Category: Reflections

“Who are you?” #YogaForKids #kidsyoga #kidyoga #yoga

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections, yogaLeave a comment
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Image Credit: Pixabay

The little girl peered up at me with teddy bear eyes as she asked her question. She was just a few years older than my daughter was when see used to boldly inquire, “Who are you?” while gazing her deep blue eyes into mine.

The question from the little girl this morning made me smile. Wide and free. “I’m the yoga teacher,” I told her.

“Am I taking yoga? I hope I am.”

“I want to take yoga,” the boy beside her chimed in.

“What’s your name?” Another child joined in the conversation.

I resisted the impulse to gather the group of preschoolers ready to go outside for their recess, turn on some Kira Willey, and lead their eager bodies in an impromptu yoga class. Their faces were irresistibly sunny as though they had no idea it was raining just outside the windows. Instead, I gathered the registration forms together out of the envelope I had hung on the bulletin board just last week, and smiled my way home.

It was my third errand of the morning. Before collecting the registration forms from the two Montessori schools, I had dropped off a bag at the high school. A post-it labeled it for the writing teacher, but it was for one of her students. A girl very different from those three exuberant young children in the preschool classroom. What a difference a dozen  years can make in a life.

She had never said a word, not even in introduction. Perhaps the teacher had overlooked her on purpose because she was shy. But I had seen the shrug of her shoulders and the head bowed a little further towards the table. The head that never looked up in participation for the hour-and-half I was there.

“I see you,” I wanted to whisper in her ear. Not in the tone of a creepy stalker, but with the words of understanding. “I’ve sat in that seat too. Many a time,” I wanted to tell her, but didn’t.

I didn’t because it was not my classroom, and I did not know her story. Sensitive to the fragility of the teenage mind, I kept quiet, like her. But I couldn’t forget about her. Although she was the only one in the classroom that never said a word, to me she was just as important the eager participants who sat around her. Even though she looked like a forgotten island. Or, an island that wanted to be forgotten.

She reminded me of me, but also someone who wasn’t me. I may never know her story. Why she chooses to wrap into herself. But, I ache for what she has lost, already. Perhaps she was once like that little girl with the happy brown eyes who thought nothing of asking a stranger who she was. I’d like to think so, but this also makes me sad.

I don’t know if she’ll read the book I offered her in return for not acknowledging her presence, and for not knowing how to bridge her island for fear of further harm. She may not read even the first word, and that’s okay. I hope she reads the card, though. I think she will. I hope she realizes that someone saw her when she thought she wasn’t seen. Not by the eyes of judgement, but the eyes of understanding. And, I hope that one day she’ll realize she has a beautiful light inside of her that is waiting to be seen.

 

The “I Need to Be Special” Syndrome Vs. Greta Thunberg’s “I Don’t Care About Being Popular” Approach to Life #mindfulness #parenting

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections, Warriors of Light19 Comments
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Photo Credit: Pixabay

It’s likely most of us suffer from it, to lesser or greater degrees. Soon after birth, the ego discovers its individuality and realizes that separation can be a threat to its survival. If I am not considered special, the ego decides, I may not be fed, taken care of, and loved. First the individual ego fears the rejection of his parents, then later learns to extend this fear into the wider world of siblings, teachers, coaches, peers, and employers. No one wants to be cast aside and forgotten.

So the ego searches for specialness. It decides, if I am attractive enough, I will be loved. If I am smarter than my peers, I will never fail. If I am fast enough, I will always win. And in that striving for specialness, angst sets in. What will happen if I  am no longer considered beautiful? Will I no longer be loved and cherished? What if someone smarter than me comes along? Will I be rejected? Overlooked in favor of another? What will happen if I lose this race? Will I no longer be a winner?

You cannot fault the individual ego who as a young child hears the words, “You are so cute” by his parents and translates this to, “I am cute, therefore I am loved and wanted.” Soon after birth, the child begins to learn the skills admired by her world, discovering in the process that accolades, hugs, and smiles accompany her feats of mental and physical acuity. She will likely hold onto these words and decide as an adolescent that the words “You’re smoking hot” translate to being worthy of love by another. If she doesn’t hear them, her self-worth may be severely questioned, as the insecure ego has learned to strive for specialness. And so this extends to all areas of life for each individual who grows in a world fixated on specialness. Each of us becoming, in the process, unconsciously obsessed with what separates us from each other, instead of what unites us.

