By Mickel Z. Adzema
JUST A MEMBRANE AWAY (February 8, 1992)
An important thing that happened during the holotropic session was that after experiencing sperm feelings, and going into the egg, and the egg swirling around . . . in the beginning there was a lot of heavy duty nausea, a lot of it. I was very sick. I felt like I remember being sick like that at certain times of my life, and I just wanted to die. And I felt like I was back there at the beginning of life and feeling how shitty it is to be physical, right from the beginning . . . and feeling like: yes, this is what characterizes the physical plane; physicality just feels sickening. . . . Other things that happened: I got a glimpse into some primordial evil. At one point I started to feel real powerful, and there was a series of images of war in my consciousness. And I could understand how people could murder and rape because it was so powerful to be caught up in stuff like that rather than to feel the pain of the body. And it dawned on me that I could easily have been murdering and raping in other lifetimes and that other people do also.
And it's got to do with how we come into this life and there's all this pain in the physical body, and we act it out in all kinds of ways, including getting caught up in wars and things which are just this hyped-up organized energy which seems better than feeling the pain. And that was a pretty grisly area to look at about physicality and the horror that exists in it.
I also realized that I was feeling tremendously exhausted going through the sperm . . . egg . . . and I was having some zygote feelings for the first time. I was feeling like I was multiplying. At one point I felt as though I were trying to connect with the uterine wall and all kinds of things like that. There were, occasionally, good feelings, but mostly it was pretty uncomfortable and not nice.
One thing that occurred to me: Of course I want to transcend the physical plane! I said when I introduced myself in the go-around before the workshop that I'd done this hundreds of times in the last twenty years; and I've been born literally into hundreds of lives, and I'm tired of coming here and feeling this pain. And it occurred to me that that is what Baba is doing to me -- having me get right to the core of understanding pain, so I can decide finally to give up this addiction to the physical plane and stop coming back here. At one point, for example, at the end, it occurred to me like Baba said: ``It's a prison.''
After the sperm and egg feelings, and the egg getting nauseated going down the fallopian tube, and the conception feelings, I was having these feelings that were like cells multiplying. I was feeling like a zygote and my hands were going out, taking things in and throwing things out. I was thinking how everything in my life is a reenactment of these early things, like right down to the tiniest things like taking tissues in and throwing phlegm out while I'm lying here in this workshop. . . .
I did have a lot of opening and closing of my legs also. I even had some egg-welcoming-the-sperm feelings at the same time as I was feeling like I wanted something, I wanted to reach out and hug the music because it was so beautiful. And the movements of my hands made me realize I was like the egg pulling in the sperm. I had an insight into how the egg wanted to unite with the sperm and what it's like to want to unite with something -- to have something wonderful on this physical plane with all this pain . . . that there are some things that you want, and that's why the egg pulls the sperm in. . . .
Finally, towards the end, music came up that made me really cry. And it had to do with feeling or thinking about all the people in my life and all their pain . . . and my pain, but mostly theirs, and all the people that are sad. I had a strong sense of connection and caring for them. I couldn't believe how much caring I had inside of me. It was a real juicy feeling. I felt like I was feeling something fundamental, like when I was a kid. . . .
And that's how it felt, that's how it felt when I was a kid before I had to shut down because the pain was overwhelming. It's just too overwhelming to see people like my father and my mother, my brother Chuckie, all these people in my life who have so much pain. . . .
Another thing I was thinking about in the course of my session was what good work this is and how -- regardless of what I had been thinking about it when I was doing it with Stan Grof a couple of weeks ago -- I feel like this is certainly taking me to all kinds of goddamn places. It's certainly getting me past where I was in Primal, getting me beyond that; so certainly it's damn good stuff. . . .
THE IMPLICATE ORDER AS UTERINE WALL (February 9, 1992)
This seemed to reflect exactly what the situation would have been on the cellular level. It's possible this was indicating that I as a zygote was trying to implant into the cellular wall and found no response, found it to be difficult, and that the uterine wall was unresponsive.
