Channeling Intensive

The first of the channeling intensives was a memorable event. Leading up to it, during, and after, I believe I saw more repeating digits than either a: I ever have in my entire life or b: I haven't seen in many years. I was astounded how many times my eyes "just happened" to look at the clock to catch a 333 or 444. To bolster the sense of specialness about the weekend, while I didn't see shooting stars as has happened at gatherings past when a certain incarnated celestial body came near my orbit, I had the closest most unusual encounter of my life with a hawk just days before the intensives.

Driving towards Hobbs Park Rd on Hazelwood, a hawk swooped down in front of my windshield, perhaps ten feet away, its wings at what seemed like maximum wingspan, spread across the width of my windshield, it swooped down moving to my right, landing on the far side of a large ditch running parallel to the road i was traveling on. With no one behind me, I stopped the car, put it in reverse, and looked at the hawk through my passenger window. The hawk looked back at me. Amazed, i drove forward, convinced it was somehow related to the upcoming intensive.

Our first practice session at the intensive involved the telling of a story, each person in the circling channeling (or attempting to channel) the next piece of the story. While I wasn't able to serve as a channel through which a contribution could be made, others were. It was a very simple story of a boy who journeys to a distant and exotic land in search of the truth, only to find that the truth was within himself the entire time.

Though a basic story, tears were leaking out from my closed eyelids as it was being told. There was such an innocence about the tale, a purity which, in stark contrast to myself, i felt absent with me. It was as if there was within me a juxtaposition of two worlds. In one world, the world of the story, the Earth was green with thriving, glowing, radiant, vibrant, colorful life, untarnished, pristine, and whole - a paradise, if you will. In the other world, the world of my interior, I found not a green lushness but a thoroughly scorched ground. I felt like all the negative emotions that daily run through me - judgment, bitterness, anger, pettiness - to name a few, have scorched my earth. I saw myself standing on what was formerly an Eden but had been burnt and ruined in the flames of anger and pain. This caused tears, as if I had started out with something so beautiful but in my ignorance turned into a barren no-mans land. Why would I choose to live this way?

I realized that evening, as I have been intuiting for some time now, that I must learn, instill, and cultivate within me those qualities of compassion, softness, tenderness and the ability to relax. To be gentle with myself and with all others, to be kind, generous, and unconditional in my love. Softness is key. My will can be indomitable, my choices firm, my mind single-pointed, my thirst intense, but at the same time I can go about things lightly, gently, without aggression, without inner violence, without cynicism and without resentment for that which is not to my liking. Softness would make the ground again open to the seeds of new life, compassion would water the new seeds with life-giving nutrients, gentleness would encourage the life to grow in what is already a harsh world, and my dedication to seeking the truth would be the light without which few things can grow --- for growth is the reaching for the light.