Today I saw the 3D art tour movie of the Vatican museums. It was glorious. I saw the museums in person decades ago yet I could not revel as fully in the glory for a number of reasons (too young, too crowded and hot, not present enough). The main reason I sense I could appreciate it so completely now is because I am “waking up.” This presence certainly comes and goes but the going is not as long or as excruciating as it has been. So seeing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael rooms brought tears to my eyes, partly for their beauty but more because again today I feel alive enough to actually take the majesty in.
If you read yesterday’s post you know I was not in great shape as old wounds arose for clearing. I am so proud of my willingness to be transparent and record my moment to moment experience of this waking up process as I have learned it supports others. It seems to be effective in reducing shame and/or in minimizing the feeling of this process being personal or unique to any one of us. It also serves as a guidebook of what the terrain may look like. Clearing the obstacles now is way different for me now then it was a few years ago. Then the fear would grip me sometimes for weeks before tossing me out like a rag doll. It could sweep over me, sometimes incapacitating me so much I feared I could not even function enough to drive.
Yesterday was so different. It took me awhile to even catch on to what was unfolding. When the physical intensity became impossible to ignore, I still did not have a name for the discomfort until a series of events let me put my finger on the charge. I ended up taking a scalding hot bath with mineral salts and lavender in order to calm my body enough to sleep. The incident did not stir fear in me or the belief it would never end. It was just a wave of energy passing through me. I did not sleep super long but I slept well and today the charge seems to have passed completely. I do not question it.
So when I went to the movie with my daughter’s class and saw the grand sweep of the Sistine Chapel I was gratified to FEEL so much. If you have been reading this long you know I went through months of feeling absolutely NOTHING about anything, a very unfunny state. Then I went through a very long period of being ho hum about almost everything. In my youth I felt everything so radically, so intensely that beginning in my late 20’s I chose to cut myself off from my emotions entirely. Yes, it shut off the despair and loneliness yet it also shut off the joy. I was no longer the dancing’ Hanson, my old nickname, the one so full of both passion and despair. In time I slowly woke my feelings back up. It was not an easy task, but I still felt almost half alive.
In 1992 I did a 5 day workshop and ended up BEING LOVE. I understood everything about love, I KNEW it was an inside job and that others could never take love away from me, never shift my unity, my ability to BE love in anyway. It took me more then two decades to restore myself to the certainty and joy of that momentary glimpse of the truth. I would pop back into a state of heaven, of being myself, of love through a few moments of connection, through nature, through another consciousness raising event. Yet it never stuck and the sense of loss was profound. This has happened repeatedly over the years.
For me 2015 carries a very different energy. January was for me an inexplicable pressure cooker of sensation with no rational explanation for the discomfort, it was not linked to any particular external circumstances. February has dawned for me with a different energy where I shift between a releasing energy and an awake energy. This awake energy feels different then anything I have known before. It is not ecstatic, wild, passionate or big. It is quiet, deep and profoundly moving. The best word I can use is alive. It feels like waking up from a dream, a nightmare where I was cut off from my own sensations, where much was wrapped in a cocoon of soft wool, dulling everything.
The years 2010 and 2011 were by far the worst for me, years where I was not certain I could survive the constancy and force of the fears I was facing. The years 2012 and 2013 were better as I got longer breaks between fear storms and the level of exhaustion was not as intense. Yet still I wondered what was happening and why others were acting like nothing was going on. I could not understand why my life was being destroyed and others were living life as usual. Luckily first I found Karen Bishop and then Lauren at ThinkwithYourHeart.com and came to understand the ascension process. I understood there was a very small percentage of the population going through the same debilitating process I was, I was not a freak of nature. I understood the process was serving an essential evolutionary purpose. The intensity forced me to look for answers I found someone who channeled my guides, something that I would have scoffed at years earlier. My guides told me I was being taken through this process rapidly so that I could function as a guide for those that would follow. At one point I feared for my sanity and had a good shit fit screaming match with my guides, telling them to back off. That is when they apologized and explained the time crunch factor. (time out for beauty break, I am outside with freezing fingers as the sun sets with the most glorious light). Now keep in mind that I began this journey in 1987 on New Year’s Day with a deep commitment to change my life. In other words I have been playing this game basically my entire adult life. It got more serious for me in 1993 when I began getting my Master’s and obtaining my license as a Marriage and Family Therapist. As part of the process I did extensive inner work. Then energetically it got very intense in 1999 when my world started falling apart and a series of losses began to crack me wide open. Yet it was only at the end of 2009 when the stakes got really high. You get the point, it has been a long time coming. Yet for those beginning their journey now, the good news is the frequency of the energy is so supportive of rapid and dramatic shifts, something just not possible prior to now. So there is the possibility to move through fear more quickly then ever.
Back to my point. It is only this month that this sense of aliveness, of waking up has become more consistent, the sense that life is an adventure, that everything is alive, that there is joy on the planet, that life here is fascinating and good. Holy cow, what a relief. Now I know this is in sharp contrast to what many are feeling. When I asked a number of people today how they were doing, all gave an evasive answer. Americans are famous for always answering fine or great when asked how they are. So the answers today ranged from surviving, to hanging in there, to plowing along, to ok, not typical American responses. I see many are now feeling the pressure and have no clue what to do. So many speak of fear, of challenge, of feeling like life is too much, of not sleeping, of feeling lost. This strengthens my motivation to encourage as many people as I can to wake up to their own magnificence, their own Divinity. It is now a choice that for the first time in history is actually feasible for the general population.
During the Vatican art movie today, I was so struck by the despair of so many of those brilliant minds and artists, the most famous of their times. Many of them died in anguish, not having found the God they sought so desperately, nor the answer to their questions. The movie showed the despair of Michelangelo, of Van Gough, of Dali never having found what they sought despite all their talent. Their eyes beseeched heaven. Look at so many of those old paintings with eyes always seeking God in the clouds, looking up They were conditioned and indoctrinated to believe the answer lay with some unavailable God lost in the heavens. They had no clue, no possibility to seek within. Religion made sure they never looked where the answer lay. My understanding is the church perverted the early Christian teaching to keep power for themselves, instituting a system where a go between was required. Everything stood in the way of self revelation thus few and far between found the God within. Yet now the doors are open and all can walk through. So yes, these are very intense times yet the possibility for liberation has never been greater. In 1999 I spent a year in a group called Way of the Doll creating an archetypal figure I call Beloved. Her eyes looked heavenward and her hands implored the heavens. Years later I caught myself in my own trap and moved her bendable arms to cradle her own heart. I finally knew where to look.
When I first began writing this blog in 2010, it was primarily read internationally so it was easy to write almost in anonymity. Yet now friends, family, neighbors read this and let me know they are reading. It is harder to bare my shadow, knowing some of those with the prestigious jobs I speak of may find their way here. Yet I refuse to bow to the small, residual inner shame that wants me to hide. I refuse to be dictated by my previous limitations. I stand for freedom, whatever it cost. I refuse to kowtow to the part of me that wants to conceal any remaining shadow. I have committed to this path of self love and I follow what self love directs me to do. In this case to share my own journey with what used to be almost painful transparency in the hopes it will lighten the load of just one person, help someone know that while the path is steep, it is achievable and, in fact, inevitable and that the joy of the aliveness is worth plowing through the fear until we wake up from the dream and live.