HOW I GOT HERE

Since a child, at a very young age, I have felt there was something hiding deep within each one of us, afraid to show it’s uniquely loving and powerful self. Contrary to what was sometimes showing up on the surface of behaviors like resentment, intolerance, critical judgment, or distain, I intuitively sensed that people had only been taught or conditioned to react in these hurtful ways… and that there existed an innate goodness in all of us, and that this innate goodness IS our true potential.

Being raised in the early 60’s by the Benedictine nuns of the Catholic church, I watched as the “Sisters of Faith” hid themselves behind their veils and habits of religious order. I spent years in a boarding school where children were separated from their parents to be raised by the nuns. We children never spoke of our loneliness and feelings of separation even though we all felt it. I grew up knowing the world as a place to hide. Adults hiding from adults. Children hiding from children. And I had to wonder, “Why was everyone hiding, and what were we hiding from?”

Nevertheless, I intuitively knew that beneath all the layers of our repressed fears there was something more tender yearning to be felt. I sensed the depth of the core self that other’s had seemed to have forgotten. And I understood our soul’s almost desperate need to express it’s innate joy and more importantly the need to experience the freedom that joy could bring into the world. And I knew that within this was the window to our highest potential. I can not explain how I knew all of this as a young child nor could I at that time have articulated it even in the slightest. Despite the portrayed world of sadness that I quietly watched through my personal isolation and extreme introversion, I had faith in something beyond magnificent. I continued to believe that there was something real and tenderly vulnerable in each of us. And this secret something in each of us was desperately wanting and waiting to peak through and to be recognized in each and every human.

You might think that it was just a young girl’s need to believe in fantasy and love. A foolish child’s belief of a fairytale world full of magic and goodness. Yet, growing up in poverty, I saw all too well the injustices that poverty consciousness imbued and how the not having enough cultivated fear in so many ways no matter at what age, race or gender. The imbalance between poverty and prosperity was seen evident everywhere in the big city of Chicago. I knew deeply that we were all letting our FEARFUL emotions run havoc and create struggle in our lives.

And that through this emotional blind-sided existence, it became ever so necessary for me to tap into a power from within in order to truly transform my life experience. Without realizing it, I set out desiring to understand the depth of relationship with a TRUE SELF and to find ways to transform our sense of lack that creates our sense of suffering and fear. My personal quest was to find ways to tap into that SOURCE which is void of fear somehow and without even knowing it, I began to talk to the Divine all the time.

The Lesson

As a quite introverted child, I intuitively would sense that many adults felt trapped within a self-inflicted emotional prison. I watched my mother’s unspoken inner emotional struggles, and I felt estranged to her dark shadowed self. I did not understand the prison of sadness, negativity, and depression that she hid behind; therefore, I emotionally and physically hid myself from her. I was not at the least curious about her dark unrelenting sadness, or her deep lingering and tormenting worry. I didn’t like to feel, what I called ugly energy, that I felt from her, so I purposefully and intentionally made her a stranger in my life. In other words, it felt not only natural but essential that I watch my mother from a safe unattached, unemotional distance. I didn’t hate nor did I blame her as the years drifted away; I just grew indifferent to her. She became the strange woman who called herself my mother.

For many years, I did not speak to my tired and life-worn mother. I remarkably managed to avoid being around her as much as possible, just as I did with many adults and other children who felt unsafe and unapproachable. It kept me free to be me…so I thought. However, as an adult, I realized after years of personal inner work that by creating a distance from mom and many others unlike me, that I had created my own prison of “unloved” and “unworthy” feelings. This “emotion-less” prison I lived in succeeded in convincing me that I could feel safe within it.

I knew intuitively that I needed to do good things in the world as an adult and so as a young girl very early on, I decided that I needed to stay under the radar of all the fearfulness. I managed to convince myself that staying small, unseen, with my invisibility cloak on would somehow help me create an idealistic sense of optimism. Staying unnoticed, I could remain cocooned and safe from a depressed and illusive world I could not relate to. I decided that feeling numb and indifferent, would free me to keep thinking hopeful thoughts away from all the chaos I observed around me. I for my own sake, stayed” Nieve” for many adult years.

