March ~ Mysteries Revealed

March marked the final weekend of our winter quarter. To complete our inquiry into the psychological theories that are the foundation of Spiritual Psychology, we explored Psychosynthesis and Neurolinguistic Programming (also known as NLP). Psychosynthesis uses guided visualizations to promote insight into a current issue or obstacle or situation while NLP reframes our interpretations of past events to essentially "reprogram our computer" - our subconscious mind. Both of these processes yielded unexpected and powerful results for me. In terms of meangingful outcomes, I kind of got a two-fer this weekend at USM. I got insight into my (potential) future and insight into my past.

First, my future. On Saturday afternoon, our teachers led us through several of Psychosynthesis visualizations. One of them was was a process that was designed to strengthen intention toward a goal.

We were instructed to choose a goal (I couldn't come up with one) and then create a symbol for it (I was still trying to find a goal, forget designing a symbol!). As my mind wandered around, I suddenly saw a picture of myself in my mind's eye. I was sitting in meditation, legs crossed, eyes closed, and there was a beautiful cone of golden light pouring into the top of my head. Okay, I thought to myself, I don't know what this is but it looks like a symbol so I'll go with it.

The visualization continued and we were gently instructed to see a path leading up a hill to our symbol. So far, so good, I could do that. Then we were supposed to notice all the things along the path that were blocking it and distracting us from reaching our symbol. Well, there weren't any so I thought I'd play along and add some but they kept disappearing or turning into cheerleaders encouraging me on my journey. When I reached my symbol at the top of the hill, it told me that this was my destiny, this is why I'm here, I already have this inside of me. Nothing could have stopped me from getting here. Then my symbol did a really crazy thing: it showed me a business card.

My card said:

Cara Gubbins, PhD
Spiritual Intuitive
Readings, Healings, Classes
Humans and Animals

Whoa! Where did that come from?! Never in a million years would I have come up with this. Way cool. Later I told one of my classmates about my card and she said, "That's exactly what you do!" Huh. I didn't know that. I let this revelation rattle around inside me for a while as I considered the possibilities. I still wasn't exactly sure what my goal was or what my symbol represented precisely, but I really liked this card. I felt like my Higher Self had spoken to me, like my Spirit had plans for me that I didn't know about. Yet. I felt like I was starting to get a vague sense of something different for my future, something that I would have to allow to unfold at its own pace, but something that felt good and right and true, even with all the unknowns. I had gotten my first clue.

As our class moved into different information and activities, my mind kept wandering back to the card. But by Sunday I was able to focus on something else when we tried out exercises in NLP. Our instructions were to discuss something that was important to us right now and really right now I was fed up with myself. I was noticing that many if not all of the upsets that I had been examining at USM boiled down to the same thing: feeling betrayed. I was sick to death of it. No matter what happened, I felt betrayed. I felt like if I didn't get the parking place I wanted, I felt betrayed. This was getting ridiculous, but it was very real for me.

Somehow, I traced this feeling back to third grade when we were living in San Francisco and my parents were breaking up. I uncovered a sadness below the surface that was somehow protecting me from feeling scared about all the big changes in our lives. Feeling sad was better than feeling afraid of falling all apart and splintering like a broken pane of window glass.

As the exercise continued, I saw that the sadness was like a comforting blanket wrapped around me, protecting me but keeping me numb and immobile. Through the NLP process, I was able to acknowledge how the sadness had helped me cope at the time and to recognize that it was ocassionally still operating now. But it wasn't serving me now as an adult to keep this part of me operating like this. Using NLP, I transformed my sadness into Loving Comfort, an old part of me with a new mission. Loving Comfort could wrap me up in love and appreciation and affirmation in a really positive way without numbing or immobilizing me.

With my future vague on the horizon but possbily taking some kind of shape, at least subconsciously, I thought about my journey thus far and marveled at the human condition and how life works. I have done lots of healing work around my parents' divorce, but this insight was deeper and subtler than any other revelation I'd had. I felt likeI had cleared away the big debris, uncovering some smaller peices that I would never have seen before, like moving out furniture and seeing the pattern of dust left behind. It's there and it's real and it's affecting you but it takes some bigger changes to be able to see the pattern. I was left with a very peaceful optimistic feeling.