Category: Reflections

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!

The Hidden Mysteries of the Parrotfish #dreams #parrotfishdream #parrotfishsymbolism #hexagram #pastlives

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Memoir, Reflections30 Comments

parrot fish
Have you ever really wondered who you are and why you are here in this body at this time in evolution? Deep inside the memory of your cells, and within the door of your heart, your answers to who you are can be found, but how do you get there? How do you unlock lifetimes of memories and wisdom? How can you find your Truth?

One night last week I entered the realm of dreams while visions of ancient Egypt played with the gods inside the garden of my mind. There was Horus with his maddening blue eye, Isis mixing magic, Ma’at with her feather of Truth, and Sekhmet, the warrior goddess holding the ankh and her secrets to heal.

I had recently finished reading Sue Vincent’s The Osiriad, and had just begun Denise Linn’s Past Lives, Present Miracles. In a shadowed corner inside my mind, amid the play of gods, I searched for myself and saw a woman bent towards the ground, drawing a story in pictures. Stand up, I begged her, Show me who you are. Tell me your secrets.

The last image I can recall before I succumbed to sleep, was of an ancient oak tree. I was traveling down its trunk into the heart of Earth. I can’t tell you were I went, only that I met a parrotfish. One stubborn image that stayed inside my brain after waking.

There was a part of me that found it rather funny and, well, random that I had dreamt of a parrotfish. It seemed completely nonsensical and unrelated to my night musings. I had, after all, never before given the parrotfish much thought. I only vaguely knew what it was.

I’m not much of a believer in random signs, especially a sign that stuck so stubbornly inside my mind. It was, it seemed, a messenger from Spirit. I just needed to figure out what it was trying to tell me. I opened the computer and did some research while Sue Vincent quietly nudged me along across the ocean.

I silently thanked the divine for my friend who doesn’t appear to think I’m crazy, and happens to possess a wealth of esoteric knowledge, as I decided to explore the messages of my colorful messenger. While Sue wrote about polarity and the “surrender of self,” I thought about a fish that has the ability to change gender, color, and size.

The parrotfish is, you could say, a shapeshifter, having the ability to adapt and transform to its changing environment. It is, in essence, neither wholly male nor female, but able to harness the universal yin/yang energies we all have within us, at will. The parrotfish also wears the colors of the rainbow, the pattern and hues displayed subject to change throughout its lifetime. It is a chameleon of the sea.

The parrotfish, although residing in the warm waters of the tropics, is also connected to the element of air and land. Named after the parrot for its colorful scales that resemble the tropical bird, the parrotfish also sports a mouthful of impressive teeth that are shaped like a beak, as well as a second set inside its throat.

The more I read about this remarkable fish, the more my head swirled with symbolism. Here I was trying to evoke the memories of a distant past life I had led in ancient Egypt as a woman scribe, and it seems Spirit had scent me the parrotfish. It was a lot to digest.

Later in the morning, a dam inside of me broke and the waters of my emotions spilled from my eyes. I sat in my blue living room and looked up on my wall, noticing for the first time that the Chinese checkerboard my late grandfather had carved into wood was actually two interlocking triangles.  The hexagram is a magical symbol that Sue explores in-depth with her coauthor Dr. G. Michael Vasey in their book The Mystical Hexagram.  As I gazed upon this beautiful representation of united polarity, this union of opposites, I felt peace settle over me.  I knew in that middle space I would find my truth. Or, to put it another way, the truth was already there, unfolding like the roses etched into the corners of the square.

My Grandfather's Chinese Checker Board
My Grandfather’s Chinese Checker Board

If you happen to encounter the parrotfish as a messenger, consider asking yourself these questions: Is there something you are hiding within that seeks to be found? Are the energies within you in need of balance, or are you being called to express more of your inner yin or yang? Are you comfortable speaking (and digesting) your truth, or is a fear holding you back? Are you expressing your true, colorful self and your innate talents? Is there an alchemist inside of you waiting to be born?

The parrotfish calls us to balance the energies within us. To connect the elements of air and water and bring forth our creative gifts into this reality. It calls us to fully and fearlessly express our true selves. This beautiful being reminds us that we are more than what we appear to be on the surface, and that our true mysteries lie within, waiting to be expressed.

Not Just a Name #namesymbolism #pastlives

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections4 Comments

Have you ever thought about why you have the name you do? What does your name mean to you on a personal level? Does it feel right? Does it resonate from a deep place of truth within you? How did you get your name?

