Brenda's Bicycles

(Note: Due to more problems with my subscription service, I again deleted my last photo post and am reposting it as two smaller ones. Hopefully, this will solve the problem again.)

During my first week visiting friends and family in Utah, I found myself continuing to cycle in deep inner work processing. Through a series of unexpected intuitions, some coming through me, and a few inspired by friends, I felt strongly guided to go to “Build A Bear” and create myself a cute little teddy bear — one who would represent my inner child. As the metaphor unfolded, I soon found myself taking this little bear to the place of my birth, in Grand Junction Colorado. It was a journey of profound healing … a journey of going back in time to rewrite emotional wounds.

The photos in this post are from that journey on November 19, 2012.

As usual, the photos in this post are thumbnail images. Please click on any photo to enlarge it. The thumbnails leave much to be desired as far as colors and resolution – plus the thumbnails clip all of the edges. I use thumbnails for the post itself, because it gives people an opportunity to get a summary glimpse without downloading huge amounts of data for the high-res photos.

CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO ENLARGE TO HIGH RESOLUTION

Birth And Back Again

After getting up early on Nov 19, 2012, I was on the road with a mission. My little “Bobby-bear” and I are off to do some inner-work together. It is around 6:00 a.m. when I head south on the interstate highway.

About five hours later, I pulled into the hospital of my birth. Back in 1955 it was quite different than it is now. Even though it is a very different place, it will do just fine.

The emergency room entrance sign. I don’t know for sure, but I do know from reading old journals and family letters that I was a breech baby, and I was scheduled for a C-section. But for some reason, I was born the night before the scheduled surgery. I can only assume that I surprised my parents and messed up all their plans, causing an early emergency visit to the hospital.

I entered through this entrance. Intuitions told me it was the closest to where I was actually born in the old, smaller hospital.

Same view, just panning to the left of the entrance.

Once inside, I approached a security guard, explained that I was looking for where Maternity and Delivery might have been back in the mid 1950s. She gave me turn by turn directions, doing so with confidence. I followed those directions to the core of the hospital.

And up the Colorado River elevators.

This is Bobby bear. He was excited to visit the general area of his birth. We found what intuitively felt like the right place to visit, and we sat down and did beautiful inner work for about 30 minutes, meditatively re-experiencing our birth and first two weeks in the hospital. (My mother tells me that she was required to stay in a hospital bed for two weeks after my birth … and I can only assume that I spent that same two weeks in the hospital nursery in a sterile hospital bassinette.)

Bobby in full size. He is just over a foot tall. He has been an amazing companion in my inner work year, still serving me in beautiful ways.

When I picked him out at a “Build-a-bear” workshop in a Utah mall, I specifically chose him based on his eyes and glowing smile.

After some beautiful healing time at the place of my birth, the next stop was my childhood home. I lived on Bunting Avenue.

Driving down the street, less than a block from the home where I spent my first ten years. This neighborhood has countless memories. Bobby and I drove slowly, reminiscing and healing, bringing new loving energy to old events and times.

This is the home were i grew up. It is now a different color, and the yard is quite different, but it has the memories just the same.

I parked in front of the house as Bobby and I spent most of another hour revisiting one old memory after another, bringing healing energy to each.

Looking to the right side of my old house, at the neighbors. Two twin boys (Tom and Ron) lived here. They were my age, and I used to play with them a lot.

I then drove away in a different direction, exploring the old streets while headed toward my elementary school. This photo is looking west from my home.

And this one is looking east.

This is my childhood elementary school … the place where I attended through fourth grade. Just like before, Bobby and I spend considerable time here, bringing light and love to old memories.

A section of the school in back. I cannot remember exactly which classrooms were mine, but I believe I attended fourth grade in this wing.

This is a separate little classroom, all by itself across the playground. I attended second grade in this classroom.

One last glimpse through a fence, showing the play area. It is totally different now, but I still remember hours of playing in this location.

Next stop … back to my old neighborhood. When I was around nine years old, I used to go around the neighborhood taking on odd jobs to earn money — usually mowing lawns. This building used to be a 7-Eleven convenience store. I have clear memories of working here, sweeping the parking lot for 50 cents. In fact, on one hot summer day, I got heatstroke working in the hot sun. The owner told me that when I was old enough to hold a job, that he would hire me. We moved before that ever happened.

As usual, Bobby and I revisited old memories here.

This photo is taken of the buildings where there used to be a small candy store. I clearly remember my father taking me here on my fifth birthday to buy some candy (with the twist that I did not then know it was my birthday). After buying some candy and walking the two blocks back home, everyone jumped out and yelled “Surprise, Happy Birthday”.

We called it the “penny candy store” because you could buy candy there for a penny. I am not sure if the store was where this Fed-Ex now exists …

… or if it was in this side of the building which is now a couple of small restaurants. Perhaps the old building was actually demolished and replaced with all of these. I may never know.

Next, I set out with Bobby in search of my childhood church buildings. During my youngest years, we met for church in this building. It now appears to be some type of commercial counseling center.

I remember performing a children’s song (with my family) during a church meeting here. I must have been around four years old.

Next, Bobby and I drove to the new church building that was built while we lived here. In fact, I clearly remember helping my father up on the roof of this building, holding the end of a chalk line while he used it to mark a straight line for the placement of shingles. When I was pulling the chalk line backwards, I accidently walked off one of the eves and landed on the roof below. I’m not sure which one it was. I also have many other memories in this building.

This, and the other church building were the source of much of my childhood religious conditioning. Bobby and I did a great deal of emotional processing here.

A close-up showing one of the eves. Like I said before, I am not sure if this is the specific one I fell from … and I don’t think I was at the highest peak. I think I only fell a few feet.

Colorado National Monument

After finishing some very productive healing work, Bobby and I took a couple of hours to explore the Colorado National Monument. It is only a short distance from my old home, and is the place of many family activities, picnics, and hikes.

A gorgeous view of this red-rock area.

It was in tunnels like these that my father used to honk the horn.

Looking down at the valley below. This scenery has so many memories.

A rock formation called “Devil’s Kitchen” (foreground, mostly in the shade). We used to hike and picnic here. I once almost fell off a cliff here as I stepped on some loose shale while leaving a small slot canyon in these rocks. (I was around five years old.)

Zoomed-out view. Devil’s Kitchen is the formation glowing in the right center.

A little closer view of the same. The afternoon sun was perfect for this photo.

Bobby and I stopped the car and got out for a grounding hike. But as before, we did some good processing here.

Continuing the hike.

Approaching Devil’s Kitchen.

And even closer. I did not go up into the formation. It was late, and a little cold, so Bobby and I hurried back to the car and began the long drive back to the Salt Lake City area … arriving at my friend’s house around 10:00 p.m. that evening.

This ends the photos from my trip back to the beginning.

Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “A Loyal Secret Service.”

Early Thursday morning, May 23, 2013, I board a small public boat and rush off across the lake to Panajachel, where I take care of much needed shopping and banking.

Later, as I wait for the afternoon workgroup ceremony, I am delighted when an old friend walks in, having arrived late last evening. I will call her Brianne (not her real name).

“Wow, you are glowing, and radiating light,” Brianne tells me as we exchange hugs, “much more so than when I last saw you a couple months ago.”

Brianne is the same woman about whom I had temporarily allowed myself to get lost in silly triggers on Sunday and Monday. I am delighted when I clearly see that our friendship is strong and intact. All of my silly ego storytelling served a beautiful healing purpose, but it is now more clear than ever that the triggers had absolutely nothing to do with present-day fact, or with my friend.

Confusing Cryptic Conversation

Ten of us fill the porch as we enter a silent forty-five minute meditation. When Keith finally speaks and announces his readiness to work with others, I find myself in beautiful energy, but I am also feeling another empty aching sensation in the center of my solar plexus. Rather than judge my self, I focus on self-love, surrendering to the pain, inviting light, and following a flow of inner metaphors.

But not much guidance is surfacing in that flow.

After a while, Keith again breaks the silence as he speaks to me, complimenting me on my beautiful energy today. He tells me that I am radiating very high vibrations that are helping others. He then mentions how it is specifically helping one dear friend.

“I have a deep emptiness ache in my belly,” I then ask for guidance. “I am focused on loving the pain, seeing it as something in the process of healing, but I do not seem to be making any progress in my journey.”

I somewhat expect a short response, so I find myself pleasantly surprised when Keith spends a great deal of time discussing the issue with me. At first, Keith jokes with me, asking how it feels to be in a place where I have pains, but they are no longer kicking me in the gut, weighing me down, etc. In Keith’s attempt at cryptic, congratulatory humor, I feel quite lost.

“I don’t quite understand your point?” I ask a couple of times during this ongoing, confusing conversation.

Mother Earth Tingles

From the discussion that follows, I eventually figure out what I “think” Keith is saying.

“I think he is telling me that I am in a very good place,” I ponder silently, “and that I have let go of so much density and dysfunctional belief systems, that the empty-ache I feel is where those things used to live – an emptiness that I am not quite used to. Keith seems to imply that this empty space is not quite repaired, not yet filled up with what really belongs there.”

I never fully confirm this interpretation with Keith. I am attempting to stay out of my rational mind, so I let myself remain somewhat confused while I go on simply feeling and following.

I wait for inner breadcrumbs to guide me, consistently focusing on love while trying many things – most of which do not work. Repeatedly, I get the feeling that it is time to connect more with Mother Earth. I am feeling beautiful, tingling energy at the base of my spine and hips, mostly on my backside. The energy is pleasant and vibrating, but intermittent … starting, pausing, starting some more, lingering a while, pausing, etc.

Glowing Hurt

Again, Keith unexpectedly speaks up and gushes with comments about my high vibration today. He makes a specific point to emphasize with clarity how beautiful my energy is, how it is helping the group today, and anchoring in a lot of light.

“Thank you,” I repeatedly tell Keith as he shares this magical feedback for what feels like a long time.

I love how Keith is validating me so strongly today. I feel a huge inner smile, with glowing energy filling me throughout.

“But I HURT in my belly,” I ponder with confusion. “Yes, I am in a beautiful glowing energy, but I HURT!”

Inner guidance tells me that this is the second day in a row where I need to focus on profound trust and surrender … on knowing that the answers will come. I try to be patient as I engage repeated metaphors to explore the pain. Everything I attempt seems to get me nowhere, so I just wait … and wait … and wait.

Meanwhile, I imagine ego trudging ahead on that hamster wheel, pushing forward on an endless journey of impatiently searching, while I visualize myself stepping off the wheel and patiently allowing. I giggle as I ponder this metaphor. It helps me to relax and disengage while allowing ego to do whatever it wants. I note that I am much more peaceful when I do this, and aware of many more feelings too.

Patiently Waiting

Remembering that most of the original pain had suddenly surfaced while simply focusing on deep, relaxed breathing, I soon return to more such breathing. As I do, the pains and tingles in my belly shift slightly, momentarily relaxing and then getting stronger.

“This pain is related to something wanting to open,” I ponder new intuitions. “The pains are related to my own resistance to allowing this to happen.”

Following another intuitive burst, I quietly immerse myself in a pillar of light meditation, filling all my chakras with energy while asking Higher Self to help in repairing, reconnecting, and unclogging damaged energy channels in my body. I soon imagine thousands of angelic neurosurgeons coming into my energetic field and reconnecting nerve channels at a physical level. As I do so, I feel more energy and strength return to the painful regions in my belly.

“This is where most of the “power” damage was done by my mother’s unknowing psychic surgeries,” I ponder.

I soon invite my mother’s Higher Essence to join the meditation, and I ask her to assist in fixing the damage. Gradually, I sense a great deal of energetic change taking place in my abdomen … but it still hurts. I continue to wait patiently, trusting and surrendering.

Storytelling Setups

As one friend talks to Keith about how she wants to upgrade her root chakra, the ensuing conversation captivates me deeply. Keith mentions how the root chakra is not just related to survival, but is also related to a “sense of belonging.”

I perk up immediately and realize that, throughout my life, I have never felt like I belonged, not anywhere.

“I want to belong,” I ponder repeatedly.

I pursue the new understanding that I have been ignoring my root chakra, hardly paying any attention to it in the past. As I focus on bringing energy into my root, I start to feel a little expanding emotion. The more I surrender, the more I gradually reach a point of beginning to dry heave – wanting to vomit out what is now very intense emotional agony.

At this point, I quickly invite the light to fill me, to take me to the next step. As I further surrender, the emotion gradually vanishes – but I still have pain in my belly.

Soon, a dear friend (I will call her Kelly) leans over and begins to talk to me, engaging in nonstop storytelling about her newly discovered insights in her own process. I listen politely as Kelly whispers, but I am so deep in my own inner journey that I am not able to relate or understand much. Her conversations feels like rational mind stories that do not resolve anything. I cannot concentrate, and her talking is actually annoying me deeply.

“I am sorry,” I finally interrupt after at least five minutes. “I cannot focus right now. I am in process, and this is pulling me out.”

Kelly smiles and disengages. Seconds later, she invites another friend to sit by her, and proceeds to talk even louder, going on for over twenty minutes as she describes rational mind insights about amazing things that just happened to her. I love Kelly, but her talking is unexpectedly driving me insane.

Giggling Insights

As I sit in my process, attempting to ignore the loud conversation, I continue to surrender to my flow, feeling, following, loving myself … and yes, still in pain.

Increasingly, Kelly’s conversation disturbs me. It is nonstop storytelling. From what I hear, it has nothing to do with actual processing … it is just talking about former processing insights.

“I get it,” I suddenly ponder with a silent giggle. “Such storytelling does not solve anything, and traditional talk-therapy or psychotherapy does not solve anything either. After ten years of counseling at such levels, someone can know exactly why they do things … but they often still do them anyway.”

“The real healing comes from the Higher Energies,” I continue to ponder. “All the nonstop stories are nothing more than a means of searching for the truth – simply delaying and hiding the discovery of the real truth. Wow!”

I have heard Keith share similar statements for a couple of years now, but I finally understand the profound wisdom in this knowing. I myself have been lost in such stories, wanting to talk about everything so that I could figure it out. I now clearly understand that talking is superfluous – that it is the process of feeling the emotions and then surrendering them to the light that really matters. Understanding can be helpful, but it is not what does the actual healing.

Conversation Confusion

At one point, as Kelly’s talking continues, I glance at Keith, exchanging a smile of recognition. He is briefly glancing at Kelly’s conversation too – and intuitions whisper that we are both smiling at the same thing.

I am not judging anything … not demanding that anything change … but am just checking to see if Keith is noticing. The shared smile says it all.

As Keith then turns away and proceeds to ignore the loud conversation, doing nothing, I get the feeling that this should be my response as well. But as I attempt to focus on my own process, Kelly’s stories continue to distract me.

Soon, as I watch two other friends take turns going into deep processing, I can no longer handle the distracting noise next to me.

“Can you please hold space for others?” I quietly whisper to my noisy friend.

When Kelly tells me that her talking is extremely important for her process, I back off and allow her to have her own truth. I know that this storytelling is triggering me deeply, and that it will prove to be an integral part of my process.

Soon, I simply stand up and move to a different part of the porch, close to a friend who is in deep release. This solves two problems. I am further from Kelly’s distraction, and I am now sharing energy with another beautiful soul.

As I sit sharing energy with Mara, I continue to hurt. But I ignore my pains as I occasionally whisper guidance to Mara, encouraging her to trust herself. Soon, as Mara stabilizes, I feel guided to return to my own seat.

I Don’t Belong

Meanwhile, a huge thunderstorm has unleashed its fury, and Kelly has now engaged yet another person in long storytelling about her process.

As I sit back down by Kelly, who is now talking about leaving before the pounding rain gets worse, Kelly turns to face me, and we briefly stare into each other’s eyes. Kelly again reassures me how important her talking had been for her.

“I just felt it was a lot of stories that don’t really process anything,” I lovingly respond to Kelly.

Our brief conversational exchange is loving and compassionate. I can allow her to have her truth.

As I stare into her eyes, the real issue then starts to bubble to the surface.

“I don’t belong,” I ponder through swelling tears. “This conversation with Kelly is a perfect mirror of what has happened throughout my life.”

An Isolating Alien Loser

As I ponder the awkwardness of my conversation with Kelly, I know that, in my life, in every instance, I have always tried to do the right thing. But I have never felt like I belonged – feeling like an alien, not conforming to anyone else’s rational mind description of reality – feeling stupid, not fitting in, giving my power away, isolating and hiding as a social loser.

As I keep staring into Kelly’s eyes, these unfolding insights continue to flow with clarity. Quite soon, I break into sobs and dry heaves. The thunderstorm is so loud that no one else seems to even notice my tears, but Kelly bends down and holds a beautiful energetic space for me.

Once I begin to dry heave, I bring in light. As the emotion starts to transmute, I sit quietly for a minute or two, feeling deeply numb. Then I quickly sink into another deep layer. As I process through four or five additional layers of emotion, I am almost screeching with agony at times. Kelly holds space as I go deeper into these emotions of not belonging. I feel all of it deeply, but I am still not getting much rational mind clarity.

