Exploration Essence® Impressions

by Eva E. Lange, MD, PhD
Winter/Spring 2005

Eva Lange is an endocrinologist, hypnotherapist, and bioenergy therapist and has received training in alternative medicine from Norman Shealy, MD, PhD. She practices the model of whole person caring. Paying attention to the spiritual aspects of healing and dying and creating a healing environment are for her the most important parts of the medical art. Eva has been a TMI Professional Member since 1995.

My last four years were fully devoted to the integrative work of bringing lasting peace (presence) to my everyday life. Taking care of my elderly, disabled mother 24/7 is not just physically exhausting. The task also involves daily confrontations with behavioral patterns faithfully downloaded to us through the genetic line by our parents. Preserving one’s inner peace under such extreme circumstances is a formidable challenge. The pressure of such situations can trigger a “crash” and yet also presents ample opportunity for transcendence. Feeling that I was more likely to crash than to transcend, I signed up for EXPLORATION ESSENCE .

The TMI program setting of group energy focused on the same spiritual goal creates enormous uplifting power for transformation and transcendence. In particular, EXPLORATION ESSENCE’s design and goal are perfectly aimed at bringing inner presence into lives of daily turmoil, which are very common nowadays. Did the program meet my expectations? Way beyond!

I know that the Universe will bring me exactly what I need, nothing less. But EXPLORATION ESSENCE. brought me much more than I thought possible. To be truthful, I must admit that all the residential programs I have attended and all the Personal Resource Exploration Program (PREP) sessions I have experienced brought me unimaginable gifts. However, this time a profound shift occurred, allowing the essence to arise fully and opening a clear communication with my physical, emotional, and mental bodies.

Suitable descriptive words are hard to find because labeling distorts the reality of the experience. It is worthwhile to mention, however, that as the presence fully arises one is able to infuse words with essence and the truth comes through. Not all is lost in the translation from energy to words. Let the words then describe EXPLORATION ESSENCE.

After we all arrived on Saturday, I discovered that six of us were from the September 2004 TIMELINE and several others had taken different programs together. In an hour or two we were like one integrated energy ball. Our trainers, Karen Malik and Peter Russell , were closely aligned and at ease with each other. They joined in with us immediately. Then they took the lead and, boy, what masterful guidance!

Saturday night and all day Sunday exercises to reset Focus 10, 12, 15, and 18, as well as guided meditations, brought me peace—more and more peace and a lucid, alert mind. In Focus 18 I felt extensive pain in my right leg, injured in the past and not yet returned to full health. Still, profound peace was all-pervading and the sensation of pain was not disturbing. The latter was a new experience to me, like observing the pain and not owning it, just witnessing it without emotional baggage.

On Monday, Karen and Peter did live guided experiences of Focus 21, Free Flow, and Focus 27. Prior to listening, we discussed the descent of the spirit from an Absolute to physical reality and the ascent back to one’s Essence in the process of self-realization. Most of us know or have heard about the process of returning to the Source, but here we were being spoon-fed that knowledge in an irresistible fashion while retaining full freedom to accept it or not.

In Focus 21 I was in peace—profound peace and awareness of my right leg’s pain, though without attachment to the pain. Meditation brought me more peace. One starts wondering how much more peace one can experience! In Focus 27 I felt the ever-growing presence (peace) and, contained in it, love and compassion for my hip with gentle attention to the pain. I perceived my hip not as an obstacle to growth but as an opportunity for accelerating it by keeping me in touch with my essence—forcing me to stay in the here and now. For the first time, I sensed the sacredness of my pain and physical infirmity.

Tuesday we focused on deep meditative work. We were encouraged to ask such questions as “Who am I?” “Who has these ideas, these thoughts?” “Who or what is aware?” In Focus 15, Peter guided us in a live meditation that I was in profound peace all the way through. Given a vision of an owl catching a mouse and flying away with it, my peace remained unaffected. I was a nonattached witness of the event. During a guided meditation led by Karen, I again experienced deep peace.

