A Journey with Ayahuasca

I went to Peru 2 years ago. It was about a week before I left that I first heard of ayahuasca – though it was not meant to be for that trip, I cataloged the information and then waited.

It was my QHHT practitioner that was able to connect me with an ayahuasca shaman and I didn’t have to go to South America – woot! I just got back from a weekend ceremony and wanted to record my thoughts.

First off, I will say that my experience was nothing like what everyone else in my group was reporting. At all.

I’ve done a round of ketamine so that I would know what my brain on chemicals would do. The experience was interesting, but overall it was a lot of pretty colors and some interesting reminders of things I already knew, but nothing really exciting. I was sort of expecting the same type of light show. Nope. The first pour, after about 45 minutes when it hit my system, yes, I saw some things.

This is an AI generated art, and for the life of me the thing could not really translate what I was attempting to describe but this image ended up being marginally close. The first thing I saw as I was laying there, I looked down at my own torso to see that it was now open. An open cavity instead of a rib cage. The entire thing was lined with all these tiny blocks, each of which had double lines on them. As I watched, 4 little beings – one after the other – climbed down into the open cavity. Each was carrying a set of oddly shaped blocks which also had the double lines on them. As I watched this scene with a bit of bemusement, I realized that ayahuasca was adding additional codes into my form. I later realized the blocks were cells, and the double lines were DNA strands.

After that, the images faded and I was left to just enjoy the sound of the music. I mentally sang along, enjoying being in the moment. Every now and again, I would feel ancestral issues start to unravel and by the end of that first evening I was able to see and release the masculine and feminine wounding that ran through my family. I came out from the experience with the saying:

When the Container becomes a Cage;

The Haven becomes a Prison.

I knew that the Container was the masculine, as described by Teal Swan. But when he’s wounded, he forgets how to be a container and instead creates a cage. The haven is where the feminine resides in happy safety, protected and yet still free to be, but when that space is now a prison that is not something she can tolerate for long. This is the feminine wound because now, once she’s escaped the prison, she tries to create her own container for herself, but she cannot. And round and round it goes.

There was one point in that first evening, after the second pour, I could hear people starting to purge and yet I felt fine. I mentally asked the question of essentially “am I doing this right?” and the answer I got was a visual of a parched desert in which the sands were soaking up the water almost instantly. Later, right at the end of the evening, I definitely purged, so there is that.

The second night of ceremony … nothing. Definitely feeling the effects, but no visuals, no insights … just enjoying the music and being in the moment. At the very end of that second evening, I asked “what was the point of this?” because it seemed as if my work with ayahuasca was nothing particularly interesting. The visual I got in response to this query started out in a dark room, and then there is a blue/white light shining up from underneath me. I look down in surprise. I know this represents a soul connection, and that the plant medicine was working below the conscious mind to increase the pathways between soul and ego.

That was it. While everyone else had ego shattering journeys, or emotional epiphanies that had them crying with joy as they shared them… I got some ancestral healing, some new codes, and a lot of time singing and just enjoying the moment.

I will not be making any more ayahuasca journeys, but I can definitely see the value of it! Those for whom it worked, it transformed their life. That’s not small.

I was musing on the overall very positive experiences both with ketamine and Ayahuasca, and realized … I’ve done a hell of a lot of work on emotional intelligence, unearthing my own repressed crap, owning myself, and letting stuff go which does not serve me. I also tend to live in the moment, am not prone to fear or anxiety or worry, and have faith that I can handle whatever comes my way. I know that I am much larger than this body, and that no label can ever contain even a fraction of who I am really am. I think that the overall positive but not particularly insightful experiences with both of these is a reflection of where I am, and that I’ve done a lot more healing than I ever imagined.

I believe it’s time to stop focusing on ‘healing’, and move forward. Now. What does that mean?

