new perceptions

In the early morning, I awoke in great peace: something was missing. Something had left. The absence of it was delicious: everything seemed simple. Yes, it may return, and yes, it may in fact not .But for NOW it is gone: the nightly sessions with extending love to all my fears have been deeply healing, and I am more able to feel that I am a decision maker and not a puppet.

Today I went back to the Psychiatric Polyclinic – I did not quite know why, but I had the clear impression it would be healing, so I decided to just go and see what happened. I told the psychiatrist that I needed to sort out my/little Ninotchka’s beliefs about psychiatric institutions and force and overpowering and violence. She told me with a big smile that I had come to the right person: this was the doctor who was one of the two persons who was in charge of admission to the acute-psychiatric ward on the hospital I would be admitted to, if I needed psychiatric ward.

I got to ask all the questions I needed. I got to interrupt her when I sensed that little N freaked out and mixed the doctor with the attackers from childhood. It was a miracle of peace and release to be able to sort out the difference between insane violence from the childhood, and my view of the psychiatric overpowering of psychotic patients who are in danger of either taking their own life or somebody’s else’s. She told me the procedure for admittance and observation, and of the patient’s right to complain to an outside court, if one wanted too. She also explained  everything about medication. All the time, I sensed her big heart, her maturity and wisdom.

How wonderful to know that she is part of my mind. Very easy to see beyond her role as doctor to the Holy Son of God.

I started to feel the inner child’s belief pattern slowly and beautifully to crumble and shrink. I could see the difference between truth and thought-spin born from intense fear and violent memories – and this process of course started to unravel the projections I have made, from a deeply fragmented mind, onto any authority.

The process also has started to release some of the memories I still had repressed – I had held onto them, because the little N whom my decision maker still identified with, so strongly believed that her perceptions were TRUE and REAL. I see clearly the makings of a paranoid psychosis: taking the repressed memories and perceptions of insane violent abuse and projecting them on authorities with powers, like doctors and therapists. And how vital this process now is for my healing – allowing myself to be lovingly corrected, so the old horror-images can be placed where they belong: in the past. And I know well that when my perception has been given time to be corrected in the NOW, I will be able to use the Course metaphysics in a much more effective way. The sense of me being in an incredibly liberating and lovingly directed process, trusting it completely, is strong. And what is also so lovely is that the ego’s incessant insisting of doing the Course CORRECTLY(or else -) are fading: the only thing I am interested in is following the H.S.s lovingly guidance, allowing me to choose to do what feels loving and kind in every moment.

How blessed am I: I have been hooked up with this particular lady now, who also comes from a part of the country where there is a much more prevalent belief in the supernatural: in the north, people naturally believe in trolls, other realities, nature spirits, and healers and psychics are looked at as someone who simply have developed more of their mental capacities. Nothing strange about that at all.

She also described to me the possibilities I would have for care and attention should I choose to be admitted to one of the many Institutions  for psychic ward for a week or two. The thought is tempting – for once in my life,I would experience the luxury of continual care, massage, physical therapy, groups – and I would break a pattern of being alone, who my inner child-identity is so strongly rooted to.

Milarepa and the demons

About including demons…I came to think about a story the great teacher Stephen Levine tells on his and his wife Ondrea’s CD-set called To Love and be Loved. Here is a summary of it:

The great Tibetan yogi, poet and saint Milarepa was beseeched by demons in his cave and invited them to tea! He cared for their suffering and wanted to help. Just by opening himself to them and honoring them as his teachers, the majority left. He bowed to the ones who remained, and sang them a sweet song of caring for their suffering – and four left, leaving only the hugest of them all. Milarepa put his head in the mouth of the beast: he wanted to know what it needed in order to be healed. And then there was only Light left.

Stephen and Ondrea has a new website, http://levinetalks.com

Anyone who is looking for a demonstration from awakened souls, walking their talk, go there a have a look around.

awakening visited

For some months now, the sense of skinlessness and raw vulnerability/anxiety has escalated. It «looks» like it is an attack – forces or aspects in my mind that I have separated from and called bad, who now push back. This is how it seems to me. After dealing with these forces now during the last 30 years in various ways, I realize that what I am called to do, is include them. Not protect myself from them, not judge them, calling them demonic or evil or insane, nor getting healers to remove them – been there, done that throughout the years, depending on how acutely disturbing they are, and how threatened I have felt by them.

