Tag: love

Summer’s End

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections22 Comments
Photo taken in July at the Rachel Carson Wildlife Preserve in Wells, Maine

It’s nearly the end of summer, and almost three months since my last blog post. Now and then I thought about stopping to write, but I abandoned the idea for various reasons. During this fiery season, Life has wrapped her joy and loss around me in a shroud that has caused a fair amount of processing and examination. I suspect I am not alone. We are each trying to navigate this labyrinth of uncertainty where kindness is woven into cruelty as love reaches out her arms to marry hate. Asking, perhaps in each moment, how much can be held at once.

This yogi meditating troll can be found at the Southern Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine.

My individual journey this summer has led me to an acceptance without resignation. My eagerness to push my long-held dream of creating a wellness sanctuary in nature into reality has caused me to face disappointments and realizations that initially felt monumental, but which were in reality merely pauses and opportunities to reassess and redirect. In early August, the month of my birth, I lost a beloved canine companion, Zelda, and was pushed out moved on from a soul-crushing job.

Zelda enjoying her final nap at the lake that she loved

There is a period of unease, an adjustment to unsettlement, that comes with a series of sudden changes, especially unexpected ones. We learn during these times what forms and defines us. We learn what needs to release before the rebuilding begins. I am getting used to the gifts of a quieter house as I scrub away the stains and welcome in the autumn air. I am finding comfort in the gift of solitude, and this time offered for letting go the hold of unfounded fears.

Sunset, Edgecomb, Maine

There is a profound peace the rises when one sits with potential. The stirrings of magic that bubble up through the strata of self is nothing other than joy. Suddenly the palette becomes infinite, the canvas without borders. The human mind, its only limitation. Or maybe it’s not in fact the mind, but its emotions. Letting go of the known and embracing the yet-to-be-defined is not without entanglements. Yet we do not go through life without support even when we believe the structure has collapsed.

A monarch butterfly outside my front door

The losses that have come along my path this summer have not been catastrophic, but they have nudged me towards reclaiming my origin story. They have brought me back to residing with my truth and not something that has been manufactured out of fear. The summer has gifted me with the opportunity to open to something that is still being defined. The imaginal cells are stirring, they are finding bonds, they are starting to form their potential. As always, life it is to-be-continued.

Examining the Archetypes of Narcissist and Sycophant through the Lens of my Childhood

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections4 Comments
A sign (not mine) from yesterday’s “No Kings” rally in Concord, NH

It is likely my personal experiences are not so different, in some ways, than yours. I don’t think there is a person who exists without having experienced, to some degree, the effects of narcissism. We all know a bully, and perhaps we have been the bully at one point. We all have the capacity to harm, to allow harm to occur to others, and to cling to false truths. What factors inform our lives shape who we become and the values we cling to. We don’t have to be psychologists to examine our lives and the effects we have on others, as well as the effects they have on us. Sometimes, though, it helps to have a professional’s perspective.

For example, it didn’t label my childhood experiences as abusive until my therapist slipped the word “abuse” into one of our sessions. I was in my mid-thirties. In some ways, it is shocking, even alarming, that it took me so long to come to this realization. I am sharing my story because I believe it is far more common than it should be. And, I think my personal experiences help me to understand my frustration with people who celebrate narcissists who are cruel and heartless, and who we sometimes elevate to the role of leaders who would be kings.

I lived with a would-be-king growing up. My childhood, adolescence, and young adult years were informed by his wishes, and I learned to comply at an early age. To obey, and even praise his rule of law. I knew if I did not, there would be consequences, often physical ones. It didn’t matter (although it did), that his rules were often illogical, often cruel, and always controlling. “Don’t flush toilet paper if you just go pee.” “Don’t close doors, not even your bedroom or the bathroom.” “Don’t grow your fingernails and never paint them.” “You can’t ride in the car with me without conversation.” “You must show interest in what I do.” “You must call me your father and refer to your birthfather by his name only.” “You must do what I say.” Always there were consequences if not. The strong hand grasping my throat, silencing my words into submission. Fingerprints left on skin. The booming voice racing the heart back to fear.

But I never knew this was of living was really not okay until someone outside of his reign told me. A professional I could trust. You see, living under the rule of narcissism often comes with complicity. My mother was, and still is, his greatest sycophant. I also lived with her words. “You are so lucky.” “We should be grateful.” “He saved us.” “You have a good childhood.” “He feels bad when you don’t call “dad.” “He gets sad when he feels left out.” “He had done so much for us/you.” Etc, Etc.