We lose, in this process of striving for a specialness that separates us from each other, both inner and outer joy. Separation is the opposite to unity, and the constant striving for this separation from each other pulls us apart from what unites us. This encompasses the inner and outer unity, as there can never be contentment if there is a constant struggle for separation. Inner peace arrives only when the ego learns to exist in a state of balance with the body, mind, and heart-centered soul. It exists only when there is the realization that striving for the outer ideals created by the world around it are false ideals. That in fact no one individual can truly be more special than another. Instead, the individual must realize that this striving only creates separation. Separation from the true self.

I have been thinking about this pervasive syndrome of specialness obsession that many of us get pulled into early on it life. God knows I did.  My need to be accepted by my parents led me to swallow my words and emotions and bury my true identity. By the time I reached adolescence, I discovered that being different meant rejection by my peers, and so I struggled to stand out in more accepted ways. Although I won awards for academic and athletic excellence, as well as the affections of handsome boys who didn’t know my past, I existed inside a sea of inner turmoil. True connection with myself only became achievable later in my adult life after I began to let the outer ideals slip away.

Last week my son tried out for the school’s baseball team and didn’t make it. He took the rejection by the coach hard, at first. And, one of the comments he made was, “what will people think of me now?” He is in the eight grade. That stage in life when the ego is acutely fixated on identity. It is heartbreaking to hear these words come out of the mouth of your son, knowing the struggle for identity that he is going through. Yet, it is also an opportunity to teach and learn. To grow and overcome. To help discover that the perceived rejection of the outer is really just a superficial interpretation. The self secure in its identity will realize that there is no true rejection or separation.

Yet this process can take time. It can take much learning, or rather unlearning, to discover that the outer ideals so cherished by a culture premised upon ranking will eventually topple. It will create inner and outer wars, as we have seen over and over again. We are in the midst of this right now. Racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and religious discrimination have raised their fearful heads in a quest for dominance. On our thrones of leadership we have placed false demigods who thrive upon the ego’s “I am special” syndrome.

But, in the midst of the ego’s struggle with fear and supremacy, there are those shining voices of truth singing songs of unity. Some of them have not yet reached the age of adulthood. I am thinking in particular of Greta Thunberg, who at the age of 16 has been nominated for the Noble Peace Price.  When she was 15, Greta began protesting outside of Sweden’s parliament in an effort to inspire a more radical response to climate change. “I do not care about being popular,” she fearlessly declares when she speaks in front of a panel of rule makers. She lives through her heart supported by, and not ruled by, the strength of her ego. You cannot help but feel the power of her words. Never having, perhaps, caught the “I need to be special” syndrome, Greta shines in the light of a universal truth as she seeks to bring awareness to a global crisis that affects not just her, but all life on Earth. She speaks of unity and not division and has no care for whether she is liked. Yet, through doing this, she epitomizes true greatness.

During my conversations with my son over the weekend, we discussed the difference between striving for individual greatness driven by the ego’s quest for specialness vs. the larger calling of the soul ruled by the heart. Although he enjoys playing the sport of baseball, my son does not feel that a life centered around an ego-centric competition is for him. He has no intention of playing professional baseball. Instead, he realizes that he has his own unique strengths, which may lead him down a path that is not so much about letting the ego shine, but allowing the truth of the soul to shine. It gives me hope, just as it does seeing Greta standing sure and true in her convictions to inspire a better, cleaner world for us all.

 

 

I See You #selfrealization #mindfulliving

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections, Uncategorized21 Comments
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The Face is the Canvas of the Soul. Image Credit: Pixabay

What does it mean to look at another and see that person? Not as a mirror of what we want to see, but of what is simply reflected back to us? Some of us make it a practice of reading faces, knowing that the truth is often hidden from us through words and other actions. We search past the lie to read the nuances of the face that might offer the tell-tale twitch of discomfort. Or, maybe we read to know. To really know who the other is.

I grew up reading faces. I think I learned to read faces before I started reading books. It’s likely we all did, as babies are masters of the craft. During my own turbulent childhood, the craft of reading faces became a method of survival. I knew in an instant if I had upset the fragile psyche of another before the mouth could form words, because I simply had to. I lived with a very volatile father figure.

Not everyone has, though, and I am sometimes amazed that we are not all adept face readers. Or, perhaps we simply choose not to see what is mirrored back to us. Sometimes we choose to see what we want to see, and not what is expressed. Even the masked face tells a story. I know a woman, who is a psychologist by trade, who is quite good at donning the mask. It’s her natural affect, and when I look at her I see the mask of her profession, and even though it is not unkind, it is hardened around the edges. You will not penetrate my mask. You will not truly know me, her visages mirrors back to me.

