Healing the time syndrome:A conquest on the path of transformation

I envision myself into a huge cave; enormous stones in different shapes protect a green lake, with deep and warm waters. On the top of the cave a narrow opening opens the way for an insistent ray of sunlight, who shines brightly as it touches the calm water's surface. I'm not alone; my companions rest on the stones and take their clothes off until all of us are naked, our exposed bodies show our pure intention to heal and renovate, in a timeless desire of pleasure and integrity, fulfilled as we dive into the dampish uterus of the Earth. We let the lake waters embrace our bodies as a caring mom. As we leave, our souls washed, we feel our sensitivity and aura expanded. We put our clothes on and go back to our daily busy routine. Someone asks me for how long have we been down there. Ten minutes? Three hours? The time elapsed on the watch has little to do with the vibrational richness of the experience and I realize that we have been healing the time syndrome. I wake up and realize, to my amazement, that I have been dreaming. What is the probable duration of a dream? One second? Two minutes? In vivid dreams we experience a new dimension of time. Maybe the watch registers no more than five minutes of a deep sleep, but in the dream the reality expands itself. In the cellular memory of our minds and bodies, dream and awaken reality have the same healing response: the time of the body is the time of memory and has little to do with the chronological time that limits our freedom and the transformation process.

Sailing in a time capsule

This dream of the cave seals, for me, a healing process that lasted twelve days, during which I worked to transform a painful childhood memory; a memory so deeply hidden and crucial that kept unconscious along twenty years of therapy that enabled me to break through profound traumas and armor. As I keep approaching my essential being this memory, entwined like a painful thorn in the time capsule that surrounds my body, surfaced with violence, triggered - to my surprise - by a successful participation in a World design contest. The cellular memory knows no time: today's pain repeats with equal intensity the pain of yesterday, last year's pain, another life's pain. The inflammatory process resists, for as long as the thorn is there. The top of the thorn showed its dark head and almost paralyzed the breast muscle, forcing me to face the facts. When I finally made up my mind to take it out, this water dream acted like a final balsam and I woke up healed.

Turning off the limiting circuits of time

The transformation and healing process demands patience, dedication and freedom, where the first step is to get rid of the time syndrome. There's no way to preview its duration, since the time of the body memory has unique characteristics and is not related to the daily calendar that rules human society routine. The chronic victims of the time syndrome fail to believe there is time, in their daily exhausting professional and social schedule, to heal their soul, to choose, to grow. In this way they unconsciously keep themselves in a state of spiritual somnambulism, where the infectious fat of stress and alienation clogs the arteries of love and development. The ultimate blockage of the fundamental human values provokes the stroke of our essential beings, leading to a state of automatism where many of us give up living in a richer, vibrating reality; at this point we hopelessly surrender to a degenerative aging process, accepting the chronic ailments of a misunderstood body, whose only choice is to continuously decay until death finally comes.

Thou shalt love thyselfas thy neighbor

Many people today dream to meet a twin soul. The twin is a love, harmony and happiness promise we look for without knowing quite well how.
This search was for many years the compass needle guiding my life path. Until today I met at least three “twin souls” that did not fail to cause me pain and disappointment. Those failures made me keep the search aside for a while, and I started to research my own center. Finally, I understood: I want so much to meet my twin soul... - “Whose twin?” - I started to ask, if I do not even know who am I.
The twin souls I have met in the past were twins to someone I used to be then; a person I rejected, depreciated and, thinking it well over, did not love a bit. I used to look at the mirror and get disgusted: - “Why must I be this weird woman, overweight, troubled and sad?” - I said to myself, while waiting for the enchanted prince to come and get me off this nightmare, making his loving bride - sweet and swell - out of me in a moment. Still, the spell always had the opposite effect: the princes ended us as frogs, humiliating me and making me feel smaller then a fly they did not want to love.
I even thought this twin soul myth was no more than illusion: today, I believe fate spared me. When I finally happen to meet “The Soul" I want him to be the twin of someone I love and cherish, as I know I must love a life companion.
This discovery led me to a deep and nonstop self-transformation process. I kept in view this vision I had of myself, looking like someone else: someone lighter, flexible, in transparent garments with the hair loose, floating in the wind, cycling in the afternoon side by side with my loved one. I used the solitude mourning, the dark winter of soul, to sow a feasible spring, while losing dead leaves and cutting short dry twigs from that forgotten tree I did not want to be anymore. I did not skip a therapeutic process, be it the more painful or deep; I stepped outside from illusions, from empty phantasies of future, from undefined plans or miracle searches. I dedicated myself to a daily gray routine of working and fighting, of research and learning. There was no traditional teaching, education pattern, dogma or absolute truth I refused to analyze and, if necessary, discard for good.
I was open to outside judgments, but established a limit to listen to family’s and friends’ tips; there was no person I refused to quit when disturbing too much my newly born self-esteem.
I was leaving behind me the excesses that did no longer serve me: excess furniture, excess clothes, excess books, excess pounds, excess expectations. I was kind of filtering myself, cooking myself under high pressure to get to the basics, to the fundamentals, to the true essence, an undoubtedly rare and one-off perfume: myself.
I did not learn how to love myself: I simply transformed myself in the woman I used to love in my dreams. I turned out to be a delicious and fair mate for my daily meditation and relaxation moments. My twin soul? I let him loose, floating through time and space. When I finally meet him, I will know whose twin is he. Being twins to this so special, so carefully chosen, so much loved human being, he will for sure be like this: special, carefully chosen, deeply loved; he will be welcomed to this friendly, wonderful, harmonious and rich universe in which we live. A universe that is living, pulsating, full of joy inside of each one of us.

