Born and Reborn
(not for the faint-hearted)

When I wrote this piece in 1994 I had no idea that I was actually having a type of born again experience that thankfully most of us never go through.  To be born again into the Spirit does not have anything to do with what I have recorded here.  However, in my own life, this all happened after many months of counseling sessions that culminated in removing blockages in some areas of my life that were keeping me separated from God.  My primary fear forever was that of rejection, especially by my loved ones, whether it was in expressing my most inner self through writing or openly acknowledging Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.  Having overcome this fear, I am now free to do both at the risk of rejection by anyone.   When God is for you, who can be against you? 

Co-counseling has been a most interesting experience, yet I had no idea I would get to places inside myself that I reached today. I was telling Anne (my co-counselor) about my anger and how I want to channel it into my writing. She said that is a frustration with my anger, that I may need to put it to some good use since I don’t know what else to do with it. She said it would probably be more helpful to discharge it (release the emotion physically), and then be able to write from free attention (a relaxed, creative state of mind). So wishing to sidestep this phase of my healing, I reluctantly tried to get to my angry feelings. This is actually quite hard for me compared to the quick flair-up I usually feel when angered in present time.

This old anger is quite a different story, though. I’ve been quite aware of my anger so I knew I wasn’t fishing in an empty pond, but as I tried to reach those feelings by punching a pillow, all I felt was extremely tired. Anne confirmed the stickiness, the guck, of these feelings and said it was important to push through them. So I persevered, until the tears and the sobbing came soon followed by a total tensing of my body. The sobs turned to a wailing and my body felt rigid with tension. When this all subsided, I was calm again. Soon I was ready to proceed and all this repeated again.

By this time I told Anne I felt like I was giving birth to this very primal anger I have carried for 41 years. I told her I felt like I was in labor, and that the contractions would come and go again. All this while I felt anger toward myself for being the kind of person who gets stuck too often. I suddenly realized that this feeling I have lived with all my life started with my actual birth and has repeated in a thousand ways, all with the core message "I Want Out!"

No wonder I felt the anger would propel me through my own internal fog when I wrote of it yesterday. It has propelled me through my life to date, however dysfunctionally this has occurred.

Whenever I find myself in a place and my "I Want Out" feeling comes, I eventually muster the final push and move ahead into the unknown with faith that I will land into loving and caring arms, just as I did when I was born and just as has happened a thousand times since. My faith embraces me with the loving support of God and the universe.

Major changes in a human life will often bring these primal emotions and experiences into the present, and we are restimulated, totally unaware consciously of the depth and magnitude of the underlying recording.

Last summer my "I Want Out" (IWO) feelings hit me hard in the box dream I had in which I was trapped in a box which constricted my body with ever increasing intensity until I actually hurt. I wanted out of my physical and emotional pain while in the dream, which felt traumatic, as much so as any I could consciously remember. Every time I can recall feeling IWO it was because I was in a situation where I was getting squeezed and it was time to move on to a new life and greater growth. I feel I’ve "died" and been "reborn" many times.

I must have stayed inside my mom as long as I could possibly hold out and when push came to shove, so to speak, I made my way through. Because that is just exactly how I‘ve lived my life, holding on to whatever or whoever it is for as long as I can, but when the time comes, I push my way on through, successfully and confidently.

Another phenomenon happened after this though, as I physically started to feel ill, even nauseous. I had an intense headache as well, and it wasn’t until I laid down for a short nap that I was restored to my former good health. Perhaps this was coincidental but rather I think it was all brought on by feelings of anxiety, fear and uncertainty as I discharged the energy stored around the "memory" of my birth.

I can’t say that this was an enjoyable experience, but it certainly has cleared up many things for me. I’ve had such a tendency to get "stuck" in a number of situations, feeling like there was no other way out until the time was right and I had the courage to make the move.

I have been stuck on publishing my writing since 1977. The time is right, now, and I have the courage to make the move.

The last session I had with Anne before this one today was my two-hour "confession" which turned out to be a breakthrough session. I am now moving through this more rapidly. Anne is a very experienced co-counselor and quite a stickler for discharge (releasing energy stored up around our age-old memories and distress patterns). I have such a tendency to intellectualize my experiences and such were my sessions with Arthur for an entire year. And though counseling with Arthur moved me much further, I have discovered that Anne has given me new eyes to see through my own feelings and distress patterns, much the same way Anne Sullivan gave Helen Keller new eyes through sign language and later braille.

Anne keeps me focused on feeling my feelings even when I stubbornly persist on jumping back in my head. I must have been very angry with my mother during birth for rejecting me, as it must have seemed, and forcing me to "leave home" for the big, wide world, full of strangers, strange things and strange places – the unknown. Anger and frustration must have played a major role in the ordeal as well. Survival emotions. They were with me then and they still are now. Fear. No wonder I was afraid. Afraid I might die in there, afraid of what I would face out there. Is it still this primal fear that puts its ugly claws into me now and then? Fear that I will be abandoned or unloved? Basic emotions that every baby feels.

I felt labor pains tonight but not those of the mother, those that I have experienced in the birth of my own children, but those of the baby – the struggle to break through to life, the very sensations of the infant in its last moments in the womb. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I could "remember" such a thing. One more in a string of strange things as I live my life as fully as I can.