Trip To Warburton With the Demons of My Past
“What kind of energy do you think I am?”, I ask Natalia, who’s decluttering her camper,
“You are definitely fire, Ashna” she says casually, barely looking up, like it was an obvious fact.
A couple of years later, I meet Sue, a special someone who operates mostly in the metaphysical (ie. spiritual) realm. She says to me,
“Whenever I think of you, there is a very strong energy that comes through. I often use it for healing.”
She also goes on to tell me that my maternal grandmother, who passed away when I was young, has always been my spiritual guardian, my protector. Even though I never knew her, she knows me all too well. In moments like these, when I’m being tested to believe in something I don’t see evidentially, there’s a quarrel that usually takes place between my intuitive & analytical parts. However, the more I humbly accept I don’t know ANYTHING and simply surrender to the mysteries of life, the more faith I can place in what lies beyond my senses of perception. The more I let go of the branch of knowledge that requires factual evidence, the more true knowledge I end up receiving.
The more I let go of skepticism, the more fuller I feel.
A week after I met Sue, I was due to meet some of my close friends, who had just returned from their trip. As we sat down on the dinner table, we began to unravel some of their travel stories. I asked my friend, who is deeply intuitive and capable of visually seeing people’s auras,
“What is my aura?”
She says,
“Definitely a strong red, FIRE. Yet, there’s something there, like a darkness or heaviness of some sort. It feels like a clot in the chest, a baggage you aren’t able to let go of.”
Just before I had met her, I had decided to tune into myself, say a little prayer, before I chose a card from the Lightworker Oracle Deck of Cards that was gifted to me by a close friend. The card that came was,
“Initiation by Fire” which spoke about letting go of all the old beliefs & patterns I was holding onto and rise from the holy flames, like the Phoenix. The Phoenix, as I read, is representative of the ability to emerge from setbacks, renewal through destruction, the possibility of a fresh start.
I kept the card close to me. It somehow resonated perfectly with my internal state.
Now, there was a time, when picking up a card from some Oracle deck, would have been ludicrous to me. Then, as I grew up, I realized that human beings neither have the capabilities nor the information to make the best decisions, thus, at all times, we are making decisions from incomplete information that’s filtered through our lens of perception before it’s processed to form a decision. Our decision making capabilities are constantly under pressure from biases, past impressions, and judgements we think to be true. At this juncture of intuition & logic, I chose intuition. You know how? Because it felt right. I figured it was time to make decisions that felt right, to me, that didn’t need subpar logical justifications, however did need to pass through the basic filter of rationalization.
Thus, my decision making center is currently being re-established, with majority of the officers appointed from the house of intuition.
As she mentioned, “a clot in the chest”, I had a very deep resonance. A part of me was relieved, relieved that someone spotted it, someone could validate it and I was not overthinking it. Instead of acknowledging what I felt, I simply delegated it to overthinking, which made it even worse.
Now here I was, bare naked, in my fire & my darkness. It felt like the fire had begun to burn things internally.
Connecting the dots, I decided to pick up my bag & go to the place where I heal, in nature. This time, I chose Warbarton. My travel pack (which is used for both traveling inwards & outwards) consisted of:
- Eggs, Pasta — to survive in case I was too far from the food shops (I don’t have a car)
- My journal, 4 pens
- 1 T-Shirt to sleep in
- Sage, Incense
- AirPods, Phone, with selected music on SoundCloud
- Childhood photo of me, with a blue crystal stone
- Selected meditations, recording of my Kung Fu class
On the journey, I listened to Abhay’s Organic Set, which places me in my seat of intuition, where I feel a sense of deep trust and courage. I was the healer and also the one who needed healing.
As I reached my AirBnb spot, I unpacked and went to the garden, to lie under a tree in the backyard. I can’t quite explain this, however, I feel deeply at rest, when I lie down next to a tree. I feel held. I put on the set, as I try to calm down & tune into my inner world. No rush, nowhere to be but here. I let the feelings arise & fall, like waves of an ocean. After listening to the set, I was ready for a deep meditation, that was meant to heal my inner child.
In every human’s life, a selection of core memories, deep-rooted in the subconscious, defines who they become and how they perceive the world. Much the same, I had a selection of core memories, that instilled deep fear within me. I never addressed this, I didn’t think I had to. I was truly under the impression that the more I took in wisdom from the books through the pipe of my intellect, the more it would drip feed into all parts of me that needed it. The pipe actually gets clogged.
I have been fierce from my very childhood. The fierce kept my vulnerabilities protected so they weren’t mishandled. It served it’s purpose however, I continued to bottle up the events when I felt scared & vulnerable within me until it became a physical knot in my chest.
The origin of this knot was from an event that occurred was when I was young, at the tender age of 12. I was at my Uncle’s place, out with my cousin sister & her husband to an adventure park. They also had a kid who was 3–4 years old at the time. My sister & her kid hopped out of the car to check whether the park was open, while her husband & I continued to wait for her in the car. I always found him to be off. I never really felt comfortable around him.
He looks at me from the rearview mirror (I was in the backseat) and with his bloodshot eyes (he drank a lot so his eyes were often worn-out & red) asks me,
“Have you got your period yet?”
I immediately felt fear travel up my spine, constricting my throat, wishing for my sister to come back. Struggling to hide how scared I was as he looked at me from the rearview mirror, I said, “Yes!” and soon after, my cousin & her kid came back. My family had left me in trust with them, to enjoy and have a good time, however, I didn’t know at the time how to tell them that I didn’t feel safe with any of them. When we were back at the house, he was parking the car and yet again, my sister & her kid leapt out of the car before I could. He catches me and gives me his phone. When I look at the phone, it had porn playing on it.
