The Journey: A Practical Guide to Healing Your life and Setting Yourself Free. Brandon Bays
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I had to admit that perhaps I’d grown arrogant—thinking it couldn’t happen to me.
I let her know something that I hadn’t shared with anyone else—how humbling it had been, and how ashamed I’d felt not only to find out how large the tumor had grown, but also to realize how long I’d stayed in denial. I just hadn’t wanted to believe that anything could be wrong with me, as I was supposedly doing everything right.
She stopped me to say, “You know, it sounds like you were doing everything right—it just seems to me like this must be some old stuff you need to get rid of.”
“But I feel like I’ve done every healing process on the planet!”
“Well, clearly your body doesn’t think so! The fact that your emotional stuff has manifested at the physical level must mean that you’re finally ready to face it and let it go.”
I knew she was right, and nodded in quiet agreement. It seemed apparent that we shared the same beliefs about health, and I felt very comfortable.
We continued swapping stories of various therapeutic practices, and laughed at some of the more ridiculous things we’d tried when we were younger. Then we began sharing our different spiritual realizations. About forty-five minutes slipped away before we both realized we were taking up precious therapy time.
Before we started I made a silent prayer that I would have the courage to face whatever was stored inside that tumor. I then opened and surrendered inwardly, and allowed myself to expand into the stillness that had been my constant companion throughout my journey. I knew instinctively it was definitely from the stillness that all the answers would come—not from my personality, and certainly not from my chattering mind. If my thinking mind was to have come up with the answers, it surely would have done so by now. As it hadn’t, my only route was trust: trust in a deeper wisdom, the wisdom responsible for making my heart beat, my eyes shine, my hair grow; trust in the infinite intelligence responsible for making my cells replicate; trust in the part of me that is awake when I’m asleep at night. I knew I would have to trust and surrender into my very essence—into the real me—into what felt like “home” to me.
As she began massaging me, I closed my eyes and felt myself relaxing ever more deeply into peace, and once again I had the experience of time standing still—my senses fully alive, and yet my mind completely at rest, with a presence of peace that seemed vast, without boundaries. I felt myself connected with everything.
While massaging, Surja suggested, “Why don’t you, in your mind’s eye, take some steps right down into your tumor and see what it looks like down there?” Her suggestion seemed so obvious, but somehow it felt right. So I decided to do just that.
When I got inside my uterus I didn’t like what I saw. It was pretty scary-looking, and more than once I thought, “I’m getting out of here. I don’t want to see all this.” But my inner wisdom kept reminding me that I was here for a reason, and so once again I prayed for the courage to face whatever it was I needed to face. I was certain I was going to find something I just couldn’t bear to see.
As I was “walking about” inside the tumor, I came to an area that seemed particularly dark. As I approached the area, I could sense an intense feeling of fear emanating from the walls. Spontaneously, an old memory of an intense childhood trauma flashed before me. Instantly, my doubting, thinking mind checked in and said, “It can’t be that—I know all about that memory—I’ve long since dealt with that issue and put it to bed! It wasn’t that big a deal—it can’t be the cause of what’s going on in here . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah . . .”
As Surja continued to massage, I shyly relayed the judgments my thinking mind was making. She said reassuringly, “Well, your body wisdom is probably coming up with that particular memory for a reason. For now, why don’t you just go with what’s coming up for you? Even if your thinking mind is doubting it, what have you got to lose?”
And so I continued watching the memory. In my mind, I found myself going through the scene as if in living color, and in slow motion. Surprisingly, unexpected emotions that I had buried and long since forgotten seemed to be arising, and the true expression of how I felt at the time seemed to be surfacing. I hadn’t realized how intensely I had felt at the time. I’d been too successful, even then, at masking my true emotions by putting on a brave face.
Tears quietly streamed down my cheeks.
I felt very private, and I didn’t want to say much to Surja about it. And yet, there was a great relief in finally just being real with myself—taking the mask off and letting myself experience the incredible vulnerability and helplessness that I felt as a young child in that memory. I was finally letting myself feel the natural emotions that I hadn’t let myself experience at the time of the trauma. Somehow, even as a small child I’d learned that I wasn’t allowed to show my true feelings. And, more important, I hadn’t been able to admit them to myself.
So, in a very simple, pure way I was finally allowing myself to experience what had been there all along. I had never really forgotten this old memory, and the “discovery” of it was no real revelation. What came as a surprise was the intensity of my true feelings—I’d been so successful in putting a lid on them that I managed to convince myself that it wasn’t that important!
I shared a little of what I was going through with Surja, and gently she asked me, “Do you feel complete?” I checked inside with the inner wisdom. “No.”
“Well, why don’t you imagine a little campfire, and put all the people in your memory there with you; and why don’t you have a fireside chat and find out why the other people were behaving as they did, and let them know your true feelings—let the younger you talk to them as if they were here right now.”
Once again, what she said seemed like a good idea, so I thought I’d give it a go—I had nothing to lose. Meanwhile, I was still getting a lovely relaxing massage. Surja seemed to instinctively know in which area I was carrying tension, and she would ease it as I carried on with my internal processing.
Inside my mind’s eye, I pictured myself at a crackling campfire. Both my parents were there—they looked so much younger, and dressed in the corny style of the 1950s—and the four-year-old me who’d gone through the emotional memory was standing there in her little dress, looking very unprotected and unsure of herself. The present me was also there, so I decided to go over to the younger me and invite her to sit in my lap, so that she could feel safe and comforted.
I was very surprised at what was said at the campfire. I hadn’t realized how intensely the younger me had felt about this old memory. It seemed the little me had a lot of unexpressed pain to share.
She finally said what she had been unable to say for years. It seemed as if years of pain poured out of her. When she seemed empty of words, I turned to my parents and asked why they had behaved as they did. I was equally surprised to hear what was going on for them at the time, and tears of compassion sprang to my eyes as I finally understood the source of their pain, and how frustrated and helpless they felt. My sister had drowned at the age of four, and unfortunately their inexpressible pain would sometimes spill out and get directed at the rest of us.
The fireside chat continued until we’d all finally emptied ourselves out, having shared from our deepest hearts. And my little childhood self finally, for the very first time, truly understood why and how everything had taken place. I was left in peace—peace, simplicity, and true understanding.
I related a very condensed version of what had taken place to Surja, and she asked me once again if I finally felt complete with this old issue. I checked inside. “No, there’s something still niggling me inside, but I don’t know what it is—it’s just a feeling that something else still needs to take place.”
I felt at a loss. I knew there was no sense in turning to my thinking mind. It would only give me some obvious logical-seeming answer that had already been unsuccessful in helping me to heal, or it would judge me and tell me how stupid this all was.
So, once again I felt myself opening and trusting and surrendering into the silence—I knew the answers would come