Zen sickness

From January till March 2014, I hit a very marked stage of apathy. Somehow this whole process of the journey with the anger and the subsequent painful letting go, the Awareness Watching Awareness meditation of looking back at awareness, the shift of perception that I am consciousness, all of that made me feel flat. I had very little energy or interest to do anything. Nothing seemed to matter.

If I was consciousness and this body and personality was just something like a character in a virtual reality game, then why invest in the screen avatar? What goals were worthy of achieving? Before the awakening, I used to have goals in life. But now, nothing was important anymore.

If awakening to what we are was the goal of the game, and if I had seen myself as consciousness, then I assumed that I could consider myself ‘done’. But then what was important now, after being ‘done’?

I was almost constantly in the witness position, not only to the stuff happening around me but also to my body.

That witness stage felt a little strange. It was as if I didn’t inhabit my body anymore in a natural way.

Once, I saw a short documentation on tv about a device that would allow a man to steer his wheelchair with his thoughts. That was pretty amazing. The wheelchair reacted to the thoughts. Think left, and it turns left. Wow!

In the same way, I kept wondering about how reliably the wish to raise my arm actually resulted in raising my arm. That is something which we usually take for granted and do not think about. But during this phase of my journey, I felt that I as awareness was different from my body. And that my body was like a cool meat-suit I had been given for that virtual reality game. How amazing that it did react to my thoughts! And how awesome that it came complete with input channels called sense organs that let me see, feel, and taste everything around me as if these things outside were separate things.

It was amazing. But even though I had a new appreciation for my body from that new perspective, life suddenly seemed unreal.

I wondered whether there was a difference to a depersonalization-derealization disorder (DP/DR). There was plenty of discussion on the internet about whether DP/DR was a clinical disorder (and should be treated by medication) or was a part of the journey to enlightenment.

Not only did everything feel unreal, but I also felt flat, low energy, purposeless, everything was sort of gray. I had no motivation whatsoever.

I searched the internet whether others on this journey had gone through similar phases and found stories about zen-sickness and falling into the ‘pit of the void’.

It was comforting to know that it was probably a normal phenomenon and nothing I needed to worry about. I hoped that it would pass eventually.

As it turned out later, life wouldn’t let me rest in this phase for more than three months, but my guides devised some clever methods to pull me out of the pit of the void, which I will discuss in my next post.

***

This post is part of a series about my spiritual journey. If you want to read the story from the beginning, you can go to the table of contents and then page forward through the chapters like in a book.

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More encouragements to keep writing

I did my best to keep writing regularly, but it continued to be difficult. The following stories illustrate how my guidance helped me through my fear, doubt, and procrastination.

Don’t fear the creepers

On November 26, 2013, one of my sons who was playing the computer game Minecraft at the time, told me with wide open, fearful eyes, “Mommy, I am so afraid! In Minecraft, I have to do some construction job in the mine. And it is dark there. And at night, the creepers will come.” (note: Minecraft is a bit like LEGO, but for the computer. And Minecraft creepers are aggressive monsters.)

I didn’t say anything but just thought, ‘Seriously? Come on, this is just a virtual reality game. And one which does not look very real at all since everything consists of cubes. How can he be afraid? Oh well, kids…’

And then he added with more confidence, “I have to be brave. But it’s okay. I’ll manage.”

Oh, how cute! This was heartwarming.

Then I thought, ‘Wait a minute. Is he meant to mirror me?’
Wasn’t this 3d realm also just a virtual reality? Then what was I so afraid of when I thought of publishing my story?

The thought amused me. How fascinating in which way my beliefs and behaviors were mirrored back to me! Even though, this message did not eliminate my fear right away, I confirmed to my guides that I got the message.

The receiving and the giving valve must both be open

End of November 2013, two minor accidents happened in our house that both involved water flowing through a tube which had an incoming and an outgoing valve. In one event, the watering system for the garden was involved, and in the other one, it was the central heating.

Both events together seemed like a pattern to me which might contain a message and I pondered the meaning.

I came up with the interpretation that both valves, for the incoming as well as the outgoing flow, needed to be open. Then, and only then, there was flow. Otherwise, the flow would be blocked.

I thought about what this might mean for my journey through life at that point in time.

Probably it meant that I had to be able to receive first in order to give.

But it also meant that once I had received, I needed to give. Otherwise, an unhealthy pressure would build up inside of me which would cause damage or flooding.

And hadn’t I received all these instances of divine guidance? Clearly, it was time to share now.

Writing and the Polar watch

Around January 2014, a long-term pattern of synchronicities started to emerge. During that time, the Polar company was about to bring a new sports watch to the market. Whenever I thought about writing down my story in a book-like format, my husband started to think about buying the new Polar sports watch. And whenever I doubted and thought that I would rather stop writing, my husband said, ‘You know what? I think I don’t really need this new, expensive watch.’