And so I believed all of it. Every word of hers became my truth due to my own need to be loved and accepted. To feel secure and safe, even when I was anything but. I elevated the narcissist who ruled my life to the statues of hero and savior, because that’s who he was in his eyes, and in the eyes of my mother, the person who I worshiped, loved, and adored above everyone else.

I wonder how many people have stories like mine? Different circumstances, but similar effects? When I was a teenager, I witnessed the harmful effects of narcissism and bullying through my peers. Who has not? Those that wanted to feel more special than others inflicting their cruelty and dominion to be elevated in social status. The sycophants who followed their lies and took them for truth so that they would not become the bullied. So common.

I believe our personal and collective traumas allow us to perpetuate these patters without realizing how harmful they are. My own mother, when confronted by me with evidence, averted her gaze to the window and asked, “Where was I?” How frustrating and heartbreaking those words were to hear knowing she was there, always there, to bear witness. Yet, she carries the burdens of her own traumas. I know this, because they informed my childhood too. I grew up with her personal stories of abuse and took her wounds into my body. By default, I became her confidant, as well as her protector. As did my sister.

What child does not love their mother beyond logic? And so I use my personal stories and trauma during these challenging, global times to try to understand what is seemingly beyond logic. On the other hand, I allowing limitations to what I will tolerate. I will not condone atrocities and complicity. I will stand up for what is right and be a voice, when I am able to, for those who need one. I will move continue to move through discomfort to find courage despite the trauma of consequences I still hold in my body. I do this, because I know I am not alone. There are people, much braver than I, battling for truth, kindness and unconditional love.

We must reignite our spark and spread it

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections, Travel Adventures, Warriors of Light11 Comments
Reflecting on our collective history and what it means to move forward through this chaotic time
Newgrange, Ireland

I was born in the year of Roe V. Wade at the tail end of the Vietnam War. It was a time of peaceful protests infused with the idea of free love. The tide in America surged towards inclusivity and acceptance. The equal rights amendment had just been codified into law, and people were experimenting with ways to return their connection to the land, and to a spiritual force that moves beyond the structure of religion.

The wave of free love ebbed when the ’80s rolled in with the Reagan era. A war on drugs commenced, never to be won, and conservatism washed across the country. I am no historian, but I am interested in our collective stories and how we move through time informing each other. I am interested in the driving forces of opposition and polarity; the struggle for power and control when freedom and love take hold. When I turn through the half-century of my life thus far on Earth, I observe this rise and fall of tides, noticing the contraction that follows expansion, as I wonder about the years ahead yet to be formed.

Never before have I felt such instability in our collective movement. In this time of conservatism that attempts to throw us back to a time long before my birth, I feel all that precedes it in a rise of our chaos. How much unease can the individual and shared body endure?

We are wise enough to know this is a tactic, but yet we are ignorant enough to think (in part) that somehow lies are truth. That equality is a ruse when a would-be-king who is an adjudicated criminal, a rapist, a heartless narcissist, and the very antithesis of all that Jesus Christ stood for, could in fact be our savior. Even though all evidence points against this. Why do we hold fast to illusions? What pulls us into the blind path of sycophants? Why do we turn outward for security, instead of inward, especially when the prophet cares not for the lambs who follow him?

Will we ever learn? Is this our moment of reckoning? This apocalypse playing out in rapid time before us, overwhelming all sense of stability and connection will either lead to a cycle of dystopia or an opportunity to return to our origins.

Because I like to follow history back before it was history, I favor the theory of the goddess cultures as a time of harmony and true connection. As an empath, I find home among the ancient sacred landscapes that honor the Mother as divine, not without the father, per se, but elevated to the status of holy ground. Inside these holy grounds, these mother-wombs, I find my sense of connection to the self as part of a whole. I feel the light threading through life in a web, now severed, but repairable.

It is this knowing that propels me towards hope. Sometimes we must cleanse a system of its debris before we can get its parts working again. I use this metaphor, that feels like truth, in my Warriors of Light series. When the warriors follow the broken lines of light in Earth’s body they arrive at the heart of a giant named Albion, only to discover that his heart is also the heart of Earth. They are one and the same. He is the yang to her yin. One cannot exist without the other to be whole.

