The other night I had a profound experience. I saw myself as an alien. I saw what some might say is my “true form.” I remembered that this creature, this light being, this sort of octopus spirit, squid bodied alien, came here to Earth for a reason. To be with me. In this body. To fall in Love with me. The ultimate Union, my soul mate, my twin flame. All my life, I had reached out to others for love, recognition, admonishment, applause, care-taking, compliments, empowerment, but now I found my real champion. It’s me. I came here to be with me. To love this body. To honor her. To live in her. To fight for her life every day. To pray for her breath. To work for her heart beat, her health, her spirit.
There is an aspect to working as a healer, and Reiki practitioner, that is very connected to the Ethereal landscape, to spirit, to magic and wonder and "the unknown." I have always been comfortable there, and loved that place since I was born. I was always connected there...to spirit, to fairies, to dreams. I didn't really understood how to exist here on this plane. I am not by any means saying that I have suddenly figured that out, but this year I have clued in to something.
I believe that in the spirit realms, and in our energetic bodies, we are all one. We are all connected. We are all unconditional love and life force energy, and we have taken form here to experience being here. To learn. To love. To wonder. To suffer. To engage. And that is the spirit landscape. The inner world of trust in the Universe. The realm of healing with Reiki, of plant medicines, or meditation. This place has always been a comfort to me. A place for me to go. But it’s also been a place for me to hide.
This experience recently of falling deeply and profoundly in love with my earth self has been a work in progress my whole life. but I never really got it and embodied it fully. Maybe I’ve just been stupid. I believe that I have heard, and read this information before, but I guess I couldn’t comprehend it or really listen until I got here on my own. I've found most importantly that you can’t hide from this place, or from your earthly responsibilities. Whatever you are hiding from will catch up to you. Either in debt, or sickness, or friendships falling by the wayside, relationships lost. This life is for learning and growing. Its not about running away and pretending that something isn’t happening. Go towards it. Feel it. Communicate it. Connect.See it for what it is. In the end, it's not the stuff. The things you own, The earthly possessions, I think it's your relationship to them, and how you care for them. How you care for your earthly body, your home, your things, your friends. Your relationship to your relationships, your habits, your foods, your vices. I recently came upon some difficult truths about myself.
I have never understood money and how to bond with it and utilize it’s magic, until now. And really I still don't know, but I am LEARNING now.
I have never understood what it means to truly TAKE CARE of myself, or the true definition of SELF CARE until now. In truth, I still don't KNOW. But these are some tips I've come across along the way. It means STANDING UP and saying NO to things, standing up for the life of your own being’s body. Saying YES to love. Operating from a place of love. Making decisions from a place of love. Saying yes to discomfort. Not getting distracted from your dreams. Letting yourself take a nap every now and then. Not telling yourself lies anymore. Not letting yourself or anyone else tell you who you are or what to do. It means staying in bed if you are sick and letting your body heal instead of pretending you aren't and taking care of every damn thing. It means doing your daily practice no matter what. It means going for walks in nature and singing at the top of your lungs from the deepest places even if you don’t think you have a “good” voice.
I don’t like confrontation. But I'm learning to confront it.
I am judgemental, but I am learning how my perception colors things.
I don’t like someone telling me things about myself that aren’t easy to hear, but I love working on myself, so sometimes I have to hear those things to learn to be my best self.
I don’t like discomfort. Yet I learned that without it, I don't grow.
I don’t like going to work for someone else. And I'm learning that I don't have to.
I don’t like turning the things I love to do into a job, but I want to love my work!
I can be really mean and hurtful and critical to others, but mostly to myself. I don't want to do that anymore.
I have an unhealthy relationship with tobacco, but I am learning to respect this great plant teacher and not use and abuse him/her
These are all truths about me that I am pulling out from hiding. These are the things that I have been keeping behind my good nature and my smile. And now that I am pulling them out. Showing them to you. Giving them open air. I can do the work to let them GO! Now that I am on this planet wholeheartedly I can take care of my outer world. I can be fully involved in breathing. I can be fully aware of my mouth and tongue tasting and chewing food. I can feel into things more instead of thinking about them. I can hire a coach or talk to a friend and learn to be great with money! My friend Gabby Wong is a financial guide and healer. She uses somatic body work and simple healing techniques to help create a healthy and natural relationship with the material world of finances. She aids in the basic understanding of personal credit and creating healthy financial habits. The other day I called her and spoke to her for half an hour about my credit card debt and what solutions I had to rid myself of it. She was SO helpful to me. Making the call was scary. Admitting my debt and my ignorance of the systems. Admitting that I don't know what to do. Showing someone close to me that there are things I don't understand. But she held me. And she walked me through it. And I am no longer afraid. If I get afraid again I can hire her to teach me how to see the magic of money and how to balance a freaking check book. (Gabrielle Wong gabriellewong@live.com)
I realize now that I have tools, and if I don't, then someone does. Someone out there can teach me to make a budget. Create an IRA, a savings account. How to deal with my credit card debt instead of just paying the monthly interest and ignoring it. There are some great freaking coaches out there who are available for these trainings, like, Jesse Johnson Coaching http://jessejohnsoncoaching.com/, Alaina Schwartz https://alainaschwartz.com/, Joanne Leffield a.k.a. The Moula Doula https://www.joanneleffeld.com/,
Then after the lies come the fears! That's how we hide also... What are some other fears?
