Category: Memoir

The Other Side of the Rainbow

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized8 Comments

Rainbow

I was a child of Doubt. I don’t remember playing with imaginary friends or fairies. I don’t remember believing in angels or a Universal Life Force/God. But, I wanted to, secretly. Everything I was told was not “real,” I imagined to exist. Inside the silence of my mind I created tiny winged beings flying amid the flowers. In the dark quiet of my bedroom I felt the heavy breath of spirits lurking beside me while I tried to sleep. Sometimes, secretly, I talked to a God I was told did not exist.

I think some of us need to forget in order to remember. I forgot who I was and where I came from at an early age, before memory imprints itself into the folds of the brain. Many of us forget our true, spiritual selves by the age of 7. As we learn to live in the world of our parents’ and society’s creation, we shed the aspects of self that do not conform to our perceived surroundings. The spirit guides, angels and fey that we used to play and commune with disappear into the invisible realm as our eyes close to the brilliance of frequencies too high to sustain belief.

There are moments, filled with a desperate hope, when I wish I could bring it all back, not so much for me, as I am remembering now what I have forgotten, but for my children and all children of our world who are forgetting. I wonder, as I looked at my practical preteen who loves fashion and sports, what happened to my little girl who used to close her eyes in pure bliss while she played and danced with “Raina.” When did my little boy stop going to sleep in room filled with colors only he could see? I didn’t intentionally will my children to lose their connection to the world of Spirit, but somehow, with the help of the artificial world we live in, I witnessed my children let go of the rainbow of magic.

How do I bring back their access to the realm of Spirit? Our children are brought up to believe in magic that is not real, only to discover that Santa Claus does not slide down the chimney on Christmas Eve, the Easter Bunny does not bring baskets of chocolates and toys, and the Tooth Fairy is not the one who saves their lost teeth. We do.

I struggle to make sense of a world of hypocrisy, while trying to retrieve for my children the real magic of life. We live in a world that has learned to fear the unseen forces that move through and around us. We do not trust what we can’t see, so we pretend it does not exist. Yet most of us believe in a universal life force from whence we all came into being. Why, then, is it so difficult for us to believe in a universal energy of Love? Why is it so difficult to believe that we are surrounded by sentient beings who share the same life force energy, as well as our innate desire for balance and love?

I have photographed my children dancing with fairies in the summer rain. I have channeled reiki energy into their restless bodies when they have struggled with sleep. Yet, they doubt what they don’t see. They doubt what is not commonly talked about on the TV, in classrooms, or among friends. I see my children’s struggle, I share it too. I am the “weird” mother they are both in awe of, and somewhat embarrassed by. In some ways it’s much easier for them to call me a writer, than it is to call me a healer who talks with and channels Spirt in myriad forms. I get it, though. I was that child too.

 

The Wild Feline: Night Hunter & Source of Divine Feminine Power #dreams #catsymbolism #divinefeminine

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Memoir, Uncategorized4 Comments
Wild cat
A Wild Cat in Captivity

I was going to write about the mouse as a messenger, but it was the cat in wild form who came to me last night. She appeared spotted in orange and gold, waiting for me to see her as I was pulled out of one distressing dream into another.

When I opened Ted Andrew’s book Animal Speak this morning, I knew why the feline messenger had made her presence known. Regarding the panther/leopard, he writes that she is a sign of “reclaiming one’s true power.” I had gone to sleep feeling frustratingly powerless. In truth, it was not a major event that caused me to feel this way, but my “feelings” about the matter, which underlies the crux of every issue, were part of a deeper fear that needed my attention.

It’s little wonder my dreams were full of loss, the first heart-wrenching, followed by a series of events that seemed to spiral just beyond my control. When I woke I realized the circumstance that had so irritated me and made me feel powerless the night before were minor in comparison to the journeys of my dreams. It was suddenly no big deal, I knew I could easily find a solution.

All cats, both wild and domestic, carry the wisdom of the night. They connect us to our psychic gifts, which are birthed out of our yin energy, also known as the source of our divine feminine wisdom. My messenger, as I mentioned above, was spotted. I had seen her before, a couple of years ago, in twinned form. She was young, but now she seemed older.