A Conformity Robot

As I begin to recover from deep emotional release, I take note that another friend is now engaged in nonstop stories with two other women. The stories are totally unrelated to inner work, and this friend seems to be on an ego trip as others listen to her wisdom (most of which does not resonate with me in any way). To my surprise, two other women to my left then begin to engage in more nonstop, unrelated stories. The stage-play mirror being presented to me is so intense that it is almost comical.

As I continue to observe and listen, more and more insights flood into my awareness.

“This type of storytelling IS a major cause of my childhood shutdown!” I ponder with astounding clarity. As a child, I was surrounded by nonstop storytelling, most of which felt to my heart like absolute bullshit … but I was forced to listen to it … forced to conform to it … and was soon consumed by it.”

As I attempt to silence my mind, I am in agony with every word echoing around me. I literally want to run away from the porch. I want to scream as I desperately attempt NOT to listen to the loud conversations blaring around me. It is insanity … and it IS the story of my life.

As a tiny child, I was in my heart. I tried to relate to others from my heart space, but everyone else around me was in their head. I felt rejected, made wrong, stupid, slammed, and punished for not wanting to conform. The verbal rejection of my right-brained nature made me believe that something was horribly wrong with me.

I did not understand the nonsensical conversations around me … I did not fit in … I did not belong … I did not want to belong … and I suffered. Finally, in desperation, I surrendered, giving up my “dysfunctional ways,” becoming a conformity robot, desperately seeking to belong.

Exploring Relating

In the midst of unfolding porch chaos, I reflect back on my entire life. It seems that feeling as if something were horribly wrong with me has been a deeply rooted belief. But now, I understand that nothing was wrong with me, nothing at all – that I simply did not relate to the alien left-brained reality around me. Yes, I wanted to fit in, but I was different and did not want to waste my time on what to me felt like “shallow, left-brained stuff.”

For most of my life, I have blamed my gender struggles as being the source of me not fitting in – but I am now quite clear that I did not fit in even when no one else knew of my struggles. I simply did not relate … period. I didn’t know how to engage in what I perceived as meaningless, frivolous stories. They bored and confused me, and as a result, left me feeling as if something was defective in me.

In school, I wanted to be popular, but I did not relate to the popular kids, and did not want to be like them.

Throughout life, I wanted to fit in to group social conversations, but often did not relate to the topics. So I isolated myself and felt stupid – wanting, but NOT wanting to be like them.

In fact, as I ponder ever deeper, I realize that all of the dear friendships that I have in my life came from shared experience – from experiences that were meaningful in a heart space. I truly love those friends with all my heart, and can discuss heart matters with them for hours on end. But when any of them go into conversational topics to which I do not relate, I want isolate and hide, even from them.

Deep introspection clearly reveals that throughout my life, I have never felt that I belonged unless I was with a group of people bound by heart-based experience, engaged in meaningful heart-based pursuits. In all other social situations, I have felt myself to be a clueless, terrible misfit, from childhood through adulthood, even now.

Now, for the first time in my life, I am gaining clarity that I am NOT a clueless social misfit … that there is nothing wrong with me … that I DO belong … but that I simply do not have a desire to engage in activities or conversation where heart-based connections are pushed aside for the extreme opposite.

Emotions Of Understanding

Finally, the rains have stopped and I stand up and tell Kelly that I have to leave – to get off the porch – that there is too much storytelling going on and that it is deeply triggering me. I have finally realized that stories like these today were the cause of a large portion of my childhood shutdown. Like the rains a few minutes ago, the lesson is literally pounding me right now. I am in a state of energetic panic from the external stimuli.

As I look around to find Keith, someone tells me he is down in the garden. When I walk down the steps and give him a quick hug, I am shocked by the level of emotion that unexpectedly erupts from within me.

“I am in a really good place,” I explain through bursting sobs. “It is just a ton of emotion suddenly flowing through me.”

I quickly summarize my journey of the day, and tell Keith how I now know that rational mind talking is at the core of my not wanting to belong to most things in this world.

As I start to walk away, Keith asks me to follow him up to the gate area, where he talks to me for a while as he keeps working in the garden.

Multifaceted Healing

Keith gives me beautiful feedback … telling me I am on the right track … that I am finally getting it … and that stories just reinforce and reenergize emotions for another loop.

I love the feeling as Keith talks to me about my process. I mostly just listen as he validates my insights and reactions to the stories that were going on around the porch today.

“Keith,” I then share, “I now understand why I often want to isolate socially, not enjoying or wanting to be around many conversations.”

“What you are doing now will help you heal that and take you to a place where you don’t need to engage in that kind of conversation.” Keith guides me. “But when you heal this, those types of conversations will not bother you anymore, even if you do choose to participate in them.”

“Wow,” I ponder as I begin to walk home. “It is not only empath energy that causes me to want to isolate … it is also rational mind words and stories … especially when such stories do not relate to my own beliefs.’

Heart Stories

I begin to ponder my blog, realizing that “Yes, I AM sharing stories,” but that I am using my writing as a means of communicating from the heart. This is something I was never been able to do or develop in the past, because I did not feel as if I belonged, and I believed it was not interesting to others.

“Now,” I ponder with a giggle, “I am using my writing to develop the skill of heart-based communication, and to integrate my own healing, without caring if others relate or not.”

“And I now understand why some people socially intimidate me so much,” I continue to ponder. “At least know-it-all type people who believe they have all the answers and correct truth.”

As a tiny child, I did not have the strength, confidence, or wisdom to withstand the onslaught of strong-minded opinions and dominant speech of others.

All clues point to this as the core of my lifelong feeling of not belonging – to the core of my God drama itself. In social situations, I did not know how to tell a proper joke, how to laugh, or to tell a story. And I was terrified of expressing an opinion unless I knew that others would agree with me.

I find new strength in the realization that having no social confidence was not the result of me being a loser … it was the result of me simply not being socially interested in trying to relate at a level that felt like a betrayal to my own heart.

A Priceless Experience

After arriving at home, I step into my bedroom and quickly begin to process through many more layers of deep emotional release. The more I ponder these new unfolding insights, the more emotions come up to be felt and transmuted. I bring in a great deal of light to assist me.

At 8:00 p.m., when I finally get up to type a few notes, I am numb and almost in shock – feeling tired, exhausted, and drained. But to my delight, I am also flowing with energy – light energy that fills my head and my abdomen.

I am just trusting and surrendering to my flow. The intense process today has profoundly helped me to resolve countless layers of emotions – bringing new, meaningful, heart-based understanding of something that could never be understood from reading a book, or a blog.

For me, it has been a priceless experience.

While most of the emotions have been transmuted, many continue to flow. Constant focus is frequently required to remind myself that what is flowing through me is NOT me … it is just old emotions coming up and on their way out.

Even as I prepare for bed, pains in my belly continue to poke and prod, but I trust that they are healings in progress – part of my ongoing process. Soon, I drift peacefully to sleep.

Not Belonging Revisited

Friday afternoon, around ten beautiful people occupy Keith’s porch. As he prepares to lead the “Glow Meditation,” Keith suddenly surprises me when he turns and speaks.

“Brenda, how are you doing today?” Keith asks. “I was going to ask you when you arrived, but I forgot, and I know that you were in deep stuff yesterday.”

“I’m doing well, in a nice energy,” I respond with a smile.

In a short conversation that ensues, I summarize my journey of additional processing, and all of my insights regarding “not belonging,” and how I am really getting that this is at the core of my God drama.

After again congratulating me, Keith turns and begins to talk to the whole group. He explains that much of what we do on the porch is about undoing childhood-conditioning and that “not belonging” is an experience common to most everyone. Keith then adds that all of us came into this life as magical children, born during a time when higher energy was not yet in resonance, and that our childhood shutdowns were an intended part of our journey.

What unfolds is a ten minute group discussion, one in which I repeatedly feel deeply validated for the intense work that I am doing.

New Beginnings

As I soon go deep in the “Glow Meditation,” I note that my belly again begins to hurt sharply.

“Ouch,” I ponder with frustration.

“It is another layer,” I silently mull over Keith’s frequent advice. “Are you going to do it or not?”

“This is NOT the same old stuff,” I remind myself. I have NOT already done this work. This is a new day, with new issues, and it is time to begin again, surrendering and following.”

I am really getting it … and I also get that today will be another day of trust and surrender.

Infinite Patience

For the first hour, I sit in silence, hurting a great deal, loving the pains, following the pains, and testing several metaphors to work with the pains … but nothing seems to take me anywhere.

I continue to love myself for having the courage to sit back and trust. Soon, a young man does some work in which he mentions that he is impatient in his own process.

“Yup,” I ponder silently. “I am profoundly impatient again.”

“Infinite patience brings immediate results,” I ponder one of my favorite A-Course-In-Miracles quotes.

Ignoring the impatient feeling, I return to trust, surrender, and infinite patience. On a regular basis, I ask ego to go walk in the hamster wheel, while I sit quietly in the pain, loving myself with compassion.

Stay The Course

Finally, I speak up and ask Keith for some back-watching support, wanting to make sure I am not scamming myself.

“Is this another of those trust and surrender days?” I ask in a cryptic message, one that I know Keith will understand.

“Yes,” Keith responds after checking. “That is what I am getting for you.”

I love how Keith’s guidance clearly matches my own.

“This is the third day in a row with intense pains,” I then add verbally. “I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something.”

Keith again quickly confirms that I am in a beautiful process, doing quite well, and that I should just trust and follow.

As minutes turn into hours, I keep reminding myself that in the last two ceremonies, both ended beautifully, with amazing new growth and insights. I continue to trust that today will be the same. I know I am being given the chance to NOT judge the pain, to NOT identify with the pain, and to show my ability NOT to attach. It is profound and difficult, but I manage to stay the course.

A Scared Lion

I begin working with the pains as if they might be more of that “Loyal Secret Service” metaphor, but I do not get very far on this thread.

Then I begin to see the pain as a frightened puppy in my belly – one needing my love.

I try all kinds of metaphors to go down and sit with the painful fear, leaving bowls of milk, having my inner child play with the puppy, etc, being patient and building trust. I also remind myself of recent revelations that to these frightened parts of me, “I am the perpetrator” in their eyes.

Suddenly, new insight flashes into my mind.

“This is not a scared puppy at all,” I realize. “It is a scared lion … a very abused and frightened lion … and I HAVE been the perpetrator to this lion.”

As I contemplate further opening my energies, I am shocked to recognize that right now, I feel more terrified of the lion than it is of me. We are both feeling victimized by the other. My heart is frightened of distorted masculine power (the agitated lion in my solar plexus) – terrified of what might happen if that rejected power is allowed to return to my heart.

A Terrified And Isolated Heart

“Keith,” I soon find the courage to speak. “I have a rational mind question about fear. I seem to recall that in the past, you have said that, with fear, you don’t have to feel it, that you can just let it go …”

Keith quickly corrects me, explaining that with fear, we do not have to necessarily understand it or pick it apart to see where it comes from, but that we do have to feel it and then ask the light to take it.

I smile when another friend quickly thanks me for asking this question. Apparently, she is dealing with similar issues, but was timid about asking a rational-minded question. I am quite glad that I did.

I quickly explain my “frightened lion” metaphor to Keith before elaborating that my heart is terrified. My heart is frightened of the power in my solar plexus – scared of the ramifications of opened sexuality in the second chakra – tied up in knots over what will happen if I start fully speaking my truth through my throat chakra – and quite afraid to open up third-eye knowing that once got me into so much trouble as a child.

“All of my inner bodyguards are surrounding the heart because my heart is terrified of all the things that caused it to be wounded when we were a child,” I tell Keith as tears begin to flow. “My heart sees everything outside itself as an agitated, dangerous lion.”

Floundering For Metaphors

“You have to feel it to the bottom, Brenda,” Keith encourages me to go into the surfacing emotions.

I go deeper and deeper, starting to drown in the fear.

“You are there now,” Keith adds a few minutes later. “Bring in the light and surrender the fear. Find a metaphor of how you hang on to the fear, and use that metaphor to undo the hanging on.”

Keith’s unexpected statement about finding a new metaphor confuses me, and he can sense my confusion. When he asks if I understand, I tell him “Yes,” but that I am not yet feeling a metaphor. Keith encourages me to find something special, possibly related to the God drama, something that involves clinging to the fear. Eventually, Keith suggests a possible metaphor, but I just cannot get into it, and am struggling deep in the emotion.

Breathing New Life

Suddenly, my mind intuitively drifts to the C. S. Lewis books and movies in “The Chronicles of Narnia” series. In the story, “Aslan” is a central character, showing up in all seven books. Aslan is a great lion – a talking lion – one who is wise, compassionate, and benevolent, yet very strong. The author C. S. Lewis himself, described Aslan as an alternative, metaphorical version of Christ. I like to see this magnificent lion as representing the true epitome of Christ Consciousness in all of his unconditionally loving goodness, undistorted by human dogmas.

“Aslan is in my heart,” I ponder with silent giggles. “Masculine power, in its most divine balance, is already filling my loving, feminine heart.”

“Why would I fear dysfunctional powers from elsewhere?” I ponder with confidence.

Almost immediately, the fears begin to subside and leave. Suddenly, I remember a scene from “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” where Lucy and Aslan were at the castle of the “Ice Witch.” During her reign, the witch had frozen perhaps thousands of good creatures, turning them into stone. Immediately, I find myself imagining a scene where Lucy and Aslan are walking among the creatures frozen in stone.

Suddenly, Aslan breathes a warm, life-giving breath to a stone statue. Seconds later, it comes back to life. Aslan then repeats this with every other frozen animal, bringing them all back to physical existence.

Immediately, I imagine Aslan, as my heart itself, breathing life back into all of the various areas of my own body – areas that are mostly dormant to the energies after years of emotional clogging. Slowly, I imagine my heart breathing life force back into shoulders, neck, head, solar plexus, belly, etc, one area at a time.

I do this for a very long time, and find great peace in the process. The pain subsides considerably.

Gangnam What?

As I reach a state of completion, I feel much more relaxed and balanced. Intuitions tell me that this layer of intense fear has been released. I giggle as I realize that the fear was actually upside down and backwards from my original metaphor of a scared lion in my solar plexus.

Even though my loyal secret service agents had been dutifully protecting my heart all these years, I had not felt the fear until I recognized my belly as an angry, scared lion. But once I connected with the true divine energies already in my heart, the fear easily vanished. Properly connected to Higher Energies, my heart has no need to fear anything.

I can only giggle when, out of the blue, the neighbors begin to play “Gangnam Style,” doing so loudly and repeatedly. Quickly, I grab little Bobby bear, hold his hands in mine, and I begin to move him to the beat, dancing all over my body.

I am having fun, lightening the mood, and it works. I feel myself giggling inside, and feeling much lighter.

A Shocking Dilemma

To my surprise, intuitions suddenly guide me to visualize my inner masculine and feminine selves, dancing together to the beat of the music. At first, I feel them giggling and jumping around in unison. Tears of deep love and compassion start to stream down my cheeks. These are tears of profound self-love.

Suddenly, my belly knots up again, hurting painfully. As I feel the agonizing aches, the love stops flowing. For the next forty-five minutes or so, I attempt to visualize little Bobby and Sharon dancing … then my teenage adolescents … and then my adult counterparts. At times, I can feel the love and joyful connection, but mostly, I just feel isolation, and stiff, rebellious, resistance.

I am shocked by the level of continued resentment between these two inner energies – shocked by how hard it is to visualize this self-love being shared between masculine and feminine sides of me.

It is quite clear that I remain far from healing the masculine and feminine balance. I know that the suspicions between heart and solar plexus are also a male/female energy thing – with my feminine heart feeling terrified of dysfunctional masculine power.

I painfully experience the unfolding inner dilemma.

An Interesting Journey

Finally, at around 4:30 p.m., I look up and make eye contact with Keith.

“You have had a very interesting journey today,” Keith tells me.

I am curious what Keith knows, because we have not yet talked about my inner journey.

“Yeah,” I tell him, quickly filling him in on my shifting journey. “I thought I was working with God drama stuff, and now I am suddenly right back with struggles between masculine and feminine selves.”

“Brenda,” Keith points out, “as you heal this next layer of masculine/feminine energies, it will be very huge for you.”

As I pick his brain for ideas, Keith encourages me to work separately with each energy, not prematurely forcing them together, waiting until each is more healed individually. Then, when they are ready, and only then, I should start to bring them together.

“Use your Higher Self to assist you in this process,” Keith then guides me.

Ongoing Pains

A few minutes later, as I prepare to hurry home to eat before yet-another evening of bagging chocolate, I note that my belly is again quite hard, painful, and swollen.

