Some inner contractions just take time to reveal and to heal. With the inquiries I know this means welcoming sensations, images and thoughts without judgment or any need for resistance, even though this too can be held with care.  This spiraling release is happening for me, a layer at a time, and it has been quite a ride thus far.  
     Many, many years ago I went to see a photographer at Carnegie Hall to take what are called head shots for my portfolio at the time. He came highly recommended and the price was right. I arrived at the scheduled time and at some point, during our initial conversation as he was showing me the photos of famous actors and musicians that he had taken, he gave me a glass of ginger ale.  It was not a closed can, and frankly, I thought nothing of it. Shortly after drinking however, I began to feel fuzzy; different. In the end, I lost about seven hours that day, the contents of which seemed frozen and untouchable in the furthest tundra of my unconscious body and mind.
     Over the years I tried many modalities to help my body unwind the little I consciously knew of what happened. Nothing worked and nearly 40 years later, things have finally begun to unpack and clear. I want to share a few things that led up to this unwinding. First, that I had been practicing inquiring and looking almost every day for about four months. And that I had attended a five-day meditation retreat during that time in which I experienced an expansion of pure consciousness, an awakening experience that seemed to make every cell in my body sing with acknowledgement. In addition, the day after the retreat I was in my car listening to NPR when an interview came on with a woman who wrote a show about her experience with a date rape drug that HBO picked up.  I believe all these events were in perfect timing for what came next: As I was listening my body began to shake, my abs became hard as rock, my hands were clutching the wheel for a sense of stability. I had to pull over and surrender to the movement that the intelligence in my body knew to do. 
     Thankfully, I resourced all the skills I had learned – releasing narratives and expanding Awareness throughout my inner and outer body with gentle care. This shaking pattern repeated over the course of several days and was the focus exploration in my practice inquiries.  After my body had apparently completed its shaking off of fear and shame, I reached another layer that I sense is quite important in all trauma work. And this is the direct encounter with the experience of horror. What I knew until that moment was to hold the feeling of horror at bay, to be horrified at it, put it outside of my mental experience and react to it. Deny it, be angry at it or anyone who acted horribly. I could see the projection quite clearly:  It was easy to be horrified at others so that I did not have to feel the horror within me.
    Big breath.  Here we go.  This is the ‘what’s next.’ In yet another inquiry, I discovered that pure, open consciousness can hold the depths of terror and horror without falling apart.  I discovered a unity between perpetrator and perpetrated, for in the moment of that act, he entered me not just physically, but energetically. I felt my horror and his. His shame was my shame and yet, finally, as the horror became infused with consciousness, I could honestly feel compassion for this man. The ‘what’ next is not the speaking of what happened, for surely that I have done, but encountering the felt sense of horror that has no solution. Pure horror infused with consciousness is yet another experience no longer denied by layers and layers of defense, rejection, projection, hidden agendas, cultural resentment and the like.
  I wrote the photographer a letter as there were things that I did want to say, not to my therapist, mentor, husband or practice partners, but to him. We are, as they say in quantum physics, observer participants, and this was also my way of participating.  I never heard back from him, and did not expect to, but I can now hold the predator and the prey, the victim and the abuser, the horror and the grace of healing in me and in us.

     When I was about seven years old, I quite vividly remember the first time that I heard a voice in my head using the word “I.” In that moment I was filled with confusion and a sense of horror. I felt as if somehow the I that I knew myself to be had been taken hostage by this assumed other I!  I ran into the house to tell my Mom that there was someone in my head claiming to be me! Well, the disbelief did not last long and quite unconsciously there was a surrender and an allegiance with this voice. It was only a few years after this experience that I realized that this thinking I could only see things in black and white, right and wrong, this and that, to make sense. This way of thinking felt so sharp and absolute in its beliefs and perceptions that it physically hurt, and it most certainly effected my relationship with self and others.  Fast forward a couple of decades and there was an even different realization that finally made more sense and afforded a deeper relaxation and ease in the world views of my mind. And, and or both and thinking, the radical inclusivity of both sides of the coin. But the gift of this revelation went beyond just the holding of opposites. It was the third possibility that it provided – a proverbial gray area wherein lay more possibilities than either of its original dualistic points of view.
     It is indeed this third possibility that is so amazing and in Yoga there are the three Gunas that give shape to this idea. It is used to describe everything from the nature of digestion to yoga poses: Rajas is fiery, energetic as well as anxious, restless, angry, stressed and even chaotic. Tamas is dull, dark inactive or heavy, while Sattva is balanced, harmonious and of natural intelligence.  In teaching asana, or yoga poses, we use gravity to create a tamasic effect, a grounding downward toward the Earth. This, in turn, births an upward movement called yielding or anti-gravity – rajas. The balance of these two creates expanded, multi-dimensional space in the body which allows for sattivic qualities such as flow, breath, stability and ease.
     When tracking or looking in the Kiloby Inquiries a similar experience occurs in the bodymind that undeniably effects the connection with and of Awareness and space. In the human psychology there are natural opposites to perceptions inherited through intergenerational attitudes, ritual, responses, and trauma.  For example, the natural opposite to despair is hope, yet the quality of import is need. When holding guilt and one of its opposites, accusation we discover our natural innocence and when inquiring into boredom or a state of being checked out and its counterpart addiction, passion rises naturally. When looking at the quality of loneliness and its opposite, intimacy it is connection that bubbles up.  So, connection has no opposite as it is the natural quality that gets bound up and frozen in time when the tendrils of loneliness first takes our breath away. 
     So far, as a Consciousness Counselor and new practitioner of the Kiloby Inquiries I see this happening both in my own looking and with those that I practice as well:  That natural presence is infused with the fragrance of qualities that too are natural to the human experience when unaffected by constriction. If we look at and feel the effects of betrayal and loyalty both, a natural sense of trust emerges.  It is not a trust born of proof or conditions, but a felt sense of trust that permeates life itself; a knowing that permeates the experience of Being. So, this sharing is not only one of gratitude for our work, but also of awe and wonder at the possibilities of those marvelous qualities that awaken from beneath the surface mind and knots of history we are all so keen to release.