This morning I participated in an online “oneness” meditation with hundreds of other people from around the country.  While others had this immense feeling of well, oneness, and awakening, I felt something that has been virtually inaccessible to me for the past several years: my own light.  I get glimpses of it from time to time, it shines through brightly only to fade silently into the twilight of my own fears and anxieties. While I have been a healer to others over the years, able to see the invisible energy centers twirling and dancing within, I’ve never been able to see my own.  Until the meditation today. 

Today I sat in the silence of my own truth and was able to see why I’ve grown so distant from myself, why it has been so hard for me to trust…not just others, but in particular myself and my own skills.  Here is what I saw: 

Imagine a large column of light running down the center of my spinal column.  It pulses and turns, dancing and free.  Contained in that space, not out of a need for restraint, but out of need for harmony with the other entities it shares my body with: organs, tissue, muscle, brain, bones and energy distribution centers.  But it is the powerhouse and it is almost solid, almost crystal-like in appearance.  It keeps everything alive and working well.  It keeps the body centered and purposeful.  It holds my fire.

Now imagine that it is covered in a slimy, milky charcoal-colored substance.  Not like tar, but like the gunk that builds up on the insides of pipes and around dirty, watery surfaces.  This residue has been accumulating for close to a decade.  The left-over festerings of disappointment, hurt, rage, shame, guilt, and despair.  All the negative things I’ve thought about myself.  All the negative things I’ve integrated from what others have said about me.  All the negative things that I’ve imagined that people think of me.  These have all gathered together to cover up my essence, my core, my light and prevent me from connecting to it as I should.

I could shine the light, turn it on so it burns off all this remaining residue, but that’s not the right approach this time.  No, there are three to five major wounds within my system that continue to spin off the residue that resides here on my core.  Being outed, failing the bar exam, my pattern of guilt, shame and fear, broken relationships with family and soul-mates, a disconnection from the divine.  Until these wounds find expression and ultimately closure then this will keep accumulating.

I check in with my divine knowledge and truth and see that in this year alone I can close at least 2 of these wounds: the bar exam and the outing.  Sew them up tight with knowledge, forgiveness, trust and a new message about my experience of these events.  My throat chakra burns brightly.  A beautiful blue glow urging me to share this with others, to share my experience.  Perhaps to write about it.  Perhaps to joyfully proclaim it in my own spaces.  In doing this, I see myself with a washrag and bucket carefully cleaning the crystal column of light.  Lovingly tending to it, clearing it of the corrosion like I would a sick child or weary lover. Performing the same clearing acts I would for anyone else.

I am the one I have been waiting for.  And in putting my trust in my own ability to heal emotional and spiritual wounds.  In putting my trust to try the bar exam again, to ask my old boss for help and possibly forgiveness from the events five years ago, I have taken the necessary step  of confronting these old wounds and allowing the medicine of forgiveness and manifestation to heal them.  My light grows a little stronger and some of the muck starts to melt away, melt down through the soles of my feet and into the ground.  It is lovingly embraced by the earth, welcoming a chance to dissipate and be reborn into something more positive. Meanwhile, my crystal column glows a little brighter and immediately reaches out to the other chakras lending them the energy they’ve needed for so long.  As I continue this process I will grow stronger and brighter.  As I continue this process my trust, my confidence, my fire, my truth, my openness will grow and become easier to access.

Yes, the meditation was about awakening for most.  Many experienced vibrations and beauty.  Yes, I found beauty too and vibrations as well, but it individual.  I have been scared to access the energy of Oneness in part because I’ve been scared of letting go of the pain that has been inhibiting myself.  Somehow that pain made me feel distinguished and even special. I was afraid that if I let it go, I would melt away and be indistinct.  But in fact, by letting go of the pain, lovingly dismissing it and washing it away, I can better add to the whole and bring a fullness and beauty that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.  By hanging on to my suffering I have been hanging on to distrust and dissonance when what I crave is harmony and balance. 

My goal in life is to heal emotional and spiritual wounds. And I think I failed the bar exam so many years ago because I couldn’t find the connection between law and this calling.  I didn’t necessarily have a passion for justice. I had a passion for transformation and manifesting self-forgiveness.  And there is an opportunity right here and now for me to add my perspective to the legal profession.  To help people disengage from the fighting and return to themselves, to create their own resolution.  To empower them with courage to do what is right. 

This blog will be silent for a while as I prepare to heal these old, festering wounds that have been brought to my awareness today in a beautiful and powerful way.  The poem at the end is what was said at the end of the session and this will become my new blessing for years to come.  And much like the picture below, I think I finally have found a way back home to myself and to my dear brothers and sisters in the infinite beauty of love, trust and truth.

A Blessing for Beauty

by John O’Donohue

May the beauty of your life become more visible to you, that you may glimpse your wild divinity.

May the wonders of the earth call you forth from all your small, secret prisons and set your feet free in the pastures of possibilities.

May the light of dawn anoint your eyes that you may behold what a miracle a day is.

May the liturgy of twilight shelter all your fears and darkness within the circle of ease.

May the angel of memory surprise you in bleak times with new gifts from the harvest of your vanished days.

May you allow no dark hand to quench the candle of hope in your heart.

May you discover a new generosity towards yourself,and encourage yourself to engage your life as a great adventure.

May the outside voices of fear and despair find no echo in you.

May you always trust the urgency and wisdom of your own spirit.

May the shelter and nourishment of all the good you have done, the love you have shown, the suffering you have carried, awaken around you to bless your life a thousand times.

And when love finds the path to your door may you open like the earth to the dawn, and trust your every hidden color towards its nourishment of light.

May you find enough stillness and silence to savor the kiss of God on your soul and delight in the eternity that shaped you, that holds you and calls you.

And may you know that despite confusion, anxiety and emptiness, your name is written in Heaven.

And may you come to see your life as a quiet sacrament of service, which awakens around you a rhythm where doubt gives way to the grace of wonder, where what is awkward and strained can find elegance, and where crippled hope can find wings, and torment enter at last unto the grace of serenity.

May Divine Beauty bless you.