The scent of frankincense is infused in the air, and beside me there is a note, a deck of cards, a bar of wrapped soap, and an unfolded indigo cloth with the hand-stitched words, “inner truth healing.” A phone also sits beside me, holding a message that reads like a miracle.
I am blessed. It is a day where this knowing is infused into every cell of my being. The tears, for now, have been wiped free from my eyes, but my heart still sings with love and joy. There is, within me, the knowing that the heart is woven with the threads of every heart. The gift of Truth permeates the tangible packages beside me.
The angel cards were gifted to me this morning. “I found these at a thrift store and thought of you,” my friend said as she handed me the box.
The First Gift of the Day
One learns in these moments that although a present can be beautiful, the energy it holds is where the true gift resides. To have taken the time to think of someone else and know that what you have found for them is a mirror of their truth is a gesture of love. The recipient cannot help but feel it.
The second gift arrived from Abudhabi, wrapped in a brown envelope. I tore the ends to release more magic in the form of camel’s milk soap infused with frankincense, a folded indigo cloth with white, hand-stitched words, and a note. By then I was over-come.
Of the cloth, my friend from Abudhabi wrote, “The embroidery I made for you is on a hand-woven, hand-dyed substrate — an indigo cloth…Indigo is a healing dye–and in Indonesia only women in midlife are allowed to handle it — it’s considered magical, mysterious, and powerful.”
I held the cloth to my heart and breathed deep. I could feel magic. I could feel love.
There is an indescribable joy that fills one’s being at moments like this. The knowing that one’s life is infused with love, as all life is, is a precious gift.
I woke at 3am with my mind playing back a phrase that came to me several months ago during a meditation, Every cell has a weight and a memory. Instead of falling back to sleep, I kept thinking about this statement and how important it is in terms of healing the body. Even when the mind chooses not to remember, the body does.
Cells, by their very nature, are programed to remember. It is how they survive, dividing and propagating themselves through generations upon generations to carry out their designated functions, yet we don’t always think about the emotional weight that our bodies carry.
You may have heard stories about transplant patients who suddenly develop cravings for foods they never liked before. There are also cases where personalities have radically changed, particularly after a heart transplant. It may sound crazy on the surface, but it makes sense. Cells, by their very nature, are programed to remember, even when the mind chooses to forget. They do it to survive and thrive, but sometimes, when the weight of the memory they carry is too heavy, they turn sluggish and lethargic. Over time, disease can set it.
Pause in reading this, and close your eyes. Allow your body to show you where it is holding density. For some of you it might be obvious, you may have an excess of physical weight in one area more than another, or you might have a persistent ache or pain. Go to these places and ask them to remember the origin of their density.
Let me give you an example in myself. Although I am relatively slender, my body holds extra density in my belly, in particular in the abdominal areas of my 2nd and 3rd chakras. This is where, as a young child, I started burying my emotions. Having no real outlet for emotional release, I swallowed my turmoil, and as a result I often had frequent pains in my abdominal region. As an adult, I had chronic IBS for two years, and I would wake in the wee hours of the morning with a bloated belly filled with pain. When I began listening to my body, and allowing the stories it had stored to surface, along with the emotional weight they carried, I began to heal, and the bloating decreased along with the pain.
In my early twenties, I was diagnosed with thyroid disease. Although I do not have the physical weight of a goiter in my throat, I have the energetic density of hypothyroidism. In my 5th chakra, therefore, there is energetic density. Although my thyroid is gradually regaining health, when I enter this space of my body, I can feel its weight. There are emotions stored here, waiting to be released. My cells not only carry my own memories of my voice and truth being silenced with physical and verbal restraints, they carry generations inside of their DNA. Thyroid disease runs in my family, as it often does. Proof, I believe, that cells carry memories. How can they not?
Why would one person get a disease and not another? Chance? I don’t tend to give much credence to chance. If you dig deep enough, you can likely find a cause; an origin. We can ask the same question another way. Why do some people heal, and not others? The answers are similar in either case. The weight of memory.
