THE TRANSFORMATION
by
Cari Alter 415-488-4708
It seemed like such an abrupt beginning. One day, I was innocently
sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper, and out of nowhere, a strong
wave of energy swept through my head and down my body . . . just like that . .
. no introduction, nothing. Bewildered, I called out to my husband, “I . . . I
think maybe I’m supposed to go meditate,” which I did, anxiously groping my way
along the wall for support, as the wave kept coming and coming.
From then on, the
waves became a regular occurrence. It was so scary. What was this? Why was this happening to me?
Once I got over
the fear, the waves began to feel like visits from an old friend. It seemed
like every time I had a quiet moment they were there -- every time I sat down,
every time I drove anywhere, every time I closed my eyes, and every time I
meditated.
As a result, my
meditation not only became more successful, it also got to be really fun. I
only realized these waves of energy were actually Spirit itself, when they one
day transmuted into pure ecstasy.
The first and most intense time this happened, I was not
meditating at all. I was simply getting dressed in the morning. The sheer
delight of the feeling bowled me over, and I fell onto the bed, still holding
one sock. For over an hour, I laid where I’d fallen, overwhelmed by wave after
wave of ecstasy washing through my body with a sweetness so exquisite it
bordered on pain.
I didn’t dare
move, and I barely breathed. I thought, “I’m going to die. If it gets one
smidgen more intense, I’ll be dead.” It felt like my human body couldn’t hold
this much ecstasy and live. I sensed I was experiencing only a fraction of what
it would be like to truly merge with Spirit, and, even so, I felt at risk of
burning up or vaporizing from the intensity. I was in suspended animation,
feeling no fear. A bizarre thought ran through my head of Jane Fonda in that
old movie, “Barbarella”, in the scene where they try to kill her in the
“Pleasure Machine”. Eventually, the whole thing faded away. I got up and went
to work, but I was definitely shaken.
By now my
meditations had gone from twenty minutes to one hour, then to an hour and a
half, and sometimes even two hours. Every half hour brought a dramatic increase
in depth. And then I began to have visions. The thought of a person would enter
my mind, and before I could let it go, it would become a scenario complete with
tools for that person to work with for whatever they needed to release.
One of my
favorite visions was of an acquaintance, a woman I’ll call Mary, who was overweight.
When I saw Mary in the vision, I was amazed. Mary was not an overweight person.
She was a thin person with an overweight body. Her body actually protruded
through her energy field, which was so very thin and delicate in a way I’d
never seen before -- so fragile. I saw a cylindrical space taking up her entire
inner body. It was filled with tears; it was like it was raining inside Mary,
but it was the little girl, Mary, who was crying. I cried with her. I saw that
she was so brave, that she really needed to be brave every moment of every
day.
Mary was the bravest person I’d ever seen. And she did it all from
this sweet, delicate little energy, with no strong energy to draw on. She was
just so tired of having to be so brave all the time. I cried even harder and my
heart swelled with love for her.
I asked for a
tool to help Mary, but nothing came. Finally, I saw a golden hammer, shaped
like a large mallet. I looked and looked, but no message came about what to do
with the hammer. I watched it float around. I wondered if someone had hit Mary
with a hammer as a child. No, it didn’t seem to be that. I watched some more,
and then I saw it was Zeus’ hammer, the one he used to strike lightening. Mary,
the little girl, shrank back. Then I heard yelling -- someone was yelling at
Mary.
Every time the
lightening struck, someone was yelling at her. It was as if the yelling had no
end, and the tears had no end. Then I saw the hammer lay at Mary’s feet. I saw
Mary soaking in the warmth and light from the radiant sun and filling her body
with it. The sun’s radiant energy flowed down and melted the golden hammer. As
the hammer melted, it drew the tears out of her body. The melted hammer soaked
deeply into the ground. The tears came down and watered the soil at her feet
and fresh new grass sprang from the earth.
The vision itself
lay the energetic groundwork for Mary to heal her core grief. I was to tell
Mary to practice this visualization in meditation, which I did. When I saw her
a month later, she told me she had gone away to a rented cabin in the woods
where she actually did this meditation. She looked wonderful. She had lost some
weight and her energy just glowed around her.
As I began to get comfortable with my new relationship with this
universal energy, something new happened. Once again, it was morning and I was
starting to get dressed for work, when I became aware my body was vibrating. My
hands were shaking. I looked at my hands, thinking, “They don’t look like
they’re shaking.”
The vibration rapidly
took over my whole body until my knees wouldn’t hold me up and I crawled back
into bed. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I just stayed there for
hours, shaking internally harder and harder, my body sobbing and sobbing
uncontrollably, my mind in a desperate fog. I thought this was it – I’d finally
cracked up. I was sure they were going to lock me up in a mental hospital this
time.
I needed help
getting to the bathroom because I couldn’t walk. Luckily, my son was home to
help me. The intensity of the experience reminded me of the experience of
giving birth to my children. I felt like I was in the “transition” stage of
labor. As I panted, it dawned on me that I was somehow giving birth to a new
me.
This image
softened, but didn’t eliminate, my fear. The vibrating made me feel like my
frequency was being raised. Then, through this surreal haze, I got the idea
that I needed to ground myself somehow. I asked my son to make me some miso
soup. This helped and the vibrating slowly faded away. Four hours had passed. I
never did get to work that day. I was completely exhausted, but felt like I’d
accomplished something enormous.
Many times after
that, my body would start vibrating for no apparent reason, not as intensely as
that first time, but occasionally lasting overnight. Over time, the fear
subsided and I was able to identify three different feelings. Sometimes, as
with those first vibrations, it felt like my frequency was being raised. Other
times, it felt subtly different, as if my cellular activity were speeding up.
Another variety was a visible shaking brought on by very strong energy being
run through my body, either by powerful healers working on me, by working on
myself, or, later, by energies that came through as I worked on clients.
My body was
simply not able to hold that much energy and was shaking it off. As I learned
to breathe to keep that energy moving, I was able to hold more and more with
only minimal shaking at much higher levels.
This period
lasted a whole unnerving year. For the better part of that time, I was quite
terrified. Simultaneously, I felt flattered to have been “selected,” and kept a
close eye on my ego. Very often, I also thought I was really nuts and
hallucinating the whole thing. I
compulsively ran from healers, to Buddhists, to spiritual people I knew,
frantically trying to find someone with similar experiences, someone who could
tell me what was happening, that I wasn’t crazy, and what I was supposed to do.
Eventually, I
found a training called Golden Light Healing, taught by Brenda Padilla and
Jeanette Madsen in Castro Valley, California, and that helped me calm down.
After I took the training, I had a format in which to use these energies. I
became a Golden Light practitioner, and at Brenda’s urging, enrolled in a
three-year program for hands-on healers at Michael Mamas’ School for
Enlightenment and Healing. It was there, in Shelby Hammitt’s Energetic Anatomy
and Physiology Intensive, that the next stage of my development happened.
Golden Light works for
health, career, relationship, or emotional issues, etc. The last night after
the class, I was giving a Golden Light healing to one of my fellow students in
my hotel room. My friend said her health and her life were fine, so she asked
if we could work on increasing inner vision.
She told me a
name that had come to her weeks ago, wanting to know if it was the name of her
spiritual guide. As I asked that question, much to my surprise, just saying the
name of that presence drew him energetically into the room. No, he was not her
guide. However, he filled us in on some details and left, leading us to another
guide who then appeared. I set aside my burgeoning fear. Eventually, we were
visited by a multitude of guides, as well as the spirits of her deceased mother
and father, all coming and going in and out of the hotel room. She not only
found out who her guide was, detailed family information was also revealed to
her.
I was frazzled,
exhausted. I didn’t believe in spiritual guides, or communicating with spirits,
or any of what had just happened. Once again, my body was vibrating like crazy.
My brain felt like mush. We were both blown away.
The next morning,
I was still vibrating. My new increased inner vision came and gave me
instructions on how to raise my frequency in the future when dealing with
beings who didn’t have bodies, so I wouldn’t get depleted. I left my old
beliefs in the dust, but I had mixed feelings about this new turn of events. I
was starting to feel like I’d leapt to the outer fringes of society and I felt
very uncomfortable.
As with the other
phenomena, I soon learned to accept the spirit world, too. Surrendering to experiences outside my
belief system became a way of life for me. A recovering control freak, I now
trustingly followed Spirit wherever and whenever it appeared … that is,
whenever I was conscious enough to hear and see what was always there.
I’ve now learned
to expect the unexpected. I’ve been known, at Spirit’s insistence, to give
intimate communications to complete strangers at fairs, workshops, grocery
stores, and even on the sidewalk downtown. My favorite healings now include
spontaneous visits from high level energies, where a vision and guidance are
accompanied by a tremendous healing presence that fills the room and inevitably
leaves my body shaking.
I don’t think I’m
anyone special, nor do I know why I’ve been so blessed. I think that at one particularly tormented
point in my life, I finally unconsciously began to ask for help. Something about asking seems to open the
doors (as in, “Ask and ye shall receive.”)
And now I see that Spirit and guidance are always flowing towards us, if
we can only get out of the way so we can see and hear and let it in.
This article appeared in the April May 1997 issue of “Catalist” magazine, Volume9, Number 3.
Cari
Alter is a Spiritual Counselor, a Healing Intuitive for health and personal
issues, a gifted Channel specializing in the soul’s journey, and a certified
practitioner of Hands-on Healing, Reiki Master, DNA Activation, and Master M.A. Breatherapy
with a private practice, weekly meditation group and transformative workshops
in Novato, California. She is the author of a tape album, "Breaking the Myths
of Reality" and has lectured at the Whole Life Expo, the Institute of Noetic
Sciences local chapter, and numerous adult ed. classes. 415-488-4708
OTHER
ARTICLES by Cari
Continuing
Sagas of Transformation Spiritual
Times in Pain