guides me.

“I can’t feel the difference.” I express to Keith in frustration as he assures me that he feels some of the emotional density now moving outside of me, being sent to the metaphorical angels for transmutation.

“Now bring the processing back inside of you.” Keith guides me to resume my old way of working with the densities – a way where I deal with the emotions by myself.

Over and over Keith guides me to first move the processing out in front of me, allowing higher energy assistance – and then to bring the whole process back inside of me. Keith is patiently attempting to help me to become more energetically aware of the differences.

Subtle Shifts

Several times when I bring the processing back inside, I experience mild sensations of fear and pain, as well as what intuitively feels like a horizontal wall stretching across my heart chakra.

Yet, when I imagine the processing as being directed to the ball of light in front of me – as being handled by the angels – I experience a very subtle sensation of relaxation.

My sensitivities remain so blocked and weak that there is ample room for logical mind doubts to jump in to ridicule what I am doing – yet I cannot deny the subtle but profound differences that intuitively whisper, “There is indeed a difference – a difference I can slightly feel.”

Pushing all doubt to the side, I resolve to further pursue a strategy of “Fake it till I make it.”

An Old Pattern

“I’m feeling a little guilty for how much time you are spending with me.” I eventually express to Keith while glancing around the rest of the porch as everyone else simply observes.

“This is an old pattern that you’re running.” Keith points out.

I clearly recognize how, throughout my life, I have craved personal attention and assistance from others – yet at the same time, as soon as I begin to receive it, I feel resistant, unworthy, undeserving, and attempt to sacrifice my needs for the good of others – feeling guilty about having my needs met while others in a group simply watch. Part of me wants to fade from visibility.

Emotional Resistance

As Keith eventually moves on, my heart overflows with gratitude for how much time he did spend with me. His patient and loving assistance has indeed given me a glimmer of hope that I can and will become increasingly more sensitive to the energies – both within and without.

I focus on internally practicing what Keith has taught me – but simultaneously observe the rest of the porch as well – looking for additional synchronous clues that might further facilitate my own personal journey.

One thing that profoundly registers is that there is almost no emotional release taking place on the porch today. Nearly everyone seems hesitant to approach emotions – resistant to going deeper – remaining mostly at the surface. There seems to be a subtle energy whispering that, “emotions are bad and heavy … we are not comfortable with emotional release … we want to fly high in positive, light vibrations.”

Empowering And Supporting

By the time Keith almost completes his first pass around the porch, I find myself resonating in profound high-vibrational energy. Feeling deeply connected to unconditional love, I simply radiate that love to everyone and everything around me. My heart is alive with glowing, vibrating, light.

As Keith begins to work with a dear friend seated next to me, I silently cheer inside as she goes deeper and deeper into what I can tell is a frightening and heartbreaking emotional journey. I am so happy that she is finally able to reach another level in her own process where she is beginning to go deeper into the depths of her own agonizing pain.

I sit next to her, holding powerful loving space, radiating love that energetically whispers, “I am so proud of you. I know that what you are doing is not only frightening and terrifying, but that it is profoundly important – that it is a place to which you must journey in order to find your own treasures – in order to heal this dark pain from your past.”

I almost feel guilty about how radiantly happy I am – yet I know that my loving giggles are the exact opposite of fixing – they are empowering and supporting.

Judgmental Frustration

As my dear friend reaches what seems like a frightening, impassable, emotional blockage, I continue to radiate loving supportive energy, silently cheering her on.

Then something shocks me. A woman who several times during the ceremony has interrupted others to share “uplifting stories”, suddenly repeats her fixing pattern, interrupting my friend’s process with a baffling and utterly unrelated fluffy story. To me, it seems obvious that she is uncomfortable with the level of emotion being expressed – and that she is attempting to lighten the mood.

“Why am I continuing to attract such strong fixing energy?” I ponder in judgmental frustration.

Supporting And Encouraging

I watch with amazement as Keith follows his own guidance, quickly squelching the woman’s behavior, lovingly but firmly pointing out to her what she just did. When this woman recoils in denial, several of the men join in her defense, unable to see the harm in what she had just done. Granted, her intentions had been pure and loving, but her actions had simultaneously disempowered the profound emotional process in which my friend was engaged.

My dear friend jumps in to validate that she was indeed pulled out of her process, and now no longer feels emotionally capable of returning to the place where she was. Keith points out how it has taken my friend three weeks to achieve this level of deep inner exploration, and that, at least for today, her process has been interrupted.

A deep healing discussion unfolds regarding “fixing energy.” It is a firm-but-loving explanation about our societal conditioning – about how most of us have been taught to stuff down our emotions – about how a great number of people are extremely uncomfortable when others express emotion – and about how conditioning tells us that when someone cries, we need to help them lighten the mood, to take away their pain, etc…

When engaged in emotional processing, what people really need is permission to go deeper into their pain – they need loving support that makes them feel safe, encouraging them to go as deep as they need in order to find the healing treasure that lies beneath their pain.

Personal Relevance

It is only later that Keith reveals to me that this woman was, in a way, acting out the energy of my mother, unknowingly doing so for my benefit, giving me an external glimpse of what happened to me when I was a child.

“Wow,” I think to myself. “This really is what happened to me. Every time I cried, my emotion was not validated. Instead, all focus was put on the fact that the crying itself was creating problems – that I needed to just get over it and to stop crying. I have no memories of my emotional process ever being supported in a way that allowed me to feel safe in exploring or understanding my hurt feelings. Those emotions were simply rejected and suppressed.”

“So That’s It”

A tiny uprising begins to form on the porch. Giggles consume my soul as I radiate a profound loving peace through my heart. I have never felt so empowered in such an awkward situation – a situation that would have left me cowering in fear just a few years ago – a situation of potential arguing and conflict.

Yet, even in the face of disagreement and debate, a beautiful presence of peace and coexistence remains in my heart. I really cannot speak for how anyone else is feeling.

One man strongly joins in to support the woman’s fixing behavior, adding how he has complained several times about the heaviness that Keith allows on the porch – about how he often begins to reach new energetic heights only to be pulled back down by people’s low vibration emotions.

Another man quickly jumps in and says something like “Yeah, and every time Brenda begins to do her work, I just cringe with a feeling of ‘Oh no, here we go again, into the tears and dense emotions.’”

“So that’s it!” I suddenly realize with giggling clarity while still glowing in my own personal stash of loving energy. “The heaviness to which this energetically-gifted man has repeatedly referred in past ceremonies is none other than ‘me’ – my own emotional processing, as well as that of others. He too is under the mistaken impression that emotions are bad and should not be allowed here – that emotions are not in alignment with spirituality – that emotions merely drag the energy (and people) down.”

Nothing Changes Until I Do

With pure love radiating from my heart, continuing to smile and giggle, I speak from a place of unconditional love, speaking my truth as I have never done before. I am so unattached that I really do not care what others are saying – I understand their confusion and judgment, and that they do not appreciate the profound power behind creating a safe place for loving emotional release.

“There must have been at least six to eight times last year where I was so angry at Keith that I was ready to pack up my bags and leave.” I share my own words of wisdom with those on the porch. “But every time I felt that way, when I took a step back and looked honestly on the inside, when I humbled myself and recognized that it is I who create my reality – every time I did this I clearly recognized that my judgments and projections had nothing to do with Keith. It was always me projecting. It was always me engaging in some of my most powerful growth lessons.”

“But most of all,” I add, “it was always me that needed to change. It is an inside job.”

Loving Opportunities

“But people should be able to just raise their vibrations, and then their densities will simply dissolve away.” this young man protests.

“When you say that,” a friend lovingly speaks her own truth in response, “it sounds like you are saying, “Just get over it.” …’”

“Good for you,” I also lovingly interject my own feedback to the young man. “If you can transmute your densities by simply raising vibrations, then I honor you. I only wish I were at that level of working with my own densities. Some of us need to do our processing in a different way to facilitate our own learning. We put these densities inside of us as teachers that would literally force us to acquire the learning that we came to this dimension to get.”

“What you are saying is judgment.” I confidently add one last loving fact. “You are saying that emotional release is bad – that your way is the only spiritual way.”

Again, I marvel at how my heart is not collapsing – I do not feel the least bit fearful or hesitant to speak my truth in such a loving-but-powerful way. For me it is a profound opportunity to see how I am confidently learning to respond to criticism from a space of love.

Unhealed Healers

“I have to admit that I too used to judge people who repeatedly cried during emotional release.” I add a tiny bit of my own story. “It has only been through my own tedious and often tearful journey of this past year that I have learned how to have compassion for the healing processes of others.”

“If we want to be healers, we need to first heal ourselves. If anything – and I mean anything, anyone, any client, any person, or any situation – if anything triggers us to judge, or to be frustrated, or to be annoyed, then that is OUR issue that we need to heal before we are ready to work with a client.”

I then mention how I am determined to never be an unhealed healer – how I would rather not assist someone in an emotional process if there is some risk that I might project onto my client in any way.

Trusting The Process

Soon a brief interruption calls Keith out to his front gate. As he does so, the group dissolves into four or five separate and chaotic surface-level conversations.

When Keith returns, he simply smiles and joins into one small discussion across the porch from me – not attempting to pull the group back together. I have seen many a crazy thing on this porch, and my own guidance giggles while whispering that all is perfect … that everything that has happened, and that will yet happen, will create beautiful results.

I spend nearly an hour having a heart-to-heart conversation with one extremely energetically gifted young man whom I have often thought of as wanting to heal others without first looking in the mirror.

To my delight, I continue to glow on the inside while radiating love on the outside. As the conversation eventually ends, I have learned a great deal about my own tendency to judge someone without really knowing his or her story.

An Unfolding Process

“Wow,” I tell Keith after everyone has left. “That was crazy but powerful for me. As I continue to vibrate with giggles and glowing energy, I also feel a little weird. I would love to understand what was going through your mind as the group almost rebelled today. It might help me to better understand how to do what you do.”

Keith explains that he always takes every situation on a case-by-case basis. He has no canned rules on how to react, on what to allow, or want to prevent. He simply follows the flow of energy.

“Every situation is different.” Keith shares with me. “Each time something happens, I go inside and check with my guidance as to whether I should allow it to unfold or whether I should nip it in the bud. Sometimes I make a mistake, but it always works out in the end.”

Keith goes on explain that today he felt guided to not intervene any further – that everything that happened was building toward a valuable process that will eventually help all those involved to get a profound growth lesson – one that they need to have.

I can say for a fact that the experience deeply served me in my own process.

Tears, Fears, And Self-Doubt

After gobbling down a plate of rice and beans, I sit at my computer in an attempt to document an afternoon that was both beautiful and bizarre. Suddenly tears of emotion begin to swell in my eyes.

“Is it even safe for me to cry on Keith’s porch anymore?” I begin to feel a crazy sense of fear, sadness, and even anger. “Will I ever again feel capable of going deep into emotions while some of those people are also on the porch? Will I always be on edge, minimizing my feelings so as not to disturb them or their view of reality?”

I am shocked and almost shaking. When I had left the ceremony, I continued to radiate a state of loving and giggling heart power – yet, now, just thirty minutes later, I am rapidly sinking into tears, fears, and self-doubt.

Yes, I have indeed received powerful and profound inner lessons through the crazy events on the porch. I know that I create my reality – and I have no doubt that my own higher energies are responsible for orchestrating these events as an incredible opportunity to guide me toward new insights and growth.

But I am now grieving … worried that the porch may never again return to normal … that it might never be safe to cry again.

A Magic Hat

To my delight, I soon receive an unexpected knock at my door. Keith and another friend are headed home from a quick dinner at a local restaurant.

“You were AWESOME today!” my two friends giggle loudly in unison.

I briefly giggle too – desperately needing such loving feedback. Part of me does know I was awesome. My heart was profoundly alive with power and I radiated giggling love at every turn – more so than ever before.

But as the three of us begin to jointly share, I briefly mention my concerns about needing a safe environment to express emotions. Tears start to stream as I describe the strange sadness and fears that surfaced while recording my notes for the day.

“This is exactly how you felt as a child.” Keith again pulls a rabbit out of his magic hat.

“What happened today is a reflection of what happened to you as a child when you finally stopped sharing emotions because it only got you in trouble. It is also a reflection of society’s box – of how emotions are not allowed, not spiritual, and not proper.”

Keith goes on to explain that many of the healers of today are still in that societal box – believing that healing means pushing emotions down while raising their vibrations into the light.

“Wow,” I banter back, “you’re exactly right. I never felt safe expressing any type of sad or angry emotion at home – never ever.”

Light As A Feather

Keith totally validates my concerns about emotional safety on the porch – explaining that he too feels guided that it is now time to make some changes to ensure the safety for those who need to go deep. He reassures me that as soon as his guidance directs, he will do what is necessary to reestablish a safe space for all involved.

Everything that has been building over the last several weeks has been a profound part of my process – I would not change a thing.

I am so deeply grateful for the lessons on fixing and unhealed healers. I could not have learned such wisdom more powerfully in any other way. Allowing things to unfold as they have was critical in helping me to understand what happened to me as a child. Gratitude fills my heart that Keith has allowed this process to unfold in a way that it did indeed serve me (and others) greatly.

As I hug Keith and my friend goodnight for the second time, I am happy again – as light as a feather.

Righteous Roadmaps

Thursday morning, as I engage in a beautiful 5:30 a.m. meditation on my patio, hidden and unexpressed emotions suddenly erupt, quickly turning angry.

“How dare you call yourself a healer when you would judge or put down someone’s emotional process!” I quietly yell out in hate to all unhealed healers in the world.

“Shame on you for pulling someone out of an emotional process.” I add another series of sternly whispered shouts. “Shame on you for implying that their energy is too heavy for you – that it is not spiritual enough!”

I try to be relatively quiet so the neighbors do not hear – but the unfelt and unexpressed emotions from yesterday are now agitated, angry, and screaming for release.

“How dare you force your unhealed bullsh#t on me when I was so young and vulnerable!” I intuitively direct my next angry outburst at parents and church leaders. “Your warped version of guilt and shame in the name of God did not serve me as a child – it devastated me. Your righteous roadmaps only served to manipulate and control. They did not heal me – they just made things worse.”

The intensity of my meditation shocks me. It seems that my inner issues with “unhealed healers” and “fixers” continue to have more hidden power than I thought. This buried anger is directed at my parents, my childhood religion, and at anyone who would use power to manipulate and control others in the name of God or higher energies.

It will not be until later that I realize the true target of my anger is at the higher energies themselves.

Processing Versus Processing

“Am I writing or processing today?” I ponder with confusion as I gobble down my oatmeal with an ounce of yummy chocolate.

As my emotions finally settle, I return with my metaphorical three-year-old angel to that peaceful waiting room – fully trusting that I have done enough processing about unhealed healers for today.

Instead, I engage in deep integrative processing while spending a long day writing “Confusing Confusion.” Every one of my recent blogs is proving to be an excruciating task.

A Subconscious Agenda

Friday morning, during a 6:30 a.m. patio meditation, a new truth settles into awareness.

“This unhealed healer issue really is a huge inner battle for me.” I ponder with increasing shock.

I have several dear friends who were deeply abused as children. One was so physically and emotionally traumatized that no matter how much healing she completes, she continues to have a very subtle underlying theme of needing to defend the world from abuse. In very gentle ways, I have tried to occasionally point out the existence of this subconscious agenda to her … pointing out that her true healing is an inside job, not one of fixing the world … but her suppressed emotional pain is so deep that she cannot hear me, and I do not push.

“I have a subconscious agenda!” I suddenly recognize with shock and newfound humility. “And my agenda is even stronger than that of my dear friend. It seems that for many years now, everywhere I go, I have a hidden agenda to save the world from unhealed healers.”

It seems that everything that has manifested over the last several weeks was beautifully orchestrated to bring me to this very painful and humbling realization.

A Mini Me

The emotional and psychological trauma caused by unhealed healers is usually overlooked by society in general – not even seen as an issue – not even recognized as actual abuse because there is no way to quantify or measure it. The subtle nature, lack of external validation, and even ridicule from others, can turn healing from such trauma into a very lonely and difficult journey. To even take the initial steps of such a journey, one must begin to literally question the reality of everything.

The interesting paradox is that almost all people in the world have actually undergone such repression and conditioning – yet most people would utterly deny its existence. We teach our children in the same way that we were taught. We minimize right-brained creativity while teaching our children to survive in a left-brained world. We know from experience that if our children stand out, if they are different or do not conform in any way, that they will be bullied and ridiculed.

I was conditioned to believe that a tiny infant was a divine piece of clay – a piece of clay that would stray and get lost if I did not program it to know just what to believe and how to conform. In essence, I believed that it was my job, as a parent, to mold each of my children into a righteous little “mini me”. As I faithfully conditioned my own children, I unknowingly caused them to repress much of their own divine identity and creativity – suppressing a great deal of their individuality.

Trusting Inner Guidance

As I reflect back on the last twenty-five years of my life – after beginning to question my own reality – I clearly see that I have subconsciously viewed every authority figure or self-proclaimed expert as suspect. I would never trust any healer before thoroughly checking them out. I was terrified of healers or teachers who might end up further hurting or deceiving me. Instead, I learned to trust my heart when any idea was in question – always trusting inner feelings and guidance over what anyone else might advise. I may have been wrong, but I remained true to my soul.