I really get that the solar plexus power, and the pains I feel, represent my fear and hatred of distorted masculine energies – a repressed fear and hatred that is not directed solely at men, but at domination and manipulation from both sides of the gender aisle.

I really want to see these two energetic sides of me loving and cherishing each other, in every scenario.

“Keith,” I beg for some quick back watching. “Is there any chance that all of this stuff I am starting to work on is just more inner scammer, delay tactics, or digging through a mountain with a bent spoon?”

Keith confidently reassures me that this stuff is quite real, and that I need to work with it.

“And it will be very magical when you heal this,” Keith further validates.

An Unforgettable Story

An hour later, as I prepare to gobble down a hurriedly cooked plate of rice and beans, I note that my belly is still quite tender. While munching down on my food, I read a new email containing another “A Moment of Oneness” quote from Rasha. This one, quote #142, touches me deeply. Following is that quote:

“It is not possible to whitewash the poignant passages of the saga you have lived. There is no disguising the details of your sacred journey in gestures of denial. Nor would you wish to. For, what is sacred is the authenticity of where you have truly been on your journey into humanness – not just the pretty parts. In order for a story to have something truly of value to offer, it must be moving and memorable. That is why you wrote it the way you did – and included passages you knew would be unforgettable.”

Even though the not-so-pretty parts of my life have created intense struggle, and continue to do so in my journey toward healing, I find myself feeling truly grateful for the magical understanding that comes from having personally lived every piece. I know that the real value to my story comes from working through this very real struggle. And the story, at least for me, is indeed quite unforgettable.

Deepening Bonds

Saturday, I become quite flexible as I set aside intentions to write so that I can spend quality time with my returning friend Brianne. In several hours of catch-up conversation over a late lunch, I can only giggle as I ponder the insane triggers and fears that had surfaced last Sunday, all from a tiny message exchange.

I am so profoundly grateful for my deep understanding of how projection works – and for my recognition that the emotions I felt earlier in the week were totally of my own making, merely mirrors of the past trying to suck me in to an emotional saga having absolutely nothing to do with present day fact.

I love my conversation with Brianne as we catch up on our last few months, and deepen the friendship bond between us.

Well Placed Trust

These last three days have been packed with magical healing power, taking me on intense metaphorical journeys. But through it all, I mostly managed to maintain a beautiful, high vibration energy, one that frequently received compliments from Keith.

Both of the ceremonies on Thursday and Friday involved intense pains and a process of full surrender, patiently trusting that all will become clear by the end of the day. And in both cases, that trust proved to be well placed.

On Thursday, after being surprisingly triggered by side-talking conversations, I finally came to understand my journey at a level deeper than ever before. While exploring the feeling of “not belonging” it suddenly became excruciatingly obvious that my lifelong struggle with not fitting in or relating to others, was related to my childhood shutdown – to a shutdown largely perpetrated by well-intentioned, logical-minded, storytelling people. The stories perpetrated left-brained beliefs, dogmas of all types, and spurious mental chatter that wounded my heart.

Through it all, my magical heart felt increasingly invalidated and rejected, causing me to isolate as an alien loser – causing me to morph into a conformity robot, struggling to please a world to which I did not relate.

On Friday, with quite a similar start, the journey of trust and surrender unveiled a scared lion in my belly. My heart was cowering in the fear of being eaten alive – thus , the reason for a large contingent of loyal secret service agents to protect my heart energy from attack. Then, as Aslan intuitively appeared to bring loving strength to my heart, all fears vanished, and new life returned to petrified areas of my body.

What shocked me most was the intensity of what occurred next – the intensity of resistant ongoing discord between my masculine and feminine selves.

As I ponder back to Keith’s encouraging words, I truly do anticipate the healed reunion between these two feuding enemies in me. I can only imagine that when the healing comes, it will indeed be magical and unforgettable.

… to be continued …

Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “A Silly Spinning Hamster Wheel.”

After another difficult sleep, I am awake early on Sunday morning, May 19, 2013. As has happened quite frequently in recent days, a great deal of energy danced around in my body during the night, leaving me exhausted and drained.

As I browse the internet, I suddenly receive an instant message from a friend. She is asking about taxis from Guatemala City to Lake Atitlan. In my exhausted state, I feel resistant and lacking in strength to help anyone right now. And without going into details, the circumstances of this friend’s trip to Guatemala are somewhat triggering me right now. Nonsensical chatter rattles away with nonstop stories in the back of my head. I mostly ignore the ego rant, but am quite aware that another layer of my own inner density is up for release.

At 9:30 a.m., as I step out of the shower and stare into a mirror, tears drip down my cheeks. Recognizing that I am going into a bottomless pit of emotion, I begin to congratulate myself for being a beautiful and courageous divine daughter of God, hoping to stop myself from getting lost in the emotion. Suddenly, the emotion overwhelms me. It is all I can do to remind myself that the feelings running through me are NOT present-day stuff – that they are old emotions simply triggered by innocent events.

In fact, I know that the raging projections that try to drown me are merely old teenage social pains – agonizing stuff that wants to be projected onto Keith, and two different friends. The intensity of this emotion blows me away. I feel it as deeply as I dare, going into dry heaves and sobbing, after which I ask the light for help.

As the emotion fades, I am left with a headache. As I ponder my insane triggers, I again remind myself to, “Do the right thing … do it for the right reason … and expect nothing back.” This new focus helps me return to a beautiful energy of unconditional love.

“Today is going to be a beautiful opportunity NOT to take the bait of another loop,” I ponder as I prepare for the day.

Really Nice Energy

When I first show up for the afternoon public chocolate ceremony, I am surprised that there are only three of us here (including Keith). Soon, five others filter in, giving us a total of eight beautiful souls. As is the norm recently, Keith is quite distracted during the ceremony today, but rather than judge him as the old me used to do, I am loving everything that happens, seeing it all as perfect – as self-created manifestations that are definitely part of my process.

Even though this is a public ceremony, we skip all the normal introductions and “Glow Meditation,” because there are no new people on the porch today.

“Wow, Brenda” Keith interrupts the silence, “you have been doing a lot of work lately. You have a really nice energy today.”

“Yeah,” I smile back. “I am feeling much lighter and more in higher vibrations.”

I quickly explain the crazy energies that have kept me awake much of the last two nights, adding how I have felt that the energies are working on me, and that I am simply surrendering. I then share details regarding this morning’s “dangling emotional hooks,” and how I had nearly gotten lost in them, but then successfully processed through them.

“Sometimes your Higher Self will create situations to make you not sleep, in order to lower your resistance,” Keith coaches me.

“Yeah,” I respond. “I understand that, and am congratulating myself because I think I did really well at just surrendering.”

I love how Keith repeatedly shares beautiful guidance as we spend the next ten minutes or so in conversation about my ongoing process.

Aching Abdominal Emptiness

For the first few hours, the ceremony remains very low key as we all meditate quietly. A few people do ask a question or two, but overall, there is not much interaction.

At one point, Keith and I briefly connect eyes. I take this opportunity to share what is happening with me.

“I am still in a really nice energy,” I begin to speak, “but there is a really intense, aching, emptiness surfacing in my abdomen. I am feeling a great deal of fear about going there. It is so overwhelming that I might get lost in it.”

“Remain in your heart space,” Keith guides me, “and just ask the solar plexus stuff to come up in small drops … a tiny bit at a time.”

As I follow Keith’s advice and begin asking this stuff to surface, I initially start to shake with panic as the first few putrid emotional layers start to drift upward. In fact, I am almost convulsing in panic, but the freak-out soon fades after two or three layers. I relax more, simply imagining myself holding space for this process – not needing to feel the emotion as my own – instead being the adult empath receiving the emotion from a frightened inner child.

This process works beautifully. About twenty minutes later, I am again in deep peace, and the aching emptiness in my abdomen had mostly faded.

Third-Eye Ponderings

Soon, my attention returns to the third-eye chakra – to a process of frequent energy in that region – one that has been ongoing for several weeks. Often, the energy in this lower-front forehead area feels like hesitant opening and closing, combined with mild pressure and even headaches. Finally, I speak up and ask Keith for feedback.

“You are being taken on a journey with your third eye,” Keith shares with me. “Just follow.”

“I really get that,” I banter back. “I’m just wondering if there is something I am missing that I could do to follow better?”

Keith confirms that I have been missing the opportunities, and then tells me that this process is related to me as a little child – a child who once had an open third eye.

“That is where she took in her higher knowing,” Keith shares, “and she got slammed for it … getting into a lot of trouble for the things she said and did because of it.”

“It was even labeled as ‘evil’ in the culture, and that child knew it,” Keith quickly adds.

“Get in touch with how that child felt, and pursue the remaining blockages around that,” Keith suggests. “You have been doing a lot of this in the last few weeks … but there is more.”

Overwhelming Grief

I go inside and begin to connect to that inner child of mine. Gradually, I start to experience the sensation of deep confusion regarding how my genuine self was being rejected by others. Intense emotions begin to surface – emotions of feeling rejected, confusion, sadness, grief, and anger.

“These experiences are at the root of my lifelong need to explain myself,” I ponder with clarity. “I have often felt devastated when my genuine heart and intentions were misinterpreted, and I have desperately attempted to correct the misperceptions of others. In the process, I have only deepened the hole, strengthening my struggles.”

As I continue diving into this agonizing emotion, I reach the point of sobbing and dry heaving. I stay here for a few minutes before finally begging the light for help. I do not feel much light at first, and I get the feeling that I am very attached to this emotion. In fact, I want to cling to it.

Repeatedly, I express an inner intent to surrender this emotion – to give it up. Finally, I feel the light transmuting the heaviness. As I feel better, I again dive deeper and deeper. Soon, I am surprised to find myself grieving the death of my connection to Mother Earth – and the connection to my higher knowing. The grief is deep and intense – overwhelming feelings of abandonment and loss. Several times in this process, I nearly get lost. Each time that I feel myself slipping down the rabbit hole, I again ask for more light. Most of the emotion transmutes, but slightly heavy emotions continue to cling.

Joy, Joy, Joy

Determined to let this all go, I start to focus on connecting with joy. As I do so, I begin to feel intense panic. Much of what was shutdown with Mother Earth and my third-eye chakra was my spontaneity – which for me was access to my true joy. It seems that I am still quite terrified of reopening energetic channels of joy – channels that once got me into so much trouble.

I pass through another deep layer of release – but instead of asking the light to help me, I ask for joy to assist – joy, joy, joy, and more joy. I find myself occasionally beginning to giggle, quite a few times in fact.

At one point, I sneak into the bathroom. I am stuck and want to try belly laughing – but I remain embarrassed to try to laugh in public. As I hide in the bathroom, I quietly belly laugh, over and over, for almost five minutes. I am shocked that no deep pain or emotion surfaces. This is the first time in a very long time that laughing has not triggered intense release.

“Something is very different today,” I giggle quietly.

Unconditional Joy

Soon, I return to my hot-spring metaphor. Focusing on my third eye, I imagine myself walking down into the steaming hot water … relaxing … visualizing my third eye as if it is open and functioning … trying out a little “fake it till I make it” approach.

I then begin to pretend that I am breathing energy in and out of my third eye, sharing it with others while relaxing as much as possible. I imagine that a beam of Higher Energy is leaving my third eye and flooding the porch.

Almost immediately, a nearby young man begins to cry. I have no idea if this is in any way related, but I find the timing to be quite synchronous. As I continue this imagined sharing, feeling increasingly higher energy, two other dear friends then begin to cry intensely.

“Wow,” I ponder the unexpected shifts around me, wondering if they could be related. Rather than concern my mind with such matters, I just keep holding space and imagining pure, unconditional joy as it leaves my third eye.

“Is the energy in my third eye connected to joy?” I ponder with surprise. “It sure feels like it is.”

Beautiful Feedback

As this process continues, I turn to face all three of my friends who are in deep release. I breathe deeply with a sensation of inner power. I feel magical energy movement resonating from my heart, flowing both down to the solar plexus and up to my third eye. While rational mind has no idea what is happening, my forehead feels relaxed and calm, and intuitions whisper that something powerful is happening.

Meanwhile, the palms of my hands are tingling intensely.

I remain in this process for the remainder of the ceremony, as two of my friends continue to cycle through deep, repeated emotional release.

At one point, Squeaky (Keith’s healer cat) begins to dash around on the fiberglass roof above the porch, making a great deal of noise. I start to laugh, being filled with joy at the silly cat antics. Soon, I share little Bobby-bear with one friend. She too starts to giggle as she grabs little Bobby and squeezes him to her heart, still crying huge tears.

I have no mental way to validate what I am doing, but I know in my heart that I am profoundly contributing to the anchoring in of light on the porch today.

“I really like you in your new energy space,” Keith later tells me at the end of the ceremony.

“Thanks for sharing energy with me,” another friend tells me. “I felt it, and it really helped me … beautifully done.”

Then my other two friends both comment on how I helped them too. Each of them expresses deep gratitude for my energy support.

“Wow,” I ponder with a giggle. “What I was doing was real!”

Peacefully Observing

After a peaceful sleep and an intense Monday morning, I find myself right back on Keith’s porch for an afternoon workgroup ceremony. It had been another morning of ego attempting to dominate me with storytelling God-drama chatter – more inner rage from teenage pain – rage that wanted to be projected onto my friends. The surfacing pain is another layer of intense abandonment and betrayal feelings – feelings that have no basis in present-day fact.

Later, having successfully released these feelings, I do not focus on them at the start of the ceremony, but I do keep them in my mind.

After a beautiful “Glow Meditation,” I am back in very nice energy – taking me deeper and deeper. When Keith opens the porch for assisted individual work, I remain quiet, simply observing. Just like yesterday, I see everything around me as perfect. I am in a state of complete nonattachment to what others on the porch do or do not do. I am here to do my own inner work, and that is the only thing that matters.

A Beautiful Paradox

As I sit wondering where the energies might lead me, I start to feel pains surfacing in my belly. At first, intuitions tell me I am reading and/or eating energy from others. As I raise my vibrations and focus on embracing my power, the pains disappear.

Later, inner guidance causes me to focus on deep, slow breathing. As I do so, anxious energy immediately bursts into my diaphragm area, followed quickly by a painful kicked-in-the gut sensation. This time, I know the pain to be my own. Intuitions whisper that I am facing another terrifying layer of the God-drama stuff that had swarmed me earlier this morning.

As I use rational mind to consider options of how to continue, I suddenly catch myself in head thinking. Instead, I let go of analysis and feel guided to visualize a hamster wheel, repeatedly asking the light to show me where to go next.

After a while of following various metaphors, I finally get in touch with Higher Energies.

In a beautiful paradox, I am giggling in high-vibe space with my heart, yet I am simultaneously feeling deeply abandoned, rebellious, rejected, betrayed, victimized, and pushed out of the picture. These emotions are intense, but I am not identified with them in any way. I know that these are merely the feelings of the agonizing density in my belly.

Owning The Perpetrator

Intuitions tell me to work with these emotions as if they are aspects of self – parts of me who are hurting and struggling. I connect deeply, sending love and exuding compassion for these rejected parts of me.

Eventually, I start to realize that I am the perpetrator. I am the one that pushed down these parts of me, repressing them, abandoning them, rejecting them, and betraying them. I am the bad guy, the abuser, and the betrayer. Throughout my life, I have been outwardly projecting that “perpetrator role” onto other people, while at the same time experiencing the pains of being the victim of others (when I was really the victim of myself).

“Ouch,” I ponder. “This realization really stings. I AM the perpetrator of my own pain.”

As I focus on loving this perpetrator in me, the process is deeply humbling. While owning this painful role, I profoundly apologize to the rest of me, loving, begging forgiveness, and hugging the other aspects-of-me who have been rejected, abandoned, and forced to “hide out” in my belly.

I feel beautiful, magical, loving swirls as energy wiggles and churns inside me. I know this is real. I feel deeply compassionate, seeing these energies as wounded parts of me – wounded BY me.

Following a recent theme, I spend a great deal of time focusing on the “abandoned mailroom employee.” I see all of these wounded aspects of me as similar energies who were abandoned and left to fend for themselves while I ignored them, pretending that they were not there. I hid them … and I buried them.

Cherished Old Friends

Around mid-afternoon, I share my process with Keith, telling him what I am doing.

“Do you have any suggestions?” I ask.

Keith tells me that what I am doing is good, and that it is literally right down at the core of my God drama.

“You are following the flow, not identifying with anything, and are trusting the light,” Keith congratulates me. “Just keep following.”

A minute later, I start to sob with deep sadness as I suddenly realize that I see these inner pains as being old friends.

“I don’t want these dense-energy pains to leave.” I ponder with shock. “I am attached to them. I will miss them. Who will I be without this core dysfunction?”

When I quickly share this new insight with Keith, he again congratulates me for reaching another level of understanding at the core of my projections.

“Yeah,” I respond to Keith. “I now clearly see a lifelong pattern of behavior projected from this core emotion – created by ME abandoning my self.”