Each spot on the wild cat’s body was like an eye, pulling me within. Andrews writes, “All cats have binocular vision, magnifying images, and facilitating judgment of distances.” (pg. 295) My visitor wore a body of eyes the colors of the 2nd and 3rd chakras, pulling me into the fire inside as she reminded me that I am never powerless if I choose not to be.

The panther/leopard can signal a time of rebirth. As Andrews writes, “old longstanding wounds will finally begin to heal, and with the healing will come a reclaiming of power that was lost at the time of wounding.” (pg. 297) My dreams last night brought me back to my childhood and adolescence, to struggles where I gave away my power to my family and classmates. As the wild cat in my dream quietly stood by in observation, she reminded me it was time to reclaim what I had once given away.

For those of us who are used to having our power stripped away from us, it can be a frightening experience to reclaim what we have lost. The fear that our gifts will be ripped out of us lurks inside our memories, and we doubt our strength and abilities. Most of us never come close to knowing what powerful creators we are, especially women. We have learned to fear what makes us strong, because others have feared the brilliant flame that yearns for light inside of us. The panther/leopard/jaguar appears to quietly lead us home. She wears the powerful stealth of night, hunting her prey with a strength and skill not easily matched.

“The panther holds the promise of rebirth and guardianship throughout. It is the extra protection we need at those times. It is the symbol of power reclaimed from whatever darkness within our life has hidden it.” (Andrews, pg. 298)

The Body of Night

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized6 Comments

IMG_2531I enter the dark body of night to heal. To recover the parts of me that have been lost to fear over lifetimes.

I’ve always enjoyed putting together puzzles. The more intricate and mysterious the art of creation, the more I am drawn into the process of discovery. I have found no better place to build the puzzle of self than at night, where I can slip into the inky abyss of darkness where everything exists. It can take some cunning and a good dose of courage to find what I am looking for. Night is the place where veils dissolve, and the landscape of the soul is laid bare. It is the place where mysteries blinded by the sun become tangible when we are brave enough to extend our grasp into the black abyss.

Each dream that unfolds through Night becomes a path with a promise of a gift, or many if we can find them hidden amid the shadows. The dreams that cause the greatest tremor of emotion within our “sleeping” form, often hold the most sought-after treasures. I have learned to love nightmares, for they lay bare those pieces that lurk in the crevices of self, which can only be found after putting the easy and obvious together. They are the stuff of the inside that likes to hide, deceptively camouflaged within an unassuming palette. Yes, it is these gems I know seek, for each piece recovered brings me closer to the whole self that is Love.

Love. That is, after all, what it is all about. This quest we are all on. It is said that to love another, we must first love ourselves. I believe that the more fully we love ourselves, the more fully we love others. I believe we can only love in others, what we love in ourselves, and when we are able to accept and unite those aspects of self that are mirrored uncomfortably in others, we finally achieve the whole self that is Love. When we do this, we are loving not the fear in the form of anger, injustice or abuse, but the aspect of universal self beneath it that we all share. The piece of self yearning to be whole that was once love/loved is still, in essence, love.

Now when I discover a piece of self that has become disconnected over (life)time(s), and has forgotten love in favor of the energy of fear, I rejoice. My dreams are a tool, they work with me, taking me down the paths of self-recovery. They lead me to the source, where the hand of fear tries to hide the light. The clues to how I got there are always found in the scenes. Past lifetimes are revealed with vivid faces, costumes and languages I have not encountered in this lifetime, interwoven with a present-day landscape. It is not my job to judge, but to accept. It is not my task to hold on, but to effortlessly let go. I am brought here to seek, to find, and unite into love. I have learned that our fears do make us stronger, when we accept them with understanding, release the energy that traps and reunite the lost love.

 

 

 

The Mystery of Fox

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Gaia & Elementals, Memoir, Uncategorized4 Comments
The fox that came in the mail
The fox that came in the mail

How could I not write about the fox after reading Sue Vincent’s post last night, “Foxed.” Her words held the promise of magic I could not resist. Of course there was also the obvious tug from Spirit, who has shown me the fox in 3 different forms over the last 24 hrs.