A crazy subconscious part of me was frequently triggered whenever I witnessed someone professing a version of his or her truth that did not resonate with my heart. I struggled to keep my mouth shut – to remain centered and non-judgmental – to see it as an inside job. At times, this “looking in the mirror” was agonizing.

I did not realize it until now that, after all these years, I subconsciously continue to abhor what I now define as an “unhealed healer.” My heart cringes when I witness vulnerable people being willingly led down a path that, for me, resonates as a path that would lead them into more ego, confusion, struggle, and denial.

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

The crazy paradox is that I have healed the vast majority of my triggers regarding those who would commit violent acts – the Hitlers, the mass murders, the child abusers, the creators of wars, the terrorists, etc…. I have been able to spiritually reconcile how everything happens for a reason – how each act, no matter how abhorrent it may appear to the eyes of the perceiver, serves a purpose in the larger holodeck of reality.

I have lovingly been able to see that every trauma in my own life has beautifully served me – how it has been my own creation. With all of my heart I believe that I chose every circumstance of my birth – I wanted to be raised in the way I was – It was my desire to have my right-brained magic snuffed out – and it was all for divine reasons. I would not wish my life circumstances onto anyone, yet I would not change one thing from my past. Every struggle has been a beautiful teacher – and each lesson could never have been learned in any other way.

But crazy as it is, and now as obvious as it is, I subconsciously hate unhealed healers. I see them as evil incarnate – as wolves in sheep’s clothing – as horrible abusers who will destroy their innocent and unknowing prey.

Perfect Perfection

“If I can clearly see that I chose a life of being shutdown by unhealed healers,” I ponder with confusion, “then why can I not see that every healer, no matter how healed or unhealed they might be, also serves a divine role and purpose?”

I find the logic to be irrefutable. We are all sovereign beings – each of us creates our reality, and each of us energetically attracts exactly what we need in our unique healing journey.

Every unhealed healer is perfect in their own unique journey – being exactly where they need to be right now – helping the people that resonate with their style of help. They will come across their own life lessons with perfect synchronous timing. Everything they do serves a purpose for someone, in some way. In my own life, my journey with unhealed healers has taught me in profound ways – teaching me all of the things that I myself hope to never inflict on others in my own journey as a potential healer. Had I not experienced the trauma or disempowerment of being on the receiving end of such situations, I could never have learned what I now understand. And I know I still have much more to learn.

And every client who goes to such healers is also perfect in their own unique journey. There were times in my life when I needed help from someone who could “fix” me. I was so hopelessly lost and helplessly desperate that I needed an outside expert to tell me what was wrong and how to heal it. Those types of healers served me well during struggling times. Every person seeks out and resonates with exactly what they need in their own journey at any given point in time.

An Inside Job

“I don’t need to save the world from unhealed healers.” I exclaim with giggles during this Friday morning meditation. “That too is an Inside Job. I simply need to shift my own projections and allow the outside world to be exactly what it is.”

“But how do I do this?” I ponder with shock. “Why is it so difficult to let go of this subconscious projection?”

I can only trust the process. A beautiful synchronous flow brought me to this deep self-realization – and I know that same flow will guide me through whatever else I need to do.

An Intense Interruption

Soon after finishing this profound meditation, I put that story on hold and begin writing my next blog, all about my journey with the “Hot Sauce Mom” videos. To my horror and amazement, as I again relive emotions from my personal journey with an unhealed healer (my mother), I completely lose all composure.

Beginning around 10:30 a.m., I retire to my bedroom, sobbing with emotions that I had no idea still existed. I thought I had processed this pain a week earlier, on that agonizing day when I first watched those heart-breaking videos – trauma-awakening videos that took me back into remembering the gut-wrenching emotional pain of my own punishments for being a mouthy child who was just trying to defend myself.

Fear Of Hell

Knowing that pushing the pain back down only serves to delay and prolong my healing process, I willingly submit to the agonizing emotional onslaught – experiencing wave after wave of intense release. With each huge wave of sobs, I attempt to bring in more light. The light brings additional insights, but it also frees additional repressed pain that now floats to the surface – and I again return to the depths of reliving old traumas.

These “rub-my-face-in-the-sand” emotions include anger, sadness, pain, rebellion, heartbreak, and everything in between.

Insights take me deep into understanding how I was literally trained with behavioral conditioning – the same type of discipline response you might use to train a family pet, such as a dog or cat.

Righteous indignation swells as I ponder about how my true divine connection to the light was systematically replaced by artificial “florescent lights” – by a connection to a judgmental and vindictive God of fear and conformity. I was terrified that if I did not obey and do as I was told that I would end up in hell for all of eternity.

Lovingly True

“How dare they do this to a child!” I quietly scream out in agony. “How dare they treat me like a piece of clay that can simply be shaped and formed by ‘knowing adults’.”

“Bullsh#t,” comes swirling off my tongue. “I was a sentient, conscious being with a divine soul and a unique journey to fulfill on this earth. I was forced to give up who I am so that I could be shaped by sleeping hands and then put into a kiln, baked into a petrified clay pot.”

The intuitions flow so smoothly. Inner voices are profoundly clear as they remind me that my consciousness and brain functions are two completely different things, and that I came into this world fully aware – I was simply incapable of communicating through physical means. Yes, my tiny physical body was vulnerable and undeveloped – but my consciousness has been aware for countless lifetimes.

It is a sleeping society that mistakenly believes that newborns are just empty brains waiting to receive adult input and programming.

Of course, I needed help in learning how to develop and use my body – in learning physical communication and survival skills – in understanding all aspects of this holodeck called physical reality. But when it comes to who I really am, the only help I needed was to be tenderly supported and encouraged to be lovingly true to my own heart in a unique and individual journey of self discovery – to be reminded of my divinity and of my ability to personally connect to the source of that light.

Fit In Or Else

The more I ponder how my creative and intuitive sides were simply snuffed out, the deeper I go into the agonizing pain – sobbing, choking, coughing, and wheezing – repeatedly in waves.

“It is crazy.” I soon resume quiet ranting. “I had to fit in so that my parents would not be judged for teaching me incorrectly. I live in a society of sheep that will judge any and all parents who do not raise their children properly.”

“It is the parents who teach their children to be bullies.” The insights continue flowing. “We are so concerned with appearance and conformity that we are uncomfortable if someone around us is different. We force our children to conform, and they turn around and try to force others to do the same.”

Each time my emotions pause, I ask for more light. Each time that the light increases, more insights flow and emotions again rage.

Personal Responsibility

“I am a divine being, as are we all,” Inner voices begin to pull me back to the Truth with a capital T.

I am the one who chose to enter a tiny, vulnerable, undeveloped physical body. On the surface, what happened to me (to all of us) was brutal and painful. But I came here with a purpose – and part of that purpose included choosing parents, religion, siblings, and birth circumstances. In order to fulfill my life mission, it was profoundly necessary for all of my childhood magic to be shutdown in firm, rigid ways.

For my purposes, I needed and wanted my parents to turn me into a miniature version of them. I needed to profoundly understand the agonizing pain of having my lights snuffed out by loving, God-fearing parents. I needed to understand the shame-inducing trauma of being born with gender confusion that was repressed and rejected as evil. It was all a part of my own plan to learn how to love unconditionally, to develop compassion, to understand the anguish of human suffering from countless different vantage points.

With such personal understanding, perfectly and synchronously timed, I will have achieved my own inner license – a license giving me the loving and compassionate capacity to help support others in waking up from similar shutdowns – to help them find the same loving light buried under their own traumas. While it is a lonely path to tread, I know that my journey is preparing me to assist others during the upcoming planetary shift – whatever it may look like.

Fake And Fraudulent

“I hate a God that would judge, induce fear, condemn, marginalize, categorize, demand obedience, etc.,” another wave of angry emotions surface. “Such an image is repugnant. That is not God … that is man’s creation … an image projected by men who would judge, induce fear, condemn, etc…”

My God/separation drama has once again surfaced. But this time I see it from a profoundly different perspective. My hatred at God was only a truth with a lowercase “t”. I was angry at a fake man-made God. The subconscious part of me that continues to cower in fear at the thought of connecting and partnering with higher energies continues to see all higher energies as belonging to that fake, fraudulent category.

Family Chains

As I continue meditating, a new metaphor consumes me – a metaphor of feeling as if I have chains tightly wrapped around my soul. This visualization is profound and powerful – giving me a clear glimpse of what is really going on inside me. I feel like the chains continue to hold me captive as a mini-mom – a miniature version of my dear sweet mom.

Yes, of course I know she did her best, and that she was lovingly following the convictions of her own heart when she raised me. I hold nothing but beautiful love for my dedicated and devoted mother.

Nevertheless, the truths she taught me are not my truths. Those metaphorical chains binding my soul continue to lock me into the teachings that I received from my dear mother – the chains are the “mother voices” that I unsuccessfully tried to release in recent days past – voices that continue to hold me captive in dysfunctional, self-limiting beliefs.

My dear mother got those voices from her mother, and so on up the family tree. Those voices were carefully passed down, generation by generation, refined and strengthened by all of my ancestors. It is now time for me to transmute them – to see them as the lies that they are and to release them into the nothingness from whence they came.

My head does not know how to transmute voices – yet my heart knows that the light is now already shining brightly on many of these voices. I trust that “Know myself” is a huge part of the healing. As I simply sink deeper into a “Fake it till I make it” meditation, I can only believe that everything will happen in perfect order.

Compassionate Understanding

Thanks to the depth of this emotional journey, my understanding of childhood shutdown and conditioning has reached a profound new level of clarity – a level that resonates, not from the mind, but from personal experience deep within the heart.

Had I not surrendered to the agonizing emotions, had I resisted and pushed them back down, insisting that I had already processed them, I could never have reached such profound levels of compassionate understanding.

As this beautiful meditation reaches conclusion, I feel profoundly gifted – gifted with an undeniable experience of actually feeling the horrendous pain of a divine being, encompassed in a tiny vulnerable body, having my source connection turned off – of experiencing the sparkle in my eyes being methodically snuffed out.

The experience has been one of the most profound meditations of my life.

Heart Balance

I now clearly realize that everything – every single thing that was ever taught to me – every teaching from any earthly source, from any person, teacher, adult, child, friend, or even channeled source – everything is suspect and potentially contaminated by human interpretation – especially by my own logical thinking or ego-tainted perceptions.

The ongoing path toward awakening really is a path of undoing – of undoing emotions that prevent me from moving forward – of undoing beliefs that restrict unconditional love and light from flowing freely in my heart.

The only thing I can fully trust is a personal connection to source – a right-brained, intuitive, heart-based connection that does not rely solely on logical interpretation and reason – a sense of knowing that only comes through equal partnership of loving balance between both head and heart.

Confused Visitors

Saturday, December 10, I make another attempt at writing “Hot Sauce Horror.” This time I do manage to write, but again the journey triggers repeated bursts of frequent sobs. Halfway through that passionate writing saga, as the tears are finally beginning to subside, two delightful beings stop by for a visit.

It is 1:49 p.m., when two little sparrows dare to venture through the metal bars of my patio door, perching inside of my living room/kitchen area on a door next to my refrigerator. They are beautiful little sparrows, with dark brown feathers, having bodies that are perhaps three or four inches in length.

After sitting for a minute or two, they begin to act a little confused and lost. As they fly a couple of times, quickly returning to their perch, I get the feeling that they are not quite sure how to leave.

Frightened And Hiding

My first thought is a metaphor that one of my dear friends has experienced several times in her life – a metaphor that when a bird enters your house, that someone close to you will die within a few days. I have to admit that I wonder if this metaphor may apply to me – but the idea does not resonate as true with my heart, and I believe that the Universe communicates with us via metaphors that resonate with our own energy – not that of someone else.

My second thought is that the birds do not belong in my house and that they may soon begin to poop all over my floor and furniture. Quickly but calmly, I move to each window in the room, slowly opening them as much as possible – providing the birds with ample opportunity to find their way out. Yet my actions only frighten the two little visitors, causing them to fly up into the rafters above my daybed – hiding on a log beam, directly above where I write.

Free Spirits

As I carefully and lightly tap a broom near where the birds are cowering, one quickly flies to the front door and disappears. My heart breaks as the other flies directly to my kitchen window, crashing into a dirty pane of glass, briefly falling on my dish drain, and then disappearing into my bathroom shower area. As I further attempt to “rescue” the second bird, he is gone, nowhere to be seen. I later discover a tiny hole between the roof and the rock wall of my shower. I can only assume that the little guy somehow squeezed his way to freedom.

After a while, I begin to question, “Why was I in such a hurry to get them to leave? … I could have had so much fun simply watching their free spirits.”

Don’t Worry About A Thing

Later, I send out a Facebook appeal for possible metaphorical meanings. My favorite response is one that had also briefly entered my own mind – a reference to the Bob Marley song “Three Little Birds.”

I love the message of “Don’t worry about a thing … ‘Cause every little thing gonna be all right.” My heart resonates as I later listen to a version of the song on YouTube. Even though I was only visited by two winged wonders, I still feel their energy of joy, freedom, and flying to the skies.

Dancing Shivers

Sunday, before the chocolate ceremony, Keith lets me glance at his “Animal-Speak” book by Ted Andrews – one of my favorite animal books. I am blown away by a few metaphorical references associated with sparrows.

The first quote references a metaphor that has been following me for many months – the feeling of a sharp pain at the center of my heart chakra – a metaphorical nail in my heart that, to me, represents the idea of having been symbolically crucified in the name of my religion. It all refers back to the shutdown process, done to me by well meaning adults (unhealed healers), all in the name of God.

The quote goes as follows:

“One story tells of how it (the sparrow) was the one bird present throughout the crucifixion of Christ, making it a symbol of triumph after suffering.”

Shivers dance in my spine as I read these words, while pondering how they relate to my own metaphorical journey that is nearing completion – nearing triumph after suffering.

Metaphorical Play

The next quote from the book also deals with human and societal shutdown. I have omitted several sentences and highlighted the word “social.”

“Its (the sparrow’s) ability to multiply and assert itself in spite of predation reflects the idea that nobility of the common person is inherently strong. […] Have you forgotten your own self worth? Have you begun to think that you would always be under the heel of some tyrant – human or social? The sparrow will show you how to survive […] helping you to triumph in spite of outer circumstances.

The song sparrow is very symbolic of this. […] There is a dark spot on each side of its throat and a heavy spot in middle of the breast. This reflects a drawing down of energy to awaken the heart and the throat centers. It is the assertion of will to bring out the inherent dignity so it can sing forth in your life. This is what the sparrow can teach.”

As I read these words, they emphasize exactly what I have been working on – awakening my heart center – learning to free myself from the “social tyrant” of cultural conditioning – and finding the capacity to fully express my creative truth through the throat center. I love how metaphors can be so powerful when you play with them.

A Nagging Worry

It is late Saturday evening when I finally publish “Hot Sauce Horror.” I am emotionally exhausted but profoundly relieved to have made it through such a grueling integration process. The journey has taken me to the depths of my obsession with unhealed healers and fixers, profoundly reminding me that the world is my creation and that everything out there is a perfect reflection showing me my own unhealed projections.

It has been a crazy week – a week of intense integrative writing, emotional meditation journeys, and a bizarre day on Keith’s porch – a week that has served me greatly.

As I drift off to sleep on Saturday evening, I reflect back on those two beautiful little sparrows from early this afternoon.

I feel the peace of those Bob Marley words saying, “Don’t worry about a thing” … yet a nagging worry is again beginning to consume me. Tomorrow I will be back in another chocolate ceremony. There is no doubt that my energy will again attract more healing opportunities in the area of “unhealed healers.”

Part of me worries that I will simply shut my feelings down, not feeling safe in expressing my emotions. The other part worries that I may explode in anger with some of the same expressions that have come flying out of my mouth during meditations on Thursday and Friday morning.

The only thing I know for sure is that I will attend the ceremony tomorrow with pure love in my heart, trusting that the synchronous flow will work wonders, as it always does.

Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

… this blog is the forth and final installment of an intense healing saga. If you have not done so, I recommend first reading the previous three blogs titled “A Crash Course”, “Confusing Confusion,” and “Hot Sauce Horror” …

Short End Of The Stick

I sit sobbing on Keith’s porch, at the beginning of an impromptu, unscheduled appointment. I can barely explain my crazy frustrations regarding what happened this morning – how after two hours of failed attempts to make a Skype call to a friend, that I had unexpectedly sunk into inexplicable anger at God – at feeling betrayed and abandoned, time and time again throughout my life.

“Close your eyes.” Keith cuts of my explanation. “Find an inner stairway and start climbing. You will come to some type of rooftop balcony. When you get there, find a relaxing chair, sit down, and have a conversation with God.”

Continuing to pass through waves of intense emotion, I imagine this very real conversation in my inner reality. It is one of explicit and profound angry words. I silently swear in agony concerning all the times I have done the “right thing” with such pure and genuine intentions – only to once again get the short end of the stick, feeling abandoned and discarded, dejectedly picking up the pieces one more time.

Truth With A Capital “T”

As usual, the unattached observer in me knows the Truth with a capital “T” – I know that the angry emotions I am feeling and expressing are merely the lowercase truth – that they are subconscious feelings that have unknowingly influenced me from behind the scenes throughout much of my life.

