“Don't be concerned about being disloyal to your pain by being joyous.” ~Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
In May of this year, I travelled back to Cusco, Peru, where I’d lived in 2005. I visited my dear friend, Paul Temple, who is the steward of the Hummingbird Retreat Center, a true sanctuary for the soul outside of Pisac, a colorful and magical little town in the Sacred Valley. Paul offers seekers a nurturing and oh so healing opportunity to journey with huachuma, the sacred Andean cactus, in his magnificent gardens, amongst terraces of vegetables, herbs, fruits, flowers and fairies. Lying in the hammock, while on my journey, facing the majestic mountain across the river, I came face to face with the mountain of pain.
Huachuma, called the “grandfather” and commonly known as San Pedro, is a much underappreciated plant medicine teacher. Tea brewed from this cactus contains mescaline and other compounds that offer powerful visionary and healing effects. In his captivating book The Hummingbird’s Journey To God: Perspectives On San Pedro, The Cactus Of Vision, Ross Heaven describes the gifts of this teacher plant: “San Pedro reveals the laws of the universe itself. The experience is less personal (than ayahuasca), less about you, and more about truth, reality, and your relationship to it….it does not create fleeting images but rather, one overriding image or philosophical point that it explores in singular depth. In this way, it reveals practical truths that can be applied directly, to the world, to life, and to healing.”
In my case, at that moment in my life, lying on a hammock in the Andes, I felt cradled by love. I had spent hours looking at my life through the lens of the plant’s gentle and compassionate wisdom. I had been seeing the towering mountain all day, and now, in the late afternoon, with the orange glow that signals the turning of the day, I heard the words, “There is a mountain of pain.” Those words came from my soul.
Not one to shy away from what has been called the ocean of suffering of humanity, somehow seeing the enormity of that mountain prompted a visceral sensation of pain I’d never experienced. I then heard my soul say, “You cannot move the mountain or take it all down,” and I felt a heavy weight. I next heard my soul say, “You did not put it all there,” and I cried with relief. I then heard my soul say, “You can do your part.”
The wise monk and spiritual teacher, Thick Nhat Hanh, says, in The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering Into Peace, Joy, And Liberation “The ocean of suffering is immense, but if you turn around, you can see the land. The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.” One of the most important things any of us can do to alleviate the load on that huge mountain of pain is to feel our own so that we can take it off and put it down, if only for a moment, in order to experience joy. That is how you can do your part.
That is certainly a lot easier said than done, which is why I am writing this article. How can we avoid feeling the pain of the world if we live in it? How much of yourself do you need to cut off and dissociate from in order to get through the day? Do you find yourself saying “I can’t handle the news. It’s all too much for me.” There is more trauma than ever at this time, more cruelty and deception being enacted every day, and whether we choose to read or watch the news or not, we are being affected, deeply. That trauma is not just out there, or over in a third world country, or at the border, or in the towns where school children have been shot. It is inside us as we hear the news of global warming and how we are near the point of no return. It’s inside us as our children and grandchildren are put on medication for anxiety, and we are not sure what we are doing wrong.
Trauma is not a noun or a thing, but rather a verb, in that it is a dynamic process that has a timeless dimension which unfolds itself over and over, and gets handed down to the next generation if we do not do the work of healing ourselves. When we carry unresolved trauma, it has a way of separating us from the immediacy of the moment, and in all we do we are continuously attempting to avoid the pain. And this causes us not to feel fully. And that is what perpetuates trauma.
Many people choose to use anti-depressants to take the edge off the pain, before they do the work of discovering what is their own to feel and heal. I entirely understand that impulse, and at times it’s needed. The dark side of numbing or turning away from our pain is less joy, and in the long run, more pain. One of my clients described his life of 25 years on an anti-depressants as “living without the mountaintops. I don’t have the deep valleys, but it’s as if all the mountains have had their peaks cut off.”
How not to get overwhelmed by the mountain of pain?
When each of us penetrates to the heart of our own pain and we surrender all the ways we have protected against it, we dissolve the lie of separateness and rediscover light, which is love. An open heart is stronger that 10,000 shields in protecting you from being overwhelmed by the mountain of pain.
From the inside, your heart emanates an extremely powerful toroidal energetic field that has actually been scientifically measured to go out as far as 5 miles from your heart. It’s the strongest electromagnetic field produced by the body. An exchange of electromagnetic energy produced by the heart occurs when people touch or are in close proximity of one another—and social distancing has greatly affected the earth's toroidal field.