A Restrictive Chain

Going back into silent meditation, I sit with flowing metaphors for a very long time. Energies repeatedly shift and move … beautiful feelings of love come and then fade … pains surface and then transmute.

Through it all, I focus on surrender, relaxing into the pains. I continue to see the pains as resistance, making frequent use of that hot-spring metaphor, imagining myself walking into extremely hot water, surrendering to the temperatures of these pains.

Gradually, the pains increasingly disappear into feelings of expansion. My belly continually feels more connected and solid as new magical energies rise to my throat.

Later, in the midst of this beautiful process, a belt of tightness squeezes the top of my solar plexus, as if a chain is tightly binding me, restricting energy flow.

“Please move upward,” I ask the energetic chain.

I am simply following intuitions as I make this request of intention. I observe with amazement as the tight restrictive band does slowly move up, feeling increasingly lighter with each step. Finally, when the chain reaches my heart, I feel it dissolve into beautiful bursts of energy.

A Beautiful Powerful Flow

As more painful densities surface in my belly, I relax and ask them to also rise up to my heart.

Gradually, I feel bubbles of these pains slip up to my heart, where they dissolve into pleasant energy bursts. The flow increases as I ask Higher Self to help repair and/or reconnect damaged energy channels all over my body.

Over time, the energies in my belly begin to dance, feeling smooth and playful, filling my abdomen from front to back. It is very nice, yet somewhat uncomfortable – kind of like foot-waking-up sensations where energy returning to sleeping areas can be quite intense in the beginning stages.

I sit in this beautiful flow of magic until the end of the ceremony. It gets better and better as I hold space and share energy with others who are in their own process.

I feel powerful today. Even though I have felt intense emotional pains, I have remained in a high vibration for the whole ceremony – doing deep inner work without lowering my own vibrations to do it. Even when I cried, I was simultaneously giggling inside.

At times, I have even felt a new flow of energy seeming to come from Mother Earth, rising through my lower chakras, occasionally reaching my heart. I have experienced similar energies before, but never as strongly as today.

A Different Journey

“You had a very different journey today,” Keith shares as I prepare to go home.

“Yeah,” I giggle. “I am going really deep.”

“You are surrendering to the flow and following Higher Energies,” Keith congratulates me. “And it is making a huge difference in your work.”

After walking home with a friend, I realize that I do not have any beans for tonight, so I quickly decide to take Bobby and Sharon out for a special treat – another evening of burgers and fries.

I remain in this magical, high-vibration energy throughout the evening.

My Own Movie

Early Tuesday morning, as I prepare for a day of writing, I open my email and find a beautiful quote that touches me deeply. It is “A Moment of Oneness, #141” from Rasha. The text reads as follows:

“The perspective of the witness does not allow for self-recrimination, or for regret. For circumstances were as they were for good reason. You set about to illustrate for yourself an unforgettable story. And the poignancy of that experience would not have been possible if you had simply sampled the concepts in theory alone. You can empathize with the vicarious pain and traumas of another being, but you cannot truly walk in anyone else’s shoes but your own. You could not have hoped to attain the perspective of true knowingness, had you not supplied the vivid details of true-life experience yourself.

This clarity that comes of hard-earned experience is what you now have to give to others who are where you have been. Now you are able to reach out in a way that is real to others in the throes of the process of awakening. Now you are in a position to really make the mark upon the world that you had always silently hoped to – one compassionate moment at a time. For, now you are in a position to speak from a place of self-knowledge. And that vantage point is only possible when you watch the reruns of your movie with your eyes wide open.”

Wow, the words of this quote fill me with giggles of insight as I ponder how my own difficult journey was indeed so necessary – and how profoundly it is preparing me to be in a position to help others. I love how my writing is just like watching the reruns of my own movie, opening my eyes wide as I observe my journey with a more healed perspective.

When I later publish, “An Expanding Toolbox,” my heart overflows with gratitude for the amazing journey that continues to unfold.

A Painful Chain

After a delightful sleep and a morning of magical energy, I again find myself sitting on Keith’s porch for another public chocolate ceremony. It is Wednesday, May 22, 2013 – the final Wednesday ceremony in San Marcos. In fact, after today, there will be only three more ceremonies before Keith stops to make final preparations for his European tour.

The porch fills with a nice group of people – a mixture of mostly new people, with a porch regular mixed in here and there. I am bubbly, eagerly participating in conversation with others as we wait for the ceremony to begin.

During the “Glow meditation,” I start to feel a new layer of pains in my solar plexus.

“I hope I am just reading these,” I ponder as I breathe energy into my heart, while simultaneously focusing on relaxation.

But the pains do not go away, and strong intuitions begin to whisper that these pains are my own. Over the next half hour, the pain increases in intensity. It feels like a tight, chain-like band, squeezing sharply around my chest, just below the heart.

Nothing Works, Getting Nowhere

Eventually, at an appropriate moment, I make eye contact with Keith and speak.

“This is mine, isn’t it?” I ask. “I just want confirmation that I am not scamming myself.”

Keith tells me that I am picking up a tiny bit of pain from others, and that this is triggering my own inner pain.

“But about 95% of what you feel is your own pain,” Keith then confirms.

I do not ask Keith for guidance on how to work with the pain. I am happy to have received confirmation that I am not scamming myself, and I feel fully capable of following my own inner guidance to see where it takes me.

I repeatedly try several different things. At first, I see these pains as density and just focus on bringing in more light, etc … but I get nowhere. I do not feel much if any guidance, and seem to make no progress. I then ask the pains to get bigger and stronger … asking the angels to help … and inviting the pain to join me in an inner conference room.

Finally, as each of these attempts takes me nowhere, I approach the pain as if it is an aspect of self, resisting me.

Still, nothing works.

Through all of these unsuccessful attempts, I remain in a very high energy … in a state of love and peace … not judging the pain … actually loving the pain … seeing it as healing metaphors that simply need my love … trusting and surrendering to inner knowing that something will eventually happen.

An Exercise In Trust

“This is an exercise to get me out of my head,” I ponder new intuitions. “It is an opportunity to practice surrender and trust.”

“You are doing really well at staying out of your head,” Keith unexpectedly interrupts the silence at one point.

I smile back, without speaking, continuing to trust and follow. Finally, as I feel increasingly unsure of myself, I speak up.

“I am feeling stuck and wonder if you can see anything in my process where I am not getting it,” I beg for any guidance Keith might provide.

“I feel like a chain is wrapped tightly around the base of my heart,” I quickly add. “And everything I have tried does not seem to work.”

“You are NOT stuck,” Keith then shares. “This is designed to help you trust and surrender, staying out of rational mind.”

“Wow,” I ponder with a giggle. “I love how Keith’s response is perfectly in line with my own ongoing guidance.

The Empath Setup

I again return to pure trust while sending love to this part of me that remains agonizingly painful. I increasingly focus on the idea that this pain comes from one or more aspects of self that are trying to protect my heart – to keep it shut down as a means of keeping me safe. But as I work with the usual “aspect of self” metaphors, I still get nowhere.

Finally, at around 4:00 p.m., Keith begins an empath training for many of the new people who are present.

Earlier in the ceremony, one woman had been crying deeply, and both Keith and I had assisted her to release a huge amount of density that she had empathically taken in from others. In the middle of that woman’s process, Keith had been called away for some chocolate-shipping business. During Keith’s twenty-minute absence, I had taken over and helped the woman all by myself. While participating in this way, my heart was alive with power. The process had profoundly energized me, and the woman had later provided beautiful feedback about how I had indeed helped her.

I had noted that, while working with this woman, my heart-chains had temporarily relaxed, slightly lessening the pains, but that the pains had again increased when that process was complete.

But nothing could prepare me for what happens next, as Keith begins phase one of the training – a phase where we ask a Higher Being to presence themselves six feet in front of us, sending us real emotional density. This phase is one where we receive emotional density in our old, dysfunctional way – where we physically “eat” the emotions, and painfully store them inside of our own body.

Loyal Secret Service Agents

Anyway, as Keith begins guiding the first step of the empath training, I again call in Archangel Michael to stand six feet in front of me.

Almost immediately, I become an emotional train wreck. As I ask for dense emotional energies to flow toward and into me, I get agonizingly sidetracked by my own painful journey.

Strong intuitions silently shout that the sharp chain of pain surrounding the base of my heart is made up of profoundly loyal secret service agents. As a child, I put these protector energies there as my most trusted body guards, all in a desperate attempt to keep my heart safe.

As I ponder this meditative scenario, I am overwhelmed by profound love and gratitude for these faithful servants – servants continually protecting my heart from that “evil” empath energy – the very energy that is bombarding me right now – the very energy that I desire to open.

“These really are profoundly loyal parts of me that have kept me alive for fifty-eight years,” I ponder through deep emotion. “They are loyal energies, and loving energies.”

As I ponder the overwhelming deep love I have for them, I realize that it is now time to ask these secret service agents to stop doing their job – to ask them to leave their post and to take on new responsibilities. As I visualize these bodyguards stepping down, I feel unexpectedly overcome with deep sadness. It is as if I am losing very old friends – friends that I love with all my heart. The emotion is real, extremely deep, and unbelievably sad.

An Overwhelming Mix

At the same time, I feel overwhelmed by swirling, ominous fear about what will happen next when this protection is gone.

“What if there is an energetic assassination attempt and these agents are no longer there?” I ponder the intense fear.

In response to this fear, I repeatedly reassure my heart that we have higher partners in place to handle that scenario, and that we now know how to call on them.

But I continue to drown in an overwhelming mix of love, sadness, and fear. It is actually quite beautiful, but the intensity of this emotion is shocking. It comes and goes in bursts. I hold back muffled sobs as I disengage from the rest of the training. Over and over, I surrender to the emotions, asking the light to show me what it would do with them. Each time that I ask, the light takes me deeper into the emotional soup.

Finally, near the end of the training, the emotion completely overwhelms me as I break down to blubbering sobs and dry heaving. As soon as I reach this level of emotional release, I again appeal to the light, asking it to now transmute what is ready – or perhaps take me deeper still.

As most of the emotion quickly transmutes, I sit back in shock, feeling numb and quite moody.

Time Will Tell

We are bagging more chocolate tonight, and I have stayed well beyond the hour that will give me time to rush home for rice and beans. But I am so emotional that I ignore the time and continue to surrender.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” A dear friend bends over as others hurriedly clear the porch for a busy evening of bagging.

“I am in a very good place,” I respond to my friend, “but intense emotions are flowing through me.”

As I share with her what is happening, I hit another few deep waves that again take me to the level of dry heaving. This dear friend holds space, encourages me to go for it, and shares incredibly beautiful energy. After each wave, I bring in light, and feel much more stable. In fact, light now swirls in my head, and magical lightness fills my entire forehead.

I feel as if I am in a state of post-traumatic shock. I know I did profound work. I need no congratulations or validation from Keith or anyone else. Even though rational mind understands only the bare details, I somehow know that what I just did was extremely profound.

“Only time will tell,” I ponder as I stand up and prepare to leave. “But something is very different inside me.”

Finally Getting It

There is no time to talk as I quickly hug Keith and a few others. I then rush home, change clothes, grab a quick peanut butter sandwich, and rush back to Keith’s porch.

By the time we finish bagging another three-hundred pounds of freshly ground cacao, I am again vibrating in beautiful magical energy.

After returning home, I am surprised by an opportunity to use that magical energy when a friend unexpectedly knocks on my door, seeking assistance with her own emotional pain. I am so energized with my own new growth that I easily guide her back to her own state of inner giggles.

“Wow, I finally get it,” I later ponder when my friend leaves. “After two and a half years of understanding all of this stuff with rational mind, I am finally getting how to use the energies to transmute density. It is so incredibly simple, yet is so fleeting and elusive when trying to engage the mind.”

As I drift off to sleep, my forehead swirls with new energy movements. I am quite excited by the events of the day.

A Loyal Secret Service

These four days have been profound and powerful. Sunday began with jabbing social triggers – triggers based on nothing factual. But I soon managed to return to a magical glowing energy. As I rode that energy through an intense ceremony, I felt and healed deep emotional layers, taking me to profound understanding of the emotional grief behind the loss of my third-eye connections to both the Mother Earth and to Higher Knowing. Playing with my third-eye chakra, literally faking it till I made it, I then rode an amazing wave of energy that seemed to profoundly assist in the inner process of three friends, all of which gave me beautiful feedback on the energy they felt from me.

Monday brought more of the intense triggers – insane feelings of abandonment and betrayal – but I again managed to find transparency, arriving at the afternoon ceremony with a beautiful energy. As those feeling again surfaced during the ceremony, I held space for them with a high-vibe giggle. Eventually, the breadcrumbs took me to a place of experiential understanding, where I absolutely knew that I am the abusive perpetrator that continues to cause inner parts of me to feel abandoned, betrayed, and ignored. Finally, as I began to surrender and release these parts of me, I experienced deep sadness, realizing that after more than five decades of living with these pains, they actually seem like cherished old friends.

But it was on Wednesday that the deepest growth came when a tight chain of pains pinched my body. After an entire ceremony of following clues with trust and surrender, the trust finally paid off. During an unexpected empath training, it suddenly became quite clear that the pains were showing me a layer of protection – metaphorical secret service agents that were attempting to loyally protect my heart from more empath agony. As I began the process of dropping this protection and allowing the energy to flow, an overwhelming mix of emotions flowed through me, eventually bringing great healing.

The growth has been amazing. I really feel as if I am doing my inner work at a new level of trust and surrender, increasingly following a flow rather than using rational mind. I cannot explain how or why, but after all this time, all this intense inner work, I really do feel as if I am finally getting it.

I feel deep gratitude for those loyal secret service agents, but for the first time in my life, I know that I no longer need them to keep me safe.

… to be continued …

Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “New Growth Opportunities.”

It is 5:00 a.m. and loud music plays in the center of town. As I rest in bed, attempting a return to dreamland, I ponder a magical event. Today, May 13, 2013, is my re-birthday – the sixteenth anniversary of the surgeries that brought my physical self in alignment with my heart. It is a good day, and I am excited to see where it takes me.

I spend the morning pondering possibilities. Something tells me this may be my last season doing inner work here in Guatemala, and that I will be moving on very soon. Among the options, Peru repeatedly tickles my fancy, but right now, many different options are germinating in the ethers.

As I prepare to leave home for a Monday afternoon workgroup ceremony, I feel clueless about my future. Rational mind throws a tiny hissy fit because it feels ignored and left out of the process. I just smile. I fully trust that perfect synchronous guidance will come with magic timing.

Unexpected Words

A beautiful group of energetic magicians occupies the porch today. As seems to be the norm lately, we do not really get going until 2:00 p.m., at which time Keith and a few others hold space for one friend who is going into deep emotion, struggling in pain and tears. I do not join in, because I feel as if my own process is finding me … and I desire to follow my own inner breadcrumbs.

Surprise lights up my face a few minutes later. As Keith talks about the beautiful work that several of my friends are doing today, I initially note the obvious absence of my name in the list of people he mentions.

“… and then there is the amazing high energy that Brenda has been anchoring in lately to help facilitate this for others…” Keith suddenly adds to his congratulatory words.

An inner smile spreads across my heart as I ponder Keith’s unexpected feedback.

An Inner Tantrum

Meanwhile, I have been sitting here feeling really lost and disconnected, sinking into helplessness as inner tantrum-like storytelling chatter rages in my head. The stories are demanding that I need help and that I do not know how to proceed with my process. I know I did indeed share amazing energy yesterday as I ignored inner scammers and powerfully allowed my heart to expand to another level. But today, ego is rebelling, demanding that rational mind be more included and involved in my journey.

It is clear to me that my “sense of being lost” is an inner tantrum – that ego is pouting, feeling left out, angry, and rebellious.

I can only giggle as I reflect back on a conversation I had just an hour ago – a discussion where I told a friend that rational mind is a beautiful and important TOOL, but that is simply not the tool for doing this type of energy work.

Therefore, when I hear Keith express his unexpected words praising my amazing high energy, I glance up and speak.

“So why do I feel so lost then?” I banter with Keith.

Keith gives me the perfect answer, telling me exactly what I have just figured out on my own – that this is related to an inner tantrum of confusion, and a pathetic loop of storytelling, trying to distract me and to pull me back into smallness and chaos.

This is the only interaction I have with Keith all day. It is perfect, validating that I am definitely on the right path.

An Abandoned Employee

As I return to silent meditation, I feel intuitively guided to unconditionally love that confused, tantrum-throwing part of me. I feel a rebellious, unknown aspect of my self, stuck in rational-mind conditioning, feeling angry, confused, and alone, desperately needing my love.

I immediately pick up Bobby-bear and hug him. The glow in his eyes tells me he has already forgiven me for leaving him home alone during the ceremony yesterday. Using Bobby as a proxy, I share deep love with this confused, rebellious part of me. I see this aspect of me as extremely loveable – just lost, trying to do a job that it was not designed to perform, not having the resources to do it properly.

