My 4 New Awarenesses

        April 21, 2025

                                                                         Bill Pautler

All Photos by Author

Story # 19

Things I Recognized on My 40 Day Retreat

 

When we start out on a retreat, we never really know where we will end up. I am constantly amazed by how I think I am in control of my life.  And as I am looking back on the last 40 days. It just unfolded.  The only thing I did, if there is such a thing as doing, was to put myself in a space of openness.  A place of quiet and allowing.

I know we have freewill, because the Divine doesn’t want slaves. The Divine just wants us to be liked-minded with Herself.  In that way we can create out harmony, wholeness and holiness out of Her dark chaotic energy.  

But as we become like minded with Her, our perceptions of life change. We begin to mirror God’s perception.  And when we open that space up in ourselves and dwell in the heart of Him, we no longer need to be concerned about where we are headed. Because we get swept up into the cosmic unfolding.  It is a very liberating feeling.

We basically have two stances we can take in this realm.  One is to face things and the other is to turn our backs to things. Both of those positions have their appropriate uses.  But retreating is still facing the world, but it is doing so by stepping back and observing from afar (to retreat, just like an army, so you can regroup).  The point of retreating is to gain clarity of our position.  And the only way to gain clarity is to step back and seek solitude. Because the Divine doesn’t scream at us, She comes to us by whispering in our souls.  

 

Here are the 4 awarenesses I received

1.  I over give, and I am a people pleaser

I can speculate why I am like this. It could be behavior I modeled from my family, it could be the fact that my core nature is very loving and nurturing, it could be some aspect from past lives, it could be epigenetics. Who the hell really knows and at some level I don’t think it matters. What matters is that it was no longer serving me, and it hasn’t for a long time.  Over giving is exhausting, it takes a lot of energy. I remember back in September of 2024 feeling spent. Nobody asked me to over give, I did it out of some perceived need that I had.  And as far as people pleasing, I was pleasing others and not pleasing myself.  Over giving and people pleasing can only last so long before our tanks run dry. These actions are not loving to us, nor the people we are acting toward. Anything that doesn’t start with loving ourselves first is a recipe for disaster.

Sidenote – These awarenesses were not just things I thought about, they literally were energies that I had embodied.  They had to be released. I didn’t orchestrate their release.  I just put myself in a mindset and space for their release.  My forgiveness release happened while I was meditating in the cemetery. I was deeply hurt by somebody’s actions. I felt like I needed to forgive them.  In the end, after sitting in the cemetery for 6 hours meditating on this, an energy arose up out of my body. I did a lot of deep breathing to get through it.  But I felt it come up through my body and leave me. But what came after that was an incredible awareness.  That there really is no need for forgiveness. The All has forgiven everything before it ever happens. Because there is no forgiveness, just observation of the action.  You don’t need to forgive our child because their first steps weren’t perfect. We rejoice in their first steps.  When we attach ourselves to the feelings of ‘you hurt me’, we allow others to hurt us. When we attach ourselves to needing an apology, we are giving others power over our emotions. People do, what people do. We are all works in progress. (This is in no way condones us putting ourselves in degrading situations and staying in them. That is a misalignment in ourselves.)   The word ‘for-give’, basically means to ‘give in advance’. So, when we forgive, what we are doing is what God is doing, to give in advance the space that we all need to live our lives how we want, without judgement.  Ultimately, all of us get what we give out.  So, there is no need to ‘forgive’. If we create space for people to live without judgement that is forgiveness. We don’t need to attach ourselves to their actions. That is the real problem we have. 

During my second energy release I was riding my bike.  I thought something was caught in my throat. I started to cough. And then cough really, really hard. I pulled my bike off the side of the road. I started uncontrollably throwing up this white goo. (This had happened to me before in an exercise we did at 9 Gates Mystery School.)  I was bent over gagging and throwing up this goo and I felt this big bubble of energy rise up out of my gut and up through my body. And damn did that feel good to get it out.

The point in all this is that we allow toxic energies to reside in our bodies for long periods of time.  When we start doing our shadow work and start to cleanse, these energies can no longer survive in our bodies.  The old energies can no longer exist in the purity of the new energy, so they have to come out.

Jesus threw out demons.  Demons are just energies that reside in us that are not life giving.  End Sidenote

 

2. Deprioritizing Myself

By over giving I deprioritize myself.  When I do this, I lose my voice in the world.  I was inches away from death in March of 2024. 9 days in ICU.  My symptoms had been coming on for years.  Like a frog very slowing coming to a boil in a pot of water.  My core issue was my lungs, which were affecting my heart, which was overworking and ultimately led my body to accumulate unneeded CO2 and H2O.  By the time I got diagnosed in the emergency room, I was literally drowning in my own body.  There was no real reason, per se, why this happened.  I was diagnosed with a specific ‘dis-ease’, that happens primarily to people that have been exposed to asbestos, and that was not the case with me.  I was part of the ‘random population’ this happens too. (PS – I am fully recovered).  But during this retreat, I looked back on my ‘dis-ease’, I am sure that my lungs got sick, because I had quit speaking my truth into the world.  I had lost my breath, my voice, my pnuema.

 

3.  Devil Energy

If you look at the Devil Tarot card, in the original Rider Tarot Deck, you will see a female and a male human chained to this heavy stone platform, which the Devil sits atop of.  And if you spell ‘Devil’ backwards it is ‘Lived’.  All evil (‘live’ spelled backwards) is the antithesis of life.  Things that are in harmony and goodness bring life.  Things that don’t bring harmony and life, chain us and weigh us down.  They keep us from being liberated.  We are bound.  But as we choose to prioritize ourselves. As we choose to find our voice. As we choose not to be harnessed by fleeting desires, success at all costs, possessiveness, glamour, whatever worldly tendencies that we have, then we free our spirits to live in communion (common union) with the All.  Recognizing our shadow side, the evil side, the devil side, the side of us that is not life giving to ourselves or others. That is our work.  Until we release those energies and our false beliefs, we will never truly be free.  We are just slaves to our emotions and stupidity.  And we carry those heavy energies inside of us.  And ignore the great gods and goddesses that we are.

That is what I learned about devil energy.

 

4. Forgiveness

I covered most of my forgiveness topic in the Sidenote(LOL).  But ‘For- Giveness’ is about giving ourselves space to not be perfect.  This life is not a game of perfection. It is a game of uncovering and understanding our true nature. Our true nature is the nature of God.  Because God made us out of His nature! God’s Holy Spirit, Her Pnuema, is what animates our souls. The word soul originates from the words ‘to animate’, ‘to give life’. God’s nature animates us, so we are everything God is.  We are perfect love, we are all powerful, we are all knowing, we are omnipresent, we are creators and destroyers. Just like God, because She made us. This world is just a place for us to recognize who we really are. The word recognize means to ‘re learn’, to ‘learn again’.  We are here to understand and ‘re learn’ our Divinity.  In the midst of Divinity, all we recognize is Divinity.  We have to be separated from Divinity to realize what Divinity truly is. That is why we are here. We are highly vibratory Spirits coming to a heavy gravity laden planet, to experience some of the unique aspects of the Divine.

 

Namaste (the Divine in Me honors the Divine in You)

Much love,

Bill

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