Journey to the Center of the Body - Week Nine
By Joey De La Cruz
T-82 Monday, July 20
Well...that was quite the blackout. What, did I really expect myself to follow through with a journal of the process every fucking day? In 10 days I will be halfway through this adventure. The turning point.
8:00 PM
BREAKING: IM FALLIN’ IN LOVE. Its undeniable, my heart hurts when there is physical separation between us but when united...all is healed. Wow. Wow. Wow. Expectations, understanding, wisdom, respect, patience, she showed up at my door. Hearts breaking together. Unrelenting.
Due to self-love journey-initiated days ago? Am I now falling in love due to the work and awareness I’ve gained during my journey to the center of the body?
UNABLE TO COMPREHEND.
T-81 Tuesday, July 21
8:51 AM
I was out longboarding down the boardwalk, pumped a few times with my right foot and I pulled muscles in the whole right side of my back. I woke up, didn’t stretch and then hit the road thinking everything was just super chill and cool. Well, it has been freaking DAYS since I’ve had a proper workout, or even a stretch and I think I’m chill, there’s that word again, but having this torn muscle, as I felt it tear is anything but chill. I’ve got to find a way to integrate this new love life into my life so that I find the balance between all the beauty. It takes extreme dedication and commitment to oneself, and it is MY responsibility to figure out how to live my PERSONAL life first and then to share and integrate that life with another beautiful person. Building a life requires showing up every day, it’s like a garden, needing constant watering. I must focus on my own soil so that any new flower that begins to grow there, love, for instance, has a welcoming fertile home in which the roots can grow. If there is no tending to our own garden it will be difficult for anything to grow there. So, today, and last night I learned how important it is not to get lost in another’s garden and to forget everything that made that other person love you in the first place. It was ME, all the work I was doing for MYSELF that attracted this beautiful partner and made her fall in love me. And I with her.
I can feel inert momentum keeping me off the mat again, it has snuck up on me. It will not take too much to overcome it again this time, but I definitely feel that I am starting back up again from a NEW beginning. My whole life has shifted, the roots of my understanding of who I am has grown deeper into new soil and I am here to tend to any weeds, give myself a fresh watering and re-center! Goals for the day, meditate, clean, stretch and fall back into my center.
10:26 AM
Finished my first yoga morning routine in weeks. The muscles/body felt tight and the pulled back muscle does not feel good, affecting my whole body. One “broken” piece is affecting many others. It’s all connected. I know it will take time to get back to my peak physical condition that I was in on or around June 16. Tradeoffs are real. Balance. It is so easy to get enthralled and caught up in the energies of another person. Who do we allow to accompany us on the journey to the center of our body? Is that company fulfilling, expanding, or confining? TRUST. I trust exactly where I am in this moment. So grateful. Going to continue to surrender to the moment, to trust, to flow and just go where I need to go. Every breath is an exercise in trust and surrender. A surrender and acceptance to the present moment. Love. Self-love. Human love.
1:30 PM
Just finished blessing a rock with sage. Labradorite, multi-dimensional type stuff. Held it in my hands as they are now the vortex of this unseen but very felt energy of astral auric arousal. I feel a tingling in my third eye space, I am connecting with my body and with the stone. The intelligence in each of us being decoded, understood and shared. I only know what I’m allowed to know. Implications broad and breathtaking. More study is necessary to better understand and harness this phenomena.
T-79 Thursday, July 23
I was brought to my knees by beauty tonight. A stunning woman dressing up, by dressing down showing off some amazing lingerie. I was literally brought to my knees. Sexuality is such an important part of who we are. Our minds think about sex and pleasure all the time. How we express our inner world shows us very much in the outer world. Respect myself, a healthy dose of self-love. I am convinced that it was only after I developed a very profound and deep wellspring of self-love, inside myself Internally, in my mind, body and soul FOR my mind, body and soul did that a physical manifestation of what I cultivated in the inner me, show up in the ‘outside’ physical world. This journey has provided me wisdom showing me that when I develop a healthy sense of self-worth, self-love, self-admiration and communion with myself (all aspects), only then was I able to experience that reflection, that mirror in the outside world. What I am now experiencing is a direct reflection of my own inner state. As above. So below. As within, so without. My internal state has determined/manifested itself in the physical/world. What does that mean for every other aspect of my inner self, emotional, mental & spiritual? I must be seeing a mirror of my inner world without. The evidence is starting to pile up.
T-78 Friday, July 24
Ananda Class**: See notes of energization exercises. How often do we use our mind to access the Prana of the Universe? A totally new series/type of workout that affect my body in a very profound manner. My awareness of this routine was very much unknown, as well as the benefits/effects and possibilities: developing.
BREAKING: LOVE => confidence in oneself. Hearing someone say they love everything about you gave me a confirmation that I AM perfect just the way I am. Have confidence in who I am and what I‘m doing when I step into the world.
T-77 Saturday, July 25
I was sleeping, half awake and half asleep, ‘out of it,’ and then I woke up and saw my partner standing intently at the edge of the bed. She sent out a strong intention signal telepathically that she was now going to climb into bed. I thought I saw, as I opened my eyes, a wave of grey (non-colored, translucent, affecting the coloration of the space) energy radiate from her head off and away from that point. This was her love and desire to come to bed to me that I SAW with my ‘eyes’?