Soon, I imagine this scene moving to an inner conference room. I ask Higher Self to join us, helping to educate and love this lost part of me, reassuring this “me” that it does not need to figure things out with rational mind.

As I ponder and follow inner threads, I unexpectedly remember a story told by Jach Pursel, the man who channels Lazaris. It is a story I have shared in my blog several times before – a metaphorical tale comparing the negative ego to a mailroom employee in a large corporation. This faithful mailroom worker had been unexpectedly abandoned by management, being asked to run the whole corporation all by himself without proper training or resources. He feels angry, unappreciated, and hopelessly confused, not having a clue how to run such a corporation on his own.

Inner Barricades

For decades, this faithful part of me has been struggling to perform his life-support duties, meeting obstacles and perceived betrayal at every turn, feeling abandoned, victimized, unappreciated, lost, alone, and hopelessly confused.

“This tantrum-throwing part of me is NOT rational mind,” I suddenly realize. “Instead, it is a victimized ego (negative ego) feeling angry that it cannot figure out how to heal my life using logic and rational mind. I have overloaded this part of me with unreasonable and impossible tasks, asking it to run my life for me, but without access to right-brained, heart-based intuition. This part of me is my own inner mailroom employee.”

As I meditatively explore the layout of the inner mailroom, I soon realize that all of the doors are locked and barricaded from the inside. It seems that I have locked myself inside the room, blocking out all love and higher-energy support.

“I did this as a child,” I ponder. “When my access to Higher Energies caused dysfunction, and painful rejection, I blocked all the doors. This is deeply related to my muscle clenching – my locked up muscles are the barricades keeping those “evil” Higher Energies out.”

Feeding Into Abandonment

As I imagine myself trying to unlock and open the doors, I am shocked by the levels of intense resistance and fear that surface. I cannot proceed. Instead, I begin to feel deep anger, rebellion, and hell-no feelings of “Eff-you God, I will not let you inside to help me.”

I immediately start to meditate down into these feelings.

Meanwhile, Keith has left the porch. The roof on the new chocolate workshop is leaking and he needs to supervise the workers. It is critical that the roof be fixed now, because rainy season is upon us, and Keith is leaving in a couple of weeks.

I do my best to ignore Keith’s absence, but I have to admit that his “seemingly abandoning the porch” feeds perfectly into my process – taking me right into the metaphor of being abandoned by Higher Energies, and not receiving help.

An Unsolvable Riddle

Suddenly, I am guided back to another metaphor – one that continues to trigger me to this day. During a project in a group therapy class (while working on my masters degree a few years ago), one of the subgroups set up a rope course in the parking lot. It was a circular (without an end) rope stretched between trees and signposts. We were blindfolded before being led outside. After someone placed our hand on the rope, they gave us two instructions, telling us that the objective was to find the end of the rope, and that we could ask for help at any time.

I became increasingly annoyed, and even slightly angry, as I repeatedly followed the rope around in circles. I easily figured out during the very first loop that there was no end, but I considered myself to be very clever with rational-mind riddles, and I was determined to figure this one out, without giving up or asking for help. After looping for thirty minutes (while everyone else had completed the task), I finally humbled myself and asked for help.

“OK,” a classmate told me. “You are done. You can let go now. All you had to do was ask for help.”

Shocking Resistance

“The game is rigged,” I reminisce on how I felt after the class project. “It cannot be solved using rational mind. And I’ll be damned if I am going to ask for help from outside sources – from those effing Higher Energies that abandoned me as a child.”

Ouch. This is such a perfect metaphor. This abandoned negative ego is livid that it has been asked to do a job that it cannot do, and it refuses to un-barricade the doors – absolutely insisting that the game is not fair.

As I pay attention to my inner emotions, I feel shocked by the overwhelming resistance and anger that rage inside me in this very moment.

I surrender, allowing myself to feel the pain and resistance, actually asking them to get bigger and to expand. Eventually, I lie down on the floor and curl up with Bobby-bear.

Holding Myself Hostage

As I rest on the ground, I repeatedly imagine myself unlocking the locks and removing chains from doors, etc…, but no matter what I do, I am unable to open a single door or window in that visualized mailroom. Occasionally, I do barely imagine a sliver of light streaming through a tiny crack in a door or window, but it disappears almost immediately. Finally, I imagine myself opening a vent in the ceiling, allowing a tiny breeze of Higher Energy to flow.

It seems that when identified with my personality self, that I AM that mailroom employee. I have lived my whole life barricaded in a rational-mind world, protecting myself from the evil right-brained light that once caused me so many problems.

Increasingly over the last few years, I have begun to realize that I really am the CEO of a multidimensional corporation (my own Higher Consciousness) – but while playing small – while “pretending” to be that mailroom employee who has barricaded himself in that locked room – I have no clue how to return to my true identity.

“I refuse to open the doors.” I feel the demands of this negative ego in me. “I am angry and should not have to. I was abandoned and victimized in the first place. I need my apology and demands to be met first.”

This is such a perfect metaphor for my God / separation drama. I am alone and abandoned inside a room, barricaded on the inside. Just outside the room are all the amazing multidimensional love, help, and support that I could possibly imagine, but I refuse to open the doors because angry, childhood emotions of betrayal and abandonment are holding me hostage.

Let The Love In

Eventually, as I sit perplexed in this barricaded mailroom, I imagine a pneumatic tube used for sending messages. Deciding to be honest with the emotions flowing through me, I scribble a message saying, “F#ck you God” and place it in the tube. I hold back muffled sobs as I imagine myself pushing the send button.

“You don’t have to run the corporation,” A response comes back a few minutes later. “That is my job. You just have to unlock the doors and open them.”

“I don’t know how,” I respond with a new message. “I can’t figure it out and I need help.”

I feel angry, hopeless, and pathetic as this new message disappears up the tube.

“Just let the love in,” Another reply soon comes back. “This is not something you need to figure out with your mind. Just let the love in.”

Diving Deeper

I sit with this metaphor for a while. New ideas and details continue to unfold in perfect magic. I want to sob and cry. Deep emotions flow through me.

A few friends have already left the porch, as two others take turns helping each other with deep work. Another friend just sits against the wall, looking stuck and numb. Meanwhile, Keith continues to supervise workers on the roof of his hew chocolate workshop.

Realizing that I have already made huge progress today, and that I really do not need guidance from Keith or anyone, I decide to leave. I am in a very good place, and something tells me I can finish this work more easily in the privacy of my own home. I want to lie on my bed, throw a real tantrum, sob, and cry. Intuitions tell me to go for it.

At 3:15 p.m., I grab my things and hurry home, quickly sequestering myself in the bedroom. Immediately, I curl up on my bed, momentarily flail my arms and legs in an imagined tantrum, and then go deep into the emotions – emotions of anger at the game being rigged – anger at not being able to figure things out. I sob and dry heave in huge waves. When I attempt to bring in the light, I struggle, and instead go deeper into the sensation of being hopelessly lost.

But I do not get lost – I simply allow myself to experience the emotion without believing it. I check in with my heart, repeating my mission statement, and I continue to feel very connected to Higher Energies at that level.

I keep releasing emotion, going deeper and deeper, until I dare go no further.

Forward Movement

Finally, I just curl up with Bobby-bear and surrender, saying aloud, “I do not know how to DO it, but I AM ready to surrender.

“Light,” I beg, “will you please show me what you would do to help … either transmuting the emotion or taking me even deeper.”

Almost immediately, I start to feel much lighter. By 4:35 p.m., still feeling a little heavy, I get up to type some notes for the day. After finishing my typing, I discover that my internet is not functioning – that the Universe has cut me off from outside communication, at least for now.

I continue to feel emotionally heavy, but am in a very good place as an unattached observer. I KNOW that this is profound work. I am acquiring magical understanding into MY game with God … my deity drama … into how I insist on throwing an isolating tantrum while resisting all the abundant higher-dimensional help that surrounds me.

Just before the ceremony today, I pulled a tarot card. It was “The Chariot” card – one that, to me, indicates forward movement and balance. I love that card, and know that I AM making great forward movement right now.

Bursting With Light

Because it is my sixteenth re-birthday, I soon head off to treat my inner children to a burger and fries. After ordering my food, I sit and meditate on a couch.

“I AM going to embrace the light,” I make a powerful commitment to myself. “And no matter what this ego scammer in me wants to do, I WILL continue to love him/her, but I will no longer tolerate the scams. I will not listen to them any longer.”

For several minutes, I release a few more intense emotional blockages, but then I know it is time to further embrace the light. Without pausing to analyze, I imagine myself back inside that barricaded mailroom, bursting open several double doors, letting in light. Then I open blinds and windows, feeling the room grow increasingly brighter.

As I sit waiting for dinner, the heaviness is gone. A very nice energy flows at the back of my neck, from the back-center of my head to the top of my shoulders. The energy is distinct, new, nice, strong, and magically tingling. I know that something is opening, connecting, or possibly repairing. I really do not need to know any more than that.

Repeat Repressed Rage

After a relaxing sleep, the internet is magically working again on Tuesday morning, just long enough to discover the amazing love and support given me by friends in response to a Facebook post I had made regarding my sixteenth re-birthday. My heart overflows with gratitude, even when the internet quickly disappears again, remaining off for most of the next twenty-four hours.

I spend the day writing, “An Ego Counterattack,” finding it quite difficult to write about an angry emotional experience without again re-experiencing it to the core. I feel the ego tantrum deeply, again trying to suck me back into rational mind to figure things out. I find it quite humorous that writing this difficult blog corresponds so synchronously to my experiences with ego tantrums of yesterday. The blog is intense, and I do not finish the final edit until Wednesday morning, right before yet-another chocolate ceremony.

With around ten people gathered on the porch, I take charge of the introductions for the chocolate ceremony while Keith again does last minute supervision of the construction workers. When Keith is further delayed, Steven then leads his own amazing version of a “Glow Meditation.”

By the time Keith joins us at 2:20 p.m., I am in a very confused state – experiencing beautiful peace from the meditation and knowing that all is well – but feeling more intense and deep agitation regarding my abandonment feelings. Another layer of profound anger and confusion is surfacing. The emotion is more like a repressed rage – rage that none of my process is solvable with rational mind.

Humble Surrender

I again flash back to that rope course in my psychology classes. I remember more clearly than ever just how absolutely pissed off I had felt about the game being rigged, and how it was unsolvable with logic.

“The entire healing and awakening journey is just like this,” I ponder. “Everything about my upbringing positioned me to rely solely on logic and reason.”

It is clear that the rope course was brought into my experience as a magic teaching tool. It clearly shows me how rebellious and stubborn I am – how I demand that something is not fair if it cannot be solved with intellect. I would rather walk and walk around that endless rope course than simply admit that I cannot figure it out – rather than simply asking for help.

“I cannot undo my separation drama by myself either,” I ponder. “The more I do my inner work, the more I feel as if I am just walking around that endless loop of rope, continually trying to figure out how to find the end, refusing to simply stop and surrender to Higher Energies.”

“I quit,” I beg my source. “I don’t know how to go on. I don’t want to figure it out anymore. Please HELP me.”

As I repeat these and similar thoughts in my mind, tears stream down my cheeks and emotions swell. I am in a state of beautiful surrender, finally swallowing my pride, admitting that I simply do not know, and will never know. I am tired of playing this silly mind game.

“I want to let go of this mental rope,” I silently surrender. “I need help … I will stop trying … I trust that the help I need is following me everywhere I go, just waiting for me to surrender and ask. Please help!”

A Profound Place

As Keith finally opens the group to assistance with individual work, I know that I am in a powerful place with my process – in a beautiful state of unfolding surrender.

“Brenda,” Keith turns immediately to me. “If you let this happen, you have an opportunity to go somewhere very beautiful today.”

I am surprised and shocked by Keith’s words, because I have not said a thing regarding what I am doing. In my heart, I know that Keith’s words are perfect and deeply guided from a higher source.

Without speaking, I glance up at Keith to make eye contact. He then tells me that I am also facing another opportunity to get lost in my loop again.

“I am actually choosing to finally let go of the loop,” I share with Keith. “I realize that I am tired of trying. I am giving up trying to figure things out and I am just loving myself for where I am … surrendering … asking the light for help.”

“That is a profound place to be,” Keith glows at me.

In a short conversation that follows, Keith congratulates me, sharing extensive beautiful comments about how I am finally beginning to let go. The whole group is paying attention and many turn to hold space for me.

Choosing The Light

“There is a huge ego part of me throwing an inner tantrum right now,” I soon share through muffled tears. “It is very intense, but I am not judging it. I am just loving the ego, not validating the tantrum, but loving and holding space with compassion as the tantrum progresses.”

“That is all I can do,” I add. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

“This tantrum is exactly what you did as a child when you were faced with school assignments,” Keith reminds me.

“Yeah, starting at around age five or six,” I add. It is the very same lifelong tantrum that erupted inside whenever I was asked to do anything creative in school, church, or wherever. I am tired of this tantrum. I am done with it. I love this part of me, but it is time to stop giving my power to it – time to stop letting it pull me into the stories. I am choosing the light.”

As I look around the porch, I can clearly see that my humble surrender is profoundly affecting the processes of a few of my friends.

A Mental Cocoon

As Keith moves on, I close my eyes, hug Bobby-bear tightly, and return into deep surrender. I imagine myself sitting with an angry, screaming child. I simply hold peaceful, loving space for the child … loving the child … loving the tantrum … loving the frustration … loving the anger … loving, loving, loving ego … loving that wounded version of me.

As this process continues, I gradually release intense emotion, eventually reaching a very nice energy space. I sit in this gradually increasing energy, doing absolutely nothing with rational mind, simply surrendering all control. The tantrum continues to fade as my energy increases.

Eventually, I notice a magical young woman staring at me (I will call her Anne). I keep glancing away, avoiding her eyes, but after a few minutes, I surrender and return her gaze.

As I do so, I have no idea if I am helping her, or vice-versa. Rather than concern myself with such details, I simply express intent to share energy and release density, all for the highest good, not needing to know what or how.

For more than an hour, Anne and I maintain nonstop eye contact. Gradually, my level of joy increases, very slowly. Simultaneously, I experience the sensation that this magical energy flowing between us is again transmuting more of my story. As before, I begin to imagine and feel that she is me … she is a divine being in a physical body, lost in a personality self … but I am really looking at ME lost in personality self.

I imagine the Muppet Show, watching myself, silly me, lost in a story, gradually letting it go. I get the feeling that stories are the way the rational mind hides – a type of mental cocoon.

A Spinning Hamster Wheel

For the next half hour, repeated insights flow through my awareness, all related to the absurdity of trying to alter reality using rational mind – it simply is not the tool.

I increasingly begin to smile inside as stories melt away and insights continue to flow.

Soon, I imagine that I am a mouse on a hamster wheel, pondering that as a child, I was taught to rely on rational mind to build my own unique personality wheel. I have spent my entire life fortifying and enhancing my hamster wheel, searching for a better, happier life.

In a bizarre twist of logic, in my spiritual quest I have been walking, walking, and walking, using my mind in an attempt to find the end of the wheel. I am constantly remodeling, adding enhancements here and there, removing unwanted blocks, meditating, hoping to find a way to create shortcuts to the end; but nevertheless, I keep trudging forward, knowing that the only way off the wheel is to forge ahead with unwavering devotion.

Intuition quickly whispers that this is just like that circular rope course – and that the only way to leave the childhood conditioning and personality-self identification behind is to ask for help – for a gift of grace from Higher Energies that are always eager and ready to assist.

I begin to giggle as I ponder how this wheel is a rigged game that mind cannot solve. I feel myself walking, walking, spinning forward, but never going anywhere. I feel the absurdity of walking forward in an attempt to find a way off the wheel. I see the silliness of hopelessly walking for a lifetime, believing that if I do so, I am eventually bound to find the end.

There Is No Wheel

Soon, I imagine everyone on the planet, each walking in their own hamster wheels, so obsessed with going forward that they are blind to their surroundings – perpetuating the conditioned reality – determined to find a way to make their life on the wheel happier and more fulfilled.

I am almost laughing right now as I imagine and play with absurd variations of this fun, crazy scenario.

At one point in this eye-gazing marathon with Anne, I imagine me, Bobby, and Sharon, walking together into my magical theme park. The path is lined by angels, guides, and higher-dimensional friends. A white carpet is unfurled in front of me. These friends are all showing me the way, guiding me. I do not need to figure anything out.

“These beings have always been there,” I ponder with more giggles. “But I have been too focused on the wheel to even notice … too determined to solve the mystery of the unsolvable riddle. But they are right there, waiting for me to receive their guidance.”

Then I remember a scene from The Matrix – one where Neo is waiting in a room, preparing to visit the Oracle. A young boy is bending spoons with his mind. Neo tries, but is unable to do the same. The young boy then looks up at Neo and tells him that the secret is to remember that “There is no spoon” … that it is all in his mind.

