Whew. I just looked back at what I wrote for “Why a Journey of the Heart“. It now looks like a bit of a naive pipe dream. I didn’t “accomplish” any of what I wrote. Here’s why…

I feel like I’ve been in survival mode. Heart-based survival mode. This has been physically, mentally, and emotionally–I’ve felt like I’ve been barely hanging on.

Fully functioning, barely hanging on. Do you know that feeling?

Something about enlightenment: In order for Light to come through, we must remove the gunk in the way, and clean out the filters, so to say.

I have one of those bagless,  tunnel vacuum cleaners. To empty it, all I have to do is detach the “bucket” and shake it out. A bunch of dust bunnies and dirt slide right out, nice. But then I look into it, and there’s a funnel-cup at the bottom, where the tornado action sucks down all the very fine dander and dust particles. So I have to bang the bucket on the ground to get that out. Then there’s another little sponge-filter that traps even more fine dust and dander, so I have to rinse that under water, let it dry and put it back in. Finally, there is a HEPA filter that gets the micro-dust, allergens, and invisible crap. By the time the air comes back out of the vacuum, it’s been purified through four stages.

You are like the vacuum, but with energy instead of air. You pull energy into/through yourself, and it goes back out. You have “filters”–your mental, emotional, physical, and etheric bodies that process the energy as it goes through you.

Cleaning your mental-emotional-physical-etheric bodies is like cleaning the filters of the vacuum.

At one level of consciousness, for example, you are able to recognize the obvious stuff and clear it out, like emptying the “bucket” of the vacuum. At another level, you can see finer material that needs to come out, but it takes a bit of “banging”, as with the dander in the funnel cup. The stuff that is trapped in the equivalent of the sponge-filter, requires actual looking, and dismantling, because you can’t just see it; it’s hidden in its own compartment. The stuff trapped in the HEPA filter stage, that’s even more hidden. In fact, it’s invisible, and therefore unidentifiable as “something”.

This filtration in your body and energy is similar to a vacuum also, in that it depends on how clean the filters are to begin with, and how clean or dirty the environment is that you are vacuuming.

If your energy filters are dirty, and you enter a mentally-emotionally toxic environment, you may not feel a big change in your mental-emotional state. But if your filters are clean, and you enter a toxic environment, you will really feel it, because all of the sudden, that energy is flowing through you, and your filters become overloaded. There is a lot more to be said on this topic, but for now, I think you get the picture.

How this applies to my recent Journey of the Heart:

I do spiritual purification practices every day, these include, but are not limited to meditation, prayer, bathing, breathing, these Journeys. There are other practices that I do more intermittently, like fire, shaving my head, fasting. The bottom line is that I have been working for years to clean my filters; I consciously transmute as much energy as I can whenever I can–I want to keep things flowing, not get blocked, and allow the energy out in the highest, purest form it can be.

So, why was I a mess during Journey of the heart? Why was I in survival mode and barely hanging on? Why did I accomplish nothing I had set out to do?

The answer is, I believe, because I was cleaning my HEPA filter. There was energy buried deeply, out of sight. Finally, the rest of my filters were clean enough, and I have been doing enough of the Journey work to push that deep, invisible energy to the surface; there was space, a clear path, for that energy to come through and out.

Here’s why I think this: The artwork for this Journey was SO important, and so important to my “hanging on”. I could feel my subconscious working something out. There were no words, just feelings, which could only come out through the art.

Does this mean I am “better now”?

Well, I don’t feel like I am hanging by a thread anymore. I’ve made some new decisions to take care of myself, and to process those deep emotions*. I do feel clearer, less burdened, less “clogged”, but there is still a lot of energy I am feeling that needs to be filtered.

This is how we begin Journey of Purpose! Let’s do this. Onward!

Journey of Purpose begins February 22.

*I have been using a combination of this self awareness questionnaire, and a “defusion” process that unblocks energetic entanglements from the brain/body.