Even the mask wears a story.

I’ve always been told I have a very expressive face. I don’t often try to don the mask. If I am allowed to read your face, then it’s only fair that you are allowed to read mine. Yet, sometimes we don the mask for self-preservation, or in our efforts not to damage another by what they might find in our visage. The adept face reader will always be able to find what is hidden, though. If he wants to.

It’s an interesting study. One can learn not only a lot about another, but a lot about oneself, by observing the face of another, along with our personal reaction to that observation. There have been moments when I have wished I had not seen what I have in the face of another. The cruel eye of disdain…the lover’s lust for another..the haughty reproach of the one who feel superior…the list could go on…

How often do we choose to see, though, what we wish to see instead of what we want to see? It often surprises me when someone tells me they see something in my face that is not there, or that I do not feel in the moment of telling. Happiness, when I am not happy. Sadness, when I am feeling fine…

Years ago, when I frequented an energy healer, she would often greet me with the words “You look sad.” I found her welcoming jarring and unwelcoming. And, if truth be told, I didn’t actually feel sad until she said those words. Certainly she had a way of digging out that hidden sadness when I was on her table. But she never dug out the joy along with it. What I eventually came to realize is that she was seeing in me what was hidden in herself.  I also realized that if I want to find that well of joy, I needed to go elsewhere, or more specifically, within my own true self.

Sometimes we see ourselves in another, and sometimes we simply see what we want to see. But, as we truly learn to see another, and ourselves at the same time, we can realize that what we are seeing might teach us. Even if it is something we didn’t want to initially see. If we really look and each other, with all the joys, fears, pain and beauty mirrored back at us, we might uncover a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other. We might begin to bridge the gap of divide, no matter how wide it seems to separate us.

 

The Fool’s Journey: I attempt to teach mindfulness to some not so mindful teachers #mindfulness #TheFool

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections, yoga5 Comments

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It was a rather dreary Friday afternoon in mid-March. Spring had arrived days before by the date on the calendar, but New Hampshire doesn’t follow the rules of the seasons. Patches of old snow still piled in heaps, even in the city, and a cold rain was falling from an ashen sky.

When I arrived at my destination, I found a tired building. The gymnasium, where the conference was being held, was equally dreary as the outdoors. Perhaps more so. The floor, scuffed and dusty, looked as though it hadn’t felt the threads of a mop in months. Films of unswept debris lined its edges and I hesitated before I released the weight of my heavy bag and winter coat. I didn’t belong here.

I felt it immediately. I was conspicuously out of place. The over-dressed outsider with a bag filled with treasures that I would soon discover were only treasured by me. I had, it seemed, set out on this day to play the role of The Fool. My face lifted to an unseen sun as I skipped fumbled to find a place in the circle I had asked approximately 45 Montessori school teachers to create.

A fool-hearty mistake, it would seem, as I had severed their zone of comfort before I had even begun. We don’t always like to feel open and exposed. Equal, you might say, to one another. The teacher is used to leading. Standing above and before the pupil. I had created a circle on purpose. I didn’t want an end or a beginning. I didn’t want to break the illusion of unity. I didn’t want to appear as their leader for the afternoon, but their equal.

They had, though, expected to be taught. Lectured by me as I stood on a podium before their lines of chairs. Here they might hid in their expected roles, as I donned the mask of teacher. Instead, I continued to play the role of The Fool, determined to open before this tired group now circled around me, my bag of treasures.

The carefully typed words started navigating in a clockwise rotation, and I watched as the turquoise and white organza wrapped crystals, tea, and chocolate offerings were reluctantly selected from the basket that held them. What care I had taken, I thought, to gather and wrap these unwanted gifts.

What a fool I had been to think they might be eagerly received.

I have learned, for the most part, to let go of expectations. What we may dream up in our mind as a wondrous play of events rarely plays out in reality the same way as our imaginings. Instead, we seem to get what we need, more than what we want, in that moment of arrival.

I had thought, or rather hoped, that my approach to talking about mindfulness might be eagerly received, or at least curiously welcomed by a group of professionals who were tasked with the role of instructing young developing minds. What I found instead was a room mostly filled (there were the few semi-eager minds) with tired minds inside equally tired bodies who just wanted to go home and call it a full day.

It’s likely whatever I had chosen to offer them that afternoon would have been tepidly, at best received. Unless it had been a check for a million dollars, for the air in the room held the feel of being over-tired and under-paid, as teachers often are.