He asks me, “Do you know what this is?”
I say, “No” or I really don’t remember what I said but I ran into the house. Later that night, he was tasked to get snacks and he takes me with him on the pretext of showing me around. As he gets out of the car to buy chips, he asks me,
“Have you ever had beer?”
I barely knew what that even was so I say no, yet he brings me back a bottle of flavored beer, and tells me it tastes like coke or sprite, the usual drinks I was used to. I tasted it, and it was nothing like coke or sprite. Luckily enough, my dad’s sister or my Aunty called him up and she had no idea he decided to take me with him. She angrily tells him to come back to the house right away. Maybe, she also sensed something since there was panic in her voice as she demanded he come home right that moment.
After a day, I went back to my home, never speaking a word of whatever happened to any one. Remember, I am supposed to be fierce? I wasn’t going to let any one believe otherwise.
I never really thought about this incident, until recently.
I wouldn’t have found out how much weight of the past I carried, until one day in life, I was faced with a situation where I had to stand up against a bully. He was an Indian man, in his middle years of life, reminding me of the lineage of similar men from my past. This time, I had the faculties to stand up for myself and what I believed was just. Yet underneath a fierce front, I hid a broken child, a child who was scared and scared to admit she was scared. I hid a child who wanted to believe she was fierce, who wanted to show her dad that she could take on the world, who couldn’t let this idea of her be questioned when she was confronted with her own vulnerabilities. She wanted to believe that no man could make her feel unsafe in her own body, the body she claimed as her home. In chasing this idea, she simply ran away from the truth. In running away, she simply let fear run her until it became the well-deserved tenant of her heart.
So when my friend told me about inner child meditation, the idea instantly resonated with me. As I lay on the bed by myself, in a quiet room surrounded by trees, I covered myself in a blanket, to make myself feel comfortable for a long session of meditation that was ahead of me.
I put on the meditation, with the picture of my childhood & the card I pulled out of the deck, held close to my heart. The blue crystal stone was burried underneath my pillow, symbolic of water, the element that counteracted fire. I put on the incense, as I prepared myself to take a journey in the deepest parts of my psyche, that were unvisited for years.
A few minutes into the meditation, I crossed over to the deeper realms of my psyche, preparing myself to meet my 12-year old self. I pictured her in this little room that was excavated beneath the staircase of one of the houses we lived in. It had enough room for some toys and myself. It’s where I went to be with myself. So this is the place I chose to be with myself, again.
I saw her playing with her toys by herself. Utterly lost. I know she came here to find solitude from the drama that surrounded her family, the constant arguments, the fights, the bickering, the yelling. She would be proud to know that we still like our solitude. As I inched towards her, she looked up at me with her innocent eyes, and I instantly knew what she needed.
She just needed to be understood.
She felt so different from the rest of the kids of her family, and never knew why. She didn’t want to be like them yet she craved to be known.
Here I was, her adult self, with a heart big enough to cover her in it like a blanket. I held her so close to my heart, and like a mother, spoke the words,
“You know I understand you, right. I see you, for everything you are, and you are a marvel. You grow up to be a strong, courageous and most of all, a kind human being. Oh you are soooo loved. You find this boy named, Abhay, who loves you so awfully much, you might want to continue holding onto this room for getaways from his love. You also find your people, who see you for who you are. You went out in the world, howled for your people, and they all found you. My long-winded way of saying, it turns out okay, better than okay.”
“I am sorry for not dropping by earlier. I am sorry for not making you feel safe in your own body, in your own home. I am sorry for all the fear you had to live with and no one knew but you.”
As I said a few more words in my native language, I held her so close to my heart, as we both wept.
I made a promise to come visit again, and very gently bid her bye. With tears streaming down my face, I slowly stepped out of my inner world to the outer. With the fading scent of the incense lingering in the room, I opened my eyes and breathed in deeply. The knot in my throat was still there, yet, felt somehow gentler. I knew my work wasn’t done, but I knew it had begun.
I journaled my experience away, to integrate my experience further through the power of words. I lay down underneath a tree, yet again, in act of surrender to everything I was feeling within. As I lay down and shut my eyes, I imagined the roots of the tree wrapping around me, to remind me I’m held.
I started the next morning with my Kung Fu practice, replaying the recording of my previous class. Listening to my Sifu, underneath the blue skies and the sounds of birds, was exactly what I needed to begin this day. I went for a walk by the river, stopping infrequently for meditation sessions, finally stopping at my favorite cafe for a nicely deserved cup of coffee. I decided to go for a Reiki session, something I had never tried before. Luckily, it was with an old woman, whose presence felt right to me. I stepped out to make my way to the Redwood trees, and decided to sit in the laps of one for an hour, before taking a long nap by the river.
This experience made me see that in trying to chase an image of me who wasn’t prone to feeling the way I did, I ignored the truth of what I was actually going through, hence why it’s so important to honor what we feel within. The thoughts seem to be convoluted with the ideas held by the society, thus have immense power to lead you astray. I was led astray.
“How could this possibly effect you today?”
“You are just overthinking it. You should let things pass.”
“Just be present.”
None of this actually helped. What helped was completely surrendering to what I felt, which was heavy and dark and full of fear. It’s in these moments, I must remember to collect my toolkit and go to nature. It’s in these moments, I must call upon my practices of meditating, movement & writing to guide me and help me find expression. So here I am, writing yet another blog, as a way to knit together a defining experience in my life and to remind myself that true strength lies in my vulnerability.
“I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship” — Louisa May Alcott
Links to the meditations I did:
Sets I heard:
- Abhay’s Organic Set: To have trust & faith in my own healing abilities
- Parra for Cuva’s Set: As a reminder that there’s always light at the end of the tunnel