But I also know that the only way, at least for me, to release these lowercase truths is to bring them into full exposure to the light – to feel them to the core, to allow them to pass through and out of me, thus freeing up space for the real “Truth” to blossom.

As I observe this profound volcanic eruption of emotion, the intense heat of the released lava is agonizingly painful.

No Logical Sense

As this initial flow of angry emotion settles, I take the time to share my entire saga of the past few days, telling Keith of my journeys with the Hot Sauce Mom, of my roller-coaster meditations with three-year-old angels, and of every aspect of this intense emotional hurricane.

“Grab the hands of that three-year-old and connect with her.” Keith quickly guides me deeper into meditation.

As I connect with this metaphorical angelic child, I am surprised by the additional angry emotions that surface – not just at God, but also at this beautiful and innocent little angel.

This angry rage is intense – and it makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Struggle To Believe

“I know I am just projecting onto my mother, and onto God,” I share with Keith. “But the anger goes further. I am really angry at all unhealed healers – people who profess to know God, yet refuse to do their own inner work – magical-but-unhealed people who unknowingly use their energy to confuse, invalidate, marginalize, deceive, and injure others.”

Just the mere expression of these words causes my anger and tears to hit a completely new level of intensity as sobs again burst forth.

“Now,” Keith interrupts, “bring in that three-year-old to help you release this emotion.”

“My head is in the way.” I express to Keith in frustration. “As I imagine the assistance, I am still so blocked that I cannot feel it. This only increases my doubts, telling me that this process is not real, that I am making it all up.”

Embracing Imagination

“Just fake it till you make it.” Keith again reminds me of what I now believe to be a divine truth.

The concept still sounds so silly in a logical world – but when I pause and simply embrace the profound truth of my own amazing past experience, I absolutely know that it is only when I drop resistance and embrace an intuitive belief, that the real Truth begins to reveal itself in profound and undeniable ways.

“Just imagine that you can feel the energy, and that it is leaving.” Keith encourages me, while simultaneously assuring me that he himself does feel the energy flow.

“I feel a lot more peaceful.” I express to Keith with relief. “Yet I still cannot actually feel the energy itself.”

Peaceful Pause

Suddenly, I burst into another intense round of sobs.

“It’s just another layer.” Keith lovingly reassures me. “Let it flow.”

In full trust, I allow the emotions to consume me completely – to the point of agonizing, gut-wrenching release. Many times, I have to remind myself to breathe.

Hanging on to my real function as observer, I imagine my little metaphorical angel helping me even more. Soon, I hit a short pause in the emotional storm.

Return To Confusion

“I don’t know if this break is a pause in the emotion,” I express to Keith with confusion, “or if perhaps the energies really are helping me. Right now, I am so angry and confused that I can’t feel anything else. It seems as if I am just giving up and returning to childhood doubt.”

“Good!” Keith surprises me by his response. “This is what happened to you as a child. Feel it!”

Another layer of tears unexpectedly bursts out. Then, a few minutes later – after imagining my little angel helping me – the emotions again dry up, leaving me with several minutes of blank numbness.

“Another layer,” Keith suddenly predicts the future.

I had not even felt it coming, but as Keith’s words land on my ears, another intense round of sobs totally consumes me.

Divine Waiting Room

“Grab the hands of your three-year-old again.” Keith eventually redirects. “Ask her to take you somewhere, or to tell you something.”

“I feel like she is just telling me to love and congratulate myself for where I am at and for what I am doing.” I share with Keith after a few minutes of meditating.

“Where is she taking you?” Keith again asks. “Is that what she is telling you?”

Soon, a new image floods my metaphorical world. I am extremely peaceful and calm, holding hands with this little three-year-old angel, sitting on comfortable chairs in a relaxing waiting room.

Divine Flow

As I sit meditating in this beautiful energy, I get the message.

“Just trust your process.” I feel this smiling little angel whisper softly. “Be calm and peaceful. Sit back, enjoy yourself, and wait for guidance. There is nothing more for you to do right now. All is well. You know you are following a divine flow. Just trust that flow.”

As I reflect on the steps of my amazing journey, I clearly recognize that every synchronous event has happened with perfect timing – every single one. In times that I panicked or pushed, I only created fear and frustration. When I sat back and just glowed in the flow, I created love and trust.

Either way, the synchronous guidance always came along at precisely the right moment.

Trust, Patience, And Compassion

“This was all a setup to teach you this lesson in a more profound way.” Keith adds his own guidance. “It is a lesson reminding you to trust and allow – not only in your own process, but in the processes of others.”

It is so clear that I can either push a process, forcing to the point of confusion and panic – or I can simply trust and joyfully pass the time in this divine waiting room – a divine playground. I can trust that whatever I need will show up exactly on time.

As Keith and I discuss my own looping through a projected God/separation drama, it all begins to make so much sense. This waiting room is a great place where I can jump out of this loop to re-center myself. I have spent a great deal of my life, feeling ignored or victimized in this subconscious loop. Now that I am becoming aware of the pattern, I can skip out of the loop, returning to the waiting room as soon as I am aware of what I am doing.

“Brenda,” Keith confidently shares, “this is all a part of your process. You have to learn trust, patience, and compassion for others that will be helped by you. You had to go through this so you can understand their struggles, so you can be calm and peaceful through it all, even while they are in deep pain.

A Better Teacher

As I ponder in silence, new and profound understanding is beginning to take hold in my heart. For a very long time, I have intellectually understood what happened to me as a child – what happened to shut me down and suppress the creative, intuitive, and energetically connected side of me.

But now, for the first time in my life, as a result of the intense and agonizing journey through which I have passed this week, I understand at a completely different level. This new knowing is no longer in my head. It is a profound and inexplicable knowing that resonates from deep within my heart. It is a knowing that could not have been achieved in any other way.

“Feeling to the core” is a much better teacher than sitting in a classroom or reading a book.

A Tightrope

As I continue feeling the beautiful peaceful energy in this metaphorical waiting room, I keep imagining a beautiful three-year-old angel giggling and holding my hand. I could sit here all day – but as midday approaches, it is time to think about moving on.

As I stand up to leave, however, dizziness consumes me, forcing me to fall back into my chair. I am so lightheaded that I need a momentary breather.

I feel as if I am walking a tightrope. One side of the tightrope represents the intense emotional hurricane of this past week – an overwhelming and confusing storm that has often made me wonder if I am going psycho, creating a feeling of being emotionally bipolar and unstable. This side of the rope is frightening.

On the other side is a strong desire to be normal – to abandon my journey of self-discovery – to return to a familiar life of conformity and fitting in – to go get a normal job, fall back to sleep, and live a life that once seemed so real and fulfilling. That side of the rope is even more frightening.

At times, walking such a thin tightrope does indeed leave me dizzy – but I also know that where I am is perfect. I have all the higher energy support I need to keep me surefooted and moving forward on this beautiful path taking me toward higher vibrations.

Trust Is The Key

After about fifteen minutes of resting and regaining my balance, I give Keith a huge hug of gratitude and begin my journey home.

Peace fills my heart as I contemplate the power of this new metaphor of a “divine waiting room.” I am at a point where I know that I can no longer walk this thin tightrope all by myself, using only logic and reason – and I know that learning to further trust and utilize the higher energies is my key.

I trust that when I raise my vibrations, I will have the courage to go wherever the light leads me, following an amazing flow. The flow may take me into deeper emotional release, or it may guide me to sit in a meditative pillar of light. Both are perfect and neither is wrong – and in fact, both can occur simultaneously. I need only to trust and to follow my own higher energies – the flow of my own being – the flow of my own soul.

And when the guidance seems to pause, rather than pushing and struggling in disconnected panic, I can simply rest, relax and giggle, hanging out in my waiting room, trusting that the flow will resume with perfect synchronicity and timing.

Floating In The Clouds

I am emotionally exhausted when I arrive back at my apartment, but have no time to crash or rest as I spend the afternoon going to lunch with a brand new friend from London. It is only later that I have time to take notes, to do a little integrating of a beautiful day, and to then watch the first movie of the Harry Potter series – losing myself in the world of innocent magic.

To my initial shock, Sunday morning begins with a partial repeat of Saturday – with an internal battle of internet frustration. I do my best to bring in light and to sit in a waiting room, but it is only when I sit holding energetic hands with a real-life angel, that peace finally fills and overflows from my heart.

In the midst of a beautiful Skype call with a dear friend in Arizona – a conversation in which each of us first hits tears – we both suddenly light up with radiant unconditional love. During the final thirty minutes of that amazing long-distance connection, we both feel as if we are about to float away in the clouds.

I love how the Universe works.

Curiosity And Nervous Anticipation

As I sit once again on Keith’s magical porch, I find it difficult to believe that it is already December 4, 2011. I have now been working with my favorite Chocolate Shaman, nearly full time, for an entire year. How time has zoomed by!

Twenty-two of us initially crowd onto Keith’s small porch, one of whom is a woman from Canada who recognized me on the street after having read part of my blog prior to her trip to San Marcos. Also among those present for this Sunday chocolate ceremony are every one of the people onto whom I have silently projected in recent weeks – every one of the beautiful people that have triggered me as being unhealed healers or fixers, etc…

Right now, I feel nothing but emotional peace and pure unconditional love for every person on the porch – but given the intense nature of this past week’s emotional hurricane, I remain deeply curious and nervous to see where the flow of today’s journey might lead.

Deeply Relating

As the glow meditation gets underway, I experience a strong feeling of nausea in my abdomen – as if I literally want to vomit physically. As I further meditate, I focus on surrendering to the physical feelings and churning energies with no conscious resistance – yet the nausea persists. I simply observe and allow.

As Keith begins his individual rounds, he first works with several other people across the porch. Everything he does with those people affects and triggers me deeply. I profoundly relate their processes to how I myself feel as an empath who remains so shutdown that I often struggle to understand and embrace just what it is I do – just now learning to consciously allow higher energies to participate in my healing process.

As two separate women reach deep emotional release, I simultaneously tear up and feel their pain right along with them. When their tears slow down, so do mine.

Suddenly, Keith turns back to work with me.

Doing It Myself

“Am I feeling their emotions or my own?” I ask Keith with confusion and curiosity, still not logically understanding what I am doing. “My heart is strong and radiating, yet I feel and relate to their pain deeply.”

Keith assures me that I am feeling their pain, but that I am also finding the same pain inside of me, further processing it myself.

“Release that pain to the higher energies.” Keith again encourages me. “You don’t need to process this inside of yourself anymore.”

I realize that I will likely engage in lifetimes of agonizing emotional work if I continue to attempt to process the emotions of others (especially in groups) in this way. Again, I focus on a ball of light in front of me, while imagining these emotions moving out to the angels for transmutation.

Nausea Nothingness

After Keith guides me to sit in meditation with the nausea in my abdomen – to get to know it better – he moves on to work with a young man seated next to me. I pay close attention, having learned that the work of others always relates in some way to my own.

What this man shares with Keith is beautiful – how he is getting out of his mind – simply allowing without thinking – letting go of insecurities regarding a need to know “how” – observing himself – observing, observing, observing – not trying, not pushing – just observing.

Everything this young man says is beautiful, deeply resonating as if it were my own guides whispering these words as advice for me. After Keith moves on, I simply meditate next to this young man, feeling his high vibrational energy, allowing myself to be raised-up in his energetic wake.

I am no longer trying to do anything other than observing and breathing love into myself. As my crown begins to tingle, I also feel powerful expansion peacefully vibrating in my heart. The nausea quickly dissolves into nothingness.

Powerful Validation

As my heart reaches full power, I gradually imagine my love expanding to connect with every single person on the porch – especially with the ones onto whom I had confusingly projected so much unexpressed judgment during the last ceremony. I leave no one out. I am radiating joy and giggling with delight as I experience the sensation of pure love spreading from my heart, filling the entire porch.

Perhaps ten minutes later, Keith suddenly stops what he is doing across the porch, briefly turns to face me, and begins to speak.

“Wow, Brenda,” Keith surprises me, “you are being really powerful today.”

I love such outside validation. I know what I feel is real, unconditionally loving, and genuine. But it is so wonderful to receive feedback that someone else, in addition to me, can actually feel what I am doing. I eagerly anticipate the day when my sensitivities will develop to the point that I will be able to provide similar feedback to others.

Familiar Methods

After an empath training in which I feel more connected than ever before, I begin to participate in a process in which we assist a woman in the middle of the porch. In the midst of a short head-struggle with self-doubt about how to “connect with her,” I suddenly take a step back.

“My heart knows exactly what to do!” Jedi voices silently shout out with deep power.

I have never understood the “what or how” … but I do know that my heart is independently powerful – it does not now need, nor has it ever needed, instructions from my head.

“Of course,” I exclaim with delight. “The way I connect as an empath is the same thing I do with any of my dear friends. I radiate heart-love to them, I listen to intuitions, and if I feel guided to say anything verbally, I do so. I have been doing this beautifully for years.”

Slow Down

“Keith,” I eventually interrupt. “I need your help. As I connect more powerfully than ever before, I feel this horizontal line of pain across my heart chakra. Is this fear about what I am doing?”

Keith agrees that what I am feeling as a physical metaphor is indeed fear. Rather than fighting this fear, I have simply been observing it, deeply curious as to why I would be afraid while at the same time feeling so much loving power.

“Brenda,” Keith soon responds. “I’m getting that you are trying to push your heart opening process a little too hard.”

I agree that some inner part of me is still afraid of opening up this heart-love any further right now – telling me that it is time to slow down and pace myself.

Past Terrors, New Confidence

As one point, while I continue meditating in powerful loving vibrations, Keith points out to someone how their energy is being dramatic and slightly disruptive. To my surprise, when this person asks the group for feedback, I speak up – finding my voice and lovingly speaking my truth, generously offering my own feedback.

I used to be terrified of providing such feedback to anyone, especially if there was any chance that my words might be controversial, twisted, or rejected. Such childhood fears seem to be literally dissolving, returning to the nothingness from whence they came.

I just giggle at how my self-confidence seems to be expanding – as is my ability to speak honestly from my heart.

No Feedback Required

After a beautiful ceremony comes to loving conclusion, I sit on my cushion for more than an hour. First, I experience an amazing connecting conversation with the person to whom I had offered feedback. This person actually thanks me for how my loving words had helped him to understand what he was doing. Then, one by one, as people filter out, I lovingly hug and briefly chat with nearly every person that I had previously judged after that crazy “I am such a looser for being so judgmental” ceremony on Wednesday.

On that difficult day, just four days ago, I had felt like a failure – a fraud that would never make it as a healer. Today I know the opposite to be true. I overflow with unconditional love for all. I know that my heart has powerfully assisted in the work of others – not only on an individual level, but also with the whole group. I simply sat back as the observer, giggling and vibrating – watching my heart do what it somehow already knows how to do.

Normally I crave feedback. Today, my heart requires no feedback at all.

Loving The Ending

This has been an agonizing-but-amazing journey – one that is now a top candidate among the most emotionally excruciating experiences of my life. The frightening roller-coaster ride began ten days ago when I received the first-ever hate comment on my blog – an event that made me giggle – an event for which I will be forever grateful.

Then I was unexpectedly treated to a “Crash Course” in being an empath – blindsided with experiences revealing a lifetime of unknowingly inhaling the emotional pain of others – taking me to the point of saying “If this is how it feels to be an empath, then I don’t want it” – taking me back to frightful depths of childhood pain, fear, and chaotic confusion.

As the whiplash-inducing journey continued, my “Confusing Confusion” only got stronger as I dug ever deeper into the bottomless reservoirs of repressed childhood anger, sadness, rebellion, and hopeless surrender. The emotional craziness was increasingly overwhelming, but I trusted the process and went ever deeper.

Next, I was shell-shocked by “Hot Sauce Horror” while exploring the psychological trauma of childhood discipline – a journey of diving to the agonizing depths of feeling my magical lights being snuffed out – of experiencing the creative, intuitive, right-brained magic of my soul being systematically suppressed until it all but vanished, being replaced by logical people pleasing.

It has been an unpredictable emotional hurricane taking me all over the spectrum – deep agonizing pain, vibrational highs, emotional trauma, and profound spiritual insights. To top it off, I have repeatedly explored intense repressed anger at God and higher energies while delving ever deeper into the intricacies of a God/separation drama.

Through it all, I have somehow managed to dig in my fingernails, barely hanging on as a detached observer while simultaneously agonizing in the actual pain as I surrendered to the emotions, letting them consume me, fully immersing myself in a journey of “know myself.” I could never have understood as deeply as I do now, had I not allowed myself to sink to those frightening depths.

I would not wish such a wild roller coaster ride onto anyone – yet I must admit with sheer delight – that I do indeed I do love the ending.

My journey is far from over, but I giggle with delight while enjoying a temporary breather – one that provides me with powerful time to write and integrate. I only pray that this “temporary breather” is not just the eye of another hurricane.

Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

… this blog is the third installment of an intense healing saga. If you have not done so, I recommend first reading the two blogs titled “A Crash Course” and “Confusing Confusion” …

As I arise on Thursday morning, the first day of December 2011, a memory of something Keith said yesterday – something I had totally forgotten about until now – suddenly forces itself into waking consciousness.