This relates to how I perceive my mother to have probably been emotionally unresponsive to my needs and my desires to connect with her. This relates to my feelings of total despair when I'm unable to get through to Mary Lynn, and also to my feelings of despair and agony in not being able to get through to my family -- who can now be seen as reflecting these various cells that I'm trying to connect with.
THE SOUND OF CREATION, or, ``TIS BLISS TO EXIST'' (April 28, 1992)
And then it was shortly after that that I recognized certain egg feelings. Again I was feeling this deliciousness, a feeling of attraction and desiring, just loving everything, loving the music, and my hands were going out to the sides. I was going into all kinds of opening and closing movements, almost like a sea creature or sea vegetable. My hands were going all kinds of ways, like a floating movement; but then I became centered on these egg movements, like bringing in, and my body came together this one time very much like what Farrant talks about when he describes bringing your arms together and bringing the egg in; and so there was that kind of a thing going on.
And after a while I was lying there and I felt rather round; I was feeling amazingly round. And I remember the last thing -- when I was feeling like I was the egg -- my hands went out to the sides and I was waving them up and down. And it was this amazing feeling of softness in my hands. It was like I was in an altered state, hard to describe.
But I began to feel like I was switching into a different mode of consciousness, like I was on a strange drug, or I was becoming a different kind of a creature.
But then after that there was this sensation of feeling very big, very round rather. And then it was just these small movements in my hands, and my hands reaching out and putting something back, reaching out and putting something back; and it was going on in my hands and my legs.
And that went on for a little while, and then it started to get more and more. A lot of it was the music, like wanting to take in the music. Or I was doing it in tune with the music, like I was this pulsating one-celled animal.
And then the most amazing part of it was that as this one-celled animal I was expanding, getting bigger. It was a wonderful feeling, and there was also a sense of power. It was a beautiful feeling, and then this piece of music came on with a sense of power to it.
I was reaching my hands and legs in four directions, like reaching out, reaching out my hands and my feet. And I realized that this was my bliss in life, this sense of reaching out and expanding, getting to know more and more, getting to be more and more, getting to be more and more creative in more directions. This is the bliss that I follow, and it's making me happier and happier in my life right now. . . .
And after a while I went into a period where I felt like I didn't want to be on my back, and I went to one corner of the mat. And I told myself it was because it was wet where I'd been, but I went to one corner and I lay on my side.
And all of a sudden that made sense. My hands were moving like little fetal hands; and I was still feeling blissful. In fact I was thinking: ``I don't want to become a big baby and have BPM II*.'' I just wanted to stay a fertilized egg. But I noticed that even as a fetus I was still grocking and digging and having a great time; and the music was still wonderful and I was still floating around. I still had movement in my hands and in my body to go with the music, to just groove with the rhythms of existence. And I felt like I was getting bigger. It seemed like I was going through a stage where I was really fetal, on my side. But then I felt the need to get up on my knees. And there was this really strong compulsion to get, like, on my head, to have my head down, and to have all the weight in my neck.
And when I did that finally -- and it took me a while to get into that position, because it felt like the confines of gravity were working against me -- I just wanted to tumble! But I couldn't do that because I wasn't in a gravityless situation. But eventually when I did get into that position it felt very right. And that was pretty good, too, but it was kind of cramped. And so I eventually stopped -- it was too painful to maintain very long. . . .
And I began to realize that the fertilized egg knows somehow that it's reaching out to everyone else in the universe, even when it's just a fertilized egg. It's reaching out because it knows the bliss of connecting with others. And the mandala that I envisioned would just be these cells multiplying outward with these snakelike arms reaching out in several directions to spin oneself around, or to reach out for more, or to just reflect the sensuous wonderful feeling of being alive and growing. . . .
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*BPMs are basic peri-natal matrices and refer to Dr. Stanislav Grof's division of the stages of birth and around birth and their related psychopathological syndromes.