Graduation

A few days ago, I graduated from HCH Institute with my certificate in hypnotherapy. Cool! It’s been an amazing journey. I needed to plow through a lot of self-doubt, and other issues, that came up throughout the process. Fortunately, we were constantly working on each other so that there was ample opportunity to process stuff. I know now that if you decide to take on this kind of work, it’s always best to have issues to work on. Nothing beats personal experience with each technique from the inside!

We had a graduation ceremony on the last day. As you might expect, it was more spiritual than ceremonial. And I have to add here the qualification “spiritual but not religious,” because the things you learn and deal with in this course of study simply cannot be completely contained within any of the religions that I know of. From my point of view, all the mainstream religions have dumbed-down their metaphysical aspects to the point of simplistic absurdity, then imply that any evidence or experience or philosophical idea that doesn’t fit should be ignored and discarded. I don’t know, call me crazy, but where I come from, if the evidence doesn’t fit the paradigm, it’s time to change the paradigm. I have witnessed and experienced many things that don’t fit into any materialist or religious framework, and they are simply to practical and useful to discard simply because certain people find them unacceptable.

To complete the graduation ceremony, the head of the school lead us in a guided, group meditation. This meditation is known as the Crystal Cave meditation. It takes you on a  journey to a round cave with a fire in the center and the walls lined with crystals. Once in the cave, you are invited to study the flickering firelight dancing through the crystals, looking for inspiration in the ever-changing patterns and colors of light. This time, we were invited to all enter the cave together and form a circle around the fire. Once there, we each had the opportunity to share whatever we wanted about the class and our time together, over the past four months.

I was the last one to go, which gave me plenty of time to consider what I wanted to say. Actually, there wasn’t really many options for me. As soon as we settled into the cave, an image came into my head, and my only options were to either share it, or not. I chose to break from my usual paradigm of questioning everything and keeping all the weird stuff to myself, and tell everyone what I saw.

What is saw was each one of my classmates standing around a fire, each one was a avatar that, I suppose, represented them to me. 

The first person was a female figure dressed in black and white that I knew was Quan Yin, a Buddhist deity that I know little about, I just knew that’s who it was. The next was a cross between a leopard and tiger: fierce, protective, clever and tenacious. The next was a bear: strong, yet gentle, loving and, perhaps, a little clumsy, not yet in full control of her power. The next was a female figure I still didn’t recognize: She had dark hair, was dressed in robes of red, orange and yellow, reminding me of fire, and held a thin, golden staff with a ball on the top, which spoke to me of power, guidance, leadership, and intuitive wisdom, still trying to find her way. 

At the time, I skipped myself, having no idea what I looked like. Looking at it later, I just get the impression of a mineral with black, white and brown streaks, and a sense of licorice, whatever that means.

That covered all the people in the class, but there was one more figure in the circle, a tall figure of light. There were no real details, it was too bright for that. As I talked, it seemed to me that the figure had it’s hands open and, from them came a circle of light that passed through each of us, binding us together through experience and support, from now on. 

I’m not generally the kind of person that “sees” things or usually speaks in this fashion. But times and people change. I know now that it’s time to speak my truth, and let the chips fall where they may.