Some people believe, myself included, that we choose our names before we are born. As we review the life we wish to experience before we incarnate, we select the name that will resonate with the energy we wish to embody or experience. Sometimes, as Denise Linn observes in her book Past Lives, Present Miracles, we are named after a particular person because we have a  karmic connection to him or her, and often our names can link us back to a geographic location where we had a significant past life.

When I was a child, my mother told me my name, Alethea, came from a book. When I was 36, my birth father told me a different story, I story that I know believe to be true. In the year of my birth, the TV series Kung Fu featured an episode with Jodi Foster called “Alethea.” The wealth of symbolism in this episode is, for me, too significant to be a mere coincidence.

Despite the phonetic spelling of my name, my parents always called me Aletha. Aletha, from what I have found, has connections to England, a land where I enjoyed a very happy past life as a writer. Is it an accident that my parents chose to overlook that second e? Without the second e, the meaning of the name changes from truth to truthful.

As a young child, I felt bound by, and intensely bonded to, my name. On the one hand, I loved it. I thought it had a beautiful ancient strength in its sound. Alethea reminded me of Greek goddesses and the wonderfully mythology that fascinated me from a young age. It also constantly reminded me of  the concept of “truth.”

My name felt like a stamp on my soul. It still does. My obsession with my name and its meaning of truth would often cause great conflict and turmoil within me. If I felt a compulsion to lie or cheat in any way, I would have a visceral reaction compounded by an overwhelming sense of guilt.  When I knew someone was lying or being deceitful with me, I would have an equally strong reaction. Truth, it seemed, was a vital piece of my being. It never left me wherever I went, whatever I did.

Although I didn’t realize the soul significance at the time, I had many encounters where truth was subverted or hid during my childhood. I was told secrets and stories by my family and friends I was not allowed to share, secrets and stories that I sometimes realized were not grounded in “truth.” Yet I clung to their truths until the pain from harboring them became too much. My body literally could not take it.

Deep within, there was the ever-present soul truth yearning to be free. In college, I became enthralled with Keats’ odes, in particular “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” For my honors thesis, I chose the young poet, who, like myself, seemed obsessed with the idea of truth.

Truth haunted me with each life stage. If you have been following my writing, you will know that I wrote a memoir, called A Girl Named Truth and named my healing business Inner Truth Healing. Truth is always inserting its presence in my life.

When I decided to write my book manuscript as nonfiction instead of fiction, A Girl Named Truth was the first and only title I considered. It felt destined. I started healing my truth when I began writing this book, and by the time I was finished, I knew I needed to use my experience and gifts to help others heal.

I no longer view circumstances in life as coincidences or random occurrences. I believe the Source behind all life has a wonderful, vastly intelligent way of weaving a tapestry of deliberate scenes for us to personally experience and learn from. No character or event is irrelevant.

When you look at life this way, circumstances become more, and less, personal. For example, what I used to consider unfair personal attacks on my being, I can now look at as learning experiences designed for both me, and the other individuals involved.

In Past Lives, Present Miracles, Denise Linn also writes of the significance of nicknames. When I was a child, my paternal grandmother, with whom I had a strained relationship due to my parents’ divorce, used to call me “Leethie.” This nickname, as you may have noted, is similar to the world Lethe, which also has Greek origins. For those unfamiliar with the word, Lethe is the name of the goddess and river of the underworld in Greek mythology. The River Lethe is also called the River of Forgetfulness, from which the dead drink in order to forget their earthly life.

You could say I (almost) never drank from that river. My sister often remarks on my ability to remember life events that she has forgotten, even though she is older than I am. It’s almost as though I refuse to forget. I believe it’s significant that only my grandmother called me by this nickname. The year I turned 14, the last time I saw her, I felt as though she had forgotten me.

I didn’t have many nicknames as a child. Most friends and family simply called me Aletha, never choosing to shorten it more, and I never insisted upon being called by any other name. On the other hand, I hated, yes hated, my middle name, so much so I tried to hide it. According to my mother, my birth father insisted on giving me the middle name Eamon because he was expecting me to be a boy.

Eamon was the name I tried desperately to hide, which I did until it appeared on the program when I graduated 6th grade. The name Eamon has Gaelic and Old English origins. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that I have always been drawn to the Emerald Isle, as well as England. The slightly differing translations of the name all center around the theme of protection and  defending. As noted above, I tried desperately to protect my family’s truths for man years. I also defended their truths at the expense of sacrificing my own.

