Rearranging the Deck Chairs

I had a dream a few days ago. It didn’t mean much at the time, it just seemed silly, but the meaning became clear yesterday. I had a lot of dreams that night, but this one is the only one I remember. That seems how dreams work for me. when I wake up, I can remember snatches of many different dreams but only one is clear enough and detailed enough to recall.

This dream is set in sunny California in the early 60’s. The whole thing looked like a 60’s glam movie, with long, low convertibles, beautiful people, and bright sunshine with saturated colors. It took place in a large parking lot, mostly full, that seemed to be at the beach. I watched it all in third person, the person I take to be me was driving this blue convertible. The “me” in this dream was a “Rock Hudson” type with a pretty girlfriend, at least that’s what she seemed, she came a went throughout the scene. Everyone seemed happy, almost movie musical happy. You’ll see why that’s weird in a minute.

The whole parking lot was flooded with water. Over the doorsills in some places, a little lower in other places. Nobody seemed to care. My car was full of water that sloshed around as I drove. I didn’t look like I cared, smiling and happy. I drove around the lot for a while then found a new parking space where the water was a little less deep, actually below the doorsills. Maybe I thought that the water in the care would drain out. After I parked, the girlfriend re-appeared and I sat there, with my arms wide open, face up to sky, eyes closed, smiling like this was the best day ever. I watched this from above, like it was the ending of a great movie. Roll credits.

Yesterday it hit me, what it means. The water is the “sludge” in our lives and we spend our lives “being happy” and trying to find a place where the “sludge” is, perhaps, just a little shallower. And we celebrate if we find such a place. 

I was struck by the superficiality of the whole thing. Beautiful people, fancy cars, beautiful location, nice clothes, but we all ignore the sludge, for the most part. But we do spend a lot of time “driving around the parking lot” looking for a place with less sludge. Nobody every tries to leave the parking lot. Funny, huh?

What is “sludge?” All the crap that weighs us down, fills our time, yet, ultimately, never adds anything to our lives. Worries: About money, about what people think, about things we can do nothing about. Fear and hate: About just about anything. Fear and hate are two sides of the same coin, you distrust what you fear, you’re fear what you don’t like. 

We are all afraid of stuff, whether we admit it or not. (Not afraid of anything? What about “uncomfortable?” Are you uncomfortable around certain people, in certain situations, with certain subjects? “Discomfort” is mild fear, it doesn’t take a whole lot to turn “discomfort” into something far stronger.) The common way you’re supposed to deal with fear, is that you find the source of your fear and remove it from your life. Then you will “feel safe,” right? Except that doesn’t actually work. No matter how hard or how far you push your fear and discomfort away, it always finds you. I know how that works. I’ve lived in “unsafe” areas, then I get a chance to move to something better, and, for a while, I feel much better. Then, I begin to notice things, and hear things, neighbors talk, incidents on the news, and before long I feel “unsafe” again.

What are you afraid of? People different from you? Be it appearance, income, education, age, beliefs, clothes? The government? Liberals? Conservatives? The rich? The poor? Climate change? Poison, in your food, water, medicines? Look around you and you’ll have no trouble finding people who want to stoke your fears, for their own ends, and once they’ve go you hooked, truth no longer matters, facts don’t matter, all that matters is the “it” that “they” want you to fear. And it’s so easy, because the fear is always there, inside you, just waiting to be pointed at someone or something. What fear? The fear that they will all find out those things we hate about ourselves.

Ever wonder what the fear-peddelers get out of it? Think about it, they all want something and are willing to scare you into giving it to them. They want your money, time, support, or just the attention. There’s always some hidden motive, because, if they were on the up-and-up, there’d be no reason to use fear to sell you their agenda. The thing is, the world has a lot of problems, but none of them are unsolvable! We have the knowledge and technology to solve or, at least, mitigate, everyone of the world problems, and the only reason we don’t is fear: Greed is fear of not having enough. Conservatism is the fear of change, or losing what you have. The need for power comes from fear of loss of control. Bigotry, of all kinds, religious and racial, including misogyny, is fear of anyone who is different. There is enough of everything for everyone, money, food, living space, if we could only get over all the fears. 

So, in my dream we were all perfectly happy, walking and driving around shin deep in sludge. We enjoyed the sunshine and our fancy cars while carefully ignoring the mess and the reality that the sludge was rotting out the cars, inside and out. We cope by vying for better parking spots, with less sludge, but nobody considers leaving the parking lot. That would require leaving behind your car, your status and the “parking place” that you have worked so hard to secure. In the real world, things aren’t so cut and dried. Getting rid of all your material things, and walking away from you responsibilities and obligations doesn’t free you from the sludge, It’s not even a necessary step. The sludge is inside and, once you start cleaning that up, what you manifest on the outside will naturally follow as a natural consequence of your new values. In all things, it doesn’t matter what you have, or what you do, it’s why you have it or do it. Intension is everything. 

In my journey of a thousand miles, I have faced and expunged many hidden fears, small and large. They are usually linked to traumas, so the fears vanish when the traumatic emotions are acknowledged and released. This is difficult for us Westerners, we are taught to “forget about it,” and suppress any hurt, “get over it, nobody wants to know.” We are so uncomfortable with feelings. Or we dwell endlessly on how we feel about what happened, which just reinforces the trauma. Neither of these is helpful. It always comes out and haunts us, making us easy prey for any fear monger that comes along. It doesn’t matter how smart and logical we think we are, or how confident we are that our religious or other beliefs protect us, our sludge is there, effecting every decision and coloring every opinion.