The whole process of my writing and sharing my story on one side and of the release and arrival of the Polar watch on the other side started to evolve in parallel. It was fascinating and funny to watch.

Being pulled to the right path

On January 29, 2014, while I was riding my bike on a path in the fields, suddenly my handlebar was turned to the right side and I came off the asphalt path and into the muddy side of the road. Luckily I did not fall down.

I didn’t think much about it until it happened a second time. Out of the blue. As if an unseen force had interfered with my bike.

What the heck was going on?

I thought about it and came to the interpretation that it could mean that ‘I was being pulled to the right (path)’ (- rather than being attacked by evil spirits or having a dangerous lapse in my sense of physical balance).

If that interpretation was correct, then that would mean that I did not need to worry so much about whether I was doing the right thing with writing. My guidance would take care of pulling me to the right path. I could do my part of the deal and relax. That was a comforting thought.

Going home on the fast track

In February 2014, I pondered and wrote in my journal about the shift of my interests. While I was feeling more and more uninvolved and disinterested at work, writing (i.e. journaling and also writing emails to others) about spiritual matters became very important for me.

Then I had the following dream: I was in my home town, Berlin, and took the public transport to go to my parents’ house. I was shown two scenarios. In the first one, I took a longer route home and was able to sell some stuff (like old household items) on the way and make some money.

In the second scenario, I took a shorter route home where I could sell less stuff and make less money, but I arrived at home faster.

Interpretation
I thought this was about my situation at work. Shifting my focus away from being engaged at work and more towards pondering and writing about spiritual matters would mean less money.

But it also meant that I was on the fast track Home.

***

This post is part of a series about my spiritual journey (table of contents).

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Encouragements to keep writing

In October 2013,  I was regularly writing down my story, chapter by chapter, and sharing each new chapter with my accountability buddy.

But it wasn’t easy. Inside of me, there was still a lot of resistance and doubt. I often felt that I just could not do it. It was too hard.

The following stories illustrate the guidance I got which was designed to help me push through my doubts and my procrastination.

Mirroring pattern: I don’t have what it takes

In October 2013, during all of that inner complaining and whining that I just couldn’t do it, two events happened that made me think.

First, one of my sons said he lost his water bottle which he used at school.
‘How annoying, ‘ I thought. Oh well, we would have to buy a new one.
But then we checked his school bag and desk at home, and lo and behold, the water bottle was found.

Then my other son told me, ‘Mom, I lost my book for my German class.’
Here, same thing. We looked for it, searched, and found the book.

I saw a pattern. Were my kids mirroring me? Telling me, ‘I don’t have [what it takes]’ , but then they did have it? Was this mirroring my frequent whining that I don’t have what it takes?

Vision: A pep-talk by my spirit guide

On November 13, 2013, when I was sitting at my desk thinking whether I should write or procrastinate, the following inner vision and subsequent conversation happened in my mind.

My spirit guide Aaron appeared. I recognized his blonde curly hair, his bright blue, smiling eyes. He looked very upbeat as he stood in front of my desk, bent down, supporting himself with his arms on my desk.

‘So! What are you gonna do today?’ he asked me.

‘Procrastinate some more? Have coffee with you?’ I joked, speaking to him in my mind.
‘When will you go away? I’ve got to work,’ I added, slightly irritated by his visit.

Aaron didn’t move. He kept smiling at me.
‘Guess what . I’m not gonna move until you follow your calling.’

Me: ‚Uh, oh, thanks.‘

The inner vision did not fade. He just kept sitting in my face. Friendly smile. And this glance that seemed to demand action. I thought I really had to write now.

I noticed that he was wearing something unusual. While he normally would appear to me with a grey t-shirt, on that day in the vision he wore a light-blue business shirt, but had both sleeves rolled up.

‘Aaron, you are wearing this shirt today. You look unusual, so business-like. Why?’

‘Yes, I have dressed up for you,’ he kept smiling at me. ‘Because I really mean business.’

‘I must admit that I am so awed by these new mental images that I can hardly concentrate on writing.’

‘You want me to vanish?’ he asked.

‘No , I’m just blown away. This is new to me. This clarity of the vision in my mind.’

‘Will you write now?’

Then I started to write and the vision faded.

Dream: stop doing the unimportant stuff

On the next day, I was busy with a lot of household chores. I managed to clean the windows, got a haircut, and bought a couple of Christmas gifts. I was very efficient and got many things done from my long to do list. I felt good about myself, content and proud of my efficiency and achievements.

But the night after that, I had dream where three different people were doing various things, and each time I said to them, “You don’t need to do that. It is unimportant.”

But in the last scene of the dream, I was repeatedly struggling and trying to put a pen or a screw through a hole of three layers of paper sheets, but it always kept slipping away.

