The Chorus shifts to a new level in this episode, describing a momentous event in our history which could be described as the starting gun of our experience of limitation. Katie connects this starting point to the beliefs in our subconscious which continue to create our experience of limitation even today – beliefs we are starting to Awaken to, which often go by the name of…shame. Enjoy!

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Kickoff

Have you ever noticed how, when in a science fiction movie they portray a time warp, a wormhole, some sort of bend in space time…it always looks like a sort of blurry, muttled, squishy and loosey-goosey sort of tunnel? It’s not like beautiful or extraordinary, it’s more like a roller coaster ride that doesn’t hold any shape.

I think there’s something in this though that may be intrinsic to us, that we understand. Because according to The Chorus, their view of sort of periods of time that pass in a way that’s less scrutinized by us…is that we have brought in a lot of new energy into a span of time that normally we would not allow that much new energy into.

So when you get really involved in a project, or a book, or something, and time flies, and it’s sort of like “whoa.” That can be viewed as one way of bending time because it is our rules of time and what can be accomplished in that time period, that are being bent.

So as I was recording today’s episode, I just tried to stick to the feeling of what was coming up and what needed to be said. And I just kept talking, like I usually do. I try and just keep talking until I feel its completeness. And this episode kept going…and going…and going. And I really hope you don’t feel like that as you listen to it. But I was convinced like, in the background, as I’m talking and talking, that it’s going to have to be a two part episode. It’s gonna be like two or three hours long, and I’m gonna have to split it up. And then as I got further, I was like, this is like a four part episode! What am I doing? So I stopped recording, I put it down, and I left it alone for a week, which always helps me to soften my judgments of what I’ve created…is if I let time pass.

And I think this is an interesting understanding that we’re coming to when you get into a mode and you start creating something and time passes without you even noticing it. As you then bring that creation back into the five senses viewpoint there will be a part of us that will naturally want to judge it. Because you crammed in a lot of incredible creating in a short period of time. Now, if you let time pass, before you return to it and activate the judging, you will find that the need to judge it or even your ability to judge it softens. And that is because it is a little more in line with our classic rules about how much can be done in what period of time.

So I set this episode down, I came back to it a week later. And I mean, at this point, I couldn’t even remember what I said. It’s like a new experience to me to it as I go through and I start editing it and clipping out long pauses and things like that. I get all the way to the end…and it’s one hour and one minute. And I almost always try and keep these episodes under an hour. So now we’re definitely going over an hour, because I didn’t include this introduction. So I’m going to keep it short.

But the point being, there is a big relationship between our judgments of what we allow ourselves to create and time. And today we’re going to start moving into more of an exploration of what those judgments are and how we as humans experience them. And as you might imagine, there is a lot of new energy In this episode, so, perhaps, give yourself…time.

In the first part of the episode, you’ll hear directly from The Chorus themselves, and then afterwards we will discuss…for a long time.

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THE CHORUS

In times before this one, humanity was a great power unto the universe. You were destructive. Guided by your paths of greatest expansion, you entered into a phase of great ability, of great potential, and also of great mistakes. This was the beginning, in many ways, of the experiences you have today that you call error.

Much of the beliefs that humanity experiences today are not only of this day and age. They are robust and expansive because you have built and experienced these things in many other times, in many other ways. There is a legacy, there is a history, that you went through as a collective, that created beliefs that are very much still a part of the fabric of what you embody today.

By way of beginning to remember the start of many of these things, you are also seeing more clearly the stuff that makes up your worldview or universe view, we could say, today. It was this power, this potential for destruction, that led you here to the earth plane.

There is much in that choice that was made out of love. For even though you were destroyers, in many ways, it was not necessarily out of malice. Though you had your moments of rage, you experienced something else that humanity continues to embody today, which is regret.

Regret and remorse are your ability to take portions of your history, even as recently as moments ago, to judge them, and to feel bad about them. In so doing what you accomplish is limiting the view of those experiences as anything other than points of shame. Left with that definition alone, humanity is not often curious about particular ways that things have unfolded in your past. It prevents you that sense of wonder that opens up to new possibility, a new energy, and new understandings coming through in this environment.