1)I don't know how to run a business.
2)If I start another business it will fail again.
3)I didn't go to business school.
4)As an artist, a craftsperson, a healer, business isn't my realm.
5)It is something I could never understand. I just can’t wrap my head around it.
Now that these fears are out there, out of my mind, body, I look at them and I feel different. I still don't get it, I'm not suddenly a business mogul, but now I have a fire in my soul to learn, to conquer, to come out of hiding, to get good at it. I want to learn to play with these earthly constructs, to understand the ways to create what I want, to build a solid foundation. I am constructing a new castle, full of prosperity and good fortune, full of LOVE, and good relationship, with my feet on the GROUND. Not just ideas floating into the ether, but real time digging in on this planet work. I can still sing up to the stars on a cold winter night and commune with nature while having a full bank account and a plan for my future. Here are some great resources of ways to learn these things without going and getting a business degree. There is Erika Rose Santoro https://www.erikarosesantoro.com/ Marie Forleo’s B School, https://www.marieforleo.com/ there is Daily Om https://www.dailyom.com/ if you want to go on the cheap. I’m not going to go into all of that too much. You can call me if you need help finding someone. The point is, that I don’t want to close my eyes and shy away any longer. I want to know how to be here. Doing what I can do on a daily basis to make this world a better place. With my hands and feet and heart, and strength, and health, and dollars and not just my heart and soul and dreams.
About a year ago I reiki cleansed my friend’s home, and she said it “saved her marriage.” I helped clear some energetic blockages in her physical space and it shifted the energy around, blew out the stuff that didn't serve her, while releasing old stuff and making room for new connection. While I was there I noticed that she was overwhelmed with the amount of physical “stuff” she had and the mess of all her kids and husbands things everywhere that she took care of mostly on her own. I began to help her to move and clear this stuff, throw things away, organize, find homes for things. I have a strange ocd talent that when I walk into a space I subconsciously want to clean and organize and move things. I don't know if it's the correct placement in Feng Shui, or in terms of interior design, but I know what feels good to me. Then another friend asked me, and then another, and I started to do more then barter. I started to charge for this service. Through word of mouth I got more clients and then before I knew it I had “SHINE- Holistic Home Clearing Services.”
How overwhelming is it to live on this planet, take care of yourself, your work, your kids, your family, your friends, your body, your mind… and your home? We consume too much. We buy more then we need. We eat more then we need. We do more then we need to do. This is the inner/ outer work that I am writing about friends. You can make “to do” lists, get reiki sessions, and hire money coaches, and go to the gym. ALL of these things will help you to feel better. But if your home, or your office is a mess and you can’t find anything, or all your clothes are old and you hate them, or everything is just a clutter, then your mind will be a clutter. This space that you surround yourself in is your home. This body that you surround yourself in is the home of your spirit. It is really important. What you put into this body, this home can be life or death. Last year I took a year of celibacy to truly clear out my inner spaces. I did a lot of work physically and energetically with myself and others to clear out my body of past relationships, and trauma, and things that no longer serve me in this lifetime. It was one of the best things I have ever done for myself and my body, and also for my life, for my inner voice, my boundaries. When I am clearing spaces in people’s bodies with Reiki, I can see and feel energetic blockages. There are places where it just seems easier to hold onto stuff then to let it go. Letting it go involves attention, work,time, and processes. Of course it's not just these pieces and parts, closets, hallways, tight shoulders, foggy brain. It's holistic. When I am clearing someone's home physically, there is a lot going on on a deeper level, emotionally and spiritually. When we fast we don’t just cleanse our bodies, when we do Vipassana we don’t just clear our minds… when you go on Dieta, you are not just clearing your spirit. And it’s the SAME with your physical space. Clearing out that back hallway stairwell, where everything that doesn’t have a place gets put is going to be HARD. It’s going to take time and attention. It’s going to be emotional. It’s going to take work. And its so overwhelming. But it will clear so much for you in your other parts of your life. And this is the big lesson:
WE don’t have to do it alone. We have support. We have resources. We have friends. We have Marie Kondo. We have SHINE, we have David Allan, we have James Clear.
