I arrived for the 2nd day of the course for consciousness raising much more positive than I did for the 1st day. I realise now that the reluctance I felt was resistance. For much of the first day I felt tired. Then the reason became apparent. I knew intuitively that I was going to discover something I wouldn't find easy to take. This came about when Manuel gave a powerful demonstration of just how much inner aggression I had. It is this inner aggression which prevents me from seeing Auras. But when I accepted this without resisting it and just sat with it, it dissolved. Today there was no tiredness just a real wakefulness and alertness.
I was determined to ask Manuel about the possibility of Asperger's as soon as I saw him in the morning. He arrived a little early so I took my courage into my hands and went up to him. I said why I thought that this explanation might be the reason for why I feel so different. He looked at me and said 'I look at your Aura and tell you later'. Immensely relieved I sat down. I had done it and I knew that he wouldn't forget. Soon all the others came and there was an aliveness and eagerness. I don't know if it was me but I felt much closer to everyone than I had the day before. It is only when you emerge from something that looking back it is possible to see what a dark place that was.
The day began with Manuel building on what he had said yesterday about being willing to raise the consciousness. This seems to be so important - choosing to do this. It made me think about how many people start a meditation course or some energy raising therapies and have no idea of what they are setting into motion. I think the awareness that the minute you open a spiritual book your life is not going to be the same should be given to everyone at a first meeting and each person then asked to choose powerfully whether or not they want to do it. Spiritual emergency happens when the consciousness rises without the person in many cases having said yes to it.
We then settled into a consciousness rising exercise using the breath to generate energy in the body. The energy exercise consisted of imaging three streams going into the body and radiating out from the heart. The first stream is the kundalini flow stream, the 2nd is the fear stream and the 3rd is the stream of sadness. Manuel explained that the consciousness cannot rise until we can sit with both fear and sadness and not run away from them. It is being with these qualities that transform them to stillness. This raises the consciousness.
He explained that the consciousness will rise when the amount of space increases. This was all said during the meditation so I have no notes and my memory is hazy. As well as that I had the usual thought assault the minute I closed my eyes so I lost much of what he was saying. The gist of the meditation was to generate more space. This is done by firstly focusing on the point in breathing where one breath begins and the other stops. That point of stop is the place to focus to increase space. He then went on speaking about thoughts and again the focus was at that place where one thought ends and the other begins - that space of stillness and quiet. Well this wasn't very effective for me because of the relentlessness of the thoughts. Then he moved to feelings and he said that this was the hardest because feelings are not always there like thoughts are. You have to wait for feelings but again when they come up to focus on the space between feelings. He explained that feelings that come up and are blocked because they are maybe too unpleasant can be experienced as pain in the body.
He began to speak about how the raising of consciousness requires more space and less form. He then said where the consciousness is all form i.e.all ego and there is no empathy - this is autism. I must stress writing this that the meditation was long and this came quietly from Manuel so it is my memory of what he said which may not be right. He then said 'there is a special kind of autism called Aspergers' where the consciousness is.....and then major frustration as someone coughed and I lost it. Then began a huge inner battle about what is he trying to say. Is this his way of answering my question...this is not what I wanted, I wanted a discussion. For a few minutes I was so uncertain and then from somewhere I experienced a deep peace and calm. I refocused back on what Manuel was saying and he was explaining the movement of energy from aggression through fear through sadness through stillness to love. At the point of love the consciousness rises.
At one point when he was explaining the importance of staying with sadness and not turning it into self pity I found myself crying which I was surprised about. I had nothing to cry about but there the tears were. Worse was that I had no tissue so it was a bit embarrassing. The meditation finished and I sat very quietly. I didn't even go for a cup of tea. I was being held still in that position. I tried again to remember what Manuel had said about Asperger's and nothing came back. Resigned I let it go. I didn't feel any urgency to go back to speak to him about it. This surprised me because in the past I would have immediately gone back, somehow it didn't seem to matter.
After lunch Manuel asked for questions and people began to explain how they had felt with the various consciousness energy rising exercises. He then began to read Auras. I understood that there is only so far that he could go giving theory. If energy is frozen then it has to be freed first before the consciousness can rise. He began working on different people who raised their hands identifying events in their lives from their auras where the energy was blocked and talked them through what had happened, the impact it has had on them and what they can do to be free of it so the consciousness can rise.
