In Love and Awakening, John Welwood uses the analogy of a castle to illustrate the world within us.  Imagine being a magnificent castle with long hallways and thousands of rooms.  Every room in the castle is perfect and possesses a special gift.  Each room represents a different aspect of yourself and is an integral part of the entire perfect castle.  As a child, you explored every inch of your castle without shame or judgment.  Fearlessly you searched every room for its jewels and its mystery.  Lovingly you embraced every room whether it was a closet, a bedroom, bathroom, or a cellar.  Each and every room was unique.  Your castle was full of light, love, and wonder. 

Then one day, someone came to your castle and told you that one of your rooms was imperfect, that surely it didn’t belong in your castle.  They suggested that if you wanted to have a perfect castle you should close and lock the door to this room.  Since you wanted love and acceptance, you quickly closed off that room.  As time went by, more and more people came to your castle.  They all gave you their opinions of the rooms, which ones they liked and which ones they didn’t.  And slowly you shut one door after another.  Your marvelous rooms were being closed off, taken out of the light, and put into the dark.  A cycle had begun.

From that time on, you closed more and more doors for all kinds of reasons.  You closed doors because you were afraid, or you thought the rooms were too bold.  You closed doors to rooms that were too conservative.  You closed doors because other castles you saw did not have a room like yours.  You closed doors because your religious leaders told you to stay away from certain rooms.  You closed any door that did not fit into society’s standards.

The days were gone when your castle seemed endless and your future seemed exciting and bright.  You no longer cared for every room with the same love and admiration.  Rooms you were once proud of, you now willed to disappear.  You tried to figure out ways to get rid of these rooms, but they were part of the structure of your castle.  Now that you had shut the door to whatever room you didn’t like, time went by until one day you just forgot that room altogether.  At first, you didn’t realize what you were doing.  It just became a habit.  With everyone giving you different messages about what a magnificent castle should look like, it became much easier to listen to them than to trust your inner voice; the one that loved your entire castle.  Shutting off those rooms actually started to make you feel safe.  Soon you found yourself living in just a few small rooms.  You had learned how to shut off life and became comfortable doing it.  Many of us also locked away so many rooms that we forgot we were ever a castle.  We began to believe we were just a small, two bedroom house in need of repairs. 

Now, imagine your castle as the place where you house all of who you are, the good and bad, and that every aspect that exists on the planet exist within you.  One of your rooms is love, one is courage, one is elegance and another is grace. There are endless numbers of rooms.  Creativity, femininity, honesty, integrity, health, assertiveness, sexiness, power, timidity, hatred, greed, frigidity, laziness, arrogance, sickness, and evil are rooms in your castle.  Each room is an essential part of the structure and each room has an opposite somewhere in your castle. 

Fortunately, we are never truly satisfied with being less than what we are capable of being.  Our discontent with ourselves motivates us in our search for all the lost rooms of our castle.  We can only find the key to our uniqueness by opening all the rooms in our castle. 

The castle is a metaphor to help you grasp the enormity of who you are.  We each possess this sacred place inside ourselves.  It is easily accessed if we are ready and wiling to see the totality of who we are.  Most of us are scared of what we will find behind the doors to these rooms.  So instead of setting out on an adventure to find our hidden selves, full of excitement and wonder, we keep pretending the rooms don’t exist.  The cycle continues.

But, if you truly desire to change the direction of your life you must go into your castle and slowly open each and every door.  You much explore your internal universe and take back all that you’ve disowned.  Only in the presence of your entire self can you appreciate your magnificence and enjoy the totality and uniqueness of your life.

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I spent so much of the first part of my life closing and locking those doors.  I have also spent many of my adults years discovering and opening doors and I find that I still have many more to unlock.  But, at least I am now unlocking them and I am slowly getting light into more parts of my castle.  And that is so much better than where I was before I began this journey.

Love, light, and laugher!

Starstuff 

Some of my blogger friends have been asking me to share what has been happening with the Transformational Energy Healing classes that I'm taking. I'm in my second year and will be able to get my holistic health practitioner certificate this coming summer. I have not been writing and hopefully this will sort of explain why.