“Brenda,” Keith had matter-of-factly asked me during one point of yesterday’s ceremony, “have you heard anything about that woman who posted a YouTube video on the internet regarding how she used hot chili sauce to discipline her children?”

As this memory surfaces, my mood remains depressed, self-loathing, feeling like a looser for having experienced so many judgmental emotions in yesterday’s chocolate ceremony.

In this low vibration state, the thought of searching out such a video on the internet appeals to me. Intuitions strongly guide me that the video might actually help in my process – that there is a synchronous reason Keith had come up with such an unexpected, out-of-context statement in the middle of ceremony – and that there is a reason that this memory has, only now, flashed back into full awareness.

A Mouthy Kid

When I first wrote about my childhood, in an autobiography that is now a set-aside work-on-hold, I had dedicated only a single paragraph to frequent memories of being punished as a child. In that writing I talked briefly of how I had, at many times during my younger years, been mouthy and sarcastic – and how, in addition to spankings, I had been punished by having my mouth washed out with soap or having cayenne pepper sprinkled on my tongue.

At the time of that writing, I believed my parents had been doing the right thing as they struggled to discipline and train an often rebellious and disobedient child (me). I became such a successful product of the citizen factory that I believed my punishment to be correct and even deserved, writing it off in my writing as being insignificant silliness, hardly even worth mentioning.

Just this last spring, as I sobbed one day on the porch over an issue of deep childhood shutdown, several porch-friends had gasped in horror, referring to the punishments I had received as being terrible child abuse.

“No, no, no,” I had firmly defended my parents with a smile, “you don’t understand. It was not abuse. I knew my parents loved me, and they were simply using a method of punishment that was culturally accepted at the time, trying to teach me to conform as best they could.”

Hot Sauce Mom

As I sit in mild depression, I spend about ten minutes performing an internet search before I zero in on an assortment of videos dealing with a mother from Alaska – a woman named Jessica – a woman who was struggling with the discipline of a seven-year-old adopted child. To my shock and surprise, another synchronous fact soon pushes my triggers. Jessica was, at the time, a leader of the children’s organization in a local congregation of the same religion in which I had been raised.

In her frustration, in what I believe to have been a genuine cry for help, Jessica asked her young daughter to film her as she disciplined this young boy. She then sent the video clip to the Dr. Phil show, begging for help.

Once the clip was aired on live television, it quickly caused nationwide uproar and controversy. Jessica was eventually charged and convicted of child abuse – but given a suspended sentence. I will provide no more background here. For anyone interested in more details, feel free to do an internet search for “Hot Sauce Mom” and you will find large quantities of information.

Emotional Interruptions

Today, as I attempt to write – a full eight days after watching these videos – I am overwhelmed with emotion. My heart breaks, and intense sobs consume me, as I again relive the agonizing journey of that painful day.

Screeeeeech … I interrupt this writing for an emergency emotional interruption. Full details will come in a subsequent blog. Whenever I write, I literally go back in time, re-experiencing the emotions, integrating the processes, locking-in the healing.

But as I was writing yesterday, I was unprepared for the emotions that would again slam me to the mat. Being unable to continue writing, I Instead knowingly surrendered to the energetic flow – a synchronous flow that further guided me into a roller coaster ride of deepening emotions – a flow taking me to some of the most agonizing depths yet – and a flow returning me to new and beautiful insight-filled highs.

After that intense emotional journey, additional writing proved to be impossible. Today I attempt to resume my story – again going back in time to Thursday, December 1, 2011.

Neither Insignificant Nor Silly

Seconds into watching the first video of Jessica disciplining her seven-year-old adopted child, I am sobbing. I am not just feeling the young boy’s pain; I am literally re-experiencing my own agonizing trauma as a child.

What I am viewing is not insignificant and silly discipline – not just a loving parent doing her best to teach her child how to conform – it is outright emotional terror and psychological abuse. Jessica seems “fully restrained,” but is extremely frustrated and angry. She yells sternly at the terrorized little boy, demanding that he answer her angry onslaught of punishment with responses of surrender and complete submission – demanding that he fully admit his “horrible” transgression of getting into a little trouble at school and then lying to her about it (because he was terrified of the punishment that would follow).

Heartbreak and Sobbing

My heart caves in and collapses as Jessica pours hot sauce into the child’s mouth. Out-of-control tears roll down my cheeks as I hear his audible-but-muffled sounds of terrorized whimpering. He can make no other sounds because his mouth is filled with hot sauce – hot sauce that he is not allowed to swallow nor spit out. Finally, after a continued barrage of yelling, Jessica instructs the little boy to spit into the sink, and then forces him into the shower, where he screams out in emotional agony as she turns on the cold water.

I quickly lose what little composure I have left as I begin to sob uncontrollably. The scene is heartbreaking.

Once again, nine days later, as I engage in a second attempt to write about this, I am briefly overwhelmed with new rounds of intense sobs. This time, however, I think I am now capable of continuing my writing.

Yelps Of Terror

I am devastated as I relive the emotions of my own angry and desperate childhood attempts to defend myself, of my inability to explain myself, and my defenselessness against a mother who was frustrated and determined to teach me how to behave.

In my mother’s loving defense, I have no videos to watch of my own childhood discipline. I have no concrete memories of exactly what it was that I might have done to deserve such firm treatment, nor do I have clear memories of her precise state of mind when she punished me.

What I do have are intense memories of feeling angry and rebellious, of trying in futility to verbally defend myself, of being forced to submit to humiliating admission of my guilt, of having no choice but to surrender to the adults in charge, of simply having to give up my own individual will. Firm-but-vague memories also tell me that such disciplinary situations were not uncommon – that when I was younger, they took place on an irregular-but-frequent basis.

Also, I profoundly remember that I was not the only one fighting. I emotionally feel the angry and frustrated words being thrown my way as I struggled to run away from hands that tightly gripped my wrists – from hands that forced my jaw open while sprinkling cayenne pepper onto my gagging tongue. I profoundly remember my own agonizing yelps of terror as I felt that hot pepper on my tender tongue. My mother was extremely frustrated with me as I fought to defend and protect my honor.

Again, as I write in the present day, I sink into more rounds of intense sobs.

Worshipping Conformity

After a breakfast of six marshmallows, I go into my dark bedroom, imagining myself hiding out in my own little “personal hell” closet. First, I allow the process of intense emotional release to consume me fully. I intuitively know that this pain is something that I must feel to the core – that the sobs, coughing, and piles of tissues are a necessary part of this journey to “know myself.”

Eventually I fall asleep, zoning out for over three hours. At around 12:30 p.m., I briefly step out to the kitchen for a spoonful of peanut butter and a banana before returning to my metaphorical closet, where I begin to meditate. As I ponder about my recent run-in with ever-increasing fixing energy, the insights begin to flow.

“Wow,” I suddenly realize. “I’m intensely judgmental of anyone who professes to be spiritual, but whose words and actions do not resonate with my own connection to higher energies.”

“I am angry at unhealed healers – people who profess to have a divine connection with God and then use that connection to force their unhealed projections and dysfunction onto others.” I further ponder.

“That is where this anger toward my mother comes from.” The flash bulbs again light up. “In the name of God and Religion, my free will was squashed, my inner intuitive lights were snuffed out, confidence to be creative was destroyed, right-brained intuitions all but disappeared, and conformity became the object of my worship.”

Confusing Memories

After a hunk of cheese and a bowl of popcorn, I return to my dark cave for further meditation.

I begin to ponder deeper into the shutdown process – attempting to remember portions of my childhood magic.

Tears again flow in waves as I ponder how deeply I must have hurt when this creative magic was being squashed by psychic energy that forced me to be a rational minded robot. There was absolutely nothing I could have done to stop the process.

Confusing memories flood my mind – memories of the mouthy sarcastic rebellions that were firmly squelched – and memories of how I was such a mommy-pleasing angel. I now understand that both were absolutely true. I played the role of angel until I could take no more suppression. After a period of rebellion at the shackles and chains, followed by punishments, I again resumed the role of people-pleasing angel. Soon, as my will faded, the people-pleasing conformer was all that remained.

At Wits End

As I further ponder about the “Hot Sauce Mom” from the YouTube videos, I can honestly say that I understand her intense pain and frustration – her inability to raise a child that is speculated to be suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder – a result of the horrendous conditions of his having spent five years in a Russian orphanage.

Jessica is indeed trying to teach her adopted little boy how to properly behave in his religious and social culture – I can feel her desperation of believing that if she doesn’t teach him to be a people-pleasing sheep, that he will end up living a hellish and troubled life. Jessica is indeed frantic and at her wits end.

Just as I can only imagine Jessica’s emotions, I can only imagine my own mother’s frustration as she attempted to train me to embrace and conform to her beliefs. And I can also clearly remember my own intense frustration and fear as I too once tried to firmly discipline my own children from a similar mindset.

From today’s level of understanding, I feel slightly ashamed – yet I lovingly know that I was genuinely doing the best I knew how as a parent. With all of my heart, I also know that my mother (and Jessica) were also genuinely doing the only thing they knew how to do at the time.

Dying On The Inside

How I wish I had more concrete physical memories to back up my obvious emotional trauma. The emotions I feel today are undeniably real. With all of my heart I absolutely know I was psychologically and emotionally traumatized as a young child – yet with all my heart I also know that it was done from a motive of love.

Whenever I look at my first and third grade photos, one thing is absolutely clear in profound and vivid memory. I clearly remember the emotions that I experienced while standing in front of that camera – I remember posing for that camera as if it were yesterday.

I hated how I looked and I knew I was ugly. I did not know how to smile right, and I was embarrassed and terrified of what people would say if my appearance and smile did not turn out just right. To this day, I can see and feel that pain in my eyes. While I may have been a people-pleasing angel on the outside – at age six, I was already dying on the inside.

Scratching The Surface

After a profound journey of intense emotion, I can take no more meditation or processing – and I still definitely am not up to cooking. Soon, I gobble down two already-boiled eggs, an apple, and a few slices of stale bread. I finish off the crazy afternoon and evening simply losing myself in movies. I too, am at my wits end. I am exhausted and my eyes are once again so red that I can barely open them.

As I drift to dreamland on this first Thursday of December, I desperately hope that my intense emotional journey has now come to completion … but a strong feeling tells me that I have only begun to scratch the surface.

Focusing Futility

Early Friday morning, during a 6:00 a.m. meditation, I experience nice energy, while remembering something Keith had told me on Monday. He had lovingly suggested that I would be manifesting tearful opportunities that would provide me with an opportunity to practice using higher energies in an emotional release process.

“If more emotions come up,” I ponder with love, “I will be more focused on trying to use higher energies to facilitate the process.

But emotions are the last thing I want to manifest. I desperately desire to begin writing again. However, by 10:00 a.m., an energetic cloud of confusion in my head is so uncomfortable that I throw up my hands in desperation. All attempts to focus are futile. Intuitions tell me to go in my room to meditate.

“I am being guided to work with higher energies.” Silent Jedi voices whisper in my heart as I head to my bedroom, light some candles, turn off the lights, and close the door.

Know Myself

For more than an hour, I meditate into and out of increasingly intense childhood pain, asking the light to guide me gently through the process. Each time I reach a point of stability, I again ask for more light, which almost immediately brings deeper awareness of childhood emotional suffering, triggering yet another layer of agonizing release.

I do not know if I am inept at using the light, or perhaps the light itself is what takes me deeper into this release process. Intuition tells me it is the latter.

The tears, sobs, and coughing are more intense than anything I have yet experienced while exploring childhood pain. I know I am making huge progress into my healing goal of “Know Myself” – into the process of fully understanding what happened, of feeling those emotions to the core, and of releasing those densities and beliefs to the light.

An Inside Out Release

At one point in this process, I quietly fling swear words and hateful expressions in the direction of my mother. As the observer, I know the words to be lies, yet the buried emotions are real and seem to require throat-chakra expression before healing can take place.

Repeatedly, I experience the emotions of a child whose magical light is being snuffed out in the name of a judgmental and fear-inducing God. Many times, during this intense sobbing release, I feel as if my throat is being turned inside out as I heave dense energies out of my gut, invisibly hurling them out of my mouth.

Three-Year-Old Angel

Once the intensity of my release process begins to diminish, I focus increasingly on attempts to connect with more light. As I try to visualize a magical angel in front of me, I experience fierce resistance. Remembering past terrors of my inner children toward such energies, I call a metaphorical meeting in my heart, discussing the idea with little Bobby and Sharon.

“No way!” I get a firm response. My inner children refuse to connect with a metaphorical angel right now.

Finally, a new idea floods my mind.

“What if I ask a three-year-old little-girl angel to help us?” I ask my inner children.

As I pose the meditative question, I visualize a giggling, playful little girl with magical powers and beautiful wings.

Clenched Resistance

“Surely such a tiny playful angel will pose no threat of adult manipulation or control.” I ponder with delight as I soon feel the hesitant inner agreement of my little children.

As I imagine myself energetically connecting with this tiny angel, attempting to look into her eyes, I expect to find that feeling of giggling joy.

But instead, I suddenly experience a new round of deeper-than-ever emotions – agonizing emotions of anger and hatred, accompanied by more inside-out throat heaving

I again ponder Keith’s words from late Monday afternoon – words that told me I would be manifesting tears as a means of practicing the use of higher energies. I feel lost in the pain, incapable of moving forward, but trust that the higher energies will indeed step up and help me if I will but allow.

Soon, I follow a strong and sudden intuition – one guiding me to focus intensely on relaxing all of the clenched muscles in my body.

More Of The Same

As the image of a “little child whose heart has been broken” anchors itself immovably in my mind, I begin to picture myself as being that innocent child.

My light has gone out; my heart is broken; I feel devastated – betrayed by God, parents, and church. I am untrusting of any authority that professes to help me, because they are all the same. They manipulate, condescend, and make me feel stupid, acting as if they know everything while I know nothing.

I trust only myself. Letting others help me only results in more of the same disempowerment.

“I will never ask for help, ever again.” I hear this part of me cry out.

Perfect And Planned

“It was all perfect.” I again remind myself, knowing that I chose my parents before this lifetime – that I chose my religion and my birth circumstances – and that I chose to go through this shutdown process for divinely inspired reasons.

“Nothing is wrong here.” I repeat to myself over and over again. “I am not a victim. I am just feeling the energy of how I felt victimized as a child.”

Yes, I know that both perspectives are true. I know that I suffered great emotional trauma as a child, and I know that it was all perfect and planned.

An Angelic Butler

As I sit cross-legged in meditation, I beg the metaphorical three-year-old angel to help me.

“Please take some of these painful emotions from me.” I plead. “Please, please fill me with light.”

I sit waiting for the response, desperately needing some type of higher energy assistance to ease the burden of my agonizing process. Finally, a new metaphor unexpectedly floods my mind.

“This little angel is just a butler.” The Jedi voices whisper confidently, “She is already serving a huge amount of light on her silver tray, and she is standing equipped and ready to take any emotions that come her way.

“But she cannot do it for me.” The intuitions continue strongly. “That would be a violation of my free will. She cannot fill a hypodermic needle with light and inject it into my heart. She cannot reach inside of me and rip out emotions to which I still cling.”

Restoring Power

“If I want the angel to process my emotional density, I am the one who has to release those emotions.” I clearly understand the metaphor. “And the light I desire is already freely available … I am the one still resisting it.

“I still have a blown fuse in my energy circuits,” Intuitions further clarity, “and my clenching is somehow related to the ongoing resistance that keeps me from allowing the energy to flow.”

Finally, after deep concentrated efforts to relax fully, energy begins to twitch throughout my forearms, hips, and legs. As has happened before, the sensation is extremely uncomfortable, like the waking of a sleeping foot. It feels as if a mild low-voltage current is running nonstop through these areas of my body. Soon, the vibrations and energy flow are less agitated and increasingly peaceful, as beautiful energy begins to flow throughout most of my body.

I know that this is just a small step in restoring the energy flow, but I love it just the same.

A Well-Deserved Compliment

By 1:30 p.m., I am on overload. I cannot handle any more emotional release, and I am starved and all meditated out.

In an effort to reward my little inner children for a job well done, the “three of us” go out for a burger and fries at my favorite hamburger spot in town.

Later that afternoon, during another beautiful extended meditation, I recognize what I see as a huge unspoken compliment to Keith.

“If I were working with any other spiritual teacher that I have ever known,” I ponder with clarity, “I absolutely know I would have packed my bags long ago. If anyone else had guided me to the brink of such painful emotions, I would have long since flipped them off and gone looking for something else – something easier.”

“But somehow, in working with Keith, I resonate powerfully with unfailing confidence that these very emotions – emotions taking me to the deepest reaches of agonizing inner pain – are my ticket to freedom and to connecting with the light – and I am not about to give up my ticket now.”

Strange Sense Of Humor

Late Friday evening, I am peaceful and very relaxed, while feeling simultaneously terrified of going any deeper into this pain. I know I have only arrived at a temporary plateau, but make a tactical decision to spend the night in this peace, taking a break from thinking, knowing that I can resume the journey tomorrow.

To my surprise, when I randomly choose a movie on my computer – a movie I know nothing about – a movie called “Equilibrium” – the story ventures to a bizarre mythical future where all emotions are banned from the planet, where medications are routinely issued to push everything down. Any emotional expression is grounds for immediate execution.

