Imprints

In earlier posts I mentioned being somewhat controlled in recent months by an anger that I simply could not shake off.  This anger was triggered by another person's behavior, and I did not like this behavior and desperately wanted the behavior to change.  Quite often, on the surface, that is what anger is about--control, policing, wanting things to be other than what they are.  I have believed and espoused the philosophy of acceptance, of profound, unconditional acceptance of things as they are, things that we are powerless to change, for a long time. This includes everything from terrorism and war to domestic violence to things that are closer to home, such as someone we love and care about behaving in an inappropriate manner towards us, or in our presence, oftentimes quite unintentionally or unknowingly.  Sometimes this "misbehavior" can trigger deep feelings of anger, sadness, anxiety, or not. Sometimes we can simply say to ourselves that we know deep down we have no control and we accept this and let go.  However, there are, for me, those very rare times when the anger persists, I just can't seem to overcome it, I cannot seem to detach from it.  So I have work to do.  I can analyze this situation as much as I want, I can understand the situation as much as possible, I can communicate all this to others, breathe into it, meditate upon it, but if the feeling doesn't dissipate then something is certainly going on at a much deeper level that needs further exploration.  It can be empowering to appropriately express our anger, and this is good; however, it doesn't guarantee the anger will go away.  Reaching out to others is nearly always helpful so long as we reach out to someone we intuitively trust and believe in.  So one theory is that the physical manifestation of this anger has shown up in my body as costochondritis, which is an inflammation of the connective tissue of the ribs to the sternum.  Right there where the heart resides.  And it hurts and radiates pain. Always there is something to learn from pain, whether it be physical or mental .  Having exhausted the offerings of western medicine, which has definitely offered a great deal of relief through the taking of anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), applying some of the ayurvedic techniques I am aware of (arnica both topically and orally, neem, ginseng, ashwagandha, chyawanprash, trikatu, tumeric...), I decided to turn elsewhere.  I have had some intensely powerful experiences in the past when I've connected to people who are either studying or practicing Shamanism.  There are many different kinds of practices out there just as  there are many different practices dealing with spirituality, yoga, and so on.   At the Bodhi Zen Center several years ago I worked with Hunter Flournoy, Wolf Martinez and David Moreno in a week long workshop that was one of the most powerful and wonderful experiences of my life.  I scheduled a session through the Austin Shamanic Center yesterday and indeed had a very powerful and cathartic experience in my private session.  I won't go into all the details, and the verdict is out on whether healing has been expedited, but at any rate I want to write some of my experience about that in this blog.  After discussing this anger issue and some of the things that have been going on in my life in recent weeks and months, the healer asked me how any of this might relate to the area around my heart?  Did something happen either recently or at any time in your life having to do with your sternum, your heart area?  This is when chills simultaneously shot through her body and my body because we were approaching something deep.  Tears welled up and my voice broke as I recalled the time when I was a young boy and there was an incident I have not thought about or talked about in a long, long time.  One morning we, meaning my family, were gathered in our living room.  The master bedroom was an adjacent room.  All was calm on the surface when suddenly a gun was fired in the bedroom where my father was sleeping.  It was a horrifying sound and there was no doubt it was the silver colored .22 pistol with the flesh colored handle  that was always kept loaded in the upper drawer of a bureau that had been discharged. The sound alone, with its many connotations and repercussions, rang terror deep within my being.  I was probably 7 or 8 years of age.  We ran into the room and my father was standing there with his hands covering his heart, then he collapsed face down on the bed, dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound right into his heart.  It was a total nightmare, at least for as long as we believed it.  We were all sobbing and screaming and holding on to him.  It is hard to relive such memories.  As it turns out, he had not shot himself, it was all a game, a pretense, a form of manipulation, and probably a cry for help on his part.  Although greatly relieved that he had discharged the pistol through the wall above the bureau and not through his heart, no doubt the subsequent anger and hate I felt for him grew even more intense with no way whatsoever of knowing what to do about it.  I was of course at that age totally powerless.  It is possible that this "imprint" is still with me.  It is possible that when I recently observed/experienced someone I care about frequently doing something that I believed wholly inappropriate that these deep feelings of anger kept trying to come to the surface, but instead they got stuck in the heart center, the heart chakra, the seat of the soul (and other chakras as well).  The Shaman decided on a course of action and proceeded with a ritualistic cleansing, an unblocking of the chakras, a calling upon my deepest self to release this anger, to release the caged boy pounding on the walls of a glass box, summoning the spiritual elements to come to my aid and release me from this imprint upon my heart region.  It was powerful and intense and at a climatic/pivotal moment deep into the ceremony her Akita Inu came running into the room, jumped up on the massage table and licked away my tears, literally.  Quite empathetic.  Quite mysterious.

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Postscript:  On May 4, 2015, I sent the following email to Christina at Austin Shamanic Center:

Hi Christina,

It has not been a week since our session, but my chest pain/sensation has nearly completely
disappeared.  It didn't happen overnight, but I particularly noticed a change on Saturday with a slight
itch.  Then on Sunday, yesterday, my heart region (on the outside) began to itch more, and the slight
itchy, tingling sensation went downward towards my lower abdomen, but completely on the surface
of the skin (seemingly).  The itch was pretty intense last night, right over the sternum, but today it is
almost completely gone.  I am so happy about this.  Thank you for your incredible work.

best, ron