A healthy, vibrant cell does not get diseased. It thrives, and carries out the function for which it is designed. Destiny, though, is subject to events. The cell exposed to trauma suffers. It mutates, or fails to replicate in perfect form. Sometimes it dies before it can divide. Physical trauma to the cell will compromise its health, but so will emotional. When we receive a cut, we apply pressure to the source of the bleed. We try to stem the flow of loss. What happens, though, to the body that suffers emotional trauma? It grows dense with the weight it is trying to release.
The body is always striving to find balance, yet many of us are unwilling to listen to its memories. Its not always pleasant to stop and listen to our bodies. What they have to tell us is often of a memory we have tried to ignore or forget. Like a child, the body yearns to be heard and understood. When we allow this occur, we start to heal density and the discomfort it creates. We shed the weight of repression as we release the trapped stories. Health returns as the energy of the cells spin more freely, and we feel lighter and more vibrant.
Sometimes the stories aren’t ours, but we’ve agree to harbor them in our bodies. Memories passed down through DNA, or through the empathic matrix of one being to another. Listen. Allow. Remember. Release. Heal. The body, like the soul, is always trying to find the light inside the story.
I woke from a strange dream this morning, just at the point where I could have let go of the notion that I needed to go “back” home, and surrender into the vast unknowing. I woke with a feeling of constriction. I felt it in the chest tight with held breath. I felt it in my throat clogged with mucus. And, I felt it in my lower abdomen waiting to release the waters processed during the night.
In the dream I had been driving a cat. Of course this might actually have been possible if it had been a wild cat such as a tiger or a lion, and I allowed myself to imagine that glorious possibility for awhile after I woke. In the dream, though, my domesticated cat looked a lot like the one that lives in my physical house, only I had a ridiculous reign around its shoulders, as though I actually believed it would be capable of taking me where I thought I needed to go, which was back to my childhood home. When I woke, my wildcat, a tiger, had no yoke of any form, instead I rode her back and surrendered to where she wanted to go.
The cat, in both instances, represents the energy of the 2nd chakra, where our creative life-force energy is birthed into being through our intuition. In the dream, I thought I was letting the cat lead the way, but of course she was too small and too domesticated to carry my weight. It was a rather pitiful scene of restraint. Before I woke, I was digging futility in a backpack with many pockets, stuffed with everything, it seemed, but the GPS I was looking for. I was convinced I needed it to find my way back home. “Back” home, that is, instead of home. I was going backwards into the past, instead of forwards into the unknown filled with that fiery energy of possibility.
The cat that wants to be a tiger
I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, and really, I wasn’t. Frustrated, yes, as we all are when we don’t allow that full expression of the 2nd chakra to channel into life. You see I had also been tempted by this possibility, in the form of a mysterious lover, who held me close and kissed me, before I made the choice to look for my “car. Yet there was the hint of promise in his words,”You will come back. Next time…”
Why, you might ask, am I telling you about this dream? Why should you care? Because, I realized, upon waking that my struggle against restraint is a universal struggle, which is so poignantly at the surface right now it cannot be denied. You need only to look around you, and within you, to see it. As the inner always mirrors the outer and vice-versa. It is also timeless, but I believe at this point in our collective evolution, the letting go of restraint is poignantly calling for our attention.
How many of us grew up with restraints and constraints? Most of us, I think it’s safe to say. I know that in the rare moments when I dared utter my will, which went against my parents’, a verbal or physical restraint would quickly reach out to hold me back. Of course it’s no wonder I am still struggling with the ties that bind, but oh is it frustrating.
Yesterday, I read a post of Facebook shared by a friend about a young man in Boston who had faced the darkness of uncontrolled restraint in the form of fear surfacing from the energy around this turbulent election process. I believe we all want to be free. Yet, when we act out from the place of fear, we cause harm. When we choose to disempower another, instead of empowering ourselves, we cause oppression and hurt. We are seeing examples of this all around us right now as we are being called to walk with a faith that calls for a surrendering to the light which is love, which is grace, and which is also the vast unknown, and as yet undecided. This, then, requires a breaking down of fear and all its restraints.