QHHT Insight: Creating new templates

I had a second QHHT session not too long ago. This time, rather than past lives like the first one, I wanted to focus a bit more on ancestral healing. See what I could learn on that front. One of the questions was:

If I don’t have children, what is the benefit of doing the work of healing ancestral wounds?

I know my mom did a lot of work to stop the family cycle of abuse, and she succeeded. But there are other lines of thinking which need to be addressed. While the knowledge that I don’t have children wasn’t going to stop me on this work, I had been wondering about how useful it was to the Human Condition.

The answer that came out of my mouth was:

For every type of healing, that is a new Template laid down. A new Template for a path to wholeness that another Human in this grand experiment could leverage. The more people do this, the more templates there are floating around out there, the easier and faster it comes. Like the first person to break the 4-minute mile opened the door that previously was thought impossible.

My dad, being the practical engineer that he is, once told me that the more minds we have working on a problem, the faster that problem will be solved. I think the same thing applies to these healing templates that I spoke about.

What really had me sitting up to pay attention to this answer? One of my favorite wise curmudgeons, Paul Selig, had a 5 day workshop. The theme? The introduction of Higher Templates. The actual workshop was called The Truth of Being, and in that he spoke of these new templates. In his case, he was talking about a new template for our being but I tend to think healing comes first — opening the door to higher potentials.

After all, the original meaning for health is ‘whole’ – from the Old English hælþ “wholeness, a being whole, sound or well.” Bear in mind, that wealth is not far removed in meaning. Old English wela meaning “wealth,” but also “welfare, well-being,”

Alignment is like taking a pool shot

I was listening to someone talk about manifestation, and being in alignment, and outcomes, etc.

As they were talking, an image came to mind — playing a game of pool, considering all the variables to line up a shot.

Wow! Such a simple image, but it really conveys a lot. Those who can really play pool well, of which I confess I am NOT one, there are so many variables to consider:

• position of the ball on the table
• position of the ball in relation to the bumpers on the table
• position of the other balls on the table
• the shot I want to take
• what angle should the pool cue be when it hits the ball
• consideration of the merits of spin in one direction or the other
• how hard to hit the cue ball
• Etc etc etc.

There are so many things to think about! The best players can sum all this up and make their shots. Those adequate players such as myself only know or can effectively enact a smaller number of variables. And those who don’t play well at all are happy just to have the cue ball hit the ball they were aiming at.

The conscious person, who embraces their personal power and walks with both ego-self and soul-self in every (or most every) step, is the master pool player. Their intention and their actions are in alignment, and the ball goes exactly where they want it to go.

The semi-conscious person, who tries to be embrace personal power and has flashes of soul-self appear here and there, is the adequate player. Their intention and their actions are more in alignment but not fully, unaware or unskilled enough yet to see or leverage the vast number of variables available, and so the shot goes as planned a bit more often than it does not.

The un-conscious person, who lives entirely in their ego-self, is the unskilled player. Their intention and their actions are rarely in alignment, unaware of all the potential variables which can be called on, and so the results are unpredictable and, barring the occasional lucky shot, rarely get the results they expected or wanted.

I like this analogy!

Karma and Wounds

I was listening to the latest episode of Next Level Soul, the one with Cindy Edison released April 6, 2024.

They were talking about Karma briefly and my brain spun off. I was meandering through my idea of Karma which is that it’s attachments – the things we can’t let go of. This could be a regret, a sense of superiority, a sense of inferiority, anger, love, even a substance. Anything which we cannot let go of becomes essentially an energetic wad of gum that we have to work at in order to remove.

Heh. Karma is a wad of gum. Funny.

Overlaid on this was a discussion I had the other day about triggers being emotional wounds. To explain:

Imagine someone reaches out and tugs on your arm. Now your arm is fine, but the person has your attention. Nothing major about this. Now imagine that your arm is wounded – perhaps it’s newly broken or has a massive open wound on it. In this case, when someone reaches out to touch your arm the reaction will be wildly different. Perhaps it’s in anticipation of pain so you don’t let them get close to touching you, or mayhap you yell at them and call them names, shove their hand off your arm with force, or maybe even you attack them in defense of your wound.