As an extremely quiet, shy, and uncommunicative girl, I learned to look past my mother’s emotional mask of sadness without managing to see my own mask of detachment. Fortunately, years before my mother’s passing, life brought in some opportunities to heal us both. Within real life lessons we were offered a chance for love and to break through our barriers and to penetrate our pride. My mother and I were finally able to find our TRUE SELVES smiling back at each other. We had found a safe and loving friendship bound in acceptance of each other’s differences, and we found forgiveness for the overbearing fear that tore us apart from the beginning. We realized that we were just two women learning from each all along the way that love heals all thing and keeps us safe. With my mom’s last breath, we both knew the acceptance and forgiveness of each other.

THE GIFT

As with every lesson, there is a gift. Everything about our lives is rich with a transforming quality if we can allow ourselves to trust that the lessons are designed to bring blessings to grow both the heart and the mind. My studies with “Spirit” connection began to be fostered at an early age when I grew up in a Catholic boarding school sheltered from the real world. As a young girl, I harbored a “secret crush” on Jesus. My thoughts about Jesus were filled with a young girl’s fantasized “superhero”. I felt a bit embarrassed to admit out loud that I thought Jesus was the most handsome man who ever lived. As embarrassing as it was for me to admit, this secret love affair for Jesus lasted for many years into my adult years… not because of religion or even faith…but from an unconditional love. As a young and lonely girl, I would very often fanaticize of what it would be like to be married to Jesus. I actually wore a ring for many years and pretended that I was Jesus’s wife. It was my secret from the nuns who wore the ring of devotion and marriage to God. In fact, I remember, the feeling of deep shock when I first read somewhere (other than the bible) that Mary Magdalene and Christ shared a deep and intimate love affair and were married.

Nevertheless, because of my secret love affair, I began to develop a Christ Consciousness. And through this Christ consciousness, I developed a deep conviction to see life optimistically, to believe in humans as good, and that miracle healings were possible. It made me want desperately to do what Jesus could do. I know many people would say that through my loneliness and self-isolation, I developed an abnormal idealization of the super-ego self. In all truth, it didn’t matter how or why I wanted to believe that creating healing miracles were possible, it only mattered that it created in me a deep desire to be a good and a loving person. And a need to read and investigating all the possibilities and metaphysical subjects I could get my hands on….Alchemy, Miracle Faith Healing, Near Death Experiences…whatever…bring it on!

With many years of personal studies into transpersonal psychology, hypnotherapy, shamanism, energy healing medicine, and metaphysical thought, I further catalyzed my belief into miracles as a reality. Someday, the book I write will find a way to show how we can tap into that Source of creating miracles, just like Jesus said we could. It is clear to me, that it is crucial for all of us to break out of our emotional, mental, and physical prisons which we unknowingly keep re-creating. Our fear (of everyone and everything) has kept humanity from experiencing true transformational change AND miracles. I finally understood my innate need as a child to stay “Naively distant” from the world.

We are now all transcending to a great truth and stepping into the knowledge that we are all power-filled beings with the ability to change every fear-based condition on this evolving planet. I am now certain that all of us who chose to stay in this physical reality in this present time have an important responsibility to create a new reality. Our job is to each of us to TRANSFORM back into our TRUE SELVES. To REMEMBER once again who we are and to remember once again our REAL potential.

My purpose is to help as many people remember and rediscover their power-filled hearts; to live our full potential; and to transform our beautiful earth into a true paradise once more. I am very resolved about my work and “Spirit Source” knows it. I am convinced that only those who are the “big players” in this life will find me. “Big Players” are those souls who refuse to play small and hide themselves in the world of fear any longer. We have all been given important life lessons to remember our strength. And within the course of finding our strength, miracles are born, and all fear and pain is healed. I trust that we can step into the reality of that reality together as one. 

gratefully,

Brenda Rodriguez, M.A., CHT, and Shamanic Healer with Source

My Mission

What I’ve Achieved

• B.A. in Child Development - San Jose State University 1994

• M.A. in Counseling & Psychology - Santa Clara University 2000

• Certified Hypnotherapist - Twin Lakes College - 2001

• Taught 500hr. Master Hypnotherapy Coursework 2003-2007

• Reiki Master training 2005

• 3 years advanced Shamanic Training 2007-2010

• Shamanic Practitioner, Intuitive and Visionary, Vibrational Healer

• Ongoing studies in Energy Psychology, Vibrational Medicine, Theta-Healing, Cranio-sacral and Somatic-Emotional Release Therapy, Enneagram Training, Tapping, & EDR (energy directed release), TRE Certified Coach, Breathwork Certified Coach.