MY SECOND EXPERIENCE GOING INTENTIONALLY INTO THE SHADOW

MY SECOND EXPERIENCE GOING INTENTIONALLY INTO THE SHADOW

On a Saturday morning during the Fall, I was enjoying my running and sweating on a tread mill when I started having a change in my perception of the moment. I felt as if a veil was unzipped and gradually I was able to see just energy, the energy of things. Meanwhile I was heavily breathing and running.
The matrix that is behind everything I thought was reality, was clean and clear in front of my eyes. Meditating in my youth, I was used to have spiritual experiences of sorts. But this time was somehow very different, it was clean and clear seeing, no mystic interpretations, not even emotions. An awareness was there that knew everything about everything.
It was just that: being-ness, deep, profound, peaceful being-ness…
Slowly and after a few moments, my thinking mind that had remained deactivated during that entire time, started slowly to come back. I even became aware of its physical location. I could locate it on my right side, six feet or so behind and above my head. It was as though a drop of black ink fell into a glass of pristine clear water.
I could hear it with a very weak voice, judging the experience that was taking place: This is not right!, This is dangerous!, You cant do this!.
These three phrases kept coming out from that place and slowly and gradually growing in strength and volume. I began to feel a rush of intense feelings. I felt the grief for myself and for all humanity, for not being able to be in touch with what I had just come to KNOW was our most genuine nature. And as the voice from the far right got closer and louder, I started experiencing fear and then the fear became terror. A deep cramp in my gut made me jump off of the machine and bend myself in two. This is very dangerous!; You are going to loose everything!; You are going to loose your health, your reputation, your mind!

I ran immediately into the men’s room and locked myself in the toilet stall. I sat on the toilet contracting in terror and I knew that I was experiencing what is called a panic attack. A command inside me said: Get out of this, you know how to stop this, do it now!
At the same time and from another place in myself, I heard: Feel it deeply and fully. To hear that didn’t surprise me. In the last two years I had been gradually becoming used to this “diving” into the uncomfortable feelings. The terror was increasing as the loud demanding voice was saying: If you feel this, you will die!!!
At that moment the decision was made: All right, then I will die, I heard myself saying and then I let myself sink into that big contraction and the feelings of despair and terror.

This fantastic inner journey was warped with fire and smoke; the memories of the emotions were absorbed by intense whirls of energy where they burned. As in a time travel experience, memories of the time I had spent before being in my mothers womb came to me, and I simply felt what I called “human pain,” layer upon layer of energy crushed into my being at an enormous pressure, very old memories of generations after generations of my ancestors.
I recognized parts of myself which I found repulsive; I discovered places where I didnt want to go at all, and at the same time I knew with utmost clarity that they were precisely the places where I had to enter if I wanted to find the way out. I let myself go into and through those places until unexpectedly I had access to a place of complete well-being where I finally felt profoundly at peace, free, and filled with immeasurable love. I was able to recognize myself, to know who or more precisely what I was. I realized that before reaching that inner place of acceptance I had been numb and drowsy, as if I had been dead.

I came out of the men’s room after an immeasurable amount of time, yet perhaps it was 15 minutes of clock time, like from outer space, feeling internally very light and very confused at the same time. A newspaper’s front page resting on a backpack in the mens locker room said in capital letters IT IS ABOUT TIME. Although the headline was supposedly about daylight savings time, I took it as a message for me, gently letting me know that I was not alone. Somehow I felt relieved.

To go through that experience for me, was like opening inner doors and learning a deeply transforming lesson. I came to know that the process I was experiencing was possible for all human beings and that sooner or later everyone will open those mysterious doors. For the first time since I could remember, I was experiencing deep and profound peace all day long.

I hadn’t realized how tense and anxious I had been until then. I didn’t know that I had so much fear lodged in my body. I also realized that when we feel anxiety we are gradually releasing fear in a civilized, proper way.

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