UPDATE: I remember this moment very vividly and has me coming back to the energy of brain waves and the power of intention. I believe that in my current state, half conscious and half un-conscious, I was able to “see through the gap”, so to speak, of the visible and non-visible realms. I believe that what I saw radiate away from her was a powerful thought form wave that blasted out from her mind off to the whole of the cosmos! I was able to see a thought with my vision for that moment, and I believe that is happening all the time, and we create, manifest and attract that which our minds are most often emitting.
T-76 Sunday, July 26
RETRO ENTRY FROM JOURNAL: An adventure within an adventure within an adventure. This weekend I escaped to the mountains with wisdom. Its amazing how the surroundings we find ourselves in can affect of internal body. Form the city of LA to the mountain forests of Big Bear. Listening to the wind and the trees speak to each other is a much different conversation than the fucking traffic and buzz of the Wi-Fi towers. What are the vibes? How do my surroundings make me feel? The mountain air and trees are blessings. The phone is off. My mind is no longer glued to my text messages, leaving room and space for the wind to flow through my mind. Camping. A new environment. My mind is slow, my heartbeat relaxed. Then more magic happened. Magic Mushrooms.
This opened a whole new arena to the idea of inner journey. The psychoactive ingredient in mushrooms totally altered the inner and outer experience of my reality, and the magic was on full display. Setting: Edge of a mountain meadow, clear open sky, no clouds, trees surrounding us with a little lake off in the distance. The moon half-full floating 30 degrees over the horizon. Tall grasses blowing in the soft breeze. Wildflowers, insects buzzing. We ate our mushrooms with intention to see the world from a new perspective. And boy did we see a beauty that is not present to us in a normal state. It starts slow, hitting the body like a warm hug, slowly creeping in on my mind, I yawn. Lots of yawning which is a sign they are beginning to take effect. Why? The body and mind feel different. I see things differently. The sky gets dimmer, mind travels, opens, concepts, ideas, a whole new world is awakened. We see ourselves and the world around us differently. CONNECTED to everything. Not separate. The stars were dancing. They were connected like links in a circuit board. The moon was talking and dancing with us. A shooting star went right into the moon. The colors of the night. Pink, purple, the darkness of the sky slowly opening up above us. Laughter. Tears, the overwhelming beauty of creation. There were subtle shapes in the sky, fractals, geometry, blanketing the whole sky. Creating it, supporting it. Chemical reactions in the brain, real effect and affects on the inner mental/emotional world. Research needs to be done. Loved it. Amazing experience that will stay with me for lifetimes.
T-74 Tuesday, July 28
The journey continues. The adventure grows stranger. I’ve been lost in the woods, unable to continue my daily entries. But today I have time to recount the last week. On Saturday the 18th of July my parents arrived in town and I showed them my new life here in LA. It’s amazing how much our family can influence the inner state of our being. Mind, emotional and physical. Luckily, I have a great relationship with my family, but it is still amazing how old patterns, ways of being and habitual mental emotional patterns show up around family. It’s easy to get tense, or frustrated. Our family and our parents, and our relationship with them determines an immense amount of how my inner energy is used and directed. In a new life as a new person, it’s easy to snap back to the old ways of being. We ended up eating and drinking and smoking quite a bit. Which, from the understanding of my current journey, does not quite support the larger goals and directions of my adventure. But throughout every adventure there comes times of transition, pauses, party. So that is what we did. They were in town from the 18th until the 22nd. During which time my time was devoted to them. Less ‘working’ out. The center of the journey, the day-to-day goals that were a priority when I was solo have taken a back seat. Expectations have shifted, largely to these external situations. Keeping them in balance is key to proper survival, to evolving survival into thrival. It was great though to be infused with that energy from home. Think about it. It was needed.
BREAKING:
In a strange land for a long time, alone, especially during a quarantine and global pandemic it’s scary, and hard and a struggle to be alone. When family came it really was a boot to my spirits. The emotional energy filled anew, waves of passion, comfort and awareness, security, confidence. It’s an amazing time. So, there are multiple levels on which the family dynamic plays out. If those dynamics and relationships are for a lack of better word, or a varying intensity of “fucked”, so too will our inner state be ‘fucked’ to a certain degree, and not the pleasurable kind. The energies present in our relationships determine our mental/emotional state which then determines the activity, positive or negative of our bodies on a cellular level. Our spiritual light/love essence is dependent on how we ALLOW our relationships to affect us. Ultimately, we control our own mental emotional state. Respond accordingly. Don’t React.
**Ananada Class: Ananda offers in-depth instruction in several different meditation techniques taught by Paramhansa Yogananda. You can take these meditation programs in person at a center, online, or order the books and receive quizzes and support by email. We also offer Kriya Yoga, the main technique recommended by Paramhansa Yogananda for spiritual growth, after a period of study and preparatory classes. (SOURCE: https://www.ananda.org/meditation/meditation-courses/)