These are typical ways that people will react when a wound is touched or in danger. That is exactly what a trigger is. It’s an emotional wound that someone’s words or actions has incited a response for. Usually though, if the wound is surface enough to the conscious mind that it gets such a reaction, it’s also ready for release.

As I thought about the wad of gum concept, and then considered the emotional wound, I began to wonder if these concepts were actually related. As in, an emotional wound which is not healed before leaving this density becomes an energetic wad of gum.

I hear some folks talk about coming back with the same people to work through Karmic issues. That one doesn’t resonate with me. Say person L wounds me, and I elect to nurse that grudge until I die with it as an active wound. Now it’s a wad of gum stuck to the soul, metaphorically speaking obviously. Back on the soul level I get to consider what types of things would be needed before the ego self will elect to remove the wad of gum – aka release the attachment to the wound. Do I really need person L to work with me again on this? No, not at all. Perhaps person L has experienced all that they choose to on that front. But there are a heck of a lot of other souls who might be exploring similar themes and can take on the role that I need.

So Karma is a wad of gum, and an emotional wound which is not released within a lifetime becomes a wad of gum.

Creating New Lines in the Sand

I was listening to Paul Selig‘s YouTube channel video called A Line in the Sand. In it, (and I’ll paraphrase broadly) he talks about our boundaries being like lines in the sand – they are arbitrary based on our perspectives and ideas of our past, but aren’t really reflective of true reality. That we are currently in the process of undergoing a re-drawing of those lines in the sand because our perspective of what is possible, and who we truly are, is also changing.

Paul, through the Guides, asks how can we support this redrawing when our entire history tells us X isn’t possible, or that Y has always failed. To which the Guides begin to answer.

As they did, I got flooded with information as well. Stories. Our imagination is the guide which allows us to see potentials that are completely new, paradigm shifting, and allow us to experience and explore ideas that are utterly without precedent.

Star Trek, for example, was a trailblazer is so many ways! The original broke through so many stereotypes and remade the world as it was then. Star Trek: Next Generation continued that path, opening the door to new technologies such as MP3 and virtual reality. So many things owe their existence to the inspiration that Star Trek provided. Even better, it has given us the idea that humanity can work together for the common good, and in so doing launch us into the stars. It has given us the template for the idea that money, while a useful medium for exchange, is limited and small. It’s based on the idea of lack, and the world of Star Trek has moved so far beyond that that the idea of Lack is just not present. Indeed, The Orville has a similar take that money is passé.

Additionally, how many times have you been listening to something and the bridge that it makes it possible to understand is actually a story reference?

So how can we as people help open the door for drawing these new lines in the sand? How can we as individuals help our family grow beyond the anger and fear which rules so much of us right now?

Stories. Open our imaginations and let the universe speak potentials through us. Release those stories into the world and let them inspire others, let others build on them and create even more potentials that inspire. Our imaginations are the most powerful creative force in this 3D realm – because what we imagine comes first in the entire process of ‘manifestation.’

Open that door, and let Source know “I am an open channel – help me see what we have yet to learn, so that these new stories can help guide us into a more expansive existence.”

Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.

Albert Einstein

Unknotting the Khipu – a story and a QHHT session

I had my second QHHT session on Sunday. I wanted to focus on healing ancestral stuff this time, since last time I had a few past lives come to the surface. We go into the session, and she asks me what I see. There is a brightly lit void and I see myself standing there in the position of the vitruvian man. She asks if I can go anywhere and the response was “It’s a void. Go wherever you wish, the view is unchanged.” lol. No matter what she tried, the focus was clear – there is nowhere to go but in.