The young man from Boston was not caucasian, and this threatened the foundation of “home” of the man who raged at him, as he was holding fast to old fears. Fears perpetuated by the rhetoric of Trump and his supporters, and hence fear that were not wholly his own (as all fears are really, in essence, everyones’). To hold onto his crumbing foundation, this older, white man, raged against the young non-caucasian, telling him to get off the bus he was riding, telling him to go “back home.” In essence, though, he was trying to find his own way home. His lack of restraint, in this case, had become a constraint. He was holding himself back from evolving, while also trying to hold the young man back who trigged this fear within him.
It’s curious how much we fear the unknown, but it’s also deeply troubling when you see all the damage it has, and continues to cause, in our world. A world that is trying, constantly, to evolve and grow, yet we try, in turn, to hold it back by holding ourselves back, and by trying to hold each other back. We cling to the past. We cling to what we are used to, because we think it is the safest way to live. But is it? Look around you and within you. What has this created besides war and suffering?
Constrained energy causes disease. It causes illness. It causes dis-ease. Ultimately it causes death, because the vital life force energy that wants to flow through us is shut of or diminished by restraint.
Last night, before I went to bed, I watched the move “Miracles from Heaven.” In the movie, if you have not seen it, a 10 year-old-girl is diagnosed with a potentially deadly disease of the digestive system. She is literally unable to digest and process the nutrients her body requires for life. The relevance of that, in light of what this post is about, does not escape your observation, I am sure, but there is more.
In the movie, which is based on a true story, the girl comes back home to live out, it is thought, her last remaining days. Instead, her older sister, following what I believe to be a spark of intuitive guidance, urges her to let go of the restraints that bind her and climb a large, old tree in their yard. When the two girls are on a branch together, it starts to crack from their weight, and they scramble toward the trunk so they will not fall. But, the dying girl falls (through a hole inside of the trunk), and in that fall, she finds new life.
A miracle occurs in that moment. In the pit of darkness at the base of the old tree, in which she has fallen, the young girl loses consciousness, freeing her spirit from her body. She meets “God,” and is given a new chance at life. When she wakes, she is cured of her disease and all of its restraints.
As her mother later says during a church service, “miracles are all around us, we just need to open our eyes to them.” And, let go of restraint in the form of fear. The young man on the subway is an example of this. In the face of hatred, he surrendered his own fear to grace instead of caving into fear in the form of hate. In the story of the event, he admits to being filled with an impulse to react by punching the man. To return hatred with hatred. To fight the battle he is being called to fight, but instead, he surrenders to grace. Letting go of his own fears, he opens the gate to life. To a new reality. In doing so, the man entrenched in fear responds in kind, to this new, stronger, energy he is presented with. The anger in his face gradually melts as the fortress dissolves. Tears of release fill his eyes, and he extends his hand to the young man he has just assaulted verbally. And in that moment, a new world is born, at least for him.
We all share these fears, just perhaps in slightly different forms. We all fear, to different degrees, the new. We fear what we do not know, and what we could become. But should we? Restraint, held in the reign of fear, only stops us from birthing the new world within and without. Now, more than ever, we cannot afford to stop the light that is life from flowing into the infinite possibilities of who we are and are desiring to become. A genius, whether in the form of a painting, a poem, a symphony or a breakthrough in science, causes us to look at the world in a new way. We are filled with awe as we gaze upon the manifestation of greatness, but we forget that it lies, waiting to be birthed, in all of us.
We are on the cusp of change. We have chosen and elected our catalyst in the form of Donald Trump. For many of us, he represents all that we find deplorable. For others, he represents the of power convictions postured in the form of Ego. It came down to two choices, one representing what could be stated as “more of the same,” the other a force-filled symbol of change. We voted for change, but we chose the hard road, as we were not quite ready to embrace the oneness that Bernie Sanders represented.
