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Point of Power

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 13:00:06 GMT

I have been asked to clarify the principle that the point of power is in the present moment. In basic terms, there is only the present moment even though it would be experienced as an infinite sense of present moments. The critical implication is that reality exists, experientially, moment to moment. It also is experienced sequentially as a sense for what we call time. This creates a sense of a past and a future which then enables us to create a sense of having memories and dreams.

Another way to understand the present is to suggest that time is actually a series of places or moments in our many experiences. As such, memories are experienced as a place in time of a moment in prior lived experiences. When we visit these places in time, there is a tendency to energetically, emotionally, physically, and mentally relive the experience as if it were now. When this occurs, our presence is moved to that place in time, fully encapsulated, often, with little awareness of this moment as we are reliving that moment in the past. For example, trauma, when relived, recreates the original experience sufficiently for it to have been described as a trauma trance. Nothing but the original trauma exists while in this trance.

In these instances, where we focus all attention, and therefore our sense of presence in the moment to that place in the past, a memory, we do not exist in the here and now. We are locked in that prior lived experience, often retraumatizing ourselves. Examples of this recurrence of trauma trance experiences are triggered either by the sense of energies, emotions, meaning making, or physical incidents that seem to snatch our sense of self, and therefore our presence from this moment. The sense of presence in this moment beyond the trauma recurrence through trance is minimal to none. We are seeing and therefore experiencing through the lens of a prior unfinished incident instead of experiencing the here and now.

To release or dissolve the triggering or reflexive energies to leave the present moment and move to the place in time of the prior lived trauma, we need to consider time crystals, moments frozen in a place in time.

Time crystals are self-sealed highly charged emotional, physical, mental, and energetic moments in our energy fields, that we are carrying with us…that are frozen. Often, time crystals are the experiential impact of traumas. When time crystals are engaged by a triggering energy, the reflexive act of the time crystal is to release some of the highly charged energies. If a significant amount is released, then the individual is pulled from the present moment into the place and time of the time crystal, potentially triggering a trauma trance.

Instead of being pulled into the time crystal, if the individual has developed or is supported by another to stay fully present in this moment, the release of the highly charged time crystal energy does not trigger re-traumatization. Rather, by remaining fully present to the here and now, this moment, the highly charged energy begins to release. In effect, this means that the frozen moment prior lived and unintegrated is magnetically pulled into the present moment, thereby enacting a healing moment and demonstrating that the point of power is in the present moment. This process releases the frozen energy sealing the time crystal and increases the life force often experienced as a sense of aliveness.

In our practice, the capacity of the facilitator to remain fully present to the moment and to stay connected energetically to the client is imperative. This is done by constantly engaging the client to focus on their felt sense of their body while making eye contact. Often, a strong sense of anxiety will arise in the client if approaching a time crystal. Staying engaged energetically is critical as it is how the client remains grounded in their body or connected to this present moment.

To visualize the experience, consider that the connection between the heart and the mind is like an hourglass. The heart is one’s capacity to fully live in the present moment. The mind is the collection of experiences perceived over time including all time crystals that are constantly trying to make meaning of this moment while scanning all prior experiences and all anticipated experiences. When triggered, the heart can begin to close out the sense of presence and allow the mind and all of it prior experiences to take control creating vacancy of presence in the body. This includes the reflexive experience of being retraumatized.

In Gestalt, we can understand this process through the empty or two chair exercise created by Fritz Perls. The effectiveness of the exercise is due to the ability of the client to be present to oneself both in this moment as the adult they are and as the wounded or frozen part in a time crystal. By switching chairs, the person is being fully present to oneself in both chairs thereby releasing the frozen highly charged energies of the past. Moreover, the client is regaining the point of power in the present moment, the only place that healing can occur. In brief, the past, frozen moment in time, is brought into the present moment. The client does not leave the present moment and return to the trauma in the past.

In Bert Hellinger’s Constellation theory, often replicated by many gestalt practitioners, the same dynamic exchange occurs. The client with the supportive presence of the facilitator and witnesses, create the spatial placement of a family or small group.

The client then, with the support of the facilitator, places each family or group member depicted by people in the class or figurines, into a spatial placement that energetically feels correct to the client as the existing dynamic. This reflects the existing constellation, an energetic pattern developed over time between each member. Once the client has the pattern completed, the pattern is changed to release the existing dynamic to create a new pattern. The client is experiencing both the past and the present in this moment, which enables the thawing of the frozen pattern and releases energy for healing for the client. Subsequently the client is able to understand that the pattern was an energetic constellation that no longer exists thereby freeing them to be more fully who they are. Going forward the client often is able to sense when being drawn back into the old pattern and experience that there is a choice to be hooked back into the pattern or to release and in essence does not participate in the pattern.

Another approach to the constellation is to create a pattern that exists from the past and stand as oneself in the constellation. Once the client feels like it is representative to the energies, the client moves to different positions including leaving the pattern as a means to find their present place in or out of the pattern.

These exercises reflect the primary issue that the point of power is in the present moment. If one is able to stay fully present with internally developed support and/or facilitator support, the ability to bring the past into the present moment is possible and healing can occur as something new or remembered leading to more wholeness.

A Personal Note

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 21:23:06 GMT

Hi folks,

It is snowing here on the farm with temperatures often below Zero Fahrenheit. It has been nice to sit with the wood burning stove as I watch the snow. It is also a good time to experience the silence of snow by walking in the woods. Both activities nurture one’s spirit. I encourage you to not become lost in the sofa monster and miss the balancing aspects of nature by seeing the beauty of the season and the desire of the soft animal within you to move.

Publishing in Journals

I decided to publish an article on presence in the Gestalt Journal in Europe. It can be accessed at this open source link that once registered you can access the journal https://www.ceeol.com/search/journal-detail?id=2485 . Because presence is a core aspect of gestalt it seemed like an opportunity to expand the concepts of healing presence to other countries.

Podcast

I have also begun the process of developing a Podcast that will initially air twice a month starting in February. We are considering the title Living on the Third Side of the Coin or Living on the Edge of Life. The promotional materials will be some variation of the following:

In a whimsical ongoing conversation, Sahadeo & Herb will explore the evolving spiritual dynamics of the modern world through asking the obvious questions never asked. The core of the conversations is that life is to be lived and not judged. Therein lively discussions will evolve concerning the power of presence and the ability to be a participating witness to oneself and the rest of the world. Sahadeo is an Indian-American spiritual wanderer that supports honoring human dignity wherever he goes. He lives in New York City working in the health care industry. Known for his insatiable curiosity he has the capacity to ask the most piercing questions often considered undiscussable. Herb is a biracial, multinational semi-sane individual living on an 80 acre horse farm. He is the author of the spiritual series, Thoughts, that reveal the adventures and misadventures of an individual’s spiritual journey. His day job is owner of the Cleveland Consulting Group, Inc. a global coaching and consulting practice. He is the founder of a men’s program celebrating 20 years called Natural Passages for Men and the Healing Den, a program that supports spiritual awakening.

The podcast will be listed on all platforms.

For those that review my YouTube channel , the videos are being enhanced and will be reposted soon

Thoughts

I have completed 13 manuscripts for the Thoughts series . Four have been published and 9 are in various stages of editing and formatting for publishing. I anticipate 2 more issues before ending the series at 15. What is significant is that the first book was written 28 years ago and published last Spring. Since then, over 1000 pages have been written. The significance is the saying “yes” to writing the long ago planned series. Might you consider something inside you yearning to hear “YES”.

Maintaining Your Sanity Through Presence

This is the year of political insanity as more lies, half truths and inane beliefs will be spewed as facts. Such is the State of the USA and many parts of the World.

A daily practice of meditation, sitting, standing, lying, or walking, will support staying out of the energetic fray. Your energies will become frenetic , caustic, and eventually feel toxic if you do not maintain your sense of self through being fully present to the moment.

If you remain present and simply witness and not engage in the energies, you will see two powerful thoughtforms evolving to create the tension needed for a transcendental shift in awareness. As it stands, the fear-laden energies suffer from their self-righteousness that they project onto the other side. The awakening of human dignity is creating a sense of determination that will continue to form through the November election in the USA. These energies will create a tension that will be sufficient for a lot of people to become active if through nothing more than voting. Human dignity has been the one missing energy of democracy, and it seems it has a good chance to become a reality in the coming years. Power is presence. Presence overcomes fear as fear only works through force.

I trust we will all walk together to create the presence needed to bring harmony and the honoring of human dignity to every part of this world.

Scalar Waves

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 02:04:07 GMT

Recently I came across information on scalar energy or more often called scalar waves. As a concept, they add a dimension to presence that might be insightful.

Scalar Energy is a subtle energy that produces healing energy frequencies that can be harnessed through presence. Conventional methods can’t measure it because they don’t stay in a measurable form. They tend to move out of the third dimension and when given a direction move through the fourth dimension as in distance healing and healing prayers. Scalar Energy can carry information and doesn’t decay over space and time.

Scalar Energy doesn’t flow like transverse and normal electromagnetic waves, but instead increases in spatial mass as it occupies space. This space occupied is not a vacuum but alive with balanced and checked energies. Scalar Energy, also, is known as zero point energy and Tesla waves that move through liminal space.

When we see the waves are like a pebble in water, the most common perception is the ripple of the waves up and down and not that the original energy is echoing outward in ongoing circles as is surrounding clients with healing presence. Another wave (way) to perceive the scalar waves are in the center of the diagram below where we can see that the waves can be focused and directional, such as through prayers or distance healing.

Properties of Scalar Energy

Various sources indicate that the following characteristics are common for scalar energies and waves.

Non-hertzian (not electromagnetic waves)
Non-linear (spatial)
Field-like circles of energy
Stationary/static form of energy until intention is applied
Fills the environment yet invisible hence the felt sense
Travel faster than the speed of light.
Seems to transcend space and time hence effectuating time is a place where time crystal can be dissolved.
Cause the molecular structure of water to become coherently reordered.
Positively increase immune function in mammals.
Involved in the formation process in nature like an energetic blueprint.

Discovery or Sensing of Scalar Energy

Scottish scientist, James Clerk Maxwell, born in 1831 discovered scalar energy. Maxwell formulated the theories of electromagnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation [1].

In the 1890s, Yugoslavian mechanical and mathematical engineer, Nikola Tesla, advanced the findings of Maxwell and invented devices which proved scalar energy existence. Tesla found 2 energies existing in the universe – scalar energy and electromagnetic energy. While electromagnetic energy is broadly utilized and accepted, scalar energy is often disregarded as it breaches common scient and therefore is misunderstood. Tesla described scalar energy as universal waves (distance healing and prayers) or standing energy (creating a healing presence with a client), which can be transmitted with no loss.

Tesla believed Scalar energy is a fundamental force in nature that is constant, rejuvenating, free, and always available. He believed that if scalar energy was correctly harnessed, it can have limitless possibilities. Albert Einstein, who during the 1920’s authored some papers referring to scalar fields, acknowledged the existence of scalar energy.

It has been theorized that this hidden energy source is in fact the unseen power that holds all matter together. If this is the case, we’re talking about an immense sea of energy from which all existence springs and returns.

Energy travels over the space-time continuum instantly through intention, quantum physics and core manifestation principals. Pure passion, focused intention, and clarity of purpose, when combined with the mirroring and matching energy from the universe create a liminal space where chi, vital energy, life force, and zero point are described in many spiritual traditions.

Healing Energies

When focused energy is sent to an individual or group who wants or accepts the energy, a second important event occurs…scalar energy. Its power can be intentionally used for a wide range of positive purposes, such as improving our physical health, psychological growth, and prayer. Scalar waves require two points to initiate their creation, a sender, and a receiver. This healing energy wave initially starts to ramp up internally as a focused intentional frequency in the sender. When it’s matched by the desire of the receiver, the second point is created, and a scalar wave begins. This process can be depicted in the following diagram.

A healing energy wave initially starts to ramp up internally as a focused intentional frequency in the sender. When it’s matched by the desire of the receiver to heal, the second point is created, and a scalar wave begins. This is how the positive scalar multiplier works.

Noteworthy presence to the moment, the intention for healing, and a clear channel of openness/acceptance to heal as if it has already occurred is required to realize the healing.

Negative waves

Projecting negativity onto another is not a benevolent or inconsequential activity. Rage filled intention, if held for enough time, produces an energetic projectile that can enter a recipient’s field. Imagine a knife embedding itself into someone’s emotional field. Depending how aware is as an individual, they will also get affected with anger and either return the energy or expand it inward. Targets often will not know why they become so negatively focused on the sender or an old memory, which may deepen the dis-ease of the recipient. People who recycle anger unconsciously will feed the scalar waves held between the two parties. If the wave triggers an internal reaction and the person who embraces their victim status wholeheartedly will develop internal negative scalar waves that support the sense of helplessness.

Within the healing presence modality, the focus is to witness oneself and then determine if this is a memory seeking a shift to a neutral energy, or from someone else. Witnessing and understanding that it feels from the outside, nonattachment allows the energy to dissolve such emotions and negative thoughts through the intention to dissolve. (not mine) If it is an internal memory, clarity often appears as the emotional shackles dissolve when it is acknowledged from the moment that it is only a frozen moment in the past seeking healing.

Dark thoughts are magnets that bring more negative that can become cumulative. For example, negative scalar cycles fuel all ancestral grudges, ancient and present hatreds, and ethnic wars as well as genocide. Even chronic conflicts in the Middle East, Asia and around the world are fueled by coalesced group scalar phenomenon.

Presence

Healing presence enables one to learn to discern at the most basic levels whether a memory that has been frozen in painful emotions can be dissolved or if unfinished interpersonal or ancestral conflicts are being triggered. The power of discernment is directly related to the capacity to be aware of the presence of what is present and to not trigger reactions.

[1] Other scientists were conveying the awareness of subtle energies during this same time, such as Odic force (also called Od [õd], Odyle, Önd, Odes, Odylic, Odyllic, or Odems). The name given in the mid-19th century to a hypothetical vital energy or life force by Baron Carl von Reichenbach. Von Reichenbach coined the name from that of the Germanic god Odin in 1845.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odic_force

References

https://www.sparkleoflife.com.au/tesla-wave/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odic_force

https://www.sparkleoflife.com.au/tesla-wave/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalar_field

https://enhancestudio.com/index.php/scalar-healing-therapy/

https://www.groundedwellness.co.uk/blog/scalar-energy/

https://www.mathematicsmagazine.com/Articles/NonHertzianWavesorTeslaWaves.php

http://www.bioscalar.eu/en/scalar-waves.html

http://www.teslascalar.com/Engl/Tesla_waves.pdf

https://subtle.energy/storage-of-non-hertzian-frequency-information-in-water/

The Pain Body

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 20:43:05 GMT

The chaos of the world continues as the disparate energies are creating more and more tensions, made evident by the events in Israel and that continue in the Ukraine, as well as the immobility for Congress to function as a governing body instead of political factions. It is likely these tensions will continue throughout the next two years as the criminal indictments and elections will raise the tension into a crescendo that leads to an emerging and new reality of how the people want to be governed. The tensions will continue in other aspects as the world experiences climate changes and other natural disasters that will continue to affect our sensibilities. Similarly, the social definitions are clashing over women’s rights and all the various forms of discrimination that will shift the sense of power by increasing the number of voters that are expressing themselves. This form of rising power will begin a true sense of democracy.

In the diagram above, you can see a simplistic view of the clash within the USA as well as other countries struggling with whether to continue or become a democracy.

Pain Body

Below is a short video on the pain body. Eckhart Tolle coined the phase. It is an energetic thought-form that has coalesced around explosive emotions and traumas that has not been able to be healed through the presence of what is present in the moment. I hope it supports everyone to understand their reactions as well as the importance of presence.

Intention is Imperative

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 14:40:08 GMT

Recently I have been experimenting with active imagination or if you prefer focused intention during meditation. For those of the shamanic interest, this is the same as journeying for a specific purpose.

