Hello Forum Members,
Not sure if it this is the correct thread to post on but it is ee related. I would like to share a few things about ee and some changes that have been happening as a result of doing it for awhile now.
I started on Sept. 4th, at the time when the US was planning to attack Syria. Out of a helplessness to do anything about the situation (and fb posts weren't enough) I decided to start the program and give it everything. The plan was just to start it, do it everyday AND DO NOT STOP. I told myself that if I can brush my teeth everyday and take a shower without fail I can do ee. But I began it with some reservations.
I had started before way back when the ee program was first released but discontinued doing it when I came up to some difficult emotional releases and it all seemed too much. There were signs of breakthroughs but I gave into the inertia that was growing. This time starting it it wasn't for me exactly. I knew I had to begin and go through whatever might come up again if anything. It was a very straight forward start, very business-like and I began to actually enjoy doing the whole program from start to finish everyday. I had this image early on of being this huge ship cutting through waves, some days turbulent and other days through calm waters.
Today marks the 150th day of doing this everyday without fail. I have never in my life done something so consistently without stopping. I'm used to putting on the breaks when things get challenging but not with this. Through the weeks I could clearly feel the warrior in me growing and displacing any hesitation to stop. This wasn't about me exactly and out of this the bigger picture energetically was coming into view, experientially.
One of the first real examples of this, the results after a few weeks, was a increased sensitivity to things around me, a heightened responsiveness to whatever was going on around me with people and in doing the daily tasks. Something was less buffered in my chest and clearing as a result of the breathing and the prayer. No real cathartic experiences happened that I was fearing would come up this time around. I noticed a few weeks into it that I really wanted to move my body along with the Ba-Ha breathing, nothing too big but as simple as shifting my weight form one leg to the other rhythmically, standing in one place. I found it greatly enhanced the continuity and focus on my breathing with my whole body involved, keeping near-perfect timing with each Ba and Ha. I also found that standing for the Warrior's Breath really works best for me too. With my feet firmly planted on the ground I became more solid. Sometimes the energies moving through were bigger than I'm used to and I let my feet get more involved with stomps that some times turned into sumo wrestler earthquake poundings slowly and deliberately. This really began to release a lot but nothing that was overwhelming. I let my body match what was coming through and moved with what the breath was bringing out then. Then that phase ended and it was no longer necessary doing that. The most important part always being the continuity of the breathing and not holding onto it, breaking it and this is what informs how to move if I move at all with the breathing now.
My dreams began to get very vivid early on with flying, drifting/floating from my feet usually during lucid dreams. More than once I rolled over in my bed (or what I thought I was doing was rolling over) and I kept rolling and thought I would fall off my bed until I realized I was spinning in my body energetically in a semi-dream semi-astral space (?). It was startling and so real but I had no where to put it in my files on strange body/soul happenings. For a few days I could feel my brain which was very odd to feel but that passed too along with other unusual things I think lots of other people have experienced on this program so I don't need to go into here.
What I would like most to share is what came up repeatedly at certain junctures during these months having to do with critical thresholds specifically with what I began calling "leaving the land of the living dead". By allowing the life force streams to come in or come out through my system and saying YES to Life, it would happen that I would get down or feel depressed and I would feel bad ,like I've done something wrong and I would check and double-check my diet, water intake etc. With all that in working order I would wonder WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING WRONG?!?. But after writing, journaling through inquiries I saw over and over again that I'm in some way I was leaving my old world of Mommy and Daddy. I felt the deep survivor guilt coming up of my father coming back from Vietnam and what I absorbed of that. I had done a lot of therapy already around the PTSD and participated in the work of Bert Hellinger's Family/Systemic Constellations (ancestral connections and trauma that might not be yours to carry) for years but I really know that ee was able to help me get down to the stuff locked in my nervous system. It was this almost impossible task of doing it everyday and not stopping that brought all this up to the surface and variations on it kept coming up. It was clear after awhile that I was making a choice to either side with life or side with the dead and stay stuck and not breakthrough whatever it was about my relationship to him and war and much more. I moved through it, past it and onto the other side of it (and I just called him for his birthday today so it means so much). A great healing has taken place. But then this issue would all go to another level.