She asked me to scan my body and where did my attention focus. Interestingly, the very first thing I felt was literally my own heart beat. It took a while to identify the source of the mild rocking, but eventually I realized “that’s my own heart beating!” There was nothing specific to this particular observation, just that it was central and immediate and obvious. I wore a rose quartz pendant and brought along a large clear quartz “ally” to help amplify the rose quartz – both specifically to engage the heart chakra, and while it was never expressed, perhaps it worked?

But the first area that snagged my attention was my uterus. It felt like all this energy was definitely present, just … going round and round and unable to go further. My description is that “the energy is in knots”. She tried to get me to understand what created those knots, but the answer was “unimportant to the current objective”. I refused to answer and the awareness was not present. Suddenly I started laughing and saying “like Khipu!” – the Incan knot language which was “an intricate system of colourful strings and knots, with each colour and knot telling a different story.” Not only used for accounting, but they do in fact record stories.

The story below is my way of working with the energy and awareness raised by this section of the session. The most interesting part? Here may be a bit TMI, but I actually started a period 3 days after this session – and I’ve been menopausal for 2+ years now. So DEFINITELY something is going on!

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Sitting at a table covered with a giant series of tied knots, dexterity and perseverance are the best skills needed to remove these.

“Hey, I recognize that string of knots.”

Glancing up briefly, I just nod while pushing and tugging at one of the knots. “They are call Khipu, the written records of the Inca.”

“Um. Why are you untying them then?”

I pause, hands going still for a moment as I ponder this. Understanding dawns, and I begin again to work at unraveling these old records while speaking. “Because in this instance, the message from the past is not helpful to the future. In fact, all these knots are a karmic tie to events and emotional reactions which are being carried forward for resolution. However, the specific stories and instances these tell of are no longer relevant if we as a people are to expand and grow. So untying the knots to release the story is a way of clearly signaling that I release this hurt, cut this karmic tie, and let the energy once again flow.”

“So are the stories being unraveled specifically Incan?”

Shaking my head a few times, the reply is quick. “No, not at all. But in terms of a metaphor, Khipu are brilliant! So I’ll untie these knots, and with every tug and bit unraveled, more and more of the pain and attachment that has come down to me through my family line is being released.”

“If it’s just a metaphor, how will you know anything is actually happening?”

I smile, recognizing from a lifetime of experience the minor cramps which are now just starting. “Oh, I’ll know. The knots being untied right now are metaphorical, but the fibroids they represent are 100% physical. They are a physical manifestation of the ancestral baggage that has to be let go. Hence, untying the knots.”

“But I thought that in order to let something go, it had to be understood?”

A small shrug, still focusing on the work. “Maybe before – but things are changing. I don’t need to understand how or why the feminine energy of my ancestors was tied into knots. All that is relevant to me, now, is that it IS. Dredging up the stories seems to actually be perpetuating the pain, renewing the anger, and reaffirming the karmic attachment. I have no interest in this process, my focus is on healing and expansion. If my work, small as it is, can help someone else release the story and focus on the healing, excellent. If not, I’ll just keeping doing what I can.”

“Huh. Never considered that before.”

“What part?”

“That knowing the story can actually do more harm than good. That our ego-self can latch onto the story and use it as an excuse to further play victim and expect others to solve the problem, rather than owning our power and moving forward.”

I smile down at my work as a knot on the end of a string finally releases. The string is kinked and shows obvious evidence of having been previously tied, but I know that when I’m done, I can steam the fibers and they will let go. “By Jove, I do believe you are starting to understand in truth!”

Healing Ancestral versus Past Life Issues

I’m having my second QHHT session next week. The last one brought up 2 of the handful of past lives I can recall, but I don’t want to do another session on the same topic. To that end, I’ve been considering other topics to explore.

Apart from a query about plant medicine and how that would work for me, my thoughts turned to the concept of ancestral healing. I had a run-in with this when I was dredging up my family’s gender issues, and another when I working on the family religious issues. Then I started thinking what other ancestral issues are in play that I’m not seeing.