Last night, a miracle happened. I found myself speaking to them, telling them that I was so sorry for the pain and horror they felt that made them lash out like this. The very second I did not defend against them but loved them, opened my heart for them, welcomed them, a beautiful release happened. And at some time I realized that I was the decision maker, and that this was my choice – to meet all of this with love.

I was awake.

I am lying now in a great calm, blessing it all, and seeing that what seemed to be dark and attacking only needed love. There is no need to analyze where it comes from – and if it belongs to «me» or is picked up – it is all here now, as an opportunity to welcome with love.

The energies that have moved around in the body before – like  scared wolfs being hunted by a  hateful hunter – now they are quiet. There is such a sweetness and innocence about this – a simplicity. Grace.

After a while I notice that I am starting to merge with the fear/attack/wolves -and hunter again. I am repeating the process of saying yes, of noticing ego and including – and as I repeat this process I am becoming more and more aware that this is not about healing anything – it is all about me becoming aware that I am That which chooses, second to second, to either receive with love whatever is there, or defend and attack and make dark.I am calling us Home .

I see an image: a big circle of beings, sitting around a sacred fire – and I am welcoming them all. Their forms or costumes fall off when they take their place, they are all the Son of God.

The excruciating pain the last months comes from excluding my totality – which I have judged and projected into these fear-and-attack-wolves. Excluding is a word I like more than separating: it describes the force in the separation, the pain in the holding on to the me/them-perception. When I include them, they stop existing as «them.»

There are no attackers – there is only a belief that there are attackers. There are no dark forces – there is a belief that there is dark forces.. They are illusions only, and I can empower them with my beliefs or dissolving them with my inclusion.

And: there is no pain in the neck or anywhere now – there can only be a belief that there is.

a very special relationship

Some weeks ago, I received a mail from my first great love, wanting to get in touch again and hear news. Last time we saw each other and slept together was in 84, and that was at the 20 year celebration of graduating from the The College of Arts. I was married then, and he too. We fell in love 20 years before that, we were in the same class at College. When we kissed the first time,at midnight  in a dark city, leaning in to a wall of movie-posters, I was transported to a completely timeless realm.

It turned out that he was engaged to his childhood sweetheart and friend: he told me he felt responsible to stay with her and take care of her. So for one and a half year we didn’t touch each other again – until it was not possible to stand this situation one second more, and he transferred to another College in another city.

I am sensing the exact feelings and sensations now, writing about this – like the young Ninotchka in her early twenties, knowing she had met the love of her life.

The last time we met before he was leaving in the 60-ies, I visited his place – and at some time late in the evening, I looked at my watch and knew I had to get home – we kissed again,standing at the floor – the next time I looked at the watch, 2 hours had passed. Nothing else had happened than standing and kissing and being transported somewhere timeless.

2 years later I met my husband, who had just fled from Prague and the Soviet Invasion. He told me that he had been told by a fortune-teller that he would meet me and be with me, and that he immediately recognized me. He was  a lot older, dark-haired and gloomy-looking, famous and with a charisma which was enormous. Pretty soon we were a couple. We had an extraordinary working-relationship as artists, working in Theaters in our country as director and stage-designer – and we had a most wonderful daughter. He was my biggest classroom: I had married someone  very much like my father – and I have no regrets for that marriage: it gave me the perfect forgiveness opportunities.

But it was nothing like the first love.

When K died in 88, and T mailed me some years later, I did not feel any remnants from the old love. – But now, years after that again, when T mails me again,it’s all here, overwhelming me, all the voices that I pushed back and can look at now:  the suspicion that I might not be good enough, since he “left” me for his fiancée back in the late sixties – that I simply don’t have it in me, to deserve such a love – and the feeling that it is too late now…

I look at it all with Jesus, and it is in fact sweet – until I merge with that young woman who still seems to be glued to me. Why would I hold on to her?

And Blue tells me that this is something I subconsciously ravel in – especially because the feelings of being left and nr 2 are still so present,  it is difficult to reject it as illusion.

Now I sense a need to control and manipulate him and make him regret he married his last wife – I look and look and find more stuff that I see come from a very frightened mind – and for the first time I can start to let it go and forgive myself for needing to be nr 2, that is, a somebody who can feel unloved and not good enough. A separated someone.

Under this is the frantic voice from the 23-year old inside: “yes, but HE has mailed you two times, searched you out on the web – WHY, if he is so happy???” she is clutching to this hope of a special love, there is  still a hope –

and I see that it is still a hope to be separate –

and suddenly I feel such a tenderness for this inside woman, believing she is real, wanting to WIN and never again feel rejected and unwanted and not good enough –

what an enormous set-up this is. I am looking forward to setting us both free, and see him as the Son of God he is. And for that to happen, it helps to know that any thought that makes me scared and tense is  u n r e a l. Just looking at it with Jesus

addiction to suffering

Morning sucks as usual: I just want to go back to the slumber that is available in the mornings. I hear a clear inner Voice telling me that it is wise to get up now. I sense that He has the whole picture of me getting up and starting my day ( which I mostly can direct as I want it) – and I don’t. I also see that if I hear His voice and suggestion – and choose something else – then I am deliberately opening myself for darkness and ego: since that is my choice. There are only two choices, Nina – right?

Oops. What a responsibility. I cannot go back to sleep now without repercussions: and there will be no-one to blame for the consequences. (They have usually been self-contempt and disgust.) To see that I am completely responsible for this is awesome

Now ego turns on the screw – I feel even MORE deadly tired, head heavy, confused – and still poor me should get up??? I am looking at my own investment in keeping this pattern, this fight, going – ego’s urge to WIN.

I forgive the part of me who wants rest and sleep and to be the one part that wins over the Voice: that is my investment in keeping the guilt and the me going.

And I get up.

That choice taken, most of the heavy deadly tiredness melts away.

In the shower, I use to have most of my big insights. So also today: I noticed myself going into catastrophizing – and instantly knew: I am feeding this sickness, that has its own life. The lies are fed when I allow myself to listen to them. This is a sick addiction to guilt that I am feeding. H-S, I don’t want this any longer. Please make me aware each time I go into this feeding. I see clearly how insubstantial the ego if I don’t feed it with my belief that it is real and important.Please give me the grace to see how I can deal with these thoughts in a healing way – what can I do in this situation?

«If God is real, this can NOT be real» says Blue and I sense a big smile around it. «Just your willingness to notice the pattern and forgive  suffices– and then give me the steering wheel, Honey.»

I have done that – and I  sense the difference between just saying this, and pausing and noticing how I feel when I am not in control any longer. Big difference. I also take a physical step to the right when I am able to: that makes the difference even more noticeable.

The Lovely Bones

This day feels like it has lasted for about 3 months. I just saw a film, the lovely Bones, about a 14-year old murdered girl and her life on “the other side” – and how we hang on to our loved ones when we lose them, for all kind of reasons. I loved the way the film demonstrated the nature of dreams, like Inception did – and when the film ended, I somehow have all of that integrated in my mind, it seems: all the talk about how we are carrying other souls with us, attached to us, because we for some reason cannot let them go ( like hating them for killing loved ones, or raping us or loved ones) – it felt like something was moving and shifting when I watched, and sometimes I found myself crying a very relieved crying, not knowing what for – just being aware that something was taking place on another unconscious level, and I did not have to do anything else that come for the ride and pay attention and not judge.

healing comment

That was a most dreadful night, impossible to be with H.S. It felt like a blessing to come here this morning and read Katrina’s comment to yesterday’s post – this was so helpful:

“But after the acute bouts are over, there ARE periods between the pain, where i am able to choose differently.  At least it appears i am choosing differently because i am relieved of the pain, if even for another ‘time’ period i am creating.  And during one of these clear times, i realized i could be grateful for the BAD periods because they are the particular ‘forgiveness’ lessons i’ve chosen — along with the ‘inescapably trapped’ illusion — and the ‘i’m not at all in control’ illusion – and the ‘why can’t i get control’ illusion…  all wrapped up so special for me.  But that does not mean at all that i will or have to be grateful for them while i am inundated.
So, i’m not going to tell you that anything can fix feeling crazy.  You are just stating what you feel, and i am just going to watch it with you.  Later, i know you will breathe fresh air and i’ll watch that with you. “

Thanks!

the asylum of the ego

Some time ago I had hallucinations, and thought I would find out if they were caused by something wrong in my brain. Among  other suggestions for examinations my doctor suggested some sessions with a psychiatrist – and I thought, why not? might be interesting.

I went there for two sessions. She was quite young, not yet a psychiatrist. She took “my story” and I started to feel bad. Next week I came back and she asked for more details – and I felt worse. The night after that last session, a couple of days ago, was really bad, with sensations of falling apart – but I have practiced well with Jesus, and used it for healing. I found out that the reason for feeling so bad was my identification with the ego-thought-system of being a victim – of “my story” – and being seen as this terrorized person by my therapist.  I knew: “This is not what I want. This identity is not who I am.”

As soon as  I stepped out of that role in my mind, and decided to stop  therapy, I felt fine…until a dreadful scenario came up: she will not accept my no to further therapy, the whole county-health-management will come and haul me into an asylum where I will be confined to a small cell, drugged and straitjacketed to a bed, with other terrified screaming patients around me.

Hm…sounds like a  very familiar story doesn’t it – being trapped in an asylum…a good description of the world of separation – and following that line, I am the Manager of the Asylum who puts me there, drugged and in straitjacket.

“Yougottabekiddingme!” I heard, and started to giggle. And instantly was I resting in a soft loving embrace, so safe, so safe.

For some time I drifted between the “trapped in an asylum” belief, and “yougottabekiddingme”-belief. I fell asleep while in the last one.

The fear-scenario rumbled in my mind the whole  next day, but I still could stop taking it seriously.

I realized that “my story” and my identification with it has become a condition that is living its own life – and in that case, it will only reinforce the story/identification working with it.

Big release.

I mailed the therapist and gave her my decision.

What do I want?

I want a silent retreat in a Monastery somewhere. I am going look for one. No more digging in order to heal something that never happened in reality – just doing what I do, and which works: inviting H.S to lead the process, which means that I will have dreams and experiences that will bring to the surface anything at all that needs my loving attention and  forgiveness.

And so I had this dream to-night, after my decision to stop believing in the old story and stopping therapy:

The Head in the Bucket

I am driving my car on a narrow dirt-road, like in a ditch, or maybe it is a trail for joggers at the side of the main road. I recognize that I should be on the High Road, and I get out of the car and simply carry it up to the High Road. It is light as a feather – I notice that it has no motor and other stuff that cars needs: this car is operated exclusively by my will.

Well – now I am at the High Road, which seems like a dirt road too, only a little more elevated and broader than the paths down below on each sides. – – – There is a bucket at the side of the road…with a man’s head inside. No blood thank God. I know that I have to report this to the authorities, obviously there has been an execution, nay, a murder. I place the bucket in the car on my right side ( and suddenly remember that that’s where I placed the urn with the ashes after my father’s cremation on my way to the cemetery.)

I come to a place with several people: Help me please help me look here – and I give the bucket to one man. He lifts the head up so he looks into the head’s eyes – and suddenly the head gets a body underneath it and is alive and this afore-split-head-and-body is now alive and laughs and he and the man who looked at it embrace.

In this moment, the former «dead» man disappears completely: the job is done.It has been seen and embraced, and the head and body have been brought together.

As I am writing this I am yawning big time. Tensions are disappearing from the neck area

Now I look to the right, and see a little boy with dark hair running to his classroom – it is the former headless man, now become this child – and this male child has a dress on: seems he is a boy dressing up as a girl. Maybe he wants to be both?

—

Later in the dream, I am in room on top of a building. And the only way down is out a little window and climbing down a rickety ladder to the ground. There is a big chance of falling and dying. I think I (ego) is so afraid to get out of the head and down to earth. And this is connected to the first part of the dream, where the head and the body were separated. But I must get down – I will not stay up here.

Then: a man is climbing up and taking me down with him: I need do nothing. At the ground, he is embracing me. It is Jesus.

answer to DonnaD’s comment(Sept.19th)

To dear Donna – and anybody who might want to comfort me.

Dear Donna: I feel and sense your love and care, and thank you for it – but it is not comfort I need in these matters you see, it is insight in how I am turning away from love. It is such a wondrous practice for me: there is no judgment in this noticing.

I notice that words can be completely magic for me in helping me shift from ego to Love. This “oops i did it again” seems not to change anything for me – I know it has helped many. I also think that this blog may, for someone with the same sort of background as me, be healing – so I am putting it out there for me to explore as process, and for somebody else to possibly be helped by. I have not meant to give an impression that you or anyone else should feel sorry for me in any way – this is my script, I’ve learned so much going through it, and I still do – so loving candles are very welcome, when I perceive myself to  be isolated – but I do not write to ask for advice or help, dear Donna, believe me.

I love that you read the blog now and then – just knowing that we still have contact is good to know. I know that there is tremendous power in Love – and of course in the Love that you send me too –  my “problem” is that when I believe myself to be stuck in ego, there is no way I can receive it – until I can 🙂 And when I can, I see that It was there, the whole time.

I am just describing a process of using Acim on  “my” background: there are so many of us who have experienced that, or something like it.

Much love to you always dear Donna

turning away from Love

The readers who have followed this blog for some time now, may know that in this dream I am dealing with post-traumatic stress from bouts with gross and insane violence and abuse in childhood, with the result of fragmentation and dissociation. As means to survive these effects in my mind and psyche – seen from a dream-view – I  have trained in different Mystery traditions, and also trained as a therapist in Expressive Arts Therapy, where I still work as a supervisor and therapist/counselor.

I have also my nightly training gong on: it started about 30 years ago, when the psychic attacks at night resulted in dark visions of such a degree that I  was forced to deal with them directly instead of sleeping away the night. Much of this blog demonstrates my way of meeting these attacks – and since I now train in A Course in Miracles, this is the way I meet this darkness now.It also means that I am all the time dealing with stuff not exclusively the Course-way – as Ken says, if it leads to peace and love, it would be foolish not to use it. I am always following the inner guidance, in whatever form it comes through – the challenge for me is to be awake enough to hear it and sense it, and not becoming “glued into” the ego thought system, hearing only those thoughts.

In short – I find that my process is all about who/what I identify with: which voice I hear and believe. As soon as I hear the Voice for Truth, darkness falls away – my challenge is to move away the blocks between me and this Voice, and shorten the time spent in nightly hells of terror and depression.

And now to  sept. 17th night’s practice:

After about two hours of the usual sensations of being in hell -( supreme separation reigneth  here, no God in sight) I hear faintly:

y e s

Immediately I remember that I am not this drama, and neither am I a victim of it. It is not who I am: it is a projection from  my mind. This tortured Ninotchka is MY projection, and she has never left my mind.

The instant I say YES to it all, I am in His arms again. The energy goes on – there is just “no-one special” spun into a drama any longer. Nothing can harm me.

Now I sense a strong suction into sleep – I am aware that this is a strategy the ego uses to run away from Presence and Love. I forgive the impulse to run away: there’s just something SO scared, and I can be loving toward it. Being loving does not mean to indulge it.

This moment I know clearly that there is nothing else than Love to walk away from: Love is, and nothing else. All the energy and sensations and feelings and beliefs this moment = illusion.

I decided that my practice now for a while will simply be to notice when I push Love away, and forgive it.

Today, sept.19th, this practice is going on. With great frequency I notice the clear thought “you are turning away from Love”. It is very interesting to notice when it comes: an impulse to see a TV-program about ghosts – “you are turning away from Love.” Other movies: O.K. And every devil-and disaster-painting on the wall ( I am world champion in this sport): “you are turning away from Love.”

The moment I write this I sense the familiar brain-fog starting – knowing it is just an energy-pattern following one of these old stories in my mind that I have called me and mine – and I say yes to that to, not taking it seriously.

I’ll go out and do some fall-work in my garden:  remove a lot of  intruding willow-saplings who seem to want to take over my garden. Nice metaphor for the ego mind 🙂 – and I forgive myself for believing in attack ( willows this time.)