Yet, I had committed to being there for two hours to talk about Mindfulness with the intention that my audience might discover tools to use in their own lives and to incorporate into their classrooms with the young minds they were tasked with nurturing. The mindful journey, though, appeared to be mostly my own.

As I stepped out of the circle and into its center to fully don that role of The Fool and demonstrate Donna Eden’s Daily Energy Routine, I felt the full glare of the invisible sun shining on me. In the shadows of the circle, figures elbowed each other and snickered. Was I in eighth grade? It sure felt a lot like I was. The same adolescent insecurity was being mirrored back to me.

Look at me, playing the role of the fool. Look how vulnerable I am being. I may appear different from you, but I am just like you. I know your number. I’ve walked in your shoes. That pain you are trying to mask with mockery, was once mine too.

We cannot expect those who most resist the new to gaze in wonder or in awe through the door we try to open for them. We cannot expect them to walk through it and see what is on the other side. We must all become The Fool in our own time, stepping off the well-worn path and out to the cliff of the unknown. We might show them the cliff, but we should not push them off.

How wrong I had been to think a group of Montessori teachers might find what I had to offer engaging or enticing. Whereas my yoga students will most often eagerly embrace the new and yet to be discovered, not all of them do. I had walked on that afternoon into a room mostly filled with people who had no intention of learning something new or different that day. Their intention, instead, appeared to be to get through the Friday of required workshop hours as quickly and effortlessly as possible so that they could begin their weekend. Fair enough. That’s okay. I can accept that. There were the few. The one or two, who lingered after to get another glimpse through the strange window I had tried to open. Offering their own stories of emotions trapped in their bodies, and techniques they had tried to feel better and live more mindfully in this challenging life we are all tasked to live.

I’m okay with going home having realized I perhaps learned more that day than they had. There is always a lesson for us when we choose to learn what it has to offer. If I want to try to bridge the road of comfort and help others find a new way that may be more mindful than the one they have walked longed walked with rote footsteps, I will need to explore some new paths of my own. I certainly have my work cut out for me. We all do. These are not easy times. What I saw in that room was not up-lifting. Bodies and minds disconnected and filled with pain and fear. I saw Trump’s America in a place I had least expected it and it left me a bit jarred and unsettled.

 

The Balance of Sun & Moon #SpringEquinox2019 #equinox #balance #harmony

On By Alethea KehasIn A New Earth, Gaia & Elementals, Reflections4 Comments

Today we tumble out of the deep bed of winter and stretch our limbs toward spring in the northern hemisphere. It is a day filled with promise.

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Hope is the bud quickening to the pulse of life ready to bloom into its fullest expression

It is a time of balance. Nearly equal parts dark and light, yet the two are not in opposition.

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The length of day nearly equals the length of night on the equinox

On this spring equinox, we are graced with the glory of the full sun, and also the full moon.

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The moon shines her full face towards Earth, allowing the sun to illuminate her glory at night

It is a time when the yin and yang energies — the divine feminine and masculine — are offered in balance. Equally holding space and supporting one another. Offering a mirror to the potential that resides within each one of us.

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A butterfly, symbol of transformation and rebirth, offering the dark and the light rimed with the blue of truth

 

At this era of time, when Earth and its children struggle for balance and harmony, we are offered this still point. A pause to reflect and then open to the perfection of balance. An offering to seek the sun, but also the moon and find what each has to offer us.

Strength, tempered by peace…

Darkness balanced by light…

Fear balanced by promise…

The singular life supported by all life…

The inhale of breath matching the exhale…

As the moon begins to wane, and the light of the sun lingers longer each day, may we be reminded of this balance. Using the sun’s energy to bring light to our greatest darkness. Darkness that holds fear in all its many forms, but also the seeds of promise. May we be reminded that each fear that we hold onto can transform into new life with the touch of the sun. It can bloom past the darkness from where we hold it tight as we breathe into its lips hope, promise, and love.  In the seeds of fear reside our fullest potential waiting to find the light. It is that place where the limited can become the limitless.

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May we today breathe in the balance of the energies that support us, allowing them to find balance within. Seeding the life that lingers in the darkness as we find the limitless love that unites us all.

 

 

 

Why I visit England (annually) and why we are called to sacred lands #ancientengland #sacredsites #travelingmystic

On By Alethea KehasIn A New Earth, Gaia & Elementals, Memoir, Reflections, Travel Adventures12 Comments

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I’ve been thinking about writing this post for awhile. To attempt to explain why we are sometimes drawn, mind, body, and soul to physical places as though we have no choice but to go there. The heart, leading the body back home.