The solution that I teach is to use a combination of tools and practices, including hypnosis, with meditation, shamanistic and other traditional and new-age concepts to discover, uncover and release the trapped emotions that keep us stuck in past events. This removes the “scales from our eyes” and allow us to see the world as it is, not as we feared it was, and the fears begin to melt away. This process takes time, and that’s good thing, for having too much change all at once would be a tremendous shock to our system, but it’s not so bad because it pays dividends all along the way. The slow progress allows you to adapt your lifestyle and values as your inner landscape changes. Many people want a new life, without, you know, actually, changing their life. They want to world to treat them differently without changing the way they view and treat the world. That, of course, never works. The simple and powerful fact is, you change yourself, you change the world. Anything else you do, from success seminars to positive affirmations, is no more that driving around the parking lot, or, as some say, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Maybe it looks good, and may even make you feel like your acomplishing something, but it's untimately fultile if you're expecting any real change in your life.

It couldn’t get more embarrassing, could it?

I started this post last week, but I finally finished it up today because it feels like I now have a context to put this in. People who know me know that I don’t like to post things like “I feel bad about this and I don’t know what to do about it.” I like to have some kind of closure around stuff before I write about it. Today I’ve reached a point where I’ve processed this enough to have some perspective on it, and I hope that what I found is helpful to you.

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I just returned from a hypnotherapy MeetUp (East Country Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy, for those in Portland) It’s mainly for therapists or therapists-in-training, but anyone can show up. They keep it fun, but I also find it informative and challenging. This time I had a face-palm insight that has caused me to rethink how I relate to people, in a big way.

At this MeetUp, we usually focus on one particular topic or technique, with a short lecture, and a practice session where we pair off, taking turns being therapist and client. When I walked into this meeting for the first time, a familiar feeling came up, one that I didn’t acknowledge until tonight. I didn’t have a name for this feeling, and it’s not pleasant, but I just powered through it, as usual. The meetings take place once a month, and each time the feeling would turn on when I stepped in and disappear as soon as I left. It wasn’t until the meeting before this that I noticed how it was interfering with my ability to do the exercises: I was too busy being wrapped up in defending myself, by being glib and superficial, to access the feelings my partner needed to do her part of the exercise. I also notice how quickly that tendency disappeared once I left.

Note to self: Context is everything. If you are on any kind of self-improvement, personal-growth path, you know what I’m talking about. Just when you think you’ve got something handled and it’s all good, then, Bam! there it is again! You can get really frustrated and upset with yourself, and feel like you’re falling backwards, but it’s not that way at all. The same issue, (or issues that are very similar) can be linked to many different contexts, and only show up in that context. This is really important. You may think you’ve handled your social anxiety, but if you’ve only done it for family dinners, it can come up again at work functions, school reunions, restaurants, bars, and church functions. Each time keyed to different internal and external cues. I have gotten to the point where I’m pretty confident in social situations and meeting new people, but this group throws me right back to school, when I felt sure that I was the stupidest person there, and was afraid to say anything lest I be teased or, worse, wrong. I feel I have no trouble being open in most situations, but in this situation I can feel the vail of dumb descend over my mind as my defenses go up. I just know that everyone in the room is smarter, more skilled and knows more that I do. In this case, I even hit by the sights, smells and sounds of those college classrooms where I felt so inadequate.

This issue is really powerful, and one of it’s aspects is that I have to pretend “it’s all good,” while I’m furiously scrambling fake it, while hiding my ignorance and incompetence. Mostly by doing as little as possible until I can get out, hide, and try and figure it all out where no one can see me. Because I can’t think when anyone’s watching.

This really caused me to drop the ball at last month’s meeting, when I was the subject and couldn’t break through my “vail of stupid” to authenticity answer the questions. What’s worse, my partner was an experienced therapist who, I’m sure, knew I was blocking and resisting, I wasn’t fooling anyone, which made it even more embarrassing. She graciously let me off the hook, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

—

Exploring this issue more deeply I have uncovered a surprisingly deep well of fear and self-deception. I am so afraid of not being the smarted person in the room, because that’s the only way I can feel safe. I can play analyst here and say that this clearly goes back to being bullied and endless teased as a child. My defenses were to say and do as little as possible, to deprive them of ammunition, and to be smart and have clever comebacks. Now I find I can’t really trust people I perceive as smarter than me because I can’t be sure I will be able to see the attacks coming in time to defend myself.

Quite a pickle. The good news is that all this introspection has really turned down the volume on this stuff and I’m beginning to cut myself a little slack. What is, is. Deal with it, don’t wallow in it. It’s time to allow myself the same compassion I would easily give someone else in the same position. And, the funny thing is, now that I’ve gotten over the initial angst of making this discovery, I do feel better about myself, I’ve released some things in my life that didn’t serve me, and, all in all, I feel better about myself, strangely enough. And my relationships seem better as well, cleaner, purer, somehow. Maybe being less afraid allows me to show up more and just enjoy the experience.

As usual, send contributions and comments to AQuestioningSpiritTherapy@gmail.com.

Shamanism 101

Today I started a course in Shamanistic studies. It takes years to get the stuff down, so I consider this just an introduction. I’ve had some training in shamanic techniques before, but that just scratched the surface, and I’m sure I’ll be digging deeper into this as time goes on. It really feels like following this path is the next step in my evolution.