The interpretation was clear. Even though I was preaching to others to others to stop doing unnecessary things, I did not walk my talk, but instead did unimportant things myself.

I wondered whether the dream was a reproach for my efficient getting-things-done spree from the day before. I was confused. Wasn’t I allowed or even supposed to play the role of a mom here on earth with all that it entails, Christmas shopping and cleaning and all?

But maybe spirit had other ideas about what was important. Maybe doing household chores and Christmas shopping was unimportant compared to writing the book? The dream seemed like a reprimand which said, ‘Get your priorities straight!’

***

This post is part of a series about my spiritual journey (table of contents).

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A leap of faith

Dream: meet old friend

On October 16, 2013, I had the following dream. I was in Berlin close to my parents’ house and had planned to visit a friend from my childhood days. Let’s call her Lena. With my small backpack on my back, I was running across a street to catch the bus to her house.

But right in front of the bus there were a few monkeys running and jumping around.
I thought, ugh, monkeys – this would mean trouble. I was afraid that they might steal my backpack.

Should I enter the bus and drive to Lena as I had promised her? Or should I stay where I was and skip the meeting in order to avoid the encounter with the monkeys?

Before I got on the bus, I woke up.

Interpretation
I didn’t know what to make of it. Lena and I had had some infrequent contact during the last years. The last time I saw her, she told me that she often felt sad or depressive. So, I was aware that there was some emotional trouble going on in her life. But what did the dream mean?

A conversation with my guide

I sat down and with pen and paper, tried to calm my mind and to get into contact with the inner voice of guidance.

‘What did the dream about Lena mean?’ I asked silently in my mind and then became still and waited for an answer.

‘Contact her. She is in trouble,’ my guide replied. ‘And send her the material you have written.’

‘What?!? No way! I cannot. I am not going to do that. I mean I do not know her so well that I would dare to share my weird, paranormal experiences with her. I don’t know whether she is open to such kind of woo-woo, world-view-shifting material. What if I overstep a boundary? What if she becomes angry with me or thinks I am nuts?’ I replied.

‘She is in trouble. Send her your unpublished material which you wrote for the forum,’ the inner voice reiterated. But he would not give me further explanations.

I was terrified and very hesitant.

‘And what about the monkeys in the dream? What did they mean?’

‘They represent your doubts.’

Oookaay.

I had to take a deep breath and to make peace with this new challenge.
Just a few weeks earlier, I had found the resolve to share publicly and then found an accountability buddy for my writing endeavors, which was good to avoid procrastination, but left me feeling naked and vulnerable. But now, I should already share with someone I knew, but in whose case I still considered it risky to share?
Boy was this stretching me way beyond my comfort zone.

Earworms

For two days, I hesitated whether to send my friend the story about my anger, the burned out light bulbs, and ACIM forgiveness. But each time I hesitated, I heard a German children’s lullaby in my head (‘Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf’. Which translates as: Sleep, baby, sleep). This seemed to say, if you don’t want to trust the inner voice, then stay asleep. On the other hand, when I thought, ‘ok, I’m gonna obey and send this,’ then the song in my head changed to a love song (Puccini’s ‘O mio babbino caro’). I took this as a sign that my spirit guide was very serious about this and that I was not making it up. How strange to have a divine radio station playing earworms in my head! But it could be a useful communication device at times.

A leap of faith

So, two days after the dream, on October 18, 2013, I sent a mail to my friend. At first only about A Course in Miracles (ACIM) and the ACIM-related book The Disappearance of the Universe by Gary Renard which had helped me to understand what ACIM was about. And I told her that it had helped me to get out of a phase of anger in my life.

But that inner voice insisted, ‘Send her also your story about the anger and the burned out light bulbs.’

Ok, so a bit later, I also sent her my unpublished text which I had initially written for an internet forum. I apologized at least three times, how stupid I felt that I wrote her just because of this dream and that I was not sure whether she needed it at all and I hoped she wasn’t angry with me and whether she could deal with ACIM as we had never talked about spirituality before .

I couldn’t believe that I actually did this!

Congratulations and confirmation

My guides gave me a vision of a path where many people were lined up on the right-hand side (while there was no one on the left side). As I was carried along that path by my guide, all these people were congratulating me to my decision to take this leap of faith. This vision moved me deeply. It was as if I was shown how many people there were on the spirit side who cared deeply about my spiritual path and my success.

As Lena confessed later, she was in an emotionally difficult phase during that time when I had the dream of the bus and the monkeys. And she had the same issue as I did with electric things going awry when she was emotionally off-balance! She let me know that my mail was like a gift from heaven to her.

OMG! I had no idea…..!

That day was a milestone in my journey regarding trust in the inner voice of my spirit guide.  It showed me that I did not make up what the inner voice told me but that it was some genuine, important information.