According to this site: http://www.sheknows.com, people with the name Eamon are creative, often writers, and are drawn to beauty in their lives. It took me a long time to let the writer inside of me out, but before I did, I traded in the name Eamon for Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, chosen when I was 18 by me and my mother, is the named shared with my maternal grandmother and great-grandmother. The name Elizabeth also has Greek origins, and can be loosely translated to “I am God’s daughter.” When I ceased being a protector of my family’s secrets, I also found my spiritual self.

So, even if you don’t love a name you were given at birth, it may be worth doing some research into how it was chosen for you and what it means. The more we explore the origins of our names, the closer we can get to our own personal truths.

What’s Left Behind #tarot #death #rebirth

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections4 Comments

What's left behind

Three days ago, on the 6th of January, I had an impulse to cleanse so I grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil and wrote each fear as it rushed to the front of my brain. With each rush of words, I ripped the paper, allowing each item its separate place. I stopped, I believe, at nine. Nine fears my soul asked for release as I begin this New Year in the quest for the balance of inner harmony and fearless creation.

2014 is a year of balance. When you look at the cycle of life reflected in Tarot, the number 14 typically symbolizes balance, or temperance as seen in the images below taken from the decks in the order below:
Universal Waite, Winged Spirit, Goddess and Thoth Tarot.

Temperance in Tarot

When you look at these 4 cards, you see different, yet similar representations of balance being sought. In the first card, from the Waite deck, an angel stands in human form, somewhat precariously balanced between the elements of water and earth. S/he holds two cups, representing the emotional and creative element of water, defying the force of gravity as s/he pours the blue water of truth between the two without a drop falling. I see this card as not only a balance of emotions, but also the peace that comes from finding and accepting one’s soul’s truths. It’s a gentle, yet powerful fulfillment. You can hardly miss those mighty red-orange wings lifted, ready for flight.

In the second card, from the Winged Tarot, a less serene image of balance is depicted. Here we see more of the temperance aspect of card 14. The angel-like figure in this card literally pours her emotions in the form of water onto her face, catching them, again without spilling them over, in the cup below. She is literally cleansing her face as she dances, almost impossibly balanced like the previous card, in the air.

When you turn to the 3rd card I have shown, from the Goddess Tarot deck, Yemana, the goddess of the sea/water, is seen emerging from the waves with sheets of the element falling from her hands. In the final card, from the Thoth deck, we see a figure of duality with two heads performing alchemy with the elements of water and fire/wands. A more active rendition of creating balance.

Back to my impulse to cleanse three days ago. I had a fire raging in my wood stove. It was, after all, a cold winter day. I took each ripped fear, and one by one, tossed them into the orange flames. I called upon the fire dragons and salamanders, asking them to burn away that which I no longer need, and watched as my pieces of paper were quickly consumed. All, except one, which partially transformed, becoming a curl of gray, stuck stubbornly to the top of a log with one word still etched firmly on its surface. “Guilt.” (Unfortunately this did not show up in the photo.)

This is what remained, that emotion that comes after rage,  bursts of anger and words we later regret after our fire is spent. It’s the charred remains of the fire element inside of us, and, I have found, it’s not so easily released. It’s no secret I have my share of lingering guilt. Some of it still carried over from childhood when I absorbed guilt from pain that was not mine to take on.

There’s the more freshly layered guilt too, that comes from motherhood and the seeking to find a strong, balanced voice that is not laced with fear (i.e. anger) in those moments of trial. Healing a silenced voice, I have found, is not easy. Fear tends to linger, and so does its aftermath, guilt.

We have just emerged out of the year 2013. The year of Death or Transformation in Tarot. I have placed the corresponding Tarot cards for 13 over the 14 cards in the figure below. Take a moment to note the symbolism.

The Death and Temperance cards in Tarot

What was the year 2013 like for you? I know for many, including myself, the last year or so has marked a stage of transformation. A calling to shed the aspects of self that are holding us back from living our true selves. Death, in this sense, is about ridding ourselves of the burdens we have too long carried within us. Note the skeletal figures in four of the cards, which are labeled “Death.” Look beyond their grim forms. In the first card, we see the promise of rebirth in the form of the family kneeling in supplication below  Death armored upon the white horse. The promise of new beginnings is just beyond those sun-filled gates in the background.