As I ponder the synchronous nature of having unknowingly selected such a movie, I can only giggle. The Universe has a strange sense of humor.

Feel It To Heal It

I want nothing more than to believe that the emotional hurricane is now over, but Saturday morning as I awaken, I begin to experience extremely agitated emotions about something as small and silly as my internet connection not working. Having a flaky internet is a common situation – one that rarely affects me at all.

“F@#K you God,” I eventually blurt out angrily after two hours of unsuccessful struggle to connect via Skype to a dear friend in Arizona.

“Apparently, I am back in my God drama.” I simultaneously giggle and cry with fuming frustration.

I know that I create my reality and that this internet outage is happening for a reason – but these tantrum-like emotions are intense. I am experiencing a sense of pouting rebellion toward higher energies – a sense of livid anger about how I have been repeatedly disappointed, abandoned, let down, rejected, and ignored by higher energies throughout my life. It is a feeling of “Each time I do the right thing, I just get screwed over by God.”

Again, I know these emotions to be silly lies, but their intensity surprises me – overwhelming me. Deep inner voices reassure me that these emotions need to be felt – that they cannot be healed unless I feel them to the core.

A Plea For Help

Finally, after two additional hours of hopeless undirected floundering – bouncing all over the spectrum of possible emotions – I resolve to seek outside help.

I want to write. I do not want to experience another day of agonizing emotional processing. I am reentering so much confusion that I no longer trust myself to assess what I am feeling. Shortly after 9:30 a.m., I step quietly onto Keith’s porch,

“Help Keith,” I beg, “I know you are busy, but I am so lost and confused. I desperately need some guidance – just five minutes of your time to help me understand what is happening…”

I burst into sobs before Keith can even answer.

A Category Five

It seems that after a brief period of eerie calm, the emotional hurricane is back with full strength winds. I have experienced many agonizing emotional journeys during my lifetime, but nothing could ever have prepared me for the intensity of this week’s powerful emotional storm – a storm still shaking me at my core – a storm taking me back to the roots of intense childhood pain. If there ever was such a thing as a category-five emotional hurricane, I am right in the middle of its fiercest winds.

As I prepare to sit down for what will turn into a long private session with Keith, I again run silently through the words of the chorus to what is fast becoming my theme song.

“Close your eyes … this part is scary … take my hand … it wont last long … you will love the ending I promise … when this part of the story is gone.”

“But when is this scary part going to end?” I silently ponder in shock.

To be continued …

Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

… this blog is the second installment of an intense healing saga. If you have not done so, I recommend first reading the blog titled “A Crash Course” …

Pressurized tears beg for soothing release as I finally seat myself on Keith’s magical porch. It is the final Monday in November – but calendars are the furthest thing from my mind. I feel as if I am on the literal brink of being committed to an insane asylum.

The floodgates of tearful sobs quickly burst open as I begin to share details of the crazy out-of-control emotional roller-coaster ride on which I now find myself. The slow and difficult climbs to energetic heights followed by wild and crazy falls that suddenly appear out of nowhere – the unanticipated emotions that fly in my face around every sharp curve – all of these unexpected and inexplicable mood shifts have me paralyzed in fright.

One-Size-Fits-All

Keith’s first words surprise me as I finally finish filling him in with my detailed stories.

“Perfect!” Keith shares with loving confidence. “You are right at the place where your little child was at prior to the time of your shutdown.”

Keith goes on to explain the obvious – something I can no longer deny – that as a child I was so overwhelmed and terrified by the crazy barrage of emotional densities that I could no longer maintain my sanity. I absolutely reached a place of crying out to higher energies in pain, desperately exclaiming that, “If this is what it feels like to have this magic, then I don’t want it. It is too painful, too scary, and too much trouble.”

Yes, I intuitively know that this is exactly how I felt as a tiny child in a crazy world of stuffed emotions and organized sheep training – a world where the adults that were supposed to help me were instead the ones who were squishing me into a one-size-fits-all religious/cultural box. I was overwhelmed and terrified, desperately trying to blow the fuse on my magic. It was my only way to survive.

Too Much Work

“I’m terrified right now!” I exclaim to Keith. “Based on what happened this morning, I now know that if I maintain constant vigilance and work with focused attention, that I can keep these emotions outside of me – and that I can send them to higher energies for transmutation.”

“But it is so much work!” I add through stressed tears. “I am frightened that I will not be able to maintain such a balanced and grounded spiritual state – afraid that I have to be totally on guard, and that if I make one false step in a moment of innocent distraction, that I will slip and fall, once again losing myself in the emotional depths.”

A Frightened Child

“I don’t know how to tell which emotions are mine and which belong to others.” I express my feeling of desperation.

“Perfect again.” Keith banters back at me. “This is also where you were as a child.”

As I briefly pause and meditate, I can indeed feel that overwhelming confusion of my frightened and stuck inner child.

“Connect with that child.” Keith guides me.

Waves Of Doubt

As I attempt repeatedly to meditate into a connection with little Sharon, I get the strange sensation that the lights keep going out. Part of me does not want to connect as I experience waves of doubt.

“Treat those waves of doubt like real waves.” Keith further guides me. “Let them just flow as they approach the shore and then break onto the sandy beach, disappearing into nothingness.”

“Let the doubts flow through you,” Keith adds, “but do not buy them. Now, connect with that little child …”

Fears And Tears

Again, I try connecting with my child while piles of tear-saturated tissues build up on the ground beside me. I do not understand why I find this task to be such a struggle.

“When you are crying,” Keith shares comforting insights, “you are connected to that child. You are feeling your child’s pain. This pain is exactly what you were feeling when you decided to shutdown your magic.”

I continue to experience inexplicable resistance to partnering with higher energies. I am still not sure if I can consciously make this connection. Each time I try, I end up sinking into deep fears and tears.

A Higher Love

“If you don’t do this today,” Keith validates my fear, “then that is just fine. Even if it takes days or weeks, that is fine too.”

I love how Keith frequently reassures me that my higher energies love me so much and so unconditionally that they do not care if I take minutes or multiple lifetimes to process through these emotional densities and belief systems. From a Higher Self perspective, there is nothing but pure non-attachment, genuine unconditional love, and absolute recognition that everything is perfect, regardless of how long the process takes me.

Waves Of Tears

“Bring in some light,” Keith again encourages me, “even if it is just a tiny drop.”

“I don’t know how.” I exclaim with frustration. “I feel myself resisting and can’t do it.”

“Just express your intent and then step back … trusting and allowing.” Keith coaches me.

As I finally allow what feels like a tiny drop of light, I sink deeper into painful waves of tears. Each wave is initially intense and overwhelming – but suddenly feels as if it hits a wall, breaking on the sand before leaving me numb and detached for another minute or two. Then the next wave hits.

Before And After

“I’m experiencing feelings of intense hopelessness and confusion.” I express to Keith after enduring many such waves in this intense emotional surf.

“More light.” Keith responds.

“I don’t want this ability if this is what it means.” I express in frustration.

“More light.” Keith again responds as a few more breakers rub my face in the sand.

Finally, I experience no emotion at all – simply being overcome with numbness and indifference.

“You have just experienced the ‘before, during, and after’,” Keith shares.

When I query Keith with confusion, he explains that I just re-experienced the hopelessness and confusion that led to my shutdown, the pain and agony of having to go through it, and the complete numbness that I felt afterward.

Trained And Chained

I begin to ramble a little, talking about the conditioning of a society of sheep, expressing how I feel as if I was methodically turned into a faithful and unquestioning sheep – and then branded.

“This IS what actually happened to you,” Keith responds with confidence.

After a few minutes of silent meditation, I see an inner visual of myself as a sheep, with my front and back legs bound in chains and shackles.

“Not only was I trained to be a sheep.” I express to Keith in deep painful recognition. “But I was also chained as a sheep.

This image causes me to pass through another round of deep sobbing.

Locked Away

“I just connected with little three-year-old Sharon in her cage in my abdomen.” I suddenly share with Keith after a long meditative pause. “But this time, I feel her wearing chains and shackles and the cage door is locked.”

I briefly reflect on how I first found my little inner child hiding in an unlocked cage down in my solar plexus. It was almost exactly one year ago. It took me nearly a week of humbling myself, of winning her trust, before I could coax her to leave her cage and join me in my heart. She was afraid of the adult me, afraid that I would try to manipulate and control her all over again.

A Robotic Sheep

I meditate in this metaphorical scene for an extended period, gradually connecting more and more with this troubled little child. She is frightened and struggling for survival, hiding in the dark, fraught with emotion and pain.

Soon, I imagine myself as having climbed into the cage with her, holding her in my arms, loving her, caring for her, reassuring her that all will be OK while simultaneously re-experiencing her painful emotions.

I sob for nearly ten minutes as I suffer through Sharon’s fear and hopelessness – her sense of loss and futility – an absolute knowing that there is no way out of her prison, that all is lost, there is no point, her magic is gone, and that she is condemned to live out her life as a robotic sheep.

Profound Validation

“Brenda, notice that you are in the cage with her.” Keith breaks the silence after nearly fifteen minutes of intensely emotional meditation.

“Yeah, I have been in there with her for quite a while now.” I giggle back to Keith in the midst of my deep emotional tears.

I had not said one word to Keith since originally mentioning that I had discovered my little girl in her cage. Keith’s feedback provides me with much-needed and profound validation that my inner journey is indeed being guided by higher energies.

Lost Light

“What else did she lose besides her magic?” Keith puzzles me by his next question.

At first, I am confused – wondering just what Keith might be fishing for – just where this new nudge might take me.

Slowly I begin to think of things that were lost when my magic was squelched. Each answer I give is separated by ten or twenty seconds of deep pondering silence.

“She lost her joy … the glint in her eye … her freedom to be herself … her ability to truly play … her creativity and self confidence … her ability to step out of the box … her passion for life … her uniqueness … her connection with the divine … her ability to speak her truth.”

“Oh my gosh!” I finally interrupt the silence with one last statement. “It is dark in here. She lost her divine connection to the light.”

Keep The Light Glowing

“Bring a little light into that cage.” Keith finally responds to my meditative rambling. “Perhaps even just a small candle.”

As I sink deeper into meditation, I try to imagine a candle, but what I end up seeing is a tiny light bulb – like a clear Christmas light – dimly shining inside of the cage with us. As we are suddenly illuminated by this faint glow, I unlock the cage and help Sharon remove the shackles from her arms and legs.

I then begin to lovingly guide little Sharon, suggesting that she might need to use this cage as a place of safe refuge for the next fifty-two years, and that when I am finally ready, in early December 2010, I will come back to find her.

“You will be instrumental in keeping this spark of light glowing while I am asleep.” I continue sharing with my precious little girl. “You will eventually bring this light back to me as I start to wake up, helping me to remember who I am, and helping to guide us both to regain the magic that we have now lost.”

The next thing I do is invite Sharon to bring her cage up into my heart, both of us knowing full well that she will eventually be pushed back down into the solar plexus.

Dancing Energies

“Wow! Did she ever keep that spark alive!” I tearfully exclaim to Keith as I explain what just happened. “Even with all of my lifelong struggles, I have never let go of that genuine quest for unconditional love.”

“Beautiful.” Keith responds. “Now bring in more light … a drop or a small stream … whatever is ready.”

For most of the next hour, I meditate in silence, concentrating on my breath, and breathing energy into my body while focusing on allowing more light. I observe with fascination as pleasurable energy and painful densities take turns dancing around in my body. Gradually the pains dissolve as peaceful loving energies spread throughout my body, leaving me in relaxed and pleasurable peace.

Growing Sensitivities

“Ah Brenda,” Keith eventually interrupts. “Now you are moving into a beautiful state of energy. What you are bringing in is self-love.”

“How do I distinguish self-love from other types of energies?” I ask with curiosity.

“Right now you can’t,” Keith responds, “but eventually you will be able to tell them apart. It will come in time.”

My interest is peaked by Keith’s confidence that eventually I will be able to fine-tune my energy sensitivities. I have been blocked for so very long. Part of me loves the thought, and another continues to throw up doubting roadblocks.

No Ordinary Itch

A few minutes later, I am shocked by an intense itching sensation that begins in my right eye. After gently scratching a couple of times, intuitions tell me to back off and simply observe – that this is no ordinary itch.

I begin to give Keith a play-by-play description of the amazing sensations that stun me with metaphorical symbolism. The itching spreads rapidly, consuming both eyes. The urge to itch is so intense that I struggle to consciously restrain myself as I continue being the observer.

For nearly fifteen minutes, this intense itching vibrates through my eyeballs. Gradually the itching fades, relaxing from the outer corners toward the center, with the inner corner of my right eye being the final spot to itch. Suddenly, one last burst of itching then pulses in the left eye.

“This is a metaphor for your inner vision waking up.” Keith shares the obvious interpretation. “It is vision that you once had that is now beginning to come back to you.”

The power of the metaphor is so unusual and all consuming that I cannot help but be impressed – and I cannot deny what just happened.

Short Term Forecast: More Tears

Throughout the next hour, I remain in mostly-silent meditation, filling myself with ever-increasing energy vibrations, experiencing the occasional random mild itching that briefly travels through ears, throat, upper chest, cheeks, and even my upper lip.

Finally, at around 6:00 p.m., Keith lets me know that it is time for him to get on with his evening.

Before I leave, now floating on air, Keith gives me amazing feedback on the way I finally allowed a little more help from the higher energies during an emotional release process.

“I have watched you today as you consistently moved through an emotional release process with very little, if any, resistance in doing so.” Keith congratulates me. “There was no sabotaging, no throwing wrenches into the works. You did great work today, paying attention, following metaphors, and making great progress in using the light to help.”

“I am feeling guided to tell you,” Keith then shares something I am not quite sure I want to hear. “You will most likely be manifesting periods of tears in the short term – tears that will give you opportunities to practice the new energy abilities that you are opening up.”

I Needed That

I am flying high in peaceful energies, but have a tiny knot in my stomach as I contemplate just what kind of tears I may manifest in this ongoing “crash course” in empathic energy work.

After a quick plate of rice and beans, I am so exhausted that I am in bed shortly after 7:00 p.m., but a little inner nudge then guides me to ask the higher energies to merge with me, to fill me, to give me whatever love and reassurance that would be appropriate at this point in my journey.

To my delight, I spend the next couple of hours basking in the most delightful energy show that I have been given in a very long time. I really needed that.

Hopelessly Stuck

Tuesday, I delight in a long day of writing, during what turns out to be the peaceful eye of a very intense emotional hurricane. It is not until early Wednesday afternoon, during the final chocolate ceremony of November, that the eye moves on and the winds again begin to pick up.

As the glow meditation proceeds as usual, my emotions are anything but.

For thirty-six hours I have been peaceful, vibrating in higher energy, delighted by the calm loving presence that fills my soul. Suddenly I am experiencing strong resistance, judgment toward others on the porch, a feeling of profound frustration, and a sensation of being absolutely and hopelessly stuck.

Slow Progress

When it finally becomes my turn to work with Keith, I express my utter confusion.

“Keith, I am again overwhelmed by emotions that make no sense.” I share while repressing an urge to burst into tears. “I feel like I am doing the same thing that I did on Sunday, again bringing in the emotions of others, but I am so confused and unsure of myself that I do not have a clue how to deal with it.”

“Connect with the light and send this density to the angels for processing.” Keith quickly guides me to do what I already know I should be able to do, but cannot.

“I’m trying to get out of my head and simply allow.” I share with Keith in frustration. “But I am still so insensitive to what I am doing that I can’t tell if anything is actually happening. It makes me doubt and lose trust.”

“Brenda,” Keith lovingly responds, “I can reassure you that I do feel it moving, but it is going slowly, at its own pace, allowing you to build trust. If it happened any faster it might overwhelm you to the point of shutting it all down.”

Curtain Tricks

“Go up with that energy (in meditation) and see what is happening to it.” Keith guides me to do something I have never successfully been able to do during previous empath trainings.

“I am experiencing deep fear.” I soon respond. “And my heart is shutting down.”

“Sneak up there and hide behind a curtain,” Keith will not let me back out so easily. “Then take a quick glimpse.”

Soon I begin to giggle lightly as I can literally feel myself hiding behind a curtain, peeking through a crack, and seeing a huge bright light where the density is being transmuted.

A Ball Of Light

As Keith moves on, I suddenly feel an extremely painful jab at the center of my sternum. It is in exactly the same “nail-in-my-heart” spot that I have felt countless times before, but this pain is much more intense, and it is also poking me from the backside as well.

“Where are you at now, Brenda?” Keith eventually feels guided to turn back to check in with me.

“I had a sharp pain a few minutes ago, right here in my heart,” I begin, “but now I am just overwhelmed by emotional numbness.”

“There is a ball of light in front of you,” Keith quickly responds. “Give some of that numbness to the light.

Triggered By The Light

As I visualize the light, and imagine that a portion of my numbness moves into it, my numb emotion immediately shifts to intense fear.

“Give some of that fear to the light.” Keith nudges me further.

“Now I’m feeling intense anger.” I respond.

“Give some of that anger to the light.” Keith continues his line of guidance.

Suddenly, I hit a wave of deep painful emotion and burst into blubbering tears.