Yesterday, after playing in the woods behind our home with a friend and our rather fox-like dog, Rosy, my daughter came in proclaiming she had found the remains of a fox half-exposed by the slowly melting snow. She had the pictures to prove it.

IMG_1485
The remains of a fox?

Later, I followed her outside, the entire family in tow as we studied the evidence. The small, strong jaw seemed about right to our untrained eyes, as well as the unmistakable red-orange fur found nearby. The cause of death, unknown, but we all made guesses. My children were willingly to bet it was a coyote (a common predator of the fox), my husband, in an attempt to temper any fears, suggested it may have died of old age.

We had a mystery on our hands that got me thinking not so much about how the remains of a fox ended up in our backyard, but about what the fox as a messenger really means. In his book Animal Speak, Ted Andrews observes that there are 21 species of fox. 21, as he notes, is the last card in the journey of Tarot. It is often referred to as “The World” card, a card of creation and all possibilities, which makes me think of the color orange that the fox wears both as camouflage and as a symbol of gifts held inside the second chakra.

The fox reminds us to go inside to that place where we create our life’s passions. It is an animal of mystery, rarely seen in the daylight hours, preferring the in-between times that are associated with magic and the fairy realms, when the veil between our worlds is thin. It awakens our passions and our extrasensory perceptions. The fox is a silent predator, able to move quickly with a stealth that is often unnoticed. It hears, sees and smells what most do not.

For those of us hoping to birth new creative energies, the fox can be our guide, helping us grow the magic safely tucked inside our “wombs.” It can guide us into other realms and help us see, hear and smell the more subtle, yet powerful energies around us as we discern with whom and in what to place our trust. When we are ready for “magic,” fox may appear to guide us.

Orange

On By Alethea KehasIn Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections, UncategorizedLeave a comment

orange

When you look at the color orange, what do you see? Years ago, before I started working with the chakra centers in the body, I wrote a poem about an orange and compared it to love. Here is the poem, in revised format, with the essence still intact:

Orange

Love should be
like a ripe orange
before it is peeled. Thick,
heavy, sweet

When you turn
its bumpy surface
in your palm, there is
no beginning
no end

Love is the color of the sacred “womb” that resides inside all of us. It is the place where we grow our creative and sensual selves into being with the fire of our soul. The color of passion and love manifested in the form of our unique gifts, it is always present, yet sometimes hides.

I have been thinking and writing a lot about orange these days, as I rebirth dormant gifts held inside the second, or sacral chakra that vibrates in this hue. Rarely do I wear this bold color that tends to overwhelm my complexion, but there I was in a lovely boutique last Friday, buying a dress adorned with orange flowers.

orange flowers on dressOn Saturday I peeled sweet potatoes, carrots and gingers and cooked them into an orange soup. We are drawn to the colors that want to bloom inside of us. There is a reason why our bodies and senses crave certain palettes. I cook with orange to kindle the fire that hides in my belly. Today, my eye is drawn to the flames that warms my house as I nibble the flesh of mango and write, my orange dog staring me down, waiting for her walk.

Rosy, the orange dog

Not broken

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Energy Healing, Memoir, ReflectionsLeave a comment

Seven days ago I broke my middle finger after a week of lessons and night healing. For more on this please read my post The Wounded Healer, which I have just revisited to add some clarification and edits (it was not a very polished post, please forgive me).  

The morning after I broke my finger, I was about to head downstairs to leave for my doctor’s appointment where I would learn what type of treatment I would be receiving for my break. The fracture was in the inside of my middle knuckle, and there was some speculation about a tendon being misplaced and the possibility of surgery. Now, as many of you know by now, I don’t tend to view occurrences as accidents. As I looked down at my finger, swollen and bruised, I heard the words inside my head, It’s not really broken.