Cigarettes: blocking the ways of Spirit

Eduardo is a sensible man, a seeker. His work as an editor is important, publishing human knowledge and development tendencies. Eduardo is sensitive and believes to open his body to spiritual entities beyond his control. Against the entities abuse Eduardo knows a unique remedy: the cigarette.
Laura is a nutrition therapist. As a dedicated researcher, Laura daily explores the limits of human health, on physical and spiritual levels; in a close touch with the technological society dangers, Laura sees our foods and environment as threatening agents. According to Laura, we are all defenseless victims of transgenic and irradiated food, harmful to health, an almost inevitable death sentence. So worried about human wellness, Laura fights stress on a daily basis; as a relief, Laura knows a unique remedy: the cigarette.
Dr. Kline is a well-known doctor, a researcher of longevity and quality of life. Dr. Kline has a long email list and sends weekly messages to his clients with precious health advice; one of his bestsellers is a quite severe diet, intended to clean the body and enhance vital functions, longevity being its final goal. Dr. Kline recommends the slow change of patterns toward his ideal diet, and one of his recommendations goes like this: "If you smoke, this is not a good time to stop, since my diet, while transforming deep nutritional patterns, provokes some level of stress; if you stop smoking now, you risk stress aggravation. As I read this "healthy" advice, I immediately asked to be removed from his list and heard of him no more.

Choosing to grow: the first step

As for Laura and Eduardo, they are nice people and I keep them as dear friends; many times I asked them to drop this absurd attachment to a habit that damages health for sure. For me, to stop smoking is the first step on the evolutionary path, a basic choice; nevertheless, as I analyzed Laura's and Eduardo's reasons for smoking, I discovered the basic effect of cigarettes on human beings: before poisoning and corrupting health, the cigarette numbs and blocks consciousness and the energetic circuits in the body, preventing spirit from circulating freely through subtle body levels. That's why, when smoking, Eduardo feels like blocking access to outside entities; at the same time, though, he blocks his evolutionary possibilities and his spiritual growth. By her side, Laura, while feeling so threatened just for being alive, chooses to feed her psyche through smoking, using intimacy with death as a protective shield.

Avoiding consciousness and numbing sensations

Cigarette, believe me, is an antithesis to consciousness, a sensation numbness agent, anesthetizing the mind. Smokers keep themselves conveniently apart from the great pleasures of life: they can't feel the plain taste of food, the aromas from nature, the vigor of an active mind. Incapable of facing themselves deeply, they keep at the surface of their emotions as they regularly burn a stupid paper roll stuffed with cancer agents. Pessimists by nature, they don't believe on the planet's survival, as they anticipate the catastrophe: through the worst of modern life habits, they offer themselves in sacrifice, providing profit to health insurance companies and to the official medical community.