“There is no wheel,” I ponder quietly. “There is no wheel … there is no wheel … there is no wheel … It is not that I do not know how to leave the wheel … there simply is no wheel.”

Two Thumbs Up

I am in an amazing, beautiful energy when Anne and I eventually stop gazing into each other’s eyes. My eyes are exhausted after hardly blinking for more than an hour. I remain on the porch for another half hour, holding space for the beautiful work of a friend. I feel as if I am riding a magical wave of energy, sharing that wave with others, all of us adding to the magical vibrations surrounding us.

I have been in complete surrender throughout the afternoon. It has been a profound experience in simply following, not needing to know, and receiving nonstop energetic gifts filling me with tingling energy, insights, and joyful giggles.

Soon, I leave early and rush home for a quick dinner, later returning for another evening of chocolate bagging. In preparation for Keith’s extended travels, we are bagging chocolate three times per week for the next two weeks.

As I finally prepare for bed, I continue to giggle. I feel as if ego is on sabbatical. I occasionally feel it attempting to chatter, trying to create stories about me not really doing anything today, etc. But I just laugh. I absolutely know that I did amazing work all afternoon.

Keith and I had hardly talked during the ceremony, but I know that he felt it too. As I skipped off the porch, he had put his hands together in prayer position and bowed with a glow in his eyes, before giving me two thumbs up.

Building Pathways

The workgroup ceremony on Thursday is one of the most different I have ever attended. Through the first half of the ceremony, most everyone simply meditates silently, with the occasional interruption of someone asking a short rational-mind question.

I too remain quiet, simply focusing on embracing more of my light, imagining myself stepping off to the side of that hamster wheel. In fact, I spend a great deal of the ceremony, simply enjoying silly variations of humorous imaginations with the hamster wheel metaphor. While I do not laugh externally, my heart is giggling silently throughout this experience.

Then, I return to memories of that circular rope-course experience. As I again visualize that evening many years ago, I am unable to find any laughter … none whatsoever. This is a clue telling me that I continue to have more work to do in this area. Even still, I know that my job today is to play with the light shadow, to focus on joy and inner laughter.

Steven is giggling a lot today during his process. Soon, Keith tells Steven how, during his own training, Keith’s guides had emphasized that is it important to reinforce such positive energy experiences, revisiting them over and over with happy laughter, because it helps to build and reinforce energy pathways, etc…

A Crystal Playground

Hearing Keith’s words, I again focus on the hamster wheel metaphors. I am in near-giggle mode for most of the next hour … filled with joyful light … surrendering to the idea of not knowing … repeatedly asking the Higher Energies for upgrades … asking the light to take me somewhere while focusing on getting out of the way. I do not feel much guidance, but I continue to overflow with fun, giggly energy. Sometimes, I even feel almost dizzy from those energies.

At around 3:30 p.m., Keith disappears after saying he is going down to the workshop to get something for Steven. Perhaps twenty minutes later, he returns with a huge bag of giant crystals, most of them globes. As Keith unwraps them and gently places them on the floor, I quickly gravitate to a large green fluorite crystal ball – one I hold for a very long time.

As I surrender, with the fluorite against my belly, an intense aching consumes me in the lower abdominal region. It really hurts, but I see it as a good pain. I am not quite sure if I am experiencing emotional density or energetic expansion, and I do not concern myself with this detail. Instead, I simply focus on enjoying the process, regardless of how much it hurts.

“Show me what will happen next,” I ask the light before simply surrendering.

Migrating Pains

Soon, I trade the fluorite for a large clear calcite globe. As I hold it to my belly, the aching gradually increases at the very base of my abdomen. A deep permeating ache consumes the bladder region, on both sides.

“Keith,” I eventually ask for guidance, “do you have any insights regarding these deep pains in my abdomen?”

“Give the pains to the crystal,” Keith suggests. “Just express your intent and allow.”

I do this, and surrender. For a long time, not much happens other than a great deal of gas that flares and churns in my intestines. It is quite agitated and painful. Eventually, however, I gradually start to feel some energy flow, as if it is moving out and into the crystal. Shortly before 6:00 p.m., the pains diminish completely.

Celebrating With Friends

Before leaving the porch, I share a beautiful goodbye conversation with Steven. He is leaving very soon, and I may not see him again. As I thank him from the bottom of my heart, I swell with gratitude for the many amazing ways in which he has participated in my magical process during much of the past six months. He has been truly a godsend for me, helping in ways that I may never fully understand. I can only giggle as I remember how Steven initially felt guided to come to Guatemala in the first place after stumbling across my blog and reading about some of my own experiences with chocolate.

After ceremony, I go out with a friend to celebrate my sixteenth re-birthday (which was actually three days ago). It is a fun evening, but one that also triggers some of my old social issues as a few people join us that do not fully resonate with my energy. Nonetheless, it is a beautiful evening, and a great way to top off an amazing day.

A Morning Of Setups

Friday, May 17, 2013, I wake up very early, unable to sleep soundly. I am downloading a few files off the internet, and I find myself feeling agitated by the slowness. Impatience bubbles in the depths. It seems that impatience is presenting itself as a theme for the day.

As I spend a tired morning just watching videos, another emotion surfaces. My back hurts, and I feel quite annoyed by a loud motorcycle revving its engine in a field below my kitchen window. Then, a little later, noisy passersby are talking loudly outside my window.

It is not fun, but at some level, I can tell I am being set up for another day of deep processing. In addition to impatience, both judgment and annoyance are making their presence obvious.

The afternoon public chocolate ceremony again starts quite late as Keith continues to stretch himself thin trying to supervise the completion of his roof repairs. As judgmental chatter rambles in my head, I roll with it, observing the emotion, not attaching to it, knowing I must feel it so I can process and let it go.

Painful Origins

Just before the “Glow Meditation” begins, my belly is already hurting. Intuitions whisper that these are metaphorical pains. They represent repressed anger, judgment, and impatience, all surfacing from deep within.

Even with the pains, I am actually in a very nice, joyful, giggly energy. The pains I feel are more of the vibrating type, feeling like a healing sensation – yet they are pronounced and intense.

“Is this mine?” I ask Keith at an appropriate moment, seeking his input on whether the pains I am feeling come from my own emotion or from reading the emotions of others.

“Yes, Brenda,” Keith responds.

He then adds that this is another opportunity to dance around the God-drama bait, deciding to either go down into my loop or stay in Higher Energy.

“Thanks,” I respond. “I really resonate with that.”

An Issue With Impatience

As Keith begins leading the meditation, I go inside, sitting in a beautiful, happy, high-vibration energy – still feeling the intense pains. I send them love, imagining myself hugging them, thanking them for coming up, and thanking them for how they have served me in the past.

I fill with love as I then return to the hamster wheel metaphor. I giggle as I imagine these pains walking around the inside of that ego wheel, trudging ahead, searching, forcing, and trying to figure things out.

“I don’t need to do anything except love these pains and surrender them to my heart,” I ponder.

Soon, I ask them to rise into my heart while experimenting with a variety of metaphors to feel and express the pain in a non-dramatic way. For a while, the pain subsides, and I feel deeply empowered. Then my friend Jim speaks up. From a place of deep struggle, he mentions that he is working with impatience.

Suddenly, my belly rages with vibrating energy pains.

“I get it,” I finally admit to myself. “I have a huge issue with impatience.”

The Cosmic Joke

I sit in silence, feeling the pains, loving the pains, pondering the intuitions that flow. I suddenly remember that my father often had a struggle with impatience. I begin to wonder if I inherited some of that from him.

As before, I stand away from my hamster wheel, and imagine the energy of ego impatience inside the wheel, walking, trudging forward, and pushing forcefully onward. I feel no judgment of the pains and emotions. In fact, standing back and imagining them walking on the wheel again puts me in a giggly, high-vibe energy.

When Jim finishes his impatience processing, I mention how deeply I resonated with his work. After filling Keith in on what I am doing, I ask if I am missing anything.

“Brenda,” Keith responds, “right now, the less I reinforce anything at the rational mind level, the better. But you are doing really well.”

Curious as to the reason for Keith’s cryptic reply, I go back to what I am doing, continuing to stand to the side of the hamster wheel, seeing my personality self dutifully racing around the never-ending spin of rational mind. In this moment of meditatively standing back as a divine observer, the ego/personality stuff all feels like a silly cosmic joke.

“I am not that body in the hamster wheel,” I ponder with a giggle.

The pain is again gone and beautiful energy surrounds me.

Hot Spring Surrender

A while later, sharp pains again suddenly surface in my abdomen.

“Pain is resistance,” I ponder an idea that returns to my mind. “If I relax into the pains, the healing will happen much more easily.”

Then, another memory fills my head. I flash back to an experience where, just over a year ago, my friend Pyper and I had talked Keith into doing a private chocolate ceremony at a hot spring near Xela. During that trip, the water was hotter than I normally like, and I had begun to panic. Finally, I had surrendered to the heat, relaxing into the frantic body reactions of fright and resistance, facing the panic attack with love and peace. In the midst of surrendering to that experience, I had come away with beautiful healing and growth.

So, as my present-day sharp pains persist, I imagine myself walking down into a piping-hot pool of water. I pretend that my belly agitation is the panic of hitting that uncomfortable steaming heat, and I visualize myself surrendering to the heat in my belly. I feel no judgment and do no pushing. I simply allow myself to relax and heal in whatever way may unfold, trusting that every pain has a purpose. Rational mind is not involved.

Unexpected Visitors

Next, I feel guided to imagine another dear friend joining me in the hot spring. I am still feeling panic, and I trust that this friend’s imaginary presence might help calm and comfort the inner resistance.

But as I try to visualize my friend joining me, I feel shocked when intuitions repeatedly insist that a different woman is going to join me in the pool. I fight the feeling but finally surrender to this inner guidance. The other woman is a former friend – one I broke up with almost eight years ago – one who at that time had pushed my buttons triggering deep emotions of agonizing betrayal.

Finally, I meditatively invite Shelly (not her real name) into the steaming water with me. Intuitions whisper that a lot of what is painfully agitating in my belly right now is the deep agony that I empathically acquired from Shelly – stuff that I continue to carry – stuff that actually belongs to her. Somehow, I know that it is time to surrender this pain, to let it flow back to her in care of her Higher Self. It is not mine to carry any longer. It is her job to process it, or to do whatever with it.

As I surrender to this process, I feel intense pains come, and then leave. Soon, two other friends unexpectedly join me in this imagined hot spring – two other former friends who had also painfully pushed my betrayal triggers. More intense pains immediately surface in my abdomen. As I allow with trust, these pains also leave me, flowing back to those former friends in care of their Higher Selves.

As the pains flow out, I feel pure love, profound gratitude, and a total absence of judgment. This is no longer my painful axe to carry. I release and surrender it fully. The empathically captured emotions are no longer my burden. I give them all up.

I giggle as I realize that I have been trudging around that hamster wheel, believing it is my duty to carry all of this extra emotional baggage with me. I now see all this unwanted luggage as nothing but stories, thoughts, and memories – meaningless mental vapors that anchored me into a false reality.

Doing Things Differently

As 3:30 p.m. comes and goes, I suddenly find myself in a different-but-similar process. I have observed that Keith has been unusually quiet today, not initiating any interactions with others, and when a few people have asked for help, he has provided only cryptic and short responses.

“I am really judging Keith’s behavior today,” I suddenly realize.

Immediately, I decide to follow this thread. I know I am creating this, and that everything happening on the porch today is being co-created by each of us, for the highest good of all, including Keith. Three years of experience tells me that every chocolate ceremony, no matter how bizarre, has always served me. I know that Keith’s seeming detachment today is exactly what I need.

“If I were Keith, I would be doing this differently,” I ponder with frustration.

“If I were God, I would be running this world differently,” I then expand the idea. “This is my God / separation drama that I am again projecting onto Keith. This is a rigged game where the proper help is not being provided at the mental level, and I shouldn’t have to ask for help, blah, blah, blah.”

Wow, that rope course metaphor is proving extremely valuable in my process.

Gratitude For Pain

I clearly see the porch today as my personal holodeck, showing me my God drama in a massive way. While maintaining a smile, I am now feeling angry, impatient, judgmental, and annoyed that God is not doing his job right … not helping people … leaving people to flounder until they find their own way … then still making them do their own work … blah, blah, blah.

“Wow,” I ponder with a giggle. “This is my childhood tantrum being acted out in real life, just for me.”

Beautiful energy surrounds me as I dive into this next process – one where abdominal pains again flare up, big time. The pains are intense, but I love them all. I do not attach or identify with any of them. I clearly know that what is flowing through me has nothing to do with present day reality. It is old stuff, dangling hooks in front of me, begging me to bite, and insisting that I reenergize the loops.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I ponder as I continue forward. “I am grateful that this stuff is coming up. I will not push it down, and I will not reenergize it.”

Waves Of Craziness

As I continue meditating, I ask the angels and my Higher Self to assist. Repeatedly, I focus on silly aspects of the hamster wheel metaphor in an attempt to keep this processing light and fun. I imagine myself standing to the side while all of this old emotional crap is up on the wheel, running around in circles.

Again, I bring in the rope course metaphor and immediately feel anger at the rigged game – anger that tells me I am not yet done processing and releasing this old dysfunctional game.

Above all else, I repeatedly focus on nonattachment, staying outside the hamster wheel, and not biting the hook. I feel the emotions intensely, and I let them flow.

As before, I remain in smiles and high-vibration giggle energy while huge waves of pain surface and leave. Intuitions tell me that these waves are related to massive impatience, to not trusting Higher Powers, to still feeling victimized by my own reality creations, etc…

I examine all of this craziness as it continues to flow, realizing that all of it is, and has been, my personal stage play designed to teach me to release this impatience, and this lack of trust and surrender.

Finally, I feel as if I have done just that. Peace and calm return to my abdomen, and the inner giggles reign supreme.

Huge Layers, Huge Energy

“Whew … wow … I let go of some huge layers today,” I giggle at Keith as I prepare to hurry home.

“And you didn’t buy into any of them,” Keith praises me. “You are in a very different place now – very different from even a week or two ago. Congratulations!”

Keith and I chat for a while as I briefly explain my new hamster wheel metaphor. As we discuss my journey, Keith then brings up the topic of my rope-course metaphor.

“Yeah, I am still working on that one. It continues to bring up anger when I go there,” I share with Keith.

For the third time this week, I rush home, gobble down a quick meal, and return to Keith’s home for an evening of bagging yet-another three-hundred pounds of freshly ground cacao. I am in very positive, happy energy.

Late Friday night, as I attempt to sleep, there is so much energy activity in my body that I simply cannot relax. I try to retire at 11:00 p.m., then midnight, then 1:00 a.m., but each time the energy flow keeps me wide awake. Finally, at around 2:00 a.m., I manage to relax enough to fall asleep. I love the energy activity (that is mostly awakening in the lower chakras), but I also love my sleep.

The overactive energy continues to overwhelm me on Saturday morning. I am in a very positive energy, but am physically exhausted from lack of sleep. Giving up on the idea of writing, I surrender to a day of doing nothing, simply resting and being gentle with myself.

A Week Of Rebirth

It has been an amazing six days, beginning with my sixteenth re-birthday – a week of constant rebirth in many different ways.

Ego counterattacks seem to be a repeat theme, both in my writing and in actual experience, but through them all, I mostly manage to maintain a beautiful, giggly, happy, and high-vibration energy.

And I love the new “hamster wheel” metaphor that so magically dovetails into recurring encounters with that annoying rope course metaphor.

At the start of the week, I began the deep diving by finding ego, barricading himself inside an abandoned mailroom, refusing to open the doors and windows, refusing to allow the light to penetrate that darkness. Finally, through metaphorical conversations with God, communicating with notes sent via a pneumatic tube, I gradually allowed some light to return.

Midweek, the hamster wheel began spinning with giggles, helping me see the absurdity of trudging ever forward in search of a spiritual ending. It now seems so clear that forever searching is merely a mental delay tactic, and that merely stepping out of the wheel is the magical solution.

As the week ends, hot-spring surrender takes the forefront of my process as I again face waves of crazy layers, all beautifully lightened with giggles when I place each one inside that hamster wheel, imagining a tired and weary mailroom employee, insisting that he is going to find the solution.

It has been a beautiful re-birthday week – a week of intense emotional release – and a week that will forever cause me to giggle each time I reflect back on the silly fun I had with that hamster wheel metaphor. After having released so many layers of emotion in the past six days, I do indeed feel as if I have been reborn, yet again.

… to be continued …

Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved

Note: This is a continuation from my previous blog titled, “Newfound Hope.”

Early Thursday morning, May 9, 2013, I wake up with newfound hope still running through my veins. As I again run the words of my mission statement through my mind, I giggle when they resonate deeply. I believe them and am in a magical mood.

