My Avatar Experience

by Dan Ecklund, MD

About a month ago I sat down and stretched. My hand contacted a magazine under the couch, and I pulled it out. Avatar Journal. Oh, yes, I had heard of Avatar several years ago. I was then faced with the possibility of divorce and got some life-changing direction from some people who turned out to have taken Avatar. Something about, “What kind of belief would you have to have to experience what you are experiencing...?” But at the time the cost seemed prohibitive.

As I read through the magazine, I had the strong impression that this was now something I was ready to do. I looked up Avatar on the Internet (www.starsedge.com), and contacted Terry Taylor, a nine-year Avatar Master in the Florida panhandle. For $25, she sent me a pack of books and a tape that introduced Avatar.

The author, Harry Palmer, described the benefits of Avatar as an ability to examine your beliefs, and choose which ones you would like to keep to create the life you want, and to be rid of the beliefs that prevent you from having that life. Terry said that one of the steps in the course was to experience oneness with all, and if I were unsatisfied with my experience, I would get my money back. Hey, enlightenment with a money-back guarantee!
I told my boss that I was going to be gone for nine days, and three weeks later, I headed south to Florida.

Terry has a condo on the waterfront and also bought an adjoining condo to house Avatar students during the course. It was a delightful setting, a park next door, and another one within easy walking distance. Each day the three masters and five students would meet together in a group to do some exercises and then retire individually to the park to do others.

The first exercises were quite simple. So simple, in fact, that as I read about them, they seemed silly or inconsequential. Things like, “Walk around. Notice something. Notice something else.” Or, “Go for a walk. Notice forms (shapes). Count them.” Yeah, right. As if that is going to change my life.

I read Celestine Prophecy several times, but never did the suggested exercises—they were things like, “Sit and meditate on a plant until it glows. Eventually you will feel Oneness with the Universe.” Right! Enlightenment and peak experiences take lots of work, years of meditation, and people who think, like me, usually don’t get there. (My belief. Sorry, James Redfield.)

Anyway, I found myself walking around this tiny park looking at palm trees, sand burrs, motels, cars, cranes, seagulls and pelicans. Counting forms. How silly, I thought. But suddenly, the world shifted. The leaves of certain plants were glowing. Everything looked sharper, clearer. My mind shut down its incessant chatter. I felt light, aware, and (in spite of myself) really, really happy! I walked around, grinning, as if it were the Garden of Eden, and I were a new Adam. Then I floated across the parking lot into Terry’s condo. Jenny Fryer, Terry’s partner in delivering Avatar, looked at me and nodded. “I feel the change in you,” she said.

But then, I started on the second part and soon became stuck on one exercise. The female students in my group were at least a day ahead of me. For three days I repeated the exercise, and my two Masters lovingly sent me back to do it again and again. I imagined them saying, “You’re not good enough. You think you did it right, but you didn’t. Whatever you do won’t be good enough.”

All of my issues about rejection by women, not being able to do the right thing in spite of my best efforts, and feeling not good enough, came to the surface. Layer by layer, the Masters taught me how to let them go. I became angry, frustrated, and upset. Yet they smiled patiently and told me how to proceed. I would go outside, do the exercise, have a wonderful experience of bliss and peace, and then lose it all as my fears and rejection returned.
One morning I went to the beach to swim and meditate. Previously, I had seen fragments of jellyfish on the sand, but being a midwesterner, I had only read about jellyfish and never really experienced them. I had been thinking about them the day before, wishing that I could see some. As I waded into the cold water, I saw two species of jellyfish. One looked like a transparent pink saucer with a fringe of short, dark tentacles around the rim. The other was a small, inverted cup marked with radial spokes. As it pulsed, it spun in the water, trailing long white tentacles. I was delighted to see them and their beauty, but wary about contacting their stings.

As I was trying to decide whether to take my swim, I thought of two things that Harry Palmer had said: First, that all actions are taken either to feel something or to avoid feeling something. Was I going to act to feel or to not feel? Second, that whatever experiences you resist keep returning until you experience them fully. If you fear something, it will just keep coming back.

Well, that decided it—I was going to fully experience jellyfish! So I dove in and swam a few laps in the small swimming area. I could feel mild contacts with the stinging cells, but the experience was exhilarating. I was not limited by my fears. I could choose to experience life fully.

Then, back to the exercise—my nemesis. But now, I didn’t care anymore. I was going to enjoy the feelings. I was going to do the exercise, and they could say what they wanted. I was feeling good, and that was all that mattered. And then, as I floated in again, my Masters looked knowingly at each other, smiled, and perceived that I had finally finished the exercise. I had learned to identify beliefs, to try on and experience different beliefs, or to rid myself of all beliefs. As I let go of all beliefs about my body, I found myself existing, formless, in an unlimited field of awareness.

At the end of the course, we were all smiling, peaceful, and fundamentally changed. I phoned friends, who immediately noticed a change in me—more confident, happier. I ended a relationship that wasn’t going anywhere, but was consuming much of my attention and was surprised at how much more energy I regained. Work that had been piling up for weeks was off my desk within a few days. I started exercising for the first time in years.

My 14-year-old son had problems with attention, so I decided to share some of the ReSurfacing exercises with him. We practiced walking while “Minding the Edges.” We practiced sending his attention to different sites, then combinations of places. After five minutes, I asked him to stop and observe how he felt. “Wow!” he said. “My mind is sharp and clear. It is more open, and I don’t have to try so hard to pay attention. My mind is quiet, and the internal voices are gone!” I explained that he had just achieved what millions of meditators strive for years to achieve.

I am so glad that I had the chance to take Avatar. It was unquestionably worth the cost. I have taken responsibility for my own life and my own happiness. I am creating the work and social situations that I have been passively wishing for or unsuccessfully striving to obtain. My income is much higher, and new opportunities for growth and profit continue to appear. Almost everything has changed. I am now working to make Avatar available in my home state.

 

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