Over the course of many traditions, medication and other forms of spiritual practices have become less focused on the purpose for mediating or journeying. This has often resulted in amazing images, but none that resonate deep within oneself except to be fun or entertaining.

I discovered that when we have a specific intention for journeying or meditation, the results tend to be more impactful. For example, the images or insights tend to be more specific and applicable to our intention. In addition, if we are witnessing the images, it tends to provide insights that will be interesting and will not likely change us. However, if we are actively participating in the images or insights, then we are resonating with the energies, like in liminal (sacred) space and literally will shift our internal sense of self.

I suggest you consider using more specific intention during meditation, active imagination and journey works as this example reveals.

(Note that this example is an application of the dream exercise which you can find on the resources page .)

Application of Intention

Describe the intent of the mediation and immediately upon completing describe in detail:

Had an emotional reaction to taking a position about politics. Woke with sense of commitment and reaction…shame like. Realized it was a complex from within myself (personal unconscious) from incongruent prior experiences. Meditated to determine what might be the complex or trigger in me.

Moved slowly through a sense of settling into my body. Slowly I moved up a ramp that progressively got darker and darker. As I moved onto a level or floor no longer slanted as if I rose up to this floor, it felt dark with light coming from the distance as if the far wall was sunlight or daylight or some luminous light. There were doorways throughout the corridor with skeletons walking back and forth between the rooks. Their bones or the skeletal images were vibrant as if numinous and alive. It was like they were in a constant or repetitive path maybe looking for something or maybe unable to stop the repetitive process.

After describing the active imagination and awakening is near complete, answer the following questions:

In what year or time did the dream occur?

A feeling of the present and yet a timelessness

What am I noticing or aware of:

- Physical Reactions and/or sensations(sweating, choking, tightness, tensions, need to go to bathroom, relief)?

None

- Mental/symbolic reactions (insights, new awareness, chaos, meaning making)?

Realization that I might have several fragment or lost or frozen experiences that are locked in a repetitive do loop unable to come to resolution, possibly an incongruence within myself or a traumatic experience

- Emotional/irrational reactions/feelings (joy, anger, fear, pride, sense of dying, sense of living, confusion)?

There was no emotional reaction only a felt sense of incompletion and awareness that there is much hidden I the unconscious that seems prepared to allow me to bring presence to the frozen energies and possible resolve the inability to integrate the moment.

- Spiritual reactions (images symbols, deep meaning—something new, something precious, something sacred)?

The skeletal images of the walking dead or the unfinished moments of the past, possibly my life, past lives and or ancestral comes to mind

Who or what triggered this active imagination?

My intent to understand an inconsistent response to a political conversation the night before that resulted in an awareness of feeling shamed for taking a strong position and expressing myself instead of simply listening or expressing without fire.

What is the dream’s message—physically, emotionally, mentally, and/or spiritually?

I surmise that in the past, I would have strong feelings and opinions and when expressed, I would be shamed in some form. This has created a complex of these energies that need to beresolved instead of held as a polarity that trigger each time I express myself.

What action is required from this dream if any—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually?

Understanding the energies and being able to witness the memories of the polarity from many moments in my life, had a felt sense of energy dissipation. Also, will be mindful of the build up of energies to entire I am not being judgmental or self-righteous which seems to be part of the trigger…

Will consider the energy as a shadow from the expert stage

Develop a title for the dream, something that reflects the essence of the dream.

Dissolving Time Crystals

Resolving Unfinished Business

List the symbols in the dream (buildings, appliances objects, clothes, trees, flowers, pictures, foods, etc.) and place a meaning upon them that coincides with the message of the dream.

Symbol: Physical/Mental/Symbolic/Emotional/Irrational/Sacred

Dark corridor: Unconscious, Shadow
Ramp up to dark floor: Pathway into unconscious
Doorways: Openings to unconscious events
Skeletons/Skeletal numinosity: Captured light seeking presence/awareness
Luminous wall of light: Consciousness is the distance and on other side of the wall
Repetitive walking between doorways: unfinished or frozen or blocked awareness

List the primary characters/persons in the dream and describe the feeling or meaning associated with each person.

Myself: Fully present, witness, healing presence
Numinous skeletal: Aspects and moments of myself frozen from prior experiences now lock in an endless do-loop seeking completion

Describe your reactions that are occurring at this moment.

Relief. Awareness of how I have carried these incomplete experiences that create an incongruence within myself. I the past, shame was frequently used to silence.

How might these people reflect you as a person in day-to-day life—physically, emotionally, behaviorally, mentally, and/or spiritually?

Numinous skeleton images my unfinished and lingering experiences seeking resolution.

Describe your reactions that are occurring at this moment.

Pleased that the active imagination is focused and provides clarity of the work that I need to do.

Rewrite the dream. Use the new meanings associated with the symbols and keep the message of the dream in mind.

I visited the unconscious energies of myself that are unfinished moments from the past that seek resolution. In seeing the conscious awareness in the distance, I realized that the numinous skeletal image were seeking completion, to be released from the repetitive do-loop seeking an end statement. Memories revealed the triggering and frozen energies that are now being reintegrated and obviating the need for them.

Briefly, in another active imagination, I sought fragmented or lost parts of myself. Instead of images there was a build up of energies. Instead of freezing or refreezing from fear, I relaxed into a massive cellular explosion that freed multiple images of how I fractured and fragmented as a child. A complete sense of euphoria filled me.

Stones for Unstable Times

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 15:29:02 GMT

Hi Folks,

If you pay attention to energy, you may have noticed we are in a period of confusing and often unstable energies. It is reflected in the daily interactions regardless of internal to ourselves or external and in the world. Many have increased their meditations in length or frequency. Others have begun to use stones such as galena, hematite, and pyrite. Years ago, I discovered an interesting stone called Cerrusite.

Cerussite is a carbonate mineral. It is a widely distributed and common ore of lead. It is formed by the action of carbonated solutions on galena in the upper, oxidized zones of lead veins. Cerussite forms white or tinted tabular, pyramidal, or prismatic crystals (orthorhombic system) and crystal aggregates, as well as compact or granular masses. Luster is adamantine to vitreous.

The color of cerussite ranges from: Colorless, yellow, green, brown, red to black The black crystals are filled with inclusions of galena. A green color is is due to inclusions of malachite. Gray is formed by Galena inclusions. The finest Cerussite are the colorless sharp edged ones found at Tsumeb.

Cerussite balances the left and right sides of the brain, bringing creativity and ingenuity. It provides the free flow of energy, alleviates introversion, brings tact and the beauty of cooperation.

It is a wonderful grounding stone and allows one to feel "comfortable" and "at home" in all environments. It allows one to easily adapt to situations and to change as is required. It enables one to be accommodating. It can help in recognizing those who have been a part of one’s past lives. The star-like configuration can also facilitate access to a connection with other-planetary beings, allowing for remembering of other worlds and other times.

It helps one to understand responsibility and to increase the capabilities required to sustain one's composure. It provides for the strength to manage the conditions of one's reality, relieving tension and anxiety and allowing one to recognize that which one can and must change--and that which one must release from one's being. It encourages growth in all areas of life. It provides strength of wisdom to all areas of relationships. It can be utilized to help one with decision-making and to initiate diversity in one's life. It is excellent for both stimulating and enhancing communications. It assists one in listening. It helps to realign the network of the nervous system and to provide for free flow of energy. It is a powerful grounding stone, providing for a clear connection to the powerful basis of love.

Personally, I tend to use the stone when combined with galena to ground a space. When I need it internally, I tend to make a necklace and immediately feel myself deeply grounded within myself and with the earth. If interested, EBay and Etsy have many affordable crystals.

A personal note: I have been writing the Thoughts Series since earlier this year. We will soon publish Thoughts III. More importantly, there are XI volumes written which is to say I have spent my Summer developing the stories within Thoughts. It seems this could lead to a total of 15 volumes before it is finished.

Rising Up: Spiritual Awakening / Kundalini Awakening

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 19:09:04 GMT

Rising Up

I’ve noticed an increase in requests from people who have believe they have experienced a spiritual awakening. It comes in meditation or a shamanic journey or while standing in the woods.

A common aspect of the experience is complete ungrounding and a desire to stay in the spiritual realms. This desire seems to originate in an ecstatic moment that sparks a movement towards engaging multiple other spiritual practices simultaneously. This might be somatic in nature coupled with psychedelics and shamanic/breathwork journeys or other practices. Interestingly, in some cases, it seems to be as if the people are in a trance-like state, possibly disconnecting from themselves.

Occasionally, such events can lead to the discovery and surfacing of a traumatic event that was lost, forgotten, buried, or forbidden. In such cases, the escalated efforts and focus on more spiritual practices seems to lead to a shift toward healing that is focused on some deep belief to get rid of the traumatic event so all will be better.

From a healing presence perspective, the goal is to support the person to get grounded in their body through body sensation and direct eye contact. Oddly, it is common for them to say they do not want to feel the sensations of their body or do not want anyone to see into them via eye contact or our preferred response, “I have never felt being in my body”.

Recently, I worked with a person who was a self-proclaimed shaman after a few workshops and an ecstatic experience. As I listened to her and encouraged eye contact, it was clear she was waffling between trying to stay out of her body and in the ecstatic energies. I asked her to feel her body, the beautiful life force moving through her, and as best she could remain in eye contact. I handed her hematite anklets and asked if she would wear them. Immediately, upon putting on the anklets her ungroundedness cleared, she maintained eye contact and her story became more vivid. She realized that she felt much better as a presence inside her body. As she described her experience, she realized that her spiritual experiences needed to be grounded inside her instead of taking her out of her body.

Frequently, these experiences can occur when the spiritual practice ignites a kundalini rising. When the mind/body are not prepared, this can be a very difficult experience as the body is unable to comfortably enable the energies to flow, become full of burning sensations.

What causes a Kundalini awakening? [1]

No one knows for sure. For some, a Kundalini awakening can happen after years of cultivating a spiritual practice, doing Kundalini yoga , meditating, etc. But just as well, it can happen spontaneously, with no prior training. The Kundalini rising is an automatic thing that happens—and it can happen under any type of spiritual discipline, any style of yoga." The truth is, there's no one answer to this question.

When I have encountered such situations, it feels like the person is caught between energies. The reason for this is the person may have an ecstatic moment, however, if their chakra, energy centers, are blocked with unresolved life issues, it is more likely that the experience becomes quite uncomfortable such as body shaking, heat in the spine or surrounding different energy centers, and unable to sleep due to feeling supercharged. Kundalini awakenings will be different for everyone, and some say it can feel like a bad drug trip or psychosis.

Working with Kundalini rising, especially unexpectedly, is difficult for the person as it can feel crazy making and there is no medical diagnosis. Too many spiritual hopefuls suggest kundalini rising is a gift without understanding that this is not a goal or something to be suffered through in hopes to attain enlightenment. My suggestion is to reframe the situation into something that they can understand and can feel they are able to work through in small steps.

Step one is to learn how to get grounded and to practice it often every day. Surprisingly wiggling one’s toes often helps this process. Grounding stones like hematite, galena, and pyrite often calms the person and is useful when needing to just sit and breathe. Occasionally, herbal support can be used through different calming teas. Kava Kava calms the nervous systems and can be quite helpful

Step two is to focus attention on the difficult sensation with the intent to calm the energies and restore flow. Often, this will feel scary as the block might be due to a traumatic event or an unwillingness to make a life changing decision. The goal is never to get rid of or to blow through but to sit with and see what emerges. It might be emotional however it is often insightful and the block melts away restoring flow.

Step three is to support the person to use three principles in any spiritual or healing practice.

1. Slow is fast: Cognitively it seems logical to go fast, however slow allows the person to develop safety within themselves.

2. Less is more: most efforts succeed when the urge to do more or the desire to chase whatever is blocking the energy is negated. No marathon efforts to get rid of something. The key to healing is to integrate

3. Small is big: Often restoring flow is sought with a six inch fire hose. In truth, the blockage might be a series of fragmented moments or a massive trauma that will respond and build confidence by going small. Flow and wholeness often come to those with the mindfulness to respect the blockages and to slowly integrate.

As a healing presence, the focus is to support the person by witnessing and support the three principles. Presence begets presence so being with the person will invite them to be more present and enable them to heal themselves in the moment, the only true point of power.

[1] For a more detailed description of Kundalini rising see https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/kundalini-awakening

Resource

Sacred Stories is a website that is collecting an array of spiritual stories they call Common Sentience — An Uncommon Book Series. Give it a look/see https://sacredstories.com/

The Intimate Edge

Wed, 03 May 2023 00:05:53 GMT

In prior articles, I discussed types of presence. In this one, I discuss the impact of presence through the point of contact or the intimate edge. It is at this edge that presence with the client occurs, and healing can occur.

The Intimate Edge

Darlene Bregman Ehrenberg coined the phrase “intimate edge” in an article in 1974 and elaborated in her book in 1992. Her focus was on the psychoanalytic interaction between therapist and patient. In other words, it was focused on the interactive edge of the therapeutic relationship. We will draw on her insights to apply a deeper understanding of the intimate edge of presence.

The "intimate edge" of being present ideally becomes the point of maximum and acknowledged contact at any given moment in a relationship without fusion, without violation of the separateness and integrity of each other. We are maintaining energetic sovereignty as individuals while connecting to one another. We are focused on creating a healing (therapeutic) presence. Attempting to be present at this point requires ceaseless sensitivity to inner (energetic) changes ( a felt sense) in oneself and in the other, as well as to changes at the interface of the interaction as these occur in the context of the subtle energetic connection with reciprocal impact. This kind of effort, in itself, tends to have existential impact on both participants like an awareness that something shifted energetically, and this in turn influences what then goes on between them dialectically and energetically. When contact is maintained, self-awareness expands within and between each other. When the lack of presence exists, there is an energetic absence to the moment, the person, the situation. There is no felt sense.

The "intimate edge" is never static but becomes the trace of a constantly moving experience of energy. The constantly changing moment in time has the potential to create a “moment” of connectivity. This connectivity might be experienced as pleasant or unpleasant depending on the degree of presence to the moment. If comfortable in the presence of self and other, it can be a moment of being “touched” in a pleasant and deep innermost way. When working within the intimate edge, it is never your responsibility to figure things out. You do not have to use your mind to think about how to undo a negative situation. It is the presence of being in the intimate moment that reveals what has been frozen in time.

If there is not adequate presence to the moment, the intimate edge can bump into memories of unfinished or incomplete experiences that originally overwhelmed the person, possibly traumatized. Suspended in time and space as an incomplete experience, surrounded by disruptive and painful emotions (energy in motion, it becomes unintegrated. All you need to do is remain present to dissolve the persistent energetic patterns holding everything in place.

Energetically, we refer to these as time crystals, moments or unfinished experiences seeking contact and completion. When the underlying energies are freed up (thaw the time crystals), they return to that zero state of oneness, the zero point as noted in most spiritual traditions. Each time the time crystal is touched by the presence of another, it is changed, and as it is touched it either dissolves into an energetic shift of awareness or increases its size and self-sealed protection. The emphasis is on process, on engaging in live experience, and on generating a new kind of live experience by so doing, in an ever expanding way. Energetically, we refer to this as expanding self-awareness and one’s individual presence, as existentially (a felt sense) there is awareness that something shifted into an expanded or greater sense of oneself or disconnects into a form of dissociation.

Presence, and therefore self-awareness, expands with acknowledgment and explicitness of the shift in energy. Therefore, the process of acknowledgment increases the moment's dimensions and changes the nature of one's experiences of it. What is achieved is not simply greater insight into what is or was, but a new kind of experience, such as a deeper sense of wholeness. A felt sense of wholeness.

Working at the "intimate edge" requires safely sitting on the edge of vulnerability through a clear presence of holding a nonjudgmental energy that creates a unique context of safety and allows for maximum closeness precisely because it protects against the threat of intrusion or violation. Attending to the most elusive interactive subtleties and "opening the moment" actually becomes a way to clear the field for self-awareness. This makes it possible for both participants to engage in aspects of the experience that otherwise might be threatening, even dangerous. In other words, the moment unfolds the felt sense into an healing presence by and between each other.