A Focus 27 exercise was designed for exploring the essential qualities of love, compassion, kindness, joy, courage, strength, freedom, and peace. I knew those qualities without any accompanying emotion because of my state of profound peace. For example, when the quality of joy was presented I knew I was joy and immersed in joy but did not feel emotion. Instead, I perceived an increasing flow of energy, increasing peace, and the strength of my Being. The pain of my right hip disappeared completely for the exercise’s duration.

The evening meditation, guided by Peter, was remarkable in its focus on allowing curiosity to arise and work. Questions like “What else didn’t I notice within my body?” “What else is waiting to express itself?” were pondered. This meditation turned out to be an excellent means of communication with my body. The body responded to my curiosity by releasing all spasms and tension. Peter suggested that we also extend our curiosity toward mind. How were our minds feeling—clear, dull, busy, or tense? I observed my mind in profound peace and nonattachment, the state of full presence.

Wednesday was a day for addressing our emotions. We were to work with personality overlays created in response to life experiences and conditioning by the ego. As every TMI program participant knows, this is frequently the toughest task. But we had a most powerful ally at our side: our rising essence made the task less painful, much easier to carry on, and at the end quite fun. The first step was to list limiting thoughts brought in by our inner judge or superego in response to the hurts and injuries of physical existence. I felt anger mixed with despair in facing my mother’s “poor me” attitude. I condensed my complaints to a few lines: “I am helpless,” “Take care of me,” “Be good to me,” and “Your weakness is killing me.” We worked in pairs. My partner repeated those statements and I answered them until I felt peaceful and at ease with an issue. Then we switched roles. It was powerful work and released a lot of stored emotions. We remained in silence throughout the afternoon break, a practice that assisted me in building a new communication link with my subconscious mind.

A live exercise at 4:00 P.M. helped in our search for guidance aimed at discerning the sources of our inner voices. The inner voice may come from essence or from ego. Usually the voice of ego speaks about taking action. The voice of wisdom is quite different. It comes to us with shifting of our viewpoint and seeing reality from a different angle.

As I moved through the Focus 15 portion of a Focus 27 exercise, I had a vision of several military horses with blankets on their backs wandering among dead soldiers at dawn on a battlefield. There was no emotion, only witnessing. In Focus 27 I said to myself: “Take care of me. I am helpless.” Is there any other way of looking at this statement and situation? Immediately I knew it was my hip speaking, for I saw a fleeting vision of John and Paul (fellow participants) working on my hip earlier. With that realization, I started feeling overwhelming heat over my entire body.

The heat lasted for the remainder of the exercise. Knowing deep compassion for my hip was the core of that experience. I considered my mother’s rheumatoid arthritis that disables her right hip the most of all her joints and the similarity with my injured right hip. We expressed the same pattern of rebellion against outside authorities and were, of course, helpless in that endeavor. The egoic pattern we expressed proved to be too much of an obstacle for me to overcome without the assistance of my fully arisen essence.

On Thursday we discussed the qualities of personal essence and merging with ego to subordinate it to essence. The discussion was followed by a meditation guided by Karen. The main theme was “What are you experiencing now?” Peace was all-pervading. My body was sound asleep; it slumped in the chair. My mind was fully alert. I stated my issue again: “Take care of me. I am helpless.” Peace deepened even more. No emotions were expressed. I perceived presence and the alignment of my four bodies—spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. Peter then read selected spiritual sayings from The Impersonal Life, written eighty years ago by an anonymous author. It was the perfect conclusion to a very satisfying session.

The rest of that morning was filled with a long exercise that stopped at Focus 12, Focus 15, and Focus 21 before ending in Focus 27. Karen and Peter took turns in guiding us through the tape. It was absolutely stunning! In Focus 12 I saw clay busts of many of my fellow participants. The finest and clearest bust was of Karen, looking very much alive and ready to move. Focus 15 and Focus 21 were suffused with profound peace. In Focus 27 my physical body started talking to me. Every fiber was vibrating, itching, twinkling, tingling, or moving in order to get my attention. My right leg became restless and painful. Then suddenly all was quiet and the pain was gone. My body tossed and turned in the CHEC unit while my mind rested in profound peace. I knew my body was releasing repressed emotions.