Though you are just becoming aware of it, there is much in your conscious recollection of your histories, that causes you shame. Shame, by our viewpoint, has only very recently become conscious to humanity. Previous to now, it was an uncomfortable feeling that operated in the background, that kept humanity directed away from these most interesting questions and aspects of yourself. This was purposefully and powerfully created for the experience of limitation. For in avoiding these things, you did not see these things, this potential in yourself. And so you remained in a limited perspective of yourselves and the universe.

And now, as you are becoming more aware of the things that bring you shame, there is an acute and conscious experience of that emotion, which most humans do not prefer. However, it is also bringing to light new possibilities for those things of which you have long felt ashamed. Could it be, Beloved Ones, that these things held great purpose? Could it be that all the actions that you remember ever having taken, for which you feel ashamed, are actually connected by something important? By your potential? By a greater story, and a greater truth about what you uniquely are beyond all the beliefs that prevent you from seeing those aspects.

In the new possibility of what those events and aspects could be viewed from that is beyond shame. You are opening and you are awakening to the multitude of perspectives that await that see absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

You may find that in your darkest corners awaits the brightest lights we love you infinitely.

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DISCUSSION WITH KATIE

So we’re here are we? Fuuuuuuuuck.

This is an old topic for me. One that is about 10 months long now acutely. And, of course, many, many billions of years long for all of us, if we understand what The Chorus is suggesting. But a little less than a year ago, I started to really move through beliefs of guilt, shame, remorse, regret. These emotions that, from The Chorus’s perspective, are all cousins. They’re all different versions of kind of one colossal construct of the belief system. And it has been hard, I will say. There is such a heaviness in these sensations. And in confronting them, I guess you could say, in seeing them like we do in awakening, it’s been a steady process of returning to experiences of shame and guilt and remorse and regret. And seeing it differently each time I do, but also returning to it over and over again.

And I’m probably at the midway point, which is probably why they brought it up today. Because they expect me to talk about it.

And if you had asked me about it a few months ago, it was still heavy. I didn’t have a perspective on it yet. I knew I was coming to one. You can sense it as it’s kind of building. But I didn’t have words. I didn’t have concepts and I sure as shit didn’t feel like it was a good thing at all.

And now I’m somewhere in between. I’ve gotten to that point of finally starting to get it – what The Chorus is talking about – the way that shame was purposeful, the things that are behind it, the incredible story that awaits behind these doors. I see the potential. I don’t necessarily yet see exactly what is behind those doors. But I see it now as a door, a door that we locked behind us…by shame.

Shame can take on many faces. Just about 30 minutes ago, I was down in the kitchen making my lunch. And then, out of nowhere, remembered that I had not re-upped my son’s lunch money online, before he went to school today. And he told me this morning, at breakfast, that he was out. And so there I am in the kitchen, making my salad went out of clear blue sky, this feeling of sadness and terribleness comes over me. I sort of pull up my head and go, “Oh, shit. The lunch money. Dammit!” I run up the stairs, I log on as quick as I can. Sure enough, the account balance is zero. And I feel awful, ashamed, guilty, regretful, remorseful. And then I run downstairs after I’ve re-upped the lunch money. And I look at the schedule on the fridge – which I still have not memorized even though the school year is almost over – to see what time his lunch is at. And lo and behold, I’ve just missed it. By the time I was running upstairs, his lunch hour was already over.

Guess what I felt? The same thing, any parent would feel, the same thing any friend would feel, the same thing anyone anywhere would feel if they were responsible for doing something for someone else, that that other person was dependent upon, lunch money, or otherwise.

 So I go into the office where my husband is. And I walk up to his desk and I look over the monitors at him. And he sees the expression on my face. And he says, “what’s wrong?”

And I say, “I forgot to re-up the lunch money. He didn’t have lunch money today.”

At which point, my husband tries very hard to conceal a smile.

And you might say, “what!? Why does he think that’s funny!? This is awful. Her poor son was hungry today because she forgot this.”

And then my husband says, “You know what? I think he’ll probably be okay without seconds today.”

Because actually, our lunch is covered this year. Meaning, my son asks me to put lunch money into his account, so that on the days he’s really, really digging what they’re serving in the cafeteria, he can get seconds.