In effect, the "intimate edge" is not simply at the boundary between self and other, the point of developing interpersonal intimacy and awareness of interpersonal possibility in the relationship; it is also at the boundary of self-awareness. In Gestalt, it is referred to as the “point of contact”. It is an energetic point of expanding self-discovery, at which one can become more "intimate" with one's own experience through the evolving relationship with the other, and then more intimate with the other as one becomes more attuned to oneself. Because of this kind of dialectical interplay, the "intimate edge" becomes the "growing edge" or the “healing edge”of the individuals and potentially the relationship.

The introduction of intimate edge (presence) to the frozen and neglected moments in time instantly restores peace to any situation, regardless of the underlying conditions. As moment-by-moment shifts in the energetic experience between the individuals are acknowledged, reflected upon, and integrated, self-awareness of individual patterns of reaction and particular sensitivities can be identified and explored. This allows for awareness of newfound choices or release of frozen constructs, often unknown till now, as well as deeper awareness of feeling more whole, as if energy has been released and integrated.

Even when the "intimate edge" is missed or bumped into due to inadequate presence in the moment, often experienced as an energetic feeling of danger such as a sense of intrusion, acknowledging the bump begins to restore the necessary presence for the frozen moment in time to return at some other time when the level of presence can support the moment.

The "intimate edge" is, therefore, not a given, but an interactive creation. It is always unique to the moment and to the sensibilities of the specific participants in relation to each other and reflects the participants' subjective and unconscious sense of what is safe at that moment.

Focusing on the interactive nuances in this way often requires a shift in perspective as to what is figure and what is ground. Forcing on presence or being open to the presence of what is present, can create a safe field for the client to expand their personal energy field. In other words, the focus is to increase the ground of the energetic connection with the client rather than to seek to reveal a hidden figure. This shift in focus creates an energy of safety that invites more presence of the individual.

For example, where an individual drifts into a fantasy that energetically takes him or her out of the room (energetically absent), the content and interactive meaning are not as important as the energetic shifts preceding the story telling .The focus becomes to support the re-membering the felt sense of the energetic buildup, often in the form of emotions and bodily sensations, that triggered the release of a story. Exploring what energetically triggered the fantasy by simply acknowledging the emotions as energy in motion, may reveal the subtler patterns of his or her own experience. As Ehrenberg noted, “it can facilitate a shift on the part of the individual from feeling victimized or helpless, stuck without any options, to freshly experiencing his or her own power and responsibility in relation to multiple choices.”

Aiming for the "intimate edge" does not support healing presence. It is not our duty to seek the frozen moments or to determine the content. Our presence supports the client to safety experience the release of energy, which ultimately is empowering to the client. We can use our awareness of a shift in energy as a clue that something may need to be acknowledged to support the experience. Hence one’s energetic sensitivity is particularly key where the individual may not be fully in touch with this dimension of his or her own experience. If one locates and relays his or her own experience when the patient cannot, this can help to locate and possibly dissolve the time crystal frozen in time as a significant shift in energy.

May Your Day be Filled with Presence.

Moments Frozen in Time: Encountering Time Crystals in Healing Sessions

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 14:45:13 GMT

We are often curious about the healing presence process especially when trying to comprehend and relate to time crystals, moments frozen in time. In basic terms, healing presence is centered in the moment with the client, often experienced as an increased degree of energy(warmth) and a higher vibrational energy. Often the degree of energy begins a grounding process to increase the client’s sense of presence within oneself. This can create a sense of being within oneself, safely.

The higher vibrational energy can trigger a sense of wobble internally as the client can experience a wobble or back and forth experience of anxiety and excitement especially if the client has not grounded within oneself (being present to oneself)

During the experience of wobbling, often between feeling anxious and excited, unconscious original actions and verbal expression emerge from something "underneath" typical thinking in the form of a deep sense of awareness and bodily felt experiencing, often like a euphoric release of energy. From the healing presence perspective, this is the thawing of the time crystal and when the time crystal encounters adequate awareness and presence, what needs to be discovered occurs first from deep within as the frozen moment in time often experienced in the body is activated and begin to thaw. As the thawing or dissolving of the time crystal occurs, there can be a growing awareness of the shift starting with the body, then the emotional and finally the mental. The mental tends to occur as a deep sense of knowing and not thinking, like a remembrance of the original frozen moment in time no longer separated and inert and now integrated in the person. Hence, presence infiltrates the sense of being to allow the ‘awareness and felt sense’ of something lost or buried to surface.

In the diagram, we can see that the time crystal is an inert, moment frozen in time that floats in the auric field of the person. In healing presence, we do not focus exclusively on the cellular energy that holds the felt sense and/or to the unconscious. We see the moment frozen in time having an implicit meaning of felt sense that permeates the auric field as well as the mental, emotional, and cellular energy fields inclusively being within the unconscious. As indicated in the diagram, the moment frozen in time is able to reconnect and be integrated in consciousness through the point of power, the present moment, by remaining fully present within themselves. The Healing presence process supports that presence like a connection to the core self that passes through the various energy fields insulated by the healing presence.

A crucial part of every successful healing presence experience is the ability to surrender, or in spiritual terms to “allow in”. When the surrender occurs, there is a shift in energy and often a bodily release that is experienced as melting, dissolving, or breaking apart and releasing. Frequently afterwards a deeper possible new awareness that something new, righter, and truer can come or has arrived. This is a moment of "death" for the existing sense of oneself according to many spiritual philosophies and is often experienced as a bit disorienting or dizzying. Knowing that there is a passage like this can help make it more tolerable and less scary. After many times through this passage, one notices that really nothing substantial is lost anyway, so it becomes less scary, and after a while less disorienting. Still, the allowing-in of presence must happen, and it helps to be open to being surprised.

Possible Indicators of a Time Crystal

A time crystal often creates anxiety when bumped into or revealed through presence. This leads to being focused upon or the client has triggered the reactivity that is keeping the time crystal inert by protecting and surrounding the moment frozen in time. Possible indicators [1] might be:

Client has inappropriate distance from feelings, either too much or too little to ne with them.(Incongruence)
Client seems to locked into judgmental reactions to their feelings (Safe distancing))
Client seems to accept vague expression for what is being experienced (Incongruence)
Feelings well up spontaneously without conscious connections (Ungrounded)
The client seems to have feelings, but not know what to do with them as if lost in a state of confusion. (Disconnected)
There is inconsistency between what the client says verbally and some of the non-verbal signs of feeling. (Incongruence)
Client hurries past feelings to talk about implications and anticipated consequences. (Ungrounded to the moment. Ping-pong between past and future))
Client reports sensations that are physical while displaying incongruence of expressions suggesting a learned pattern of redirection when approaching time crystal.. (Thawing)
Client expresses conflicting feelings and seems to favor one side over the other. (Incongruence/inadequate internal or external support)
Client’s eyes struggle to make contact or dart around as if trying to avoid or trying to focus on an evading object. (Ungrounded)
Client’s eyes float upward indicating client presence is leaving the body or their eyes drop down indicating going into the original memory that formed the time crystal. (Jumping to the future or to the past vacating the present)

When any of these indicators occur, it is not to be judged but to be treated as data to support creating the healing presence container by patiently supporting their experience in the moment. Use of a soft voice and requesting the client make eye contact and experience their own body shifts the client back to the present moment. Because presence is contagious, the clients typically will calm down and possibly move towards a time crustal or will be completely satisfied to have felt safe while wobbling.

It is our responsibility to simply be present and witness the client’s experience. Not to do unto them by trying to diagnose or to fix them. They are not broken. Our presence will restore their presence.

[1] I have encountered similar indicators for Focusing therapy by James R. Iberg in Finding the body's next step: ingredients and hindrances The Folio: a Journal for Focusing and Experiential Therapy, 15, 1, 13-42.

Types of Presence / Active Presence

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 17:27:28 GMT

We often refer to presence or healing presence without revisiting it. In the following article, I am integrating three forms of presence often referred to by Buddhist traditions, plus the deeper meaning in Buddhist and many other traditions. As you ponder the four aspects of presence, you will see that where you focus your attention creates a different for of presence. The last, pure presence, is akin to what we teach as healing presence.

Types of Presence

Active presence invites an open-ended engagement with experience like the spiritual dynamic of surrendering…the allowing-in of the moment without emotional reactions or mental restrictions…simply Being with oneself.

Active presence includes the four forms of present-moment attention identified as:

1. In therapeutic presence, you actively choose where to focus your attention.

2. In joyful presence, you actively choose how you react to your experience.

3. In mindful presence, you actively choose how to make sense of your experience.

4. In pure presence, you exist in the oneness as a deep sense of being.

Therapeutic Presence

Therapeutic presence can fully witness and stay present to oneself and the client/other person. It maintains eye and vocal contact providing support through descriptive comments of what is noticed. One stays fully embodied, aware of energetic connections to the earth and the client energy field.

Healing (therapeutic) presence: let go of the past and the future… the future is not here..the past is already over. We must deal with things as they are in the moment... healing and transformation are possible the moment we accept the actuality of things as they are in this moment.

Joyful Presence

Joyful presence attends to the present moment to cultivate full appreciation of the rich experience available in each moment. Joyful presence is filled with Gratitude in each moment. Epicureans insisted that only in the present moment is happiness possible. What is more, they said, happiness in this one moment is all the happiness one could ever want.

Mindful Presence

“Mindfulness” (in Sanskrit) means ‘remembering’. This is “mindful presence”—presence that remembers …..itself. “Remembering” here does not just mean remembering to be mindful: it refers instead to remembering what has value, what matters most…that you are pure presence.

For example, when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, and remaining silent, one remains fully alert to the moment while remembering to fully embrace each moment. With mindful presence, then, we move beyond immediate sensory experience and disregard for past and future, beyond joyful and healing (therapeutic) presence into aware presence.

Pure Presence

Pure Presence is often referred to as the zero-point or the still-point where ones experience of self and other become interwoven as a soothing and piercing experience of oneness or wholeness. Experience tends to shift one’s sense of self and sense of the world as if all perceptual limitations have been eliminated leaving a sense of awe, wonderment, and ease in being. A realization can occur that the self, as known prior to the experience was a series of creative adjustments to life’s experiences that were useful to navigate the social and cultural landmines, no longer exists. Some refer to this as embodying the Self or a full embodiment of our spirit.

Active Presence

We can only act in the present, not the past or the future. When we practice active presence, choosing how to act in this moment, we also choose who and what we will be. Active presence—choosing how to act in this moment—takes mindfulness out of the range of sitting meditation and inserts it into daily life.

Active presence has the potential to go further, for it invites an open-ended engagement with experience. When I am actively present, I choose to fully be present to this moment. It is “Taking the plunge” means fearless presence, total involvement, holding nothing back. The courage to Be. Active presence offers a way into the deeper existential and universal understanding of presence to what is present. If it is difficult for the self to do this, if it (your created self) clings to and defends its own positions and wants, that only underscores the need to challenge the self and the conditions it imposes on experience.

Committed Self-Work and Presence

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 14:54:56 GMT

To the spiritual seeker...

There has been, and continues to be, an ongoing crisis in spiritual communities globally with regards to ferreting out charlatans. Shared articles across social media platforms of bad trips, botched ceremonies, abuse of power and incompetence signal a warning to spiritual seekers—beware of the person, beware of their training, check up on their authenticity. The remedies I have read, which I disagree with, are that we should ensure that the teacher we work with is “indigenous trained” and/or “doesn’t charge for their services” and/or “comes from an unbroken tradition”. In my experience, the crisis in authenticity cannot be addressed by performing a review of these external criteria.

This is personal for me. I have been on a spiritual path for 26 years. It has taken me around the globe (especially to East and Central Asia, the American and Canadian west). I have met many spiritual teachers and seekers, traditional medicine holders and ceremonial leaders. I have had “bad trips,” specifically met people who didn’t use their power appropriately or lacked the maturity and knowledge to hold a safe space. I have also met good teachers, who have done their own healing work and possess the maturity and presence necessary to help others do the same. Based on my experience, I am confident that simply looking for someone who has traditional knowledge or training won’t safeguard from having bad experiences. Collectively, we’re missing the point.

To truly promote safety, we need to look deeper, regardless of someone’s cultural background, tradition or training: are they doing their own healing work, and where are they with it? Are they encouraging their students to do the same? And are you, as someone seeking, prepared to be rigorous in your own work?

Seeking the Elusive Tradition

“Tradition” is a loaded term that has different meaning to different people. I don’t want to get into an academic breakdown of its usage and meaning, however, I do want to state my opinion that what constitutes “traditional knowledge” and/or “traditional practice” is an ideal, a construct. All knowledges and practices are in a constant state of change, even more so today.

In the context of a traditional practice, for example, a healing ceremony, there is both the form and the spirit or intent of the ceremony. The form refers to the steps, procedures, invocations, etc. that are carried out by the ceremony leader and participants. The intent is the purpose activated through the ceremony. In traditional ceremonies, the form itself carries the intent and that intent is then intermixed with the intent of the participants. Someone initiated in that tradition understands the form and the intent of the form, they live/embody both. This allows them the capacity to then transmit the practice. The best traditions are living and are able to be adapted to the times because they are embodied by people who understand the traditions enough to safely adapt them.

Due to genocide, globalization and generational discontinuity there has been a near total breakdown of form. We can’t close pandoras box on this one. We are living amongst many ways of knowing, many paths, many forms that are in a state of cross-pollination and transformation. Across indigenous communities, traditional knowledge has been at threat of or victim to a kind of mass extinction. When the traditional knowledge is lost, the path to rediscovery may involve going deeper within, looking through the lens of colonial authors, seeking across traditions to find truth, often all of the above. When a community is able to heal and there are people that are healed enough to carry the knowledge, there is hope of renewal, but this challenges the construct of a tradition or lineage of knowledge. It is often multicultural and is founded in restoration and healing— what I am calling committed self-work.

We know there have been longstanding problems within Christian traditions concerning misuse of power, but it’s not just those traditions; misuse of power exists everywhere throughout all cultures, traditions and times. We need to be careful not to romanticize a practice or a person because of their background. We need to examine that person and practice closely. Any practice from any tradition can be corrupted due to wounding and/or lack of maturity of the one practicing, which impacts the intent. I have some specific notes here based on my experience:

Some people are well-intentioned, but they may either lack maturity and self-awareness, or have some significant blind spots due to their own wounding. This means they haven’t done enough of their own work to be able to hold a safe container for others.
Some people and/or practices are not well-intentioned. There are some people out there who have the intention of exercising power over others, stealing from others, or otherwise seeking power for themselves. In my opinion, anyone seeking power other than their own power is misguided. Likewise, some practices have persisted (throughout time) that teach that to gain power comes at a cost—that we live in a limited world where we have to take from to get. Run the other direction if you encounter this.
Money itself is not good or bad. In today’s world, I believe that requesting money for service is a form of self-respect and can be a form of fair exchange, so long as the service being provided is someone’s to give and has not been stolen.

What makes the difference when it comes to working with a spiritual teacher or ceremonial leader of any kind, from any tradition, is the quality—the character—of the person or people transmitting the knowledge. In our contemporary time, we should prioritize maturity—someone who has set on their own path of committed self-work, and who expects the same out of their students.

I know that for me, not only do I expect this out of my teachers, I have come, over time, to want it in any work that I do myself.

