Chapter 72 Advanced Focusing and The Places that Scare You - from my book Changes

Chapter 72

Advanced Focusing and The Places That Scare You

In this chapter I want to talk about focusing in more depth, and in ways I would not have imagined if I had not been taught by Tom Brown Jr.

I also found a little bit about this technique in the book The Places that Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness by Pema Chodron, a  Buddhist nun.

I picked up the book The Places that Scare You at a little book shop at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon.  The cover at the time was that of a craggy old leafless tree in a dark looking background; something you might imagine next to a haunted house.  I was intrigued by the book because it was about overcoming fear, which I had a lot of.

In Chodron’s book she describes an event where she was very angry at someone and she could feel the energy of her anger intensely.  She wondered what she would feel if she took the story away from her anger; what would the energy feel like?  She experimented.  She took the story that was making her feel angry away from her and set it aside to see what the energy felt like without the story and she found it was just energy without the emotion.  Knowing that the story is what created that most unpleasant feeling of anger allowed her to look at energy and anger in a new way.  She realized that the intense feeling could be let go of by taking the story away and letting the clean energy dissipate.

I’m paraphrasing, of course, but this is the part of the book I was most excited about because of the way Tom Brown Jr expanded on the focusing exercise.

Tom taught us that we can not only take the story away from the intense negative emotion, but we can then imbue the pure energy with a positive emotion; making it stronger, thus empowering the positive emotion.

We practiced using energy with a positive story attached to it for healing, by having our exercise partner think of something slightly depressing, nothing big, and while we sat next to them, we would think of something that gives us extreme joy.  Then as the joyful partner is surrounded by the energy of joy, they would allow their energy to engulf their partner sitting next to them, who had been thinking of something negative.  The negative thinking partner would not be able to stay in that negative feeling.  Usually they would start giggling.

Of course, the dark side can use this in the opposite way against us.  Tom warned us over and over about never using this for self gain or in a bad way or the dark side would get it’s hooks into us.  Everything Tom taught us was to help us heal the earth and to heal others in a way that is not self serving.  Our motives have to be pure to live in the light - and the light is a teacher.

One night I had a teaching dream.  I was instructed about four different types of energy “personalities”.  One was anger, one fear, one love, and I don’t remember the other one.  The only one I remember fully was the lesson about fear.

Here’s the story: I was in a hospital with my teacher Dumbledore (yes, I know, it’s funny, but the spirit world uses what it thinks will get through to us) and we were observing a group of people who were trying to make a decision about whether or not to do an operation on a baby that was very sick.  The baby needed the operation but the parents were so afraid of possible risks they were unable to approve the operation.  The parents were standing in a hallway, discussing what to do.  The energy around the group was thick with the parent’s fear.

Dumbledore showed me how to take the story away from the group.  We walked a short distance away holding onto the story.  The energy remaining with the doctors and the parents was pure, without the story.

The parents were then able to make a decision and the baby was given the needed surgery.

I wish I remembered the other three parts of the dream but that one part helped me later in this next story I lived.

I was home in Florida and my husband had gotten home from work.  He was in a bad mood and seemed very angry.  He started yelling at me for no good reason.  Of course I was confused because I didn’t think he should be yelling at me for no reason, but then I recognized that the signature of the energy surrounding him was not anger, but fear!

I was surprised.  However, knowing that his energy carried the emotion of fear allowed me to act differently than if I thought he was angry.  Instead of getting upset and shutting down, I reassured him that everything would be all right.  Even though I never knew what was making him feel afraid, my words of comfort calmed him down immediately.

What a lesson.