In the second card, Death appears as the Grim Reaper, yet look inside his tattered cloaks. This is where the angels reside. Here is the true, divine self, wrapped, yet emerging, from the wrappings of Death. In the last card, from the Thoth deck, the struggle is more forced and active (as it was in Thoth card for Temperance or “Art.”) Here we see the active struggle to get rid of the old and start anew.

The act of transformation is literally seen in the Goddess deck with Ukemochi, who is rebirthed from death into a fertile supply of life. She is the symbol of life transformed from death. She represents what many of us are feeling inside of us right now.

What new life will you call forth this year? What fears have you already shed? What still lingers within, stubbornly seeking transformation? What will you do to let it go? How will you find temperance and balance this year. What will you create from your soul’s truth?

Constructing Happiness

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections10 Comments
Fairytale Castle
A Fairytale Castle

It was only our second family trip to the “Happiest Place on Earth,” but before we stepped through the gates leading to Cinderella’s castle, the “magic” of Disney was fading.

Don’t worry, we had fun. Quite a bit of it actually, mixed in with the stress of crowds, the humid heat, and our search for a healthy meal. The waiting in long lines, sometimes never to get on a ride, was mostly shrugged off as an unfortunate side-effect of this popular place we were visiting.

Those of you who have been there will know that although Disney may strive hard to make its properties the “happiest” on Earth, there are moments of unhappiness experienced by its guests. Over-tired children dissolve into tears, while their over-heated and over-stressed parents try to weigh the probability of arriving at happiness before total melt-down occurs. Disney is a landscape of extremes. Turn one way and you will see joy, turn another and you will witness a face of frustration, or even fear amid a back-drop painted concrete. It’s a place of princess dreams coming true, but only for as long as you’re inside those magical Disney gates.

When I was a young girl, I dreamed of going to Disney, but I was a child of modest means. Disney is for the child who rarely wants for anything. Perhaps that is why I’ve brought my own children to Disney twice, to make up for what I felt I “lacked” as a child. Through my children’s delight, I am able to experience the wonder of Disney I missed when I was young, yet in this atmosphere of opulence, I can’t help feeling lack. Strip away the canned smiles and the concrete megaliths painted to look almost real, and what is left? The masses searching for happiness, including those not there by choice.

Caged Freedom
Caged Happiness

If you strip Disney down to energy, you can see how easily one can be left feeling every extreme in each moment. With little personal space, there is ample opportunity for energies to mix and mingle. Disney is not only haunted by the “living,” but also a popular retreat for the”dead” still searching for happiness. Take a ride through “It’s a Small World,” and you’ll feel what I’m talking about.

A Favorite Haunt
A Favorite Haunt

Not surprisingly for an empath, after my first trip to Disney I returned home completely ungrounded. I had temporarily lost my vital connection to the Earth after spending 5 days in the world of make-believe filled with the energies of thousands of souls.

We all were a bit more prepared for our second trip to Disney. I brought along my crystals and made use of AA Michael’s shield of protection, while my family and I let go of too much expectation. We chose to leave the crowds behind when we were all tired, even if it meant we only put in 5 hours of “fun” at a park. After all, there was always the pool.

The Grand Floridian Pool
The Grand Floridian Pool

The Disney resort pool, where every girl is a “princess” even when donning a tankini and racing (“Princess, no running please.”) her brother to the water-slide for the 5th time in an hour. The tired affect and notable lack of smile on the life-guards’ faces were hard not to miss, despite their kind words. One can’t help but think of those “cast members” who, each day or night, step out of their realities into the world of make-believe. Those thousands of employees whose job it is to make you believe you are living your dream in the “Happiest Place on Earth.” I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pretend for that long. And, what exactly is this dream of make-believe we’re all taking part in? Why do we keep coming back?

During my 6 days at Walt Disney World this December, I was constantly searching for anything “real.” To be more specific, my energy moved toward Nature in the most natural form I could find it. While my children swam in the turquoise water chlorinated crystal clear, my eyes strayed to the fairy-flight of katydids. When the insects happened to fly into the pool, I was over-come with delight at their misfortune. A rescued “fairy” meant the chance to hold the magic of life on my hand.