Committed Self-Work

What is committed self-work? First and foremost, I believe the term self can refer to the individual self and/or the collective self, depending on the context. If we are evaluating our participation in a community practice, or ceremony, we can look at the collective as well as individuals within it. Committed self-work, then, refers to wholehearted dedication to healing, self-development and growing awareness. I would expect any leader, teacher, healer or community who is on a path of committed self-work to be engaged in the following:

Self-Healing . Across many traditions, healing is a process of becoming more whole, more ourselves, more connected and in harmony with the world around us. Wounds from the past that are unhealed can act like hauntings that color our view of the world. They impact our intentions and the actions that come from them. Our practices must contain the commitment to address our wounding when it is ready to be healed, and to maintain the spirit of willingness to face difficult truths, even if we are scared.
Clearing Intentions . What we bring into a ceremony or healing engagement of any kind has a significant impact on the experience. To possess clear intentions, we have to be aware of what our intentions are—committed self-work involves continuously examining what we are putting out and where what we are putting out is coming from within us. Our practices must therefore center on sensitivity and increasing our own awareness.
Growing Awareness . The process of awareness is lifelong, it involves the dropping of illusions, the dropping of the lenses through which we interpret our experience. Awareness must be a priority of any self-development work. We need to grow in our ability to pay attention, to track, to look with new eyes at every circumstance, and to learn from it. As we grow in our awareness, we are able to drop our preconceived notions and see the world more and more as it is. I believe that experiencing the world more as it is helps us to be more connected, to gain a sense of being a part of the fabric of existence. Likewise, I believe that as we connect more directly to the world around us, rather than through the filter of our past, we grow in our awareness.
Connectedness . Connectedness is about participating in something greater than ourselves. When we disconnect, it is often due to a lack of trust and can result in trying to control—forcing outcomes or "doing onto" others. Our practices should prioritize connection. In this spirit, a humility can emerge that helps to safeguard from grandiosity or causing harm.

These are not easy things to vet over the internet or even through reading what someone has written. I recommend that you have a conversation where you can ask the person you would like to learn from or practice with questions about their own self-work and their own intentionality directly— over the phone, on video chat or in person (not via SMS, Instagram, Facebook or email). When you enter the conversation, be honest about your intentions for asking, then go ahead and ask them directly whatever you are curious about. Here are some examples:

"I want to make sure that the ceremony I participate in is aligned with my intentions for healing. Can you tell me more about the intention of the ceremony and how that works?” Most ceremonial leaders will talk about the ceremony and intent to help people prepare for it. If they seem clueless, maybe they are. If they seem guarded or act as if they are sworn to secrecy, I would question if it is a good first-time experience with this person.
“It’s really important to me that I learn from a teacher who has their own daily practices and is on a path of self-healing. Can you tell me more about who you are and what your healing path has been?” Be sure to listen long and deep. Not everyone is prepared to share every detail of their own personal healing, but most are willing to tell their healing story. If they don’t have much to say here, or something seems ingenuine, note the yellow flag.
“I really want to understand what your expectations are for yourself and for your students. What’s the outcome you’re hoping for from this experience for you and for us? What’s required of all of us to get there?” If they expect that they will be doing the work for you, and you won’t be doing any of the work other than to give something to them, that would give me pause. Some healing / spiritual paradigms put a lot of emphasis on the teacher or healer, but pretty much all paradigms concede that ultimately it is the responsibility of each person to heal and grow themselves.

Pay attention to how they respond. Do they take offense to you asking questions? That’s a red flag. Most good teachers will have the opposite reaction— they will be delighted that someone cared enough to ask meaningful questions. Also, how well do they seem to listen to what you are asking? If they seem unclear about the questions, do they seek clarification? How present and engaged are they with you? If they are distracted for some reason, do they admit that they are distracted? These small cues can tell you a lot about someone’s level of awareness and capacity to hold presence, which is critical for safety.

Presence

There is another criteria that I want to put out there, which I think is critical to evaluate with any spiritual tradition, teaching, practice as well as the person transmitting it: Presence. Presence, the act of being present, the practice of cultivating the ability to be present—this is a cornerstone of nearly every spiritual tradition out there. Presence is the key that unlocks the capacity for healing, clear intentions, awareness and connectedness.

There are some spiritual teachings that have as a focal point leaving one’s body—leaving to go to other worlds or dimensions, to have a trip, an experience, a journey. These teachings, I think in some cases, have been stripped of the important context of presence that would make them more effective and safe. What you need to know:

It is possible to maintain presence while having a spiritual experience. The only thing that exists, that is real, is right here right now. The present moment is the only place/time where healing can occur.
It is possible to have fully embodied transcendent experiences. In fact, the safest place we can be is in our own bodies.

How present are the people, is the leader, in the community you are wanting to engage with? Does their primary practice involve checking out? Does everyone you interact with have glassy far-out gazes? Or are they present, so present, in fact, that you feel seen/heard/witnessed. So much so that you may even want to squirm out of your seat? If everyone is checked out, or the practice involves deliberately checking out, then there will be serious limitations to what the container can hold. It may even be unsafe. On the other hand, if everyone is really checked-in, and their level of presence is disarming, just know that discomfort is a pretty normal reaction to being with someone who is fully present. Presence, unfortunately, isn’t the norm in contemporary society, and we are so unused to being seen that to suddenly be seen can lead to feeling exposed. Take it slowly, for your own sake, but trust that you may have found a place where you can safely explore and pursue whatever it is that brought you to your spiritual path.

Closing Thoughts

I still have a long way to go in my own self-development and healing. Overtime, I have come to embrace the path of committed self-work and presence for myself. It’s a worthy pursuit, and if you’re here, and you’ve read this far, I hope you find my remarks helpful to you. A lot of what I have written is grounded in experiences with my teacher, Herb Stevenson, who runs a program called “Healing Den” which is centered on helping others become more of a “healing presence” for themselves and others. You can learn more at https://www.healing-den.com/ .

@cspowers

Jan 17 2023

Republished with permission from https://www.naturespowers.net/

The Neuroscience of Healing Presence

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 15:16:34 GMT

The Neuroscience[1] of Healing Presence

The Healing Den focused on creating presence through a variety of techniques, many of which are based in neuroscience. As research has proven the science-based ideas below can be used alone or in combination to encourage and create an all-important shared mindset. For the healing den, these create a series of opportunities for increasing presence with yourself and others.

Eye contact.

During the intensive week, we encourage eye contact as a means to build trust, courage, and connection between all participants. Brain scans show that when people make eye contact, synchrony (sense of connection) increases. When they look away, synchrony decreases. Eye contact activates the mirror neuron system and the cerebellum of the people engaged in social gaze. It helps prepare us to understand the actions and intentions of others[2]. In HD, we find that eye contact is quite foreign and approaches feeling vulnerable. As the activity progresses, there is a sense of safety and connection between participants. We ask participants to test the eye contact experience with their families by making eye contact, soft eyes, one minute per day for each family member for 30 days. They have found a deeper sense of connection with each family member and a willingness to engage is deeper conversations.

Trust.

The Healing den is based on four tenets of trust. Each member realizes that their healing presence is based on developing and practicing these trust builders[3]. All teaching and practice sessions focus on creating trust through presence.

Benevolence means holding each other, especially oneself, in positive regard and being motivated to act in the healing interest of each other rather than acting in story. Such as falling into the trap of believing one knows what is best for another person.
Healing presence requires integrity to make good faith agreements, telling the truth, and fulfilling promises. This requires a constant sense of sense whether one is telling a story about the session or being fully present to the moment.
A healing presence requires a special kid of being with oneself and with others. Competence means having the ability to quiet the mind and be in the moment to allow the energy of presence to fill into a connection of safety. We practice often to support this developmental capability.
Predictability means the participants become consistent enough in their presence on behalf of the other people in the exercise to feel safe in each situation.

Shared purpose.

The Healing Den is comprised of multiple geographic, nationalities, vocations, ages, and interests. Identifying the group’s purpose as creating healing presence is one way to create common ground that transcends demographic or personal characteristics. By deliberately establishing shared purpose, developing healing presence, we can maximize inclusivity, collaboration, and success to unifying as a community and individually as a healing presence.

Deeper conversations.

Healing Den uses a variety of conversational approaches to support deeper conversations and development of personal awareness. We use small group and community dialogues as well as individual and small group practice sessions to cut through the standard surface-level chat to create more substantial connections faster.

Virtual sessions support this same process for theory development between the residential sessions. The teaching is designed to provide insight and discovery as the community engages or the small groups are in dialogue.

More time together.

The idea focus of the healing den sessions is to invoke trust and affection in a safe environment when frequently in each other’s presence. We recognize that when HD members feel more interconnected, they tend to safely create their healing presence at their own pace without pressure from the community. Neuroscience studies also show that the more time people spend with one another, the greater synchrony they exhibit.

Personal gratitude.

Healing presence is based on the presence of what is present. Letting someone know how much you appreciate them can increase connecting feelings on both sides—the person expressing the gratitude gets the same boost in happiness as the person receiving it. We do not use the binary trap of right and wrong; rather, we focus on what we experienced without judgment and might improve.

Music.

We often used guided meditations and meditation music during training sessions. It is no secret that listening to music has been shown to improve mood, motivation, and the ability to create bonds with others. We encourage personal use between sessions of the recorded guided mediations from the website, and iAwake meditation recordings. These experiences develop more sense of presence within each individual.

Find and leverage “chemistry creators”.

Laboratory research corroborates the existence of chemistry creators and the impact they have on the levels of synchrony. The combination of presence building exercises in healing den sessions increases the degree of trust, safety, and discovery within the community. As we feel more connected, the safety of the learning environment opens to all voices. When these people talk, there is greater inter-brain synchrony across the group.

May Your Day be Filled with Presence,

Herb Stevenson

Footnotes

[1]https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-to-use-neuroscience-to-build-team-chemistry/?utm_campaign=KatW2023&utm_medium=email&utm_source=kw_campaign_monitor& utm_term=1-25-2023&utm_content=How_to_Use_Neuroscience_to_Build_Team_Chemistry

[2]One study led by Suzanne Dikker and David Poeppel, showed how two minutes of sustained eye contact between teachers and students in the classroom resulted in enhanced neural synchrony, higher engagement, and subsequent improvement in performance.

[3]Adapted from D. Harrison McKnight and Norman L. Chervany, Trust and Distrust Definitions: One Bite at a Time in R. Falcone, M. Singh, and Y.-H. Tan (Eds.): Trust in Cyber-societies, LNAI 2246, pp. 27B54, 2001. c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001

The Four Stages of Learning

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 19:17:30 GMT

Over the course of the first 5 Healing Den Programs, it has become clear that the stages of learning is difficult for participants. Some have described it as agonizing and frustrating. I decided to apply the four stages of learning to the healing den process to create a roadmap for attendees.

Four Stages of Learning

Martin M. Broadwell described the model as "the four levels of teaching" in February 1969 [1] which was later adapted to become the four stages of learning.

Learning is the relatively evocative process in a person’s sense of competency, capacity, and capability that leads to a permanent change in their knowledge or behavior due to an uncommon experience. Interestingly, progression from stage to stage is often accompanied by a feeling of awakening where understanding 'click' into place for the learner - the person feels like he/she has made a big step forward, which of course they have.

Sense of Competence, capability, and capacity.

The general process of learning involves three nuances that lead to actual learning and integration into ones sense of self:

Competence is the ability to understand, accept, and generally perform what is being learned with ease.
Capability is the ability to unlearn prior meaning making processes that inhibits the successful utilization of what is being learned
Capacity is the ability to overcome any resistance to the paradigmatic shift that often occurs when learning as well as develop the necessary skills required from what is being learned, including how it is applied to day-to-day life.

The learning process has often become more difficult than necessary because of the prior learned judgements people have been socially imprinted when they make mistakes in learning. The old expectations come from learned judgments like, “not doing it right,” “not good enough,” “can never learn this,” etc .

Ironically, not doing it right and making mistakes are vital steps in the learning process; yet too often our attention goes to trying to avoid the bad feelings, r ather than to the learning at hand.

In addition, family dynamics and cultural rules will impact whether the learning becomes fully integrated and applied in day to day life. In other words, presence is not often accepted by others until they get accustomed to the new way of being.

The Stages

Understanding the four stages of learning a skill can support the learning process where one is focused on learning to do something, and not feeling bad about ourselves for not already knowing how.

Unconscious Incompetence

“I don’t know that I don’t know how to do this.”

This is the stage of blissful ignorance before self-awareness and learning begins. For example, many people arrive with preconceived notions of what is presence, self-awareness, and mindfulness. As the class progresses, an awareness of not knowing often occurs leading to nervousness and uncertainty. It is at this stage that the potential to learn occurs. A new sense of self-awareness develops.

Conscious Incompetence

“I know that I don’t know how to do this, yet.”

This is the most difficult stage, where learning begins, and where the most judgments against self are formed. This is also the stage that most people give up [2] . For example, when new people arrive at the healing den, they are steeped in “doing” or “performing” according to all their life experiences and professional training. This stage tends to trigger an uncomfortable experience of feeling out of one’s comfort zone. If it is too uncomfortable, they will tend towards relying on existing techniques and methods versus learning how to become present to oneself or the clients. To leave this stage, a willingness to not know and to experiment with new experiences must occur. Often, there is a floating between beginning to understand and being confused. As experiences begin to be trusted, a new sense of awareness and being supersedes habitual behavioral such that the learning starts to occur.

Conscious Competence

“I know that I know how to do this.”

This stage of learning is much easier than the second stage, but it is still a bit uncomfortable and self-conscious. Here we consciously try to learn a new skill. Practice and repetition are at the forefront. This is where most learning takes place. It takes effort and work. For example, the individual tends to be learning technique, a forming of doing presence versus being presence. As presence is practiced with self-awareness through developing a witness to oneself and others, the techniques of being presence becomes a process that is experienced and generally known by the individual. The sense of success and self-discovery tends to evolve and support the individual into greater and deeper self-awareness and presence.

This is the basis of the ongoing practice session with required reflection papers to support the learning process through experience and self-awareness of journalling.

Unconscious Competence

“I know I did something well?”

The final stage of learning a skill is when it has become a natural part of us; we don’t have to think about it. Feedback from multiple sources indicate that presence versus the mind-stream of rules and thoughts now permeate our existence. Other perplexed suggest that we are different or that “you seem to be more you”. This is where we are in a state of being regardless of what we are doing.

The key is to recognize where you are at in the 4 stages of learning and be patient with yourself.

Reflective Competence or Conscious, Unconscious Competence.

"I can explain it and how to do it with ease."

Over time, there has been the addition of the fifth stage, referred to as Reflective Competence or Conscious, Unconscious Competence. In the healing den we refer to this as the ability to witness oneself and others, Even though witnessing is being learned through the prior four stages, in th is stage there is sufficient self-awareness, and mindfulness to know that you know and move from differing levels of presence depending on the situation and circumstances of each moment.

This is the stage of the certified practitioner and eventual certified facilitator. It allows teaching others what they need to move through the stages.

https://helpfulprofessor.com/stages-of-learning/

As a follow-up to this model, I suggest looking into the four stages of listening and the four stages of paying attention. They provide a slightly different perspective of the evolving stages of being fully yourself.

[1] Paul R. Curtiss and Phillip W. Warren mentioned the model in their 1973 book The Dynamics of Life Skills Coaching. The model was used at Gordon Training International by its employee Noel Burch in the 1970s; there it was called the "four stages for learning any new skill". Later the model was frequently attributed to Abraham Maslow, incorrectly since the model does not appear in his major works.

[2] Judgment release can be very helpful here in the second stage because mistakes are integral to the learning process. They’re necessary because learning is essentially experimental and experience-based, trial and error. Information can be accumulated, but until it is practiced and used, it’s only information. It’s not learning, and certainly not a skill.

References

Broadwell, Martin M. (20 February 1969). "Teaching for learning (XVI)". wordsfitlyspoken.org. The Gospel Guardian. Retrieved 11 May 2018.

https://peachcapital.com/the-four-stages-of-learning/

https://nathaliehimmelrich.com/the-five-stages-of-learning/

https://leadershipmanagement.com.au/understanding-4-stages-learning/

The Shroud of Covid

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 19:31:44 GMT

As I reflect on the effects of Covid, it seems we may have moved into a collective shroud. Typically, a shroud refers to an item, such as a cloth, that covers or protects some other object. The term is most often used in reference to burial sheets, mound shroud, grave clothes, winding-cloths, or winding-sheets, such as the famous Shroud of Turin [1], the tachrichim that Jews are dressed in for burial, or the white cotton kaffan sheets Muslims are wrapped in for burial.

