Ask And You Shall Receive (My Encounter With A Black Bear)
TO WATCH A VIDEO SUMMARY OF THIS BLOG CLICK HERE
I was feeling connected and my heart was cracking open. Prayer was becoming more real and genuine. Love was coming into my life in new and unexpected ways. I was learning how to receive and how good it felt to live through the heart.
And then my ego took hold of the feelings and experiences and before I knew it I was tripping and stumbling in the world of form and thought again. My mind was creating stories about what could be done with this new heart centered vibration. Giving interest to the story in the mind is our ticket back into suffering and disconnection.
Before my descent into egoic craving and desire I noticed a prominent darkness within my consciousness. Obsessive dark and fearful thoughts had become my ever-present companion. Truthfully, obsessive dark and fearful thoughts have been present in my consciousness for as long as I can remember. With this heart centered frequency entering my being the darkness was being seen with such clarity that it was inescapable.
I knew that there was no going around this darkness. The energy, beliefs and pain underneath the darkness would have to be embraced and met with openness.
I asked God to show me this darkness. To allow me to see it for what it truly was, so that I could feel it, understand it and integrate it into my being. I knew that I would not be able to offer my fullest self to my path and to my purpose if I did not work through this shadow in my consciousness.
Even though I was functioning quite well, it was still there, in the background, tapping me on the shoulder saying, “I’m still here.”
I engaged in genuine and intentional prayer to have this darkness in my mind unearthed and brought to the surface for healing.
The next day as I was practicing my daily yoga asanas I felt a surge of energy release into my body. It started out as an out-of-body experience where I could feel myself floating outside of my body for a couple of hours. Upon touching objects, it was as if the hand doing the touching was not mine.
As the day went on the energy began to settle around the sides of my head creating of a lot of pressure inside my skull. I started suffering from some of the worst brain fog that I’ve had in maybe a year or more. I couldn’t read, analyze or think straight. Meditation was downright painful. I was just laying there, writhing in frustration and trying to watch YouTube to distract myself from the discomfort in my head.
The energy had gotten stuck in my head, in exactly the place that I had so clearly seen my darkness hiding out. I tried my best to allow the energy to flow and to relax and open to it, but it was just too uncomfortable.
I felt rage bubbling up to the surface. I tried making YouTube videos but couldn’t speak clearly. Words were hard to manage. I was just so damn angry.
The next day I woke up to a powerful wave of fear flooding my mind. I was fed up with feeling anger and fear. I decided the forest would help so I headed to the trail 30 minutes from where I live.
On the trail I got startled by just some normal looking man in his mid 50’s walking along the trail. “Wow, I really have a lot of fear inside of me right now” I thought to myself. After maybe a quarter of a mile I just wasn’t feeling it and decided to turn back. There is a beautiful Gazebo towards the beginning of the trail that I frequently meditate in, so I decided to scrap the hike and just go meditate.
On my way back to the Gazebo I heard some very loud shuffling about 10-15 feet to my right.
To my surprise there was a spooked Black Bear crawling up a hillside! He managed to crawl about 10 feet up and then turned around and stared at me with a mix of surprise and curiosity.
For a moment I could have sworn he was sizing me up.
I slowly started backing away, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. Then I started walking away quicker and quicker and before I knew it I was back at the cabins at the start of the trail telling the workers about my encounter.
All I could think was that life was providing me triggers to bring my fears to the surface.
As I was looking back at the bear while I was walking away there was a moment where I was sure he was going to charge at me. For a brief few steps it felt inevitable.
I was gauging if I could sprint to the cabins before he got to me or if I would be better off turning around and holding my ground in the hopes that he was bluffing as Black Bears are apt to do.
Thankfully I didn’t have to make that decision, but it was a beautiful example of how our fear can manipulate us into thinking up realities that don’t actually exist and therefore make us feel the fear of those realities as if they are actually happening even when they really aren’t happening at all.
Once the mind has gotten hold of fear and believes it what is the difference?
When I was driving away from the trail I couldn’t help but think, “Ask and you shall receive.” Life was doing all it could to bring my fears to the surface like I had asked.
Life is revealing to me what a powerful creator the mind is. The mind can create our energetic state and the Universe takes its cue from our inner state.
This is why presence and living through the heart are so important when going through an awakening. We have so much more energy available to create with and when we just hand this energy over to an imbalanced and fearful mind, we can create a reality of not feeling safe in this world.
In my experience I’ve learned that the less I identify with my mind’s thoughts and the more I can sink into my heart space, the safer I feel and the more joy and love are available in my experience.
And when we sink into the heart space we are actually helping to restore a balance to the mind because we are bringing in healing frequencies. These frequencies will illuminate anything that is out of balance and restore clarity to the deluded thoughts that are creating the imbalance.
On the surface this process of coming into balance can feel like deep depression, white hot rage or overwhelming fear and self doubt. This is the process of healing. You must see, feel, accept and love the old for it to release.
When you are able to love what is arising it no longer has anything to teach you and releases from your being.
Right before the old is set to release from our beings it gets the loudest.
Try to avoid getting overly entangled in the process. Stay as the witness and let the healing happen how it wants to happen. We only need to allow and surrender to this process. The hardest part is having the courage and humility to ask Life and God to give you what you need to awaken.
One way of healing these imbalances in the mind is through vivid dreams. I am talking dreams where you wake up and think, “No that happened. That wasn’t just a dream. That was as real as anything I experience when I am awake.”
Ever since the yoga asanas brought a surge of energy into my head I have been having all sorts of vivid dreams every night. I feel that it is the content of our subconscious mind that we wouldn’t be able to consciously process that arises in these dreams. These subconscious energies come up to be integrated while our conscious mind is at rest.
Constant and repetitive thoughts and emotions are often trying to tell us something that we are refusing to hear and acknowledge. If like me, you sometimes have constant and repetitive fearful thoughts, it is essential that you understand that fear, when met with openness, transforms into an excitement for life.
In my case, I feel that by suppressing my excitement for my path due to fear, the excitement turned into a fearful voice inside of my head. And what the fearful voice really wanted was expression!
The voice was telling me to take action and to start embracing my path. I have realized that I don’t have to wait until I am an enlightened Buddha to channel my focus into helping others.
The fear of not wanting to lose the support and love that I have obtained has been a huge block that I am working through. The message that keeps coming through is: “just share from your heart and let loose with your authentic self.”
The fear of losing what I have is opposite to life’s movement. Life is always moving towards growth and expansion and the second we start resisting this movement by trying to maintain the comfort that we have attained we will start suffering needlessly.
Through believing my fears I was stunting my growth and expansion and the dark voice in my head kept trying to wake me up to this reality. What the dark and fearful voice was really saying was, “please start giving your gift to life and let me transform from fear into excitement.”
What is your inner voice trying to tell you?
We need not be afraid of losing the validation, praise and love from others. The validation and love from others is a bonus, but it isn’t the real reward.
The real reward is doing the work of giving your gifts and living in alignment with your highest Truth. The real reward is shinning your light fearlessly while feeling One with Life. Disappointment is inevitable and isn’t something that should deter us from walking forward on our path.
