It's just life

As can be deduced from the above, my practice has become more about descending than ascending. Grounding and integration have become incredibly important to me and so have confronting my fears and getting down and dirty - in love and passion - with the opposite sex. If I'm to develop a healthy channel for Spirit to emerge, I must make sure that my ego has been well integrated and healed. Otherwise, the dark side of the force will beckon me and I will be ill equipped to resist.

Cathrine, the sweetheart who is my lover, took me to the woods in her new car. That was truly meaningful beyond the obvious fact of convenience, as demonstrated by the feelings that washed through me when we sat in the meditation hall together for a while. I described to her the intense experiences I had had there, struggling with my mind and my relationship with the opposite sex. A strong sense of completion descended on me and I was awash with emotion and gratefulness. That's the benefit of having a truly great woman by my side - I can be strong and powerful yet broken and vulnerable at the same time.

The woman that appeared with the key for the main house told me the day after that she'd had a vision of my arrival. She'd received training in the fire shaman lineage and her teacher had appeared in a vision just before I called her to signal my arrival. We had never spoken before and she was quite excited about it as the experience had been so strong and powerful. She clearly thought there was some deep, powerful connection between us. We talked for a while, and on my request she used her shaman training to tune in and adviced me, based on that, what to work with in the retreat.

I entered silence the next day and meditated, contemplated while immersed in nature, went for walks, did yoga and stretching for my broken back and studied the book "The Way of the Superior Man" closely and read some additional chapters of "Think and grow rich" by Napoleon Hill (which is all about materializing my vision). And as time went by, information started appearing of its own accord in my mind. I know that I'm a good writer, but I did not expect to become an author anytime soon. Well, as things would have it, my subconscious mind produced pretty much an entire novel for me while I was away in the woods. It appeared gradually over the week, starting out with just the one sentence "You see what you are" and developed from there. I received it through images, feelings, atmospheres and actual words. So now I have this fantastic novel in me just waiting to get out. I've given myself three years of writing to produce it - as I obviously have my daytime job to attend to!

But I can't just dive into writing a big badass novel straight away so to address that I also developed the outline of a couple of significant essays, one about the dark side of feminism and another one about fear and its power in today's world. I also realied that I will translate The way of the Superior Man into Norwegian. David Deida's American publisher has already given me the go-ahead to start looking for a Norwegian publisher so things seem to be on track.

I did the things the Fire shaman lady suggested. Some shamanic rituals and meditations - I improvised quite a lot, and I also slept under the wide open sky one night. I found a good place on the top of a big rock hill covered by soft moss and surrounded by trees. The September night was a bit chilly in my sleeping bag and I didn't sleep that well, but it was lovely to watch the stars appear at night. There were some planes up there, one shooting star (my wish has been fulfilled) and then there were these other moving stars that I didn't quite understand first, but I realized they must've been satellites. I thought UFOs for a while - your mind gets creative when you're all alone at night in the deep woods of Norway :-)

I also managed to confront my fear of dark windows in little abandoned forest cottages. I've always found them creepy - not knowing what's inside and having all sorts of scary movies and crap whirlwind its way through my mind while I stand facing the black window, expecting horrific faces or monsters to crash against the window at any moment - or emerge slowly from the darkness like a messenger from hell. I found a good Blairwitch cottage and practiced around it. In the end, I broke through and conquered my fear - and developed a system in the process that I can apply to my other fears.

So a productive week in the woods yet again. Challenging as always, there's so much stuff in this mind of mine and the annual mental housecleaning is at times arduous. But I was truly amazed at what gifts appeared this time and sometimes awed by the power that's emerging from deep inside. I may choose to contain some of that for a little longer until I'm certain it's all good and well-intentioned power and not resentful ego crap.

As it turned out though, I wasn't the guy the Fire shaman lady - Ambika was her name - had seen in her vision. She found him a couple of days later. But it was still good to meet her and I'm sure we'll stay in touch. Her background represents something vital to me now. The planet, the great Mother, is beckoning.

So that's about it, guys. Now to implement all the life changes and to give my all to implement my vision in my life. I have a direction now - for the first time I have a life purpose. That feels good. Really good. And to have a material, concrete measuring rod to relate to (as described in Think and grow rich), I've decided to amass a fortune of ten million Norwegian kroner within the end of 2012. And I have little doubt that I can do it (signs are already appearing). And I start a new job tomorrow! And there my creative juices will be given room to flow ever wider. I'm looking forward to that a lot!

On my way back from the woods, I explained my novel to Cathrine. She loved it. These are good times indeed.