Metaphorically, what if we see covid as a shroud that covered and isolated each of us to awaken or transition or face our deepest concerns. Notwithstanding the tens of millions who died and exponentially higher number that suffer through the ill effects of the virus, there are billions of people on this planet that are no longer the person they were before the pandemic. The number of people who soul searched into awareness concerning their marriage, their work beliefs, their career goals, and their aspirations alone is an astounding shift of perspective of what is most important for the world.

A New World

Hungarian-American psychiatrist Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy [2] developed the concept of “invisible loyalties”. Invisible loyalties are characteristics and behavior, usually those which govern or impact our relationships with ourselves and others, which are passed down through generations—not by choice, but unconsciously, and often detrimentally, as unwitting homage to those who came before. For example, embedded beliefs about work, family, marriage, etc. that unconsciously filter what we are supposed to do.

The whole theory might seem damning at first, but there is hope: invisible loyalties thrive as long as they remain unconscious, unquestioned, and unchallenged; however, once we become conscious of this unconscious process, we can also consciously choose to act differently. We can acknowledge that these attitudes and behaviors do not serve us well in all circumstances, and we can choose to try something different.

It seems that the shroud of covid afforded or imposed a conscious review of the underlying and driving beliefs related to day-to-day life. Under this shroud, we let go of invisible loyalties—and their dysfunctional consequences in our lives and relationships—by developing cultivating visible loyalty. Or, more accurately, voluntary loyalty. The process of enacting voluntary loyalty looks different for different people, but they include a few of the same basic insights. We begin to self-define through evaluating what is true for oneself and accepting that one has the capacity and if you will allow me, the permission, to create the life that is truly one’s own.

To further understand the shroud of covid, we can review the internal sense of such internal changes by reviewing liminal spaces.

Liminal Space

Liminal space is a concept that's being talked about a lot lately. If you're like many people, you may have noticed that there are certain places or states of being in which you feel different, off, or uncomfortable. Often, these uncomfortable spaces turn out to be liminal spaces.

Fortunately, there's a reasonable explanation for why liminal space feels different. Once you know the source of your feelings about liminal spaces, you can better deal with the feeling when a place makes you a bit unsettled.

Liminal Space Definition

Liminal space is referred to as a threshold, and indeed, the etymology of liminal comes from the Latin root word "limen," which means threshold. Liminal spaces are transitional or transformative spaces. They are the waiting areas between one point in time and space and the next either in physical, emotional, mental, and potentially spiritual experiences. Often, when we are in liminal spaces, we have the feeling of just being on the verge of something.

The Shroud of Covid created a threshold between the comfortable known world we all lived in and the world that has evolved from being into the cauldron of change for the last few years. We are different as is the world.

Examples of Liminality

Liminal spaces are often physical places. In some cases, the same place may be at one time liminal and at other times not such as walks In nature. Other places may feel like a liminal space regardless of the time of day or year you visit them.

Whenever we are at a place during a time that's not usual for that space, it can feel unsettling. Or if we're in a liminal space for longer than necessary to pass through to our actual destination, we may experience that same feeling of something being "off" that we can't quite pinpoint. For example, many felt an uneasiness when forced Into remote work from home that erased the threshold between work and family, office and home, etc.

Divorce

Marriage is often seen as a beginning. The years of a marriage are a journey. Divorce, however, often happens unexpectedly, so it can leave you feeling like you don't know where you are, or sometimes even who you are. In your life journey, there are certain destinations you expect to reach, but divorce can be a way station in between the destinations you seek, especially after years of marriage. When you've devoted years of your life journey to a marriage, it can be hard to see who you are and where you're going without that marriage. Covid revealed weaknesses and appreciations In relationships that are still being negotiated.

Job Loss

Jobs are also milestone markers in your life, and a job loss is a place in between one job and another, for most people. Job loss can be an especially difficult place to be after you've been employed for a long time. Covid amplified this as the number of jobs exponentially shrank while confining people to their homes. Similarly, work habits were tested through covid as all were forced to learn to be effective in remote settings while work was transacted purely through video chats.

Moving to A New Place

Moving to a new city involves a physical move, but the liminal state you are in is very much mental space. You know exactly where you are, physically and geographically, but you don't know where you are as a person. You may not know how you fit into to this new community

Clearly remote work involved making new friends or even leaving behind gatherings you were accustomed to having around. All of these changes put us into a liminal, or threshold, space. You may have found yourself in a similar mental state if you realized you need to break yourself away from toxic work or family situations.

Liminality

You can see then that liminality is as much a state of the human mind as it is a particular place. Indeed, all the places where one gets a sense of liminality are quite usual as far as structures go. It's only in the context we give to them in our minds that they become unusual.

The liminal veil is what we call the place where a transition occurs between the threshold and the place that waits before us. A liminal space may feel confining, but often it takes only minor changes to get through to the next place.

Returning to the Covid Shroud, it covered the world for three years wherein we have learned that remote work is as productive as in office, one can be in relationship with family members in ways often forgotten, that one can self-define by evaluating unconscious beliefs that have directed your life, keeping some and letting go of the dysfunctionality inherited from cultural dynamics.

As we look at the Shroud of Covid, it is clear that it is slowly lifting throughout the world, and many have blossomed into a new person. The most important question for everyone is: Do you have the courage, determination, and fortitude to continue to self-define and therefore to create the life that is uniquely your own.

Footnotes

[1] is a length of linen cloth bearing the negative image of a man. Some describe the image as depicting Jesus of Nazareth and believe the fabric is the burial shroud in which he was wrapped after crucifixion.

[2] Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., & Spark, G. (1973; 1984). Invisible loyalties: Reciprocity in intergenerational family therapy. New York: Harper & Row. (Second edition, New York: Brunner/Mazel).

References

https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/general/understanding-how-liminal-space-is- different-from-other-places/

https://lindseyhoskins.com/the-visible-consequences-of-invisible-loyalties/

Trauma and Collective Field

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 19:02:23 GMT

I've noticed some interesting patterns and trends that are nearly running rampant…okay, more likely more visible than in the past.

The first pattern are the number of podcasts and virtual conference that are discussing trauma.

SAND: https://science andnonduality.com is a good example of gathering the best or known from around the world that have combined science and spiritual practices.
Iya Affo: https://healhistoricaltrauma.com/iya-affo and
Thomas Huebl: https://www.thomashuebl.net .,
Systemic Constellations https://www.nasconstellations.org/what-are-systemic-constellations.html

There are many more that can be looked up on google.

The second pattern that seems directly related to the above is the amount of fear being released into the collective energy field. Much of this is likely the result of the ongoing economic and political crises throughout the world. I also wonder if the increased advocacy and practice of various trauma release processes might be bringing it directly into the Individual which triggers releases. The reason I wonder is the number of people communicating about fear, and its capacity to be all consuming in the moment has increased. Many are indicating spontaneous trauma memories without recognized triggers. I could consider that this is natural and an opportunity to release the fear attachment from the past; and it seems more.

I wonder If we are at the precipice of a massive shift In consciousness where the fear crescendos into a deeper awareness and creation of more conscious presence. I wonder.

Recently, I facilitated a workshop for certified healing presence practitioners. We developed a series of rituals on the medicine wheel to acknowledge the essence of our ancestors as an act of acknowledging our birthplace within this lineage, while claiming our birthright…a ritual birth rite.

The entire experience was designed through our presence in the moment to acknowledge these collective energies surrounding our existence while granting our right to be the internal authority of our existence.

We closed the process with a constellation of how the Individuals energetically create and surrounds the collective presence of this group. Interestingly, each ritual led to an eventual sense of understanding and ease. A deep knowing of how one fits into the collective, how one has the right to fully be the person they are without the burdens of the family constellation, for example, and a sense of being In the certified community. Presence in the moment is the point of power.

Overall, the experience revealed a sense of belonging, a natural order within the family system, and a return to a fair exchange of energies between the ancestors and the individuals…yours versus mine. Pondering surfaced a new awareness surrounding understanding epigenetics, the passing of family disruptions from one generation to the next, and a sense of selfness. I wonder how much fear and overwhelm has left these individuals personally as well from their lineage.

Some Thoughts…

Whether you have experienced any of these patterns of sudden trauma release, overwhelming fear, or some other form of overwhelm or not, it is also a good time to ensure daily presence. Walks in nature, including tree hugging :-) are always a good idea. Daily moments of quiet to breath in a beautiful sky, a precious moment to actually see into the eyes of the ones you love, and some form of daily meditation on a regular basis.

An interesting ritual to release fear is to get a jar with a lid. Fill the jar with fresh salt water daily. Each time any of these uncomfortable feelings arise, open the lid, and direct the fear or overwhelm into the jar. You can think or say the words or blow the fear into the jar. Close the lid and move on in your day. You can repeat as often as needed. At night, release the fear or overwhelm now locked into the salt water by poring down the sink. The water will not release the contained fear.

There are many variations of this ritual such as using shungite in water or a quartz crystal. The shungite is a toxic energy absorber. The quartz is an energy purifier. Pouring out the water cleanses the stones however, if it supports you, rinse the stones under water.

Most importantly, all of the above are more successful if you are fully present to the moment and use focused attention on the purpose of the action. Focused attention is true desire to shift the energy without attachment to victimization…"I can't".

Deepening Presence

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 19:08:56 GMT

My recent work has focused on deepening my own understanding and ability to articulate how presence permeates or dissipates in each of our experiences. Generally, we experience through our emotional and psychological reactions. For example, in the diagram below we see the emotional process that is called urge surfing.

In time, we are able to distinguish other or more refined forms of understanding through staying sufficiently present to sense beyond the day-to-day processes. For example, as we track or witness ourselves, we become more aware that many experiences have a flavor, such as fear is often reported as tasting like metal.

Moreover, as we refine our awareness, we can apply our degree of presence to any emotional or psychological reaction to determine how to reshape the past into a more satisfying present. For example, in the revised diagram, we can see that presence as an experience provide insights and therefore choices to move from reactive to proactive.

As such, we can realize that when we feel triggered, there is an immediate move to disconnect from being our presence to what is present in the moment, and we get lost in a memory. As we allow the emotional and psychological energies to rise, we break from our presence. At the peak of the urge (emotional or psychological reaction), we are absent from ourselves in the moment…lost from ourselves, and steeped fully in the triggering memories, often referred to as the Pain or Fear body. As the energy dissipates, there is a fading of the original energetic burst that leaves us bridging a memory and this moment as we slowly return to ourselves. We are literally trying to climb out of the pain-body created in our past.

As we develop more presence through conscious awareness, our capacity to recognize triggering moments increases as does our capacity to track and witness and choose to change the pattern and become our fully present self.

For practice, every time you have a reaction, ask is this real or is this Memorex. If it is Memorex, a memory seeking healing in this moment, focus on being present and not consumed by the memory.

Place Where The Light Enters

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 18:19:45 GMT

Lee Holden recently wrote, "If you've ever gone through a healing process, perhaps this quote from Rumi resonates with you…”

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

Holden provides insight through this story.

Last year I went out to a show. A homeless man stopped me and asked for change… and instead of giving him change, I offered to buy him some food.

The man accepted.

While we were waiting for the food, the man asked me, "Do you believe in God?"

"Yes, and no. I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. I believe there is a Higher Power, but I don't follow a specific religion,” I replied.

The man responded, "Ah yes, I heard once that religion is for people who are afraid of Hell... spirituality is for those who have been there."

If you've been to Hell, so to speak, you know that your wounds... the very hurts you might hide from the world... are the very places where the Light [seeks to] enter you.

The wound is where you can connect to that Higher Power (whatever that is for you).

Healing is not a destination.

Health is not a destination.

To be healed is to be whole.

It is to remember your essential wholeness... including the wounds, the pains, and the injustices you've experienced.

To heal is to accept your wounds as essential parts of who you are."

When I apply Holden’s words to Healing Presence, and if I accept Holden’s definition of hell, it is an experience frozen in the past. As we know in our healing communities, it is in this present moment with Presence, we heal ourselves and support others to do the same. It is in Presence where we are present to ourselves and therefore enables the wounded experience to heal. We are not our experiences; we are the essence of all of our experiences that enables us to form our Presence. If we form this presence from the wounded past, we continue to suffer. However, if we consciously form our Presence in the present moment, the only reality, we free ourselves to fully be who we are.

I want to share the below video with you for inspiration on presence and healing. ( Green Renaissance .)

I wish you a Happy Solstice where the Darkness begins to wane, and the Light brings more awareness and presence.

Silence

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 20:08:55 GMT

We chat often about prayers, meditation, walks in the woods to support developing a natural state of Stillness.

Most spiritual traditions suggest in the silence we find ourselves. For example, Eckhart Tolle says “The equivalent of external noise is the inner noise of thinking. The equivalent of external silence is inner stillness.”

Tied to inner stillness, the HeartMath Institute uses heart-centered meditation and breathwork to create this stillness. We call this inner stillness your healing presence…totally present to the moment….the point of all power for all creation. As we explore it further we find that the stillness is the voice of the soul. Caroline Myss adds “The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.”

My recent exploration of silence was to look at how we experience silence as a way to create awareness of the different types and uses of silence as a condition (or not) for healingpresence to evolve and emerge.

To understand how we use silence, we need a clear sense of the unspoken and general types. There are three types that are easily identified:

Obstructive Silence
Connected Silence
Intimate Silence

Obstructive Silence (of the Mind)

Silence is not always beneficial and can be used to obscure as well as to reveal, i.e. the silent treatment of a family.

If verbal dialogue is our primary means of connecting (making contact), silence can be a means of avoidance or reducing connection with another. For example, a response of silence from another can be the trigger for shame, engendering a rapid withdrawal from connecting or making contact. Silence is interpreted in these situations as an active refusal to speak, a rupture in the relational field, and an obstacle to interpersonal contact. A more subtle form of obstructive silence is the social taboo; subjects never spoken of or avoided.

Connected Silence

An enriching silence is the sharing of presence, uninterrupted by words. It is the silence of being present to oneself, by oneself, and of the deepening awareness and exploration of our own being through solitary silence. We often find this in meditation, walking in nature and on occasion with animals or people.

Intimate Silence

When deep silence takes place between intimates (bound by either love or hate) there is no need to exchange information. They stand together in an abiding silence, which is sometimes interrupted by words. This form of silence communicates more than the words do. From a healing den perspective, it is the energetic exchange driven by emotions and the mind.

Quieting of the Mind to Become Present

The silence of avoidance is often about not acknowledging what is present, while connected silence is the silence of presence; of being fully in the here and now. In The Healing Relationship, Richard Hycner and Lynne Jacobs (1995), stress that Presence is more than a ‘quality,’ it is an existential stance: bringing all of myself to bear in this moment with this person. Therefore, genuine connectedness is a “turning towards” the other, with one’s whole being, and a turning away from personal concerns that are separate from this occasion and this person…a quieting of the mind and opening of the heart.

Being present in silence, however, requires an awareness of being embodied, and a connection to the solid actuality of the physical selves as well as a genuine responding to the other. It thereby seems as if genuine responding to the other is dependent on our connection to ourselves, our self-support as the silence.

Silence becomes the focus that allows us to become attuned to that which lies beyond our own chattering thoughts.

The turn towards the silence is also to become empty, open to new perceptions. It is to turn away from our fixed understandings and reified self-image and enter a transition state full of dynamic possibility. Such is known as a liminal state - a state devoid of preconceptions; of surrender, with total presence, on the threshold of something new.

Silence takes courage and involves a willingness to let go of our pre-configured interactions and to enter a liminal state where a new state of connectedness can emerge.

Stillness is where we become conscious of the interconnectedness of our being, of the subtle pre-awareness of our lived body and of the undiscovered potential of our being radically alien to our own conscious self.

Connected silence is to be present to the ‘nothingness’ or ‘void’ forming all perception, which contains all that is in pre-awareness, the unthought known, and the unrealized potential of our existence.

Silence as Presence

As I explored silence, I realized that the experience of silence is directly tied to our capacity to stay present. Ina certain way, silence is a container for conscious presence or conscious absence (we lose ourselves). In this sense, silence is the space between that either supports our presence or sustains our absence.

