Hitting Rock Bottom – and finding my bedrock

Three weeks ago I faced the lifelong fear of being completely alone. I finally hit rock bottom.

And then a week later as I came out of sedation for a hernia repair surgery, I knew that my life had just been reset.

Sure enough, recovering a week later, I found my bedrock for this next chapter of my life.

As I sat in stillness after doing my kriya yoga practice, I could feel an energetic presence of charged energy in front of me, centered at my heart. It feels like holding a huge beach ball that keeps growing as I try to gauge its size. In the past, I always attributed this presence as something “not me” that would visit now and then. But this time is different. This time, as I stay with this awareness, I realize that this is a doorway that has always been there for me, and is a part of me.

And I’m finding that I can come back to this energetic doorway at will.

Even as I sit with it now, I can feel the energy vibrate with almost a tingling sensation at the front of my body. Incredibly relaxing, grounding me into the experience of just BEING. My anxious thoughts and patterns are replaced by a deep sense of openness and freedom that resonates in every breath, in every cell of my body. I am completely content to sit still and BE.

It is always a choice of to be aware of/with this presence, but it sure is an easy choice to make. I’ve been exploring bringing the awareness of it into my teaching and playing. As I’m aware of and with it, it relaxes me and changes my consciousness, which I imagine benefits my students and colleagues.

As I sit with it, I realize that THIS IS my natural state. All anxiety is foreign and can be released. I may have to consciously practice releasing anxiety for the rest of my years, but when I’m in this state of being, it becomes possible to sever the thoughts and patterns that keep me tied to fear. That’s the blessing of hitting rock bottom: the opportunity to live through my fears, see them for what they are, and realize that I am so much stronger than I ever imagined. Now I get to build the rest of my life on what is real.

And here is what is real for me:

• I choose to teach music is a tool of connection, not of separation.
• I choose to see what is possible, instead of what is dogma.
• I choose this state of natural well-being and success, this connection to something so much bigger than myself.

Of course I have questions:

• Why do I feel it in the front of my body?
• If it is a doorway, what lies beyond?
• If it is a sphere, like the beach ball of infinite growth I mentioned above, what is on the other side?
• What is truly possible?

This is a journey of a lifetime.