Keith soon leaves me to continue this profound emotional release while he moves on. My hidden emotions cannot hide when the light is shining, and he seems to know that I am now going deeper on my own.

A Dark Room

Eventually, as I meditate solo, I find myself in my own little private “hell” – an imaginary broom closet, just down the hall and around a few corners from a room filled with higher beings – some of my closest friends in the other dimensions.

This little room feels like just the place I need to be right now. I crawl inside, close the door, and cry alone in the darkness – while exterior tears simultaneously flow.

As I imagine myself wanting to walk down the hall – wanting to connect with my circle of higher being friends (June 23 blog titled “Circle Of Friends”) – I cannot do it. In fact, I feel incapable of leaving that little dark broom closet.

Using a trick that Keith has taught me through various meditations, I imagine myself at least opening the door to the closet, even though I am unable to leave.

Crazy Fear

Emotions are quite intense as I visualize myself sitting in the doorway of that dark broom closet. I try to imagine myself walking down the hall, but again freeze up with fear, feeling hopelessly stuck. My imagination refuses to allow me to go there. Finally, I invite a metaphorical higher being to come to me, to sit in the hallway just outside the open door – asking the being to maintain a small buffer of distance.

The crazy fear makes absolutely no sense. I know that this being is nothing but pure love and that I too am love – but I cannot connect. I imagine the being as a beautiful, compassionate young woman – an image that is completely non-threatening – an image that will not manipulate or control me. I imagine being hugged, but am immediately visited by more intense fear.

Heart Shutdown

“As you sit in that closet,” Keith pauses to reconnect and to give me a brief clue, “you are connected to your little girl, feeling her pain and futility.”

I begin to imagine myself as little Sharon in that dark broom closet. As I do so, my emotional levels intensify greatly. Soon I imagine us both hiding in that darkness. I attempt to reach out to Sharon, trying to hold her hand, to comfort her – but as much as I try, I cannot feel the connection.

Keith again turns back to help me, and asks me to visualize a ball of light between Sharon and I.

“I want each of you to throw some of your fears and other emotions into that light to see what happens.” Keith guides me before again moving on.

As I try to visualize this process, my resistance strengthens, the fear increases even further, and I feel my heart shutting down and caving in.

Logically Nonsensical

To my surprise, I experience a strong sense of anger and hatred toward my little Sharon … and I also feel equivalent emotions aimed directly at me. To the rational mind, this is all utter silliness – but I know it is profoundly real at another level.

As I imagine an experiential emotional release where we each speak our truth to each other, I feel an intense burst of emotion as I imagine Sharon’s anger and hatred finding a voice, ripping into me for abandoning her in that little cage for all these long years. Soon, I feel myself returning the favor, silently expressing and releasing huge reservoirs of pent up anger over how she is not helping me as much as she should, how I hate her for my current state of dysfunction, etc.

Through it all, I remain the observer, being lovingly aware that none of this is present-day emotion – but also knowing beyond any doubt that this emotion is real, and that it must be felt and expressed in order to be released.

Rebuilding Trust

When the process is complete, I intuitively recognize that some unexpressed emotion remains, but our process together has been enough to allow a sense of camaraderie and connection.

Completely forgetting about the higher being waiting in the metaphorical hallway, I sit with my little girl in the closet. We begin connecting hearts and focusing on jointly building a renewed trust in one another.

Eventually, after a great deal of loving meditation, I feel as if my little inner child and I are finally on the same side, but that our relationship is still very tentative and extremely confusing. Neither of us fully understands our feelings, nor do we know how to proceed from here.

Fixing Free-For-All

Suddenly the ceremony takes a very strange and bizarre twist. There are several people on the porch who have each, over the last few weeks, shown various levels of tendencies to want to participate in using their energy skills to fix others – something that my own manifestation energy seems to have been recently attracting like flies drawn to rotten meat.

There are a few others on the porch who are stuck in their processes, unable to move forward with where they need to go – each seeming too fearful to delve deeper into their buried emotions.

I nearly cringe when I hear Keith invite several people to do some energy work on one of the others. It is a brilliant action on Keith’s part – one that really triggers me.

I nearly die inside – half freaking out – half giggling – as I feel the fixing energy on the porch break through all previously known limitations. I know that Keith has something up his sleeve, and I am eager to understand.

Holding My Tongue

Seconds after Keith turns everyone loose, he returns to work with me.

“Trust me on this.” Keith winks and quietly fills me in. “It will all work out for the best. I’m getting that this will actually be very helpful for all involved.”

I nearly gag with resistance as I then watch one person walk unchecked across the porch to perform energy magic on another stuck person.

I simply smile a twisted smile and watch with blind trust, reminding myself of all the bizarre things I have experienced on this porch – reminding myself of how each situation has always turned out to be a beautiful event that perfectly met my own healing needs.

Chaos And Confusion

Insights suddenly flood my intuitive mind as I excitedly begin to share with Keith.

“I’m feeling extremely resentful at my mother for manipulating, and controlling me throughout my childhood and youth – for using her fixing energy to keep me under her loving power and authority.” I tell Keith with delight. “Everything going on here on the porch right now is energetically reminding me of how I felt as a child when I was the target of such well-intentioned but misdirected fixing and nagging energy. My mother was constantly trying to help me, but deeply hurting me in the process.”

As I further discuss these insights with Keith, I am suddenly overwhelmed with swirling chaos and confusion in my mind – the exact same experience I had last spring when I had visited this exact same emotional issue from a different, but equally bizarre, vantage point.

Later, just a few hours after this incident, I attempt to take notes regarding this brief period on the porch. As I do so, I remain so confused that I am unable to recall specific details of perhaps a half hour of conversation with Keith – and the confusion is so strong that remembering the other parts of the ceremony requires great concentration and effort.

Today, eight days after that ceremony, as I attempt to write this short section, I again feel overwhelmed by a sensation of swirling confusion that tries to dominate my mind.

I have no doubt, that my mother’s intentions were loving and pure. She was desperate to train me to conform and fit in to our religious and family culture. But because of these events in meditation, there is also no doubt in my mind that my mother, without being fully self-aware, had some type of psychic surgery ability (as Keith has several times pointed out to me). Whatever she unknowingly did, it caused me to get so confused with myself that I had no choice other than to hopelessly give up and submit to her authority.

When You Least Expect It

To my inner surprise and giggles, another person on the porch, the last person I would have expected to try to fix me, suddenly interrupts my process with Keith, and begins to try to coax me simply to let go of this emotion, to get over it, and just forgive my mother.

Keith quickly explains to her the true nature of my process, but I am blown away by how I again attract this fixing energy, even from someone who I never expected would do it.

Silly, Nonsensical, And Indefensible

“That is all so silly.” I feel an inner voice rampage through my heart, telling me everything I am doing is stupid.

“That voice is not necessarily even your own voice.” Keith quickly coaches me. “I’m getting that it was the logical, rational-mind voice of a mother or religion belittling your right-brain feelings.

“When it came to my intuitions, I had no way to defend them against the logical voice of my mother or my religion.” I suddenly exclaim to Keith with powerful insight. “If someone critiqued a computer programming subroutine, I could easily defend myself with superior logic … but if someone critiqued my intuitions or my creativity, I was made to feel utterly silly, nonsensical, and indefensible.”

Not Mine To Keep

“Give that voice back to your parents.” Keith guides me firmly. “It is something that belongs to them – something that they need to heal. But they cannot heal it until you release it back to them. Perhaps you can heal it in conjunction with them, but they have to be involved.”

As I meditate into this new process, I quickly feel intuition and lightness confirming that some of the voices have been released. But stronger intuitions tell me that portions of these voices are stuck, refusing to budge. Simultaneously, I feel a pain in my heart that begins to intensify.

“I think I don’t want to release it because it feels like part of my dysfunctional identity or something.” I share with Keith, passing along intuitions that come out of nowhere.

As I try to release more, I am met by deep fear and panicked resistance.

“What will my family think?” Suddenly flashes into my mind.

I do not fully know yet what that voice is, but at least part of it seems profoundly related to additional buried fears of offending family – of further disappointing them.

An Utter Loser

As I sit in quiet meditation, watching the remainder of the chocolate ceremony unfold around me, I begin to go crazy with judgments. I am now silently projecting my inner pain onto nearly everyone in the group.

As I look at several people in particular, I feel inexplicably strong judgments being projected outward toward them. I know the issue is really my own and that something inside of me needs to be healed … but nevertheless I am judging, and I hate that fact.

“I will be a horrible healer.” I begin to flog myself with intense self-judgment. “I am a complete and utter looser. How can I possibly profess to be any type of healer when I am feeling such intense judgment toward others – when I feel so incapable of seeing them through loving eyes?”

A Lifelong Vendetta

Suddenly the truth floods my awareness. I am judging them because I see them as unhealed healers – people who want to run out and heal or fix others without first taking the time to go inside and work on healing their own frightening issues.

But then the real deeper issues begin to surface – the real light bulbs of my projector begin to flash.

I am extremely angry at my mother. I see her as having been an unhealed healer – as someone who was professing to represent God and divine religion – yet the results of her working with me – all done with well-intentioned innocence – caused me deep childhood pain and emotional suffering.

I suddenly understand with newfound clarity. Buried in my subconscious, I am dealing with a lifelong (but never understood) vendetta to save the world from unhealed healers – from people who would do to others the same thing that my mother did to me.

This is why I am attracting so many fixers into my life. The Universe is trying to bring my awareness to this very issue.

Pleading For Answers

As the ceremony ends, I again wait until the bitter end, wanting to have a private one-on-one conversation with Keith. I feel horrible and I need clarity.

“Keith,” I beg for guidance. “I am so confused. I feel intense judgment toward nearly everyone on the porch today.”

“What is going on with me?” I plead for answers. “As a healer, I will be such a loser if I continue to feel such awful judgments. But then again, I am wondering if these are even my own emotions that I am feeling. Am I feeling their judgments? Or am I feeling my own judgments about them?”

“I am so confused.” I throw up my hands in despair. “Help!”

Sober Counsel

“Brenda,” Keith begins to respond. “You have to return into the middle of this confusion in order to heal it. This is a pattern that you have been in throughout your whole life. You cannot heal it without going back into it.”

“But do NOT get lost in the ego voices of smallness.” Keith strongly emphasizes. “Do not lose yourself in believing that you are a loser.”

I am frightened. I know I need to remain the observer while remembering the truth about myself – yet I am terrified to go any deeper into this confusion. I am scared that I really will get lost in there.

Keith and I discuss the issue for nearly thirty minutes as he shares the critical nature of the place where I find myself – telling me how people he loved had reached similar such critical junctures in their own processes – people who did indeed get lost in ego and never came out of that loop.

Huge Healing Hurdle

As I walk home, I am emotionally drained. Screaming ego voices are proclaiming that I am indeed a hopeless loser and a fraud – that I will never be capable of being a healed healer – that I will always project onto others and hurt those I try to help.

It seems that once again, the Universe has presented me with exactly what I need to show me the next huge healing hurdle in my path. Yet the way I feel right now, I am not so sure that I am capable of making it over this next obstacle in my journey. I am beaten down, depressed, flogging myself, and swimming in a cesspool of chaotic confusion – confusion so powerful that I feel as if I will never be able to think clearly ever again.

However, a more hopeful part of me desperately hangs on, observing events from a higher place, cheering me on from the sidelines, telling me that I can do it. I overwhelming believe this higher voice, but my emotions are dragging so low that I can barely muster enough strength to even climb into bed.

I surrender to this powerful flow, but I am indeed right back in the scary part of this movie called life, cowering in another horror scene. I can only trust that I will eventually love the ending.

To be continued …

Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

As I come up for air after an amazing week of healing – a journey that has taken me back fifty-two years to the passing of a beloved grandfather – I find myself exhausted. While resting my head on Thanksgiving eve, a few additional tears stream down my cheeks – a few are final spurts of emotion regarding my love for my grandfather – but most are tears of sheer joy and gratitude for the amazing chocolate ceremony that just brought closure to that profound journey … or did it?

Thanksgiving Rest

As I settle in for a beautiful and peaceful Thanksgiving by myself, I opt to finish something that I started a few days ago. Part of me is giggling and joyful at the opportunity to watch the final two movies of the “Lord of the Rings” series. Yet part of me is terrified, wondering if there might be more tears hiding in the same places as those inexplicable flashfloods of tears on Tuesday while watching the first movie.

Early on, I do experience a few short bursts of residual emotion, but to my delight, I am thankfully blessed with a peaceful and delightful Thanksgiving Day rest – a day topped off by fun socializing with friends as I participate in an almost-monthly playful ritual – that of assisting in the bagging and weighing of nearly 250 pounds of freshly ground, still liquid, chocolate.

As I prepare for bed, I am feeling peaceful, but weird. Several times today, I tried bringing in higher energies – but continued to feel inexplicable inner resistance. Part of me is still holding back – still flipping-off the higher energies for no apparent reason.

Overflowing With Peace

Friday continues my theme of taking an emotional-processing breather. Keith asks me to participate in a private chocolate ceremony where my budding Spanish translation stills might come in useful. As I hold beautiful energetic space in that powerful ceremony, I feel no need to process any of my own stuff. Instead, I delight in the fact that I do indeed have the ability to translate … and I do so for more than half of the ceremony. It seems that even when I am not studying Spanish much anymore, I continue to increase my vocabulary, simply doing so through day-to-day interactions.

It is Friday evening, when I return home from this peaceful ceremony, that I begin to giggle as I first read Aimee’s newly arrived comment to my blog – the one that inspired me to share more of my story in “A Profound Reality Check.”

Saturday continues with peaceful distraction as I accompany Keith and another beautiful friend on a boat ride across the lake where Keith conducts an amazing ceremony with a group of women who are involved in a yoga teacher training retreat. I love such opportunities – and I cherish the fact that my heart continues to overflow with peace and love as I spend the night in my own little private tent, less than a short stone’s throw from the energy-radiating waters of Lake Atitlan.

Temporary Filter

As the chocolate ceremony on Sunday begins back in San Marcos, I am delighted to see an old friend that I have not seen in a very long time – but totally unprepared for the emotions that will soon surface – emotions partially triggered by this perfectly-timed synchronous encounter.

The last time I had any interactions with this friend were via email, at the first of July, on my final evening in San Marcos as I prepared to travel home for the summer. For privacy reasons, I will not discuss the event – other than to mention that in the process of humbling myself and admitting that I had been wrong, I had simultaneously opened up my heart in ways that left me feeling extremely emotionally vulnerable for the next week or so.

I wrote earlier in my blog about that first week of traveling through the Yucatan, but I had intentionally omitted this piece of the puzzle, not wanting to further agitate a valued friendship.

It was during that first week of my homeward bound travels that I had literally begun to suck in the emotions of everyone and every situation around me, empathically stuffing them inside of me, leaving me confused, and falling apart. After about a week, with the help of a friend, I realized what I was doing and asked higher energies to install a temporary filter to stop me from bringing in such energies until I was aware and able to deal with them. After doing so, and then using meditation and tears to release that bottled up emotion, I remained mostly emotionally stable throughout those amazing travels.

Only after returning to San Marcos in late September did I ask the energies to remove that temporary filter. I was now in a place where I knew that I could receive the guidance and assistance I needed should my emotions again get out of control.

Energy Of Resistance

As the glow meditation proceeds, I begin to feel strongly annoyed, disconnected, rebellious, angry, resistant, and feeling the urge to blurt out “F@<K it all” before running home to pack my bags.

The emotions I am feeling are powerful, but totally bizarre, inexplicable, out of context, and extremely confusing. As the meditation progresses, my resistance increases. I do not want to meditate and the last thing I want to do is to connect with the energies. As the meditation concludes, I feel like a psycho basket case. I have no explainable idea why I feel the way I do.

“Wow!” Keith comments as he begins doing individual work with a woman beside me. “What a profound energy of resist-dance there is on the porch today.”

Without singling anyone out, Keith goes on to discus the profound intensity of dense energy that wants to be released today – all over the porch – but that strong resistance is powerfully present, standing in the way.

An Emotional Conduit

“Keith,” I interrupt and then ask, after explaining my own journey. “My emotions do not make any sense to me. I have no understandable reason for even feeling such intense emotions right now. Am I simply feeling and sucking in the emotions of the group … or am I working with my own emotional density of resistance and stuck-ness?”

I totally expect to hear Keith tell me that this is another layer of my own buried emotional dumping ground. His answer catches me by complete surprise.

“It is not your energy.” Keith responds with firm confidence. “It is density from others. Right now, you are in a powerful place of being a conduit for most of the resistance that is happening on the porch. It is all running through you.”

I Don’t Want It

“You have a habit of energetically connecting with large numbers of people in groups.” Keith goes on to remind me.

“Yeah,” I respond after checking in with my somewhat-painful heart. “I am probably connected to three-fourths of the people here … even though I don’t understand how or what I do … I do intuitively know that I am doing it.”

As our conversation continues to focus on me, the intensity of my emotional sensitivity seems to grow exponentially. What began as confusing emotion is now a state of intense inner panic and confusion. Tears quickly dampen my cheeks.

“If this is what it feels like to be an empath.” I express to Keith in horror. “Then I am not sure I really want this magic to open up for me. In fact, what I am feeling right now will literally drive me crazy, even if I can develop an intuitive awareness of what I am doing.”