A PREP session with Skip on Thursday was the crowning event of the program for me. The session in the TMI isolation booth put me in touch with clear guidance, addressed my questions and doubts, and filled me with light. I feel compelled to provide some details. While expanding my heart in Focus 18, I felt scars in my physical heart dissolving while love and compassion poured in. Once again, only pure knowing was perceived, without emotion. After a while, the pain in my right hip intruded and then switched on and off. I asked why this was so and intuited that mother and I were aggravating each other’s pain. Skip instantly said he was taking me to Focus 21. Profound peace returned as soon as I arrived there.

I saw a very clear and colorful vision of the Gettysburg battlefield viewed from the ridge where Confederate batteries were located. The field below was illuminated by light from the noonday sun. Masses of dead soldiers covered the field. Zooming in like a camera, I saw a close-up of corn, grass, and soil. All was soaked in blood—literally dripping. At that moment the light over the field intensified. The light began to shimmer very fast and suddenly the whole mass of white-gold light moved toward me. It engulfed and filled me completely. I felt enormous power within and around me. Then knowing came: the sacrificial blood of all the fallen soldiers had transformed into light and engulfed me. It was as if I were literally feeding on light. In that instant Skip said, “Now you know you can live on light.” That had been my question for some time. I met someone who has lived on light for several years. I needed confirmation from Essence on whether I was ready for a shift from material nutrition to nutrition by light. Well, I received a clearer answer than I had expected.

The logistics and technical aspects of surrendering to light are not important at this time. I am confident that I will be guided step-by-step with perfect timing. The Universe will provide the opportunity for me to spend three weeks in seclusion in order to focus inward. Meanwhile, Skip took me to Focus 27 where I came to realize how sacred Gettysburg and other battlefields of the world are. They are temples of the transformation of flesh and blood to light. All those soldiers, masses of them, had not died wastefully. Their sacrifice transformed to light that feeds and sustains us. That’s why crowds visit those places. Whether the visitors realize it or not, they are nourished there. Now I can understand fully why in Poland, my motherland, places of sacrifice and martyrdom have always been considered worthy of care, honor, and homage. The more open and allowing we are, the more easily that gift of sacrifice can transform us into our true nature—essence arisen. We Beings of LIGHT are naturally sustained by LIGHT.

For me the battlefield sacrifice also makes reference to the redemption of humanity by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. For the redeeming power of Christ comes from his body and blood transformed to light. That transformation is the basis of the Eucharist, the most holy sacrament of the Christian Church.

As examples of how the TMI experience lasts far beyond the programs, I cite two events. The first was a Metropolitan Opera performance of La Clemenza di Tito that I saw shortly after EXPLORATION ESSENCE. This is Mozart’s next-to-last work and for me it is musical perfection. The performance was choreographed, directed, and conducted superbly. The vocal and acting skill of the cast were equally impressive. Suddenly I saw the whole production in a totally different light, as an archetypal play of characters and roles in which everybody but Titus, emperor of Rome (endowed with arisen essence), wore the heavy masks of their outer image, hiding an inner turmoil of contradictory emotions. The opera magnified the EXPLORATION ESSENCE work on the overlays of personality and ego. Titus suffered the consequences of his court members’ immature games. He had to forgive one after another for their childish and destructive behavior. It was a stunningly clear allegory of the human condition. Mozart’s music reached the summit pointing to all the emotions and words—literally shouting out their meaning!

The second event was a phone call almost a week later from a friend in New Jersey. She had learned that I was seeking someone to help care for my mother. A friend of hers was looking for a permanent position as a live-in maid. It was exactly what I had been trying to arrange for several months.

I thank all members of the EXPLORATION ESSENCE group simply for being themselves and for renaming me Profound Peace, for it really means One With Essence, whereas Eve or Eva in the popular understanding depicts falling out of touch with Essence (Paradise Lost). Thanks to Karen and Peter for being who they are—All That Is.

© 2005 by The Monroe Institute