I'd get sad again or really down, even sick. It took a while to learn these weren't blood-sugar related and that the sadness was just a natural part of the learning, that now something deeper was coming up to be cleansed. At one point at work, coping with the low points, I realized, "Hey silly, this is what you've been praying for everyday!" I really laughed and got that I've been actually asking for all of this and that there is nothing wrong and it's just part of the process. I didn't quite get it till then, that this going deeper through the practice has been about the issue of increased aliveness, my natural exuberance for life and love of beauty, creativity and vitally basically and feeling alone in it; a deep object relation( a not-entirely mental pattern) of being alive as a child again and the adults around me are either zombies or alive and downright cruel and had to shut me down. Working through this one popped me out again and into new levels where it doesn't matter anymore if others don't like it or can't tolerate what's being expressed. I can move forward and not be afraid anymore like that. There were past-life things too that came up related to this issue that felt most heavy and scary but those passed and that's a whole other post. The point is: it all comes up and out. The sensitivity dial has been turned way up and that includes my anger and not-so-comfortable feelings AND it's all good.
Although it's not recommended as part of the practice, I was drawn to wearing silk and at times holding two small crystals, my little companions, which help me in bringing in greater focus and inspiration during Ba-Ha. At one point I held a silver 1953 US quarter I've had for years. It was "my Silver Period" and that passed too and now I have it with me during the meditation. Little things like this come and go and keep the practice alive with new discoveries. It's new every time.
Being on the Ketogenic Diet, off gluten and dairy now for more than three years, has been another factor that has made a difference in starting and continuing ee. Back when ee came out I had a different body and this might be why it was more difficult to continue it, why I stopped back then. The diet too might also be why the most interesting change has taken place, one that was the most surprising of all. And that is the complete falling off of any need whatsoever to masturbate. About one month into ee, in November, I looked back and realized it had been about 2 weeks since I had taken things into my own hands, so to speak. Looking back at such a long length of time of NOT doing it, I thought it might be a by-product of continually and consistently discharging my nervous system of any tension building. I haven't engaged in the act of discharging in the old way since. In fact, the whole thing is lame. I thought as weeks went by that this was one of those things that come and go and if I feel the urge at some point it might be very different but that has not happened. What's most awesome is that this is not a refraining-from phase. I'm not trying to be "good" or suppressing anything. I feel sexually free and a new level of expanded sensuality which is very beautiful. The lusty quality has changed and/or is moving through different channels and I see people now less as objects. I'm far more interested in how my whole body is delighted to be unusually alive and relaxed in this new way. In many ways it is a great relief because it was an issue I struggled with for a long time even going for a full 6 months without "pleasuring the self" 5 years ago. I've read and heard from various teachers about not misusing any of my sexual energy, that that's not what it's really meant for, it's not for the self. I'm also not ruling out that I might have indirectly thrown off an attachment or two but what seems more real and viscerally so is that I'm discharging energy through ee and building a very different kind of charge and that this is the main reason for leaving the old ways behind. I've even woken myself up from sexually-charged dreams more than a few times so as to not spend any of this just incase attempts might be made on other levels to siphon off the developments. I'm keep tabs on that aspect. The point is, what really matters now is saving this vital life force for something else. Don't know what exactly but I like the results.
The Prayer of the Soul is the best. I look forward to it so much and even listen on my ipod to it walking down the street sometimes, speaking it as a constant reminder. There have been times when I've said, instead of, "carried in the heart, ruler of the mind, savior of the soul", I've said, "carried in my heart, ruler of my mind, savior of my soul" and it felt more true to say that. I'd go back to the original version for a few days and then, at some point, found myself saying "my" again. There is a felt difference. I really love words and read and write poetry and in some way saying "my" closes the distance between my soul and the Cosmic Mind at the times when it's right to say it that way. I know there is a logic, as Laura has said, to the specific word choices for the prayer and I wonder if it's important to not identify with the Cosmic Mind right away for a reason, to keep things clearly defined and separate at the beginning. I did see just recently on the ee site about exchanging words like Buddha or Christ for Cosmic Mind if that made folks feel more comfortable so it's really no biggy but I was wondering about this.
I'm really grateful for EE. It's incredible knowing that there are so many of us doing it together whenever and wherever we are on the planet.
Thanks for giving me the chance and the space to share the good news here. I'm rarely on the forum but I want to change that now. Lots of things are changing. I'm really growing.