A Terrified Child

What I am experiencing hurts me to the core. I am boiling and churning in a stew of other peoples’ negative emotions – yet I am profoundly confused because I feel like they are my own.

As I begin to meditate back to my days as a tiny child, I experience momentary flashbacks – brief-but-painful glimpses of how I also experienced such horribly confusing emotions when I was an innocent and vulnerable toddler. Profound inner compassion floods my heart as I contemplate the intense confusion and struggle that dominated the tender journeys of my little child-self.

“I must have been terrified and confused as a child.” I ponder amidst the flashbulbs of insights.

Pattern Recognition

Then, as I quickly scan through a lifetime of memories, I begin to recognize a pattern of depression and confusion.

There were so many painful days, weeks and months, where I suffered through unbelievable emotional overload. I had always written-off such emotional periods as being the byproduct of an intensely difficult personal journey.

“Could I have also been drowning in the emotions of others during those periods?” I ponder with increasing clarity and curiosity.

Such patterns are especially evident in experiences with two different work situations where intense and inexplicable overpowering depression consumed me while working for companies that were experiencing difficult times – during times where most of my coworkers were going through extreme frustration with management, etc…

I now understand why my depression in those situations was so powerful. I was not only feeling my own emotion, I was drowning in the overwhelming emotions of others as well.

God Drama Revisited

As Keith focuses on working with me, I remain deeply connected to the prevalent resistance that permeates the porch. Emotions that are not even mine are deeply urging me to grab my bag, put on my sandals, and run home … yet I remain on my pillow and engage with Keith from a space of profound trust.

“Rather than trying to process all of this emotion inside of you,” Keith begins to coach me, “bring some of that processing out here in front of you.”

Keith then makes a small ball with his hand, about two feet in front of my heart chakra, and tells me to send the processing of the emotional energy out there.

“Let the angels or Mother Earth help you.” Keith encourages me. “You don’t need to do all this work by yourself.”

What is obviously coming up is that I am facing my lifelong resistance against asking for or allowing help. As much as my conscious mind desperately wants the higher energies to help, a hidden part of me continues to strongly resist such assistance.

I am revisiting my God Drama … revisiting my inability to trust higher energies.

Fake It Till You Make It

I initially struggle to “release” … trying to figure out “just how do I release this so that it can take place outside of me, being handled by the higher energies?”

Suddenly I remember that I don’t need to “know how” … that I just need to fill my heart with love, express my intent, allow, surrender, trust, and “fake it till I make it.”

It sounds so stupid to an intellectual mind – simply pretending that something is happening until you can actually feel it. But I have often heard Keith explain that his teachers actually taught this technique as a powerful way to get out of your head.

“I know that my imagination is indeed my personal connection to right-brain and intuitive energies.” I ponder with trust. “I’m going to give that a try.”

A Glimmer Of Hope

A few minutes later, I suddenly experience a sense of partial release … of less emotional intensity flowing through me.

“There,” Keith quickly interrupts the silence. “You have now let about 25% of the processing move out to this space in front of you. How do you feel?”

“I feel considerably more peaceful and less emotionally agitated.” I respond with a glimmer of hope.

Body Metaphors

I simply continue to breathe energy into my heart while relaxing and imagining that the emotional energies continue to move out in front of me.

“You are almost at 50%.” Keith soon interjects. “You are not quite there, but you are doing well.”

“How does that feel now?” Keith asks as he attempts to coach me into further recognizing the subtle shifts in my energy field.

“Much better,” I respond with a grin. “I am much more relaxed … and my heart is not shutdown anymore.”

“Great,” Keith congratulates me. “You are paying attention to your body metaphors.”

One way I am beginning to understand what I do is to pay attention to my body. If my heart feels squished and painful, then I am either working on my own issues, or internalizing emotions from others. But if my heart feels alive and powerful, even if I am feeling emotions, then I am simply “reading” the emotions of others without bringing them inside me.

Loving Support

Soon, Keith leads the entire group in a meditation of bringing energy from below, energy that rises up and peacefully supports the heart. It is a meditation of feeling as if you are in the palm of God, or perhaps sitting in the lotus flower of the Buddha.

But I am not paying much attention as I continue to focus on my own process, being distracted by the fact that I am clenching my forearms – something that I have recently begun to realize that I constantly do – something I have done my entire life. Intuitively, I recognize that this clenching is part of my energy-sensitivity shutdown.

“Can you feel that?” Keith suddenly asks me, catching me off guard.

When I focus, I can indeed feel a small peaceful loving energy that seems to hold my heart in a space of warm protected love.

“Yes, a little bit.” I respond with weak-but-growing confidence.

“This metaphor will also help you to know when you are using your empath abilities from a positive or negative polarity.” Keith lovingly coaches me.

I am still slightly distracted, but suddenly realize that Keith has given me another body metaphor to guide me. Another way I can tell if I am positively working with the emotions of others is if my heart feels lovingly supported from below.

From now on, when I experience unexplainable emotions, I will immediately search for such metaphors to help me know what I am doing.

Forced Fixing

As Keith moves on to work with someone next to me, a young man (I will call him Tom) suddenly stands up from his seat, walks across the porch, and nearly forces his body into my personal space.

“I would like to help you with what you are doing.” Tom insists, giving me the strong energetic impression that he believes me to be broken, and that he knows how to fix me.

“Actually, what I am doing right now is very empowered.” I respond with loving confidence.

I note with interest as Keith pauses what he is doing and listens out of the corner of his ear.

“If you helped me right now it would actually disempower my process,” I smile firmly. “I need to work with these energies myself so that I can learn how to do it – how to trust them.”

Journey With Fixing

“Can I at least tell you something?” The young man pushes harder, forcing his hand.

“Sure,” I respond, being totally willing to listen.

The young man goes on for several minutes trying to teach me how not to bring in the angry emotions of others … to protect myself from their emotions. His words resonate as strong attempts to fix and tell me his way is better, not connecting with me at all. But I simply smile, listen until he is done, and thank him for his suggestions. I would rather be happy than right.

Soon I am back in my process of further connecting to the higher energies that I am finally allowing to assist me, even just a little bit.

I cannot help but also ponder why it is that I continue to energetically attract such strong fixing energy from others. I profoundly recognize that I have a journey with fixing energy – but I have no idea yet just what that journey might be.

Peaceful Vibrations

Meanwhile, as Keith continues to work his way around the crowded porch, with twenty-two of us squeezed around the circle, I continue to breathe more and more energy into my heart, imagining the higher energies assisting me while simultaneously focusing on relaxing my forearms.

To my surprise, the muscles between elbows and wrists feel all painful and tingly, as if they were a sleeping foot that is now beginning to wake up. The sensation is very uncomfortably in the short term.

My head urges me to stop the discomfort by returning to clenching, but my heart says, “no, surrender and allow.” Suddenly, I recognize that my hips and legs are equally clenched. As I focus on total body relaxation, I feel glimpses of beautiful energy flow accompanied by fierce physical resistance – resistance that I gradually flow into, release, and relax.

Soon, I feel as if I am about to float off the planet with all the peaceful vibrations that consume me.

Fixing Fixation

For some reason, I again attract a further discussion on fixing energy as I face my fears and provide loving feedback to that man I call Tom – courageously sharing how I had perceived his attempts to work with me – his attempts to show me what I was doing was wrong and to convince me that I needed his help.

Through the remainder of group, while floating in divine light, I further ponder the question of “Why do I repeatedly manifest people that push fixing energy onto me? Why am I creating this reality?”

A Synchronous Sequence

“Wow,” I share with Keith after the rest of the group has filtered out. “Today was amazing and powerful for me.”

“Can you provide clarification on what happened at the start of group today?” I then ask Keith, hoping to learn a little more about his side of the equation.

Keith first congratulates me for my awareness and sensitivity of the intense resistance-based energy on the porch as the ceremony began.

“Soon after I felt that energy,” Keith shares with me, “I recognized that it was going to greatly facilitate your process today.”

I am amazed by how, yet again, I arrived at a ceremony, not having a clue as to what my experience might be – and I now leave recognizing a profound sequence of synchronous events that guided me effortlessly from one empowering experience to another.

My old friend’s presence somehow took me right back to the same empathically sensitive spot that was previously triggered by her almost five months ago. The group’s intense energy provide me with a profoundly-painful playground in which to practice, and I finally learned how to begin trusting a tiny bit of higher energy assistance in releasing such energies.

Something Scary

“But what is with the emotional triggers that are suddenly being pushed by simply being around my old friend?” I ask Keith for guidance on something that we did not work on much today.

“I know her presence today enabled me to have the powerful experience that I had.” I share with Keith as I prepare to walk home. “I know she is my biggest teacher but I’m not really sure if I am ready to go there.”

As I drift off to sleep after an amazing Sunday afternoon chocolate ceremony, I revel in the vibrational peace while pondering the presence of puzzling, pushed triggers.

“I love her,” I meditate deeper on my pillow, “but just her very presence in my vicinity opens up something very raw from my past … something scary … something I do not understand … something I do not want to face.”

Energetic Catalyst

As I meditate early Monday morning, surrounded by banana trees while warmed by the rays of a newly emerged sun, the answer suddenly hits me.

“She energetically reminds me of two former friends who I had once perceived as betraying me – who I perceived as marginalizing me, of unjustly accusing me.”

As I further meditate, I realize that this porch-friend has absolutely nothing in common with a past that deeply hurt and devastated me. It all happened during a period of my life, ten long years ago, where I was still living in victim mode. Yet, in a strange and bizarre way, something about her mere presence now energetically whisks me back to those past traumatic experiences – experiences that I thought were completely healed.

“Apparently I still have issues with that past pain.” I ponder with newfound recognition.

Projection Parade

Then more profound realizations begin to ripple into awareness.

“Am I projecting my mother onto her?” I ponder with shock as I remember past feelings of a profound inability to explain myself, times when I only made things worse by trying.

And then I clearly see the same pattern in trying to defend myself during my marriage.

“I’m projecting my God Drama all over her.” I finally hit the end of the projection parade. “I’m feeling betrayed, misunderstood, and marginalized by God.”

Again, I giggle at the synchronicity of having received my first hate comment on my blog, just three short days ago. It was a perfect opportunity to show me my projections, but I did not take the bait.

Confusing Emotional State

As meditation continues, I waver in and out of emotional stability intertwined with collapsing confusing chaos.

“Perhaps I need to go see if Keith has time for a private session today.” I begin to ponder. “I don’t think I am in any place where I am capable of writing.”

Short bursts of intense tears followed by peaceful power further serve to illustrate my confusing emotional state.

Soon, I meditate deeply into feeling the loving support of the “palm of God” holding my heart safely and tenderly.

Energetic Lessons

“Body metaphors!” I suddenly exclaim. “I am feeling confusing waves of inexplicable emotions … yet I am simultaneously feeling loving energy that supports my heart.”

“Are these even my own emotions that I am processing right now?” I ponder with deep curiosity. “Of course, I know they are related to something that I deeply understand … but I know I have dealt with these emotions … what I am feeling does not make any sense.”

“Or have I dealt with all the layers?” I again question with confusing doubt.

As I dig deeper, I decide to try something. I perform the same meditation that I did yesterday … the one where I imagine the emotions moving into a ball two feet in front of me, and then releasing them to the higher energies for transmutation. As I do so, I am guided to simultaneously envision myself breaking the energetic connection with my porch-friend – one that I was not aware of until this exact moment.

To my delight, the emotions in my own body suddenly settle and disappear.

“What a profound lesson in working with energies.” I giggle with delight.

Totally Peaceful

After finishing my meditation in a profound state of peaceful bliss, I soon sit down to check emails.

Seconds later I hear loud (and I mean loud) arguing taking place just outside my bedroom window. Being deeply curious, I quietly open the shutters and peek out to see what is going on. Several westerners are engaged in a verbal fight … one of them slinging deep emotional jabs at the others.

As peace continues to flow through my veins, I simply meditate into a higher resonance and radiate love to the scene below my window. I remain centered, peaceful, and unattached.

“Wow,” I ponder a few minutes later. “What a synchronous display. That man was in the same agonizing emotion of feeling betrayed and unable to defend himself – the same “God Drama” emotions that came up for me in the last two days – and I never took the bait. I never related, I did not inhale one random emotion, and I feel totally peaceful.”

Random Emotion Sucking

When I sit down to write, however, I hear a baby crying outside my kitchen window. To my shock, I begin to feel inexplicably sad and miserable.

“I’m bringing in the pain from this baby and its mother.” I quickly recognize as I note that my heart continues to feel strong and loving.

Again, I meditate and release the “not-mine” emotions to the higher energies for transmutation. Minutes later, I am vibrating in renewed loving peace.

“If all of this confusing random emotion sucking is what I did as a child,” I ponder, “no wonder I shut the ability down and buried it under tons of metaphorical steel and concrete. I am just now beginning to have enough spiritual awareness to recognize that I am doing this.”

An Emotional Toilet

As I finally sit down to write, I first begin to reread my most recent posting to get myself into the proper frame of mind. As I read “Rule Robot,” I begin to experience extremely confusing mood swings. I have read this blog several times and had felt deeply inspired by my own writing.

But in this instant I am beginning to feel like Aimee (the woman who posted the hate comment on this very piece of writing just three days ago).

“I hate this blog.” I begin to ponder with self-loathing. “It is stupid, poorly written crap, confusing and incoherent.”

I don’t know if I am feeling Aimee’s emotions, or perhaps they are those of my own inner child being experienced through a whole new perspective – but I actually believe these emotions as if they are my own. I stop and attempt to connect to higher energies but am inexplicably stuck in resistance and rebellion.

My confusing emotions are quickly spiraling out of control, I cannot stop them, I do not know what to do, and I just want to cry. Yet something whispers inside that these are not even my own emotions, that crying is not the answer, and that I need help.

I have reached a brick wall and my emotional world is suddenly collapsing. I literally feel as if I am sliding down the whirling vortex of an emotional toilet.

A Crash Course

Thirty minutes later, I find myself solemnly slipping through Keith’s gate and up onto his porch. I don’t know what else to do. If even I can just get a few minutes of his time to help me …

To my delight, a few minutes later, we do get a couple of private moments to talk … but Keith has a scheduled individual session waiting to begin.

“I’m on a roller coaster of emotion that I can’t handle on my own.” I express to Keith through sobs that suddenly burst forth out of nowhere.

“Brenda,” Keith confidently answers, “I am being STRONGLY guided to tell you that around ninety-five percent of the emotions that you are feeling this morning are coming from outside of you.”

Keith goes on to lovingly explain that the higher energies are giving me a “crash course” on how to move these densities without bringing them inside of me … without eating them.

Survival Mode

Soon, I am walking back home, continuing to wipe tears from my cheeks, knowing that I now have a 3:00 p.m. private session with Keith – some hope at the end of the tunnel.

“If only I can survive till then.” I ponder with desperation.

After arriving at home, I begin with a positive burst … but soon I am numbly playing computer games, and by 11:30 a.m. I am in bed, with the covers pulled over my head, attempting to meditate.

Just as I begin to feel glimmers of gentle higher energies starting to tickle my scalp, loud music begins to play downstairs – near the same place as this morning’s yelling-fest.

Immediately, I am again overwhelmed by intense emotions that struggle for permission to be felt and expressed.

Fend For Myself

I am overwhelmed by confusing emotion, feeling rebellious, agitated, and desperately just wanting to cry … yet intuitions tell me that this is not emotion that should be tearfully released.

Suddenly, I profoundly understand another version of the God/separation drama. I feel helpless and pathetic – utterly beyond being able to do anything more for myself.

I have often listened as Keith teaches about this other version of the God/separation drama – a version where we might subconsciously believe that Deity will never help us if we are empowered, strong, and capable – that higher energies will only provide assistance if we are pathetically and helplessly lost and incapable of doing something for ourselves.

It seems that right now I am facing such a dysfunctional subconscious belief.

The overwhelmed and confused part of me does not want to be strong and empowered here. I desperately want to just sink into chaotic tearful collapse, so that just maybe, the higher powers-that-be might step in and comfort me. This same part of me believes that if I am strong, that I will be alone and abandoned, left to use my own strength, left to fend for myself. It seems that this is an emotional pattern that has repeated itself throughout my life.

This Part Is Scary

I have been working on opening up this inner magic for a very long time. I have begged the higher energies and my inner children to assist me in taking the lid off from my long-shutdown “Magical Theme Park.”

But wow, now that it is beginning to open, even just a crack, I am frightened, rebelling, and panicking. I don’t want this magical ability if it brings with it such confusing and terrorizing emotional pain.

After a long and tearful few hours, as I prepare to walk back over to Keith’s magical porch for my 3:00 p.m. private appointment, I cannot help but reflect back on those beautiful words that comforted me last week – the ones I wrote about in “Synchronous Dots.”

“Close your eyes … this part is scary … take my hand … it won’t last long … you will love the ending I promise … when this part of the story is gone.”

Overflowing with emotion – with eyes that are bulging from a bottled-up flashflood of tears just waiting to explode – I set out on that familiar ten-minute walk to Keith’s home, desperately hoping to bring a little sanity back to my journey – a journey that right now finds me cowering in a corner, trapped in the middle of a horror scene.