This class went amazingly well. What that means for me is that I actually got what we were supposed to be doing in the journeys. If you don’t know what a journey is, think of it as a guided meditation. (That’s not really it, but you can find out more on the internet, so use it.) It wasn’t so long ago that this kind of stuff didn’t work for me. I was way too much inside my head to be able to feel, and way to self-conscious and worried about “getting it right” to let go and just let what happens, happen. It was a wonderful surprise to discover that I could be water, be air, earth and fire. Very cool. And I saw, and felt, that being air is how you fly: You become air, and just do what air does, up among the clouds.

As a little background, I’m been working on a post about fear. I completely rewritten it four times, and It’s still not ready. Maybe because it’s just a process I need to go through, maybe what I’m actually doing is changing my relationship to fear, not getting rid of it. More on the later, as it came up in my journeys. Before I talk about my journeys, I want to talk about what happened at lunch.

I didn’t bring any lunch, since the course paper work said that there was a place to get food “across the street.” Well, “across the street” turned out to be a mile up the road. And I was walking. It’s all good though, cause I had a good walk, once I got over the bitch’n. It was cloudy, with some sun, with an interesting wind. I was enjoying the wind when it hit me that I really enjoyed the wind. And this wind was saying “Hi!” It really seemed like an old friend. I have always liked wind, no matter if it’s soft and warm, or harsh and cold, or teasing and playful. I love clear air and a fresh breeze. Talking about this later in class, the instructor pointed out that air is the element associated with being in your head, and, boy, have I been in my head most of my life!

Since I had so much time to walk, I figured it was time to wonder why my feet were so cold today. That part was easy: Fear. But fear of what? It took some time to tease out the the answer, seeing how I had to fight for each word, but I finally got it: I was afraid that I would find out the real reason why I was so selfish. Who me? Selfish? I’m still wrapping my head around that. Here I’d thought I’d made real progress in that area, but, apparently, there is still much to learn. I have a feeling that that word doesn’t mean what I think it means.

I think we had three journeys. I can’t remember them all separately, so I’m going to tell it the way I remember. (I know, I should write things down. But I really don’t want to. I don’t have a good reason for that, I just really, really, dislike taking pen in hand and trying to write down how I feel. It’s much better to talk, next comes typing, which isn’t so bad, but writing comes dead last, in my world. I must have a lot of bad feelings wrapped around writing. From my childhood perhaps?)

I remember starting with an exercise where we tried being each of the four elements, earth, water, fire and air. That was fun. I’m not sure if I was actually being each element, but I sure felt like I was full, or made of, each element. Earth felt all peaty, like soil, water, cool, crisp and weighty. Fire seemed my least successful as I just felt energetic, but air was the most fun. I felt cool and light and transparent and ready to take flight.

Next, we went to the lower world, the land of essences, as I understand it. I went to find my “place,” and discovered a meadow of waist-high grass, along a meandering stream, inside a thick, pine forest. As I approached the stream, I found a clear area of dirt and lots of “Me”s: Many different instances of myself, all different ages and from different times, all different incarnations and realizations of the possibility that was me. Most were faint and ghosts-like, and payed no attention to me, but there was one who was solid and, lets say, mature. He was on his knees, working on something. A drum perhaps. And he seems angry or annoyed with me about something.

My mind has a real tendency to wander off, and this time was no exception. I don’t even know where I go. It’s just that I frequently I realize that I’m suppose to be doing something, or the instructor just said something and I can’t remember what I’m doing, or what the instruction means, because I can’t remember the context. That is why my recollections are always a bunch of separate scenes, punctuated by periods of amnesia.

Anyway, going to meet my guide: I was sitting on a log, with an ordinary-looking guy: thin, youngish, in ordinary clothes. Said his name was Allen. “Allen? Really? What’s your real name?” was my response. He just smiled a wan smile and shrugged. I didn’t get any further with that. At some point it occurred to me to return to the old guy and try and find out what he was so upset about. I had just started that conversation when the instructor called us back.

The next journey was into the upper world. That was my favorite. We needed to find a way up, and, since you can use whatever method you like, I picked a tree. There is a pine tree near my house that is very tall and straight and, when you put your head against the trunk and look up, it seems like it goes on forever. So I rode that tree up, into the sky, through the clouds, into space and into the upper world. I’m told that it looks different for different people, but for me, it was hazy with pastel colors. Sort of like walking on clouds. I found myself a bench to sit on, overlooking the world below. I had a sense that I could look down there and see whatever I wanted: The world, my life, my past, my future, other worlds, anything. At some point, I called in “grumpy old guy” to finish our conversation.

The conversation still didn’t get too far, but I learned a bit more. First, he was disappointed with me because of “so much fear.” It was my turn to be upset: This, after all the work I have been doing on fear? Anyway, I eventually got that there are fears that I’m so not willing to admit to myself that I don’t even feel them. I had just asked the question “How do I deal with fears that I can’t even feel?” when I ran out of time an had to come back.

Coming back was super fun, I just stepped off the overlook and flew down through space and the clouds, slid down the tree and “poofed” my feet onto the ground. I wish I could do that all the time! I wonder if it’s possible, one of these days, that I might get so comfortable with flying that I might just step off some high place, forgetting that gravity tends to have its own way, in this world, at least. I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I’m really looking forward to the next class. In the meantime I have a lot to chew and meditate on. As usual, send questions and comments to rodwhitehouse@ieee.org. Take care.

The Darkness Inside

When I traded sessions, a while back, I got acquainted with my fears. Before that, I thought I knew what fear was, and what it felt like, but I have been learning a lot since then. I have discovered the many ways fear masquerades as something else: Often anger. It starts out as reluctance, “I don’t want to,” then escalates into annoyance, then into full blown “pissed off,” if, whatever it is, doesn’t back off. So many of my preferences are really fear, it makes me wonder who I really am. I’ve been processing all of that, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something important.