And it’s funny now, and I understand why my husband was sort of smiling and a little bit laughing at me now. And I knew it was about seconds when I ran up the stairs, and I knew it was about seconds when I went down into the kitchen. But something else won. Something else felt more real. The feeling bad about what I did, felt more visceral, more apparent to me.

And even as I stood there and my husband pointed out that our well fed, loved and healthy child is probably okay without seconds today. There was still a part of me that had  this vision of my son walking back up to the counter, asking for seconds and the lunch lady saying, “Sorry, kid, you don’t have any money in your account.” And I imagined his disappointment that mom hadn’t remembered when he had even reminded me.

So what do you think? Should I feel guilty and ashamed? Should I have prevented that moment of disappointment for my son? Or is it a little silly, that I feel bad that my son couldn’t get seconds?

Shame is a wilely feeling. Because it appears in different people in different places and at different times. There are things that I feel deeply ashamed of, that another person can’t even fathom why I would ever think those things.

Even now, as I sit down and I make this podcast, there is something in the background, there is a part of me that is embarrassed by something that’s not going well with this podcast. I don’t even know what it is. But it’s a voice that’s there all the time.

Sometimes we’ve called this the voice of the inner critic, the one that says you’re not good enough, it’s not going well, it’s not going to turn out good, people are going to reject it. This voice of the critic is often related to a projection of shame, an impending shame, a shame that you will feel and suffer through should you continue with the course of action that you’re on. Maybe you’re halfway through writing a song, or a paper, or a book, or a love letter. And somewhere from within you, this voice of the inner critic will show up and will project onto the process of creation, a feeling of shame.

Somewhere in our path of awakening, in recent times, we’ve become aware of this voice. We have conversations about silencing the inner critic and today, in current society, conversations about ignoring the outer critic. Haters gonna hate. It’s an interesting reflection of the hater, the haters, inside of us, meaning the belief systems that we constructed that evaluate and judge ourselves and typically find ourselves to be coming up short.

As The Chorus has often suggested, we are a physical embodiment of our beliefs. Therefore, when you find a hater out in society, or one that’s inside of your head, it is simply a reflection of a resonance with these belief systems. That’s it. This is why sometimes those haters don’t hate. As we well know.

Now, when we look in social media and other networks, the faceless voice of the critic is starting to have an identity. In many ways, this is hard for us. And we find ourselves hating more people, or more groups, or more factions that look like the ones we’ve learned to identify with the voice of criticism or the voice that is against the thing that we are for. But actually, this is also a step in the right direction for awakening because what we’re coming around to is the complicated story that is behind every voice of the critic.

The Chorus said, I believe in book one, but maybe it’s book two…because sometimes they all meld together…that we’re starting to come to a place where we want to understand the sinner and the saint. Meaning, it’s not enough anymore to just say that the villain is all bad. It’s not believable to us anymore. This is why, in many of our stories, and theater, and movies, and in books, the story of the villain has started to take almost as much of the spotlight as the story of the savior or the superhero. Because it feels insufficient to us -or another way to say it is unrealistic to us – to have a villain that just kind of is awful. Doesn’t make any sense. What happened to them? Why do they feel like they have to do this? What’s the motive and what’s the reasoning behind their personality or their passion to do awful things to other people?

I was recently watching the Eternals and I’ll try to describe this without any spoilers. So towards the end of the movie, there is a conversation of sorts happening between one of the villains of the plotline and then one of the heroes. Now, in the hero’s case, she is tortured, and she has her own issues. But she comes face to face with a member of the I will say, “bad guy group.” And by this point in the movie, the villain caricature has started to look – meaning in form –  a lot more like the heroes. And also, he sort of gives this like monologue as they’re sort of having their final battle about, “oh, how much we are alike, except that these higher powers pitted us against each other.” Something like that. Now, I found this incredibly interesting, because I think it’s a good reflection of where we are as a human collective, where we might not feel as satisfied with the storyline, if he just sort of, like, ran into the fight and was like, “I hate you. Blah.” It would fall flat. The plotline, the version of that character, would feel insufficient to us.

But now as you’re hearing from the villain himself, in this case, and he’s describing almost the reasons why he is doing what he’s doing, but also the similarities that he sees between himself and the quote-unquote, heroes, the audience feels like, “oh, okay.” There is a greater identification with the overall story, because there is a greater identification with all the characters in it.

