Читать книгу The Sedona Method: Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-being - Hale Dwoskin - Страница 39

Kenneth was a direct witness of the World Trade Center attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001. In spite of daily releasing ever since, he’d been in a continuous state of high anxiety for almost a month when he arrived for a Seven-day Retreat in Sedona that October. He told our group this dramatic story: “I was running late for a 9 A.M. appointment with a client across the street from Ground Zero. Coming out of the subway, the escalator was clogged up with people who were New York-style aggravated. When I reached street level, I turned to the right and saw a number of bystanders looking up at the North Tower, which was burning then. At that moment, none of us knew what had happened. It just looked like there was a fire on two floors. My only thought, as I continued hurrying along, was, ‘Wow! The Fire Department had better show up soon.’

“When I entered my client’s building, I took the elevator to the 14^th floor. But no one was there, and the office was locked. It was now a few minutes after the hour and they had already evacuated the building. I went back downstairs and exited and stood on the sidewalk for a while and watched the fire. After 5 or 10 minutes, I don’t recall exactly how long, there was a tremendous explosion at the other tower—the sound approximated the clicking of an igniter on a gas stove. First, there was a whooshing noise, but magnified a million times over. Oddly, I didn’t even learn that it was a plane crash until I got home later and spoke on the phone to my girlfriend, who was watching the scene on CNN in Illinois. Right then, it looked like a bomb blast. That’s when it became apparent to us, the people in the street, that this event was something besides a simple fire.

“When the explosion occurred, a tremendous amount of paper began raining down on us. People panicked and rushed up Day Street. In their haste to get as far away as possible, I almost got run over. I wasn’t consciously releasing at the time. I felt curious instead of panicked. I tried to call out on my cell phone, because I wanted to tell my girlfriend what I was witnessing, but it wasn’t working down there since the transmitters had actually been on top of the towers. After a couple more minutes, there was also the cacophony of fire engines and police sirens coming towards us. Paper was still falling, not dust yet. It was surreal. I remember that one paper dropped right at my foot, and I noticed it had the name of a German bank on it. It struck a chord in me, as I’m German.

“The next dramatic thing, which has been haunting me, is that people began jumping from the top floors of the North Tower. It happened to be a beautiful, clear morning, so it looked almost unreal to me. It was a Panavision perfect picture, and I felt like I was watching a movie. Perfect colors and wide-open shots. One image in particular stuck in my mind: a businessman jumping out, holding on to his briefcase. Such a clear day, legs up in the air, hands down, and the tie up in the air and waving as he was flying down. Because the towers were high, it took quite a while for him to come down. Gratefully, I didn’t see the impacts of the bodies because other buildings obscured them.

“That’s when I knew that something extremely serious was going on. People were crying in the streets, and whenever someone jumped, everyone went Haaaaaaaah, sucking in their breath. I felt compelled to watch, even though it was horrific. But I told myself, ‘You have GOT to get out of here—NOW! There’s a possibility that something else might happen. We don’t know what caused the impact. There might be more bombs. LEAVE THE AREA AND GO HOME!’ So I worked myself against the flow of the crowd to get to the subway station at Brooklyn Bridge a few blocks north of where I’d been. To get there, I passed by a park near the mayor’s office. There were crowds of people outside in the park, throngs watching the drama unfold. Once or twice I almost turned back and looked over my shoulder. But I had made up my mind to go. Luckily the subway was still running then, but I was almost the only person on it and it soon stopped.

“I got home and immediately called my girlfriend on the landline. She explained what I had seen. I shared my feelings with her and the impact it had on me. Then I went into shock. I couldn’t turn on the TV right away because it was stored in a closet. So I got it out and turned it on. The reception was terrible because the antennas had been blown away. There was a powerful sense that the attack wasn’t true somehow, tremendous disbelief even though I’d been a witness. I urgently needed to see the drama unfolding.”

As Kenneth was recounting the story, I walked him through a release on pieces of the experience: the sounds, sights, feelings, thoughts, and sensations. He released some fear and anxiety. But Kenneth had a lot of resistance, and often he answered “no” when I asked him, “Could you let this go?” I knew that everyone in the group would benefit from his releasing process, since we had all been deeply affected by the scale of the tragedy. It wasn’t until he was able to recognize how he was subtly proud of having been in such a unique situation, and developing such a great story about it, that he was able to let go completely. Once he did see the pride and released it, the anxiety that he’d been experiencing vanished and did not reoccur.

As Kenneth says, “Pride is a powerful emotion, but I was finally able to let go. Persistence paid off. In the end, I was oblivious of the group. It was me dealing with this particular event. It wasn’t about pleasing Hale, or about seeking anyone’s approval, not even my own. After the release I felt good. September 11th was still very much on people’s minds and there was constant talk about it, but I never brought it up again the whole time I was in Sedona. Even better, I was actually sick of it.”