So, what do we do now? Do we continue upon the divisive road of otherness, or do we band together to find the commonality we all share? It’s not just spiritual jargon to say that we are, in essence, one. It is simply Truth. Whether you believe in creationism, evolutionism, or some other design that got us all here, we all came, at some point, from the same source. We all share the same light and darkness, it’s simply the degree to which we express it that we differ.
When I heard the news this morning, I went through the stages of grief, but very quickly. There was a spark of anger, followed by the shaking of fear. There was a sense of collective mourning, but there was also relief. And peace. Peace is what prevailed. Either way, I knew, we were on a path of change. Electing Hilary would have meant, most likely, a slower path. Donald, on the other hand, will ignite the fire within. It is our choice as to how it burns and spreads.
Inside all of us, there exists the Light from which we arose. We share this. This is what unites us. It is our life force energy, but it is also Love. We are at a time in our collective evolution where we are being called to the frontline, but not to wage another war. Haven’t we all had enough war and strife? This is a cycle we’ve repeated for thousands of years, and it doesn’t work, does it? Someone always loses in war. It divides us. It separates us. No, this is a call to the frontline to hold the Light. To walk with the Light. To be the Light. To spread the Light so that it may ignite the Light in others who chose to harbor fear.
When I let the anger and fear wash through me, I felt the power of this Light. I knew the time had finally come, and it was up to me, and to all who choose to live in the Light to walk strongly with the Light in whatever form we are asked to carry it. This is our time. May we unite in this knowing. May we come together and recognize the Light in ourselves and hold each others’ hands. I see, on the horizon, a beautiful rainbow. Hands raised in the joy of surrendering. When we allow the storm to pass, this is what will come to us. The New Earth is on the horizon, waiting to be birthed. Waiting for us to co-create it. It is our time. It is our calling. We are all One. May we unite in the Light of Love that we all share in our core.
I could have written this title various ways. I could have said, “The Mask of the Bully” or “The Bully Behind the Mask,” you name it. The phenomenon of the bully is in itself multilayered. The bully, a product of layering. Of hiding within, in front of, and behind fear.
I had known him since junior high, although never well. He was even more on the periphery of popularity than I was after the 7th grade. To be honest, I never gave him much thought, and hardly noticed him, except for one thing. He was a fine writer, so fine that my 11th grade English teacher sang his praises to the advanced classes of which he was not a part of, and held special writing groups, just for him.
Over the many years since we graduated from high school, I thought about him on occasion, even asking, once, a friend if she knew what had become of him. I asked if he was still writing. She didn’t know anything beyond what he posted on Facebook. I thought about friending him, my secret motivation to find out if he was still writing. Certainly, I told myself, he could not be denying his gift.
I didn’t have to friend him, a few years later, during the early stages of the current presidential election season, he sent me a friend request. I accepted. I didn’t ask if he was still writing. I didn’t ask anything. I looked on his profile and saw that he had a beautiful young family, and that he had been in the military. He vaguely resembled the boy I remembered. The face, older, but the same.
He didn’t ask me any questions either and I figured this was one of those friend requests that was sent out because he had vaguely remembered me from high school, and wanted to add me to the collection of his list of “friends.” We all do it, right? It’s Facebook after all. I “liked” his posts that featured his children, and the rare musings that showed the ghost of the writer I had so admired. I ignored the Trump posts, but he didn’t ignore mine. In fact they were the only posts of mine to which he responded.
The first one featured an article I had shared from a public site someone else had written about Trump’s bravado, demeaning and harassing women. As a preface I wrote, “Trump is no hero.” In the comments he had responded, “Bullshit.”
The next post I shared was a clip of Michelle Obama’s eloquent and moving speech a couple of days ago in Manchester, New Hampshire. A brilliant mother of two daughters, the wife of the President of the United States, who has been the epitome of grace these past 8 years. A brilliant grace, in my opinion. In the speech, if you have not heard it, Michelle speaks about her feelings about Trump’s treatment and disparaging attitude toward women. Her voice shakes with emotion. She speaks from the heart of all women who have been undermined. She speaks of dignity. Of basic human rights.