One piece of advice I got from the other session was, “Look inside,” and I’ve been doing that. A lot. I don’t like what I see, for I see darkness. I also see that I’ve never let anyone in, ever. Not a super surprise that, but still. I wouldn’t have characterized myself as quite so cut off, but there you are. I can see that I’ve spent most of my life holding people at arm’s length, at best. Over the past some years, I have been letting some people closer and closer, to the point of letting them in a little ways, but no one gets all the way inside.

I don’t even know if that is a good idea. You really don’t want to let everyone inside, do you? At least, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t think that everyone wants to see everything that’s going on inside me. It seems that there should be some people who, what, want to help? Huh, I’ve had enough of “helpers” thank you. They just want to listen, a bit, then offer cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all advice. Then get pissed off if you don’t take it. Or not. I know because I’ve played that role. Not much of a relationship there if all you do is listen to offer advice. That role was comfortable and safe, but I eventually figured out that there wasn’t anything there. I was always the “strong,” Mister Advice Giver, who couldn’t show any problems, because, that would mean that I didn’t know what I was talking about after all. That’s a pretty lonely life.

So, in my problem solving mode, I realize that I need a new set of friends. I find that there are a few people that I have been able open up to, under the right circumstances. There’re not many, because I have tended to surround myself with people like myself, but I have been slowly moving in the direction of hanging with a different kind of person. Another problem I have is I don’t know how to Be with these people. I don’t have any experience with sharing without some kind of goal in mind. Part of my mind still has a problem with that. Everybody wants something, right? Anyone I talk to will either want something, or expect that I want something from them. I don’t know if that’s true, it’s just been an unspoken assumption all of my life. So unspoken that I just realized that it was there.

Can I honestly be sure that I don’t want something, that I’m not working some kind of angle? Here is where things get weird. I find myself trying to carefully convince them that I have no agenda, while never 100% sure that it’s true. I don’t even want to think about how that must come off on the outside, I must seem pretty odd, at times. Hey, I blame it on my upbringing: I have no idea how people are supposed to behave in these kinds of situations.

There was no affection, of any kind, my family. Well, that’s not quite true, I remember a one time when I felt close to my mom when I was pretty small, but that’s pretty much it. Nobody “talked” in my family. They yelled, complained, gave orders. But talk? Nah. My number one priority was to survive, and saying anything that might come back around to haunt me, was something I worked very hard to avoid. I was schooled from an early age to say as little as possible, because, no matter what I said, the older kids would find a way to turn it against me. And then I always blamed myself for being stupid enough to let something slip out.

It took me at least a decade, after I left home, to learn to have a conversation. Even a trivial “Hi, how are you,” was a strain. In my head was the ever present calculation about how much did I have to say to get them to go away, without revealing anything that they could use against me later. Work was always like that. Sitting in the lunchroom, hiding in a book, listening to other people’s conversations, wishing I wasn’t quite so alone, but knowing that I just “didn’t have anything to say.” Over time I built up a supply of harmless conversational items I could pull out, when necessary. Sort of like conversational flash cards where I could whip out a canned comment or response. What I said didn’t always fit in with the rest of the conversation, but it was better than nothing.

Over time, I gradually realized that “saying nothing” really wasn’t working all that well. After a point, the conversational nothings become so meaningless that you want to slash your own throat, just to get it to end. I was pretty clear that I had surrounded myself with people who worked on that superficial level, and I was growing to hate it. I am still learning, but I’ve picked up a few things that seem to help.

First, find different people. You can’t always pick your co-workers or family, but you can pick your friends. So find a community where you can say what you want without it being turned against you. I’m not saying that’s easy, stepping outside of my comfort zone to talk to a different class of people is, well, uncomfortable. You don’t know what you’re going to get. You have to use some judgment. Get out of your “lost puppy,” “Will you please be my friend,” mode and value yourself a bit. You don’t have to accept everyone who does you the honor of bestowing their presence on you. Take some time get to know if you really fit before jumping all in and making commitments.

The next thing is like the first: Learn to shrug off hurtful or unkind comments. Then, keep at a distance from people who continue to make them. Again, this comes back to valuing yourself, because you truly don’t need anyone who makes you feel bad about yourself. Even if it’s only part of the time. I’ve had trouble with this, as do many other people. But I’ve pretty much gotten to the point where I don’t want or need someone who won’t hold up their end of the relationship.

Now, for the last thing on my list, learning to accept and meet people where they’re at. This is a far as I’ve gotten, so I have no idea what it’s like to fully achieve this or what might lie beyond it. At this point, I should be able to tell what’s appropriate for each person and situation and share at that level, respecting the boundaries of the other person. I am still learning how this works, how to be intimate on some levels without jumping in whole-hog. I’m really getting that relationships do take time, no matter what stories or movies you may have seen or heard, and the vast majority of relationships only go so far, and that’s the way it should be. A relationship isn’t a failure because it doesn’t meet your initial expectations. They are what they are, not what you think they should be.

I believe I’ve come a long way, but there is a ways more to go. When you stop holding people back and keeping them out, the question then becomes, how far is far enough? And, far enough for what? Now with my divorce, I’m staring at the possibility of having other relationships at some point. What will they look like? How will I know that I’ve actually found something I want to stick with? At the moment it feels like I have this really big emptiness inside that I’ve never really looked at, or allowed anyone else to see either. At the moment, it appear really dark. But I sense the possibility of something wonderful there. All I need to do is learn how to see it.

