Transformational Experiences

These past few weeks have been interesting for me and for many people I know. There has been a lot of darkness in the forms of sadness, depression, despair, illness and such. As difficult as these experience may be at the time, I find that I usually emerge from them with a renewed sense of clarity and aliveness. It's like dipping the bucket of life into a well, for a while you can't see anything and the journey both downward and upward seem endless but they are not. This process is important in the ongoing evolution of life it seems and so the more we learn to observe it and move with it, the less painful it tends to be.

After the darkness the dawn however and I am in a dawn experience once again. At Sunday's gathering we did two things that have had a profound impact on me, I can't speak for anyone else here. In the first process we did a burning ritual where we silently meditated on what belief/pattern we were being called to release then we wrote it on a slip of paper and burned it. I've done this kind of ritual many times in my years in ministry but never have I been so very present to the process. Watching the paper burn and turn to ash, releasing the smoky essence of the idea that was symbolically being transformed was very powerful and the process didn't end there. In my quiet time that evening and the next morning as I focused on my solar plexus I was suddenly envisioning the outer layers of every cell in my body turning to smoke and drifting off. It was an amazingly cleansing and freeing experience.

The second part of the Sunday morning ritual was about opening to the idea that I am to focus on now. As always, what came up wasn't what I expected. I love that. It's such a great reminder that when I let go of what I think is going to happen there is usually something even better that shows up. Anyway, there was more to the process and it was all quite wonderful. The real benefit however is not what happens in the workshop but rather the ongoing effects of a process. After a day or so of seeing the old fearful ideas burning away in my cells, the new focus arose in awareness. In my quiet time last night I was present to it in my body and just breathed with it and rested in it. This morning I ran it through the chakras, similar to something I had learned many years ago but hadn't done for a long time. I was inspired by a participant of the Sunday morning gathering who is currently learning about chakras through another group. I used to work a lot with chakras so it reminded me about the process of focusing on each chakra with the idea I am working with. I love the process and I can feel things shifting in my body. It will be interesting to see how it affects the way I move through life these days. Yet another grand experiment! I love it.

I think I'll offer the burning bowl and focusing process again on the 20th. There's so much richness in it.

Namaste