I won’t go through the details of my brief visit with the orthopedist, but I will tell you how pleased I was to discover that my appointment had been made with a physician that took a nontraditional approach to breaks. Yes, my finger was fractured, but, as he told me, there was no reason I couldn’t heal it myself. Now, to be fair, I had not yet told him what I did for a living. I told only after he offered physical therapy referrals, etc. as options to help me recover full mobility after the swelling and pain went down.

To be honest, aside from the pain that occurred immediately after I fell, my finger didn’t hurt unless I over-did my attempts to bend or flex it. I walked out of the office in the elated air of slight disbelief, but I knew I could heal without help. I had never before broken a bone, but I was ready for the challenge.

One week later, I can form a fist, albeit not a tight one, and flex my finger fully. What did I do to heal? I trusted my body. Except through client healing, I never channeled healing energy through my hands. This healing, I knew, needed to come from within. It wasn’t hard, I simply allowed the process to occur.

All healing ultimately comes from within, from allowing and trusting that we hold inside of us the infinite capacity to be whole. That, in fact, our body and soul desire this more than anything else. This is why I share my story with you. When we think perhaps that we are broken, when we even have a fragmented bone to prove it to ourselves, we always have the choice to heal.

Healing what we think is broken can be a beautiful journey to self. I needed this break, along with the lessons of last week, in order to progress on my journey to Truth. That soft fire within me needed to be ignited, and the old flames of fears burned away. 

 

The Wounded Healer

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized1 Comment

The tag on my tea yesterday read “Be Heard,” but let’s start back at that mountain from two nights ago. Part of me hoped I was done releasing, at least for awhile, after I woke on the morning of the March 11th. I had, after all, opened a door to let out the trapped energy of  fear. Naturally, when you go through a doorway (note the significance that this dream occurred early in the morning on the 11th), you need to deal with what’s inside. We never know quite what we’ll meet, or how long it will take to go through what we find.

So begins the journey that started with a single crow, perhaps the largest one I have ever seen, perched high in its glossy black cloak atop a bare tree as though waiting for me to pass by on my morning walk. The crow calls us to enter the darkness we hold inside, and through doing so create light from the shadows. It is a messenger of magic and the divine feminine energies that reside in all of us. There was one crow, I knew the job was mine alone.

Then the robin appeared beneath my apple tree, pecking the frozen ground to pull a treasure from the snow. The single crow, followed by the single robin, a messenger of spring, renewal and the birth, or rebirth, of one’s truth with its sky-blue eggs, told me this new phase was only just beginning.

I won’t deny that I had been feeling it. For the past few days I have literally felt as though I were pregnant. My lower abdomen felt achy and crampy, as women’s bellies often do in the early stages of pregnancy as the womb begins to adjust to new life. My lower chakras were, and still are, adjusting to that freed-up energy from two mornings ago. In fact, my entire body felt achy and tired.

The next night, after I dreamed of the mountain, I experienced a night of fitful sleep. I can’t tell you where I went in most of my dreams, my only memory of the first half of the night was waking to the message, healing, healing being played over and over inside my mind each time I woke before falling back into a restless slumber.

One dream, occurring again in the early hours of the morning, stayed with me. I was at Bowdoin, where I went to college. It’s perhaps worth noting that I last, physically, returned to Bowdoin for a reunion in the summer of 2011 (a doorway year). Right before, and during the time of the reunion, I came down with walking pneumonia and was quite ill, fatigued and feverish while I was back on campus with my family and the two friends I had stayed in touch with.

Can it be a coincidence that I dreamt of Bowdoin on the night of the 11th/12th? In my dream I was searching for comfort and peace, a space to freely express my truth, much like I had during my college years. I found myself in a dormitory with cluttered and dirty carpets, beyond which was a long room with a pristine polished wooden floor and organized, uncluttered furniture, but I needed to find a way to clean up the space I was in in order to get there. I walked into a large kitchen, like I had the night before on the mountain, only this time the cook opened an oven to reveal a large, pink, roasting pig. I was hungry, but this meal was not being cooked for me. Something was holding me back from partaking in the succulent feast that was being prepared.

