It was about 3 weeks after I started DNRS. My main form of incremental training (one of the 5 pillars of the program is to do a small amount of an activity or exposure that would normally trigger slight symptoms, followed by the practice to redirect the neural pathways to healthy ones), was taking a walk. Walking, was, shall we say, uncomfortable and extremely anxiety provoking to my brain at the time (this is putting it very mildly). I had been very slowly working on getting my brain to accept a solid mile of walking, utilizing the principle of DNRS that we can focus intensely on something else (positive) in the environment so the brain is occupied and unable to send false messages of illness to the body.
This particular walk started out no different. I did my practice round and headed out for a walk. I got a little farther than I had been going previously and my brain was putting up quite a fuss despite my attempts to stay focused. But this day, I got far enough to see the trees, about a mile away, that surrounded my favorite park and pond, a place I hadn’t been to in months on my own steam and desperately desired to return to. That was it. I made my choice. Without a single thought, with complete faith in the intensity of my desire, I kept straight ahead.
It felt like trying to hold a wobbly boulder over my head to focus enough on the music in my ears and the splendor of the trees to the point that my brain couldn’t register sensations or anxiety. But by the time I reached the tree that had called my name and hooked me by the soul, I had that boulder freely suspended over me and felt nothing but an intense silence, a radiance that extended in about a half mile radius around me. The focus of my attention was so completely outside my body that I could not just hear but feel the joy of the children playing on the playground across the pond, the birds flying over head, and the radiant life of the earth awakening on a spring day. And that was it. Pure bliss, pure silence. I made it home, utterly mind blown at the bliss that could be found when my focus was so intense in every nanosecond- I never heard that part of this song before! The intricacies, the details, when I forcefully brought ALL of my attention into this moment, on how my heart, soul, and brain felt to be filled with such beauty as I had surely never experienced before in my life. What is this? This superpower?
I remember that evening, just contemplating how I had more that doubled my mileage in one day and yet had a more blissful experience whilst doing so than any walk prior to that. This was the defining moment when I learned, through experience, what I had been told on the DNRS DVDs – limits only exist in the mind. Even when it comes to the body, limits only exist in the mind. And we can choose to override them, to let them go.
Beyond whatever limit you may be facing right, is you. When you reach beyond, under, behind, around, you find there is always something there to catch you, and it’s you. Your own spirit, your own desire to move beyond, is literally the only thing, the one key, that makes doing so possible. To create a wholly different experience of life, and thus – a whole different life. The essence of who YOU are is joy, love, peace, bliss. When you lean upon that, and your desire to move forward, to reach your worthy goal, you can fly.
This experience of intense focus and bliss during my walks soon became my norm. Every leaf, flower, and ray of light in my neighborhood became sacred and precious to me. I could feel the energy of the trees, their beauty, ancientness, the way they pointed to God, not just enduring all weather, but showing a unique radiance in every season, whether winter, showing their strong skeletons of trunk, occasionally dusted in white, the heavenly glory of spring, or the calm soothing abundant green of summer.
I felt at times like I actually lived in Narnia; it no longer seemed fictional. On one particular day awareness dawned that this, this world of magic, glory, and bliss – this is real, this is the only thing that can last for all eternity. Evil and negativity, by their very definition, imply a lack of real ness, a lack of existence (think of the mathematical definition of a negative). But this? This absolute fairy land I am floating through right now? This is always here, just waiting for me to grow the eyes to see it. It was always be here, totally reliable. My fundamental worldview shifted. The world is soft, welcoming, abundant, rejoicing and delighting in its Creator and inviting us to do the same.
I also learned on the deepest level, what it means to let go. I found that I left behind thinking, everything familiar, everything ego related – fear, victimhood, anger, grudges, pride – but ultimately, I gained complete freedom, utter peace, the REAL ME, endless joy and love. A sense of always being satisfied and at peace, free to create, to love, to wonder and marvel to my heart’s content – literally. I looked around wondering why people kept getting upset about everything they couldn’t control, fretting over that which was not in their power. At the same time I recognized that what I had found was possible for any human being, and every person I saw was powerful, capable, limitless, endlessly beautiful, totally lovable. I stopped being afraid of people, because I could now see them through the eyes of love, they could no longer hurt me – I had taken my power back and in doing so handed the power of each person I encountered back to them.
After experiences like this, whenever someone prefaces a statement with “You’re not going to believe this”, I just think, “Try me.”
The Eye of the Needle 