If anyone had told me that the root cause of a crippling belief hidden away in my unconscious could be uncovered and transformed in a short thirty minute phone session with Dr. Laurie Moore, I would never have believed them. However, that is exactly what happened.

I met with Dr. Moore because I have suffered from guilt and shame for years because I believed I failed as a mother with my youngest of three sons. He has told me that he believes I am missing the ‘mommy gene’. I don’t meet his criteria for showing up as a good mother, mother-in-law or grandma.

I was a single parent for most of his childhood. There wasn’t much time to bond with any of my sons because I had to work full time. Of the three boys, he seemed to march to a different drummer, and he still does. We haven’t been able to reach agreement about much of anything. The breach between us has grown wider as he has grown up, married and had a family. What has made it even more heartbreaking for me is that they have my only two grandchildren, whom I see rarely, if at all.

I have read dozens of books dealing with family psychology, spiritual transformation, and forgiveness in my attempt to figure it all out. I’ve taken classes and attended seminars dealing with self-healing and communication issues. I haven’t been able to make any of the teachings work in this situation.

Just prior to my session with Dr. Laurie, I was at the end of my rope, so to speak. I hadn’t spoken to him in over a year. I would have given anything in the world to be able to be at peace with our relationship. However, going into the session I wasn’t holding much hope that it would eliminate my suffering. She surprised me right at the beginning by skipping my whole sordid story and asking me to simply identify my feelings about the breach with my son and his family. This was a new approach for me because I spend most of my time in my head and have difficulty even identifying my feelings. I’ve spent a lifetime stuffing them because of my fear of disapproval and rejection.

Dr. Laurie has the ability to create a very safe space for her clients. She calmly and gently encouraged me to locate the sadness, frustration, hopelessness in my body. It was amazing to me how quickly I felt it all in my solar plexus area. I felt nauseas and almost gagged. I was shocked that my body immediately reacted so strongly to my feelings. It was so unpleasant I didn’t want to stay there. Dr. Laurie calmly asked me to sit with it and in it and observe if it changed or moved at all.

After a few moments of sitting in it despite the nausea, the feeling shifted from mostly frustration to enormous grief and sadness. She asked me to feel the sadness as fully as possible and notice if it moved in my body. It felt immensely deep, dark and empty. As I allowed myself to feel the fullness of sadness and hopelessness over the shattered relationship, the grief and sadness moved into my heart. I felt as though my heart would break in pieces.

A panicky feeling then emerged. My fear was palpable that I would die if I tried to hold the visceral sense of sadness and hopelessness in my heart. Then a very strange thing occurred. I felt dead. I was cold and stiff. I felt the damp earth weighing down on me and pushing me deeper into the earth. I sensed that I was about to descend into a bottomless dark abyss.

Dr. Laurie asked if I would be willing to sit with the intense grief for awhile and see what might come up. At first I said I didn’t really think I could do that. It was actually becoming quite terrifying. I felt totally alone while descending into an endless inky darkness. My mind was frantically trying to understand if what I was experiencing was indeed my actual death. What would happen to me – my-self if I stayed with this feeling?

Would my life be over because I never got my son’s approval of me as a mother and grandmother? The answer came instantly. Not only would my life be over, but I was being condemned to the eternal darkness and separation of hell for failing to fulfill my only purpose for living, which was to be a good mother. My anguish was unbearable.

Everything was becoming blacker, cold and alienating in every way imaginable. I still had the sense that I could choose to escape the whole experience. However, I sensed it was of major importance that I stay and let go of any resistance. If I surrendered to the void, I would be giving up my sense of being a separate self and the awareness that “I am” an individual soul, conscious of my beingness.

Since I felt so hopeless about the situation, I resigned myself to my fate and accepted my sentence to eternal separation or annihilation for failing to be a good mother. It became even more black and cold and alienating in every way imaginable. Dr. Laurie assured me it was safe to feel the experience of a hellish separation for a little while. “Just be with it”, she said very calmly. I resigned myself to just be in it.

It was what she said next that broke me wide open. She quietly asked if I could think of this space as being “The Beloved”. As she said the words, “The Beloved”, a monumental shift occurred inside me. It felt miraculous. The cold endless blackness was instantly transformed into what felt like a warm, dark velvet cocoon that was completely secure and totally loving.

My mind was immediately confused because I couldn’t equate overwhelming love and peace existing in a total black nothingness. The Beloved Divine Presence was supposed to be all Light, not a black void. In my heart however, I was experiencing the endless void I’d always feared as being hell, as actually being the Divine Love of the All that Is. It was so wondrous that I dreaded the thought of any light interrupting this peaceful nothingness. Any light would interrupt the soft peace, introducing choice to the mind to separate things and judge them. In the warm, dark void every-thing was all one; and yet, there was no thing. Words do not or cannot describe this space of oneness filled with an infinite peace.

When Dr. Laurie gently suggested that I consider inviting my son into this peaceful no-thingness, I resisted the idea at first because I feared losing the wondrous peace I was experiencing. However, my fears evaporated almost instantly in the sea of calm I was floating in. As I thought of him he appeared in front of me smiling with eyes filled with love. We both recognized in that moment that our lives were perfect. We realized we were playing roles in this lifetime to teach us to love authentically. We laughed together at how well we are performing our roles as protagonists in our relationship. The whole idea of judging each other’s performance as mother or son seemed ridiculous. There was just great love and gratitude between us. At the same time I felt there was no separation between us.

As the session came to an end, I was speechless at first. I was stunned to realize I had been linking my children’s disapproval of me as a mother to being condemned to hell. With a belief like that I could never or would never be free of guilt and shame. It would always push me to play the victim to their demands, craving their approval.

Dr. Laurie suggested that it’s probable that my belief that a woman is only valued if she is a good wife and mother is an ancestral one. Societies and religions have implanted this belief in women for centuries. Many women now and in past generations may believe the guilt and shame is theirs alone. They don’t realize it may be linked to the belief that they deserve God’s judgment. It is buried so deeply in the unconscious that it is nearly impossible to access it. Thankfully, Dr. Laurie’s guidance through the process enabled me to feel safe enough to delve into my deeper feelings, face the fear of total rejection and go into the dark void. I was guided throughout to get out of my head, or ego mind, and experience how my suffering thoughts affect my body.

I don’t think it is possible to access the void of no-thingness and experience the Truth through the ego mind. Our resistance to feeling our deepest fears is too great. But with Dr. Laurie’s encouragement to experience my feelings in my body, I was able to face the fear and descend into that dark void (which I had considered evil or hell). I absolutely had to experience the separation of hell in order to experience it being The Beloved.

Since being liberated from the crippling belief that I must have the approval of my sons to have favor with God, my view of my relationship with them and everyone else has shifted. I no longer judge any of it ‘good or bad’. It is all the One Infinite Presence. My only responsibility is to experience myself and everyone else as being one with that Presence.

As we play our human roles we are all perfect mirrors for one another to learn how to be whole. The frictions between us only reveal where we are out of alignment with the wholeness of our hearts. They are not intended to be excuses to judge and condemn each other. We are all connected in consciousness or spirit. There is no separation between our hearts.

Every time I catch myself thinking thoughts of separation, good, bad, right, wrong, ugly or beautiful, I go back to The Beloved beautiful black velvet void. I allow all those suffering thoughts to soak in that peaceful space of the velvet Oneness until they disappear.

I have a new and deeper understanding of Jesus’ words, “You shall know (experience) the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free”.

Shirley Hart
Author of Life Inside Out: Living From the Heart, Hay House