Excerpt from ‘Licking Honey Off a Razor Blade’ by Valerie Grimes, CHt

A book on alcohol dependency and alcohol addiction and hypnosis

Available on Amazon and Medium

Chapter 22

Headless Buddhas

With my personal life on a new and steady course, I only drank wine on weekends with Marc, which was an amazing shift of self-control. I chose to drink, not because I was numbing a feeling of discomfort, but because I was celebrating the person I was with or relaxing with a yummy vegetarian dinner that was made for me.

I now had the energy to shift to improving my business in the area of increased revenue. That began with this appraisal.

After dedicating myself to my passion in the healing for the past ten years, I was living only a little above the poverty level. It seemed I could either follow my passion and be broke, or vice versa. Why was that?

Leading up to this day my spiritual journey included: faithfully attending the Episcopal Church (and I loved it, even taught Sunday School) then studied Buddhism, Taoism, discovered the Goddess path (all building on each other). Buddhism actually helped me to understand Jesus better. I also read and followed to the letter all the self-help books by Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyer, Melody Beattie, and many more also there book in the ‘think like a millionaire’ category. I created several personal hypnosis recordings full of positive suggestions about attracting the ideal client, did family belief work about money, practiced affirmations about being worthy, started each day with a gratitude walk, and began to see myself as connected to the energetic source that was money—but still was tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

Well I knew it had a lot to do with my thoughts and my allowing either negative or positive thoughts, people, aspects to flow to me or to block them. Growing up dad said if your name is on the door you take full responsibility for everything in your business life (and so I did). The good weeks I had were the weeks when my heart was open and as a healer that is all I was thinking about. The bad weeks I had were the weeks when I was consumed with fear and worry about how to pay the mortgage. What was I doing wrong was the daily question.

“I’m sorry, but I am taking this extremely personally,” I shared with my friend. “What am I doing wrong?” The friend sent me a link to a course on EFT in order to reverse the worried thoughts. Then there were still more methods to attract prosperity found in audio recordings, books, and weekend workshops. In the evening I recorded the daily ‘positive happenings’ (those things with workshop leader said were the ‘physical proof’ prosperity was happening). Then, just before exhaustion from all the effort I was putting into this new positive vibe, I asked that while I slept my subconscious would release all doubt and worry.

Things would get better for a time, two better weeks, three not-so-good weeks, three ‘ok’ weeks, one terribly bad week, but evening out to about the same financially. Never seeming to break out of this box I was in. Why was this? After all it’s been two months.

Bored with the lack of progress, I would put my focus into something that gave me instant gratification—men.

But that didn’t happen with my current man as Marc was not fully open to me and so there was another area that I didn’t understand: How could I give so much and love him so much only to get a fraction of him? Frustration set in as I realized I also didn’t get much out of the effort I put into my business. That feeling lead me to an overwhelming desire to express the following:

Today I am questioning God, the universe, angels, spirits, everything! I am angry that for the past ten years I put so much faith in something I’m not sure even is real, I gave God my faith and life’s purpose and am rewarded with more debt.

I’m taking back control, I am not going to rely on anything outside of my self. I just want to figure this out myself. Besides God is in me right?

I put away all my books, journals, positive notes even the vision board went into the closet. And looked up the phrase Self-Determinism, as I opened a bottle of wine.

Within a few days, heads began to roll.

While running the sweeper, I knocked over a large Buddha statue and the head came off.  Crap! Isn’t that like dropping a statue of the Virgin Mary on the steps outside the Catholic Church?

I immediately glued it back on.  But then the following week while dusting I knocked another statue off the mantle and that head was severed as well.

“Wait just a minute! I have not broken anything in my house in years.”

I consulted the person that gave me the statues as this incident really disturbed me. He reminded me that, “It wasn’t the first heads of Buddha statues that have broken off.  There was the tiny one you keep on the kitchen window seal.  His head was severed in two separate incidents some time ago.  Maybe that was the first (very subtle) sign.”

Incidents like this get my attention I wanted to understand the significance of it.

I began to contemplate the obvious: keeping my head on, not loosing my head, not loosing my mind, be more careful, etc., but I did not feel that was it.

Putting the pieces together

While gluing the second head back on, I recalled a past meditation wherein I asked for guidance in breaking down any barriers leading to my personal growth, the message was, ‘let go of something you’ve outgrown’.  Okay, beside my short shorts, I really wasn’t sure.

Since the waning moon was a week away, I decided to get my altar out of the box in the closet and do a releasing ritual. Self-Determinism was still a note on my bathroom mirror that was going unnoticed.

In the meantime, my Buddha gifting friend did research on headless Buddhas. And they have some significance.  There are the Headless Buddhas of Preah Khan.  Built in the 1200s; this temple was a serene place of Buddhist reflection. The Hindu’s later removed all of the heads from the Buddha statues and placed a third eye on them to represent Lord Shiva.

Shiva is the god of yogis, self-controlled and celibate.  Shiva is responsible for change both in the form of death and destruction, of destroying the ego. This also includes the shedding of old habits and attachments.  On the National Geographic web site I found, ‘The power of destruction associated with Lord Shiva has great purifying power, both on a more personal level when problems make us see reality more clearly.’

‘Let go of something old’ popped into my head as I read his message. What was the old I needed to let go of? Is it my head, my brain, my ego, my thinking, men? What were the habits and attachments? (I could do this very well for my clients, but really couldn’t see it in me).

A few days later on the night of the waning moon ritual I gently began to see I needed to simply ‘get out of my head (let go of the ego mind) and into my heart (the true heart mind)’. I began to cry as I suddenly felt I was no longer alone in this, there were so many beautiful people that bring me gifts and messages, so many symbols in nature, and the messages are all the same, all leading to the moment when with a huge leap of faith I dropped out of my head and down into my heart. For the next several weeks I made art: messy finger paint art with lots of red! And I looked at the world from a sense of wonder, like a child. I looked younger and felt better than I had in years.

But when someone asked me what I’ve been doing, how do I look so great, I would say with a shoulder shrug, “I just love everything and everybody.”   But really I was beginning to more deeply love me. Because to say, well “I just love myself” sounded cocky.

And because anytime we are learning something new, like loving ourselves more deeply, the world brings us experiences so we can see what ‘holes’ need to be patched up. My hole was men.