Yesterday morning brought more fatigue and that strange pregnant feeling in my lower abdomen. I chose an Echinacea tea, and as I sat down to sip it, read the words “Be Heard” on the end of the string resting against my mug. Now, to be fair, Spirit had been trying to prepare me for this healing and release phase for quite some time. For weeks the repetition of signs kept appearing in various forms.

In her book The Hidden Power of Dreams, Denise Linn writes about learning to pay attention to messages that come in sets of threes, in particular. I had been seeing the number 3 for days, and had recently done 3 tarot readings for fellow healers/lightworkers that were eerily similar. Each querent, it became revealed, was, or had recently been dealing with, trapped fears in their lower 3 chakras. There was energy calling for, or being released in all cases. Denise Linn also tells her readers that the wounded healer draws to her what needs to be healed within herself, thus by healing this energy in others, she also heals herself. I have found this to be true in my own healing practice.

Now I’ll take you to last night. Although I was tired, I had trouble falling asleep. Perhaps it was the selenite crystal I had moved from the vanity beside the window and activated for dream healing before I went to bed. It had been a bold experiment. I had never before activated a selenite for dream work and placed it beside my bed.

I fell asleep sometime between midnight and 1:00 p.m., when I woke abruptly with my dream-voice calling for help, and filled with desperate fright. The dream began on the side of a road near my house. I was walking up a hill on my way home with my two dogs on leash beside me. Several construction/plow trucks were passing by on the left side of the road, I was on the right (the logical side of our bodies).  To prevent my dogs from attacking the trucks, I pulled the 3 of us over an embankment. Suddenly, I was struggling to hold on to the dogs, which were both orange in my dream, and the earth, so as not to fall down the steep ravine below.

Before I jump ahead to where I next found myself, let me draw your attention, as I did mine, to the time during which this dream occurred. Linn states in her book that the hours of 11 p.m to 1 a.m. are the gallbladder time according to the ancient Chinese clock. It is a time where we deal with unresolved, outwardly directed anger and test our courage.

After dangling from that cliff with my two, “loyal” dogs, I found myself home, inside what I knew to be my house (it appeared differently in the dream) with my family. I looked out the window and saw fire trucks and media vans pulling up the hill beside my home (again on the right side of me), and noticed a large white barn that was about to catch fire from my burning neighbor’s house.

I turned into rescue-mode and began gathering clothes, which are often symbolic of our outward appearances/coverings that hide our true selves, and blankets to bring over to help out. (Years ago I witnessed a fire in a neighboring apartment building and gathered clothing, etc. to donate). My husband went outside to investigate and I told my children to start getting ready for bed. Suddenly, our house turned into a Red Cross van (an overt symbol for healing, and since a vehicle often represents our bodies, this could be interrupted as a call for self-healing) and I could not get “upstairs” to my children, because there was no longer an upstairs, but a small, unreachable set of windows above me.

I began to panic, and looked out a lower window where I saw my husband on the hillside axing what I knew to be the remains of our house, which was what had actually burned. He was standing before a large pile in the shape of a teepee (I lived in a tepee for several months as a child), containing the  stacked remains of what we owned, encased in some of my shirts. One shirt, which was purple and stiff like it had been starched, stood out in particular. In her book Linn notes that an ax can be symbolic of the “fear of loss” and “cutting away that which isn’t needed.”

As I watched my husband, I could feel his devastation and anger. He was, like most people in our dreams, symbolic of my own shadowed fear. In the middle of the pile I knew was my old white computer, which contained all my work and writing. My manuscript, not yet published, was lost in the middle.

Along with the fear of losing my belongings and my creative work, I was now worried about our pets that I knew must have perished. I was filled with grief and helpless frustration. Yet, next to my husband, and the rubble of our house, there was a new, unfinished house wrapped extensively with plastic that was our new, unfinished home. Still, I was ravaged by my grief brought on by this fire, and woke to my struggle to express my emotions at 1 a.m. My body was feverish, my stomach upset, and the side of my big toe on my right foot was aching, an area associated with the throat and the thyroid. The word “mother” popped into my head.

