Tag: finding inner magic

Selfheal #selfheal #medicinalplants #magic #spirituality

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections, yoga3 Comments
IMG-1543
Common selfheal and the grass that is my natural lawn

Life begins with a spark of light entering a darkened womb. The self dividing itself over and over again until it finds cohesion inside a physical form. Quite often birth involves a struggle of forces. The body contracts as it gathers energy to release this new life through a narrow canal of darkness back into the light. We see this pattern in various lifeforms. The seed of a plant, requiring darkness, the compaction of soil, and a protective womb-like shell in order to grow a new self back to the light.

I tend toward the belief that there are few true accidents in life. Things generally happen for reasons, even when they are unwelcome or difficult to decipher. It’s the simple law of cause and effect. These “things” that happen to us can lead us in many directions, and it is in the path that we choose to follow where we gleam insight into ourselves.

When I made the decision to enroll in a mystery school, a part of me was hoping to learn some magic. You know, the sort that you find in the Harry Potter stories. Although I understood this was not the path of study I was to embark upon, there was a longing to uncover something magical to, let’s say for example, defy the gravity of the mundane existence. Like, you know, learning how to fly.

I flew in my dreams, so why not learn to fly the physical body, like Icarus, but with invisible, magical wings, towards the sun? During my last year of study with the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, I embarked upon the path of yoga. The two paths, I soon discovered, were not so separate. In the yoga sutras, which have been widely translated, the mysteries of yoga are revealed as a path back to the true self. In the final chapters of the sutras, the yogi, if s/he so desires to, and with great disciple and practice, can learn how to fly.  Literally. Or at lease levitate. It is revealed that outer manifestations of magic are indeed possible if the yogi learns to how to become a master of energy.

But to what true purpose does one gain this sort of mastery? The whim of the ego, or something else? If we don’t first fly through the dark land of yin energy where the self is formed and molded, exploring every curve and fold — every shadow, until it is revealed as a truth to be learned — to what end will flying serve us? The wings burn when the self fails to understand the form of being.

There are so many things we are being asked to give up right now, and rules that we may resist abiding by. Minds are plunging headfirst into conspiracies of darkness, screaming blame in the voice of ignorance as they spiral deeper and deeper into the abyss. How easy it is to deflect and refuse to examine the interior. How easy it is to erupt in anger instead of pausing to breath into the inner discovery.

If restrictions were lifted, perhaps I would be walking the ancient landscapes of England right now and finding that delicious stirring of cellular memory that fills me with the call of home. But I am here, in my physical home, and somehow that is just right. I find I am relishing, albeit not always with joy, this prolonged pause we are all being asked to take. Welcoming it, for the most part, as a gift of the self that I can unwrap into discoveries inside the inner land I have thus far left unfound.

When I ask, I receive this response, The pause will take as long as you need.

I am okay with that. Most days. Even when the computer broke, again, and left me feeling strangely weightless. If I lost it all, what would really happen? 

Perhaps the load of life would feel a little lighter.

Here I was trying to hold onto temporary things until I discovered the gift of the break and sank my belly to the ground to breathe in crumbled grass and prunella vulgaris, also known by the name “common selfheal.”

Self heal.

I peer through the green blades to study the tiny purple pitchers, imaging the nectar of bees. Through the skin of my belly I can feel the tendrils of life pulsing into the matrix hidden from sight. This is magic enough for me in this moment. I need nothing more. The pulse is strong and reassuring. Comfort dances with gratitude in the moment of connection and the outer hold dissipates in the surrender. This is the magic of life.

 

 

Who Are We Underneath the Covers? #dreams #thesuntarot #innerchildhealing #pandemic #releasingfear

On By Alethea KehasIn A New Earth, Dreams, Gaia & Elementals, Reflections11 Comments
19
The Sun Card in Tarot symbolizing the true, naked self

A few dreams ago I found myself floating down a sheer, jagged rock face when physics says I should have tumbled bruised and battered into the river below. The climb back up, though, required the help of other hands.