Now, there’s still something inside of us that does not want to totally forgive the haters, or totally understand the haters, much of the time. We’re not there yet. But we are enough to a place of allowance of the hating that we have these platitudes, we have these sayings: “Oh, haters gonna hate. Moving on!” T hat is a form of allowance. That is a form of allowing people to be in that position and to be in that place, and having it hold less of a power over us, less of an effect, and definitely slowing us down a lot less than it used to.

Rejection and criticism previously held a much greater power over us in the form of shame.

We did much to avoid the experience of shame as an individual or as a collective. Now, though there are still aspects of this alive and well in even the United States, you will find that there is a form of individualism that has sprung up where people are, in some ways, disassociating from the collective identity. They are finding their own paths within or without of the family unit. Now, it’s not to say that you won’t find families even in the United States, that are still, I would say connected in forms of identity. It is simply that it has started to fall out of popularity.

There are many Victorian shows that are popular or have been popular – movies and TV series that have been popular over the recent decades. And one of the aspects of that time period was a very strict decorum, a very strict way of behaving, especially in the elite circles, which are often the subject of these stories and these books. It goes so far as you can only look at certain people in certain ways. And you have to nod courteously or curtsy just right. Or you have to invite them to tea in so many days after they have invited you to tea. And you have to be careful where you put their place cards at dinner because you don’t want certain people to sit next to others or you might offend them. And I think this is often a fascination for many of us because it is a good example of the contrast. The freedom that we’re currently experiencing today and sort of a lightening up of the pressure of these beliefs which has resulted or is manifested in a lightening up of these of these social protocols. You could say, we don’t have them the way we used to, because we don’t believe in them the way we used to.

So really our experience of shame and all the cousins, and our understanding of shame, are growing in tandem. The more we come to an allowance of these things, the more It manifests itself in an understanding of these things. So we are simultaneously feeling less shame at times for ourselves. And we are also hating or pushing against the experience of others’ shames – whether it be rejection, or some sort of disdain, even – that we don’t get as affected by it as we used to, because we are not generating it as much as we used to.

As you know, from listening to Season One of the podcast, I went through an intense period of pushing myself out of the closet last year. And what I found was that each time I took a step forward in accepting more of myself and allowing myself to be seen, in taking a risk going out of my comfort zone, however you want to say it, each time that I moved in the direction of trusting more of what I was, I often found that there was a corollary response, where I did not fear the opinions of others as much as I did before I took that step.

So there was almost this pattern of…as I came to a place of release, of a potential release, of these beliefs of shame and limitation, they accelerated and I found more things that I did not like about what I was creating. More things that I was afraid others would not like about what I was creating. And when I pushed through it and released what I was creating anyways, I found that those things that I had been afraid of, or that had felt so impending, were seen completely differently, and were released. Meaning with each step that I took, I became less and less concerned about what others thought. And I definitely became less and less concerned about what I thought. My standards for what I considered to be a good podcast or something that I would feel comfortable releasing, shifted.

And now we would use often in a description of this, like a vertical kind of axis? Like, “oh, my standards lowered. I became like, not so pushing on myself to make it this particular way.” And that is a fair way to look at it. But another way to look at it is that your viewpoint of what you’re creating shifts outward in a circular fashion. And so rather than seeing your creation, or whatever it is that you’re trying to do well, as needing to go in a certain direction, you will allow for more directions, you will allow for it to turn out in more ways, in different ways, than you had originally thought. And as you will allow for more of that in a circular direction in like a 360 degrees, this could go any which way, and I’m pretty stoked about it actually – it’s that feeling of creative power, it’s that feeling of creativity, of who knows how it’ll turn out, that is delightful to us.

As that happens, the narrow point of focus on certain individuals opinions also broadens. Meaning, you see the possibility of reaching and connecting to more people with what you’re doing or working on or expressing. And the weight that certain people’s opinions used to carry is sort of rebalanced in that larger perspective.

So maybe in the beginning of creating something, you have a handful of friends that you’re very close to, and maybe a handful of periphery friends, and you’re very concerned about what these friends are going to think about you. The ones you know, at school in your class, and then the ones that you’re actually close to in school and in class, or in your neighborhood. And as you sort of expand outward in the potential of what this could become, as you release the narrow idea, and the narrow focus of shame and preventing shame, what do you find is that you make more friends, you find different people and different communities. And others show up that very naturally like what it is that you’re creating.

