My journey with the mantra Aham Prema, “I Am Divine Love,” continues, pulling me deeper within to examine the origins of fears that hold back the full light of the divine self. Love’s opposite is not hate, but fear. Hate and all its friends are byproducts of fear.

In the first post I wrote about working with the Aham Prema mantra, I talked about the constriction I felt in my throat. The journey through this pathway to the voice of inner truth continues. Almost every night I note in my journal some point of evidence about my throat being worked like a muscle. I also make note of the sensations felt in my heart and third eye chakras. The heart feels as though it wants to be free of another barrier, while the brow seeks the expansion of the inner light.

In my Silent Eye School of Consciousness studies, I am working with the energy of the inner fugitive, an aspect of the self that can reside in a habitual state of fear and hiding. The mantra Aham Prema adds to the intensity of the work, pulling me into depths I have, I realize, avoided exploring. I will call this place terror: that aspect of extreme fear that holds the tightest binds around the true-self. Irrational terror, if one considers only this lifetime, but I cannot.

The signs are too many. They appear everywhere. One day, while I walk, I see the number 6, where the inner fugitive likes to reside on the Enneagram, in a murder of crows. Another day, it appears as a bevy of doves. My dreams at night bring me deeper, pulling me to places of extremes to test the reins of fear binding the fugitive-self. One night, while I am on a ship being pulled underwater, I realize I am no longer afraid of “drowning.” Yet, in the same night, I find myself cowering away from an archway of the gods filling the sky with its awesome presence. One glance tells me I haven’t reached faith without doubt of the divine.

Aham Prema. “I Am Divine Love.” To open the light within, one must also surrender to the light without, knowing that when the reins of fear are broken there is no division.

When I go to sleep after day 7 of working with the mantra, I dream of artichokes in muffins presented by Sue Vincent, my mentor. Later,  Eagle appears. Eagle has been a faithful and revelatory guide for many years. Years ago, Eagle brought me the vision of a past life that is significant to this journey.

By day 10 I start to succumb to a cold virus which, it will be no surprise, begins with a sore throat before it works its way to the sinuses, causing pain from the pressure built up in my temples and forehead. From here it travels down the channel of the throat into the heart chakra where the lungs start to fill with fluid residue.

Later in the day, I see 6 crows in the sky, circling and calling out.

In the evening, I go into a meditation and find I am pulled into the forest nearby my house, to a place I have not walked in years. It is a path lined with evergreens. Years ago, when I first walked the path with my late dog Daisy, my mind brought me to a recurring nightmare from childhood. The dream was of sheer terror, and each night it would wake me at the same moment when the voice of fear tried to escape from my throat. It was a dream of fleeing through a forest of pines which, I later discovered through meditation and healing work, held the imprint of terror from a past life when I tried to flee from the Nazis through an evergreen woods. During my meditation, waves of healing pass through me as my body begins to release the binds of its terror.

When I later fall into sleep , Daisy visits me in a dream. My beloved companion who taught me that forests are places of magic and elemental love, and not to be feared, has returned for a night.

On day 11 I cannot practice the 54 repetitions I have been chanting every night.  My throat is too sore, and my body is beyond fatigued. I need to rest.

And so I find myself at the edge of faith with my soul asking me, Will you release the residue of fear that remains to open fully to the Light? Will you stand naked to Love in the arms of Faith?