His response: “LOL.”
In that moment I realized I had friended a bully. It was not a lightbulb moment. Let’s be honest. The signs were there from the start, but I was holding onto that glimmer of hope that the gifted boy, the sensitive writer, was still living inside of there somewhere. I’m sure he still is, but I fear, he is deeply buried behind and within other masks. I don’t know what his life has been like these many years, I can only guess. I can make assumptions that we probably share some of the same struggles. I was not popular after the 7th grade, a product of the effects of bullying by two former friends that marred my reputation and “likability.”
He was, I had to admit, not my friend. An insidious presence, like Trump, coming out of the shadows only, it appeared, to undermine me and others for standing up for our basic human rights. He was there to intimidate and laugh at what we stand for. Why, I asked myself, was I willing tolerate this. I was not.
It’s as easy to “unfriend” someone on Facebook as it is to “friend” them. It just takes just one click. There is nothing personal to it, except what you make of it. That, I believe is the inherent problem of social media. This impersonal mask we can hide behind. It is a place where we can easily become the bully. The manipulator. The jerk. Our shadow side can easily be expressed behind the mask of a computer screen. Or, we can choose to shine the light.
I have found grace, again. You could say I just went through another “Dark Night of the Soul.” One of many, but this one was particularly acute. This one began on my birthday, if you are interested in reading that story you can find it in my post The Return of the Goddess. It came to a head one month later, when I entered one of my darkest nights and found myself doubting whether I was going to find the light again. “You’re not a quitter,” my good friend told me as I sobbed over the phone 3,000 miles away from her.
She was right. I have never given up, even in my darkest moments when the light seemed to flicker in a shroud of darkness inside of me, gasping for air, and I had no real intention of giving up then. Yet, grace seemed illusive, a state so far from where I was, that I could not imaging reaching it again.
I have found grace, again. The light, burning inside has erupted through the shroud of shadows and pronounced victory. Grace, I have found, is subtle. It is gentle, yet profoundly beautiful as it works its way through the pain to find the heart of life and beat it gently back into rhythm. Let me give you some of the story so you will better understand the cycle as it came through me.
On my 43rd birthday, my pain-body, or shadow-self, called out to be seen. I saw that inner-child and the goddess-woman still hiding in the shadows wanting to be healed and brought back into the light. Through the course of the ensuing month, I was faced with many tests that brought me ever-deeper into the darkness that needed to be explored and healed. As all spiritual tests are that ask us to evolve, these were not easy, and after one full month of them with little respite, I felt brought to the point of collapse, yet in an almost sadistic way, I was also saying to the Universe, “bring it on, let’s do this.”
And so the adage, “be careful what you ask for, you just might get it,” could be applied, yet I also believe that we are never given what we cannot, in theory, handle. So, I worked though the horrific dreams at night and the daily, sometimes, horrific, ordeals of waking time. I started going to tai chi classes on Fridays, a few hours after my regular yoga class. As a friend so eloquently stated during lunch today, when yoga is practiced as intended “it is like inviting God into your body.” Or, it could be said, it is like letting the God force that is within you, but only simmering, stir back into life. Yoga, tai chi and other activities that work with the life fore energy, can be incredibly intense, leaving you feeling like you have literally had a battle of light against darkness.
In the midst of this, I decided to get myself an energy healing that focused on releasing ancestral trauma and abuse, going deep through the lineages to release stored memories of trauma, including those passed down (which, by the way, was on a Friday, right in the middle of yoga and tai chi). Foolishly, I had hoped to be done with the worse part of what I had been experiencing after the session. As my friend 3,000 miles away reminded me, “You know better than that, Alethea. You’ve told me about how this works before,” adding an anecdote just in case I needed proof.