My Rescued Fairy
My Rescued Fairy

Nature, and the reality I could create around it, became my sanctuary for those 6 days. The snow-white egrets poised in patience over the lagoon made me almost forget I was yearning for a Narnian landscape at Christmastime.

Our favorite cast member
Our favorite cast member

I was not alone in my search for Nature’s sanctuary. My husband escaped by running along the lagoon, coming back happier than when he left, with tales of herons and the bald eagle flying over the golf-course. My children spent more time searching for lizards among the rocks and bushes, than they did for Mickey and Snow White.

A Favored Character
A Favored Character

We unanimously agreed to return to Animal Kingdom for our 5th, and final day of park-fun. Here, the Disney visitor can find Nature amid the concrete, even if She’s in a tamed state. Walking through the garden paths, and standing in the sanctuary of birds, the energy lifts and the light changes from artificial to real, and sometimes magic happens on its own.

Nature's Light
Nature’s Light

 

 

You Can Go Your Own Way

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections8 Comments
What is your path?
What is your path?

Often, when I am feeling lost, confused or in need of direction, Spirit takes me back to school. I call it night school. In that often blatant, but still cryptic manner that Spirit has, I return to the scene of my high school, college or graduate schools while I sleep, yet the characters and events are exaggerated, twisted, and labyrinthian in nature, like an M.C. Escher painting. Usually, it’s not a very pleasant experience. Who doesn’t feel, at least at times, lost and over-whelmed when they’re at school, especially in the school of dreams?

Spirit though, has a way of hammering a point home until you get it. Two nights ago, I found myself back at Brown University, only it was vastly different from the Brown I knew for only a year. The campus had changed into a congested city of buildings hugged by the sea, and I found myself following my husband (who had not attended Brown with me). I was losing track of him as he wandered through the city on his way to class, and suddenly I was alone, by the wild ocean, with only his black cell phone. Naturally, the phone did not work, and I found myself panicking as I punched in numbers to no avail. I was lost and bewildered, unable to find my own way to where, I was not sure.

Instead of exploring all of the symbolism in this particular dream, let me take you to last night, where I again returned to school. This time I was at Bowdoin, where my husband and I completed our undergraduate education together. Bowdoin, when I attended the school many years ago, was a place of mixed blessings for me. My husband took full advantage of his time at Bowdoin, and found the rigors of the education and social environment fulfilling. I, on the other hand, found it hard to adjust to an environment I found to be, in many ways, a repeat of  high school, only here everyone was an over-achiever. I couldn’t find my place in the sea of cliques.

It was no surprise that the Bowdoin of my dream last night was an exaggerated scene of what I had experienced years ago, there were even characters from high school. Here I was in a crowded cafeteria of sorts, filled with tables and people figuring out their schedules and where they needed to go. In my personal confusion, I was trying to follow their examples. A confident and sure friend was going one way, my husband another. I tried to follow him to an early biology class, but I was late, twice.

The dream changed, and I was in a metaphysical store. A woman was making miso soup. I told her I loved miso soup. I could smell it. I could taste it in my mouth. The colors in this scene were vivid and more real than life. I was wearing a natural face devoid of make-up, and a peach-colored shirt. The walls were hung with hand-bags, just out of reach, and in the center of each was the rounded form of a globe. At the counter 3 or 4 women poured over a map. I approached them, looked over their shoulders, and watched their scenes unfold. The map came to life, characters interacted in scenes, which the women understood clearly, yet I struggled to make sense of.

Suddenly, in this room, my senses were becoming dull and tired. My face swollen, and my eyes heavy, as though I was taking on energy that was not mine, and in the process, draining my own. When I woke, this lyric from Fleetwood Mac started playing on repeat inside my head, You can go your own way. Go your own way. You can go your own way…or was it find your own way?

Both versions, it seems, I needed. I thought of The Fool card in the Rider Tarot deck, blithely skipping along his own path, unhampered by the potential of danger ahead. I thought of the 2 of Wands, depicting a traveler holding the world in his palm, and I thought of the dreams I had just left.

That map on the counter was not mine, nor were those paths I was trying to follow at the revisited school(s). The world held inside that wall of handbags, which had seemed just out of reach, was waiting for me to reach up and grab it. To find my own way. I thought of Goddard College, the literal school in this life in which I found home. When I dream of Goddard, I dream of paths in nature, I dream of mysteries waiting to be found. At Goddard, I found my own way, through the gentle, nudging guidance of its faculty, my peers, and its wonderful connection to Spirit. I found home among a place where everyone was going his or her own way. There was no path of convention to follow. Instead, success was measured by the mostly personal barometer of finding and embarking on the creative journey of the soul.