If we have found strength and curiosity in silence, it becomes comforting and supportive of our presence. If we have found fear induced by the mind, silence becomes aberrant and painful.

In the diagram below, there are four quadrants that suggest an experience of silence. For example, we can be intimate, captured, lost, or observing within silence.

Your Thoughts

As you review the w ords above, write your thoughts and send them to me in comments, questions, or disagreement. These are my initial thoughts to deepen our understanding of the experience of stillness and silence.

Thoughts on the Seven Directions

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 20:48:55 GMT

As the year winds down, I find myself drawn into various writings on mysticism. From this reading, I’ve found some inspiration to look more deeply into universal symbols and structures of prayers and the art of connecting to one’s soul.

Prayer Structures

Connecting to one’s Soul… it is a lost art of allowing the heart to speak for itself.

Speaking from the mind or memory is proof of the numerous compromises of one’s SELF that evolved over the years for work, family and relationship. Prayer vocalizes the daily intent of your deepest self to be fully present to yourself, your life and your family.

Symbols such as medicine wheels and six pointed stars like the Star of David have been used for spiritual practices for many millennium. The symbols create an image for understanding the sacred energies and how they fit together as path to awakening, enlightenment, etc. The power for deep healing is based on the capacity of the symbol to create a container for one to be fully present and embrace the point of true power to heal in the immediate moment.

The medicine wheel in physical form is an energetic container used in most spiritual traditions for thousands of years in one form or another. For example, Invoking the four archangels. More recent uses in psychology are Jung’s quadrinity model, Weir-Perry’s Lord of the Four Quarters, etc.

All variations of the medicine wheel, star of David or the various invocation of energies gain its transformative energy from human presence, which is why presence and is what opens the sacred center that is within our individual hearts.

Many Paths

The most interesting aspect of the various spiritual traditions is how many have variation of the seven direction invocational prayer which is the road maps to one’s spiritual awakening. For example, many traditions acknowledge the four elements, the four sacred direction. Many native American prayers while walking the medicine wheel invoke the four elements then add the unifying energy of the spirit above, below and then within. Early Judeo-Christian ceremonies found in the works of the Essenes invoked the four archangels, the protectors of the four sacred elements prior to invoking the sacred feminine of Shekinah (shehkinah) and Yeshua as the alchemical process of invoking the original Spark, Christ Light, eternal life force, hiddendeep within each person heart.

For example, by devotedly conducting the below invocation, you summon the four archangel energies, Mikael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael as well as ask Shekinah, God’s divine feminine energies to unite with Yeshua, the divine masculine energies, to reveal the Christ light within your heart integrating the Christ light into your human being.

At center of the human energy field is the body and what we call cellular memory (Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger, van der Kolk, Bessel (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin.) Next is the reactive emotional energies that form the pain and fear body (Levine & Tolle, Power of Now). The pain/fear bodies form a protector energy to prevent releasing the frozen memories (Tolle, Power of Now and Donald Kalsched, the Inner World of Trauma). The Mental body is the creative adjustments of the mind to move and seal the piercing or traumatic events (Gestalt) out of awareness as well as create bipolar meaning making structures that support forgetting who we are and adapt an earth bound identity.

The Spiritual body is often the dissociative state that seeks wholeness but is not adequately integrated with the physical body. Van der Kolk, Bessel. Instead of focusing on any of these earth-bound bodies, the focus of the medicine wheel, Star of David ceremonies or the various invocation of integration prayers, is on thawing the frozen or fossilized ways of making meaning that is floating within our self-created energy field. This results in releasing the frozen experiences that led to meaning making adventures. Once cleared, a re-membering begins to occur that can lead to the re-union of the divine feminine and divine masculine from whence we were created. Once this occurs, the illusions created in our creatively adaptive meaning making processes are dissolved and we are able to experience our Being in human form.

Mayan Prayer to the Seven Directions

https://thejewelledsky.com/articles/mayan-prayer/

Sources

Whitney Hopler Updated December 23, 2018 https://www.learnreligions.com/archangels-of-four-elements-in-nature-124411 .

Ø Muhl, Lars. The Law of Light Watkins Media. Kindle Edition.
Ø Muhl, Lars. The Gate of Light Watkins Media. Kindle Edition.
Ø Muhl, Lars, The Seer, Watkins Media, Kindle Edition
Ø Muhl, Lars. The Magdalene (The O Manuscript) Watkins Media. Kindle Edition.
Ø Muhl, Lars, The Grail, Watkins Media, Kindle Edition.

https://thejewelledsky.com/articles/mayan-prayer/

Archetypes of Initiation

Mon, 06 Jul 2020 20:54:43 GMT

The Coronavirus, aka Covid 19, is an energetic cauldron. If you will, it is global transformation, often referred to as a collective initiation. Like all initiations, we do not expect them or most often do not volunteer, at least, consciously to participate. Rather, an initiation, drags us deep into the collective (and/or personal) unconscious to create a transformative reframing of reality. All self-created constructs in the form of values, biases, preconceived notions, and general misdirections from the core of or ourselves and the collective humanity are brought forth.

For those afraid of such revelations about themselves and their participation in the larger collective, they will tend to follow Leon Festinger’s three rules of integrating new ideas. We either accept, reject/destroy, or ignore the energetic shifts seeking conscious awareness.

If we look at the present disposition of the world, there are many initiatory energies simultaneously. The virus has people either accepting medical guidance through wearing masks, using social distancing, and relearning or learning basic hygiene. Those ignoring the medical facts simply go to bars, beaches, and other social venues without any preventive actions. Those rejecting the increasing numbers of confirmed cases, hospitalizations, and deaths tend to be belligerent including demonstrating against the information by suggesting freedoms are being infringed upon. The latter two responses increase the spread of the disease until contracting or transmitting to family….to their personal embarrassment.

In the table below, Stages of Initiation, we can see from v arious experts that the virus triggered an initiation. Please take the time to review the table to begin to remember your own experiences that support we are in an individual and global awakening (or initiation). Consider times in your life where you became something deeper and different yet more yourself.

As we explore the situation, we can see that the virus has triggered an economic crisis for many as unemployment has triggered further self-examination in perceptions of the various roles one has become, whether as provider, parents, child, etc. Worry fills the pores triggering emotions of safety, fear, etc. beyond what the virus has imbued into us. This worry overrides the fear of the virus with anger for many as their sense of success or making a living might override common sense to stay home or to be more careful.

Finally, we are faced with a crisis in humanity. We now see disparity in human treatment through race, religion, income, sexual orientation, etc. Our inbred biases are choking off our perceptions in many cases so stark reality such as violence in multiple forms are in our face and in living color.

I suspect you are now beginning to get the gist of the economic, health, and social pandemic. We are in a big cauldron being forced to self-exam our sense of self, our sense of a country, and our sense humanity.

From a healing presence perspective, if we view the present series of simultaneous pandemics from an energetic pattern, the initiatory process has us feeling like we are drowning or coping by staying above the fray or struggling to be fully present. Try asking yourself is this my energy, my memories, or the collective in transition.

If our energy feels disrupted, creating anxiety, we are attempting to clear the lens of perception to see more clearly. If we are sluggish and slightly depressed, it might be the collective energy, something that we do not wish to see or experience, or some experiences from the past seeking our awareness. Regardless, the reactive moods and emotions are often suggestions to ask what wants to be seen and altered to create more coherence within our conscious self. Meditation becomes even more important as our answers to the initiation lie deep within ourselves and the collective unconscious.

Rumi centuries ago, reminded us that we live through much of life as if we are rote, semi-awake individuals. We tell a story that we are present while living within the self-created social constructs of who we are supposed to be in our various roles and self-perceptions. I think it is time to wake up while in this transformative initiation and give yourself permission to more fully be the person who resides deep within you, partially hiddenfrom yourself and others for fear of harm, rejection, or acceptance.

If our energy feels disrupted, creating anxiety, we are attempting to clear the lens of perception to see more clearly. If we are sluggish and slightly depressed, it might be the collective energy or that we do not wish to see or experience something seeking our awareness. Regardless of the experience, the reactive moods and emotions are often suggestions to ask what wants to be seen and altered to create more coherence within our conscious self.

As a healing presence, say “yes” to be present to yourself, to the world, and provide your essence energetically to what we are becoming. Say “thank you” and “goodbye” to your charred self and walk in your healing presence.

The Seven Essene Mirrors: How We Attract Each Other

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 20:29:46 GMT

The Covid 19 virus has created a perfect mirror for all fears, fragmented parts, lost dreams and hopes to be projected onto the world surrounding us. As a perfect mirror, we are facing ourselves in what we fear most or were never able to complete on our own prior to this time. Hence, we are at a critical place in our life to take the opportunity to complete a lot of personal development or further ingrain our Incomplete, fragmented, and often scary moments in life…frozen in our minds. I encourage to read about the seven mirrors to begin your healing process.

The Essenes Mirrors

The Essenes are an ancient brotherhood of divinely illuminated beings who believed they were here to share enlightenment with the planet. They were strong advocates of self-mastery and heart-based living. They determined that each moment of our life, the reality of our internal truth (what we have become) is mirrored to us by the actions, the choices, and the language of those around us. In many respects it all the pieces of unfinished hopes, dreams, and experiences that we do not know how to bring to closure and Integration. So, we project these incomplete experiences onto the world around use until we can see the interactions are a mirror of our internal world.

Why Do We Have These Mirrors?

We are creating all the time, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. The Essene mirrors are constantly letting us know what we are creating and are endlessly reflecting this back to us.

When we emit a negative vibration, the universe shows up for us to support our learning. It gently reminds us what is going on inside of us, to make us conscious of our creation. When we do not wake up to this and become conscious, the mirror effect increases in its intensity. This would be analogous to failing a test at school and having to re-take a more challenging version of the original.

The universe does not discriminate upon what it mirrors to us. It is unconditionally reflecting to you exactly whatever it is that you are projecting outwards – positive or negative. Unconditional existence does not pity, it respects.

When you are emitting negativity, universal energies unconditionally stand by you and projects these energies onto the external world to challenge you to see your negative energies via the mirror effect.

The source of all energy unconditionally shows you what you are projecting outward, for your growth and expansion to occur.

What are the 7 Mirrors?

We live in an Action-Reaction World where Consciousness Creates Reality. We manifest and magnetize people and events into our lives according to our consciousness. The Seven Essene mirrors is a way of understanding how this process works.

In the diagram below, you can see how we use other people and experiences to mirror our turbulent and sometime tumultuous inner world.

In todays' Covid 19 environment, the 7 mirrors are running rampant for many people. High and unusual reactions are generally a triggered projection conveniently put onto someone else to break the mirror and start the healing (dissolution) of the fragmented or unclaimed part of ourselves.

Remember:

Every mirroring event is an opportunity to recognize yourself more clearly. Pain or frustration are here to guide us to the fragmented part of ourselves that are calling for integration.
When you are on auto-pilot, you are not consciously creating. Whatever programs you picked up on in childhood are instead creating on your behalf. The more intentionality we can bring to each moment, decision, emotion and thought, the more we flow with the current of life.
The more aware we are in each moment, the easier it becomes to recognize the lessons that the universe is bringing to us.
The mirrors become more and more subtle and complicated as time goes on.
The numerical ladder of mirrors tends to follow a more difficult path, that is, the unfinished parental issues are typically a smeared mirror that is exceedingly difficult to own. Hence, it is placed on someone else, often with self-righteous justification.
Allow for perfection in the imperfections of life.

Questions to Consider:

What do I see in you that is really a part of me in this moment?
Is it pleasant or not?
How can I reveal me in you?
What is this person supporting me to see about myself?
especially self-righteous
or judgmental reactions towards them?
What is seen in this person that I have lost, given away or stolen from me that leads to such a strong, energetic reaction (positive or negative)?
What about this person feels like a repeating pattern of internal reaction that wants to take over my conscious presence such as--?
old addictive behaviors
over-compensating behaviors such as rage
How am I mimicking my parents from old imprinted behaviors?
Remember how it felt when done unto you!
Is it time to release those imprinted energies?
What am I afraid to know or be-
That I am good enough
That I can trust my true self and other
That I can allow myself to connect with others
That I belong where I allow others to connect with me
That people will love me even if they truly know me.
How do I tell stories so that I do not have to stay present to myself or others
Use self-righteousness to blame another person or justify having berated them
Use anger to fend off feeling the pain buried un the projected events.
(Bonus) How am I contributing to my being happy or unhappy?
(Bonus) How do I know/experience when I have succeeded or failed at something in life?
(Bonus) When will I give myself permission to be the person I am, instead of the person I am supposed to be?

References

http://gollihughfamily.blogspot.com/2012/07/seven-essene-mirrors.html#.XMDfV-hKioA
http://journey-to-my-soul.blogspot.com/p/7-essene-mirrors.html

https://youtu.be/U_JvvmnMork

Gregg Braden 2 hour explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiBsczafvaA

Understanding Meditation and Mindfulness Equals Presence

Tue, 12 May 2020 21:17:30 GMT

The Healing Den constantly advocates being mindful and taking the time to meditate for your well-being while strengthening your healing presence. An interesting further development is that as this practice evolves, it develops and supports a deeper sense of understanding oneself and others appears. A frequent comment is “I feel more me, more present to myself.”

The cultivation of mindfulness has roots in Buddhism, but most religions include some type of prayer or meditation technique that helps shift your thoughts away from your usual preoccupations toward an appreciation of the moment and a larger perspective on life. Rituals and liturgies are often used to sway the mind into silence and the person into a sense of the sacred.

Ellen Langer, a Harvard professor defined mindfulness as "the simple act of noticing new things." More specifically, mindfulness is a type of meditation that focuses on being intensely aware of what you're sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress[1].

Mindfulness and Well-being. Meditation can help you experience thoughts and emotions with greater balance and acceptance. It has been shown to improve attention.

Increasing your capacity for mindfulness supports many attitudes that contribute to a satisfied life. Being mindful makes it easier to savor the pleasures in life as they occur, helps you become fully engaged in activities, and creates a greater capacity to deal with adverse events. By focusing on the here and now, many people who practice mindfulness find that they are less likely to get caught up in worries about the future or regrets over the past, are less preoccupied with concerns about success and self-esteem, and are better able to form deep connections with others.

Mindfulness and Physical health. If greater well-being isn’t enough of an incentive, scientists have discovered that mindfulness techniques help improve physical health in several ways. Mindfulness can: h elp relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, and alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties.

Mindfulness and Mental health. In recent years, psychotherapists have turned to mindfulness meditation as an important element in the treatment of several problems, including depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, couples’ conflicts, anxiety disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

How does mindfulness work?

Some experts believe that mindfulness works, in part, by helping people to accept their experiences—including painful emotions—rather than react to them with aversion and avoidance. This acceptance tends to come from the dissolution of tightly held beliefs that constrict perceptions into binary perceptions of good-bad, right, wrong, etc. The expanded awareness occurs during meditation (mindfulness) in a transforming process where the either/or paradigm expands into a both/and perception until it crescendos into a more than awareness of what is or could bethe reality one is experiencing. Judgments against oneself and other persons are revealed as antiquated and not applicable to the present moment. The binary rules of reality dissolve.

In addition, it tends to reduce irrational, maladaptive, and self-defeating thoughts by revealing their emotional charge fixed by past events that are no longer true. In other words, it is like a perfect recording of the past is spliced into the present perceptions as if the past event is happening in this present moment. Suddenly, a surreal recognition of what has been perceived as real is now understood as a self-created perception of reality. One has been living in a world of Memorex; that is unfinished critical and unexpected events including trauma, biases, beliefs and misbehavior, cultural and family values, dynamics, and misbehaviors, and life experiences that have been constructed as meaning making for self-protection that often is frozen in a moment in time.

