into The Void (part 3)

hello!

as promised, with some delay, here finally a little sketch of what happened during the spiritual workshop in a small village maybe 5 km from Steenwijk, The Netherlands

after breakfast with my lovely host girl, i remember taking out much time to get under the shower and get ready ...

the cost for staying the night there was an unbelievable low 18 € ..

anyway ... the man who also worked for The Muse, the organisation which did the workshop, came to pick me up and off we went ..

in fact, i was a bit disappointed when i heard the Transformation Game we were about to play, was actually a real board game ..

in this game i had to go through different stages of life in this order ..

- the basic level (survival)
- the emotional level
- the cognitive level
- the spiritual level

now the funny thing was that when the game was about to start our guide (there was just one other participant and the guide), said that she would do something she had never done before and that she would actually participate in the game ...

she wanted to do this because the theme i had brought to the game .. to experience reunion with the Ultimate Cosmic Creative Source, was so peculiar that she wanted a piece of the action!

she also said that she told about my theme to a spiritual magazine and taht they would include it in their next issue ...

so the game began

it was played with dice and first we had to fall on an angel on the board to get born .. then the game really took off ..

i got a large card for the basic level ... this card would then contain all the smaller cards that i would gather when the game would progress ..

i don't actually remember all the smaller cards but i know this ... somehow i rushed through the basic and emotional levels to the point where after some 15 minutes to half an hour i started to panic that the game would be over for me in no time .. and i rode the train for four hours , stayed for the nigbt and everything ... so i was getting a bit worried .. but i slipped into the cognitive level i actually said to myself that i should find ways to slow down my life game and so taht's exactly what i did .. there were possibilities to skip turns in this game and i used them frequently ..that meant that i got to pick some other smaller cards ...

in fact, there were 'angel' cards, 'insights' cards, 'obstacle' cards and 'guidance from the spiritual realm' cards ..

one obstacle card which i had and which striked me the most was 'acceptance' .. yes! ... as a gender dysphoric person i'm having a lot of trouble with acceptance, even from my family ... i must also tell you that in the offline world i don't have one friend ... oh sure i have nice collegues as a dancer but they're not really friends either ...

and in the street or in the subways and trams, trains and buses i also have sometimes a difficult time to be accepted because some people just have to laugh at me or worse ..

and then it dawned on me ... that i don't really have to worry about those things regarding acceptance because i have the power to let it all go! ...

then after being in the cognitive level for some time .. in which i had some other insights as well ...

i finally entered the spiritual level in the game and i got cards like 'union', and other things that really corresponed with the theme i wanted to experience ...

now even a week before my trip to The Netherlands i pondered upon the fact that i would enter a special state of consciousness and would enter The Cosmic Void ... , well during the game i felt myself entering this void and then near the end of the game i believe strongly that i indeed got in touch with The Source .. briefly ...

when we took a break, just before dinner, i went into the garden and smoked a doobie, ...

then the strangest thing happened to me which i think (for me anyway) is proof of what i set out to do became reality! ..

here it is:

there was a very small pond in the garden surrounded by brisck like but also natural like stones which were carefully placed around the pond ..

i randomly and without thout took one stone, and i returned with it to the table where i had rolled my doobie some good feet away from th pond ..

i started feelin the stone, its texture and weight and i really caressed it as wel as just touching it without moving ... i wanted so much to feel one with this stone because it would make me feel that what i wanted to experience was indeed possible ..

and then the first epiphany happened ... i layed my fingers randomly on the stone, spread them some and what happened next was in no way normal at all! ..

in the stone were like naturally cut out little nichesand i swear i didn't do this on putrpose but when i layed my fingers on the stone they fitted (all of my fingers!) precisely in those niches, which were so small the naked eye woudl have had difficulies noticing them ...µ

i started to become ecstatic and thrilled .... i really felt the connection with nature and thus with The Ultimate Cosmic Source ...

i walked back to the pond to lay down the stone again and my eye fell on the stone next to the one i had held in awe .. i took the two stones ( please remember that i had no clue whatsoever anymore where i had first picked up this stone) and what do you know ...!

the two stones were once a whole... the pieces fitted together perfectly and now i was really getting high on adrenaline dopamine and serotonine and it wasn't just the doobie alone that gave me this effect .... i was really high when i returned into the house were dinner and some good conversation would bring me back down to earth a little ...

at the end of the whole session, the other (female) participant, asked if she c oudl touch my body for like half an hour or so ..

she didn't ask me to undress or anything and the whole touchings tuff was really clean ...

it was just that she was preparing herself to give workshops in the massaging or touchin business hehe and she wanted to practice a little ..

the funny thing is that, after the ecstatic feelings i encountered outside, when alone with the stones, i started to come down and i felt myself slipping into the nothingness of The Void again, which i must say, certainly lasted for a week after i got back home ...

now The Void, The Cosmic Void, is not just emptiness, when i experience the void i became Absolute Consiousness, ... not only of her primordial emptiness but alsoa strange paradoxal feeling ofessential Fulness ..

it's a vacuum, but in the mean time also a plenum, where nothing seems to be missed out ...

it seems to hold the whole of Existence in a potential form

and, that what i think is very important, suprpasses every dichotomy, and in particular, the dichotomy between Existence and Non-Existence

i just can't put the exact words on it, it can't be explained in normal words, The Void has to be experienced and only then does one understand ....

even though the story with the stones i held, is totally inexplicable, it opened my eyes and for a brief moment i understood!

all in all, considering my i nitial disappointment when i realised the whole thing was only a board game ... i can only speak positive of the whole experience ...

but i did had to do some thing on my own ... like walking in the garden and taking the initiative to play with those magic stones, to actually feel the wonders and miracles The Ultimate Cosmic Source is capable of rendering,

this means that part of The Source lies within each of us and can be unleashed ..

exaclty how it came to be was a total surprise for me ...

as with the game, which was played with dice, meaning coincidence had a lot to do with it ...
so did my experience, because if, in the spur of the moment, if i hadn't picked up and played with those stones i would never have experienced thsi magical moments ..

that is something which my normally very rational mind has still difficulties with ...

i used to neverf believe in coincidence but boy, i do now!

all in all i would rate my experioence with The Transformation game very good, but only because i took initiatives on my own ...

thanks for reading

this concludes my writings about my trip to The Netherlands and the spiritual workshop !

Light and Love

Betty Donelly