Traversing the Sacred Web
a year on the journey of awakening
by Marla Durden
It all started easy enough. It was a simple encounter at a spiritual workshop that changed the fabric and nature of my being and life. I had come to the Waking Down Weekend after spending an amazing weekend with the founder of the Waking Down in Mutuality (WDM) Saniel Bonder. His approach to embodied heart-centered spiritual awakening had fascinated me from the moment I had heard about it. He promised enlightenment in this lifetime. After more than 20 years of actively seeking this elusive thing called “enlightenment”- a weekend was worth finding a new path to my goal. Our workshop with Saniel was simple yet profound. A new part of me came home and I knew that I wanted more.
With a few colleagues, I contacted a local WDM teacher and made plans for a Seattle workshop later in the year. I approached it with anticipation and a whole host of other emotions that seemed to have control over me. I was told that this was part of the awakening process, that the Waking Down weekend and being in the transmission of consciousness in it would help me. It did that and much more.
Reunited with an old friend
At this event, I met a man, a man I knew instantly as an old friend and mentor. It struck me as odd with all of the signals my body and soul were giving me about this man that he should be here with us mere seekers. I knew in an instant- one of those moments when whole scenes and lifetimes roll before you in the blink of an eye- that I had found my teacher again. I saw myself in multiple past lives- in battles, schools, and monasteries- always as his student. And I loved him, which my rational mind was freaking out about. It kept saying, “how can you love this man, you don’t even know him?” It was the kind of love that transcends lifetimes… the kind of love that men have after sharing and surviving the heat of battle, the kind of devotional love that students have for their beloved gurus. It was so strong. But, I had to be cool.
I asked Ken for his phone number and if he would like to share a pot of tea sometime. He said yes. At our meeting at Seattle’s historic Panama Hotel Tea Room, I shared with him my observations. He looked at me as if I were odd. It occurred to me that I could have been wrong, but just shirked it off. We shared small talk and went our separate ways. Two weeks later the phone rings and it is Ken, asking me if I was alright, that he had had a dream about a small black girl hovering between life and death. I shared that I was OK and that I had been having a hard time through what they call “The Rot” in WDM. It is the sometimes very difficult period of soul and life review just prior to achieving a heart-centered awakening. The night before Ken’s call, I did feel in some way like I was hovering between the worlds, not knowing if I could withstand the near constant images and cellular memories of women being beaten and raped; and of people being enslaved and death marched. None of this was a part of my current life history, but somewhere in the dark recesses of my DNA it was there and coming out in torrents of emotions and visions. I was exhausted.
Remembering
After thanking Ken for his call, he revealed himself to me. He had “read” my soul and found that I was a “renaissance woman”. He also told me that he had remembered 9 lifetimes that we had shared on many continents and then began to tell me about them in detail. I came to know that this level of specificity was what I could always expect from him. He asked if I wanted to have coffee. I said, “Yes, of course.”
We met a few days later at a Starbucks near my sacred and beloved Lake Washington. That day began a journey that would change my life forever. We sat with the sun streaming through the window and began to share. We were at once in Seattle at the turn of the millennium; and sitting in a 19th century monastery as high level Oracles for the spiritual leader of Tibet; and simultaneously sitting on the edge of the planet’s atmosphere surveying all of life and beyond. We would jump from place to place and encompass it all at the same time. I could feel myself as this young and ambitious monk, keeping his teacher- the head Oracle on his toes. It was true. I had found my teacher again. It was thrilling. He had come to the WDM Weekend out of “boredom” and to find me.
Our regular meetings usually started at 10:00 or 11:00 am and went most of the day. We would share and Ken would offer me some guidance and support. I did have the coveted “second birth” heart-centered awakening as promised by Saniel Bonder and the WDM community. I could feel this energy coursing through my veins unlike anything that I had ever felt before. Colors were brighter, there was this felt sense of connection with everything, finally melting into a feeling and knowing that I am everything and everything is me. It felt as though the life that I had come here to lead was only just beginning. I had found myself. And it was the beginning. What transpired from there over the next year is truly the stuff of legends.
Awakening
Whole new worlds opened themselves to me. I was visited by gods, goddesses, angels and demons alike. I spontaneously began remote-viewing and sensing deeper into people’s souls. New healing energies would show up or Ken would initiate me into an energetic lineage and I would have it at mastery level almost immediately. Once, I felt something pop in my energy field and began vomiting to the point of dry heaves over and over again. When the retching stopped, I fell back on the bathroom floor, head next to the toilet in a state of the most sublime bliss I had ever experienced. At times I could vividly see people’s past lives and even hear their thoughts as they were dying. I began to instinctively know how to help people heal emotionally, where the energies were blocked in their energy fields. The siddhis – psychic and spiritual gifts that come as a result of awakening, were coming rapidly.
There were and continue to be long “moments” spent in the most glorious sense of grace and spaciousness; and times when a feeling of deep and abiding peace would just descend upon me. It was pretty amazing, at times overwhelming. I was growing and changing so fast that I often felt disoriented. If I did not have Ken I would have thought that I was going crazy. He provided for me a steady sounding board and guidance, healing energies, new information and inspiration… at once friend, guide and mentor. An enlightened shaman of profound power and grace, this unassuming man helped me through some of my most challenging moments of healing on this path of embodied awakening, and joyfully celebrated my triumphs and rapidly growing skills as a mystic and healer. He also reminded me that the gifts were not the point of the path, only its rewards. Though I had been doing Reiki for 20 years and had been a Reiki Master for nearly 15, what I was opening into and as made all of my previous experience pale in comparison. Little did I know for what I was being prepared… yet another new beginning.
Stepping into mastery… a new beginning, again.
One morning, I had the distinct feeling that I was now ready. Though I had all of these skills in Reiki and natural intuitive gifts, I had never before felt ready to be a healer, a teacher. Now this feeling of rest had come over me, like I had finally reached a long sought after goal. It was after this that my “friends” paid me a visit. These highly evolved Beings/Guides told me that I am to work with the leaders- those people who feel called to spiritual leadership of some kind. That I would be working with those who felt ready to “break trail for their people”, choosing the path of awakening with the conscious understanding that they were doing it for themselves, for their families and indeed for all of humanity. I accepted the invitation and was “graduated” by Ken. All along the journey, he would share with me my calibration, using Dr. David R. Hawkins’ (Power vs. Force) Calibrated Scale of Consciousness and kinesiology. We could tell by my calibration how well I was doing and what my next challenges would be. My calibration and intuition told me that I could now begin to share some of the insights and gifts of this soul’s journey.
Ken and I did not know at the time that we were birthing a “new” teaching and way of walking the path to the highest levels of enlightenment- he as the guide and me as the guinea pig...uh student. Now we are each guiding and healing souls on their path of remembering and enlightenment. The work has taken on a decidedly heart-centered approach for me and it is exciting to see the profound changes and breakthroughs in my clients. Through the grace of spirit, I have had the honor of supporting and guiding multiple souls through the sweet and blissful moments of heart-centered awakening and continue to support them through the sorting of ego debris and healing of old soul wounds still in their energy fields. This was my new beginning yet again. The wheel keeps turning.
© Marla Durden, 2005