To be continued …

Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

Friday evening, on November 25 – the day after a delightful Thanksgiving – I am completely surprised as I stumble onto the first-ever “hate comment” waiting for approval on my blog. After my initial shock, a huge smile spreads across my face. Giggles quickly erupt, while peace and love joyfully overwhelm my heart.

Following is that comment in its entirety – a comment posted by a woman named Aimee. Since the comment was posted using a fake email, I did not approve it for direct posting. Instead, I opted to save it for a special-topic blog discussion. Aimee’s exact words are as follows:

“How selfish of you to leave your six children for your own journey to self discovery. You should have made these decisions before you decided to take on the lifelong responsibilities of children (the marriage aside). You are the most selfish person I have read about, causing a wake of destruction in your path, and contributing nothing good to this world … especially considering your writing is really bad and incoherent. Go home and be a parent, no matter your gender, and stop acting like a middle aged child.”

Words From My Past

First off, I wish to express my genuine love for Aimee, and my deep gratitude for her comment. I am not being sarcastic or tongue in cheek. I am profoundly appreciative for how Aimee’s words have synchronously arrived with perfect timing – words that give me an unexpected glimpse of both my past and the healing journey in which I am presently engaged.

When I was thirty years old, I could very easily have been the one to post such a comment. I too would have done so with shrouded anonymity, and perhaps my judgmental statements would have been much harsher than the well-chosen words that Aimee put together.

At that period in my life, I was so trapped in my own pain and belief systems that I judged most anything that did not align and conform to my cultural and religious conditioning – a conditioning of learned definitions and ideals of what the world should be like – a conditioning taught to me by well-meaning parents, teachers, leaders, and society in general.

Yes indeed, Aimee’s words could have easily been my own words from the past – aimed not just at others, but deeply targeting my own inner self-hatred. In that phase of my life, I felt as if I were a freak of nature, violating God’s laws and human nature.

I was struggling with my gender identity.

Defense Versus Love

In the workbook of “A Course In Miracles”, two of the daily lessons resonate profoundly with me. The first is lesson number 153 with the title “In my defenselessness my safety lies.” The other is number 135, titled “If I defend myself, I am attacked.”

At first glance, when compared with commonly accepted wisdom of the world, neither title makes logical sense. But the paradoxical statements, when understood at a much deeper level, contain profound wisdom. To me, defense is a tool of ego – a way of responding to a world that is perceived to be a dangerous place – a place that can hurt me if I do not defend and protect myself.

If I perceive myself as being attacked, then I must defend … but that defense will be perceived by the other as a counterattack, requiring additional defense … and the loop goes on. The whole cycle can spiral out of control very quickly, giving ego a great opportunity to further implant itself in my mind – pushing love to the wayside in the process.

I choose to be happy rather than right, and to respond to a “seeming attack” with love.

Kicking And Screaming

While I will not defend and counterattack, I do choose to use this opportunity to share a little more about who I am, what I believe, and why I am so passionately engaged in this journey of self-discovery.

I believe that everyone is on a unique journey in this lifetime, and that each of us chose our birth circumstances and the primary trials that we would face during this adventure we call life. We each came here with a purpose … perhaps to acquire experience, to heal, to learn, or to grow in some desired way.

I totally believe that I chose my parents, and that I came to earth wanting to spend the early years of my life learning how to love unconditionally via the agonizing journey of being a transgendered woman. Being born in a male body and raised in a very conservative religion and culture, I profoundly struggled to understand why my heart inexplicably demanded a full feminine expression. It is something impossible to explain to someone who has not personally experienced it.

My birth circumstances of pre-mortal choice created an environment that literally forced me into survival mode in this lifetime. Eventually I hit a brick wall of agonizing emotional pain that forced me to choose. The first option was to squash my heart, eventually dying a slow and depressing death. The second was to question my reality in such a profound way that would literally force me to grow, even if I did so kicking and screaming all the way – which is what I literally had to do through much of that frightening journey.

A Magical Reality

During my journey to the depths, I have learned to see the world as a magical holodeck, an energetic mirror of sorts. I am the one looking into and interacting with that mirror. Everything and everyone I see in that mirror is something that I have energetically attracted or created at a level that for most of my life has remained mostly hidden from my conscious mind. It is only now that I clearly recognize the profound way in which I do indeed create my reality on a daily, even moment-by-moment basis.

It is as if the world is an amazing movie screen and I am the projector. My beliefs and emotions, functional or non-functional, healed or unhealed, literally control the content of the film in that projector, creating the projected movie around me wherever I venture. What I see and encounter in perceived reality is an energetic reflection – something I either create or allow – something that I have manifested, consciously or unconsciously, to be part of my healing and awakening journey.

I believe that we each live in such a magical reality – experiencing our own unique perceptions and manifestations.

Selfishness Explored

Believe me when I say that I understand the meaning of “selfish.” I incessantly flogged myself with various manifestations of this word from my early teens, well into my late forties and even early fifties. By age thirty-two, when my youngest child was born, I still fought my unavoidable path. I could not bear the agonizing thought of hurting those I loved. At that difficult time, I nearly destroyed my marriage in a self-destructive cry for love and help. Soon, I settled back into the role of a pretend family man, earning a metaphorical Oscar by playing the role of happy religious father for ten additional years.

After my divorce and full transition to Brenda, I purchased a home less than two miles from my children, being as emotionally and physically involved in their lives as I was allowed to be. And yes, I also struggled greatly in order to financially support them in ways that far exceeded all legal obligations.

It was not until my youngest child was twenty-two years old and engaged to be married that I followed undeniable inner guidance – guidance that insisted that it was now time to set off in my own journey of life. Each of my children is now married. They are beautiful individuals, raising admirable families of their own, and they all know that I am lovingly available if they but ask.

Shining My Light

Yes, of course, things were awkward and emotionally difficult – and many emotional wounds yet remain to be healed. Hearts were broken and lives were undeniably disrupted – but as a family we made it work, and we all did it with pure and genuine love – and I dare say that we all grew in profound ways as a result.

Aimee, call me selfish if you will. I honor your right to this opinion.

On the other hand, those who were close to me during those excruciatingly difficult years – those who were connected to my genuine, loving, and selfless heart – those who saw and experienced the agony through which I passed – well they might just have a differing opinion to share.

As for me, I am simply learning to embrace the divinity within each of us, to heal my life, to illuminate my inner light, and to then shine that light for anyone else who cares to share in any portion of my journey.

All In

When I married at the tender age of twenty-one, my only desire was to be a loving and faithful husband and father for the remainder of my days – hoping to one day be found worthy of living in God’s presence. With all of my heart, I believed that the role of father and grandfather was a lifelong responsibility – one not to be taken lightly.

Yes, of course, as I engaged in those sacred wedding vows, I was already struggling with what I then perceived to be the evils of my transgender identity. For years, I had fought it with all of my heart. I hated that aspect of myself. I despised the inexplicable “evil” that lived inside of me.

My genuine heart believed that I could somehow find the strength to overcome that festering “evil.” In fear and desperation, I kept that shameful part of me hidden – faithfully believing that somehow a loving marriage would cure me of what I mistakenly believed to be some bizarre sexual confusion that could be easily “fixed” by living righteously.

It was not until age forty when I literally realized that not transitioning to be Brenda was a literal death sentence. It was then that the fear of NOT transitioning became greater than the fear of transitioning.

In the face of foreboding apprehension and overwhelming odds, I put my whole life on the poker table. I was “all in,” knowing that I could, and most likely would, lose everything I loved. However, if the cards were not dealt I knew I most certainly would end up dead – if not physically, at least emotionally.

By Their Fruits…

Yes, at the time, I continued to believe in the concept of a lifelong responsibility – but I believed that the only way I could remain alive to fulfill that responsibility was if I did transition. I had reached a point where I realized that my children could have either a dead father or a living Brenda. I chose the harder of the two paths … I chose life.

Disagree with me if you will, but my life of the last fifteen years speaks for itself. I have no need to defend my honor. My joys and sorrows, my genuine capacity to love unconditionally, my aliveness and zest for life, and my profound spiritual growth – each of these qualities (and others) stand as their own testimony. As a popular biblical phrase states, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Lifelong Responsibility

Believe whatever you wish, but as I progress down my journey of self-discovery, I now realize that there is no such thing as a lifelong responsibility to anyone other than to myself and to my own healing.

Yes, of course, I have and hope to maintain a lifelong relationship with my beautiful and amazing children, but now that they are raised, they are responsible for their own choices, for their own lives. I can share in loving experiences. I can shine my own light for them. But they now live their own lives, and the ultimate responsibility lies with them.

Mine is a journey that no one else can make for me, and the journey of my children is now in their own very capable hands.

The interesting paradox is that if I had remained in my family and religion, I am now at an age where it is quite common for an older couple to leave their family and to serve a mission for the church, sometimes spending years in leadership roles elsewhere in the world. If I were serving in that role, I would be deemed a hero by some. But if I take a couple of years to engage in a profound spiritual journey of my own – one that is not religion based – does that make me a responsibility shirker?

Cast stones if you will. Meanwhile, I will live my passion.

Wake Of Destruction

As I mentioned earlier, I believe that I setup my birth circumstances before coming to this earth. Likewise, I profoundly believe that my own amazing children did the same (as do we all). Call me crazy, but I believe my children actually chose me for a parent, knowing in advance that my path would quite possibly include a gender transition – that this is something that they wanted to experience in this lifetime as a part of their own amazing life journeys.

While my children may not embrace this belief, I doubt that any of them would disagree when I say that facing the huge challenges of this whole experience has enabled us all to open our hearts and to expand in ways that would have otherwise been impossible, or at least extremely unlikely.

Everyone is free to judge how they will, but when I look at my beautiful children and grandchildren, I do not see a wake of destruction. I actually see the complete opposite. Each is emotionally stable, of exceptional character, happily married, gainfully employed in well-paying careers – and all but the youngest already have darling children and homes of their own.

As I look at each beautiful grandchild, I see nothing but joy and love in their lives. And I continue to giggle at something one of my son-in-laws told me during my final visit with his family when I returned home to Utah this past summer.

“Brenda,” he told me. “I want to thank you for the way you raised your children.”

Contributing Nothing Good

I think that the best way that each of us can contribute to this world is to find out what stirs the passion in our heart – and to then follow that path. It is only when our own hearts are alive and shining that we can fully share that light with the world around us.

For me, my present journey and my corresponding writing are providing me with exactly that passionate focus.

The focus of my writing is not to help others – it never has been. While my heart demands that I must write, I can only write if I keep it in the first person. I do it as a means of integrating and solidifying my own personal growth. I do it in a raw and genuine style, knowing as I write that my words may inspire others to follow their own hearts. But my primary task here is dedicated to my own personal journey – to learning to speak my own truth without fear of judgment – to healing myself and undoing all of the conditioning and emotions that keep me trapped in dense energies.

Because of my style and my genuine depth, I have been told often and frequently – by dear friends and by total strangers – that my words have deeply inspired them in their own healing processes and in finding the courage to follow their own hearts.

Our Unique Journeys

My writing is definitely not for everyone. For someone on a different energetic journey, my words must sound like folly and gibberish. All I can say is that if my words resonate with you then feel free to follow along, apply them in your own way, and perhaps use them to inspire you in your own journey.

But if my writing style comes across to you as bad and incoherent, all I can say is “Please … stop reading … my writing is not for you … don’t waste your time with such silliness. Please go read something else … something that inspires the passions of your own heart. And above all, you might find more joy in your life if you embrace your own unique and loving journey rather than critiquing someone else’s journey.”

Middle Aged Child

If I recall correctly, a famous religious master once taught the concept that: “except ye become as little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

I actually consider it quite a compliment to be referred to as a “middle aged child.” This scripture is not encouraging us to be childish, but to be child-like. I fully seek to embrace the innocence, wonder, and magic of life, while developing the ability to love without adult grudges and judgments. I constantly strive to remove the layers of grown-up beliefs that trap me in seriousness and dysfunction.

Aimee, I am grateful for the profound compliment.

Conditioned Sheep

Many spiritual paths embrace the concept of becoming as little children, of undoing the conditioning that holds us in bondage. Don Miguel Ruiz, In “The Four Agreements” refers to the process as “The domestication of the planet.” A Course In Miracles emphasizes that enlightenment does not come from doing, but from “undoing”. Some Zen beliefs talk about how the truth cannot be found, but instead the lies must be removed – thus allowing us to remember the truth that already is. My inner work in San Marcos has profoundly and shockingly opened my eyes to the unbelievable depth of conditioning through which I myself passed during childhood.

The majority of our earthly realm has fallen asleep through thousands of years of societal conditioning. We raise our children to be just like us – to believe like us, to think like us, to behave like us, to talk our language, to embrace our political beliefs, to eat, sleep, exercise, love, hate, forgive, judge, or whatever – just like us.

Through this process – and yes I did it to my own children – we condition our youth to be obedient sheep, doing things the way they have been done by our ancestors, doing things the proper way, the way everyone else does them. But we rarely question these beliefs.

Even more subtle, however, is how we teach our children to enforce those rules onto each other. If we see someone doing something differently, we bully them, ridicule them, punish them, ostracize them, and shame them into conforming to the “right way.”

Anyone who is starting to wake up on this planet is at least beginning to understand this conditioned reality.

Speaking My Truth

In my own case, I was terrified to begin my own journey of self-discovery for fear of “What will my family think?”

I can only speculate, but I would imagine that there are very few people on this planet who have not often cowered in fear about following their own heart – all because of the potential reactions or judgments that might be triggered in those we love.

I spent a large portion of my life being an obedient sheep, simply following the person in front of me because that was the only way to avoid being judged by others.

One of my favorite metaphors of the last ten years is the true story of how, when several crabs are placed in a basket, none of them is able to crawl out. As soon as one begins to climb toward the upper edges, the others will reach up and pull him back down into the basket.

It is fear of speaking my truth – fear of judgment – fear of someone pulling me back down into the crab basket – that kept me from following my heart all those years. I am now so profoundly grateful for the confidence to speak my truth – confidence that is finally flowing through my veins.

Reality Check

Aimee, I again want to thank you from the bottom my heart for the comment that you posted to my blog.

When I began my journey in June of 2009, I was terrified to write something that my family and some friends might not understand or embrace. I actually told many of my closer friends that I had considered writing two blogs – one for family and conservative friends – and one for my more open-minded spiritual friends. I was terrified that family might read my “blasphemous” words and be offended, or judge me as crazy.

Throughout my travels, I have gradually expanded on my ability to “speak my truth” but it was not until June of 2010 when I first found the courage to spell out all of my primary spiritual beliefs in black and white, condensing them in a blog appropriately titled “Speaking My Truth.”

As I read Aimee’s comment on that beautiful day-after-Thanksgiving evening, the reason I giggled with such bubbly delight, is that the negative words had absolutely no effect on me whatsoever.

The grinning from ear to ear that became glued to my face for several hours – well that was due to the fact that I profoundly realized that I have graduated to a whole new level of self-confidence and self-love – a level of honoring and living my inner truth to such a powerful level that I no longer care if anyone else on the planet even agrees with me.

Thanks Aimee, for providing me with this opportunity to perform a profound reality check with where I am in my journey. I love you for that.

Gratitude For Feedback

I want you to all know that I deeply appreciate the frequent feedback that I receive on my writing. Most of that feedback is sent to me via emails, Facebook posts, or Facebook messages. Twice, however, I have even bumped into people here in San Marcos who stop me, having recognized my photo or met me at a chocolate ceremony – who then tell me that they have been reading my blog and it is one of the things that guided them to come here.

Such feedback often arrives at just the perfect time when I myself might need a little encouragement to keep going, or as in Aimee’s case, the perfect time to give me a new burst of self-awareness.

Humble Requests

I would also like to petition for two humble requests to anyone who reads these words.

For those of you who feel inspired by my writing, I would love it if you would somehow spread the word to others – perhaps sharing my links on Facebook, or sending a website link via email to anyone you think might benefit. A deep inner guidance tells me that one day my “bad and incoherent writing (LOL)” will be published in a manner that will help others. I have no idea when or how it will happen. Right now, I am totally focused on experiencing and writing, trusting that the rest will happen as part of the beautiful synchronous flow that guides my life. Yet a restless feeling tells me that something yet needs to happen – something outside of my own control – to reach whomever it is that might further facilitate the publishing of my writing.

Giggling And Curious

My second request is that, just this once, I would like to encourage anyone who is so inclined, to provide a little feedback of their own regarding my writing, or perhaps to compose their own loving response to Aimee’s comment. (Please keep them in the loving category.)

And rather than sending your comments offline via email or Facebook, I would love to see them posted here, directly on my blog. For those reading via subscription email or RSS readers, you will need to go directly to my blog (www.BrendaLarsen.com) and click on the “comments” link just below and to the far right of the blog entry title. You will need to provide an email in the posting process, but rest assured that the email is not published for others to see.

While my heart insists that I will write whether anyone reads at all, I think it would be fun, just this one time, to find out who is reading and what you might be thinking. I would love for anyone who reads this to post a little comment – a comment of any sort – even if it is just to say “Hi” – just so I can get an idea of who might actually be reading along. I’m just giggling and curious.

Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved