MM MECC ANICA

Diving back into my first journey and the path that got me there before Ctrl+Alt+Delete (2). I wrote notes the morning after this experience and have just let the series of changes unfold for the past 7 months, only writing about it as of late in an attempt to process, be vulnerable, and continue stimulating and encouraging the progressive changes I’m experiencing. While I don’t believe assisted methods are ‘the way,’ they did clearly illustrate what I had not been seeing and what is possible as I continue growing as a human. It’s hard to shake a finger at something that has brought me to where I am today.

While this path is 38+ (depending on what you believe) years in the making, with an itch in the back of my mind for the past 5 years, months before this day I was at a point where I decided to make heavy life changes. My identity was so tied to what I did or didn’t do personally and professionally that I couldn’t see what mattered. I was at the ‘freest’ and most ‘lucrative’ point of my career. I had more money, toys and time than I’ve ever had before, yet I was still left wanting. It was one of those points where historically I would’ve found another large house, car or motorcycle project to consume me and ultimately frustrate me to distract from the issues. I would’ve stacked more on top of myself, further removing me from my relationship with myself, my wife and friends. That was my addiction, being busy, always looking to the next thing and never being where I was.

In the first meeting with my internal tour guide, we discussed backgrounds, what I was looking for, how I put ‘me’ on paper, and was jealous of it, yet I couldn’t let that be enough. Then we somehow struck a cord on ‘overwhelm’ that had me fighting back tears sitting across from a computer screen of someone I had just met digitally 30 minutes before. I can’t tell you much about that meeting other than it connected me to something I knew needed to be fixed. The walls I had built to protect myself weren’t as strong as I thought. I had seen emotions as barriers; something that prevented me from doing something else, something that was holding me back. Building walls around them made me strong, more resilient, more productive, happier… or so I thought.

After that first meeting, I couldn’t describe what happened to myself, couldn’t explain it to my wife or friends. I just sat in a whirlwind of emotions for days processing what happened. I was afraid to pick at the wound as I felt everything would come out every time I thought on it. I didn’t know what everything was, and it scared the shit out of me.

After sitting on/in it, teetering on the edge of the floodgates of every emotion I’ve stuffed down for years, I knew my next big project wasn’t going to be a car, motorcycle or house, it was going to be a full tear down and refurbishment of ‘me’. My thinking brain was the problem, it was in control, putting up the barriers of logic and fear at every turn. It was preventing me from a life experience the rest of me was craving.

I met weekly with the internal tour guide for months. I would leave a 1 hour meeting and spend 1-3 hours a day reflecting on the topics discussed and would dive deeper into my feelings as I experience them rather than ignore them or put them aside. What I learned was the power of a mind body connection. ‘Overwhelm’ was a tightening of the muscles around my eyes and narrowed focus. I learned after a few months of trying to catch those moments of emotion that the second my eyes felt tension overwhelm was about to begin. I became aware enough of this to train myself to feel the sensation, relax those muscles, and open back up. Progress.

___________________

I take a couple laps around the block preparing myself for what is about to come. I arrive early even after walking two miles to spend time in my thoughts. This was my first time meeting someone who has help guide my perception of outward and inward life process through pixels on a screen; my internal tour guide. They have helped break the veil of my ‘somebody’ training over the years and helped me take the next step.

I was ready, no goals, objectives, or deliverables, I just a want to learn more about myself and how I worked. Engaging in a small ceremony, then getting comfortable in my new environment, I take an offering and start discussing my current mind state. Thinking brain was not happy, my energy was all over the board, fear, excitement and adventure awaited.

The tree out the window begins taking on a personality. Its quirky uniqueness draws me in. The blanket becomes a topographic wonderland of tactile sensation.

Here we go.

I begin trying to look into myself during a conversation, but remain distracted by my logic and the distraction of the physical world keeping me from going in.

More.

I put on a sleep mask to shut off my visual sensors. I settle in and need physical assistance with breath-work. Slow serpentine movement takes over my body and my breathing gets deeper and deeper. The feeling of warm waves of energy crash onto me like laying on the shoreline of a tropical beach. I’m carried off.

I become conscious in darkness.

Who am I? … I have no concept.

What am I? … I have no concept.

My wife? … I have no concept.

My dogs? … I have no concept.

My parents? … I have no concept.

My friends? … I have no concept.

Will any of it be there when I get back? … I have no concept.

I was in a space where I felt everything; content, happy, pain, love, peace, war, sad, power, birth, death…. yet nothing I was, had been, or connected with was describable or known beyond a a distant whisper of a pronoun. I was an object in space with no sense of time, no sense of self, no sense of anything but internal feelings. It was concurrently the greatest and worst feeling. It was presence, unadulterated by my thinking brain and outside influences. It was everything in nothingness. It was the most relaxed and accepted I’ve ever felt.

After 5 minutes or 5 years….still not sure which… I feel earth, plants, trees, rocks, organisms, humanity, oneness, the divine and the powerful and complicated ever moving state that we live in. I’m one with it, part of it and can feel the connection between it all. I feel and observe a specific birth. I don’t know who’s it was, but I was part of the beautiful process of the development and introduction into the world.

…transport…

I am now in my mind. A tiny being in the center of my brain looking up and around watching the synapses firing across a domed brain space like I’m at the top of the mountain looking at the stars. Tall structures appear in the distance, starting to cloud the view and beauty I’m mesmerized by. I question what they are but can’t make it out. Thousands of screens of data begin barraging me containing everything we are flooded with on a daily basis. The tension behind my eyes builds up.

Enter. Overwhelm.

I relax my eyes, and raise my hand up between me and the screens. They don’t stop flying, but I’m able to pick individuals out of the chaos, process them and push them off to the side. One by one, I digest the information on my terms, at my pace. I’m in control now, the information coming to me is being processed freely without self judgement or external judgement. I wasn’t trapped by my own logic or others logic. I did what I needed to, how I needed to, when I needed to.

Freedom.

I enter a visualization of connection with ancestors building a wall. Not much is clear but a return of the sense of all things being connected. The people, the stone blocks, the nature surrounding, what was being built all had an energy running through it that I could feel. I fade from this and enter a blank slate of shimmering textures all around me. I am able to play with all visualizations and then mold and create my own in this blank state. Something I’m attempting to do is met with resistance that feels like incapability, and a dark face with red eyes appears from the amoeba like substance, it grows and grows and I can feel judgement from it. I take a moment to look at it, felt that judgement, then let it go, why does it’s opinion matter? I roll the whole face up between my index finger and thumb and flick it off to the side of my mind like a ball of lint. Self judgement….was that you? Fuck off.

I fade out of this reality and back into the plane where I can converse with another human, though mostly incoherent. I float the the restroom and back to my sanctuary. I’m asked how I’m doing and remember saying, “time to go back in”.

More.

I don’t go as deep, probably by design. Energy consumes me, I feel the environment around me, the power and energy in me. I’m able to move that energy through my body back and forth between digits and around my whole being. I spend what seems like days experiencing this and then I reenter the shimmering canvas and play god for a few days more.

I come back to ‘reality’, in a daze and numb.

Thinking brain back on…I start feeling that I played too much instead of addressing anything real… what did you actually do in there? Those weren’t your ideas, you saw those somewhere in a movie…

Fuck off thinking brain.

It fucks off.

Well this is new…

My brain and lungs hurt like I just spent the day sprinting until I threw up over and over again. I head to bed and start night sweating and feeling like death. I get a few hours of restless sleep.

I wake, still feeling physically damaged from the day before. As the pain fades, I go for a long walk, feeling like I had been carrying around 100lb backpack my whole life that I decided to ditch moments before.

Thoughts, feelings and actions are flowing now, not encumbered by self judgement or fear of others judgement, however, much more work to do. Exciting.