It took me a long time to get back to sleep in those early morning hours as I thought about my dream and what it meant for me, trying to shed the fears it brought up as I did so. The sleep that came after was deep and restorative, I can’t tell you where I went, I don’t remember, but I woke without aches.

Again, I hoped I was done with the healing and release, but Spirit wasn’t quite finished with me. As if to make sure I’d gotten the message, the first part of my dream played out in the morning in slightly different form. I gathered up the dogs, as I always do on school days, and walked with my children and husband down the driveway to await the bus. I only made it half-way. Rosy, my orange-and-white dog, decided to lunge suddenly at a small animal, likely a cat or squirrel, pulling me in the process over an embankment of snow beside the driveway. I fell backwards and landed, not too graciously, on my right hand. It was a painful experience, to say the least.

Can you guess what I broke? My right, middle finger. The finger that holds our fire energy, which we house in our lower chakras. Message received!

The Mountain

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Memoir, Reflections3 Comments

It started with a clogged drain. I was cleaning the bathrooms in my house yesterday and pulled up the plastic plug that collects hair in the shower of the master bathroom. The shower is as old as the house, its narrow walls are an avocado green and its milky glass doors bordered in gold. It’s one of the few fixtures in our home we have not changed since we moved in 6 and 1/2 years ago.

The shower drain was not clogged enough to stop the flow of water, in fact it had shown no previous signs of being clogged. Yet, my eye was drawn to a black mass of residue that clung to the side of the pipe and I pulled it free in one satisfying handful. I thought the job was accomplished, but it wasn’t. As I turned on the water and started cleaning the residue from the floor of the shower, I discovered the water was collecting in a pool. By unclogging a pipe that had been allowing the flow of water before, I had somehow managed to create another clog. There was something in there, older, deeper, that needed to be released.

Now let me take you to the mountain I climbed in my dreams last night. Actually, I wasn’t climbing the mountain, I was riding up it with my husband on a chairlift. It was near the close of the day and we decided to take this lift up to the summit that we had never before noticed. The chairlift was all the way over on the far left-side of the mountain and it let to a lodge where you could spend the night.

This was something we were considering, as we were riding up the lift. Whether to spend the night in one of the pod-like rooms that we were fairly rapidly approaching as we ascended the mountain. Then I noticed the lift beside us with people we knew who were making their way up the mountain too, only faster. I found myself envying their speed. Why was their lift going faster than ours?

We arrived at the summit to spectacular views. The view was unimpeded, the only clouds, wispy and light high in a clear blue sky. We could see for miles, the undulating terrain spread around us like a feast of the eyes. To get onto the ground, it seemed we had to de-board from a large ship that was suddenly nestled tightly in the middle of a pond at the mountain peak. We were inside, along with several other passengers and the boat kept turning and bumping into the walls of the earth that held the pond.

Although I was still held inside the boat, I was given a view of the brow of the boat. It was solid, high and strong. The metal structure was painted white and there was a section that jutted out slightly in the shape of a triangle pointed downward. As I watched this close-up image that I clearly needed to see, the triangular structure opened like a plank, and I knew this was how we were going to get out of the boat.

I found myself on the top of the mountain, now inside a beautiful kitchen where delicious meals were being prepared for the travelers. For some time, I stood and watched, taking in my surroundings with all of my senses. Then, suddenly, I felt the urge to eliminate the waste held inside my bowels. I ran down the stairs where I knew the bathroom to be held, and as I ran I found that I was wearing only a white nightshirt. A long white cord descended from beneath the cloth and I pulled it, releasing a plug in the form of a tampon partially covered with old blood. Now I had that to get rid of, as well as the feces that were ready to be released.

As I was entering the basement room, I knew already what I would find. Of course, more open stalls without doors, like in most of my dreams, I said to myself. Here was the turning point. The moment when I decided I had had enough. I searched the wall and found a container for the tampon and shut it inside. I looked at the floor that was now devoid of toilets and decided I would eliminate the waste I was holding inside of me and find a way to deal with it afterward. I was not going to let fear win, no matter what tricks it decided to deal out.

