The 12 Veils of Forgetfulness
This is the second article in a series of 2. Read the first article here: Soul Hatching Meditation.
The Veils of Forgetfulness are the mental, emotional and energetic interferences that keep your programming running, veiling and interfering with your conscious connection to your Soul.
They were created during childhood and youth but can also be created in adulthood as the result of a trauma.
Either through conditioning or conclusion, you create these veils as protections to your Soul, to your Essence.
But once created, they become attached to your Primary Identity and become a mask that hides your Essence and pops up each time you want to connect to your Core Self.
How the Veils of Forgetfulness are Created
They are created in either of two ways:
- Someone —usually an adult (in childhood) or a person to whom you have conferred authority— convinces you to see yourself in certain way. This can be the way they see you or the way they believe you should see yourself in order to be good or successful.An example of this would be the mother that tells her daughter not to talk so proudly about an accomplishment because she is humiliating others, that this is arrogance and bad and that she should be humble. The daughter grows up judging herself each time she feels proud of her achievements and unable to “toot her own horn” —which now becomes an interfering with positioning herself in her career or accepting praise or compliments.
- You go through an experience that is traumatic to you and in your fear or desperation try to defend your Essence from harm by creating a belief or response that becomes ingrained in your subconscious. Whenever an event triggers this defense, it pops up; whether it is appropriate or effective or not.An example of this could be that your neighbors mock and look down upon you because of your race, accent or provenance. You decide that in order to protect your identity you need to guard yourself against this people. Years later you believe that you have outgrown this separation, but when you create your business you cannot seem to attract anyone who is not in your racial or ethnic group and you cannot expand your outreach. The underlying Veil of Forgetfulness is that segregation that is still labeling others as dangerous to your identity or enemies.
The 12 Types of Veils
These are the basic types of veils in more or less the order that they tend to show up, though the order may vary person to person or according to circumstances.
- Activation of the logical mind that tries desperately to control the situation, especially if it feels like a mystery, by figuring out how to do, what it is, etc. This becomes mental interference to you emptying your mind and connecting to your heart to listen to your Soul. Your Soul does not speak in logical terms. It speaks in silence and in what I have term the Infinite Whisper a small voice with infinite wisdom. As the logical mind can escalate, you get to the point that the logical mind is shouting and this makes it hard to hear the Infinite Whisper.
- Identity. Your Primary Identity resists quieting down and connecting to Soul because you are attached to the labels, judgments and limitations that prevent you from tapping into your Essence, Soul, potential or Divinity. The identity says that you are not that, cannot be or do that. Once you believe that it is not possible, your Reticular Activating System (RAS) closes your allowance to this experience because the RAS cannot let in any concept or reality that is not in agreement with your identity. You are left in the unenviable situation of defending yourself against your True Self and your very Soul in order to protect a False Identity you inherited from others.
- Distraction. The mind wonders to the past or the future or highjacks your attention or focus and starts wondering about those pretty flowers in the curtain. The mind is protecting you against the unknown, which in this case is your Sacred Self.
- Activation of your will power. This veil is linked to the first one. Once the logical mind starts figuring out how to “fix” that “problem”—whether there is in fact a problem or not— then your will power may get activated and you are propelled into action. The will turns on with great force because there is an underlying fear moving it into the Flight or Fight Response. There is a compelling need to do something about it. However, any action at this point actually blocks further insight, Soul sourcing, connection or discovery.
- Projection. You project your attention elsewhere. In women this tends to be on caretaking others. In men this tends to be something “useful” and “practical” like making money or fixing something in the house. This is a combination of the logical thought and distraction. As you release those veils and keep focusing on your connection to Soul, they then try to focus you on someone or something else.
- Body aches and discomfort. You nose starts to itch, your shoulders hurt, your leg goes to sleep. You get hungry or thirsty. You need to go to the bathroom. As you keep releasing the urge for distraction it is displaced from the mental realm to the physical realm. (Sometimes it can be the other way around.)
- Fear. As you dive deeper into the emptiness and silence that is the territory of your Soul, there is a sense of dissolution of the self (though it is only the dissolution of your Social Self or Primary Identity, you have attached this to your identity and therefore the experience is one of dissolving.) Fears flares up as the self feels threatened.