So, the wave of darkness came crashing down in full force this past week. One of the most dramatic incidences that occurred involved witnessing my daughter’s terror at being exposed to a horrific story at school by a police officer teaching drug education. The aftermath of this being almost as unpleasant as the episode itself, showcasing the shadow-side of many involved, along with my own.
In the midst of all of this, I began reading M. Scott Peck’s, M.D. book People of the Lie: The Hope of Healing Human Evil. Having just finished The Road Last Traveled by Peck, something nudged me to go further into this place of darkness inside to explore. And there was that moment, yes, that moment, where I had to ask myself, are you dancing with the “devil?” Now let me clarify, by “devil,” I adhere to Peck’s then 8-yr-old son who defined the devil to be the opposite of “live,” or “lived,” which is the word spelled in reverse. That state of non”life” where we can succumb completely to the darkness that resides inside. I knew I was agreeing to push myself to the brink of fear, and as my spiritual mentor pointed out to me after my lasted journal for the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, “You are really going through some dark things at present… but always remember that the ball cannot bounce until it hits the ground…and the harder it falls, the higher it will soar.” It’s worth also mentioning that this dark night was occurring during the 6th month of my second year with the school. The half-way point. One could also say, the turning point.
Those words were written by my mentor a week ago, and as I’ve just said, it got worse before it got better.
I realized the light of grace was returning to me last night, in my dreams, where I often learn a lot about myself. I found myself riding in airplanes (the symbolism of which you can look up) to faraway destinations I had never been to, by myself, without the baggage I was accustomed to taking with me. The planes dived and flipped in mid-air, I found myself without my seat-belt on, I was in a strange place with strange people, yet I was okay.
I woke feeling lighter, much lighter that I have for many days. The tests that could trigger me during the morning, did not. At 11:15 I got into my blue Volt, and started driving north to meet my friend for lunch. I felt exhilarated, like I had new life coursing inside me. A large crow flew from the forest beside the road and straight over me, as though guiding me north, for some time. I smiled. The crow had returned. The messenger that reminds me of rebirth out of darkness. And it never left. Through the entire ride there and back home, the crow appeared often. At the beginning of the ride home, going south, it emerged from the forest with a red apple in its mouth, and flew over the car once again, turning south to guide me. I found myself filled with gratitude. In the parking lot there had been a car parked beside me with 444 on its plate, during the ride home, 555 (for more information on number meanings I recommend Doreen Virtue’s resources or Joanne Sacred Scribe’s website. I felt incredibly blessed and guided, and I knew the light inside had won, again. I knew that I had just turned another corner in this journey of life.
As I continued to drive, with crows appearing in trees and in flight beside me, I listened to the end of a story on NPR about a writer who had suffered brain damage from an accident, and had not only survived, but thrived from her ordeal. She had transformed her darkness into light. After the story was over, I hit the buttons on my touchscreen to find music, and found John Legend’s song “All of Me” playing. Impulsively I started singing, surprising myself with the harmony of our voices. I sang loud and with passion. I sang to myself, “all of me loves all of you,” and I meant it. And I cried, again. Not from a place of despair, but from the state of gratitude, surrender, and grace. I felt filled with light and life.
Mourning dove feather I found on my path: “Light emerges out of darkness”
Sometimes all it takes is a trigger to make your remember, again. I was getting my hair cut and highlighted, and while the color was setting, my friend, the stylist, was proudly showing me photographs of the beautiful fairy house she made with her 10-yr. old “little sister.” I was impressed by the intricate details and the obvious care and love that had gone into its creation, but the images faded into the background as we talked about other things. An hour later I walked out the door and continued on with my day. The little fairy house, already forgotten, lurked somewhere hidden inside my mind.
A “fairy house” beside my home
Sometimes it takes a trigger, and also a release of the old to give way to the forgotten inner. After leaving the salon, I made my way to my tai chi class, where I stayed for the next hour. As I was preparing to leave, I over-heard a woman remark to her companion, “It’s like having reiki.” She’s absolutely right, I stopped in pause.