As this goes on, what you find is that not only are you finding the approval you always hoped to find in new directions, but that the fears you used to have about those particular friends not liking what you wrote or creating…it actually softens. Because you are now existing in a broader context with your creations. It’s like, “well, I’ve got 25 new friends who think this is really cool, I kind of don’t care if these other five, like it or not, in fact, they don’t really have to.”

That sensation is a really good reflection of a softening grip on shame, a softening energization of shame, because now you are seeing more of yourself. And that is manifesting in more directions and in more places.

So all of this makes sense, when we have examples that seem very cut and dry about shame. Like who isn’t worried about having something that you create, be rejected? That’s very conscious to us. We’re very aware of that. But there are other places of shame that are still…too hot to touch, I guess you could say, they’re still too resonant to activated to even go near.

These experiences of shame are still vastly unconscious to us. We’re starting to sense their presence. And it’s a little bit of a mystery to us.

I’ll give you an example. At the start of the episode, when I gave the story about forgetting my son’s lunch money, that is a really good example of a conscious experience of shame. Most people can understand why I felt that way. Even though my perspective was different than my husband’s perspective, or of any other perspective about the experience that I was going through – t’s not that my shame in that instance, was absolute – but you can kind of understand why I felt that way. Like, “okay, yeah, it sucks to promise that you’ll do something for someone and you disappoint them.” So maybe even at a general level, my shame is understandable. This is an example of shame that is conscious to us. We get it.

We get how that experience can generate that sensation or shape. In that case, the line – as we’re on the topics of line and linear time – the reason, the line, is often causal. Meaning you had this instance, based on the sum of everything that happened in that instance, we can understand why you would then feel shame. The Chorus mentioned this briefly in their introductory message, they said…of course, now, I can’t remember it! Ok wait…”You have these things that cause you to feel ashamed. But actually, it goes much deeper than that. Much more historical than that. If you’d like to take the linear timeline perspective, which we do.” So they said, “look, there are things in your history that created beliefs that are still active within you. And you don’t remember, you don’t remember those times, you don’t remember that. That’s why you feel that way. And you are unconscious to the fact that that is activating in the background.”

Now, the challenge here for us, in this podcast episode, is how do we point to things in a conscious way that are unconscious to us?

So let’s tell a few stories and see if we can sort of point out the unconscious aspects in a conscious way…

So last summer, as I was moving through season one of the podcast, these beliefs started to crop up, these experiences of guilt. As I was coming forward and coming out of the spiritual closet, and sort of embracing what had happened to me, and trying to figure out what I would make of it, I started to experience waves of shame and guilt. And these things laid me flat. I mean, under the weight of feeling ashamed of everything you are, it is really hard to move. It causes a sort of second guessing of self that is lightning fast and almost ever-present. So as I was feeling ashamed of everything that had happened and guilty about it to, somehow had taken on the burden of everything that had manifested over six or seven years, it was oppressive. I could barely sit down at the mic because I was already certain in some way, that somehow whatever I did next would bring about more pain.

I looked at like the series of years that we had been through, the illness, and the ups and downs, and The Chorus and all sorts of things, and somehow felt like I was to blame for all of it. It felt logical. It felt rational. And I had a pile of manifestations to point to that were very clear evidence. Somehow I had made mistakes. I hadn’t gone to the right doctors when I should have, I hadn’t gone to doctors when I should have, I tried to do it on my own when I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have said those things I should have asked for more help. I mean, you name it. I felt like the story of the last several years of my life was piled up in one place on my desk. And until I apologized for, until I reconciled what had happened, until I was forgiven…it felt like I couldn’t do anything else.

And if I tried, it felt like it was going to be something that I was doomed to be ashamed of as well.

Like, even as I started to record an episode, it was like, “this sucks. You’re awful. You shouldn’t be a podcaster. What are you even talking about? Where’s this going? Is everyone in your family okay with this?” The questions and the demands from shame, and guilt, and remors,e and regret, were almost nonstop.