So I manifested a drain inside of my dream, which opened into the floor, waiting for me to wash my waste away. It snapped shut, and the job was done. I had found a way to be free of what I no longer needed. I had changed the circumstances of a legacy of feeling trapped and helpless, which has for many years manifested into infuriating bathroom dreams.

As I usually do, when I woke I returned to the scenes of my dream and started exploring their messages. I believe, as Denise Linn states in her book The Hidden Power of Dreams (incidentally I had just read this passage earlier in the day), that “Every day, in every way, the universe is trying to tell you something, just as your dreams are attempting to give you messages during the night.” (pg. 166)

Linn points out that we’re given these messages in the form of various symbols until we accept them. The clogged shower drain, I knew before I went to sleep, had not been coincidental. I could feel the sluggish energy from the old fears that were clogging my first and second chakras. This is where we often hold many of our deepest, oldest fears, as well as our creative and sexual energies. I knew I was being called to work through and release, to free the plugs, so to speak, that were holding me back.

Back to the mountain, that majestic symbol of spiritual transformation, at least when one is traveling up, which I was. I couldn’t over-look the other chairlift though, which was bringing people I knew faster to the summit. I couldn’t overlook the fear that I often feel like I’m not “getting there” fast enough. I’m an impatient soul, after all.

The voyage, which really wasn’t so long, was worth it. The summit so high, opened to glorious views. First I had to find my way out of the trapped waters of emotion and creation. I needed to find a way off that large ship that kept bumping into the walls of earth, so I could get to that beautiful kitchen where alchemy was being created in the form of cooking.

Spirit showed me the door, which blatantly revealed itself in the form of the upside-down triangle, symbolic of female genitalia and the sacred feminine wisdom of creation we house within our second chakra. The triangle opened, and I was free. Well, sort-of, I still needed to pull and release those two clogs that were trapping the free-flow of life-force energy inside of me. They were old, tired plugs, long stuck, and it was clearly time to let them go.

The only thing holding us back from living our complete, creative, sensuous divine selves, is the fear we trap inside of us. We can learn, as Denise Linn talks about in her book, and as I demonstrated last night, to work with our dreams to release these fears. My dream-self made the decision to step inside that fear and actively release it. I became an active participant in my own dream and changed the ending I was tired of having. I freed the fear that wanted to stay inside.

The Sifter

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized6 Comments

the sifter

It appeared to me at the end of a dream last week. I held the large metal sifter in my hand as I surveyed the boxes of artifacts from my past on the floor of my childhood basement. The sorting and discarding was finished, or so I thought. But, left in my hand was a sifter. What do I do with this? I wondered.

When I dug out my kitchen sifter to take a photo for this post, I noticed how similar it was to the one in my dream. As I studied the metal holes and edges, I realized this sifter, although cleaned after last use, was holding onto debris stuck stubbornly to its meshwork. Instinctively, I started to scrape away at the stuck residue with my nails, then stopped. There’s always something left behind, lingering, isn’t there? Whether it is an actual artifact we can feel through the caress of our fingers, or a memory tucked into the folds of our brain. When we clear the clutter, it never really disappears.

It can only transform. Before my dream of the sifter, I had spent weeks sorting through past fears. Have you ever noticed how the Universal Spirit has a way of kindly dumping a load of our fears at our feet, not one-by-one in a gentle fashion so that we might lightly skip over them, but in a pile so large we have no choice but to notice it? We have no choice, but to make a choice.

We can try to climb the pile to get over the top, then down the other side, but chances are if we do this, its jumbled contents will cause us to trip or fall. We’re likely to get hurt and bruised with the effort, and the pile is still there, slightly less neat, waiting behind us.

Another option is to bury ourselves inside of it and hide. The task of sorting being too over-whelming to accomplish, we simply let it enclose and crush us. How many people do you know who look like they’re carrying the weight of an invisible world on their shoulders?

Years ago, before I started healing my past, I realized it was no fun to carry my fears with me all of the time. It not only weighed me down, the effort made me physically ill. So, I started sorting and shedding. I’m still doing it today. That’s what I was doing in the weeks before I saw the sifter in my dream.

