dolphin intro (long)

I thought I would introduce my new persona and share a very powerful experience. Putting this non-linear experience into a linear storyline lacks some of the power of the original, but I believe it’s still worth sharing.

I attended the Lesser Kan and Li retreat at Heavenly Mtn this summer. It was quite a transformative experience, rediscovering a part of myself I hadn’t remembered ever feeling. Exploring the depths, I got back in touch with my original self.

Prior to attending the Lesser Kan and Li retreat, I worked fairly diligently through the Fusion series, spending a good amount of time studying the CDs, practicing the forms, getting introduced (re-introduced?) to my shen and developing a greater comfort level with my emotional body. I was a pretty intellectually-oriented individual; it was my place of refuge during difficult times while growing up, and through lots of repetition, became my primary place to hang out. While growing up, I was rather small for my age, and weak and sickly as a child, so thinking big thoughts was a form of compensation.

I was born with my feet completely pigeon-toed. The solution at the time for this problem was to put the legs in a cast for awhile, then wear shoes that were attached by a metal bar at the heels. The shoes were pointed outwards Charlie Chaplin-style. My mother said that I used to waddle around the house, or drag my legs in a sort of crawl. I don’t have strong memories of the time.

Fast-forwarding to the Lesser retreat – Michael led us in a meditation where we create our cauldron and then explore it. The meditation starts with a visualization of a small person in our heads running a control room, who discovers a trap door that leads down to the cauldron. Once at the cauldron, we were given an opportunity to explore it.

Rather than waiting around and testing the space out, I dove right in. As I began stretching out in the space and adjusting to it, I began to feel like I was swimming. While swimming I noticed that my legs came together on their own, and that the feeling of my legs joined was very familiar. Swimming around, the space began to feel more and more open and the feeling increasingly enjoyable. A feeling of grace and freedom, effortless movement and great joy.

While exploring the space, Michael gave us a suggestion to notice that there were others in the space. My immediate response was: NO! This is MY space! Michael was suggesting that there were guides there; however, my reaction was an immediate flashback to myself as a very small child. I grew up in a big family, with siblings being born sometimes less than a year apart for several years running. The difference in feeling between myself swimming around in what I now know (at least it seems) as primordial space, and the feeling of my space being invaded again was very dramatic.

Emerging from the meditation, I noticed a rug that Michael had placed in the end of the room I happened to be sitting in. The rug was decorated with dolphins. In my body, I felt the connection between myself in the primordial space and the dolphins I was looking at: my connected legs and the dolphin’s back fin, my big forehead and the dolphin’s head area, that wonderful feeling I was reminded of in primordial space and the dolphin’s grace. The connection brought tears to my eyes.

I am able to call up that space/sense of myself in meditations now, though the experiences to date are not quite as strong as the first one; there is a wonderful amplification of energy that happens when you’re with a large group of like-focused people. However, I have a sensation of mySelf that I am able to return to and foster. It’s Wonder-full.