The (Healing) Weight of Water

Healing Waters
Healing Waters

I fell asleep to water. Outside the walls of my home, a storm of thunder and lightning raged its energy, working to cleanse the atmosphere of the heavy humidity from the day. On the shelf beside my bed was the just closed book by Sue Vincent and Dr. G. Michael Vasey, The Mystical Hexagram. My left hand rested on the arm of my husband, as I silently sent energies to lift the heavy weight of water I felt within him, knowing as I did, that what one sees or feels in others, one also has within.

There is a reason that water is both heavy and healing. It is the element that both stores our emotions and releases them when we are ready. Have you ever noticed how some people appear heavier than others, not just physically, but emotionally. That idea of “carrying the weight of the world,” on one’s shoulders, or at least the weight of the past. An imbalance, or (dis)ease, within the body is usually the result of stored emotions.

We are made mostly of water, that element of emotions. So is the earth. Just like us, Earth needs to cleanse and release when density builds. Sometimes, like last night, she cries fierce tears. It behooves us to do the same. Sometimes we need to weep, or have a “good fit,” of release, in order to heal and rid our bodies of our stored emotions. When we do, we feel better, we feel lighter. After Earth weeps, the air we breathe is less dense.

In my dreams, I was standing inside my house with my husband, watching lines of water pour through the roof. A discouraging dream, you might say, but it became one of empowerment. There was the tiger who leapt from the shelf, filling the room with the energy of creation and power.  Out of the emotional element of water, we can create. Sometimes this takes a spark of fire – the element that overlaps the triangle of water to create the “mystical hexagram” that Sue and Dr. Vasey have written a book about.

In Tarot, the element of water is often portrayed with the chalice – a symbol of feminine wisdom and creation. The Queen of Cups in the Rider deck is one of my favorite cards, it shows us that anything is possible when we go within and create from those sacred waters of the soul.

Rider Queen of Cups
Rider Queen of Cups

To do this, we need to release, to bring forth those energies stored within the water of our emotions, and us them to create our individual gifts, such are writing, art, music, etc. This is where life emerges out of stagnation. Consider a vernal pool holding winter’s melt. The life that is birthed within those still waters does not stay for long. Compare this to a lake continually fed by the moving waters of a mountain river. Here, oxygenated life flourishes and cycles repeatedly through the phases of birth, death and rebirth.

Close your eyes and imagine standing near, or in, a stagnant pool of water, then a lake, a river, a waterfall and the ocean. The energy of water changes profoundly. What is the water in your body like?

When I woke at 2:40am, I needed to pee. Quite literally I had the urge to relieve myself of the water held inside my bladder. You could also say that I was clearing the water of that leaking house in my dream. Although I have done a lot of healing of myself, with the help of some wonderful healers, I am not wholly free of the clutches of water. Sometimes it builds and calls for release.

We not only carry the water of our own emotions, we literally carry the water of the World’s. Our bodies are made from Earth’s elements, we require these shared energies to sustain our existence, recycling our waste to be reused in another form, in another body that shares our home. Water cycles through bodies, it travels through the ground and is expired into the air as vapor. The element collects into clouds and comes back down with gravity. Water remembers where its been, it can only exist when it joins with other water molecules.

In this way, water carries both weight and wisdom. When we learn how to work with the emotional element of water, we become gifted creators and healers. We rediscover, or release, hidden truths and wisdom. Water can carry us to the fiercest places within, and it can also cleanse us of our sorrows and fears, especially when we add a little light.

After The Storm
After A Storm

The Aftermath of a Vacation

I thought I would feel the return of home when I landed in Portland after a six hour flight from Boston on the evening of April 19th. But, halfway through the trip, I began to question the idea of home when all I could think about was the moment I would step into the woods alone with my two dogs in New Hampshire.

What happened to the euphoria I felt two years ago when I had returned to Oregon with my own family of four, after having been away for over a decade? It had clearly left me. The jolt of excitement of recognizing a park I hadn’t visited since I was three or four, quickly dissipated into the idea that I no longer belonged in this state.  Portland was nearly impossible for me to navigate with its crowded buildings and thick ropes of traffic. The wind at the ocean bit through my fleece with teeth of ice, and never let up its grasp. Why could I not find peace inside this place of my birth?

I could easily blame it on my grandma, in fact I find myself doing just that when I speak of my trip. By the end of the week, after five days together at the seacoast, I nearly pushed her out of the car door when we dropped her off at her condo. I could no longer endure the heaviness of her energy. She was caught inside a pain I no longer wanted to hold onto.

But, I couldn’t avoid it. My reactivated pain body clung to hers, as I my spirit struggled to breathe. I could not escape this ghost that connected us together, filling the air around us with a suffocating weight that I found impossible to lift in her presence. Two years ago, when I last saw her, we had spent a late night talking about my life. It was the first time in my 36 years in this body that I had shared any of my pain and childhood “secrets” with my grandmother. An opening of voice that would ripple across the ocean into a tidal wave of wrath, deteriorating the already tenuous relationship she held onto with her daughter, my mother.

This “ghost” hovered around me and my grandmother, its density affecting my children and husband as well, as we tried to enjoy our time together. My grandmother was the willing medium, speaking its words of pain whenever it found a the space to be heard. I could not, despite my efforts, lighten the energy that permeated my grandmother’s body.

Was there, I wonder, a way for me to reach through the density? What does one do for someone who chooses to wallow in darkness? Is it our place to try to lift them? How do we shield ourselves and others from its effects?