An irresistible invitation

Consciousness awareness is sometimes frightening. It is hard to awaken from this torpor that anesthetizes most of us. The path of evolution is full of obstacles and the loss of illusions is many times more painful than their maintenance. For this reason, if you don't feel strong enough to go on living, don't stop smoking: this drug can keep you asleep and half doped for the brief period of a lifetime granted to you by this friendly addiction. A brief look, though, a slight consciousness brightness, is sufficient to take you back to life's plenitude. We are the designers of this planet's future; each of us is a vibrant cell in this universe, a microscopic but an essential cell. None of us is hopeless or insignificant, as the reductionist religious morals make us believe. Each human being is a powerful generator of vital vibration, many times suffocated by a flawed value system that we must transform. If you choose to be part of this exciting revolution of the senses, a catalyst of human evolution, don't hesitate to take the first step: clean your body from the idea of smoking. Erase from your memory the image of the noxious tobacco rolls: the body, after all, recycles itself, healing the harm cause by this old habit. We know that the fabulous organic human machine renews itself completely every seven years: this is your chance of recovery, a generous gift from nature offered to all those who chose to awaken for a full life. Isn't this invitation attractive?

The new world is here, presenting an indisputable restriction: for your maximum health and pleasure, smoking is forbidden.

Chicken soup for vegetarians

Hopefully this will be the last bowl of chicken soup I will have for self-healing purposes. I have been cooking this soup for ages, boiling the pot with this old, fat and tired chicken, myself. The soup must be tasty, enriched with all the eggs I have broken walking on eggshells for so many years. I have tried many healing recipes, each time trying my best to learn how to balance spicy techniques and psychic ingredients, but I still could not stop being a chicken. Finally I turned myself into a researcher and started looking for a personal recipe, one based on my own intuition and feelings. I learned to contact my own inner master and started to study with him. He taught me to walk on the pleasure path, always to mix purpose with pleasure for a tasty result. He made me try pain, only to discover how difficult digesting it is. He made me swallow my pain uncooked, only to learn patience and perfect timing.
With this true guidance I began to change, at last. A voice spoke loud inside me, telling me what to do next. I was peeled as the onion cooking on my chicken soup, layer after layer taking off patterns as old, useless dresses. This process included adopting voluntary simplicity, literally giving away most of the dresses - old and new objects, furniture, books, clearing up space on the closet, shelves, mind and heart.
Some changes were painful, some simply amazing. I discovered addictions I could never dream of, and suffered many headaches when the Voice told me to quit coffee cold turkey. The Voice waited until I had twelve boxes of milk stored on my kitchen to make me give up on dairy. I was shocked, and asked: - "Now? Yes, it said, immediately." Giving away again, twelve boxes of milk donated. I never felt the slightest desire to taste milk or cheese again! The Voice new me well for sure, much better than outside masters. To give up sugar was not that painful, for I used imagination and started experimenting on the kitchen. I discovered many sources of sugar, cooking bananas, pineapples, apples and dried fruit. Sugar has many flavors and scents!
Time arrived to take out fat from the soup: beginning on the surface, with dietary fat - learning to cook with water and soy sauce - then diving deeper, to burn body fat through exercise practice. Looking for the best aerobic activity led me to the most amazing discovery: I could meditate on spinning classes!!! It took me about ten minutes after the warm-up to reach that special mind state, and there I was: cycling on a past life, myself on a different body and environment, riding an old bike to deliver fresh bread on a medieval morning!
Months later, some pounds of fat shed, I began learning to fly. Suddenly my lower body detached from the rest, and while my legs kept cycling, the head could float freely. What a feeling! Being able to stand on my own feet and keep balanced! Maybe I was not that old chicken anymore, after all. Maybe the old chicken melted in the soup and disappeared!
I was not ready yet, though. I felt lighter, looked lighter, but could not believe myself lighter. I could not change my inner body image, and part of me was still fat and inadequate.
In a way I was enslaved in a harsh daily routine. Working out for so many hours, keeping such a hard dietary discipline, yet at the slightest slip extra pounds began to jump on the scale. The more I ate, the hungrier I felt, where did the secret of well being hide, for God's sake?
Back on the track my Inner Master made me read books, articles, web sites. I spent a year researching nutrition, exercise techniques, life extension news, consciousness and spiritual development. I felt this urgent need to change from patient to doctor!
The cleaning process extended itself to all areas in my life. I sold my car and started to walk more, learned to live with less and to manage stress. While looking for the ultimate wellness secret, I was accelerating change. My looks changed, thoughts and feelings changed as well. Nothing in me remained the same, from haircut to ideals, from furniture to soul desires. I saw myself as a new building, still lacking finishing touches. Soon, someone new was going to move in. Meanwhile, I kept hungry . . .
Working on illusions, stepping out of eggshells rugs, I decided at last to count calories and, to my surprise, discovered I was eating close to 2.000 a day! Facing the facts, I dropped my chicken side for good. I was not afraid of truth and mirror anymore and nothing could stop me from rebirthing.
The reward did not take long and my Inner Master soon revealed the secret. As a miracle, the key to balance emerged from tons of stored articles and I adopted a low glycemic diet! I cut fruit portions and replaced them with low glycemic cakes and cookies, homemade with my own recently created recipes. For the first time, my fears of lacking were gone: I was eating much less - limiting calories - and was not hungry; I was full of energy, working-out every morning and steadily shedding pounds.
Today, my new self is moving into this brand new, harmonically built body. The chicken vanished from the soup. This healing recipe is suitable for vegetarians like me and I share the feast with you, a low calorie, low glycemic, guiltless and energetic banquet. I did not change from patient to doctor after all, but stopped being a patient, while turning into a teacher and writer. I published a book about my self-healing process and now keep a web site to share my daily discoveries. I hope many will taste the evolutionary kitchen, a food and life recipe, a knowledge I received from Spirit: a welcome gift to the world of harmony and peace of mind!

An old lampost blocking the way

Early morning, as I walk to the gym, I pass by a new building in construction. I watched every step of the building process, from the demolition of the old building that used to be there. I saw the structure being erected level by level, then the bricks, the windows, the porches, the garden. The construction's electrical power was provided through a wooden pole, placed in the middle of the sidewalk; each morning I had to avoid the inconvenient block, an outdated electrical device surrounded by a confusing web of wires crossing the street. When the construction ended, all the wires were cut and the building energy was now provided by a subterranean modern cable, invisible to the eyes. The pole, though, remained there. The modern, impressive building started to fill with life, as the new residents began to arrive; the old, outdated pole, now disconnected and useless - an abandoned carcass - was still there, blocking the sidewalk. I asked myself how long would it take for the constructors to take it off. Finally, on one bright Monday, I walk to the gym on early morning to find out the pole is no longer there! Taken from the landscape, I don't regret its absence as I cross freely along the sidewalk it used to block. The sidewalk design was repaired and there was no sign of the old post. Within a week, the post was completely forgotten; the street residents and I will not miss it, that old, invasive, inefficient and completely outdated lamppost.

Reconstructing the self: a progressive alchemical process
I believe the personal transformation process to be similar, in symbol and sequence, to the construction of a new building. At first you must reject and destroy the existing pattern; a slow, careful construction of a new structure follows, searching for new sources of vital energy and new behavior patterns. In this renovation process we keep many times attached to the old structure; to jump in a sole impulse toward the new - with its charge of chaos and insecurity - requires an amount of courage quite hard to find. For this reason, the growing process is usually gradual and cautious, sometimes delayed by going backwards. When the new pattern is finally adopted and invites us to enjoy the recently conquered freedom, an inconvenient old pole, already disconnected from our present reality, may block our path as a painful memory. We already live in a brand-new body, recovering spiritual wholeness, connected to an advanced source of energy, refining our consciousness and wisdom. Still, the post remains there, feeding with its presence the phantom of our subdued insecurity. "If the winds of change blow too strongly" - we think at the unconscious level - "trying to knock us down, we will have at least this post to hold on to."

Giving time to the mind timing
The ways of the mind are slow, gradual: it takes us time to recognize that the winds of change are here to make us fly, not to knock us down; to grab the pole because of fear is to limit ourselves to a level already surpassed by our desire to grow.
Brief compulsive episodes, like small pouches of fat gained through the weekend, flashes of emotional pain when meeting old friends, or a light headache in family meetings, reminding us of childhood traumas, are just like lampposts in the sidewalk, temporarily blocking our path and close to extinction. Finally, one day, we wake up ready to give up the fake security, apparently guaranteed by the old post. As the post is destroyed - the last remains of a cellular memory already altered - the body speeds up to recover the sidewalk design and quickly erase the slightest memory of the old pole...
Following the path of transformation, we may, for brief moments, feel weak, without energy, when the desired harmony and peace seem impossible to reach. Deeply involved in the process, we fail to realize our real advance; despite the obstacles and backwards steps, we move forward steadily, though unexpected blocks, apparently impossible to overcome, may surprise us. This is the miracle of transformation: a joy beyond words certainly waits for us at the end of each section in our evolutionary journey.