Or a double dose in my case. You see before I went to the salon, I had my Friday morning yoga class. Both yoga and tai chi work with the energy centers in the body where we hold our “chi,” and allow it to stir back into life where it has become stagnant. We also release stuck energy that’s ready to leave, to allow the true life force energy that resides in all of us to flow as it wants to. In tai chi class, we literally draw into our bodies the energy of Earth and the Universe to rejuvenate our bodies as we shake out the old that we no longer want to carry.
I was exhausted by the time I got home, and I uncharacteristically found my way to the hammock under the oaks and hemlocks and stayed there for so long I could hear the whisper of the arbiter inside me reminding me, “You should be making dinner now.” But, a stronger voice said, “Stay awhile longer. Forget about time as you have grown to follow it.”
So I stayed and took in the contrast of the green canopy of leaves filtering the brilliant illusion of a blue ceiling, allowing myself to just be. I watched and listened to the squirrels in the oak, carrying on their conversations as they clung impossibly to their vertical home. I fell into that hazy sleep of daytime, only to wake and wonder where I had temporarily gone.
The blue of the sky
The day gave way to evening, and I ventured back into town to get take-out for my family. No one complained that I did not cook. The sky turned from the color of a blue jay’s wing to the color of the crows who had circled the skies like an omen when I had walked the dogs before I ventured to the hammock. I grew increasingly tired after dinner, sleep calling louder with each hour that passed until I finally made my way to bed.
Night’s messenger
I can’t tell you where I traveled while I slept for most of the night, but I can tell you about the scene from which I woke this morning. I am still smiling with the memory of coming home, even though I couldn’t find the tea on the internet after I woke. But that’s really irrelevant.
Home, to my recollection, was mostly the scene of a summer forest. I woke, in the dream, that is, alone and outside. I had been sleeping in some sort of tent and my family was already gone for the day. I rolled my blankets and ventured out into my surroundings, which were lush and green, the color of the oak leaves before they turn in fall. There was some sort of wire enclosure, to keep animals in or out, I was not sure, but I rolled it away none-the-less. I searched the area for signs of life and found myself suddenly in winter, drawn up a hill beside an old mansion. There were neighbors working on their own house. I left them alone and walked through the snow toward a large hedgerow shaped into an archway. It was covered in ice, but there was a narrow opening in the middle, so I squeezed my way through. I was back to summer.
I shed my heavy coat, for there was no longer need of it, and found I was hungry. I ventured inside a hobbit-like house that felt like home, and there inside was a child. A girl who seemed to know me, and I her. She, I discovered, was also hungry. “I think they went to get more food,” she told me, and we saw the remnants of a meal. Animals appeared around our feet. A couple of young cats, and two small white dogs. The blind one lingered around my legs. Daisy appeared, but not my dog companions who are still in physical form.
Daisy, who always reminded me when the elementals had something to say
Soon we discovered the food. It was a full buffet, laid out, partially hidden, in a depression in the kitchen counter. For a moment we indulged our appetites, then began the search for tea. “I think it’s over there, I told the girl.” We culled through drawers filled with tea, but could not find the kind we were looking for. Above the counter were cabinets, and I opened one, only to discover what I had been looking for. My eager hands held the boxes filled with the green of spring. I read the labels, “Fairy Tea,” and felt the inner stirrings of joy. “I used to drink this as a child,” I told her. But, of course, she already knew that.
With my friend Deb at Samhain. That spark of light on my left arm just might be a fairy
I went outside this morning to ask the vines about Life…
Spiraling into a chalice
I asked, “Why do you spiral energy only to hold on tight to solid form?”
The struggle to hold “solid” form
“But also spiral untethered, as though reaching only for the light? Which do you prefer? How do you choose where you send your energy?”
Spiraling free
The vine replied, “For the same reason you do. To grow.”
“But what of this tangle back to self, after the reach for light?” I asked, looking at spiral that became a knot.”
The tangle back on self
“Because the blind search can be binding,” replied the bee gathering pollen from the sunflower.