We may be spirit beings, or aliens in human bodies, or this may all be a construct of the mind… a multidimensional video screen playing us a show. I do not know. I have a lot of ideas, and thoughts about it. But I don’t know. Maybe someone knows. Maybe there is a person pushing an "on" button somewhere… What I do know is that I came here to the physical for a reason. I don’t want to ignore that physicality anymore. I want my roots to be strong in this earth, heart pounding from skiing down a mountain, or running through the forest. Hearing my heavy human footsteps crunching the leaves, the sound bouncing off the trees. I’m here! I’m human! How can I best be here? How can I inhabit my body and take great care of her? How can I taste the flavor and feel the warmth of my loves lips every time we kiss. How can I listen to every wordsong birdsong wacky story tale that comes out of my son’s mouth and really listen. How can I feel my breath coursing through my lungs on each inhale and exhale? How do I work on my relationship with my mom so that my last years, days, moments with her are joyful? How do I stop tolerating what is intolerable in my life? Stop ignoring it. Hiding it. Pushing it down and away into the spaces they get pushed and hidden away...the back stairs, the trunk, the mud room, where I pass by it every day, with a side glance...hoping to have a chance on this day to look through it. Carry it out into the air. Deal with it. Sometimes it feels easier to leave the blockages, then to have the discomfort of dealing with them. But when you don't, they just pile up, and illness comes, debt comes, resentment comes, more piles come, relationships end. Sometimes chaos comes or a fire to just tear it all down, so you HAVE to be reborn.
What do we do with all this stuff we have accumulated? Inside and out. Let’s make a plan together. Let’s do it differently this time. I was watching Gregg Braden’s show "Missing Links" the other night on Gaia.com. The one about the Torah codes. (just watch it it’s too much to explain here episode 8 season 3) The basic outline is that the Torah has a code that tells every story that has ever been written. It’s like the Akashic Records, but it’s here on earth. It’s a physical written book. And if you read the code it tells you things that have happened or could happen. And on every page it also says in the code, “but, WILL YOU CHANGE IT.” We have the power to be our best selves. To fully embrace these bodies. Take care of them as though they are the most precious of all things. Because they are. Every breath we get to breathe is a miracle. Each of us is made of magic. We are all one in energy but we have skins, and we are each a separate entity here, with each our own hearts, and eyes and perception. Step into that. Who are you? What are you doing here? What’s your magic? What are you so afraid of? Why are you hiding? What are you hiding? What are your truths? What are you tolerating? What are you pushing under the rug? What can you CHANGE?
I don’t have answers. What I’ve come to are little steps that change our habits such as:
Journaling. Asking for help. Music. Accepting love. Acknowledging our mistakes. Forgiving. Doing our best. Operating from a place of love. Taking care with others. Patience. Open hearts. Communicating. Learning. Getting help. Asking questions. Being in nature. Doing research. Clearing physical and mental space. Plant medicines. A daily practice. Doing the work physically. Not knowing. Listening. Singing. Being. Loving YOURSELF.
Awake
from Born To Wake Up by Decker.
You were born to wake up You were born to be new You were born to be light You were born to be true You were born to be love You were born to be life You were born to be the day You were born to be the night You were born to be moon You were born to be stars You were born to be Earth You were born to be Mars You were born to be kings You were born to be queens You were born to move mountains You were born to sing But, oh You are the one You've got to remember - you are the one Oh, you are the one You always remember, you are the one You were born to be silent You were born to be still You were born to fly You were born to heal You were born to give You were born to receive You were born to be right here, right now You were born to leave You were born to make magic You were born to breathe You were born to make love You were born to make peace You were born such a treasure You were born to smell rain You were born to feel pleasure You were born to feel pain But oh... You were born to wake up
You were born to be new You were born to be light You were born to be true You were born to be love You were born to be life You were born to be the day You were born to be the night You were born for laughter You were born to cry You were born to be young And you were born to die You were born to inspire You were born to trust You were born of the sunrise You were born of stardust But, oh...
octopus artwork by Bill Shiffbauer / Witch and Fairy artwork by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite / Grounded artwork unknown