When letting people in, the first hard lesson I learned is that you can’t force people to be what their not. If they can’t/won’t be what you need, you need to move on, no matter how hard that is. You don’t have to burn bridges and slash-and-burn your way out: You can let them go with love and be friends. But you do need to let them go. The same thing goes for new people: Accept them at the level where you both are comfortable. You don’t want to be a bully or a doormat. It can be really hard, sometimes, to not lay too many expectations on any relationship, we are all human. I’m still learning all this, so I really have no idea what’s going to happen next. I’ve already moved way past anything I ever imagined before, and these are just friends, so who knows what might actually be possible? I assume that I’ll never know it all, but I’m sure there’s a whole lot more to explore.

My Colors of Fear

I thought I knew what fear was, I didn’t know jack. Earlier this week I had a session with another practitioner and discovered fear comes in many flavors and shapes, and I had managed to hide myself from most of them.

We traded sessions. It’s a practice among us practitioners to help the newbies gain experience. I use it to help keep myself grounded. With over a 100 clinical hours under my belt, I’m no longer a beginner, but I’m hardly the seasoned professional either. I need to ‘check in’ from time to time to ensure that I’m not drifting off course. I’ve done a couple of these trades over the past few weeks, but they didn’t work out as I had hoped. The sessions were I was the client went poorly, because I am still significantly blocked from getting access to my subconscious. I was hoping things would have gotten a lot better, but I was disappointed. This time, access was a lot easier, but it was still far from easy and wasn’t of any real value. The past lives were interesting, though odd, but no real information came through, as I can remember. (The other practitioner had trouble operating my recorder and so my session wasn’t recorded.)

My first life was as a dark-haired young man, in what looked like renaissance Italy. He was wearing expensive clothes and a puffy hat. I don’t remember anything else about him. The next life was as a young girl, about 10, with long gold hair and a red velvet dress. It seemed like England, sometime in the middle ages. In the first scene she’s sitting on some grass, smiling and listening to someone sitting on a stool. I don’t know if it was a teacher or a storyteller. The next scene was a party in a large hall, but now she seemed only about 2 or 3 years old, holding hands with some really big person. In the last scene, she was old, with long grey hair, sitting up in a bed in a clean, brightly lit room in, what felt like, a small cottage. She seemed content and not afraid to die. i remember that there was a purpose to the life, but I can’t remember what it was. Then things got strange.

I jumped to a scene from depression-era America, the great plains. I saw the same girl, this time barefoot, in a plain dress, standing outdoors. Everything was dusty and cloudy around her, like there was a dust storm. Behind her I could make out the shadows of a small farmhouse and a windmill. She was just standing there, hand straight down at her sides and staring straight ahead, right at me. She seemed frozen as the wind blew around her. She seemed very unhappy, in stark contrast to the first time I saw her. Her eyes were hopeless.

After a while where nothing changed, I finally got the idea that she was stuck and I was supposed to help her ascend. I tried, and achieve partial success, as part of her seemed to go. But part of her remained. I tried showing her the light and showing her love, but it was a struggle. I should go back there and have another try. I think that what I’m seeing there is part of me that is stuck, somewhere.

The subconscious portion of this session was a bust, as I remember, I was so busy fighting the process that not much came out. I remember almost nothing.

But things finally got interesting when we switched and I ran the session for the other practitioner. Things went well, and at the end of the session, I sometimes the client’s subconscious if there is any message or advice for me. Usually I get some some simple advice, “Keep doing what you’re doing…” etc., but this time I got a whole conversation. A whole conversation about fear. Yeah. I know I’m blocked, but this conversation really showed me that the blocks were fear, in stark terms. I don’t mean that I was told about it, I mean that as the conversion went on, I was remembering and feeling the different kinds of fear that were there.

I remembered when I was working with someone on my LinkIn profile, and how reluctant I was to accept what she was saying. At the time I was thinking “I don’t know how,” though now it’s clear that I was afraid. I’m not sure of what, exactly, but we I was feeling was fear. I never realized that before. I also noticed arrogance. This is hard to explain, but I saw myself in recent situations and realized that what I thought was helpfulness was actually arrogance, and the need to force my opinion on the other person. It isn’t like this is the first time I’ve done that, but it’s the first time I recognized it for what it is. It seems that everywhere I look in my life, I see fear. I am hemmed in by fears on every side. Here I though I was so enlightened and so in control of my life, when I’ve been actually navigating a torturous path among the rocks of my fears, while pretending I was sightseeing.

That’s what the past week has been like. I’ve been doing it so much I’m getting weary of the whole thing, but truth is truth, and hiding from it just makes me feel worse. I’m beginning to question the authenticity of my words and actions in almost every interaction. I’ve started short posts, retyped them several times, taking over an hour, then ended up deleting them entirely because I couldn’t convince myself that I had anything worth saying. I’ve been serially doubting myself. But then, this morning, I read something that moved me and wrote a reply, and it just felt right. What I said isn’t important, but it was honest and genuine and authentic, and that’s what matters. I find myself reading certain things that provoke me to think and remember when I’ve been less than honest, and deal with confronting what was behind those actions and feelings. (I also seem to be expressing myself differently, or at least it seems that way to me.)

That seems to be my job, for the time being, confront what I’ve kept hidden. To pull penetrate the facades, remove the masks and peer through the disguises on all the things that I have been pretending were something nice, or at least acceptable. I’m done with pretending, so what if everybody else does it, I don’t want to do it any more!