I’ve been thinking about who we will be when we emerge out of this period of isolation. In particular, I have been thinking about how we have lived clinging to the covers that we choose to wear, which separate us from our true selves, as well as from each other.

I am so ready for emergence, my body aches. Before I fell into that dream a few nights ago, I  crawled into my womb.  It’s something I’ve never done before, but suddenly that’s where I was. Sinking into the orange-red chalice of my being, surrendering to my inner creation.

Here inside the womb of self, I returned to a five-year-old-child. Emerging to be seen was the little girl who is still a part of me, naked in her truth before she donned the cloak of the false self. I felt her body sitting atop the first stone she fell in love. Not her own stone, but her neighbor’s. So huge she had to climb it. Here the sun fell around her, and through its golden beams danced the fairies she adored.

I felt joy before the collapse into fear and conformity as I watched my child self grow with rules and beliefs that offered her a false sense of security. A few nights before, my dream teacher had shown me a shelf filled with books he had chosen to leave behind while all the others were being cleared. The books were filled with fairies and magical beings.

We live in a time when magic has been  largely forgotten and often shunned as nonsense. If you talk about “magical” beings most people will look at you askance. It’s likely you will be labeled as not quite sane. Yet the lore of the magical landscape stretches far back into the past. Further than written memory. When did we forget who we were? How many children fall in love with fairies, dragons, and unicorns before they are taught they are fanciful?

After I made my way back up the cliff-face in my dream, with the aid of other’s hands, I returned to a classroom with my dream teacher. Together we surveyed long tables of  stones and crystals, all formed from the body of Earth. Out of the myriad I chose a citrine. Into my hands I took the crystal, feeling its weight and size, before I swallowed it and the impossible became possible. Too large for my body according to physics, the crystal dissolved into liquid upon my  tongue.  In an instant, I became pure light. I became the inner sun, set free.

I find the hiding of the true self wearisome. I wonder how many feel the same. This daily donning of false garments, which weigh upon us heavy and burdensome. Most of us walk cloaked, covering the light of the true self as we allow ourselves to follow rigid laws and codes designed to confine and conform. We peer outward, ever-searching, instead of inward to the magic of the inner light. We believe we are Earthbound and body-bound, yet even the Earth, for most of us, has become just a vessel to be mined.

Back inside the red-orange womb, I watched the four-year-old child grow into her world of separation as she learned to forget the magic of life. I watched her swallow her essence to guard her light as she moved robotically through her phases of physical growth. I watched as she checked off all the milestones she was expected to earn. Awards for academic achievements and races won. Marriage. Children. And then, finally, she arrived at schools of her choosing and the true self began to emerge. The child who once danced with magic in the sun was finding home inside the self, again.

I grow weary when I wear the cloak of society’s expectations, and I wonder who the cloak was really designed for. Pretenses feel more false than they perhaps ever have as the world struggles to rebirth us. Or rather, we struggle against the world to be rebirthed. It is becoming more and more apparent that this struggle is of human design. Nature is thriving while we try to figure out how to live. Truly live with the magic of our beings.

I realized, after my dream of swallowing citrine that it was the first flying dream I have had since the pandemic instilled fear in all of our minds. It was different from most of my flying dreams, though. The body had dissolved entirely. There was no need to defy the laws of physics, because I had become the light held inside the stone. The light of the sun. The light of the true self.

I long for the feeling of home while I struggle with the rules and conventions that still form our ideas of normalcy. Some days there’s a longing to fly across the pond and sit inside a circle of stones and never leave, because it is a place where I feel most “at home.” Why? Because the magic of the land, and of us, still lingers there. It has not wholly been erased.

There are other days when it is enough to sit outside on my deck and lift my naked face to the sun. To let the gaze soften to magic and watch the dance of the sylphs against the limitless blue horizon. Here, I know, is also home.  The free soul one breath away from release.

Yet the struggle persists. Inwardly and outwardly. I wonder what will prevail in this world seeking our rebirth? Will we erase more of the magic, erecting more false monuments of power, or will we rekindle, slowly and with love, the magic of the light held within?