December 2, 2021

 I see now why I’ve been pushed to focus on developing my belly center. On the surface, it’s clear that occupying the belly center is important for embodiment. By embodiment, I mean fully occupying the physical body, feeling it as completely as possible.

The belly center is also important for the soul body. I’m reminded of the maxim, ‘As above, so below,’ in this: Meaning that there are parallels between the physical and numinous. It’s just as important to fully occupy the soul body, the physical body’s correlate in the numinous. The reasons for this weren’t immediately apparent but after today’s meditation, I’m seeing why more clearly.

The ability to fully occupy/sense the soul body allows one to fully occupy another’s soul body and experience their experience. This is important for helping other souls to heal and process their experiences, especially traumatic ones. 

This morning, I started meditating and saw in my mind’s eye saturated blue and green. It took me a while of sitting with the experience for the place to resolve itself. I’ll skip right to the chase: When the scene finally crystallized in my mind’s eyes, I was standing in a cenote somewhere in what is now Central America. This, of course, wasn’t a place in the physical world but its counterpart in the numinous. As such, it was a holy place full of beauty and mystery. The cavern walls were lined with ferns, lianas and epiphytes. The sunlight sparkled down from above upon the crystal clear water. Birds darted overhead and fishes swam at my feet. It was a place where time collapses on itself, both day and night, alive and dead. The spirits of the animals who had died in the cenote were present, some of them had been sacrificed, others had simply fallen in and couldn’t get back out. Their bones were entombed in the lime at the bottom of the cenote.

The spirit of the cenote resolved herself. I’m not sure if she was a local spirit or an ancient Mayan goddess. She was quite beautiful, wearing a ceremonial headdress and many sparkling green and blue gems and stones. She greeted me and I bowed, overwhelmed by the honor of meeting her. She smiled, surrounded by her menagerie of animals.

In the back of my mind, I suspected that I had been called here most likely to help someone who had died but it wasn’t immediately apparent who that might be. And I need to stress that I come into these ‘places’ naive and clueless. I frequently misinterpret what I’m there for, mistake what I see, mistrust my impressions. This was no exception.

I stood there feeling the sensuous interplay between life and death. The cenotes are a gateway to the underworld, a place where the living and the dead mingle. They are beautiful, holy and a little terrifying as well. I simply allowed myself to feel the dance between the living and the dead, realizing that the entities there were both at the same time. Like I said, time collapses in numinous and everything is present at once. It’s quite beguiling.

Slowly, I became aware of a young person, probably the youngest soul I’ve encountered in these journeys. At first, I wasn’t sure if she was a girl or a boy; she was kind of at that age--eleven or twelve--when girls and boys kind of look the same. She was dark-skinned and mostly naked. Her hair was wet and she was sort of just waking up. I wonder if the spirit of the place had lulled her to sleep until my arrival and now she was just coming to and beginning to remember bits and pieces of her life.

I stayed with her, not rushing her, just allowing her to wake up and reveal more of her memories to me. I wasn’t sure (and still am not) if she had been thrown down into the cenote as part of a ritual or if she had jumped inside or if she was pushed. I could tell that she had died early and traumatically, though. She was confused.

I only have access to the soul’s memories/impressions at these times and often they are just as confused as I am. It’s like piecing together a mystery and I’m never certain if I am correctly putting together the fragments.

This bears explaining: My mind is often a hindrance at these times because I frequently discount the impressions as my imagination, sometimes pushing them away several times before I realize that they’re legit.

This was one of those times when I wanted this girl’s story to be hopeful and loving and it just wasn’t. The longer I sat with her, the more I sensed my body as her body. I slowly understood that my ‘training’ in occupying the belly center was benefiting her as well. The more fully I could occupy my body, the more fully she could occupy her own. This proved to be key in her process of remembering what had happened to her and coming to terms with it.

My body became hers. I was small, pre-adolescent, scrawny and brown-skinned. I was mostly naked, no pubic hair yet around my vagina. (It’s really weird typing that - makes me feel like a pervert, but it’s what I ‘saw’.) It was difficult to get her to settle into her body because of the trauma she’d endured but slowly she did.

I became briefly hopeful when a young man, perhaps in his late teens or early twenties, appeared before me. I really wanted to believe that he was my rescuer but the girl became numb when he appeared in my memory. She knew him, I could tell, although I’m not sure who he was. Perhaps an older brother or an uncle? I don’t know. In any case, his presence caused her alarm.

He was mostly naked, too. His body was dark-skinned like her and he had barely any body hair. I could tell from the girl’s impressions that she had been at first glad to see him but this relief quickly turned to alarm and then revulsion when he began to molest her. She fought back but he was too strong. I’m pretty sure that he murdered her after he raped her but I’m not sure how. It was all too much of a blur.

Needless to say, I found this experience profoundly upsetting and traumatic and disturbing. It unfolded in my experience like a movie, one that I had no control over, much like her (although I’m not for a moment presenting my experience as equal to hers.) I did feel everything as if it were happening to me. All of the confusion, horror, alarm, betrayal, disgust, fear, terror and despair as well as so many other emotions and sensations. I have never been raped so this may be as close to the experience as I get. It is completely and utterly devastating.

Her murder only made it worse. Whether she died quickly or slowly, I don’t know. I do know that she didn’t live long after the rape and assault. Her body sank to the bottom of the cenote and after a time only her delicate, fragile bones were left. She remained in the cenote, though, perhaps lulled to sleep by the gentle actions of the spirit of the place. The spirit/goddess did her best to alleviate the girl’s trauma but she couldn’t touch it in the way another human could.

So, is that why I was called here? To feel the girl’s experience, to help her to embody it and be present in her ‘body’ as fully as possible so that she might eventually let it go and move on? It could be, although I feel a little unworthy of accepting such a mantle. I’m not an adolescent girl, much less a Mayan girl. I don’t have experience with Mayan spirituality or culture. I can, however, feel and maybe that’s enough?

Unlike other meditations, this experience was not resolved when the timer went off. My body felt numb in all of the places she had been assaulted. I was dissociated, much like her. She is still with me, haunting me. I am at a loss as to how to help her, though. How do I help her? How? You tell me. I don’t know.

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