Conscious connection to the toroidal energy field
The human toroidal field is directed by our breath, which we must continuously infuse with love. At times, to remain connected to the toroidal energetic field, we must consciously choose to stop doing and allow ourselves to be. It is counter instinctual in a digital world, and is exactly what we need to do. No longer functioning from our instinctual survival brain to move faster than we have time for, we slow down and attune to the pulse of life. We allow ourselves to feel whatever pain we have not released
It is our personal responsibility to regularly cleanse our toroidal field of the thickened barriers that form from serious and everyday trauma. This is particularly so for those working directly with the physical, emotional and spiritual suffering of others. We need to consciously release resentments, grief, fear, anger, shame, so that they don’t remain stuck within us. When we do not attend to these emotions and the energy attached to them, we are likely to experience overwhelm. It is not the pain of the world that overwhelms us, but our resistance to our own that adds to the mountain of pain.
By releasing resentments and grief and fear consciously, that which stands in the way of our own light shining forth into the world is removed. This is the real protection we need—the open heart that builds our human toroidal field.
Our own breath is the pump for our human fountain to raise that light energy up and through us and around us like a shower. In a sense, just as we take regular showers to cleanse our physical body, we must take regular energy showers of this source energy, which is love.
Raising your electromagnetic vibration
The goal of the human energy shower is to fill yourself so full of love energy that you raise your electromagnetic frequency which radiates that love energy in the form of light out past your skin. As you become so full of this energy, it rises upward and connects with the universal light force of Source, allowing wisdom and energy to rain down into your body and energy field, into earth and back up through your body, into the heavens. The more you practice this cycle, the faster the cycle repeats itself, until it creates the luminous energy field that you are meant to be.
Changing your electromagnetic field of energy is not difficult, nor does it take years of study or practice. It can be immediate. Energy changes with intention, instantaneously and powerfully. If you change your thoughts, you will notice the instant shift in the energy within and around you.
Toroidal energy fields exist around everything: people, trees, the earth, sun, and the entire universe. When you feel genuine core heart feelings such as appreciation or compassion, your heart naturally increases its coherence and positively affects and influences everything around you. When you feel compassion toward yourself for your own pain, rather than creating more suffering, you transform the pain into love. Doc Childre, the founder of HearMath says, “Dare to connect with your heart. You will be lifting not only yourself and those you love and care about, but also the world in which you live.”
This coherent heart energy also allows you to hear your inner voice, or what I described as my soul when I heard the words about the mountain of pain. This information is sent to your brain so that you can experience a deep knowing about life, or what is called wisdom. Anxiety and depression begin to fall away, and you are able to stop resisting life, which frees up energy for healing.
This is a path of deep healing from the inside out, which you can read about in this article What Is Deep Healing?
Meditation to raise your electromagnetic vibration
Preferably do this meditation standing. If you would like, burn some sage to clear the space before you do it, and to set the tone for the inner work.
- Relax all the muscles in your face and body. Place your hands at the side of your body and your feet firmly on the ground if you are standing. Keeping your head straight and in line with the rest of the body.
- Rotate your neck gently to relax the torso.
- Close your eyes and imagine roots growing out of your feet into the deep center of the earth.
- Start breathing slowly and deeply, bringing your attention to every breath as you do so. Allow your attention to be natural and effortless, simply observing each breath as it goes in and out.
- Remain in position for a minute or two before starting a gentle circular breathing pattern, with no pause or break between inhaling and exhaling. You can use what feels natural—your nose or mouth.
- As you do so, begin to feel the energy of Mother Earth flowing up onto your body through your feet, legs, root chakra, and all the way up your spine and out your crown.
- Continue the circular breath as this energy flows up and out through your crown, like a fountain, cascading over your entire body, and down again to your feel and up again through your body,
- Now infuse your breath consciously from the center of your chest, your Sacred Heart, with the love energy you want to circulate through you and into the world.
- You can choose a color to go with this breath. I suggest radiant white, pink or golden light. Keep this circular breath of radiant love light flowing through you and send it out into the room you are in, the house, the town, the state, as far out as you desire.
Our sacred work
There are many places in the world that need your love energy now, and they are closer than you might imagine. There is a mountain of pain, and when you do your part to transform your own pain into love and wisdom, you open the way for joy.
Above all else, do not take your pain out on another person. It adds to the mountain of pain exponentially, by increasing the weight of your own pain for inflicting it on another. And when we do that to our children, they carry the weight of our pain and all the pain before us, that our ancestors experienced and never put down.
Let us do the work of putting down our burdens so that we can celebrate the life that flows through us, even as the mountain of pain is so great.
There are many ways to do this: conscious breathing, psychedelics, body work, meditation, prayer, yoga, deep connection with another person, nature, embodied crying, dance, ritual……..the list is endless. You can do it by being fully present to what is—to a delicious meal, sitting with a friend, feeling your true feelings without judgment….the list is endless. The common element is awareness of what is happening without judgment. Pure consciousness of the field of existence as it is experienced through your awareness. It’s a practice to be taken off the meditation mat, and into your life.
This is our sacred work, breath by breath.
You can listen to a recording of this meditation here.