I think many people I know are confused as to why I feel such a need to travel to England, over and over again. What may be viewed as a flight of fancy becomes, perhaps, seen as an excuse to get away in their minds. From the mundane. The roles we choose to play out in life that can feel old and weary.

It’s true. These roles can age us when we allow them to do so. The soul, mind, and body seeks replenishment from that which wears us down. But being drawn to a place on such a holistic level is a soul’s calling the body and mind to home. We live many lifetimes. Sometimes in one place. The location becomes an integral part of our being, woven into the memory of cells so deeply that it is brought with us through our lifetimes. We become, in essence, of that land.

We are all of the larger “land” that is Earth. Its elements have given us our body of life, but what I speak of is memory. Sometimes the call to a certain place feels as vital as breathing. It sustains us and enlivens us. It reseeds the sacred within.

I have tried to find this here, in New Hampshire and in its wider landscape of New England. I have had moments when I have felt the coming home, but this is not so much about place, but about surrendering to the union that connects all life. When I am in the ancient lands of England the sacred enfolds me and strips me bare. It opens the magic hidden within and I begin to remember fully and completely, through every cell of my being, the essence of Life.

There are certain places that hold memories for us to retrieve when we choose to open to them. Portals. Vortexes. The convergence of ley lines. Sacred temples. Stones placed upon the energy that feeds the body of Earth and in alignment to the stars…Long ago, all life lived in this union, but over time the ego took hold and dismantled union in a search for separation. We are still living the false ideal of separation, to our own imminent demise.

I believe there is that essence inside of  all of us that searches for that Light of union. To feel, once again, a part of the sacred whether we are consciously aware of it or not. We go to churches and temples to find it, and sometimes we go to the land. I am drawn to the land. It is here where the memories of home sweep through me in perfect union when I find that quiet space to surrender to it. Each time I travel to England another part of me is brought to life. Another piece of my soul retrieved and reunited.  The land speaks to me in a language I can understand. I am revived and filled with hope when I hear it whisper through my cells.

When I look at life through the eyes of the mundane I see a broken world. I see the ever-present quest for more. To be better. To divide and conquer. I see wars fought over this. I see violence because we are broken. Despair because we have forgotten. We rape and pillage ourselves and the land because we have become disconnected. We have forgotten that when we destroy another, we in essence, destroy ourselves.

Perhaps it is a fool’s quest, but I also travel to England not only so that I can remember, but so that I can somehow, through my words and experiences, stir the memories inside those we have lost and forgotten this sacred union. We are born remembering, but through modern ways of living we easily forget. Ceremony has been lost to the click of an icon to numb the searching brain. The temples of the past turned into playgrounds to capture selfies.

I don’t think it’s an accident that incredible work and care went into building these temples of stone so that they might stand thousands of years later. They are the physical keepers of our ancestral memories. Libraries set in Earth. And, it is quite likely when they were built they were built with this intention in mind. Knowing that one day we would enter, of our own free will, a long age of forgetting. And that we would, one day, also seek to remember as though our very lives depend upon it, because they do.

To place a hand on one of these stones and feel the flooding return of these memories is a testament to their sacred purpose. When I open to the ancient sites of England, the “I” and all its false needs and wants disappear. There is no I. There is only union. Union with the great stone. With Mother Earth. With the vast heavens above. And with all Life. Long ago, this is what our ancestors knew as Truth.

We are living, collectively, through the false ideals of the ego, lives of self-destruction. If we continue on this course, each individual “I” will perish collectively. In what is the utmost of irony in our striving to be better, different, and special from each other, we are making our “I” become extinct. Soon enough we will have depleted all the resources our planet has to offer and there will be no room for life to carry our “special” DNA onto future generations. There will be no living Earth to sustain progeny to live out or legacy, because our legacy will be extinct. Money cannot buy what we need for our survival. A bigger house will not spare us from disaster, no matter how much we fortify it with outer strength. Eventually the “I” dies.  Each “I” has the same destiny of death. Yet if we really cared about each individual “I” we’d collectively realize it takes the “we” to preserve it. To ensure life continues on, sustaining and enriching each other. We are now at that pivotal moment in time. That tipping point where we can choose to continue on towards imminent demise, or trade in the self(ish) for the betterment of the “we.”

Living immersed, as so many of us do, in cultures that strive for individual greatness, we become numb to the sacred within and without. We look at a tree and see a resource, not a fellow being whose breath feeds our own. We look at a body of water and see it as a fun medium for racing our boats, not seeing that our boats pollute the liquid that is meant to sustain us and the life it holds inside of it. We look at our neighbors and think, you have something I want…a bigger house, a nicer car, smarter kids…without realizing that our neighbor is an aspect of ourselves.