The afternoon workgroup ceremony starts out extremely small, with only four of us present at the designated starting time. A few more join us over time. After drinking chocolate, we banter in casual conversation.

Suddenly I sneeze. With curiosity, I ask Keith about the purpose of my occasional sneezing, explaining that whenever I sneeze I feel a magical burst of energy that explodes up and down my spine, and that it increasingly persists longer and longer.

“Brenda,” Keith explains, “for you it is like an electro-shock jump-start that helps kick the energy flow. For others it can be different.”

I love the magical energy that flows in my body, lingering for several minutes after the sneeze is long gone.

Dripping Distractions

I sit in this beautiful energy for the first few hours, listening to the occasional conversations as Keith works with a friend who has encountered a magical meditative place, one that Keith refers to as a “cookie jar” state. I too desire to open or expand something equally as beautiful, but begin to wonder if I might be trying to push the river a little. Intuitions whisper that there is a very fine line, with one side of the line being pushing myself with expectation, and the other side simply being to set magical intentions of expectancy while following and surrendering to a flow. I choose to invite more light to fill me while allowing and following whatever happens, period.

Having no attachment to results, I express an inner intent that I want to do something more with opening my third-eye chakra. As I ponder this intention with expectancy, I start to feel an active and slightly annoying vibration in the center of my lower solar plexus region.

As I ponder the vibration, intuitions tell me that it has to do with fear – with fear of opening something that has hurt me in the past. This prickly little vibration comes and goes frequently during the first few hours of the ceremony.

In the midst of these vibrating encounters, I sometimes imagine myself walking up a flight of steps while heading toward my eighth chakra, and other times walking down similar steps leading to the lower chakras. But every time I try, I feel as if I am experiencing some type of water torture – with a feeling of drip, drip, drip, stop, stop, stop pressure pulsing in my forehead. It seems that I am dancing with distraction at every turn.

Dealing With Distraction

Still surrendering and following, I eventually get an intuitive feeling guiding me to invite my inner children, Bobby and Sharon, to show me a switchbox of circuit breakers, somewhere in my head.

I first feel guided to a switch in the left front of my forehead, and I imagine myself turning it on. Then I am led to the right front forehead, where I do the same. Next, I feel guided to the very center of my head, at the pineal gland, where I flip another switch to the “ON” position.

As I ponder how silly this seems to rational mind, I feel tiny energetic differences in my body. A sensation has begun to grow – a sensation of more hope and more possibility. Simultaneously, I sense new fear pulsing and strengthening in my belly. I sit with this scenario for a while before finally engaging in a short conversation with Keith.

“How do you work with distraction?” I beg Keith for guidance. “Is it like fear, where you can just let it go?”

“You need to go find out what is behind the distraction and deal with that,” Keith answers with a subtle clue.

A Disgusting Soup

As I return to inner meditation, I ask the distraction to get bigger. I immerse my self in it more and more, paying attention to the noises around me – to the side conversations – feeling the “drip, drip, drip” of pressure pulsing in my forehead.

“This distraction is a protection mechanism,” I suddenly ponder. “I put these safeguards here to stop me if I started getting too close to my magic … to protect me from repeating the things that got me into so much trouble as a child.”

Patiently tolerating the increasing distraction, I gradually begin to feel the presence of a deep layer of agonizing emotion. I get the sensation that these distractions have been dutifully hiding this painful emotion from me, keeping me safe from having to feel it before I was ready.

As I allow myself to start to feel the emotion, venturing as deeply as I dare, I begin to shed a few mild tears. Soon, I feel guided to imagine myself sitting on the rim of an old-fashioned circular well, with little Sharon at my side. Together, we throw “love pills” into the depths far below. The well is full of putrid, black, slimy, tar-like anger, rage, hatred, victimization, and sadness. It is a disgusting soup consisting of the vilest emotions imaginable.

Angry Resistance

The love pills do not seem to work. In my heart, I understand that I cannot simply throw light and love at the darkness. I know that I have to find the courage to go into that frightening darkness, at least deep enough to feel portions of it. Only then will the light transmute what I am able to feel

But terror tells me that if I, myself, go into that well all at once, that I WILL get lost in there, feeling overwhelmed by what I might find. Looking for alternatives that will help me do this more gradually, I follow a hunch telling me to lower a rope into the well. At the bottom of the rope dangles a tall thin glass.

As the glass hits the surface of the putrid soup, it tips sideways. The glass soon sinks into the emotional brew, gradually filling with oozing darkness. Together, Sharon and I pull the rope, retrieving the glass filled with this putrid agony. When it reaches the surface, I am surprised to see that the outside of the glass is clean. I imagine holding the container in an outstretched hand, asking for an angel to touch it … to transmute it.

But as I visualize this scenario, I experience intense resistance. I cannot let this emotion go. I sense the anger and rage in that glass and I feel protective and justified in hanging on to it.

Glasses To Buckets

Still determined to let this go, I ask little Sharon to help me throw the contents of the glass at the angel, drenching the angel with this angry, black, tar-like yuck. As I visualize this scene, I deeply feel the intense emotion for about ten seconds. Then, as my emotion fades and transmutes, I sense that the angel returns to pure white light. Peace returns to my heart and the emotion is gone.

Together with my inner child, we repeat this scenario, over and over, for a very long time, lowering a rope, filling a glass with putrid emotion, throwing it at an angel, and then feeling this small emotional portion to the core before it transmutes to love.

Through it all, I have no idea what exactly the emotion is. I only know it is a putrid mix of very old and painful stuff. I feel each tiny layer to the core, but am not identifying with any of it.

Soon, I get brave, and imagine replacing that small glass with a big bucket, deciding to work with increasingly larger amounts of this frightening emotional soup. As I visualize this agonizing brew splattering all over the angel, I feel emotions more intensely and deeply, but I have reached a state where I am no longer so afraid of getting lost in the process.

Sharing From The Heart

After a while, Catherine engages in a discussion about her emotional process. It is a conversation that soon evolves into a group discussion about the processing of emotional densities. I giggle inside as I quickly realize that nearly everyone on the porch seems to be approaching the same place of understanding that I am finally reaching – an awareness of the ideas that we have to feel this stuff, but not attach or identify with it, and then be willing to surrender it to the light. It is that simple.

“The conscious choice point is in feeling it deeply, but then not staying in it, and then being willing to give it up.” I share a short contribution.

“That is how you do it,” Keith coaches me. “It is not necessarily the same for others.”

I love Keith’s perspective, reminding me that we each have our own unique way of doing and feeling things.

At one point in this beautiful discussion, I make what, for me, is another inspired comment, doing so in response to something Catherine had said. Immediately, she casually slams me with a crude comment, telling me that she has been on this porch for a year and she obviously knows this already.

“Ouch,” I ponder with shock. “Why am I creating this crazy conflict?”

I know my comment was not in any way directed at Catherine. I was simply sharing my own insight with the group. I have seen many others actually confront and debate with Catherine during this conversation, and she was not defensive with them in any way.

“Yet she slams me for simply sharing something from my heart,” I explore my trigger.

Pain To Gratitude

I immediately withdraw from the conversation, sitting on the sidelines while going inside. A lifelong pattern begins to unfold – a pattern of contributing to a conversation with my truth only to feel unjustly slammed by someone – a pattern of then withdrawing, never again contributing because of fear of rejection.

“This is an opportunity to allow someone else to have their own truth while I remain transparent,” I tell myself.

I feel this emotion of rejection, and I feel it deeply. As I shed a few tears, I remember again how I have been slammed “below the belt” throughout my life. In fact, I am quite clear that this is more of how I felt a few days ago when I was triggered by Keith’s comments before an evening of bagging chocolate.

“Brenda, do the right thing,” Inner voices whisper. “Do it for the right reason, and expect nothing back.”

I quickly focus on unconditional love and gratitude, while imagining Catherine and her rejecting comment as being beautiful contributors to my process, playing an essential role in revealing my painful triggers.

“I would rather have these triggers revealed in a setting like this than with real friends,” I ponder with sincerity.

A short while later I reach a profoundly peaceful and loving place – one where I am overflowing with gratitude.

A Magical Encounter

Suddenly, I lock eyes with a young woman across the porch (I will call her Rosa). I am not sure which of us looked first, but in the moment our eyes touch, we both know to stay.

We maintain this beautiful gaze for what feels like at least forty-five minutes, staring into each other’s eyes until my eyeballs are so sore I can no longer keep them open. Many times during this beautiful experience, we both reach smiles and tiny bursts of laughter, but mostly we just gaze with straight-faced, joyful peace.

During this magical encounter, I experience profound energy and insights flowing through me. I see Rosa as a divine reflection of me – as literally being me at the oneness level. The personality-self and my emotions feel quite silly, meaning nothing in my present state of awareness.

Again, I see the entire porch around me as a stage play, as a collection of divine beings, each lost in varying levels of personality identification and stuck emotions, each healing in their own unique way. I feel this clarity genuinely and magically, yet it is quite ordinary, nothing special.

Gobbledygook Stories

Throughout the experience, my heart vibrates with beautiful, intense, loving energy. I have no idea regarding which direction the energy is flowing. I only know that I feel the energy flow profoundly, and that it is so amazing that I do not want to stop. My heart feels like a warm vibrator, glowing, strong, alive with knowing, overflowing with indescribable trust. I am immersed in a powerful, peaceful flow of confidence.

There is no way to describe it. It is not otherworldly. It is just profoundly peaceful, combined with an inner knowing that all is perfect – a knowing that I am not yet done, but am being given another glimpse of the transmutation of personality stories. Right now, all the stories feel insignificant and meaningless. I clearly see that the stories continually evolve and change over time, depending on the present mix of emotional healing.

An inner smile grins from ear to ear as I ponder the silliness of “personality-self” truth.

“Absolute divine experience is all that matters,” I ponder with a giggle. “The rest is all just gobbledygook – a mish-mash of rational-mind words – a collection of distorted personality-self stories.”

Beautiful Validation

Finally, Rosa and I prepare to disengage. We do not discuss the timing. It just seems to be an intuitively-acknowledged, mutual moment of exhaustion in which we both know we are done. We each put our hands in prayer position and bow to the other from across the porch, after which I close my eyes and return to an inner world.

I sit in this continued beautiful flow, without eye contact, for at least another half hour. Finally, glowing inside and feeling quite complete, I decide to leave the porch at 5:00 p.m., slightly before the ceremony concludes.

Just as I leave, I bend over and give Keith a big hug. He quietly congratulates me on my process today, saying something like “You were working on something that cannot be understood … doing beautiful work.”

A friend follows me to the gate. As we walk home together, I briefly share my glowing experience about staring into Rosa’s eyes.

“It was beautiful just to be on the edge of that,” My friend tells me.

“You mean you felt the energy flow?” I ask with surprise.

“Oh yeah,” My friend responds. “It was amazing and beautiful.”

I am so grateful for such feedback. So often, I doubt and wonder if I am making things up, and such external validation deeply warms my heart.

Talk About Triggers

As I later ponder on my pillow, I drift back to an experience that happened just before I left the ceremony. A young girl had walked onto the porch to join her mother.

“Only four people today?” The young girl commented as she looked around the porch.

Several of us giggled at her innocent comment, because there were still five of us on the porch.

“I don’t count,” I responded with a tease, joking about me being the invisible fifth person.

“Talk about triggers,” Catherine had jumped into the brief conversation with a sarcastic tone.

She was quite serious, implying that I have been triggered and was being defensive. I remained quiet, allowing her to have her truth. I know I was not triggered at all. Instead, I was simply feeling playful and silly.

A Magical Day

For me, today turned out to be an experience of taking the higher road of unconditional love … recognizing that there is no absolute truth at a rational mind level … and allowing others to be perfect where they are, doing so with pure transparency. I reveled with delight in seeing the higher truth of everyone’s divinity, in seeing the silliness of their personality-self and emotions, in seeing the absolute cosmic joke of how our emotions seem to be what locks us into the personality story – of how our stories literally define us until we feel those emotions and release them.

I have no doubt that today was another of those chocolate ceremonies manifested just for me. It was a day where everyone present seemed to be deeply synchronized in similar growth processes – a day where pure love reigned in my heart.

Later, as I drift off to sleep, intense energy flows in my head and body, churning and wiggling. The energy is pleasurable and pleasant, but quite active and distracting, keeping me from sleeping soundly. But even so, I love it.

An interesting Start

After a relaxing Friday morning of videos, in beautiful energy but lacking in motivation, I again find myself sitting on Keith’s magical porch. What unfolds next is quite unusual.

Initially, there are only three of us present when the chocolate is served. For a while, Keith begins to discuss issues surrounding the purchase of a new tablet computer. He is preparing for a six-month European tour and has need for a more convenient interface to the world.

During this conversation, I simply sit in beautiful energy, surrendering to the flow, having no expectations, while at the same time enjoying a sense of beautiful expectancy.

Then, a new young man stops by the porch to purchase chocolate. This young man just happens to have with him the exact tablet computer that Keith is considering. Soon, the conversation goes much deeper into experiential play with the tablet itself.

Given the tiny group size, I have been feeling quite excited about having a quiet and very deep ceremony, but after ninety minutes of casual computer conversation, we are still going nowhere. Yet I continue to trust that all is perfect.

A Setup For Growth

As I quietly meditate, I ignore the ongoing distracting conversations. But while pondering my feelings, I come to realize that underneath a very mild annoyance is a pool of intense rage – repressed anger regarding the need to have and follow rules, to control a situation, and to not allow distractions etc…

I clearly see the insanity of these repressed emotions, and initially ignore them. But I realize that this emotion does need to be felt at some level before it can be released or transmuted. I remain quite unattached as to how or when that needs to happen. I clearly see that this repressed emotion is blocking further movement on my part, but I do not want to talk about it or go into it while this young man is here purchasing chocolate and showing off his computer.

Soon, Keith sits beside me and asks how I am. Rather than respond directly, I simply sigh in exasperation. I remain in a beautiful energy, but the distractions have reached a point of overwhelming me. Just as happened yesterday, I feel as if my forehead is the recipient of constant drip, drip, dripping water torture. I cannot focus.

“We need to focus on the ceremony now, huh?” Keith then suggests before I find words to respond to his original question.

“Yes,” I smile back at him.

From what is happening already, I can tell that this whole scenario is another beautiful setup for magical growth. I expect today will be deep and profound.

Stop Trying To Focus

Fifteen minutes later, with the distracting conversations continuing, Steven shows up on the porch. Keith soon announces to the few of us present that it is time to get down to business. The porch goes quiet as we all meditate silently. This is a workgroup ceremony for regular students only, so we are not following a normal ceremonial flow.

“Brenda, how are you doing?” Keith interrupts a while later.

“I am feeling intense and overwhelming energy,” I respond with a sigh. “I felt a lot of it last night too. It is like a pulsing distracting energy so strong that I cannot focus.”

“Stop trying to focus,” Keith guides me. “Let it have you. Go into it.”

Keith then checks his guidance and tells me that there is no reason that the experience needs to be overwhelming like it is. He adds that I am still engaged in a belief system telling me that if my experience is not intense, then I am not really doing something productive.

This really resonates with me. I do still somewhat believe that an energy experience is not real if it does not overwhelm me in some undeniable way. I quietly ponder that the “overwhelming-ness” is also a contributor of my God-drama, doing so in a way that causes me to believe I am helpless and need assistance from an outside source.

Following A Flow

“Just allow the next level of what is ready to happen,” Keith coaches me.

I take Keith’s words as implying that my sense of being overwhelmed is simply my own resistance to allowing something to flow to the next level.

But as I attempt to relax, express intent, and just observe, the only thing that happens is that the intensity of the energy throbbing in my head further overwhelms me.

I sit with this experience in complete silence, trusting that all is well.

“I recognize that I am at the “bait-biting” phase of a pathetic and angry entry point into my God-drama loops,” I share with Keith a while later. “It feels like there is more intense density that I need to dive into, but I am intentionally NOT going there. Instead, I am asking the light to show me what it would do.”

“Does this sound like a valid approach,” I ask Keith for feedback, “not jumping headfirst into the density and instead letting the light show me if I need to, or if perhaps it can be transmuted otherwise?”

“Yes,” Keith responds, expressing that it is a good approach to just be open, honest with my intentions, and to follow with no attachment.”

As I sit in this energy of following, the new young man with a tablet computer again takes the group conversation off on a long tangent, asking nonstop questions about shipping chocolate internationally. I ignore this conversation while meditating, but soon realize that I am again being shown how much anger remains buried inside me – anger at such inappropriate conduct (based on my conditioning). I get the inner guidance that I really need to delve down into this emotion. I do not seem to be feeling progress in any other way.

Deep Diving

Following intuition, I return to the same metaphor that worked for me yesterday, imagining Sharon sitting with me on the top circular wall of a deep well. Together, we use a rope to lower a tall, thin glass into the bottom of the well. When it hits the surface of thick, gooey, runny, tar-like slime, the glass falls to its side, sinks, fills, and we raise it.