And perhaps no surprise, as I started to go through this, and it was intense, The Chorus says to me, not exactly their words, but my words…”it’s time to write the second book!”

Now you can imagine how I felt from that shameful place. If you are in the midst of feeling nonstop, pervasive guilt for everything that you are and every decision that you’ve ever made, and then some loving beings show up and express to you quite clearly that it’s time to do more of that. You can imagine that your, your reaction to that news is like, “you guys have got to be kidding.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

There is a gap in season one of the podcast, if you were listening in real time, there are two episodes that come almost a month apart. So I had been doing it weekly, kind of doing it weekly, every couple of weeks maybe. And then there’s this stretch, where there’s these two episodes that barely get like squeaked out one month at a time. And it was during the time that I was going through exactly this, these beliefs coming to the forefront, while also my energetic expansion was continuing at a rapid rate. And I was able to perceive more things, more perspectives about what I was going through from The Chorus.

For the most part through these weeks, the experience of guilt and shame, were very conscious to me. I had a conscious understanding of the prior several years of what was hard and what I regretted doing. And also, as I started writing their perspectives on these beliefs into a book about time, I will note it felt very connected and like it was very much all coming together.

And I didn’t understand it per se. But it was enough connected consciously in my mind that it all made sense.

It was brutal. And I was certain I was doing it wrong. In fact, all the chapters that I wrote down from The Chorus, I put in like this draft document just to assure myself that it would never ever see the light of day. And I would write it…I would, you know, put it in this document, save it and then close it. I’d never look at it again.

Even so, as we continue moving through these topics, I am starting to see its function in a new way. And I am starting to understand a little bit that guilt and shame may be responsible for more than I’d given them credit for in our experience of limitation.

Now simultaneously, they were also talking to me about our capacity to remember and about memory.

And from their vantage point, memory is our ability to access other wavelengths in the universe, you could say. Quite simply, it is a way of reaching for those things from within the bounds of the game. Meaning, I can remember all sorts of things right now in the present moment. And it doesn’t disrupt the limiting aspects of this present moment. It was a first foray, it was a first way of experiencing those other wavelengths, while emerging from, expanding from, this point of limitation, which is by the definition of The Chorus, awakening.

Through our conversations, I became so much more aware of my own ability to remember. As it continued, there were times in my day where a memory would come back to me and I would almost be as taken, as absorbed, in my ability to remember something as the memory itself. And also, perhaps not surprisingly, memory started to come back to me that I had forgotten.

One such memory was about a time when I was in therapy shortly after I had collapsed. For those of you who are new here and may not have listened to Season One of the podcast, I had years of a mysterious and debilitating illness that my symptoms increasingly got worse until one day I finally collapsed, and then had to essentially be cared for by my parents for a matter of weeks, because I was unable to care for myself. I had nervous system issues and a variety of other things, thyroid issues, gut issues, you name it.

During that time, I was sent to many mental health experts, particularly because it was at this most opportune moment in my journey that I felt like I had to tell my family that I had started to hear voices, namely, The Chorus’s voices. And as you can imagine, disclosing that information from that point of health, it would be easy to understand why those who loved me thought that these things were causal. That I had opened up to a connection that was beyond perhaps what I should have done, or perhaps even more so that I was experiencing some sort of chemical imbalance, and that those voices are the result. Either way you look at it, something was wrong. Wrong with me, wrong with my connection, and wrong with the voices.

Now, as I continued to heal, I started to develop my own perspective on what had happened. And one of the first memories or clear understandings that started to come through to me was actually an aspect of the timeline of events and how they had unfolded. And I remembered, I know, it’s gonna sound strange to say, but I remembered all the times that I felt awful, and sick and struggling well before the chorus showed up.

As I continued in my exploration of what the hell had actually happened to me, I actually put my communications with The Chorus on hold. This was by request of the people who loved me but also felt like a pretty rational idea to me too, until we could understand what was happening. It seemed logical to me that we might limit the variables.

Now, I felt very conflicted about this. I understood the logic, but also The Chorus had been kind of my place of refuge. The, I don’t know, loving, meditative, calm place where I went, when I was trying to understand or just keep my head afloat with everything that was happening to me. So even so, I agreed…and I stopped communicating with The Chorus during this time, and started seeing a therapist on a regular basis.