When we come into the world, newly born, we still remember. When an infant gazes around you and past you, smiling as though into thin air, they are seeing what you can probably no longer see.  Essence that dances around you as a sacred part of the light woven with all life. Sing the infant that cries to the overwhelm of this chaotic and foreign life we have brought it into, the sound of “Om,” and you will return to her the feeling of home. Of union. Stillness opens the eyes back to memory and the sacred returns in the moment of union.

We all have the doorways within us. We just need to find the keys that open them. England, in many ways, is my key. If you don’t know where your key(s) is hidden, its worth the search to find it. The life that sustains you depends upon it.

The Temple of the Knights #templechurch #knightstemplar #london #sacredtravel

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections, Travel Adventures12 Comments

It seems fitting to have ended my latest journey to England in Temple Church, London. Built for the England headquarters of the Knights Templar 800 yrs ago, the church is more recently known through Dan Brown’s book The DaVinci Code. 

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Temple Church, London 

There is a small fee of five pounds to enter the church, which saw a large spike in visits in the months after the publication of Brown’s famous book. There were fewer than a dozen tourists inside the church when Larissa and I stopped by on my way to Gatwick. Had I not had the burden of my luggage, I would have taken a few more glimpses into the more hidden areas and perhaps a few more photos. The layered history of the church is palpable, even in the newer, restored areas. Like the sphinxes guarding Cleopatra’s Needle, the Templar Church suffered (more severe) damage from German bombs in WWI.

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Now that’s some luggage I’d like to look inside 😉 

The templars, considered “holy warriors” of their time, certainly hold an air of intrigue that can be felt inside the walls of their church in London. Although their order was only active for two hundred years their temples can be found throughout Europe and the Middle East. Founded in Jerusalem during the Crusades, the Knights Templar was formed to protect pilgrims visiting the holy city. Later, in battle, the Knights were known for their fearless valor as well as their financial prowess. They came to a rather gruesome end under King Philip IV of France after the Crusades ended in the loss of the Holy Land.

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Stone effigies of Knights decorate the floor of the temple, including William Marshal the 2nd Earl of Pembroke

Despite being a rather small church, there is much to see, including the myriad faces of men in often leering and hideous expression peering out from the walls. I, though, was more drawn to the faces of women found beneath the pillars, as though lending a feminine balance and support to the masculine structure. The Knights, after all, were all men. Christian monks.

And then there was the impish figure sitting on the skull…

IMG_5595.jpeg I’m no expert on the Templar order, not its churches, and walking through the Templar Church in London brought more questions than answers. More than the history, though, I am draw to the feel of these holy places and I was only too pleased to discover that we could go upstairs.

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I peaked through a wooden door on the way up, but dared not take a photo.

It was a bit of a colossal feat to get up, and then down, these old stone stairs lugging a suitcase. You can imagine my dismay when I needed to maneuver around a visitor going down as I was going up. It’s heady stuff, especially when you get to the top and start walking the circle…(I was so caught up in the walk, I didn’t take any photos)

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The circle from below. One can conjure all sorts of scenes from this place.

It wasn’t a long visit. Just long enough to walk the floor below and above and pause a few times to take it in. I was expecting it to feel more haunted and weighed down by the ghosts of the past. Instead it felt inviting, drawing you into its mysteries. The echoes of power and ritual call out to you, especially from the more hidden places.

A few more photos:

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Threading the Eye of the Needle #england #cleopatrasneedle #londoneye

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections, Travel Adventures4 Comments

After a very full morning with Sue, Larissa and I headed back on the train to London. We still had daylight ahead of it, and we were committed to making the most of the glorious spring afternoon we were given.  We had made a date with Cleopatra. Her needle, that is, which graces the banks of the River Thames on a site called the Victoria Embankment.

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Victorian Embankment with Cleopatra’s needle guarded by two more modern day sphinxes and the London Eye in the background

When I first discovered, a few years ago, that there was an ancient Egyptian obelisk in London I was determined to see it during one of my trips. Although she had likely passed it several times during her travels, Larissa had also yet to visit Cleopatra’s Needle.

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The obelisk was not made for Cleopatra, but for the sun. Its current name, instead, comes from the boat that brought it over.