Mindfulness Techniques

There is more than one way to practice mindfulness, but the goal of any mindfulness technique is to achieve a state of alert, focused relaxation by deliberately paying attention to thoughts and sensations without judgment. This allows the mind to refocus on the present moment. All mindfulness techniques are a form of meditation. All mindfulness and mediation require a disciplined structure to grant oneself permission at the deepest level to invest time into your own personal development and growth.

General Techniques

Basic mindfulness meditation. Sit quietly and focus on your natural breathing or on a word or “mantra” that you repeat silently. Allow thoughts to come and go without judgment and return to your focus on breath or mantra. The most well-known mantra is focusing on feeling and vocalizing OM.

Live in the moment. Try to intentionally bring an open, accepting and discerning attention to everything you do. Find joy in simple pleasures. This requires the mindfulness to remember to be mindful Another way to describe this process is to learn to participate and witness oneself by shifting your focus and attention between acting or doing and observing.

Accept yourself. Treat yourself the way you would treat a good friend. Suspension of the monkey mind, Council of lunatics, Voices in the background,and whatever else distracts you is imperative. Mindfulness is being able to acknowledge the voices, watch them and let them go…a first step in regaining control of your thoughts.

Focus on your breathing. When you have negative thoughts, try to sit down, take a deep breath and close your eyes. Focus on your breath as it moves in and out of your body. Sitting and breathing for even just a minute can help. Recognize the voices in your head are only recordings that once served now prevent your being your full self.

Body sensations. Notice subtle body sensations such as an itch or tingling without judgment and let them pass. Notice each part of your body in succession from head to toe. Reframe from fixing any discomfort and assume it is simply energy frozen in the cellular tissues that are seeking release[2]. See sample mediations later in this article.

Sensory. Notice sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. Name them “sight,” “sound,” “smell,” “taste,” or “touch” without judgment and let them go. This ties directly to the prior paragraph. Much of life has taught us to numb our senses except in very specific situation. Senses have memories just as much as cellular tissue and our mind. The difference between the mind and the sensory memories is the latter release energy and restore full body sensations. As a child, these full body sensations could be overwhelming or discouraged and therefore become frozen. Mindfulness sees each of the irritating or unaccepted sensations as opportunities for reclaiming one’s right to a full experience of life.

Emotions. Allow emotions to be present without judgment. Practice a steady and relaxed naming of emotions: “joy,” “anger,” “frustration.” Accept the presence of the emotions without judgment and let them go. For example, if we look at emotions as water that can freeze, flow, turn to vapor, we understand all the variants are still simply expressions of water. In the human experience, all emotional variants are expressions of internal experiences. When we dispense with judgements of “good or bad”, and “pleasant and unpleasant” we derive an entirely new awareness of satisfying expressions that simply need to become mature expressions of each emotion.

Urge surfing. Cope with cravings (for addictive substances or behaviors) and allow them to pass. Notice how your body feels as the craving enters. Replace the wish for the craving to go away with the certain knowledge that it will subside. Addictions in the forms of drugs, sugar, alcohol, sex, violence, are like 3 dimensional memories that take control of one’s sense of self and replaces it with a creative adjustment to survive some overwhelming deficiency in one’s experience, often to survive the power of the moment. A concerted effort is needed to re-establish self-control and therefore self-efficacy to be able to subordinate one’s self to the addiction or to create a life without the need to not exist[3]. Mindfulness and meditation can support re-establish control over these traumatic and addictive impulses.

Mindfulness Meditation and Other Practices

Mindfulness can be cultivated through mindfulness meditation, a systematic method of focusing your attention. You can learn to meditate on your own, following instructions in books or on tape. However, you may benefit from the support of an instructor or group to answer questions and help you stay motivated. Look for someone using meditation in a way compatible with your beliefs and goals.

Getting Started On Your Own

Some types of meditation primarily involve concentration—repeating a phrase or focusing on the sensation of breathing, allowing the parade of thoughts that inevitably arise to come and go. Concentration meditation techniques, as well as other activities such as tai chi or yoga, can induce the well-known relaxation response, which is very valuable in reducing the body’s response to stress.

You can also try more structured mindfulness exercises, such as:

Body scan meditation. Lie on your back with your legs extended and arms at your sides, palms facing up. Focus your attention slowly and deliberately on each part of your body, in order, from toe to head or head to toe. Be aware of any sensations, emotions or thoughts associated with each part of your body. From a healing presence, perspective, it is supportive to linger at every area of the body until you notice a shift of energy or change in temperature. This is awakening consciousness in the cellular memory and/or bringing more life force to that area.

Sitting meditation. Sit comfortably with your back straight, feet flat on the floor and hands in your lap. Breathing through your nose, focus on your breath moving in and out of your body. If physical sensations or thoughts interrupt your meditation, note the experience and then return your focus to your breath. Similar to the body scan, the focus is on your experience of breathing. Often, you will quickly drift to a series of thoughts that distract the process. Regain control of your mind and continue to breath.

Walking meditation. Einstein was known for walking meditations in his office and amongst nature. Similarly, labyrinths and medicine wheels were walking forms of medications that preoccupied the mind with focus on the ritualistic structure. Therein the mind quiets and a window opens for a new knowing.

Find a quiet place 10 to 20 feet in length and begin to walk slowly. Focus on the experience of walking, being aware of the sensations of standing and the subtle movements that keep your balance. When you reach the end of your path, turn and continue walking, maintaining awareness of your sensations. Focus on the walk, step by step.

For example, years ago, a Cheyenne elder, we will call Chief Joseph, and I met at a Sundance in South Dakota. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. He asked if I would perform a healing ceremony on his behalf. I agreed. The Sundance was deep in a narrow valley on the Rose Bud reservation. On one side of the rising hills there was a medicine wheel that was quite old. We met at the bottom of the hill. Joseph told he me could not climb the hill to the medicine wheel because of his limited breathing capacity. I looked at him and said we were not going to climb the hill; we were going to pray ourselves to the top by putting one foot in front of the other in gratitude. Our heads were focused on our feet. We scaled the hill without hesitation focused on walking.

Concentration

Mindfulness meditation builds upon concentration practices. Here’s how it works:

Go with the flow. In mindfulness meditation, once you establish concentration, you observe the flow of inner thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations without judging them as good or bad. Easier said than done as most know. This requires disciplined awareness to not became a captive of your thoughts and to simply observe them. I often use humor and laugh at myself for falling into my self-created thought trap; then I start over.

Pay attention and Know You are in Control of Your Experience. As noted in the prior paragraph, you will notice external sensations such as sounds, sights, and touch that make up your moment-to-moment experience. The challenge is not to latch onto a particular or familiar idea, emotion, or sensation, or to get caught in thinking about the past or the future. Instead, you watch what comes and goes in your mind and discover which mental habits produce a feeling of well-being or suffering.

Stay with it. At times, this process may not seem relaxing at all, in fact, may find it irritating and so uncomfortable they immediately stop. Repatterning oneself requires commitment and discipline and over time it will lead to greater happiness and self-awareness as you become comfortable with a wider and wider range of your experiences.

Practice Acceptance

Above all, mindfulness practice involves accepting whatever arises in your awareness at each moment. It involves being open to the experience without judgement, like being kind and forgiving toward yourself.

Some tips to keep in mind:

Gently redirect. If your mind wanders into planning, daydreaming, or criticism, notice where it has gone and gently redirect it to sensations in the present.

Try and try again. If you miss your intended meditation session, simply start again.

By practicing accepting your experience during meditation, it becomes easier to accept whatever comes your way during the rest of your day.

Cultivate Mindfulness Informally

In addition to formal meditation, you can also cultivate mindfulness informally by focusing your attention on your moment-to-moment sensations during everyday activities. This is done by single-tasking—doing one thing at a time and giving it your full attention. As you shower, brush your teeth, pet the dog, drive to work or eat an apple, slow down the process and be fully present as it unfolds and involves all of your senses. Notice the scent of the shampoo or soap instead of the random thoughts in your mind. Notice the taste of breakfast instead of chomping and reading the paper. Notice your experience throughout the day.

Mindfulness Exercises

If mindfulness meditation appeals to you, going to a class or listening to a meditation tape can be a good way to start. In the meantime, here are two mindfulness exercises you can try on your own.

Basic Mindfulness Meditation. This exercise teaches basic mindfulness meditation.

Sit on a straight-backed chair or cross-legged on the floor.
Focus on an aspect of your breathing, such as the sensations of air flowing into your nostrils and out of your mouth, or your belly rising and falling as you inhale and exhale.
Once you’ve narrowed your concentration in this way, begin to widen your focus. Become aware of sounds, sensations, and your ideas.
Embrace and consider each thought or sensation without judging it good or bad. If your mind starts to race, return your focus to your breathing. Then expand your awareness again.

Learning to Stay in the Present. A less formal approach to mindfulness can also help you to stay in the present and fully participate in your life. You can choose any task or moment to practice informal mindfulness, whether you are eating, showering, walking, touching a partner, or playing with a child or grandchild. Attending to these points will help:

Start by bringing your attention to the sensations in your body
Breathe in through your nose, allowing the air downward into your lower belly. Let your abdomen expand fully.
Now breathe out through your mouth
Notice the sensations of each inhalation and exhalation
Proceed with the task at hand slowly and with full deliberation
Engage your senses fully. Notice each sight, touch, and sound so that you savor every sensation.
When you notice that your mind has wandered from the task at hand, gently bring your attention back to the sensations of the moment.

Invest in Yourself. Aim to practice mindfulness every day for about six months. Over time, you might find that mindfulness becomes effortless. Think of it as a commitment to reconnecting with and nurturing yourself

The effects of mindfulness meditation tend to be dose-related — the more you do, the more effect it usually has. Most people find that it takes at least 20 minutes for the mind to begin to settle, so this is a reasonable way to start. If you’re ready for a more serious commitment, Jon Kabat-Zinn recommends 45 minutes of meditation at least six days a week. But you can get started by practicing the techniques described here for shorter periods.

Guided Meditations. Some people find it easier to start with guided meditations and brain frequency entrainment, support the brain through sound to move to a deeper state of consciousness. Below are several links to guided meditations and my shamanic drumming recording for those that meditate with drums.

iAwake. For those that seek more advanced support, iAwake provides excellent products. There is a discount for all Healing Den affiliates. Go to iAwake.com to see catalog and get 25% Discount for All Purchases. Use Promo Code: CLEVELAND-IAWAKE-25

Samadhi Guided Mediations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZGqaDSOYxI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7WCK5DK4sw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ded5S6ETePw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZBJJrOJOKY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0pTRLaDpgU

Healing Tones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go99WqXWGgk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY4MVNO74y4

Shamanic Drumming

https://vimeo.com/414605290/1d91eab3d0

http://www.onewhitehorsestanding.com/resources/audio/herb-drumming.mp3

Footnotes

[1]Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder and former director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, demonstrated that practicing mindfulness can bring improvements in both physical and psychological symptoms as well as positive changes in health, attitudes, and behaviors.

[2]Peter Levine in Taming the Tiger suggested that we freeze moments in time in our cellular tissues https://traumahealing.org/

[3]Addictions and trauma are a form of dissociation that makes the day-to-day person become invisible while the creative adjustment, an illusory sense of self takes control. This is not to diminish the power of trauma or addiction, however it is to say that to overcome them, requires disciplined mindfulness often found in meditation.

Sources

· Positive Psychology: Harnessing the Power of Happiness, Personal Strength, and Mindfulness , a special health report published by Harvard Health Publishing.

· https://www.helpguide.org/harvard/benefits-of-mindfulness.htm

· https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/mindfulness-exercises/art-20046356

References

Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Mindfulness Meditation for Everyday Life. Piatkus, 1994. ISBN 0-7499-1422-X .
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. Hyperion Books , 1994. ISBN 1-4013-0778-7 .
Full catastrophe living: how to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation. Piatkus, 1996. ISBN 0-7499-1585-4 .
The Power of Meditation and Prayer, with Sogyal Rinpoche, Larry Dossey , Michael Toms. Hay House, 1997. ISBN 1-56170-423-7 .
Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness. Hyperion, 2006. ISBN 0-7868-8654-4 .
The mindful way through depression: freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness, by J. Mark G. Williams, John D. Teasdale, Zindel V. Segal, Jon Kabat-Zinn. Guilford Press , 2007. ISBN 1593851286 .
Arriving at Your Own Door. Piatkus Books, 2008. ISBN 0-7499-2861-1 .
Letting Everything Become Your Teacher: 100 Lessons in Mindfulness. Dell Publishing Company, 2009. ISBN 0-385-34323-X .
The Mind's Own Physician: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama on the Healing Power of Meditation, co-authored with Richard Davidson (New Harbinger, 2012) (based on the 13th Mind and Life Institute Dialogue in 2005).
Mindfulness for Beginners: reclaiming the present moment - and your life. Sounds True, Inc., 2012. ISBN 978-1-60407-753-7 .

Ellen J. Langer

Langer, Ellen J. (1989). Mindfulness . Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-52341-6 .
Langer, Ellen J. (1997). The Power of Mindful Learning . Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-33991-8 .
Langer, Ellen J. (2005). On Becoming an Artist . New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-45629-8 .
Langer, Ellen J. (2009). Counter clockwise: mindful health and the power of possibility . New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-50204-9 .

Daniel J Siegel, MD

The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience (New York: Guilford Press, 1999)
Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2003). Co-edited with Marion Solomon.
The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2007)
The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician's Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2010)
Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (New York: Bantam, 2010)
The Developing Mind, Second Edition: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (New York: Guilford Press, 2012). ISBN 978-1-4625-0390-2 .
Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2016)
Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence (New York: Tarcher Perigee, 2018).

Dreams

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 11:34:25 GMT

During times of crisis, there is an opportunity to develop your presence beyond your normal day-to-day experiences. During a crisis, people focus on moment-to-moment getting through the day or focus on what needs to be done to not only survive but to thrive if not during the crisis then in the aftermath. Somewhere in between are moments that can be liminal… changing the Internal meaning making neuro-pathways that program our daily activities. In other words, how we perceive and experience ourselves.

For example, crisis evokes the pain body or the fear body… survival mechanisms designed to avoid pain experienced in the past and disasters of our imagination of how reality could be worse than it is. Pain bodies are energy fields that surround emotional moments frozen in time. These bodies are activated in any situation that seems it might trigger a similar painful experience. Oddly, the pain bodies invoke pain or a sense of danger to keep us away from re-experiencing the original painful event. (Seems our brain and programming might need an upgrade. :-)

Similarly, we have fear-bodies that activate as a pre-emptive pulse of fear to prevent enacting or re-enacting something that creates a deep sense off dread or fear within us. For example, in many family dynamics, mature conversations between family members, whether it be parents or siblings and all of those configurations. The thought of having a meaningful conversation trigger fear that is often paralyzing.

If we are able to remain sufficiently present, to acknowledge we have been triggered, we begin to dissolve the pain and/or fear bodies that prevent dissolve the frozen momenta in time.

Liminal Space

Presence, being consciously aware in the moment of one's actions and reactions while experiencing them at the same time, is a doorway to liminality. Liminality is the space between. A liminal space is the consciously aware time/place between the 'what was' and the 'next' constructed sense of one’s self. It is a place of transition, waiting, and not knowing. Often, we get caught between excitement and anxiety because liminal space is where all internal transformation or transitions reside that can only take place in the present moment.

Dreams: Another Doorway

Dreams are another doorway into liminal space. During dream time, much of the logical day to mind is suspended or asleep. We can call it the ego, though I prefer to just call it the programmed daily mind. Interestingly, a lot of what occurs in dreams is playing out the unfinished business from waking time. Hence, during times of crisis we might find ourselves in a variety of catastrophic dreams that reveal deep seated pain, emotions and fear.

Pause and consider the dreams you have recently experienced while during the coronavirus. Pay particular attention to your emotions and feeling (sensations). Ask what these emotions and sensations are trying to complete.

Presence

With practice, we can train our mind to focus on the pain and fear body invocations whether awake or asleep and in dreamtime. Each reactive moment whether awake or asleep is a crack in the door to new awareness and healing. We can choose to open the door to the pain and fear or choose to acknowledge that it is unfinished business, a moment frozen in time seeking your here and now in the moment presence.

Playing catch with oneself is a way that I have used to remind myself to watch and catch each fleeting moment of pain or fear invocation. Presence enables me to see that an emotions or fear, like in playing catch, can come in a variety of pitches. Fast ball, knuckle ball, curve ball, sliders, etc are variation energy coming towards the batter. The batter either relaxes into seeing the nuances and prepares to hit the ball or only sees a moving target that often is swung at and missed, leaving the batter sullen and frustrated because prior strikeouts cloud the presence of the Individual. The latter chases ghosts where the one fully present plays baseball.

Dreams Records

Dream are moments of liminal time which close quickly as we all have experienced a profound dream only to lose It as we awaken. The awake, daily program mind, tends to erase our dreams unless we retrain it by recording dreams immediately using desire, intent and sheer will to remember and record. The issue to remember Is that remembering dreams is an act of practicing being fully present to the moment. Prior programing is changed, and it leads us to a greater sense of participation and presence in dreams and in daily life.

The above diagram capsulizes the concepts. Note that outside of our awareness are the unfinished or unconscious programming that is not integrated and creates the triggers for the pain and fear bodies. Unfinished critical and unexpected events including trauma, biases, beliefs and misbehavior, cultural and family values, dynamics, and misbehaviors, and life experiences float outside the ring of constructed meaning making for self-protection that often is frozen in a moment in time.

The Dream Practice of Presence

Upon waking from the dream, immediately write thoughts, notes, key words or a stream of images that comes from the dream. If possible, record sensations and emotions, insights, and sudden awareness. Frequently, we try so hard we close the dreaming mind and further awaken the daytime mind losing the details.

Try to relax and follow Rumi’s guidance “Don’t Go Back to Sleep.”

Remember: Every sensation or experience in the dream is a voice within yourself that seeks to be heard or an event that seeks satisfaction or completion. The mature adult in the present moment knows how to allow that voice to speak and be heard and the unfinished business from the past to completed by the wonderful person that you presently are. To support your process, the link below goes to a PDF dream form I created 30 years ago to support my dream development which I now know is to support my healing presence.

Bountiful Blessings,

Transitions

Sat, 04 Jan 2020 17:49:00 GMT

Healing practitioners from all methodologies often struggle with supporting clients after a major shift has occurred. There are several models for understanding these transitions. It is imperative from a Healing Den perspective that we remain fully present to the client's experience in support of their empowerment versus our being the expert.

I often share a model that can support their understanding. For example, in the semi-clinical context below we can see a model by Adams and Hopson that can be used with the client to make sense of what is happening (inside) to them as they struggle with changes or insights from the healing process.

Stages of Transition

The transition curve tracks the self-perceptions of competency during a major shift or change.

Stage 1: SHOCK

The initiation of any major change can throw a person into Shock. The person can appear in total surprise as if they have been disrupted from a trance. In extreme cases, panic and immobilization can occur. Typically, the perceived gap between expec tations and reality can lead to drop in confidence.

Stage 2: DENIAL

It is the natural reaction for most people to go into denial. Generally, it consists of a disbelief that the condition or situation is as “bad” as portrayed and/or a denial that any change is necessary. Often, the process involves some form of retreat to memories to create a sense of safety or to complete withdrawal. When retreat occurs, it can manifest a sense of false competence or even ‘blocking’ the new awareness. This suggest that their internal authority comprised of the courage and compassion to be fully present to the movement has not developed sufficiently. Support by being fully present to their process.

This can appear when someone believes that any outside support will be more of a nuisance than a supportive assistance. or, old stories take over suggesting a movement to the past or to the future to get out of the sense of anxiety. Stories of having been through worse or similar situations in the past are offered as evidence that the internal disruption or insights are temporary, and nothing needs to change. "Been there, done that."

Stage 3: AWARENESS

Awareness can occur once the fright/shock of the new reality settles in. This tends to be a soul-searching time where many individuals will begin to understand the limits of their own self-awareness. Some wonder how they could have been so blind to themselves . Identity crisis can develop as self-perceptions surrounding self-confidence, and self-competence are brought into question.

Stage 4: ACCEPTANCE

In stage Four, acceptance of the reality that change is necessary begins to evolve. Typically, 20% will grasp the need for change immediately, 60-70% will grasp the need for change with time and additional information, and 10-20% will never grasp that change is necessary. ‘Letting go’ of past comfortable habits and attitudes becomes a strained and disconcerting process because everything is questioned. The quicker the acceptance and shift to a learning perception, the more likely for a successful transition for the individual.

If the individual organization does not fully embrace the reality of the situation, it will show-up in the next stage when the actual change begins to occur.

Stage 5: EXPERIMENTATION/’PRAXIS’

The actual change to a new internal organization and therefore self-perception begins in this stage. New approaches and skills are initia ted. People adopt a learning mode of thinking and begin to practice trying to do things differently. "Living alone". "Living with". Wondering.

Frustration can be triggered as new forms of feedback is generally resulting in both success and failure as the new processes are tried on. The Knowing-Doing Gap tends to surface as the person might know the new way of being (living), but struggle doing it until the new ways of being are habitualized.

Noteworthy is that at this stage, there is a tendency to regress/revert to Stage 2 with a strong, false sense of security that nothing needs to change. [1] “We’ve seen this before and weathered it” is a typical type of statement made. Or, there is a false sense of relief that maybe that insight was not true, triggers unconscious, old habits to quickly regain control of “how we do things”. Without strong, objective awareness, this regression will seal-away the insight while feeling fully justified in their behavior. Note: It is always the client’s decision and it is not a moral decision. It is a capability decision.

Stage 6: SEARCH FOR MEANING

This involve a shift from a sense of danger, discomfort, and disruption to a true understanding of the reasons to accept the insights. New models/ personal theories are created about the self, and the potential for a future. A broader sense of aware of what was wrong and how the new processes are beginning to not only make sense but to make a difference in personal awareness and presence

Stage 7: INTEGRATION

This involves alignment with a new way of being and behaviors that are congruent with the new sense of self. Self-identity evolves into a new form as the transition has awoke a larger sense of self and how one fits into a larger sense of life.

Different Models

Handy

Another way I use the model Is for the client to track their own process. This allows them to normalize their discomfort and old thinking patterns and realize they are amid a deeply transcendent of not spiritual, process. For example, most people can easily under the Handy change process curve above.

Kubler-Ross

Another way to support the client is to draw a modified Kubler-Ross transitions curve that indicates the grief stages of any loss (self-identity) and provide then suggested the developmental stages to healing or self-acceptance. You can support the client to provide their descriptions of these stages if the words do not fit.

Draw your Own

A final way to support the client and by now I hope you realize how to support yourself through healing transitions and changes is to use the reactive change curve.

Notice It color codes the most difficult red and the path to healing in green. If you prefer a summary of the various transition models, a table has been provided below. It can be insight to realize how similar they are and in total provide a deeper understanding of the internal processes most people struggle through as they transition from living from the past or future to living in the present.

Bountiful Blessings,

Footnote

[1] Typically, after a profound insight, dissolution of a time crystal with the return of a memory, if the full pain and fear bodies are not dissolved, the residual energy will create doubt about truthfulness of the memory or the addition of a moral judgement that leads back Into victimization. If the client does hold residual thoughts and feelings, I ask them to act as if the experiences were real and as the adult they are today, how could one begin to accept it happened and moreover that they survived.

12/12 Squared

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 17:49:00 GMT

A recent set of experiences began a wonder, or is it a wander, of "what do you do when" you're surprised by your own reaction, one where you are both inside and observing the situation. Not one leg in each experience but fully enveloped by both like being in a memory fully embodied and yet able to observe from a deep sense of knowing without the two being separated.

One experience evolved from the loss of both of our wolf hybrids, Smokey in June and Windy in November. Both died from cancer. While I had a sense of the impending passing of Smokey, I did not have the same from Windy. Rather, I was holding onto a deep spiritual sense of something with her and in denial about her dying so quickly.

As I explored this deep sense of two worlds, I discovered the full moon on 12/12/19 at 12:12 am was taking place. I also was made aware that several people in and out of HD were experiencing greater than usual turbulence internally and externally. A sense of disorientation filled many while other were watching multiple misbehaviors at work. Moreover, I wonder if It was the Holiday insanity starting early.

Implications of 12/12

On the 12th day of the 12th month of the year, a powerful numerology code is activated helping to raise the frequency of our light body, access high realms of consciousness, and bring a sense of completion to a greater cycle. If not aware or ill-prepared it might be what triggers the unfinished family misbehaviors.

12 is a powerful number in numerology that represents wholeness and completion. We have 12 months in the year, and 12 signs in the zodiac, and it is only once we have experienced all twelve of these states, that we can gain a bigger picture perspective and understanding as to where we have been. Sometimes, it is only when we reach the end of a cycle, that we can really begin to understand the journey.

The awareness of the bigger picture and this sense of completion is the energy that number 12 holds, but on the 12th day of the 12th month, this energy magnifies. 1212 gives us the opportunity to see things from an even greater perspective and level of consciousness.

The numerology code of 1212 activates and raises the frequency of our light body or energy field. My experience is that it expands the energy field so that time crystals, frozen moments of time, floating in our energy fields become transparent and possibly dissolve.

We all have a field of energy that exists around us. Our light body, energy field holding the mental, spiritual, physical and emotional bodies, has many different layers to it. Once activated, it enables us to travel across dimensions and into higher realms of consciousness and awareness. Our light body as the sustaining energy field of our existence is also believed to be the vehicle that helps us return to our Source (energy).

This light body [1] vehicle is also known as a Merkabah and is seen as two inverted pyramids that spin in opposite directions [2].

On 12/12, we can activate our own personal Merkabah with more ease, and we can use this energy to view the events of our lives from a higher state of awareness. This higher state of awareness is essentially the ability to see all things through the eyes of clear awareness often described as eyes of love where you can perceive outside of the physical reality.

“According to Merkabah mysticism, 12:12 is a code portal that, when you enter in resonance with it, activates your Merkabic field. When this happens, you are in alignment with the human heart connecting to the Unity Consciousness.”

Merkabah, a star tetrahedron is made from two pyramids, one poicscnting up and one pointing down. The pyramid pointing up helps to connect you to the heavens, whereas the pyramid pointing down helps you to stay grounded in the physical. These pyramid shapes also vibrate and move in opposite directions.

When this spinning Merkabah force field is observed around a person, it is believed that they have activated the ability to travel across different dimensions. Therefore, the shape of the Merkabah has been referred to as a chariot or mode of transport for our light body as suggested by Ezekiel's vision [3].

12/12 Squared

As I pondered the impact of 12:12 AM on 12/12 I realized that the energetic impact was like 12 squared or 144/144. In my own experience, I began to witness and participate with the memories of childhood where the loss of pets and grandparents in my early years had imprinted a specific set of fears when I sensed or experience energetic loss. When triggered, I would experience a deep sense of fear that something "bad" was about to happen and I would begin to have Irrational thoughts.

I realized that a time crystal had been triggered from the combination of 12/12 X 12:12 AM where I was both in the moment in full memory of a grievous loss that had Imprinted fear of experiencing loss and in the present moment. The fear was bleeding into the present moment taking control of my thoughts. As I witnessed this process and focused on staying completely present. This enabled the time crystal to dissolve freeing the memories of childhood and the source of periodic irrational fears that sought to preempt the experience of grief. The memories now integrated without the frozen grief have removed a subconscious process that often redirected my presence. A deeper sense of wholeness now exists.

Healing Presence

As I reflect on 12/12, I do wonder if it is the energetic source of Holiday craziness. Moreover, it is a time to be more fully present to ourselves, as a witness and participant of the end of the year. The significance of moving into the Winter darkness to bring forth light for the Spring has been part of ancient mythology. Maybe 12/12 is an annual opportunity to clear the time crystals, frozen moments in time, unfinished and unsatisfying, that are asking for our presence to heal, here and now.

Bountiful Blessings,

Footnotes

[1] Merkaba is another name for one's Light Body. Part of full consciousness, when spiritual, astral and physical bodies are integrated. The Merkaba allows self to shrink to baseball size and to travel anywhere, instantly. The MerKaBa is a spinning structure of light similar to the chakras. It is similar in that when spinning properly it works as an inter-dimensional gateway – kind of a Star Gate - so that higher consciousness may incarnate into the physical body. The difference is that the MerKaBa is much larger, encompassing the entire body. In fact the MerKaBa is the structure of spinning light which allows for the incarnation of the Light body itself. Without the MerKaBa being activated the other parts of the Light body such as the Chakra’s cannot incarnate properly and may not be stable.

[2] Merkabah/Merkavah ( Hebrew : מרכבה) mysticism (or Chariot mysticism) is a school of early Jewish mysticism , c. 100 BCE – 1000 CE, centered on visions such as those found in the Book of Ezekiel chapter 1 , or in the heikhalot ("palaces") literature, concerning stories of ascents to the heavenly palaces and the Throne of God . The main corpus of the Merkavah literature was composed in the period 200–700 CE, although later references to the Chariot tradition can also be found in the literature of the Chassidei Ashkenaz in the Middle Ages.A major text in this tradition is the Maaseh Merkavah (Works of the Chariot).

[3] Go to http://www.spiritualhealing-now.com/merkaba.html for exercises on opening the Merkabah.nces

The Numerology and Spiritual Significance of 12/12 by Tanaaz

https://foreverconscious.com/the-numerology-and-spiritual-significance-of-12-12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkabah_mysticism

http://www.spiritualhealing-now.com/merkaba.html

Image reference: crystallinks.com

Grounding

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 17:49:00 GMT

At HD3 (Healing Den Basic Intensive, Cohort 3) we refined the concepts related to grounding. It seems important enough to highlight a bit of it for everyone and then discuss it at the next video call.

Grounding has been brought into HD as grounding-in and grounding with. Grounding-in is the typical process referred to as grounding where we experience being inside our body. This can happen by using stones, sensating to our bodies through wiggling our toes, and/or to focus our attention into the vacant areas of our bodies to increase our energetic connection, feeling embodied, with ourselves.

For example, the use of galena connects our energy body to the density of a heavy metal. The large gap in frequencies is so drastic, one can feel an immediate sense of density of the body ergo feeling more grounded-in to oneself. We often notice the density in the form of a clear sense of self as a person and as being in-body.

Similarly, the use of the focus of one’s intention to direct awareness and sensation in the physical body either through using meditation or literally moving the body is activating the awareness of energy in the body ergo creating greater sense of presence in-body. In other words, we become in-body, with more awareness.

Grounding with is interacting with the earth energy by opening the feet chakras to connect with the energies of the earth. Often we have drilled down into the earth with our focus and attention to increase our sense of grounding-in to ourselves. Connecting directly with the earth energies during grounding with is interactive....we are dropping our energies into the earth while the earth energies are flowing up and through our bodies.

When we make the connection to the earth, we are actually connecting into the matrix energy of the earth which resonates with our bodies and some say our heartbeat. When we regain this interactive connection, our energies increase and provide access to creating an even larger and potentially safer container for our clients. In one sense, we create these energy field (containers) with each other when we get present.

Moreover, we can begin to realize that like creating chelation and infinity loops with our clients as a means to unravel links in the energy field and the energetic fill process to further embody or be in-body, we can do the same thing when grounding with the earth (and larger matrix). We begin to connect the chakras and increase the flow of our energy field/body.

Jim Kepner and Carol DeSanto suggest that the infinity loop can actually be applied to an ongoing process between the front and back of each chakra. Go to their website http://www.pathwaysforhealing.com/spiritualapproach .

As I ponder the implicati ons of the ping-pong effect of bouncing back and forth from past to the future, I wonder if the connection to the masculine and feminine energy when connected are more like an infinity loop through the present moment. This explains or implies the energetic power of compassion and courage. In other words, are these forms or expressions of presence like an energetic expression of our self. If so, the energy of the courage to be present with the compassion to be present could explain the how the energies alchemically form intimacy.

Bountiful Blessings,