A breath. I needed a deep breath, of the sort that reaches your belly and pushes it outwards, deep inside, burrowing a place for itself between your organs, and leaves with a sigh, ahhhhh. A sigh of insight and quiet.
I took that deep breath the day I realized I was channeling. Not with beings or angels; not with cards or stones, and not in ceremonies or by sorcery – my channeling was much simpler: I realized I was communicating with myself. Communicating with my body and my breath.
Looking through the attic of the body, somewhere in there is a memory box of feelings… and the sense of the body's vitality that swept through me with that breath may be identical, in its way, to the first independent breath we take, a second after we leave our mother's womb.
"So what is the essence of your soul?" she asks me, in a clear and so very supportive voice. I close my eyes and look deep within. The colors transform, change and mix together. "Love", a soft voice which I had not yet recognized as my own, was coming out of my mouth. "My soul came here for love. To give and to receive love."
Yes, to receive love – and a lot of it. Global love, the love of a mother and father, the love of friends and nature, the love of a man … I came here to know great love, exposed and true, with no specific purpose or goal.
For a moment my breath stops, and then again becomes rapid and short. To receive so much love is itself a paralyzing thought. So how will I be able to allow so much love to flood my body, carry me on the wings of existence with full awareness; to invite a pure love, my heart's love, into my life?
A whirlpool of emotion is raging and I dive deeper inside. My head becomes heavy. A feeling of stiffness and immobility overcomes me. Someone must have put weights on me, on my legs… every move is so slowww …
Everything mixes together. Love, fear, apprehensions, support, fear and acceptance – it's all there, churning and creating inner chaos until my forehead is hot and a sense of pressure builds up in the area of the third eye.
Another deep breath and my hand rises to my head, slowly, and begins to disperse the trapped energy. Something happens in my body. Something in that breath was so full that new currents begin to appear, and another breath, and a softer relief is born; a sense of release begins to flow through my body.
It is not so simple for me to understand what acceptance is, and more than that, allowing myself to accept love into my life is no trivial matter. As a child, free of any need to understand the difference between giving and receiving, I was, simply, in the zone. In the here and now. In what there is, and what there is not. In the desire to give and the desire to accept. I could tell when I was happy or felt good, and when I didn’t. I was in tune with myself; my ability to listen to myself was so great that freedom just became a part of the moment I experienced. The years passed, and the girl became a woman. My soul is still present. It wants to love. It demands to give and receive. I got hurt. It happened even to me; on the long path I took in life, even I got hurt, and suffered pain, so many times.
Hurt by parents, by friends, by family… and every time, I wanted to try to go on loving. Like when I fell off my bike, hit my thigh and got scratches… how I cried. All of the pain, the tears, and the emotion came out. There is no trust. The bike did not keep my body balanced. The band aid we put on the wound on my leg was, for me, the first stone of a wall around my heart.
And every time that I fell again, and got hurt, the stronger, higher wall I built; many band aids, of all sizes and types. Armor.
And love, it just wants to be. With me and in me. And as much as it searches and tries, it can not find the crack, the opening that will allow it to enter my heart and slowly remove the walls. To release all of the defenses and allow me to have love. Truly, and fully.
My body feels. It knows when I am in love itself and when love is around me. The vitality of my spirit, the life energy in me – the more I hide it, the more chaos there will be, and the feeling of inner struggle, frustration and detachment from my body will increase and paralyze me, making me unable to move and separating me from the movement of life itself.
And here I am, facing her. My body is again as rigid as stone, like that of the girl who fell. And in one deep breath, with a slackness of the body – it happened. Another wall was removed. Another movement of love managed to penetrate straight into my heart and dance in my body. It removed the pain and brought me happiness.
Working according to Tantra directs the soul and the body, the giving and receiving for the development and opening of both the heart and the body. The use of techniques that include movement, breathing, meditation, yoga and more help bring about a proper energetic flow of the kundalini energy through the various energy channels of the body, thereby removing barriers and armor.
My beloved partner once wrote that we are all looking for love. The need to love and to be loved is at the very root of our soul, and in fact accompanies us from the womb. The truth is that both men and women, without exception, are for much of their lives busy searching for ways to realize love within themselves, or ways to compensate for its absence.
The search is over. Love is part and parcel of my daily life. It surrounds me everywhere, in every direction. All you have to do is reach your hand out to it… a little more … and here it comes… straight to the heart.