Fear and Shadows

I’m thinking about fear. Fear is sneaking up on me again. I’m taking a big risk by not working and trying to build a hypnotherapy practice. It has taken time for training, and to figure out what I am going to do, and that time had eaten into my savings. Now to the point where I am beginning to wonder if I have a chance at this at all. Logically, I have another few months before things get critical, but try telling that to that to that little part of myself that nibbles away at your confidence whenever you’re alone. Logic be dammed, it just looks at my shrinking bank balance and keeps pulling the twin strings of panic and hopelessness, “Do something now!” it screams. 

What should I do? I could give up and get a job, but then I wouldn’t have much time for clients. I could make that work, but should I? Things could pick up at any time. I am looking at four clients this week and, perhaps, three next week, which would be great if they were all paying, but they’re not. Therein lies the conundrum: I do need the experience of working with clients, and I’m really not so busy that I can’t spare the time for free and low cost, clients, but it just feels bad to not be getting the income I need. The actual reality is that free clients are not a problem, and they won’t be unless they start to eat into time for paying clients. I’m told that it takes two years to build a workable practice, and at this point I’ve only been at it for a bit less than a year. I do feel that I’m starting to get some traction, but I can’t really see the future, I don’t know if I should wait it out, or give up and start working now. In reality, if someone offered me a job right now, I’d take it.

It’s like playing a video game, or one of those movies about someone who accomplished same great feat. You know the movies, where they have some great dream and they struggle and struggle and then, just when all seems lost, something happens and he is vindicated and everybody is saved at the eleventh hour. In video games, at least the story ones that I like, you never know how close you are to the end. You keep working, what seems like forever, finding clues, solving puzzles toward whatever grand goal the game has for you, and then, almost without warning, you’re done. You’ve finished the last task, solved the last puzzle, uncovered the last secret and it’s all over. Afterwards, your whole perspective changes and you see how close you were all along, you just didn’t know it. And in those movies, you want to cheer the characters on, “don’t give up,” you say, because you know that they are going to make it. But real life doesn’t always work like that. Maybe one day I will look back at this time and tell it as a great story, how I stuck it out, against the odds, and made it in the end. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll give it my all, throw everything I have into the ring and still come up short, it happens all the time. So, the question becomes, how close am I willing to cut it? How close are *we* willing to cut it? 

Most small business fail. That’s what statistics say. I’m not going to come to any firm decision right now, or tomorrow, but I will have to create a hard stop soon, know when enough’s enough, make up my mind and draw that line. And do it before I reach that point of no return. It’s what they always say “It take money to make money,” and I could probably generate more leads if I sunk a lot of money into advertising, but that’s were the fear comes in. When you don’t have a lot of cash, spending hurts. I’m seeing that it’s getting harder and harder to pay for things, even though I know I need them. Like the Chamber of Commerce, everything tells me that I need to join and get myself out there, but it’s so hard to pony up that cash. Thus is the dilemma of risk, it wouldn’t be a risky if it was easy. 

You probably hear the same stories I do, about the serial entrepreneurs who start and fail thee or four times before they succeed. I have to wonder, how big a risk did they take, if they can just start up a new business in nothing flat after the old one falls apart? It seems to me that if they can turn around so fast and find the capital for a new company, they must not have put a whole lot into the last one. It must be nice to do all your risking with somebody else’s money. These are held up a wonderful examples of examples of tenacity, but I wonder: Just how dedicated and tenacious is it, to gamble with some else’s money? Or with so much money that the loss doesn’t hurt. Don’t get me wrong, these are talented and hard working people. I just don’t think that they are displaying anywhere near the balls they are given credit for. They are nothing like the guy who sinks his life saving into some business, laying everything on the line. If he goes under, no angel investor or venture capital firm is going to hand him a pile of cash to fund his next idea. He’s going to have to dig his own way out with no help from anyone. How can you possibly compare the two? The second guy is taking a much bigger risk. He’s putting a lot more on the line than just his ego, which is more that these “serial entrepreneurs” can say.

So, here I am. I clearly have work to do, and I need to get at it. I have worked for years to banish those inappropriate feelings that ruled my life and kept me small, but some fears are true and appropriate, and I need to acknowledge them, and balance them against what I know to be true without letting them paralyze me. There is a path forward, as long as I don’t let my fears undermine my efforts. This have given me some clarity. Isn’t it funny how writing something like this can me feel somewhat better, somehow it blows away some of the shadows off the future, and that’s all anyone can ask, right?

A Cautionary Tale

Today I finished transcribing my own QHHT session with a fellow practitioner. It took place several months ago. I had done up the past life portion a while back, but I've been strongly resisting doing the subconscious part. Part of me still thinks that I was screwing around and faking it. Now that I've listened to it, I still feel that a lot of it is crap, but some parts give me chills, and one part invokes a very powerful feeling that I have no name for. The advice for the other practitioner was interesting and just sweet. I have no idea where that came from and I'm almost embarrassed by it, but there you are.

I won't post the full transcript, it's nearly two hours, and I believe I've already posted the past lives portion anyway.

What was most significant to me about this was how hard it was to get information from the subconscious. Lots of stuttering and thrashing around. It was like something was doing it's best to prevent certain information from coming out. I could think the words without trouble, but as soon as I tried to say them, the muscles in my face would lock up. It was exhausting. The practitioner noticed this and tried to find out what was going on (I have paraphrased the questions and condensed this section for length):

Why is it hard to speak?

We don't want him to speak. We don't want you to know. He's not supposed to find out.

Why are you there, in his body?

We are not in the body. We are everywhere.

Why?

He's not supposed to know. He doesn't want do know. He doesn't want to know what he's done.

What is your purpose?

To help him. He doesn't know how to handle it.

Who are you working for? Who are you serving?

Him. He asked us to do this.