***

This post is part of a series about my spiritual journey (table of contents).

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Losing the towel

Finding an accountability buddy for the book

After I had found the inner resolve to share and write, some help appeared in an unexpected form. On October 10, 2013, I sat together with a friend at work when she suddenly asked me, “What different stages of insight have you gone through in your life?”

I was baffled. Where did that come from?

But then I realized that this was a godsend, an opportunity. In July 2013, I had already opened up to her and told her about my experiences with anger and burned out light-bulbs, inner peace and miracles, and that we are more than our body. This topic was not completely new for her.

“I was nudged to write a book about it. And it would be helpful to have someone to whom I can send the single chapters I write,” I told her.

With anticipation, I looked at her and tried to determine her reaction. Would she be open enough for my request?

“It would motivate me if I knew you would read this as I write it. Would that be okay for you?”

Because I was aware of my tendency to give in to fear and procrastinate, I needed someone who would act as an accountability buddy or a midwife for the book.

Luckily, she agreed and I was very grateful for that.

Then, I sent her the draft which I had written for an internet forum but never published. And later, I started to write chapters of the book regularly and send them to her.

Now I knew I had to write. I was hopeful that then the heavy feeling of guilt because of being not in alignment with my guidance would lift.

Dream: Feed your brother

On October 9, 2013, I dreamed that I was in my former high school at a festival. There were many people around and many exhibitions in the various classrooms.

In the crowd, I was looking for my brother and finally found him on the top floor in the music room.

I knew he was hungry and since it was a long day ahead, I offered him some pizza and fruit. At first, he did not want to eat it. But he admitted that he was hungry, and so I served him the food.

Interpretation
Feed your brother. Sharing my experiences and insights on my path with a fellow traveler (‘brother’) was like giving them food for the soul. Giving other people food would often used in my dreams later as a metaphor for nourishing others spiritually.

In my journal, I wrote that I felt so full inside that I felt like a dammed lake shortly before the dam was about to burst.

Losing the towel

I noticed something odd. During the last days, both of my kids had lost their towels during their swimming lessons at school. Both events happened shortly after another and independently of each other.

When something like this happens where I see a pattern, then I ask myself whether it contains a message.

What did it mean?

To throw in the towel, i.e. to give up? I pondered. No, that didn’t fit.

‘Losing the towel’ was no idiom, neither in German nor in English. So, what was I to make of it?

When I searched the internet for ‘losing the towel’, I came upon several youtube videos where people at home were wrapped only in a towel when the pizza delivery service rang the doorbell.

The people opened the door and then unfortunately lost their towels and stood there naked in front of the pizza delivery man…. Very embarrassing.

Yes. That was what the pattern of lost towels pointed to. It was how I felt after opening up and sharing my entire story with my friend at work. Totally naked, vulnerable, and embarrassed.

***

This post is part of a series about my spiritual journey (table of contents).

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‘Write that book! You are late’

So, the breathing issues had improved. But my guidance would not let go of their original request.

On September 28, 2013, I was in a very relaxed mood, sitting on my sofa, and enjoying a book with a Jesus channeling when I read a paragraph where it was suggested that we should ask God, ‘Father, what would you have me do?‘

I thought, good question, I would ask that. After that, I became still and waited for the answer.

‘Write that book! You are late.’ appeared in my mind like a thought or like a silently spoken phrase.

It ‘sounded’ like these were my own thoughts. But they weren’t. It would be more accurate to describe them as thoughts in my mind which I did not think.

I was baffled. Was it from spirit? I couldn’t tell. I thought, well, if this was from my spirit guides, then I was sure that they would find a way to contact me again to make their point clear.

And they did.

About two hours later, when I sat down on my sofa again, the back of my head slammed against the wall. Just accidentally. There was no special external reason for it.

Ouch!

This had never happened before and also did not happen any time afterwards. It was like a slap on the head. I interpreted is as a sign that the order to ‘write that book’ was not from my imagination, but that it was really from my spirit guide.

In retrospect, I was now able to make sense of all the signs I had received up to that day. The dreams about my procrastination, the dream about the feather in the throat, the breathing trouble in the throat, and now finally the clear order by the inner voice accompanied by the firm slap on the back of my head.

Duh! It all seemed so obvious now.

That sentence ‘Write that book! You are late!’ together with the slap on the head end of September 2013 was a turning point on my journey. Afterwards, I yielded and said, okay, I will write.

***

In the metaphor of the hike, I was on the downhill part strand B of my journey which was about guidance and sharing. This ran in parallel to the other downhill part , strand A, which was about integration. After I had lingered for a while at the riverside, running in circles and getting nowhere, my spirit guide had given me a push so that I entered the river which would hopefully take me to my destination.

***

This post is part of a series about my spiritual journey (table of contents).

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