There have been so many changes in my life and in myself since last summer. Late last spring, I had been thinking ALOT about the possibility of quitting my job and living off my savings for awhile. I really needed to get away from the overwhelming stress. After working all day at a job that was sucking everything out of me I would come home and not have any energy left to take care of my house or myself. The best way I can explain it is that each day I felt absolutely pecked to death only to come home and sleep in order to get pecked to death the following day.

But, I was not brave enough, I was too afraid to actually make the step to resign. There were too many "voices" in my head (my mother, sibs, ex., etc.) saying things like "Are you crazy? How can you do that? What about this, what about that, what would people think?” My inner voice was agreeing with them and so did not make the move.

Well, apparently Spirit/God/the Universe was listening and decided to help by giving me a push and kicked me out the door. My boss went from loving my work and telling me how good I was to three months later telling me I was doing many things wrong. I knew she was working toward firing me so I resigned. I never did find out exactly what happened but my feeling is that I became her scapegoat so she could save face with HER boss.

Anyway, the decision was made for me. The first month was good. It had been so long since I’ve had more than a week off at a time. The next month was scary. My mind was racing. “Oh My God! What am I going to do??? I’m not being productive with my time! I should be looking for a job!” But when I calmed down and really thought about looking for a job, I just knew it wasn’t the right time and that I will be okay. In fact, one time that I was panicking, I looked online for a job. There wasn’t any I could or wanted to do but the next day a “perfect” job was listed in the local paper. So, I felt the message was when I’m ready, a job will be there.

The first two sets of classes last fall and the scads of reading I’ve been doing have led to an amazing about of introspection and “rewiring” of my mind, thoughts, and my body. I feel so much more at peace and more comfortable with myself. I am coming into myself and my “power”. The classes last fall and what I learned from them could not be put into words. It was all such inner work, more a feeling of understanding rather than a logical understanding. It seems to me to be based on faith and spirit. Thus, I just could not share what I did and learned in those classes. I can’t even begin to articulate what all this has done for me.

I can share that we’ve been learning more types of healings one of which deals with past lives. Most of the work being done this year is a case study. We each have chosen one person to be our case study. We have to put into practice all that we’ve been learning in the past year and a half and treat our case study as if she were a client. My neighbor volunteered, in fact she jumped at the chance.

We are to do 12 healings over a period of a few months. We begin by taking chakra readings. Chakras are the energy centers of our bodies. The way the energy is flowing can be seen by using a pendulum held over each chakra. It can show if the energy centers are balanced or if they are shut or flowing in a negative direction. Healings help to open the energy and to help them flow in a positive direction.

We have to make a preliminary assessment of the client: What are their primary and secondary defenses? What physical and emotional issues were presented by the client? What is their core wound?

We then create a treatment plan: What does our client need to receive from us? How will it be provided?

We have to document each session: What type of healing did we use and why? What images/impressions did we receive during the healing? What was your client’s experience? What did we learn about the client and about ourselves?

At the end of the 12 sessions we are to review our findings: We will take another set of chakra readings, compare it with original set. Analyze the changes. Has the initial assessment of the client changed? Discuss the assessment and any changes in detail, including information on primary and secondary defenses, core issue and physical condition. We will also have to discuss any issues and feelings that come up for us while working on our client.

At our last weekend of classes, we each have to get up in front of everyone and present the case study to the class and answer any questions our classmates and teachers may have.

I’ve done five healings so far. I have been amazed how everything is coming together. The findings from the chakra readings fit right in with what I decided about the defenses, and the emotions and physical ailments presented by my client. It’s all so integrated, it’s fascinating. It’s also so involved and convoluted. I’ve been taking pages and pages of notes but have yet to figure out how to put it all together coherently in a presentation. It’s as if I’m psychoanalyzing my friend/neighbor which is definitely a little strange. I also am not sure how much to tell her about my findings. After talking with my teacher, I finally decided that I would tell my friend only the basics of what I’m discovering but mostly just answer her questions.

I’m beginning to really feel that I CAN do this! Yay!!!

Love, Light, and Laughter to All,

Starstuff