Who?

He did. To protect him. What he knows, what he's done. We have an agreement.

Who are you?

His friends. From long ago. From before life, from before time.

We keep him alive. Time is running out, for everyone.

Who are you?

I. don't. know. you. You don't need to know! It's not your time yet.

Where are you?

We exist all around. Where all things come together. We help when we can. To keep things together, things aligned.

What things?

Life, spirit, balance, energy. Some things need to be done. Balance needs to be restored before it's too late. …ending or need to understand. More need to understand, there's more than what they see. It's beyond their gods and fears and demons. Those are all made up. Their morals are killing the planet. Those that don't understand.

What kind of morals?

Use it up. Use up whatever you have. Use up everything till there's nothing left. Us versus them, there is no them.

Who is 'us'?

All entities.

Versus?

There is nothing else. That is the illusion. And that is why people fight.

What is your purpose, here on this planet?

No, no, no no…! <sobbing>

I find this very interesting, but also frustrating, because at this point the practitioner worked to make me feel better rather than find out what was going on. This happened a couple of times in the session, and whenever we got close to whatever it was I don't want to know, we veered off into trying to fix it.

This section is the most significant for me. It points out that I need to understand, not hide from, whatever it was that happened:

Can the subconscious help?

Fear and hate and darkness. It's darkness. So much dark, so much hate, so much death. It happened. He did it, he did. He needs to understand. Darkness. Darkness to come. Darkness of the soul. Out is through. Face or deny.

What is he hiding?

So much pain. We will help. He doesn't want to know. He needs to know. Stop fighting.

Any Advice?

There is nothing to do but give in. Get used to it, you are not what you think you are.

Who is he?

Someone much more powerful and dangerous. Very dangerous. <sobbing> He is still there. They are still there. Still remain. Death is not the end. All is forgiven. Forgive yourself. It was a lesson to learn. And freedom to know the dark from the light. Can't know the light without the dark. Accept what is. Be what he is. You are they, they are you. They understand. You have suffered enough. It's time.

It's time to take the first steps. to light fear fear keeping him where he is. Trust. Can't be as bad as it was.


This still gives me serous chills when I read it. The practitioner asked for advice and got this bit. (It really doesn't feel like me, even at the time I remember that it felt odd.) (The odd grammar is on the recording. LOL):

Keep trying your route. You have much to go. Color, white light behind you. You have many behind you. You are not the first. There's a line of people behind you. The first one's a male, there's many more behind you. They are you, and you are growing. You are on the right path. You need to open. Fear. You need to open. Cocoon, tightly closed. You must transform, to be a beautiful self. You are larger than you seem.

So what I take from this session is a note to self: while it's always good to strive to healing, feeling good in the moment is not necessarily the best path to healing. Sometimes we need to struggle to reach that place of healing. As a practitioner, I will always need to use my instincts and experience to know when best to push the client and when to back off. But we practitioners can to a disservice to clients by rushing to "take care" of them, at the expense of having them experience what they need to in order to heal.

P.S. On proofreading this, I noticed that "they" were also protecting the practitioner. So, perhaps, trying to find out more would have been completely pointless.

"Things I don’t want to remember" in review

This is a follow-up to my post “Things I don’t want to remember.”

I’ve realized that I shouldn’t take that whole story as a literal past-life, but as a wakeup call, a gentle reminder to get off my high horse. I feel that, while the actual events may or may not have happened, the emotions and the motivations were very intense, immediate and powerful. So intense that it’s hard to imagine that I haven’t been is some situation like that, somewhere, sometime, and succumbed to the temptation.

When I look at the world today I see religious sects at war with each other, countries invading each other, Christian extremists preaching hate for pretty much everybody, unarmed black men being gunned down by whites with no apparent consequences, institutionalized greed run amok and political parties who can’t agree on anything, even among themselves. I see a world that has decided that the solution to every problem is rampant slaughter of anyone you don’t like, or gets in your way, or you might not like, or who could get in your way. How could I possibly not slide into despair and cynicism?

There lies the danger. Being holier that thou, better than that. How could those people possibility be so cruel and heartless? Why can’t everyone just get along, like me? Oops. There it is. I’m so much better than them. I wouldn’t get pulled into that cycle of hate, fear and violence. Yah, sure, maybe. Watch out, set yourself on a pedestal and it only takes one misstep for you to fall off.

So, the message is to have compassion. In deed, I am no different than the worst of them, so don’t assign myself any moral superiority. The footing on that moral high ground can be extremely precarious. Can I decry their actions without denouncing their being, while I attempt to understand the forces that put them where they are. Ultimately, we are all responsible for our own actions, and violence for violence and killing for killing solves nothing.

The Dalai Lama meets the genocide of his people and destruction of his culture with love and compassion, while working for peace and reconciliation. People are and will continue to be. We must allow them dignity and self respect, if we are going to heal the planet. To heal the planet, we must heal fear.

Everyone is afraid. Average Joe is afraid of losing his job. The CEO is afraid of the next quarterly report. The 1% are afraid of the stock market. Christians are afraid of God, Muslims are afraid of Jews, Jews are afraid of pretty much everybody. Everyone is afraid of change and the possibility of losing what they have. It all boils down to “stuff.”

Perhaps the Dalai Lama takes the long view. When you’ve lived fourteen lifetimes, all the “stuff” we fight about, money, resources, land, power, faith, “honor,” don’t mean a whole lot. Nothing, really. Spirit is the only thing that survives. As monuments crumple, empires disintegrate, wealth disperses, deeds are forgotten and faiths fade, all that remains is spirit. The only constructions that can survive are those built of love and community. Spiritual growth bridges the gaps between generations, and is the only thing that will, ultimately, heal the planet and ourselves.