It started with the uncomfortable weight of fears presenting themselves in various daily circumstances. Not fun, it never really is. But, thankfully, I’m learning to take a different perspective on these periods of learning that Spirit sends to me. Ah, ha! I say after I get over my state of grievance (lengths may vary ;-), It’s time to shift! Lets do this!

Yep, that call for sifting is a cue to us that we are ready for a spiritual shift. Our soul is calling us to release a particular burden of fear and transform it into light. So, after I grudgingly accept this (again, the length to time it takes me to do this often varies :-), I now say, Bring on the joy! I’m ready to receive!

The end result of first sifting through our pile of fear, then shifting it into light, is joy! We have now opened ourselves to receive more of the Universal Source of Abundance, that I call the Light of Love, Joy and Truth. Let me give you my most recent example:

For weeks I played with my little demons called fears. In my daily life challenges, and in my dreams, I worked with shifting the energy that clutched my heart and throat, going to the source of the pain, and bringing it out to light. It wasn’t fun, playing with this last patch of fears.  As I sifted through them, they brought me back to my childhood in this lifetime, they brought me way back to distant past lives. They danced in my dreams and I woke up to a heart thumping with exertion.

I even shifted the energy in my home, with the help of a gifted friend. I burned clutter that was weighing me down, asking the fire spirits to transmute its energy. I rearranged and sorted, nothing too drastic, but all with the intention of bringing in more “light” and abundance.

As the shift started taking effect, the metaphorical pile, with its bulky weight, lightened, transforming into a path of abundance. 4 crows and a hawk appeared in the sky while I walked, followed days later by an unexpected surprise in my email box. WordPress had Freshly Pressed one of my erasure poems. I was pleased, but didn’t hold on too tightly to the tether of hope, instead I released it and a few days later my inbox was flooded. 400 pages views in one day on a single poem (I was lucky to get 10 before), over a hundred likes, numerous comments and reblog notices appeared, and the flow has continued with each day. My audience has grown by hundreds, without any direct effort on my part. I simply cleared the clutter abstracting the path.  I brought in more light.

The Gifts of Night #dreams #sleep

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized4 Comments

I used to go to sleep with Fear. When I was a child, I would check the shadowed corners of my room to see if a ghost, or some other unwelcome presence, was lurking there. Three glances for each corner, then I’d quickly tuck myself into bed, pulling the sides of the covers like a cocoon around my head with only my face exposed so I could breathe. My army of stuffed animals stood guard around the perimeter of my bed, yet my heart would often race my frantic thoughts to sleep.

More than the dark, I was afraid of what was hidden inside of it. I was raised with the belief that ghosts were not real and a fear of the dark was irrational, but my fear was real. It stayed with me long into adulthood and has diminished only over the past few years. Before it left me, Worry started moving in to take its place. Since Worry is a companion to Fear, it merely took the upper hand of an already present relationship.

Instead of fearing “imaginary” ghosts and demons, my mind played with Worry. As many of us do, I re-worried past events, going through the day’s circumstances that caused frustration or other unpleasant emotions within me. Instead of letting the past settle, I dug it back up and resisted sleep as I sifted through what I could no longer retrieve. Sometimes, I’d move into the future, creating a world of what ifs and maybes, mostly centered around the emotion of worry.

As I learn to live more fully in the present, I have find it easier to leave Worry and Fear behind when I tuck myself into bed at night. Most nights I go to bed with feelings of relief, gratitude, and expectation. In the soft cocoon of darkness, nestled under my covers (I still tuck them around my head, some habits stick fast), I welcome the unimpeded drift of the mind.

The veil that Ego grips more tightly during the day quietly dissolves at night when our minds drift into the intermediary realm that occurs before sleep takes over. In this space, Spirit moves freely and, when we are open to it, we travel and commune with beings from other realms often overlooked during the daytime. It is a time, I believe, filled with magic.

Art by Karen Kubicko
Art by Karen Kubicko

If  you are used to going to sleep holding the hands of Fear and Worry, try releasing them. Welcome instead the gentle embrace of Love. Imagine what wonders you will find!