Now one of my many hobbies is genealogy, and I have my family line for every single generation about 8 deep before the first hole appears. A number of my lines even go back to the 1000s, and very few even earlier when they hook into nobility or royalty. Given this deep knowledge of my history, what topics came to mind? Well, my mom’s side has a great deal of heart issues and strokes. This tells me circulatory system, of which the heart is the engine, is likely manifesting some issue – not sure what, but something. Then there’s weight – no one else is my family is fat, except my parents and me. Yay. 😐 That’s got to be something. And there’s a dysfunctional relationship with health, or unhealth, and worthiness of love. Thanks mamaw! :-\ So that’s 3 ancestral issues which I can see, but I’m not sure exactly what they are messages for so exploring this strikes me as the perfect use for my next QHHT session.

As I was pondering this, I suddenly got hit with an idea.

I chose this ancestral line because the themes of power and value running through this family are the same ones that I’ll see running through my past lives. They aren’t actually 2 different things, but correlating elements.

Of course it’s always possible that the some the ‘past lives’ I’ve recalled aren’t actually my own, but instead ancestors with issues I’m equipped to face/heal. Even so, when I think this, none of the past lives have the “flavor” of family, if that makes any sense. It’s always possible, so I’ll keep that door open.

I find it interesting that the word “power” ended up in the opening sentence above. I never thought that one before – only value, ie worth. The big themes in this life are healing old wounds and dealing with my sense of worth. Never really considered that adjacent to worth was power – my own power. To express myself, to BE myself, to open explore ideas without fear of being burned alive in my own house…. heh.

Survival Archetype: The Child: Guardian of Faith

I absolutely adore Carolyn Myss‘ work, and in particular her Sacred Contracts work. That has been a tool I’ve leverage repeatedly and allowed great insight as I was working my way through the Hall of Mirrors. I am going to assume that if you are interested in this post, you are familiar at the very least with the concept of archetypes and so will not re-explain. I’ve provided links to her work, so if this sparks curiosity please I encourage and applaud the initiative.

During my heavy exploration into the shadow or unknown aspects of myself, I did a lot of work with the archetypes she calls out as her Basic Survival Archetypes. These are the 4 that every human has. She has a marvelous write-up for them available for free here. In the process of working with them, they actually re-interpreted themselves and I wanted to put this down in writing.

While the first to re-define itself was the Saboteur, it is always the Child that I turn to first. Why? Because it is the first, most core, most primal archetype – after all, we are all born with this one front and center. And it is this one that first makes decisions about how best to survive in life. Indeed, it is the Child mind that informs the adult self How Things Are.

I learned quite viscerally as I navigated my own Hall of Mirrors that a great many, in fact all in my case, of the ideas that I had about how life worked, what was expected of me, etc were all things that my child self decided at a young age. The child mind generally goes “decided, tested, verified, stored” and the template is now set. Very rarely does the adult self intentionally go back and take a look at the power templates that the child created.

My brother announced at the age of 6 or so that he was never going to college. My parents figured, he’s 6. We’re not going to get upset, just let life go on and we’ll see how this shakes out as he matures. When I was in Jr High, my mom went back to school and got 2 degrees: accounting, and computer science. My brother was about 11 or so. He suddenly then announced that he decided he would go to college. My parents were pleased, but simply asked what made him change his mind. As a youngster, he looked around and figured out that going to college meant leaving home and never coming back. When my mom went to college, and came home every day, he saw that his younger-child mind decision was incorrect, and so he changed his stance with this additional input.

That is the perfect example I point to as a decision that the child mind makes, stores, and then acts upon as if it was 100% true always. But there are a few things that all children lack, specifically perspective. The older we get, the longer those child mind templates are used and proven true, the harder they are to even recognize let alone change.

With all this groundwork laid, I was having an interview with my child self in a creative writing piece. She told me that she was the Guardian of Faith. Well that was a very different take that what I’ve read about and asked further into it.

