Emotional Pain

The Mountain Man – 1977 – Santa Fe, NM

“There’s a shadow in you.” said Herschal, igniting his hand-carved bone pipe and stroking his Gandalf like beard.

“A what?” Straightening my back, moving forward on the log, planting my hand-made moccasins in the red earth. My memory was awakened by his penetrating eyes.

“You know!” as if I was knowingly hiding something. Stirring the fire with his wide-brimmed hat toward Obruini seemed to purposely shift my gaze onto her glowing face.

“Discover for yourself.” her calming voice guiding me to be still.

Closing my eyes, my memory jumped back to the day we met a year ago in a diner outside Santa Fe. There they were… Sitting side by side, with eyes clear as crystals watching me enter the diner. My focus zoomed in on them like an eagle, their smiles, drawing me in like a moth to the flame.

“Join us.” they said together exuberantly, gesturing me to sit.

Herschal, a seasoned mountain man from head to toe, became my first spiritual mentor. A minister and student of many religions thirteen years prior, he left everything in search of… the way he put it, a genuine experience of the Tao. The search led him to La Cañyon in the high desert outside Santa Fe and the female version of himself, Obruni. The small community of people spread out through the canyon treated each other like family.

Six stepping stones spanning the Santa Fe river led to their home, a small adobe style hogan, hand sculpted from the earth with a wood stove in the middle. Outside was a fire pit surrounded by natural earthen seating and a few steps to a 100 year old wooden baking oven. This stove sat up against a 1900’s adobe brick building used to dry fruits and spices, which became my home.

Obruni was natural beauty and radiated compassion. Long sandy blonde hair flowed from underneath her mountain hat, framing her soft milky-white face – A face that time and sun had very little power over. Her deliberate stride revealed hand-sewn moccasins underneath her long flowing hippie skirt. Obruni, meaning white-face in Twi, the native language of Ghana, became a term of endearment she adopted while in the Peace Corps.

Together, in that diner, they appeared as two halves of the same unique being when I met them in 1977. At 23, the depth of their wisdom, shrouded in genuine humility, sank beneath my awareness like a stone.

“We’ve been waiting for you.” her voice resonating a gentle strength.

“Yes… All day it appears.” Laughingly looking out the window bringing my attention to the shadow of the setting sun.

My inner dialog began… “Wow! That was fast. Should I tell them? If I do, they gonna think I’m crazy! Nobody believes me.” I took pause.

“We both had vivid dreams last night and a strong intuition guided us here this morning. We’ve been waiting in the… Hmm…” head tilting, eyebrows raising, slowly grinning and turning to Obruni…

“Mystery solved!” His great sense of humor, masterfully delivered with facial expressions, let me know exactly what they were thinking.

Hesitant to share what I’ve been doing hitch-hiking around the country fearing their reaction, I let go…

“I have something to tell you.” becoming deliberate.

“I’ve hitched over 30,000 miles over the past few years with the purpose of developing my ability to manifest what I imagined. It seems that once I got on the road, my being would become free from the world’s grip as I become aware of an increasing internal power to manifest.”

“They varied; A direct ride from one city to the next… In a car or truck… Spiritual conversation… Man or woman driver… Buy me lunch… Each ride became it’s own creation in rudimentary physical forms.

“But then my focus turned onto desiring rides with a greater quality of connection where I could somehow help or inspire others. Finding myself being able to feel people’s inmost emotions, I began watching them resolve emotional pains and gain the inspiration toward a loving path.”

The accuracy began surpassing mental believability, but I continued.

“Then, a beautiful woman invited me into her home and a whirlwind romance ignited. Maybe knowing it was only for a few days, we gave ourselves to each other in transparency without judgment, the closeness we shared was sublime.” This gave birth to a new type of intention, can you guess what it was?” I said jokingly.

“After dozens of 2-3 day romances, I found myself hitch-hiking from Santa Fe with a woman who was going home to Seattle. I intended a ride where we could stretch out, a hippie van picked us up. In Flagstaff, AZ, the roads became icy and the van spiraled off the road, overturned and beer cans pelted the embankment. Nobody was hurt, we all turned the van up and we left them in Las Vegas.”

“Just outside of San Fransisco. I intended to manifest what I considered to be impossible because I still did not understand the dynamics at this young age. “My intention was for a brown and yellow Monte Carlo driving to Seattle by a couple who would not only share their pot but invite us to stay with them.” Within minutes of sticking our thumbs out, a yellow and brown Monte Carlo pulled over, rolled down the window and out pops the head of a full-blown hippie chic.”

“Hey man, we’re going all the way to Seattle, so if you smoke pot, jump in.”

“We stayed with them that night.”

“That was the moment I felt the power to create, so pure within my soul… but I was not. Knowing my dark past, I feared abusing it or taking it to selfish gains. Up until then, it was like participating in a movie, not actually real while I was hitch-hiking. But now I was scared of this much power within me, so I shut it down. I hitched back to Santa Fe by myself without the intentions.”

