Journey to the Center of the Body - Week Thirteen
By Joey De La Cruz
T-44 Tuesday, August 25
Woke up and completed a little meditation. Staying within today. Looking forward to more meditation classes. I want to continue to go deeper within myself. The days are passing ever faster, and I will be arriving at my destination before I know it. Gratitude and living every day well is imperative. Life is so beautiful. I am grateful. More to follow.
UPDATE: 1:22pm The call came in around 9:30am. My phone didn’t ring, but I must answer the call. I am not alone. I am one with another, I am one with all. My lover’s grandmother, her ‘mother’ who raised her, is in the hospital. She’s 92 and on her way to the other side. My lover’s pain is my pain. My lover’s hurt is my hurt. We share each other, we are each other. We got her on a plane within three hours of the call and off she went. The body of her grandmother is approaching her final turn around the sun. I’m immediately transported back to the moment I got that same call, it was my phone that rang, it was my mother in the hospital. Trauma hits hard, I remember right where I was. I was right back in those uncomfortable feelings, emotions, sensations, smells, and locations. This is the nature of life. The body grows, it matures, it decays and then, at its appointed time, it dies. At the time of this writing there is still life in her, Yais, that’s all I know her by. I hope I get to meet her. If there’s still time.
Memory, exists inside the body. I just journeyed to the deep recesses of my mind. To the pain, the hurt, the discomfort of losing my mother. My substance abuse after her death, trying to fill of the void, numb the hurt, one can go to drastic lengths to “make it right.” But those roads led to darker places still. This is one of those moments in life, a wake-up call. A shift of perspective. A WAKE THE FUCK UP AND LOOK AT WHAT’S AROUND YOU. Are you grateful for your body? You only have it for so long. Reality check. Can you hear me!?
I am so intimately connected to my lover. I am not alone and, in this moment, neither is she. Yet here I am alone in my room as she races across the skies to reach her, I hope there is time. TIME. The moments, the seconds, the minutes, the hours, every single one counts right now.
T-43 Wednesday, August 26
When death is close, I can feel the translucent barriers between worlds is more available to us.
T-42 Thursday, August 27
Love. Today the adventure takes off. I find myself within my body traveling across the country at a moment’s notice because of Love. The emotion, the power, the truth of true love moves me now. I am support, I am light, I am coming to be present when an wise soul, in an old body. I have experienced death close at hand, once before. My mother. It was a though experience and here I will lend support to others as a possible witness what happens when a consciousness, a soul, leaves the body. The ultimate journey into the unknow, into the depths of the mystery. The universe. My senses are calm, preserving my energy until my arrival. Dropping into the unknown, a tense emotional environment that will present many different energies, unknown challenges. Many different perceptions about life, living, and death. Many different levels of self-awareness. This moment will a massive catalyst which will allow the opportunity for growth. Or not. Be like a river. Flow. Be present.
T-41 Friday, August 28
This morning it is confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are all intimately connected on an energetic level of conscious awareness. My dreams related to the events of the day and the subconscious awareness and energetic signatures of my current location, I can feel the charge of the environmental and uniquely personal landscapes. This morning I felt major physical pain, true heartbreak, although it was not my own. It belonged to another. If we are all connected, which I believe we are, then what I experienced today was the ability to feel into the aura, the energetic body of another.
Here’s what happened: I woke up in bed with a girl I love, in her family house as a stranger, an outsider. I represented a new energy, a new force in their lives and the life of my love’s mother. I am here to be present for my partner, and also to support her family as they go through a scary time with their grandmother, as she is 92, and delicate. I was asleep in bed with my love, her mother opened the door to look inside and collect a suitcase for another family member, no harm no foul. As mom saw us in bed a HUGE energetic shift occurred. Nearly immediately I felt my heart breaking. Immense pain flooded my heart center. This truth is being verified by energetic chills going all over my body right now as I write this. This really happened, I felt this pain. I’m going to describe what occurred in very simple and straightforward terms and will elaborate at a later time. My heart breaking, the pain I felt was that of mom. Seeing her daughter sleeping in bed with a man, according to the history I’ve been told, was a huge loss for mom. Upon my arrival, mom wanted daughter to sleep with her, to comfort her. There was a very strong bond between the two, one that the mom required, leaned on, needed, was dependent upon. Mother was dependent on daughter for support, validation, in short, energy. At the time of seeing me it was made known that daughter’s energy was not going to mom, and was being directed in a new direction, towards a stranger, a lover. That bond, previously present between mother and daughter, was no longer available to mom, this broke mom’s heart. I felt that heart breaking. It was MY heart that also broke. I felt a huge amount of pain, it really hurt, I can feel it still. I have every belief that this hurt will continue long after I leave here. My presence