A divine alchemist
So I turned to the bee, “Tell me about Life.”
“Life is alchemy,” the bee replied as it gathered pollen in its arms and sipped nectar from the heart of the flower. “Life is the continual process of creation.”
“And destruction,” offered the dragonfly who would not stay long enough to be captured by the camera. “Inertia causes stagnation and confusion, until the old is broken down to form the new.”
Tipped against Time
“But growth does not abide by time,” offered the grasshopper who looked at the sundial reading false time. “Whatever time is to you.”
Time-hopper
“Sometimes it is rest, followed by a jump over an obstacle. Like a rock.”
“Did you say call my name?” asked the rock. “Some think of me as an obstacle. Some may even call me stuck, but even what looks like stasis is really slow movement. Even I am not in the same place where I began.”
Yesterday I baked myself a birthday cake. A day late. It came out okay. The children and husband were polite, telling me it was “good,” but I knew they could taste what should have been there. There is a belief held by some, myself included, that the food we prepare for consumption holds the emotions we feel as we assemble it. When I took my first bite of the cake I had made for myself, because I had decided I couldn’t let the occasion pass without one, I tasted a distinct note of melancholia, if not the definitive spice of sadness.
A not so pretty cake before the strawberry sauces was added
Birthdays are never easy days for me. The wounded inner child comes out weeping to be nurtured, loved and adored unconditionally on this day, as well as the cloaked goddess who desires to cast aside the garment of domesticity and shine in all her glory. For at least one day. Instead, reality takes over. The hectic nature of our modern lives consumes the celebratory energy of the day, and the goddess and inner child are squeezed into the spare moments. But they are still there, waiting to be let out, and I find I can no longer deny their presence, nor do I want to.
I don’t think I am alone in my hidden, or not so hidden desires. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re shared by most of my fellow goddesses in hiding on this planet. There was a time, you see, when the goddess was revered. The woman-as-goddess was simply an undeniable truth. There was no question of our sacred power and gifts. We were revered and honored for the divine famine energy we possessed, as well as that awesome ability to create and bring forth life.
“Ancient” artifact of 3 goddesses – Bath, England
I’d like to believe we are gradually coming back to this place, but we’re not there yet. I am not the only woman out there who has to occasionally bake her own cake, and buy her own flowers (yes, I did that too). And, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. It’s a step toward honoring that inner goddess and child. It is an expression of self-love that is essential to healing the wounded spirit.
The lovely sunflowers I bought myself
Last night I told my own daughter, who, I might add has had at least a handful of pedicures and manicures in her twelve years on this planet, while I have had one, a pedicure, in my 43 year, that life was not always like it is now. I brought back the time of the goddess and told her about how women shone in all their glory in a way that honored their power and truth. A time when we were not something to be feared, but revered.
I told her this is something that needs to be brought back, and that it can start within the home. That it is not a selfish desire. It is, quite simply essential. When we look at the world we live in, it is hard to deny that we are out of balance, and the scales have long been tipped dangerously on the side of masculine force. Notice I said force and not energy, as the true masculine energy is not forceful in its power, and it is always, ideally, balanced with the divine feminine nature that exists in all of us. We have forgotten that we are both. We have forgotten harmony and balance, and the glorious celebration of who we are. We have forgotten the need to bring forth in ourselves and others the hidden energies that lie in wait inside of us, so that we can nurture their rebirths.
The goddess within needs to be brought out. It’s high time we celebrated “her,” and revered her. It’s high time we starting using the name “Isis,” who was once celebrated as an aspect of the divine mother, in the name of love and not war.
So, you see, what I held inside and desired to come forth on my birthday this year, is an energy that exists in all of us. We all hold within us the dark and the light. The yin and the yang. The divine masculine and famine energies. And, there is always, always, the inner child waiting to come out to dance in the sun (or rain). If only for one day, but hopefully everyday.
My children, several years ago, dancing in the rain
The Light Behind the Story 