Faith is how we believe Things Work. How the World Is. For those who’ve gone through any level of Dark Night of the Ego, what generally plunges someone into it is some level of breakage of this foundational faith. It’s Faith upon which our entire worldview is built. And when a pillar gets shaken, or knocked down, that’s when the ego is plunged into a crisis. A crisis of Faith.

People hear “faith” and think “religion”. Nope. An atheist has absolute faith there is nothing beyond here and now. A scientist has faith that the process of observation will yield reliable and repeatable results if the experiment is laid out right. A passenger on a plane has faith that all the bolts needed are in place.

Now some faith perspectives are surface level and can be broken without plunging the ego into a true Dark Night. Some faith perspectives, when broken, are like shackles coming off – as I described in this post. And some faith perspectives are so foundational that anything which even threatens to shake them can have people reacting as if they are literally being attacked.

My husband served in the military and saw some combat while deployed. He had always had this notion that he was a civilized man, but in the heat of a particularly harrowing moment, he learned very differently. It completely shattered, in one instant, a core foundational aspect of who he saw himself as, and as such How the World Works. He came to face to face with his own dark primal self and it changed everything. It took him years to reassemble himself, and now he works with others as a transformational shaman. But there’s no way he would have ever unlocked this aspect without having his Faith in himself shattered so thoroughly.

So the Child as the Guardian of Faith. I found this renaming to be rather profound, and it made it easy for me to understand what Dark Nights really are and why they can be so radically altering. It also helped me understand that pretty much every single assumption I had, I made as a child. With all the perspective and reasoning capacity of a child. Wow. This means that unless I’ve had the opportunity to learn something as an adult, all my actions and reactions are being guided by the decisions of a child. And this is true of everyone around me as well.

I believe it called itself a Guardian because not only does the mind make these decisions about How the World Works, but also defends them. By ensuring that our core concepts of self are unchallenged, by any means necessary, we are free to move along life’s path feeling safe and secure. After all, children want to feel safe and secure above all else.

By now in my journey toward self mastery, I’ve gained the use of my observer self, which has very much helped give me the ability to hold up these child mind decisions and re-evaluate them with the adult mind – without feeling threatened. Many of them I can change, correct, set aside, or replace. I’ve had the foundational pillars knocked out, cracked, or shaken enough to know that I can handle a “core truth” turning out to not be so true after all. I know it’s not fun, but I can handle it.

Seeing the Child as the Guardian of Faith and what this means on a practical, everyday life level means that adult-me can accept that child-me’s ideas may not be as wise or as solid as the child had assumed. Me as an adult can love the child self for making some strange conclusions, adapt, and move along. These are the new ideas of Faith that Child now guards.

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Child – Guardian of Faith – decides early on How the World Works, tests and then entrenches these ideas – protects them from being damaged, especially the most important ones – is concerned with safety and security.

Actions over Words

I was watching something recently – most likely an early episode of Season 2 of Babylon 5 – and heard the line:

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m deafened by your actions.”

I’ve spoken quite a bit on why I think Communism is bad – and one of those ‘bad for us all’ is the extreme conformity that it demands. What I’m finding very interesting is how much some people have been screaming about ‘diversity’ but then getting rid of anyone who would even ask a simple question that might challenge … anything.

Thinking about the current manifestation of a false diversity, one of words but not actions… The image that comes to mind which illustrates this is of a field of tulips. All different colors of tulips. But … ALL … tulips. Only tulips. Rose? Cut it down! Weed? Rip it out! Medicinal plant? Burn it! Tree? Cancel it!

A field of tulips is colorful, but it’s not genuine diversity. As a gardener, I’m learning very much that sometimes I’m better off to let the weeds have a bed, or that mixing my vegetables/herbs/medicinals does such marvelous things for ensuring the whole thing is stronger with fewer pests – and I don’t have to work much at all to have a great and tasty harvest.

