Laura Ann, Again you have described something very familiar. I was a certified spiritual healing counselor for a number of years. The program was originally developed by Dennis and Rita Bennett as part of their Charismatic Episcopal Ministry in Seattle. An important exercise was to visualize yourself in a relaxing spot like a beach or Alpine meadow. As you sit there enjoying the peace and solitude noticing the smell of the air and the warmth of the sunlight you notice a figure slowly approaching. As he gets closer you realize it is Jesus. He looks at you intently and embraces you and sits down next to you. What do you say to him? What does he say to you? Can you see the two of yourselves together? What does it look like? How does he see you? Etc.
Recently I realized that in all the years I participated as either a counselor or trainee, I rarely saw myself in the picture. Jesus' face and expression were clear and I felt the comfort of his embrace and tacit understanding and love, but my image was too fuzzy to be seen-almost like a person far in the distance. You know that person is human, but can discern nothing else. I had no sense of old or young, male or female, tall or short, fat or thin, just that there was a person in the picture who I knew to be me, but who could not be made out. Others did not seem to have that problem. I have begun to realize that the difficulty was in the fact that I was trying to see the man the world thought me to be, the man I was trained and conditioned to see myself as. But he wasn't there. I thought it was some defect in my visualization skills that others did not seem to have difficulty with.
When I have repeated the exercise recently, I see a little wide eyed blonde haired girl of no more than 9 or 10 trembling in Jesus' embrace and silently sobbing. He says nothing, just holds me in his comforting arms and I feel safe. For too much of my life I not only hid my identity from the world, I buried it so deeply within myself that I did not even know it was there much of the time. The murkiness of my vision was a reflection that I did not even see who I really was. Now that I do the world is so much brighter, the possibilities are endless, I know who I am. I have found my way home to myself.