here, the presence of my energy, my love and this new relationship has fundamentally altered the old energetic relationship between mother and daughter. This is confirmation that leads me to believe, sometimes, LOVE HURTS. Which makes sense why we often run away from Love, why we avoid Love. It hurts. This counter-intuitive, yet verifiable truth, explains a lot. It explains why we hold onto dysfunctional, or old relationships and habits. Although it may not be in our best interest, we hold onto what is familiar, even if it is painful because we are unable, or afraid to step into a new space, new potential for A MILLION different reasons, one of them being pain. THE PAST. I still feel the mother’s pain in my heart. Then, moments later, I HEARD IN MY MIND, VERY CLEARLY, MY NAME, SPOKEN BY ANOTHER. I experienced telepathy, the supposed communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses. I did not speak it or think it. From an outside source this thought resounded like a cannon going off in my mind, my awareness. It came from mom. “JOEY.” That’s all I heard. It was very intense. I have never felt a directed or focused energy like that directed towards me before in my life. This was literally like a cannon blast of energy and emotional thought from another person, and I heard it in my mind and felt it in my heart. I could feel her whole world shifting, fresh pain occurring, new awareness arising, a feeling of loss. At the same time, her daughter told me that she felt an energetic opening in her back, like wings opening up, similar to a feeling and emotion that I felt weeks ago, which I recorded in this journal. So, this confirms that a massive shift of energy occurred between three different people simultaneously.
Which leads me to believe, if one person shifts their energy, it must affect those around them. Which lends evidence to the theory: If you want to change the world, change yourself first.
UPDATE 9:36am: Just completed some Chi Gong exercises, I am new at it, I have previously taken Tai Chi classes, but this was a new form and I wanted to explore something new. I feel the aura, the chi around me, the energy of my being is vibrating.
T-40 Saturday, August 29
The vibes, the energy between the family have been changed in a subtle yet profound way. Energy has shifted and relationships are changing, as they are always in a constant flux. My internal energy has settled too. More grounded. More mellow and at peace. We will see where it goes from here.
T-39 Sunday, August 30
I experienced more grief today within my body, and felt it in the bodies of others. We took part in a virtual memorial for a young kid who passed away in the family. I’m grateful to be here to hold space and to be a source of compassion and support in these difficult times. It’s amazing how sharing a story can help others to look within themselves, to see their own inner journey and to bring light and love to hidden places that lurk within our mind and our body, deep in the subconscious, or floating around undisturbed on the surface of our being. I myself am feeling strength. In finding my own inner light, I am not overly impacted by the emotional stress of another, I am grounded in my own faith and knowledge that in myself, I am free.
T-38 Monday, August 31
I’m happy that I’ve been able to keep daily notes recently. I am on an adventure, within an adventure. I am TIRED. I have realized that although I am connected to those around me, the pain I felt deep in my heart a couple days ago, was not my own. Although I was the object of and source onto which that pain was projected, I was NOT the cause. The cause was within the person feeling it and over the course of the past few days I have come to realize very acutely that it IS ALWAYS FROM WITHIN that pain, suffering, heartbreak, all emotion originates. I have done my best to stay true to MY OWN INNER STATE, which I am happy to report, after all this hard work on my inner self, has a strong foundational state of love and gratitude, pillars upon which the rest of my life can rest comfortably. From this baseline level state of being, although I felt this pain, this heartbreak, I know that it was not my own and that in fact it was a healthy release. Its healthy to FEEL our feelings.
Life becomes difficult when emotions get stuck. We run the risk of getting caught in a loop, from which we may never escape, and sometimes it takes a catalyst to break free. In this case, it was the daughter’s new boyfriend. I was the catalyst, my presence at that time broke ingrained patterns of belief and actions. This weekend was also the first introduction to a smudging ceremony with the use of sage for this family. It assisted in breaking a cycle of mental self-defeating dialogue. A cleansing of smoke and loving words spoken with intention can rid that which no longer serves us. We must burn away, yes, BURN away the old, and clear space for new seeds of thought, new seeds of behavior, to take root and provide a clearing to blossom. This is TAXING work. I am exhausted. We cleansed the house with sage, an act of rebirth and awakening that was long overdue. This change took place in physical “external” house, as well as the mental/emotional INNER house. This experience has led me deeper within the journey of personal healing and understanding of the SELF.
I know that I am a storyteller, but I also know that HEALING people and LIGHTING them up is also a very essential part of who I want to be and become. I want to heal the world, and that will come from healing people from WITHIN. This weekend was a massive adventure. Meeting another family, feeling their judgements/reactions to me (unconscious/conscious, neither bad nor good, just real) was a test of my own personal moral and spiritual code. Who am I as a person? Love the person I am. I am.