As a student of growing things and promoting planet health as well as learning about the necessity of the human gut to be wildly diverse in order for our own bodies to be healthy, I’ve learned that genuine diversity is the lifeblood of a thriving ecosystem. A thriving culture. That said, the environment and available resources will limit the diversity so that everything present supports and thrives in that environment. Sort of like shared values with different approaches and perspectives makes for a thriving culture.

I try to live with integrity – and that means my actions must match my words to the highest capability I can manage. I see so many living without integrity – saying one thing, and doing another.

Words are pretty. Words can inspire and shape and create. They can also destroy. They can lie and mislead.

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m deafened by your actions.”

Speaking to Ourselves

I was listening to a Next Level Soul podcast episode with Pamela Aaralyn. In there, she mentioned something I’ve heard over and over, even said myself, but something about hearing it in that moment … well. Suddenly I heard it very differently.

To paraphrase, she said that everybody looks outside themselves for answers and guidance – but that everything we need is actually already within. When are we going to realize that the only one we’ve ever really been speaking to, is ourselves?

That statement in that moment in time was like a smack upside the head. See, I “hear” guidance all the time. But it’s said with my own voice. I’ve told that voice repeatedly that I’m not going to consider anything said with my own voice as any sort of valid guidance because clearly, it’s just me. And who am I?

And it’s never happened. The ‘guidance’ still comes, but it’s always in my own voice. Only ever in my own voice, within my own head.

In that moment, that same inner voice said without words – a sort of realization awareness spreading through me which I will now translate into words because this is a blog. “This is why the voice I hear is my own.” I had to just sit there and blink for a few minutes to really let this sink in. My inner-voice-guidance is in my voice because it IS me speaking to me. My own ‘higher self’ is me. My ‘God squad’ or spirit team or guides or whatever term you prefer, they are all me.

What I have to do is learn to differentiate or discern the difference between Ego Mind thought, aka Monkey Mind chatter, and the sound of my deeper self, my wiser self.

I’ve been working on learning those differences, and am starting to trust a bit. My ego self comes out with “way to go, stupid” when I blunder something, to which my higher voice comes back with a soft “is that a loving statement?” (By the way, enlisting my higher self to help me stop the ugly internal dialog was very helpful!)

The ego mind has a … vibration? a feel? to it that is like listening to the hum of electrical appliances when they are on. It’s so pervasive that it just blends in and we don’t notice it for the most part. But when that vibration, that frequency changes, that we notice. So the ‘feel’ of the ego mind is like that background ‘feel’ – because it is part of that everyday awareness. Hell, it IS that everyday awareness. But the other voice, the one with the insights that make me pause, that has a subtle difference in feel. I would say ‘lower’ but that connotation has baggage and can be interpreted as ‘darker’ or ‘lesser’ when that’s not at all what I mean. It feels …

Have you ever faced a wall and spoken aloud? The sound bounces back at you in a distinctive way. Then face a canyon and say the same thing. The sound is radically different. The Ego Mind is like hearing myself when I speak into a wall inches from my face, while the other voice is like saying the exact same thing while facing no obstacle. It’s hard to explain, but that’s the best I can do.

There was a single time I heard a voice not my own, and not within my own head. It was not part of the internal dialog at all. This was in that Junior year of college in which everything else profound happened. I had been practicing the mirror meditation, looking at the different faces which overlaid my own on the side I was not focusing on. After a bit of that, I went into the mundane practices of preparing for bed. I was home at the time, my parents and brother having already gone to bed. I brushed my teeth and had just looked up from rinsing when I heard a very clear, very calm, and very external male voice say my name.

I walked out of the bathroom and into my parents room and said “what?” They said “what?” I said “you just called me” and they said “uh, no, we didn’t.” I go into my brother’s room and said “did you call me?” to which I heard “snooooore” (not faking it, he was dead asleep). I went back to my parent’s room and confirmed again that Dad had not just said my name. I went back to the bathroom, stood in front mirror and went back into a mini meditation and said “What? I am listening.” Nothing. Crickets! *sigh* And that is literally the only time I ever heard a voice that could not be explained.