Finding Your Individual Essence On A Path to Higher Consciousness

By Tanya Tonneson

If you read a lot of New Age material you've probably heard the phrase "there are many path's back home." Home being our original state of unity, light and inner peace. This statement is most likely true based on some major fundamental similarities we've seen in different spiritual traditions and healing forms practiced around the world. But, what are the most potent practices for real positive transformative growth? Is there some magic recipe of complimentary modalities that give the best and quickest results? Transformation means that you are not just changed but that a negative attachment, identity, or way of being is transformed forever. When a real shift in consciousness takes place, on many levels you are still the same person and on some levels you can never go back to your old way of experiencing. Spiritual awakening is a very individual experience and process.  Sometimes it's cultivated over time and sometimes it hits you like a ton of bricks. Since the way home to our true nature is so different for everyone, and destined to be lead in many directions by our guides or ourselves; how can we discover a right combination of healing modalities that will be built for success and ensure us better health on all levels of body, mind and spirit?

One practice that uses the body to transcend the mind that has become popular in the Bay Area (aside from yoga) is Five Rhythms Dance. All the foundations seem promising- the idea of using an expressive movement meditation as a vehicle to deepen and expand your self-awareness. And then there are also your fellow dancers in their own internal worlds of experience that you may choose to interact with. They serve as a witness and hold a group conscience or container, which can add power and energy to your experience. Any type of movement is always good for change, but if you are very sensitive to others energy and have some level of unprocessed trauma in your history being in a room of breathing, moving, grunting people might not be the most therapeutic thing. Thus, a smaller group container or support through individual work might be a better foundation for initial more vulnerable spiritual work. If you've done that foundational work then Five Rhythms Dance can be a great place to practice intentional healing and growth or to just enjoy dance in a fairly conscious community.

I can look back now and see the importance of all the modalities and steps I've tried on my path to spiritual growth, up to my newest practices of Tantric Buddhist meditation (body centered meditation). Many people start their spiritual path with meditation, however, this was not so in my case. It definitely would not have served my extremely ungrounded, young adult, addict-in-recovery self to sit and open my awareness to the totality of existence. I would have simply blasted off my meditation cushion into some other realms searching in vain for a point of oneness and inner peace. I was already good at accessing higher realms because I lived in them. I was so uncomfortable in my body (and not in living in it) that the idea of sitting and going inside myself felt completely intolerable. But I knew I was ready for spiritual work, in fact I knew that it was probably my last hope.

My early path from birth to young adulthood was a rough one. I now consider that to be somewhat of a blessing because it led me to spiritual growth at an early age, but at the time it felt like hell. My family seemed to be living in layers of extreme denial, lies and hidden abuse; not an uncommon childhood for many in this day and age.  It seems that we are dealing with unresolved trauma and repression that has been passed down for many generations. Family constellation work is a great healing modality that goes into great depths around healing the unresolved pain in our lineages.  I invite you to research it more if that is where you feel led, but more importantly is the decision and willingness to heal whatever your piece is that you've taken on in your family. I really do believe as spirits we choose our families for the pain and good qualities they will bring. Our 'wounding' and programming create a clear direct template to learn and grow from, in a sense. And I have experienced that usually under our deepest wound lay our greatest gift.

Clearly there were a lot of reasons why I was uncomfortable and disconnected from my body in the past, but I grew up thinking that there was something innately wrong with me. I spent five futile years going through many psychotherapists and psychiatrists with little to no improvement. I was put on medication from an early age and diagnosed with conditions like ADHD that I now know for a fact I don't have. The fact was that I was in a soul crisis and was split off from the unresolved trauma from my early childhood. Of course I was unaware and not ready to know this as a teenager. All I knew was that I was deeply unhappy, uncomfortable in myself and unsupported at home. I always knew deep down that there was more to life than what I was experiencing. I've found that the western family unit is more often than not based in isolation, not in community. So in that paradigm, if you are not getting what you really need from your family, you are basically screwed. I longed for a well-intentioned mentor as a child and young adult, but there were none. None in my family or at any of the schools I attended. I felt ever increasingly uninspired and disconnected from my unique soul substance. As an adolescent I suffered from suicidal depression and used drugs to try and escape things I didn't want to feel.

Most people have experienced a deadness or feeling of emptiness inside or can resonate with the idea that parts of themselves may be missing or have never fully arrived. At some point there becomes a longing and a readiness for a different kind of fulfillment. The soul is ready for a new level of awakening in consciousness, but what does this really mean? One of my teachers uses a great analogy, think of a radio dial, when you're on a certain channel you only hear that one frequency, but there are many stations going on simultaneously that you don't hear. The same goes for the states of consciousness on which we exist. Right now you are experiencing your life at a certain frequency, which has been created by a number of things including: whatever your soul came in with, material from 'past' lives, ancestral influences, along with current life history and outside influences, all mold your current way of being. When the timing is right your soul will start to pull you towards things that will promote positive change and shifts in your frequency/consciousness. This is all assuming that you have not lost that connection to spirit, nature, and the ability to sense and listen for true intuition.

Most of the time sensing spirit is a matter of letting go of the thinking mind and getting into your body. Ironically enough sometimes people separate the two. Your senses are your greatest source to guidance and can actually aide in accessing important information. Your spirit guides know what will work best for you. For instance, imagine yourself walking in nature; you are breathing deeply and tuning into your senses. Your thoughts become fluid and a new inspiring idea comes in. Then all of a sudden you see a hawk (an animal you happen to resonate with) the sight of the hawk serves as symbolic confirmation from spirit that you should act on this new inspiring idea. Strengthening the senses of your body and your connection to nature and spirit will prove invaluable in feeling led and guided from your center instead of the whirling thoughts of the mind. Find out which of your five senses is the strongest and most acute. Or perhaps you are sensitive and have inclination towards a sixth sense. They are all equally valuable for gathering information about yourself and what healing modalities may work best for you. It's from this grounded centered place that we can feel sure about our next move. And if you've decided to make spiritual growth and change a priority in your life you're going to want to know what's the best next step.

Remember your soul came to this planet to live in this body so why don't we start there? I really recommend some kind of movement practice that's going to promote coming into the body like yoga, dance, or massage. For the emotional and mental levels some kind of therapy is usually needed but not the kind where you sit and talk about yourself for an hour! There are many therapists that use a more body-based style of psychotherapy. I trained in Core Energetics Therapy, which was developed on the theory that every experience that we've ever had is held in our body at a cellular level. This method uses the breath and different movements to reveal negative holding patterns in the body from old trauma and emotional pain to release them. I've found these types of methods to really cut through the BS and get to the root of a problem or symptom. Usually there is also work to be done purely at the soul level, such as soul retrieval, past life healings, or repair to the human energy (auric) field. This is where it can be beneficial to seek help from a skilled energy healer or shamanic practitioner.

Some practitioners you will work with and holistic treatments you learn will come and go as a stepping-stone, while others will stick and become continuous for a longer length of time until some form of completion happens. I do believe in divine timing and flow and that simply deciding to make your healing a priority in this life will start the movement towards positive change.  Sometimes it is a matter of pulling what you need and leaving the rest from a certain modality or school of thought. For example, twelve step meetings were a great fundamentals course that sparked the beginning of my spiritual work and getting clean off of drugs but I did not agree with all of the teachings and some of the methods did not work for me. When I do attend a meeting now I listen with an open mind and heart always to leave with something great I needed to hear and leave the parts that don't resonate with me. This theory can also be applied to diet. You may not fall into a particular group or category of thought when it comes to food or anything else. You are unique and your body may have different nourishment needs that change over time. Don't do something just because it worked for somebody else. Learning to feel your own inner truth while still being able to surrender to experience and learning from others is a challenging and fulfilling practice indeed.

In my training at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing we were taught an exercise to go inside and connect with our "core essence". This is your soul substances' creative expression at its most potent authentic state. At first I had a ton of resistance to this exercise. Mostly I felt impatient as we were supposed to spend several minutes dwelling into this inner core before igniting it and expanding it out. Maybe I was nervous I wouldn't experience anything. When I finally surrendered to finding my core I experienced it as a warm ball of light that wanted to expand out 360 degrees to the whole universe. There was a great longing to share this part of me in service to the world. In a way, it felt like a really pleasurable effortless expression of me, which did not require any striving for. It was also deeper than the ego or some kind of idealized image of myself. It felt like pure creative essence that was solely mine to be joyously shared. I like to think that maybe it is possible to initiate all decisions from a place of core essence, from the deepest purest part of your creative being. This is the part of you that really wants to expand and contribute your gifts to the world! Most likely your life and world purpose is going to be something you enjoy doing. Grounding and opening to spiritual work will help reveal this longing and the path to take to get there.

Many blessings have come out of surrendering to my own healing process, the forms it has taken and all the amazing experiences and people that have come out of this strong intention to heal and thrive in this life. I didn't really start out thinking I could ever heal other people; I certainly couldn't heal my dysfunctional family, though I tried to for many years. The feeling of wanting to guide others came from falling in love with my own healing process, as painful as it was at times, the beauty of it was twice as great. So wouldn't it be awesome to support others in their own healing journey, and be with all that unexpected beauty that would come from it? This has proven to be very true and I am forever in gratitude to all my mentors and teachers who have helped me get to where I am now.

Don't sell yourself short especially when choosing teachers to work with on your path to higher consciousness. Find outstanding people with integrity to learn from and those who have really done and continue to do the work themselves. Masters of their craft in the most honest of ways, clear, fearless, compassionate and wonderfully human. Find people you resonate with and if you feel like you want what they have, go for it. If you feel unsure ask to be guided to the next best step that is in alignment with your highest good. I leave this article with a prayer; may we be peaceful warriors of truth walking our sacred paths in a clear and positively ever evolving way.  In this we allow space for our actions to be guided and supported by our mother earth, father spirit, and a loving compassionate heart.

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