I graduated from Goddard nearly 3 years ago. My environment, and the characters within it have changed, and I have been challenged by their individual lessons. There have been paths I have been tempted to follow, like the path of martial arts, which led me to the painful (yes, it is often painful when we uncover our truths and shed the weight we no longer want to carry) truth that it was not the path intended for my spirit. I have had to let go of judgement too, realizing that a path (martial arts was one) may be right for my husband and others at this stage of their journeys, even though it is not right for me.

There has been that struggle to find connection to others, along with the courage to travel my own path. Even though I am on my soul’s journey with my writing and healing work, I have sometimes struggled to stay true to my own voice and trust that my individual path will unfold it its own unique way. It seems to be the quest of humanity, to find that balance between connection and individual truth. How many of us have tried to follow a path of “conformity,” while forsaking our soul’s truth? We can too easily forget that we are all here to do something unique, perhaps radically, or only slightly different, from someone else, yet none-the-less, a purpose that is only ours. This is why we are here, to blend our own voice of truth to that universal breath we all share. This is how we balance the world, this is how we balance ourselves.

I am a writer and and a spiritual/energy healer, I have a path that is not, by nature conventional. I often find myself in places where I feel more alone than connected, yet when I fall to the temptation of conformity, I am quickly reminded that I am on the wrong path. I doubt I am alone in this feeling. How many of these people around me are trying to follow a path of conformity that doesn’t make them feel blissfully happy and free? I think, sadly, too many.

It is indisputable that the world, and its inhabitants, struggles in a battle for balance. We are striving for destinations that are not our own, we are walking paths of conformity that cause crowding and strife, and we are, in this sea of masses, often left with a feeling of loss.

When I opened the curtain of my bedroom window this morning, I saw the blue feathers of truth worn by a jay, flying into the evergreens. When I opened the door to my house to step outside, 3 crows flew in front of me, calling out to me in that loud, unmistakable voice of magic. Later, as I walked the dogs, those 3 crows became 4, and I was reminded that to follow the magic of individual creation does not mean we must leave those we love behind. That, in fact, each path will merge and mingle in the mysterious song of harmony when sung in the vibration of truth.

The Act of Being Still

On By Alethea KehasIn Energy Healing, Reflections2 Comments

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking with a young woman about her health challenges. The Universe, in that uncanny way it has, brought me a mirror of my former self in her image. Here, before me, was a girl suffering the side-effects of trapped emotions held inside a swollen abdomen. She is only 16.

As I spoke to her, I thought, What are we doing to our youth?  Before me was a young woman already wrapped up in a culture of belief that to be still is wasted time; that to do more means a day well spent, even if our bodies cry out for rest. Her doctor (wisely) told her that her intestines where suffering from anxiety and stress. She is only 16.

Yet, she too is wise, beyond her years. Although she struggles with a drive to go, go, go, she knows that healing will be easier when she can learn the act of being still. Unfortunately, stillness has become something one must learn, an “action,” many of us must master. We are too used to over-stimulating our bodies and minds. Simply sitting, standing, or lying in stillness takes, in some cases, great effort.

Often, a busy mind and body is a mask for a soul in need of healing. We can fall victim to filling our days with activities, often multi-tasking in the process, in a subconscious effort not to go within. A quiet mind hears the truth.

Again, What are we teaching our youth? The younger generations learn by example, just as we, older generations did. They look to their parents, but they also look to their peers and the media, who are often feeding the notion that more is more, and to keep working harder to be “better,” and to “succeed” in a society driven by greed and competition.

I know it’s not an easy life to shed. When I am quiet, which I have learned to love, and even relish, sometimes the ego’s guilt will step in and tell me I need to accomplish more with my day. A quiet mind and body is open to receiving the vibration of Love and Truth.

A quiet mind/body/soul is in harmony with the Universe and receives its infinite wisdom and healing. 

How humbling and gratifying it was to stand beside this remarkable young woman and hear her speak to me about her efforts to be still. She is taking yoga classes, something that was not common when I was her age. There is so much hope for our future and for the younger generations. Can we teach our children to be still, and, in doing so, be embrace the stillness of being ourselves?

I think we can. I think we need to. I think we have no choice.