What he then did was to go to people who didn't raise their hands but by seeing where they had a reaction to someone else he was working with he went to them. He said to one woman 'what happened to you then when I said this to that lady'. As usual the woman didn't understand. He explained 'I saw in your aura when I said about 'not having a choice' that you reacted - why what happened. Again the woman looked blank. In his usual patient and humble way he said 'I help you'. He asked her how old she was and she said 55. He then said between the ages of 38 and 45 how were you. The woman explained that she had had depression. He probed a bit deeper. It turned out that the woman was married but had no children. Through a long process of patient coaxing it turned out that this woman had never grieved for as she put it 'the end of her dream to have children'.
He explained that depression is often an unwillingness to be with sadness. He said that feelings that are allowed to be experienced dissolve, those that aren't get buried and will come out again. He said 'you never want to go through what you went through like that again do you' and through her tears she said 'no'. He then said 'sometime over the next two weeks sit down with your husband and tell him how it really was for you when you realised that you no longer had a choice as to whether or not you could have children and be with the sadness. Then the energy will be freed. Next time you feel sadness, do not push it away but stay with it'.
I looked at him with such respect. He had given this woman who had suffered for so many years an explanation for why this was and an access so that it wouldn't happen again. Once again that deep desire to be able to do something similar and give people this access emerged in me. He then came over to my side of the room and said I have a couple of questions for people here. I saw him looking at me and my first thought was 'oh no and I felt my stomach tense up'. He stood in front of me and said 'did you understand what I said about Asperger's this morning'. I looked up at him and said 'no I didn't'. He said 'Asperger's does not allow any space between thoughts. If you get a diagnosis that this is what you have (I felt the disappointment that he wasn't going to tell me that it was what I had but I pushed it down and listened intently) then when you meditate I want you to take a thought say for example 'The weather is good today' and then break each word down so space can be created'.
This was amazing because I have often written in this blog about how relentless my thoughts are when I sit down to meditate compared to when I am just mindful and the confusion this has caused for me. Manuel had seen this and given me a way for the meditation to have more space. He then said 'are you OK' and I just said 'yes thanks' and he moved onto someone else. Sitting there I immediately knew that this was the man I was going to take as a teacher/guide. I can learn more from him than from anyone else.
The rest of the time was spent working with different people and always the process and result was the same. He spoke to a man but this time had the spirit of his dead father and uncle present. Usually I am so skeptical about all of this but with Manuel there is no doubt. His combination of being a neuroscientist, psychiatrist and mystic gives him this power. It is also why I trust him so much because he also involves the brain. At the end of the evening I went up to him and I asked him about the possibility of him being a teacher/guide to help me to raise my consciousness to the level at which I can also see spirits and auras and empower people in the way that he does.
He is based in Switzerland and Athens more than London but he said he would be willing to read and answer emails from me if I send them to him at his centre in Athens with a photograph so he knows who I am. I left the training course feeling great joy that I would be training with someone I totally trust. There is a chance that this training will happen in London but he won't do it unless there are at least 50 people and it will go over 2 years. This is a long commitment and I know that the process is slow. Raising consciousness is not an easy or fast thing to do.
I feel so grateful to the have the opportunity to do the Landmark programmes because it is the fastest way I know to expand the consciousness by bringing to the surface everything that needs to be dissolved in order for the consciousness to rise. What Manuel provides is the energetic input into raising consciousness which the Landmark programmes don't.
Walking back to the tube a guy who was on the course caught up with me and asked me to go for coffee. It was strange because I've been in more regular contact with the guy from the gym and my immediate thought was of him and how he would feel. But then I thought 'it's only coffee', so I agreed. It turned out that this guy had left a well paid job as a management consultant to set up on his own as a bone therapist. Speaking with him was inspirational but also at the back of my mind was the thought 'you were successful as a consultant and could go back to that again'. I am like a fish out of water when it comes to conventional working environments that sooner or later I am going to go it alone, scary as it may feel and be.
It was my seminar evening so we walked to the tube and said goodbye. At the seminar I was more alive and shared at the front of the room which is something I never do. Manuel had said that the heart only comes alive when it is sharing and when I sat down after saying whatever it was I said I felt my heart felt expanded and a great feeling of joy and bliss come over me. I came home tired because it had been a very long day but full of energy and vitality. I have accepted the need for a teacher and I will do whatever it takes.
I am going back to the GP on Friday morning to see what if anything she has managed to put into place. I don't think she will write the referral letter to the diagnostic centre for Asperger's because a referral from the health service will cost the health service £1,700. If I was to pay for it privately it is £600. I can't see the GP authorising the health trust to pay this huge amount of money when I have kept a job down and in most respects my life is working. But I will see it through and speak to the GP and then accept whatever it is. I felt sure that Manuel would tell me, yes or no but for some reason he didn't want to. I know that he knows. There is no doubt about that. Perhaps through working with him an explanation will evolve organically.....
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