And So It Begins…

Last night was one of the worst in recent memory. I couldn’t sleep for my stomach was tied in a knot, which was caused by something that happened earlier in the evening. Sometimes being on a spiritual path knocks you upside the head, and this was a big knock. Things are not over yet, and I expect that it will be some time before the full meaning of this, comes clear.

I held my MeetUp last night, at a local coffee shop. Only one other person showed up, a recent friend of mine that also happens to be a retired English professor. I had mentioned earlier that may guides had told me that I was going to write a book. I had also said that I had no idea when or what it was to be about. When I became clear that no one else was going to show up, she proposed to help me write that book, in exchange for help I had given her in handling a spirit in her house.

We discussed the idea and she outlined how I would get started. For my part, I was resisting, but I’m not sure exactly what I was resisting. I don’t mind writing, (obviously!) But something about the situation was bringing up something, something I couldn’t put a name on, but I have felt before.

This something first popped up when I did my first QHHT session as a client. I never really got much detail, but an enormous about of guilt and grief came to the surface. It seems that I had been someone who was responsible for the deaths of thousands, if not millions of people, and wholesale destruction as well. Despite the powerful feelings and the physical symptoms from that session, I have never been 100% convinced that I didn’t just make the whole thing up, well, to be important, and all that. Once the session was over the emotions slid back beneath the surface again, only occasionally reappearing, in brief flashes.

Last night, I’m still not sure what I felt, but it seemed like I was feeling the huge swells caused by some powerful force below my awareness. Something so large that it only needed to roll over in it’s sleep to cause tidal waves on the surface of my mind. I can never leave well enough alone, so, like most boys do when they see something they don’t understand, I kept poking at it with a mental “stick.” Unfortunately that left me stuck inside it most of the night, with my stomach knotted, thoughts swirling in my head and unable to sleep.

Let me try and explain what was going on in my head. First there was a buzzing, and anxiety, and a set of memories that kept playing, over and over. The first memory was of a “dream” or past life, take your pick, were I was a priestess, traveling on a ship. Though I was technically a priestess, I was for all practical purposes, a mid- to high-level bureaucrat. One of those faceless people who do the grunt work of managing all the details of keeping a temple complex running smoothly. I was on the ship, with a single, armed, escort, because I smuggling holy artifacts to a trading outpost to protect them from the coming disaster. I really didn’t want to be there, but I was ordered to by my superiors, and there was nothing I could do about it. Apparently politics were such that we were not allowed to admit that we knew what was coming, so we had to make what preparations we could in secret. I kept getting more and more details about this, as the scenes played over and over in my mind.

The next memory was something that happened when I was about five, and playing with a neighbor girl. I was living in Massachusetts at the time, in an area that was pretty undeveloped at that time. The street we were on had houses on just one side and we were surrounded by undeveloped forest and fields. The girl and I were playing in some area away from the houses and she needed to pee, which she did, in front of me. I remember watching with mild interest. After that, we went…somewhere, and the next thing I remember is “I don’t want to feel any more.” Where about that time I disassociated so strongly from my body that it took decades of self work and a therapist to get back in, sometime in my 50’s.

Now for the last memory, the one that turned out to be the key. This is about a girl I had a crush on, starting in the first grade, and on through the last time I saw her in school, junior collage. Despite the fact that we were in the same grade all that time, I don’t remember noticing her very often. The first memory I have of her is in the first grade. We walked to her house after school and playing “horses” in a neighbors yard. Later, as I remember it, I was attacked and bitten by a dog on the way home. After that, I never spoke to her again. I would see her at school, but I was deathly afraid to ever go near her.

I ran into her at our twentieth high school reunion and her story of that time is quite different than mine. Apparently, she followed me around a lot, and hung out at my house enough that she knew my mother. I have no recollection of any of this.

Back to last night. I got up, at some point, very late, to walk a bit, in the hope the my stomach pain was caused by gas and standing up would allow me to burp and release it. No such luck, but, while I was pacing, thinking about my grammar school crush, a strong need to cry came over me, and the words “I am so sorry!” Once I had let that run it’s course, I felt a feeling of release, and then went back to bed. Soon I realized that everything in my head and body had subsided enough that I could finally get to sleep.

Today, my stomach still hurts, and it still feels a bit weird inside my head, but it feel…different, something has shifted. Something has begun and we’ll see what happens next.

Take Off the Mask!

“Take off the mask!” That’s what one of my clients said a few weeks ago, and I have been thinking about it ever since. I keep wondering about how I would do that and what it would feel like. What I have noticed is that, without really, or consciously, trying to, I’m giving up pretending everything is alright, when it’s not. It feels funny to do that. I’m sure that I’ve always thought that I should keep bad stuff to myself, sure that nobody wants to hear about my problems or feelings.

I learned that lesson early on. But, perhaps, I got the wrong message. Nobody wants to listen to someone always complaining about life, the universe and everything. I’m sure that I wasn’t the happiest person to be around in my early years, I was quite depressed and I’m sure I was a real downer. So I took that to mean that I should keep my mouth shut and pretend everything was fine, which had the side effect of me not having anything to say. I’m pretty sure that that really didn’t fool anyone, a depressed person is a depressed person, whether they talk about it directly or not. Which probably explains why I have always had few friends, and no close friends, for most of my life.

Things seem to have changed. Maybe it’s because I absolutely have to, or it’s the result of all the personal exploration I’ve been doing, but I am starting to accumulate friends. People who I can relate to and we have significant things in common. We can talk about stuff that matters to me and to them, and, this is really important, it’s not about complaining about stuff. I can tell you, it’s so refreshing to have conversations not based on mutual dislikes, or on superficial things that really don’t matter.

I can’t say for sure, but does seem like I’m acting differently, more honestly. It’s so hard to judge my own behavior because I am my own yardstick. I mean that if my values change, then my perception shifts as well as my behavior. It’s like having a ruler that continually changes size: It seems like all the stuff in the world keeps changing size, when in reality it’s your ruler that’s changing. I don’t think that is really all that important, other than to be aware that it happens. Otherwise you can get pretty confused when people start acting strange: Maybe they’ve changed, or maybe you’ve changed.

I also notice that I’m handling my clients differently. I’m more direct, less likely to be tentative about what I really think, more willing to ask personal questions and dig deeper. It feels to me like I’m able to focus more on the client, when I’m less concerned about myself.

Wow! A perfect case in point: I just had a conversation with our mail-person who needed me to sign for a package. I met her for the first time just a couple days ago, when she came to our garage sale. But now she wanted to talk about how we’d never met before, even though I’ve lived here for 20 years. Next thing I know we’re talking about sewing and she’s offering me and my family “free stitching!” In that vein, I offered her my services and gave her a few cards. That was something I would not have done one year ago. Perhaps I am learning what it means to “take off the mask” and be who I really am!