I am not sure why we have collectively resisted the divine feminine energy that threads through all of us, and why we have tried to dominate (and thus destroy it) in our shared mother, Earth, for so long, but it has become painfully clear at this present moment we are destroying ourselves. If we continue along this path, we will not thrive. It’s likely, if we survive, it will be just barely, and only a select few. One man’s quest for kingdom is not about sustainability and mutual thriving. Instead, it can only lead to a further severing of our connection from all that makes us whole.

This is a time of reckoning. It’s a time to reflect upon the self and the role you individually play in this life that is shared. In this time of climate crisis and political upheaval, we must, if we are to endure, dig deep into the debris and spark the light back to life. We must thread it back to a place of unity so that we can, collectively, begin to repair what we have torn apart.

Not Your Ordinary Love Story #KeystotheHeart #lovestories

On By Alethea KehasIn A Better World of Books, the labyrinth, Warriors of Light20 Comments

A few months ago, I came across an article that said middle-grade and YA readers are now seeking stories about strong friendships rather than romance. Perfect, I thought, because the bond of friendship threads through my middle-grade Warriors of Light series. It is, you could say, a rather non-traditional love story. The six young protagonists are driven by their philial love for one another, as well as their filial love, and their love for Earth.

A giant in the land that helped to inspire the character Albion in Keys to the Heart. Photo taken at Jordan Pond, Acadia National Park in 2018

A year after visiting Arbor Low, I journeyed back to England for another weekend of Silent Eye adventures, and to partake in my graduation ceremony. “You need to come to this one,” Sue had urged me. “It’s all about the ley lines and the hexagram star.” Once again, while exploring the ancient landscapes of England, I would discover more insights about the stories that had been whispering their secrets onto my pages.

These sacred waters were the site of my graduation rites

We spent a very busy day following the ley lines (aka dragon lines) in the pattern of a hexagram star, hopping from church to church to feel into their energy. Many of the ley lines/dragon lines in Earth follow geometric patterns and connect to sacred sites. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, churches were frequently, and probably not coincidentally, erected atop ancient sacred sites and dragon lines (it makes one wonder about religious images of dragons being slain or “tamed” in paintings and church windows). Truthfully, the day for me was mostly unsettling. To me, the energy of the land beneath these religious edifices feels not so much sacred, but deadened in an attempt to exert power and control. 

Sue standing beside one of the churches we visited that is situated on a hexagram of ley lines

So when we journeyed away from the churches to visit ancient sites that still feel alive in the landscape, I felt much more at home. One of our stops was to visit the chalk giant embedded into a hillside in the Cerne Valley. Legends tell that the Cerne Abbas Giant, with his erect phallus, was a fertility god of sorts. Couples would (and perhaps still do, although it is now fenced in) flock to the hillside to make love in the hope to conceive.

The fertility giant in the background of a “Hardy” sign.

But I was more interested in the idea of a love story about the land itself. The carne giant, as well as a giant I saw a month later in the landscape of Acadia National Park (see above photo), helped inspire me to created the character Albion (whose name is derived from an old name for Great Britain) who appears in book two of the Warriors of Light series. The giant Albion, whose body is comprised of the British Isles, holds within him the heart of Earth. So Albion became part of the love story I was writing. A giant whose body is a part of the body of Earth. The two, like the yin and yang energy that exist inside all of us, cannot live without each other. Keys to the Heart is not the love story of romance novels, but about the love that threads the life into the veins of Earth and all of her children.

#Daybreak #writephoto

On By Alethea KehasIn Poems, Uncategorized21 Comments

daybreak
Photo Credit: Sue Vincent

Peace arrives upon the horizon of stillness

and the slow letting go fades into the night

We are creatures of the moon and the sun

howling through the winds and the rain

lashing at fears often unfound

we seek the light as though it were

illusive. Stretching our filaments in surrender

the body breaks open to become the sky

The mind, woven in wonder gives way

to the passage. And the voice, that howling

gnashing voice screeching to be heard

becomes the wind. And you

and I, we become the one

crimson wrapping gold

and everything in between

our ocean of light softly surging

and collapsing into the fold

we rock to the music of stars

and find that we were never

forgotten

 

For Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompt #Daybreak. 