You know, looking back, I feel like it was exactly what needed to happen. And that may be the benefit of hindsight. But also, there was a pause on bringing down anything new, on any new information coming through, from The Chorus. And it gave me time to assimilate or integrate what had already happened to me.

We started a phrase in our family or I guess with my therapist, too, of “unpacking the suitcase.” That basically I had been through a large number of experiences over those years, and without the space or the time to really look at them and process them, I had just continually shoved things into a suitcase and continued carrying it, until finally the weight of it…I couldn’t move any further until I finally looked at it.

As we unpacked the suitcase, we did a variety of I don’t know methods, I guess you could say, we did EMDR. and you know, opening up to parts and things like that. Nothing that was subconscious, thoug. There was no regressions or hypnosis, it was all from my conscious perspective, which I think was purposefully and importantly, done. There was nothing I was trying to access in my subconscious as The Chorus brought up today, I’d already had quite a lot of experiences of that. Instead, what was missing, or what was needed was for me to bring those things through to this place, to this conscious place.

And so we spent a lot of time just giving room for the stories to come out, for me to tell them in an open way, in a place where they would be welcomed.

And I really do think that is often the benefit of therapy. I know there are many different practitioners and many different methods out there. But I think, overwhelmingly what we’re coming to is the importance of a sacred space where you can put anything into it, anything at all, and know that it will be welcomed and received. There won’t be judgment, there won’t be evaluation. It’s just a place to let it be, whatever it is.

So into that place, I dumped out the suitcase. And it took time.

It took weeks, it took months. It took a couple of years. And I think I both marveled at the fact that I had collected so much, because I hadn’t looked at it. I shoved it in the suitcase and kept moving. And also I marveled at how much was in those stories, that all the things that I had been feeling over those years were in some ways explained by all the crazy shit that was in the suitcase. No wonder, no wonder I was having a hard time! In the suitcase were experiences of really hard days of illness and exhaustion, and feeling like I couldn’t get through it. And also extraordinary and inexplicable experiences with The Chorus and their different members. And also experiences here, some of which I know now, as I’m speaking into this microphone, I do not yet remember.

And in the midst of some of those sessions, those early days, and those early few months where so much was coming out of the suitcase…I had a memory.

It wasn’t a memory that had been shoved into the suitcase from those recent years of illness.

It was a memory from a very, very, very long time ago.

It was a memory of where this all started. There was a memory of how we got here, and why we’re here.

It was a memory that was at the root of everything. It was beyond form and shape. There was no corollary, there was no vision that I had in my mind. There was no…there was no sight. But it was felt. It was felt in that place, and in that way, and in that knowingness that I had come to learn was a real place through my experience with The Chorus.

It was a memory of a great destruction. A loss that was so vast, that was so expansive, it felt like…it felt like everything had been destroyed. That there was nothing left but dust throughout the whole universe. It was so visceral and it was so real that I was sobbing in the therapy session. It didn’t feel like a memory…like a concoction or like a story…it felt…it felt like I was reliving it in a conscious way.

And there was something more. Because it wasn’t just destruction. It was that it had been a mistake. It’s that sensation of “this went wrong.” And it went far, far more wrong than we could have ever even imagined, could have ever even guessed.

I was very emotional for days after I felt that memory, wracked with a sense of remorse that I couldn’t even explain. It was, it was true, it was real. It happened, I remembered it. And I felt it.

And it felt so ancient. From such a long, long time ago. It was hard to even fathom a place as far away as that.

And yet, at the same time, I felt like I still held that regret and that remorse in myself today.

The Chorus was very clear in the session, they told me that I had remembered the beginning. And that now, it would be easier to remember everything since then. And then that was it. For months.

And it was the strangest sensation because I felt like I had just been unpacking the suitcase, and then I put something right back into it. Another mystery. Another thing I couldn’t explain, but felt, so palpably. It was undeniable. And I didn’t know what to do with it…

Until about a year and a half or two years later, when I was suddenly writing these chapters with The Chorus about guilt and shame, remorse and regret. And as I stepped into those gaps, that hiatus, that somewhere where I was practically immobile, so oppressed by the weight of shame…I remembered that memory. That newcomer to the suitcase that had been hanging out in there, as I started emerging in those therapy sessions, and that honestly, I had not remembered was in there. Until I reached that point with The Chorus.