The history of the obelisk that now pierces the London skyline at a height of 20.88 meters and weighs 187 tons, begins in the 15th century BC in Heliopolis.  The pharaoh Tuthmosis III had ordered the building of the Temple of the Sun, as well as a pair of obelisks to record its dedication. In the 10th century BC, the obelisk was moved to Alexandria to decorate the temple of Julius Caesar. An earthquake in 1303 toppled the obelisk, and it was not erected again until it was brought to London 1877 on board the ship Cleopatra, as a gift from Egypt to commemorate the Battle of Aboukir. After its erection in London, two bronze sphinxes were made to flank its sides.

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The sphinxes were the marks of German bombs from WWI

It seemed a fitting end to our adventures, gazing upon this ancient memorial to the sun with the London Eye shining golden with the day’s end across the water. A very full and glorious day, of time well-spent touched with magic.

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The London Eye

The Gifts of the Stones #WaylandsSmithy #uffington #england #sacredsites #castlehill

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Energy Healing, Gaia & Elementals, Memoir, Reflections, Travel Adventures11 Comments

It was yet another place I didn’t want to leave. Whereas I had felt the exhilaration of life at Castle Hill, the more I immersed myself into the energy of Wayland’s Smithy, the more I felt at peace. As the sun wove its golden light through the guardian trees, I walked over the long barrow and around it. Time slipped away and the veil thinned. The air was gently electrified, and I could feel the elemental kingdom and all the guardians of this sacred site watching, but also welcoming us. Below my feet, amid the last year’s fallen leaves, white feathers appeared on the path.

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More white feathers. Gifts of spirit. If you look closely you may see faces in the leaves.

I was, without a doubt, walking holy ground in a landscape of the dead that was very much alive, revered and protected by forces more felt than seen.

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The flowers beneath the guardian trees

“Look at the trees,” Larissa remarked. “Each one has a patch of white flowers.” Not planted, but growing as though in nature’s reverence. It felt like magic, in the purest sense. Each piece a deliberate part of the whole. And, as I walked, I could hear the whisper of the ancient stones.

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Each stone has a personality filled with the history of its purpose. Even the smaller stones show the faces of the past.

Pairs appeared in stasis, like long married couples set in their ways, yet determined to protect the love they hold.

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This pair of guardian stones look as though they are reaching for a kiss as Sue peers from the beyond.

It’s quite something to think of the work and care that went into the construction of this long barrow. A tomb to house the dead whose bodies were prepared with care that rivals that bestowed upon the pharaohs of Egypt. A tomb supported with carefully selected and placed stones. Huge sarsens, like that of Long Meg, mark the entrance to the inner chamber of the long barrow. All this work, including the massive stones, once covered entirely in earth. A house built for the dead, 196 feet in length and 50 feet at its widest point.

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Standing at the end of the long barrow, you get a sense of the immensity of its size and the undertaking it took to build it.

“You need to leave a piece of silver for Wayland,” Sue revealed as we gathered before the entrance. “To shod your horse.” I didn’t question her words. I had silver in my pocket and I crawled inside the chamber to find a place for it.

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Ani stands guard over the entrance to the chamber

“Can you find Wayland, the spirit stone, the totem stone?” Sue continued as we peered at the massive rocks before us. The faces on their surfaces morphing and changing with each angle. All for the dead…

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Ani runs before the sarsens

Then Sue began to tell us the story of a visitor before us who had asked a question of one of the sarsens. Within moments his answer had appeared in physical form and still holds true to this day. While she spoke, I watched a bee circle around me. A February bee, but I had already seen two butterflies during my visit to England, so perhaps it was not too unusual…It made me think of the buzzing I had heard, low, but constant, as we were walking the path from the car to Wayland’s.

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My chosen stone, guarded by a great bear

I chose my stone, as the bee continued to circle my neck, and pressed my forehead upon its surface. I didn’t have a question. Instead, I wanted only to receive whatever might be revealed to me.

The mound appeared before me in the full splendor of summer. Upon its green back, a white horse emerged, strong and sure. It stopped in wait as a figure cloaked in white descended and began to walk toward me. The landscape opened to beyond the barrow, to where people long passed gathered inside a great womb. I saw the path weaving in union between the land of land of the living and the land of the death. It became a processional of people coming towards the barrow. In the middle of the trail I saw a small circle of stones.

The visitors gathered around the mound of Earth, upon which the white horse stood with the figure cloaked in white. I could not see her face, but I knew her energy to be both feminine and strong.

The vision turned inward, and I felt as though I had entered an inner chamber. A shadowed form of a great bear appeared beside me, then morphed into a great serpent whose head rose behind mine. In front of me, a hawk of the sun passed before my vision, circling until all disappeared and I felt my body again. Each cell buzzing with renewed life, as though in those few moments of connection I had been washed with light.