When we throw the glass of muck onto a metaphorical angel, I do not feel much emotion, so we repeat the visualized process several more times. Gradually, I begin to feel deep angry rage as I imagine throwing that putrid stuff onto these divine beings.

I continue repeating this scenario until I finally reach the point of a deep, dry-heaving reflex. Then I stop and immediately ask the light to take and transmute what I have now been able to feel. Almost immediately, I am lighter and experience beautiful energy tingles, but there is a continued ache at the center of my solar plexus, so I do it again.

I quickly switch to imagining a bucket versus a glass. As I hit deep anger at the edge of more dry heaving, I again ask for the light to come in and transmute what is ready. As I do so, another rush of lighter energy makes me feel much better. I do this over and over, speeding up the process and increasing the number of imagined angels standing in front of me. Each time I feel more light energy flowing through me when I am done … but my gut continues to have that “achy feeling” indicating that there is more to release.

Dizzying Energy

I soon reach a feeling that this well is bottomless. Rather than continuing with bucket after bucket, I imagine myself dropping a pressure-pumped hose down into the well, and I invite a large stadium filled with angels to surround me. Sharon and I stand at the top of the well, holding the pressurized hose nozzle, drenching entire sections of the stadium with this dark, putrid crap.

At first, the emotions are intense, and I nearly get lost in the energies that I feel flowing through me. Gradually, things flow more smoothly. I continue to feel more dense energy surfacing as it flows out in a steady stream. Eventually, the flow reaches a stable point of leaving effortlessly.

As I repeatedly imagine spraying all sides of the angel-filled stadium, I feel as if we are finally reaching the bottom of this overwhelming layer. I intuitively feel the hose as it sucks up the last vestiges of this emotion. I repeatedly express my intent for it to be fully removed and cleaned out. I even ask angels to go down to the bottom with vacuum hoses, cleaning every square inch. Finally, I express an intent for the well itself to be transmuted.

The process takes a while as I imagine various scenarios until I feel that the well is entirely gone – until it has been dug out completely and filled with clean soil.

Remembering Keith’s frequent guidance, I then ask the light to fill all the empty spaces in my energy field.

At this point in the ceremony, I start to focus solely on higher vibrations, not doing anything, but instead simply surrendering, inviting, and allowing … without trying. At times, I feel almost dizzy with the beautiful energy that now flows through me.

Eraser Energy

After sitting in this beautiful healing energy for a very long time, I begin to remember a frequent occurrence in my process. I have a lifelong “eraser” in my journey – an eraser that frequently makes me forget the good experiences in my process, leaving me filled with stories, doubt, and distraction.

“Keith,” I speak up a while later. “Can you suggest what might be a good way to work with this “eraser” energy? Is it an aspect-of-self, or perhaps emotional density, etc?”

“Work with it as a belief system or as conditioned programming,” Keith guides me.

I smile as I listen, realizing that my own eraser has already made me forget how to work with belief systems and programming.

Keith compassionately guides me, suggesting that I go down into the subconscious mind and work with the “Book of Beliefs.”

“Duh,” I ponder with a giggle. “I profoundly know how to do that. Why does this eraser try to convince me otherwise?”

As Keith reminds me of all the steps, I already remember them quite well. I can only assume that Keith is using this as an opportunity to teach others about this particular meditation.

Proactive Processing

I clearly remember the process of walking down, down, down into the subconscious, following hallways until I find a door, walking inside, and finding a book with a page open. I know how to intuitively read the beliefs written on that page, and I understand the process of destroying each page three times, each in a unique, creative way.

“Once the pages are destroyed,” Keith then guides me, “ask your Higher Self to bring in appropriate programming to replace the outdated beliefs. You put them there for a reason, and they did serve you when you put them there.”

“Yeah,” I respond to the extra instruction with clarity. “I put them there to help me forget all the things that got me into painful trouble, so that I could continue and function in a world that would not have understood my magic.”

I then ask a question that has been puzzling me. It has to do with “When is it appropriate to simply follow in-the-moment guidance, and when is it appropriate to do proactive things like journey into the subconscious?”

“It feels like this might be pushing the river when I self-initiate processes like this,” I express concern to Keith.

Keith reassures me that this is NOT pushing, and that it is a good practice to follow. He compares it to having a piece of furniture in your room – one that does not serve you – indicating that going into the subconscious is like going inside to remove the misplaced furniture and to bring in a replacement piece that does serve me.

I am grateful for Keith’s advice and counsel. It seems that I have been so deeply immersed in following the flow of my process, that I have often felt leery of doing such proactive inner work. I realize that there are many areas in my process that could use such proactive journeying, but that right now, I am so immersed in five-day-per-week chocolate ceremonies that I have little time or energy left to pursue anything else.

Delightful Interruptions

As I close my eyes to begin this meditation, Keith repeatedly interrupts to give me more guidance – telling me that this guidance is coming through him.

“When you get to the room where the book is at, pay attention to what else is or isn’t in the room,” Keith channels to me. “Work with that as part of your God drama.”

“This eraser is a piece of your God drama,” Keith continues.

“Yeah,” I giggle. “It helps me remain pathetic by making me forget the good stuff. I clearly see how it helps me to avoid my light shadow, making me forget the powerful loving experiences, etc…”

“This is related to your joy as well,” Keith interrupts me a few minutes later. “By erasing the good things, you are kept from memories of the joy, hiding the joy, and forgetting the joy.”

“Wow,” I giggle, “that makes so much sense.”

Keith and I continue to banter. It seems that every time I close my eyes to begin this solo meditation, he interrupts me with more guidance. It becomes obvious that I can work with most of my remaining God drama as deeply rooted beliefs in the subconscious.

“And also as choices, all focused around this eraser,” Keith points out when I explain this insight to him.

The more Keith and I talk, the more eager I am to actually begin this meditation, but every time I start, Keith interrupts me with additional valuable feedback. Finally, at 4:15 p.m., as Keith and I finish another such interruption, I suggest that maybe I should just save this meditation for later, taking it as homework for another day. I clearly see that since we are bagging more chocolate tonight, that there will not be time to complete it today.

A Magical Toolbox

Keith quickly agrees with my assessment, and goes so far as suggesting that he wants to end the ceremony now anyway, so that he too can get an early start in preparing for tonight.

As I rush home for a quick dinner, my heart is alive with joy and hope. It has been a beautiful ceremony – one filled with intense emotional processing, and magical energy. I am in a very good place.

While hurriedly typing up a few notes, I again ponder how at one point in the ceremony today, I had again reached that powerful place of seeing all of this personality silliness from a higher perspective. I clearly knew that these crazy belief systems and emotions are nothing more than a personality script that continues to suck me in, knowing that they are merely illusions in a much bigger picture. I actually flowed with beautiful energy during that magical stage of my process.

I know that all is perfect – that I am prepared and ready to do this subconscious journeying all by myself, whenever that may be. My toolbox is full. I know exactly what to do, and I trust that it will happen with perfect timing.

Shaking Energies

After a fun evening of bagging chocolate, I return to my computer to research details of an earthquake that had vigorously rocked the ceremony earlier in the afternoon. I am surprised to note that it was a 5.1 shaker that happened at 2:49 p.m., only about sixty miles away on the other side of the mountains, barely out in the Pacific coast. I can only giggle, when another mild quake suddenly shakes my apartment as I research the first.

Extremely active energy-flows again consume me as I attempt to sleep. As before, the nighttime energy is pleasurable and positive, but extremely distracting, making sleep fleeting and difficult.

It seems that the energies are shaking my life from many different perspectives.

Latent Dormant Emotions

Saturday, May 11, 2013, is another magical day as I write and publish, “Terrified Of Joy.” As usual, I find great healing integration that matches beautifully with present-day processing – all tying directly into my ongoing God-drama work.

After a beautiful Sunday morning of connecting to dear friends on Skype, I return to Keith’s porch for what turns out to be another relatively small group, with only around ten people at the peak. Some of them had arrived just as we were about to begin the “Glow Meditation,” causing more of my latent emotions to bubble and churn. The experience brings up feelings of dormant anger and resentment at people for their inconsiderate behavior in not only coming late, but then launching into more delaying casual conversation as if they are oblivious that we are already in the midst of a ceremony.

I see these new interruptions as my creation, and am grateful for them. I take the emotion inside to feel and process it, focusing mainly on the feelings of anger, resentment, and judgment. But I do not seem to be going anywhere.

Energetic Scamming

As Keith finally starts the meditations, I feel a nice energy, but immediately begin to experience sharp pains in my solar plexus. At first, I suspect that these pains come from reading the emotional energies of others, but eventually I start to wonder if perhaps this is my own emotional density. Finally, I get the feeling that what I am experiencing is an inner scam – part of me wanting to be pathetic, not embracing my power, pulling my emotional “assemblage point” inside my belly so that I can hurt and wallow in painful smallness.

This latter intuition feels right. An inner part of me is rebelling, trying to keep me stuck and small, doing so for my own dysfunctional protection. Immediately, I start to focus on relaxing, playing with my “White Bird” metaphor, imagining the emotional receptor-point gracefully flying back out in front of me where it belongs. I do not know how to do this with my head, so I simply surrender, asking my Higher Self to assist in whatever way appropriate.

After the “Glow Meditation” is complete, Keith soon turns to me and asks how I am doing.

“I am doing well,” I respond. “But I have sharp pains, and am starting to wonder if maybe this is pain from my “assemblage point” being back inside me. I am working with Higher Energy to relax it back to where it belongs.”

Keith checks his guidance and tells me he is in full agreement – adding that the emotions of others are running through me in a painful way. Then Keith surprises me, because I have not yet shared my own personal insights about scamming. He tells me that this is part of my God drama, pointing out that this is a scamming attempt trying to keep me pathetic and small – to get me to go back into the “needing help” loop so that I do not have to embrace my magic and power.

“Yeah,” I thank Keith for his insight. “Am I missing anything else?”

“No,” Keith starts …

“Well, yes,” He giggles at me. “You are missing a lot of things still, but nothing that you are ready to work with. I am getting that right now you are right-on with what is happening.

Tearful Gratitude

I close my eyes, going inside and focusing on being powerful, bringing in more light, and surrendering my “scamming pathetic-ness” to Higher Self. I ask the light to help adjust my energy back to where it needs to be, and then I step out of the way while beginning to share energy with two young women on the porch. I know that sharing energy with others is always a beautiful way to increase my own magical flow.

At one point, as another woman across the porch does very deep emotional release work, I am quite surprised when Keith mentions my name, telling her that I am doing a beautiful job in helping her to release a lot of stuff. I had been focusing on doing this from afar, and I love the unexpected feedback that others can feel what I am doing.

Soon, a young man (one who deeply triggered me last year) goes into intense inner work, and I also focus on sharing energy with him. As he struggles and sobs deeper into his own inner pain, he looks up and shares something that makes my heart melt.

“Brenda,” he tells me. “I finally understand you and what you have been going through from a whole new perspective.”

I simply hold my hand on my heart, glowing at him with gratitude as tiny tears form in the corners of my eyes.

A Failed Scam Attempt

As I bask in my powerful loving energy, I begin to wonder if I might be partially scamming myself on the other extreme – possibly avoiding my own inner work. But as I check with my heart, all of my feelings overflow with power and inner validation telling me that this is my journey today – one of power and expansion.

I had been silently hoping to return to the “Book of Beliefs” meditation that I tried to start on Friday – the one working in the subconscious with my “eraser” energies – but what I am doing right now feels more important in the moment. I continue to radiate powerful space holding energy for others, while simultaneously expressing a silent intent for more personal expansion.

At one point late in the ceremony, as another friend does deep work, my belly starts to really hurt. As I again get the feeling that this pain is another attempt at scamming my self, I ask Keith for his assessment. He agrees that this IS another attempt to scam me, to pull me out of this new power.

I thank him and redouble my efforts on loving expansion. Soon, that new pain simply disappears.

Awakening Energies

Later in the ceremony, I return to my own work, remembering a recent pillar of light meditation in which Keith had been guided to make modifications tailored just for me. I silently return to that meditation, connecting with energies from below and above, filling with those energies while asking my Higher Self to help me to repair, clean out, unclog, and/or reconnect damaged energy channels throughout my field.

I silently smile as I listen to Keith work with another friend who is focusing on connecting to Mother Earth energies. Keith verbally points out that her childhood shutdown is very similar to “Brenda’s.” I clearly recognize that I remain deeply disconnected from the Mother Earth energies, and my rational mind has no idea how to rectify the problem.

Continuing with this “Pillar of Light” meditation, I focus on each chakra, filling with energy and asking Higher Self to assist in repairs and reconnecting. I sit in this expansion and surrender process for the remainder of the ceremony.

I soon begin to feel numerous energy tingles here and there. Almost immediately my entire abdomen begins to bubble and churn with painful gas popping inside. It is quite wild, and I feel a great deal of energy flow in these lower chakras, both in front and in back. Rather than judge the pains, I love them, finding gratitude for them. I know the pains are similar to a sleeping foot waking up – to an increase in energy flow in an area long asleep.

I sit in this beautiful energy until the very end, overflowing with loving peace as the pains continue to bubble and churn.

A Bear Scorned

After walking home with a friend, I sit at my computer to type up a few notes. The first thing that I ponder is my sadness for having forgotten to bring “Bobby Bear” to ceremony with me today. This is only the second time in six months that I have forgotten and left home without him.

“I really hope he will forgive me,” I ponder with a giggle.

I deeply love and appreciate this little bear as if he were real, with actual feelings. After all, he is my precious little inner child, and I have grown to cherish him with all my heart. His presence has been so profound in countless ceremonies over the past six months – not just for me, but for many others as well.

Somehow, I do know that my magic little bear will definitely forgive me.

New Growth Opportunities

Then I ponder back to another memory from the ceremony. One of my friends had been stuck in painful inner work. Keith told her that she was also being scammed by her ego. She was feeling the “same old” pains and was refusing to go into them, pointing out that she had already done that work before, and that there is no need to go there again … nothing new to be learned.

Keith told her a story from his own processing days, one where he had made the same arguments to his channeled guides.

“It is another layer,” they had told him. “Are you going to do it or not?”

My friend never did agree with Keith on this one, still refusing to go back inside and work with the same old pains. But observing the experience had profoundly touched me in beautiful ways. I realized that over the last three years, I have often been quite annoyed when the same pains surfaced again and again. I have judged myself, refusing to go back to the same pain and work with it again, because I too believed there was nothing more to learn. I now suddenly understand that, even though it feels the same, that it is in fact brand new, and that no matter how many times a pain appears in the same place, that every time I need to begin anew, asking it to expand, bringing in light, sitting down and having a loving encounter with this NEW growth opportunity.

I plan to never again ignore a pain, treating it with judgmental disdain, refusing to acknowledge it as my teacher.

Opportunity Accepted

Sunday night, I retire early, feeling quite exhausted. As I attempt to relax my legs, I again feel lots of anxious energy flowing. The anxiety sensations are intense, hard to describe. The flowing energy makes me want to curl up in panic.

But I surrender to it, love it, do not judge it, and ask the Higher Energies to either take it or to make it increase – to show me what needs to be done with it. I will no longer treat this same anxious sensation as something that I refuse to feel. Eventually, the anxiousness subsides and I peacefully fall to sleep.

Joy And Healing Giggles

These four days in the second week of May have been beautiful, filled with amazing expansion and insight.

While following drip, drip, dripping distractions on Thursday, I discovered a metaphorical well filled with a disgusting emotional soup. Soon knowing that I must feel the oozing agony before it can be released, intuitions guided me to do it in a safer way – one in which I did not just dive in headfirst and get lost. I started with lowering a glass, and later a bucket, down into the well, collecting a small amount of the emotion, and then feeling it by angrily tossing it at an imagined angel. The process turned out to be emotional and powerful.

But the most amazing thing about Thursday was a magical energy-sharing experience with my friend Rosa – staring into her eyes until my eyes could stare no more – feeling overflowing energy that brought profound insights and a melting of stories and personality separation. It was indeed a magical day, taking the high road of unconditional love.

Friday brought more triggered emotion, taking me back to that putrid emotional well – this time finishing off the bottomless contents with a pressurized hose and a stadium filled with loving angels. With each release, the magical dizzying energy brought more beautiful relief. And I love the two earthquakes and nighttime flowing energies, all shaking up my healing journey.

Sunday brought amazing expansion and sharing, as well as many new insights regarding ways in which I have scammed myself in the past – keeping myself small, pathetic, and separate from the light-being that I am – that we all are.

As I embrace ongoing new growth opportunities, doing so with eager surrender, I am profoundly grateful for the support and companionship of a precious little teddy bear – one who does not hold a grudge when he is forgotten – one that brings joy and healing giggles to my journey on a frequent basis.

… to be continued …

Copyright © 2013 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved