2 More Case Studies - Aug 2005

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THE JOURNEY NEWSLETTER

VOLUME.2

8/31/05

Dear community, clients, and friends,


Here we are, a full eight months after writing my first case studies, and promising you a newsletter on a quarterly basis... yes, sometimes life just takes you down a longer path than you expected.

Today I want to share more with you about the emotional journey in particular, and give you a detailed insight into the possibilities of this process.

Like no other healing work I know, the emotional journey takes you through the many layers and faces of your inner limitation, accepting them, even inviting them, until you break through into the very part of you that is eternally connected, unconditionally loved, loving all that is, peaceful yet powerful, timeless, vibrant. Everybody experiences that source, that self that is source, in a different way. But nobody who visits this place through the journey comes out unchanged.

While the emotional journey addresses and releases any emotional patterns, relationship disfunctions, traps, codependencies, or addictions, it can also have an instantaneous effect on our physical bodies. The first case study gives a great example of that.
(Again, the names of my clients have been changed)


CASE STUDY I

Paul had had back pain for the past 20 years. It started when he was 18; at 21 he had his first disk hernia and another severe one at 22, while he was in the army. He described the pain as a beehive in his back that would never stop buzzing. He had been to chiropractors, acupuncturists, doctors and surgeons, who performed four surgeries on him during the last six years alone. None of these treatments ever made the pain go away; the only success he was able to achieve was a temporary and minor easing of it.
After his health insurance refused to cover yet another surgery, he was forced to look for other ways. A friend had recommended my work to him.

In his emotional journey he went through 17 different emotional layers until he came into his source experience.

His breakthrough into source, or transition, happened from a feeling of being trapped and boxed-in, which appeared as a dark, black space, a circular room. This was also the emotional layer in which his parents showed up, and this always indicates the layer we will do the campfire process in later.

As we explore further, he feels an excitement as he discovers a light area, a room with white bone walls, sensing this is a place he’s been looking for for a long time. It turns out this place is right above the dark space, and he finds he can consciously go up there when he finds himself back in the darkness and the feeling of being trapped. But even though up there is a better place to be, the earlier feeling of excitement is now replaced by boredom and he realizes the real solution is outside either of those rooms. Outside is the unknown, the outer space. There is an opening in the light room that would allow him to leave, but he is afraid to go into this unknown; something is holding him back. At that point he realizes that what he needs to find in this journey is his connection with the unknown. After some communicating with an inner part of himself that shows up as a strong authoritarian voice holding him back, a part that really wants to keep him safe, we find another inner part: a guide, or a sense of guidance that will protect him out there and lead him back safely. Once that is discovered, he is ready to let himself drop into the unknown outer space.

After he enters that realm, he floats around for a fairly long time.

He finally describes the experience to me: ”I am one with the unknown, it is infinite, it is everything, I feel very light, I am floating, I am being part of the universe, there is a lightness here that eliminates the heaviness of being in the body”

During his campfire circle a 10-year-old Paul needs to speak to both his Mother and his Father. His Mother is finally hearing his true feelings about her criticizing him and even his friends all the time. Interestingly he learns that she really just wants to protect him, (just like the authority part inside of him wanted to protect him) and she almost can’t help herself. Exploring further, he discovers that deep down she is experiencing a fear herself, and that this fear comes from constantly being criticized both by her father, and also by her husband. He realizes that because she is hiding this fear from her consciousness, she is acting it out against him.

We empower Paul with some new inner resources: the courage to set his own boundaries, optimism, the sense of belonging, self love, a protective crystal layer against criticism and verbal attack, and the ability to look for love in the right places. After breathing in these new qualities he feels very different standing there looking at his parents. When at last everything is out in the open, his feelings are fully expressed and he feels that both his parents really heard what he said; he is ready to wholeheartedly forgive them.

During the last segment of an emotional journey, which is called the ‘future integration’, we are able to check whether the work is complete, by projecting the experience of what just happened into the future.

In this case, when we noticed that Paul's issue never completely disappeared, not even at 10 years into the future, I knew there was something else that needed clearing during this session. When I invited another younger Paul, one who also needed to speak up today to the campfire, he found himself brought to a memory of his first girlfriend cheating on him when he was 16 years old.

Again, he could now, at last, say everything he needed to say and let her know his full feelings about what she had done. During the exchange he understands that even though he was ready for this love that felt very deep to him, she just wasn’t there yet. After completing their dialog, he decides to cut an energy cord that still connected them, to completely let each other go. This feels very uplifting to both of them. After he thanks her for all the love she did give him, and she thanks him too, he is ready to forgive her. When we do the future integration now, the issue disappears completely by 6 months.

I talked to Paul three days later on the phone. He described the rest of the day driving home from our session as being in a fog and very tired. When he woke up the next day though, he was stunned to find no pain in his back; all that remained was a certain stiffness that felt like it too was unwinding. He also showed some signs of detoxing: symptoms like a flu coming on, and no appetite, also some sudden strong tingling in his hands during a walk he took, almost like an electrical discharge over a period of 5 to 7 minutes. His eyesight felt clearer and he felt his sense of smell coming back.

Three weeks later the pain still hasn’t returned. I haven't heard from Paul since.


CASE STUDY II

Joanne was visiting with friends in this area when she heard about my work. She wanted to address a particular emotional pattern in a growing relationship. When a relationship wasn’t progressing in a certain way, it always brought up a lot of anxiety, worry and anger in her. There was always the longing of wanting more, mixed with the confusion about not getting it and the feeling that it might be wrong to want it after all, because she really wasn’t worth it.

In her emotional journey we went through 9 layers in reaching source. Unlike in Paul’s case, her emotional layers didn’t have much of a story, or sense of space to them. She was dropping, in textbook fashion, from one pure emotion into the next. There also wasn’t a big obstacle to reaching source, but rather a soft transition. From a last negative state of anger she found herself dropping into a pure “alleluia”; from there transported to a feeling of awe that sat as a tiny bright star in her heart, and finally she enters into a vast “inspiration, a humility that is bigger than love. It is like a chalice, almost untouchable, almost too sacred, and it is everywhere: inside myself, outside myself, without boundaries.”

Her mother had shown up in a layer of nothingness, in a neutral feeling, but when we invite everyone to the campfire, the 9 year old Joanne has a lot of intense feelings to express to her: “I need to let you know how much I hate you! How unprepared you were to be a mother. I have never felt so confused or misunderstood, or hated , or blamed, mishandled, mistreated and unappreciated before. I feel I grew up in a nightmare!” Her Mother responds that she really could not do it any differently. Visiting her mother’s own inner world to understand more, Joanne can feel those spikes, those ‘shoulds’ that go toward the people around her, as much as against herself. Dropping beneath that layer, she discovers her mother’s fear; a fear about letting go, a holding on, so that ‘nothing will ever catch her’. Underneath that is simply pain, a pain that Joanne senses came from her own childhood long ago.

But in the mix of all of that, we are also able to find her ‘connected place’: the place inside herself where she feels good about herself and the world around her. That place is in her heart, and from there she feels nothing but pure love for Joanne. Recharging the self with that parental love is always a powerful experience, and we are able to use it to its full extend. After the final cutting of an energy cord, the exchange is complete, and Joanne is ready after all these years to truly forgive her mother.

The second part of the campfire dialog was devoted to a group of three men. Joanne had needed their presence and participation: each one of them had abused her during her school years. It was the present day Joanne who needed to speak to them: “ I want it healed!” She declared. “I even want restitution! - - I don’t know if it can ever heal, but at least I want to manage it, I want it not to manage me any longer.” None of them have anything to respond to that. It is her mentor who speaks: “You need to open yourself to them. You can’t keep on doing this to yourself”. She realizes that since these experiences, she has deep down hated every man she has ever been with. Her mentor helps her to look inside the feelings of this group of three men. What she finds there is in her words a ‘binding experience’; there is selfishness and ignorance: the inability to realize the devastating impact of their actions, but also clearly: guilt. We now invite these men to ‘clean up the mess’ they have caused. This is another powerful mini process we call the ’clean sweep’ where they are able to remove all the residue, waste products,.and all the results of their behavior out of Joanne’s body. When at the end we fill all the emptied out places in her body with light, the transformation has been successful and Joanne is able to forgive all of them.

During our final future integration Joanne starts to feel lighter immediately and after only one year her relationship issue has completely disappeared.

Speaking to her about one week after our session Joanne tells me that she notices she is letting go of needing the perfect relationship. It feels to her like much is shifting, and that she is able to give old wounds the chance to be acknowledged.

A month later she reports that her intentions seem to be more in the forefront of her mind. She realizes she may not always act on them but they are there. She seems to be more aware of them and what she wants to create in her life. And she feels clearer about some things. And:
“Do you remember in the journey where I met with my three abusers? Well, last week when I was back in my home state, I met with one of them [in person] and expressed my forgiveness to him, which was part of the message I received in the journey. It was an incredibly healing experience. A big space opened up for me after this interaction. One, where I decided it was time to start discussing moving back there and another where I met a man that I deeply connected with. “
That has been my last update from her.


Does everybody have such a tremendous healing or opening after one journey? Of course not. I often see the conditions we are addressing as a layer of ice surrounding an essence of our being. That part of our essence that is frozen up can not direct life force into our physical body nor into our emotional body. When we are working with the journey it is as if all of a sudden we are being given a hammer and chisel. Sometimes that ice is just a thin cover, and we break through to the part that has been sitting there dormant right away. Sometimes that ice is much thicker and we need to use this process more than once to uncover what has been buried. The important thing to remember is that we now have this tool. It is here for us. It is here to serve us. And while successful journeys as Paul’s and Joanne’s seem to indicate that this process works for some people better than for others, it is important to remember that it is not just about the outer success we do this work for, but for the profoundly healing discovery we are having in each single journey we take, the discovery that we have the right and the ability to be who we truly are, that our feelings are, and have always been valid and important, and that when our essence is at last truly seen, it will be seen with nothing but love.

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