I am not above the system. I am not better than the system. I am within the system. I am the system. We must use the tools of the system, flawed as they are, to heal the system. Our flaws make it possible to understand and relate to the difficulties we face. We must use them without being used by them.

Thank you for listening.

A new door

Here we go again. I'm a bit unsure if I want to share this. It's a bit personal and I'm not sure if this is the person I want the world to see. It's one thing to read about other people's experiences with channeling and messages from...elsewhere, but it's quite a different kettle of fish when it happens to me. What follows is what spill out. I corrected spelling and other erros, and formatted the result (As a result of this, I'm beginning to see that there's something that I had no idea existed before. I don't know what it is, but it's like walking into your house and discovering a door in the wall that you never noticed before.):

I’d like to know about my left leg and foot. What is going on there? Why does it feel curled up and distorted?

You can see what is going on. It's not what you think it is. You never know that to think. You can’t find the answers on your own. You have to work with other people. You need to ask. Ask the people at church, talk to them, meet with them. They can help you find your path, even though it isn’t theirs. There is no way to do this on your own. 

You don’t want to hear that. You want to be the lone genius, who puts out all the special knowledge. You must absorb to return. You must read to know what to write. You must be with people to understand what needs to be said, and to whom. Moving forward means becoming one with those around your. Even those you don’t like. Even those you don’t agree with. Even those that rub you the wrong way. Even those who think you’re nuts. Even those you hate. You still hate some, don’t you? 

I can’t see that. 

You will. 

I can’t find the right way to do this. 

You will. 

I don’t know what to do next.

You will see, you find out as you go. I will help you. 

How do i start? 

Go to the place you think most important. 

Where is that? I don’t know. 

You must see. Take a chance and see what happens. 

What kind of chance? Go up on the mountain? 

Yes. You don’t want to go.  Right. You think it means something that you can’t accept. 

I know it means something, I just don’t know what. What does it mean? 

You think that it means walking into a trap. They all hate you and you must always be on your guard. Not necessarily. They can’t hurt you. You are always safe. You relish the uncertainty. You want mystery. You don’t want answers because that would spoil the mystery. Your think that will leave you with nothing to hope for. There is always more, there is no end in sight. Don’t take a chance on missing the way out of hiding. You have to ask to visit. It’s not that hard, and will be glad you did, no matter what the outcome. 

I will feel dumb, stupid. 

Why? Must everything in life be certain? Can’t you take a chance on anything? Must everything be spelled out in advance? You have to take a chance, if you expect others to also. At some point you have to take that leap or step of faith. Without it you are forever trapped within the walls of what you know and understand. You can’t grow unless you allow yourself space to grow. Within the bounds you have set for yourself, there is only what you already know, what you already have. It is only outside the bounds that you find the unknown and the exciting. Your outcome will will necessarily be beyond what you can imagine, and can only be found outside of what you know. Don’t limit yourself to the familiar, the known, the expected, what everybody else knows. To be extraordinary, you must do extraordinary things, and extraordinary things are risky. Try and fail, step and stumble, leap and fall on your face. There is no trial without error and the is no learning without mistakes. reach out, take your lumps and keep on trying, this is the process of being alive. You know how mind numbing and stultifying is it to play safe. Risk is exciting. Chance is exciting. Safe is boring. You know this, yet you still hesitate. You don’t want to die. You don’t even know why you are afraid of. Somehow, they are going to make you feel bad. Like that’s the end of the world and no one will ever like you again, is that it?  

You always try to eliminate the fear. Without fear, there is no risk, no danger. 

Is it necessary to understand the fear? 

Not necessarily. In some ways it can be useful to know what your are facing, so you can face it head on. That’s the best way to deal with it. Facing it head-on allows you to see it for what it is, and that’ the best way for it to be gone.  But for every fear you vanquish, there will be another one behind it. It will be a step up, true, but they will always be there, so get used to it. Keep fighting. Keep understanding. 

Fear, and fear of fear, can block you from seeing what’s really going on. You get so focused on the fear that you can’t see the trees for the forest, so to speak. Take the chance, reach out, ask, try, and reach the life at the end of the tunnel. 

You don’t believe, you don’t trust, you don’t accept what I’m telling you. You don’t want to see what’s in front of you. You love to put others down for ignoring the obvious but you are comfortable doing the same thing. You don’t want to be seen as embodying all that “stuff” what people make fun of. Ask and you shall receive, but you have to ask People. There is where the challenge is. They will think what they think, and they know what they already know about you. Perhaps they are just waiting for you to open the subject first. You can’t receive unless you are open and being open is being vulnerable.  You will take some licks, but don’t let that be your excuse for closing down. It’s not your fault that they attack you. It’s not your problem that others can’t see what you are offering. And you are not wrong because they attack you. You already know, that when dealing with pain and fear, the best way out is through. You will gain acceptance from those that matter to you and will help you in your growth. Once you carve you way through the wall of fear of fear, and fear of pain. Disapproval can hurt. Rejection can hurt. Rejection simply means that you’re looking for approval in the wrong places. 

It may be time to start looking at those groups that you are too uppity to consider now. they are too wacko for you to want to be associated with, with philosophies that you can’t accept. Wake up brother, you are already pretty far out on the limb. The stuff you’re doing and what you are doing right now. This. Who are you to say these people don’t know something you don’t? Why should anyone accept this if you can’t accept them? Or are you too full of BS to face it? Looks like that’s enough for now, you are coming apart.