An Ego’s Stream of Consciousness

On By Alethea KehasIn Poems, Reflections2 Comments

Sometimes I crave a glorious battle

To rage and wage a war with another

But to what end? To inflict my pain on

the other whom I believe has caused it?

To even a playing field that has been

trampled on one side? Then we can be

equal in vengeance and strife. Equal

players in the game of justice. To achieve

peace inside. Fool, I say, you harbor

malice for no purpose than to starve

love. The light inside dims to hatred

the desire to show another who is

right and who is wrong; who is better

or worse; who deserves glory when

what you really want is more love

Look inside. Shed the armor. Who

are you protecting? Why do you hide?

No one can stop your light from shining

except the darkness of your own demons

The Body of Night

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized6 Comments

IMG_2531I enter the dark body of night to heal. To recover the parts of me that have been lost to fear over lifetimes.

I’ve always enjoyed putting together puzzles. The more intricate and mysterious the art of creation, the more I am drawn into the process of discovery. I have found no better place to build the puzzle of self than at night, where I can slip into the inky abyss of darkness where everything exists. It can take some cunning and a good dose of courage to find what I am looking for. Night is the place where veils dissolve, and the landscape of the soul is laid bare. It is the place where mysteries blinded by the sun become tangible when we are brave enough to extend our grasp into the black abyss.

Each dream that unfolds through Night becomes a path with a promise of a gift, or many if we can find them hidden amid the shadows. The dreams that cause the greatest tremor of emotion within our “sleeping” form, often hold the most sought-after treasures. I have learned to love nightmares, for they lay bare those pieces that lurk in the crevices of self, which can only be found after putting the easy and obvious together. They are the stuff of the inside that likes to hide, deceptively camouflaged within an unassuming palette. Yes, it is these gems I know seek, for each piece recovered brings me closer to the whole self that is Love.

Love. That is, after all, what it is all about. This quest we are all on. It is said that to love another, we must first love ourselves. I believe that the more fully we love ourselves, the more fully we love others. I believe we can only love in others, what we love in ourselves, and when we are able to accept and unite those aspects of self that are mirrored uncomfortably in others, we finally achieve the whole self that is Love. When we do this, we are loving not the fear in the form of anger, injustice or abuse, but the aspect of universal self beneath it that we all share. The piece of self yearning to be whole that was once love/loved is still, in essence, love.

Now when I discover a piece of self that has become disconnected over (life)time(s), and has forgotten love in favor of the energy of fear, I rejoice. My dreams are a tool, they work with me, taking me down the paths of self-recovery. They lead me to the source, where the hand of fear tries to hide the light. The clues to how I got there are always found in the scenes. Past lifetimes are revealed with vivid faces, costumes and languages I have not encountered in this lifetime, interwoven with a present-day landscape. It is not my job to judge, but to accept. It is not my task to hold on, but to effortlessly let go. I am brought here to seek, to find, and unite into love. I have learned that our fears do make us stronger, when we accept them with understanding, release the energy that traps and reunite the lost love.

 

 

 

Orange

On By Alethea KehasIn Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections, UncategorizedLeave a comment

orange

When you look at the color orange, what do you see? Years ago, before I started working with the chakra centers in the body, I wrote a poem about an orange and compared it to love. Here is the poem, in revised format, with the essence still intact:

Orange

Love should be
like a ripe orange
before it is peeled. Thick,
heavy, sweet

When you turn
its bumpy surface
in your palm, there is
no beginning
no end

Love is the color of the sacred “womb” that resides inside all of us. It is the place where we grow our creative and sensual selves into being with the fire of our soul. The color of passion and love manifested in the form of our unique gifts, it is always present, yet sometimes hides.

I have been thinking and writing a lot about orange these days, as I rebirth dormant gifts held inside the second, or sacral chakra that vibrates in this hue. Rarely do I wear this bold color that tends to overwhelm my complexion, but there I was in a lovely boutique last Friday, buying a dress adorned with orange flowers.

orange flowers on dressOn Saturday I peeled sweet potatoes, carrots and gingers and cooked them into an orange soup. We are drawn to the colors that want to bloom inside of us. There is a reason why our bodies and senses crave certain palettes. I cook with orange to kindle the fire that hides in my belly. Today, my eye is drawn to the flames that warms my house as I nibble the flesh of mango and write, my orange dog staring me down, waiting for her walk.

Rosy, the orange dog

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!