“I haven’t done it since then until leaving Quebec three days ago. I did it again, this time intending to find a man to help me return to the white light.”
After a calm peaceful silence… “And there it is!” they said in unison.

“Herschal has been intending to meet someone he could mentor in the way of what we call… white-magic, or the deep principles of Tao and other spiritual teachings. And so here we are.” smiling with joy.

Reaching across the table, her hand gently covered mine then Herscal’s hand covered her’s. Our eyes locked and hearts merged.

A red 50’s truck pulls into the parking lot and beeps the horn.

“Hmm… Look at that… What timing… There’s our ride. You’re coming, right?” And off we went, like three old friends.

“Bob… You still with us?” waking me from my memory.

“Sorry, I was remembering when we met.”

Obruni walks over, embraces me then slowly caresses my eyes shut.

“Ask yourself what hurts.”

It took two weeks for the buzzing in my ears to subside after I moved out into the silence of the canyon. A bit longer for the chatter in my head to diminish. But that question caused my mind to race. I couldn’t focus. I felt my eyelids flittering. Emotions were welling up inside as I tried choking back the tears.

Seeing my reaction, Herschal rushed over, leaning me backwards into his supporting arms. With her right hand on my heart and the other cradling the back of my neck, my eyes witnessed the expanse of the Milky Way. Everything was in its place as I became the observer as a hidden shadow emerged from the recesses of my mind, bringing the feelings of emotional pain.

“I don’t remember my dad saying he loved me after I turned eleven. I don’t know what I did, but he just stopped saying it.”

Clarity rushed in, focusing my mind into an epiphany of self-discovery. I saw it as clear as day, just like a movie. It was true that my dad did stop telling me he loved me, but it was not the actual source of my pain, that was just the story about my pain.

The source was my perceived absence of love.

I could not feel the energy of love within the pain because my story was keeping it out. My limited perception created a story that led to the pain of loss, the loss of love, causing me to recoiled as if from a hot flame. I became afraid to feel my pain again.

Fear took on a new meaning… The anticipation of pain.

This defense mechanism, fear, misdirected my focus onto the story instead of the pain itself. Blaming someone outside myself as the source of my pain created a false perception.

“I was worthy of love as a child, but not as an adult because of who I had become and the things I had done.”

The cycle was complete, my pain turned into the payoff of playing the victim of my own circumstances and keep love out so I would never be hurt again.
Not wanting to feel the hurt ever again, my story solidified around my pain like a membrane keeping love out. A thorn in my psyche. I became the deceiver and the one being deceived.

Realizing what happened, the joy of relief replaced the pain with a love for my father that lasted a lifetime. I felt love again as a part of me.
“How are you feeling now? We can see what you’re going through.”

Limp within their arms, tears of freedom came forth. There were no words, only peace and an energy of love flowing like a fountain from inside me as if I uncovered my own being. So, so sweet. I wanted more.

After some talking, they embraced me and went to bed. Staring into the fire and up at the brilliance of the Milky Way, my awareness of the cosmos expanded until I realized, everything was perfectly in its place, even me. I slept, cradled in the cosmic arms of love and peace.

Enjoying the lightness within my being, the bubble of calmness ensued for weeks as time passed without notice. A sunset meditation by the Santa Fe River, where we collected our water, transmuted into an especially dark night. Cloud cover cloaked the rays of the stars and without the moon, there was little illumination. Closing and opening my eyes, only a slight contrast could be noticed.

Meditating far into the night, absorbed in peace, I lost all sense of time. Stabbing fear ripped me out of the sublime, peeling my eyelids back, surrounded by the black of night. My senses heightened. The soft river turned into a roar. Appearing over the river…

The vision of a Japanese warrior hanging from a cross, with an exposed blood-red heart… hurting for forgiveness. Searing pain, slicing me like a sword, propelled me forward out of my cross-legged meditation posture. Landing me on all fours, palms down touching the river, I exhaled.

Soothing to the touch, the water brought forth tears as I became the man on the cross. Then the vision disappeared and the pain subsided, burning the desire for forgiveness on my heart, for the next 30 years. Revealing the vision to Herschal and Obruni the next day, it was now time for me to leave La Canyon in search of…

Igniting a passion for self-discovery, this vision morphed into decades of seeking beyond the thickness of the human veneer. Digging deep, discovering layers of hidden pains and false perceptions, my childhood white-light (near-death-like) experience began recurring every five to seven years with increasing acuity. During these events, the human veil would be lifted, exposing my life-force beyond the human form, existing within the energy flowing from the presence of a divine being.

Coming to know myself as spiritual energy, not just mental processes, I began seeing my pain as energy, instead of just a story. Like a ball of energy encapsulated within a membrane, penetrating my psyche like a thorn, the foreign object was not inherent to my being. It was not me. And inside this ball of energy, the energy of Love was always missing.

A theme emerged – emotional pain is the perceived absence of Love.

The opposite, also being true, gave me a way to heal my pain – Bringing the energy of Divine Love into the pain dissolves it.