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The capstone of the chamber resembles a serpent.

It was soon time to leave, but before we left we placed more offerings for the spirits of the stones. It has been a true gift of a day. Full and complete in and of itself, even though it was just an hour passed noon.

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It’s hard to deny the magic of Wayland’s Smithy

As we collected ourselves back into the car, even Ani appeared withdrawn into her own thoughts, refusing the small bits of sandwich we offered her. Each one of us quietly processing our return in our own way as we paused before our descent back into town.

To read the rest of the posts in this series, please click the links below:

Part 1: The Blindfolded Girl in the Hallway

Part 2: Keats and the First White Feather

Part 3: The Eye Opens: Long Meg

Part 4: I Journey from Long Meg to Little Meg

Part 5: Castlerigg at High Noon

Part 6: A Walk in the Woods with Tess

Part 7: A White Horse Appears (well actually two) and I Make a Stone Sing

Part 8: The Castle on the Back of a Dragon

Part 9: The Other Eye Opens: I Meet the White Horse of Uffington

Part 10: Wayland’s Smithy: A Temple of Trees and Stones Worthy of Reverence

Wayland’s Smithy: A Temple of Trees & Stones Worthy of Reverence #waylandsmithy #castlehill #ancientengland #travel

On By Alethea KehasIn Gaia & Elementals, Meditations, Reflections, Travel Adventures16 Comments

There is an old road called the Ridgeway that connects Castle Hill to  Wayland’s Smithy. It’s a mile in length, and had we more time we would have walked it. The Ridgeway joins the land of the living with the land of the dead, and I have no doubt it is as old as the “Castle” and the burial chamber of Wayland’s Smithy. To walk it, is to walk upon sacred ground where feet have traveled for thousands of years. Yet all do not treat it as such.

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Ani and I waited for the site to clear of its busy visitors before we walked the long barrow.

The tread of reverent ritual has been replaced by the tread of travelers seeking outings from their over-busy lives. On the day we visited Wayland’s Smithy, there were visitors who had arrived before us. Two friends and their toddler-aged children were stationed at the foot of the chamber. The moms looked haggard and distracted as they half-watched their children and studied the screens of their phones. The children climbed the headstones around the entrance to the more than 3,000 yr. old burial chamber as though they were on a playground’s jungle gym.

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Wayland’s Smithy feels, to me, like a natural cathedral worthy of reverence and awe.

My mind turned back two days, to that gloriously sunny noon at Castlerigg where a large family had created a picnic ground and play gym out of the sanctuary in the stone circle. “If this were a church, that would never be allowed,” Larissa put words to the emotions rising through me as we watched the young kids hang precariously off the great stones guarding the chamber.

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The entrance to the chamber, as seen from one side, where the children played and their distracted moms leaned against the mighty stones.

Wayland Smithy is a place of worship. It is a holy ground for the dead, but also the living. A Sue noted, many years ago someone must have seen the site as a home of the sacred and honored it by planting a ring of ash around it, creating the effect of a natural cathedral. The temple of trees holds the stone chamber for the dead in an embrace of such sublime beauty and peace, the present mind cannot help but find sanctuary in the heart.

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The open eyes will recognize a sacred site.

We had to wait maybe ten minutes for the visitors before us to leave, and continue on with their midday hike. And, in that time, I kept thinking about Castlerigg and how the energy of the sacred had retreated as though in self-preservation, deep within Earth. I looked at the long chamber before me and thought of the stones that were obviously missing from its sides. Stones that may have been callously dug out to line the border walls of houses or fields. Or, perhaps even to be trophies of sorts, displayed proudly on private grounds.

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Lonely Stones: I got the sense that these stones were left behind as part of a border of stones, which are now mostly lost. They are spirit stones, filled with holes and intrigue.

Yet, despite the handfuls of oblivious visitors that visit Wayland’s Smithy, and its missing parts, the site still holds a very special energy. The guardian trees form a ring of protection around it, and I suspect most who enter their temple enter it with a feeling of reverence.

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I felt much better with Sue and Ani sitting above the mouth of the chamber. Sue’s face reflects an unmistakable peaceful joy, and Ani, well, she could not have been happier.

As the mothers gathered their belongings and children and made their way back to the walking path, I stood upon the back of the grand chamber with Ani, ready to receive its gifts.

To Be Continue…

To read the previous posts in this series about my recent visit to England, please follow the links below:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9