If you can sustain your Soul Hatching Meditation past this point, you begin your surrendering and your “descent” into your Soul or Essence. At this point a different quality of veils shows up.
Though items 8-10 are not properly veils, they become veils if they distract you from your deeper connection to Soul.
- Flood of Insights. Once emptiness is reached, the doors are opened to your creative genius. You are now probably in a state of Alpha-Theta, which is the threshold to trance. The mind is open and a flood of insights and revelations rushes in. There is a tendency to “do something” about it or at least to write them down before you forget. But movement at this point interrupts the process.
- Conversely, the deep relaxation may lead to sleep. It may be that your body is tired. We often push ourselves beyond what is good for our physical body because we are living in the mind. Then we sit down to meditate and the minute we relax, we fall asleep. But it may also be an escape mechanism. While falling asleep does not interrupt the flow, it takes you from Alpha-Theta into Delta, and you will lose awareness of what is going on and will not remember it later.
- Imagination. As you begin to feel who you are as the dream, purpose or potential you were searching for outside you, then again your creative genius is activated and your imagination opens like Niagara Falls. You begin to visualize the possibilities. Once this happens, your psyche wants to build a story around this. Even imagination, as good and creative as it is, steals the experience that is the most powerful source of embodiment in the present.
- Time/Urgency. By now you may have spent 10 to 20 minutes going deeper and you may have “nothing” to show for that time. the mind urges you to “get on with the day.” It reminds you of your to-do list and you become impatient with the practice and distracted.
- The Knot. If you persist in the Soul Hatching Meditation, you connect your conscious awareness and sense of self to your Soul. At that moment, you experience that you are your dream. You feel your purpose as who you are, as a love that emanates from the core of your being to the world. You access your potential as an organic expression of your Essence, and this is all experienced as being present in you now, just as you are, with ease and grace. With clarity, simplicity and elegance you comprehend and experience who you are as your dream and how you have all you need to create it. Sometimes all of your scattered and fragmented life experiences fall into place to reveal the perfect design and blueprint that makes you perfect for your purpose just as you are right now.
It is at this point that the Psychic Knot that holds the flow of Divinity in your Sacred Self emerges into the foreground. You experience and see the interferences, beliefs, attitudes or avoidance that keeps you from fully embodying your purpose or potential. You are able to see these interferences —which were invisible to you before— because you have Detached from the Veils of Forgetfulness created to cover your Sacred Self.
If you then rush to “fix” this, interpret it as a defect and start to judge yourself or give in to the logical mind or will power that wants to do something about it right now —then your highjack the deep experience of your Core Wound.
As you go through your Core Wound, you may experience what I call a Subatomic Restructuration —a spontaneous healing and restructuring of your energy patterns. This may show up as a Neurogenic Tremor. The body shakes from the inside out, involuntarily —which releases the built up energy and tension held in the muscles and connective tissues of the body. This shaking is the body’s innate response to calm down the body when it is traumatized or overexcited.
Any of these experiences may scare you and you may stop just at the deepest, most powerful moment in the Soul Hatching Meditation.
But if you keep surrendering and connecting at this moment, you transverse that Core Wound and arrive at the deep core of your Soul. Then your Soul Song rises and flows in you and through you and you experience its full potency.
It may be that for many days, weeks or months your practice does not go through the 12 Veils of Forgetfulness. It all depends on how much personal growth process you have done, how deeply you have been traumatized, how safe you feel now and other factors. It is important that you do not judge yourself. In fact, you can start with this statement.
Even though I am not deeply aware of my Soul’s Song right now and may not hear it today, I love and accept myself unconditionally, without judgment just as I am right now.
As you say this you may tap the “karate chop” inner edge of your hand.
This will calm your flight or fight response and place you in a zone of Unconditional Love.
Eventually, you may experience a couple of seconds, perhaps a couple of minutes of your Soul Song before the Veils start circling again.Enjoy it, but do not try to retain it or possess it.
The more you practice the more you will become conscious of your Soul’s Song and it will become the compass to your days. You will experience your dream as a part of you that wants to be expressed in the world and you will embody your purpose with ease and grace.
That’s why the Soul Hatching Meditation is worth your time and effort.
More in the Soul Hatching Series:
Story: The Veils, the Shadows and the Swan