It came back in a rush. It took my breath away. And I said, “the destruction. Wait, I remember this now!” I remembered that I remembered this! (How layered is that?) And they said, “Yes.”

And then they were able to say something more than they had been able to say, or that I had been able to hear when it first came up. Because I felt so much remorse in that moment, over that memory. And now it was coming back in a softer way, where I was curious about why I had that memory and what had happened.

And that’s when they said, “that was the beginning, in some ways, of this experience of limitation. You all were very powerful, and were capable of many incredible things. And also, you were gradually moving into an experience of limitation in which you were starting to find that you were having experiences of being mistaken…that in your desire to assist others or to correct them, as the case may have been, you did very much have positive effects on other civilizations, but also you were starting to have the experience of being wrong. Your uncertainty grew, but so did your desire to continue to use your power for what you viewed as the betterment of others. Until such time, as a great effort was undertaken…an immense effort, something that had never been attempted, you could say, before. It was new, and it was unknown.”

But we were certain in our abilities, we were certain in that it would go the way we wanted. And we were certain that it was everything that others needed.

But we were wrong.

Somehow, it went very wrong. And our power of destruction was vast and complete. In fact, so destructive that from our great height, from our godlike powers, we thought we had destroyed nearly creation itself.

It was and remains, for me, the memory of an explosion that goes beyond words. I do not know how to describe a destruction that is so vast.

And not only that, but as The Chorus described to me what had happened…as they described our earnestness, or our desire to set other civilizations straight, to take on a big effort to do it our way, the right way…and to have it fail colossally…was at once something that seemed reasonable and aligned to the memory and the feelings that I had, but also seemed like a story I could very much relate to today.

That experience, from a vantage point, was the birth of shame in our belief systems. And we are resonant with it, we create under its limitations, even to this day.

There are parts of us that do not trust what we create. There are beliefs which tell us that we are doomed to fail, that humanity as a whole, always fucks it up. That there’s something in us, innately in us, that we should be ashamed of. We will step outside of our comfort zone, but maybe not too far. We will take risks, but maybe not too much. We feel like we’re tempting fate. And that idea of fate comes from a memory of something that we did a very, very, very long time ago.

And that shame, has loyally kept us here. Has loyally kept us from seeing those aspects, those powerful aspects of ourselves that we in those moments learned, we could not trust.

Said another way, we learned we could not completely trust…us.

Now, I’ll ask you this. Is that fundamentally true? Or was that the beginning of an experience of limitation? Are there not other wavelengths in the universe where we do not deny ourselves the perspective of our infinite selves? And from those other wavelengths, much like the wavelengths of The Chorus, is it not possible to see the love, the creation, and the expansion in every wavelength that can ever be experienced for all time?

Meaning from that perspective, where we destroyed so much, were we not already aligned to these frequencies from which we are now Awakening?

The choice ultimately, is yours. But I’d like to share where I stand.

I recognize and honor the shame that I have feel for that destruction and the regret and remorse too. I recognize and honor all the times in my remembered lifetime that I feel those same sensations. I recognize in those things an incredible expression of the power of creation, which gave us the opportunity to have that power, to believe that we were godlike, and our ability to always be right and to know…and which gave us a powerful experience of being mistaken. So mistaken as to believe you could have almost destroyed everything.

And I see the path of love that led us there, that gave us all these experiences, and is now giving us all the power back again. Not because we’ve suffered the punishment we needed, not because we’ve earned it again. Not because we’ve finally done our penance the way we thought we needed to.

But because Love always gives the power to create whatever experience you will most benefit by having next.

Ultimately, we are loved. And ultimately, we are of love.

And though we’ve had a hell of a ride at every moment in between, the pathway was one – consistently – of light and of love.

There is much of our history, in our story, that has been locked behind the door of shame. And that door is beginning to open. Sinners and saints, haters and non, we will move through that door not by casting apart from us the things we do not like, but by embracing them all.

We will go through that door when we are ready to go…together.

continue to see more of them…What do I spend all my time then doing?”

And that may be one of the best questions we’ve asked yet.

// View List of Season 2 Episodes