do I have any guardian angels? oh, here's one!

Dear Universe (God, spirit, angels, guides)

I need some guidance.  Everything is different, which so far, is even worse.  I am so lonesome, and really sad, and I don't like going through this process alone.  I feel isolated, and even weirder than before I started this healing journey. 

I need some direction, guidance, hope.  I am really struggling, and I don't know the skills yet how to be at peace, how to feel comfortable in my body, how to feel at one.  I don't like it at all.  In fact, I don't like this me much.  I feel scared, irritable, hateful, short tempered, exhausted, lonely, crabby, raw, sensitive, weepy, and moody... hopeless.  And that's a problem.

So please guide me, help redirect me to what I need to grow and feel ok, so I can contribute and be loving and strong, beautiful and joyful.  Do I have a guardian angel?  I think I need one.  Or a few.

(now the next day....)

How do I fill this empty spot, the big gasp of terror when you realize you are small and lost, and alone, like when you were four?  I want to go home.  I am lonesome, and homesick, I don't fit in here. I don't have a home, or family.   I really am trying to be grateful, and appreciate all that is around me, all the blessings in my life... but I am just... waiting?

I am terrified.  I don't feel part of anything bigger, I don't believe love is the answer.  I want a "pill" for this, so I can check back out.  Everything feels wrong lately.

Today I had to go outside, I was hiding in the swing in the backyard so I wasn't so panicked in the house... and I didn't want my son to see me, crying again.  Today, my meltdown was unexpectedly early.  I am getting used to having them every evening, but it was early today.  My son came to find me, he sat with me in the swing.

I confided that I don't know what I'm doing.  I can't fake it and be like the others, this is raw and lonesome being different.  What if I'm making his life harder?  This isn't fun, I'm not having fun. This is terrible!!  (our inside joke from when he was a child, and we were at a slightly different spot at the swimming hole.  I said the whole lake is the swimming hole.  He cried big tears and pointed, and said this is not the swimming hole; that is the swimming hole over there!  And wept "This is not fun, this is terrible!!")

I told him I'm not digging being me right now.  I'm not making a difference in the world (peace, lightwork, love, healing).  I may not develop my wings, hell I am mostly snot bubbles and weeping these days.  It's not pretty or fun.  My entire family thinks I'm crazy, every single one of them. Should I just take a pill for this?  Buy a tv?  Get a desk job?  Would it make a better life for us?

He looked me right in the eyes for a while.  Then he said, "I know it's not pretty, but it's real.  Don't take a pill for that, and become a numb, 'gee that's nice mom'.  I want you to be real"  He's 11 years old.

Thank you universe, for putting this angel right square in the middle of my life.  How beautiful.

I put down my pencil now and stop writing in my journal, and knock on his door, so I can thank him for being such a beautiful human being to say that to me.  I tell him he is the first person EVER to tell me to be real and not fake it.  And I tell him it makes my heart overflow.  Across the dark room, he giggles and says, "I can hear it overflow and come out your nose in snot bubbles."   He's right.  

chakra class notes

spring 2014

How to learn to trust myself when my whole world is falling apart?

Life isn't happening to you.  It is happening with you.  

We are spiritual beings having a physical experience.  What we feel and think (emotions) is a beacon to attract everything that comes to us.  Heart is truth, but the mind can lie.   We are electromagnetic vibrational beings, operating through emotions.

We operate through love or fear.  

Love is intuitive, fluid, open, trust, joy.

Fear is logical, closed, analytical, afraid.

Laugh, seek joy, live fearlessly.  Cancer is the result of fear.  Be infused with bliss, love, energy.

Learning chakras- helps us be mindful how we invest our precious life force (power, prana, chi) at all times, and be empowered to balance ourselves.  If all is in balance with energy flow, we don't get depleted.  The target is art of love- balance.  Love yourself while loving another, without losing power.

Chakras- spiritual anatomy that correlates to physical anatomy.  We are batteries; currents of energy come in through the top of our heads from divine universe (source, God...)

Hindu metaphysical and tantric/yoga teaches that chakras are points or knots in the subtle body, located on physical counterparts of major plexus.  Chakras are meeting points of subtle energy channels- nadis.  Energy moves through these channels, through the body.

1st- (red) roots- at sexual part of body- 

             connection, tribal, all is one, survival, safe.
2nd- (orange) womb-
             relationships, partnerships, nuts and bolts of survival, sexual energy
3rd- (yellow) solar plexus/upper belly-
             personal power, self esteem, fear of rejection, intuition, fears of abandonment, unworthy
4th- (green) heart-
             lotus, self love, anahata
5th- (lt blue) throat-
             communication, integrity, truth, speak and receive truth, willpower, choice
6th- (dk blue) third eye/forehead/frontal lobe-
             vision, big picture, clairvoyance
7th- (violet) top of head-
             spiritual, connection to God, source, divine, infinity.

learning to calm with reiki

Today at reiki, he taught me to center my energy with my hands, and how to unplug my brain and be calm.  He also showed me how to ground myself, send bad energy out, fill up with good energy that's all around me and already in me.  (Why do I have to pay someone to teach me this as an adult?!? Why are we not being taught this in school?)

When I could do it, and really picture that calm and love (I feel it best when I imagine floating on the water in the sun) he could feel it too and would whisper "good job".

When his hands were gently over my eyes and we were just breathing in life, peace, love from the universe, an image of a purple flower popped into my mind- a flower bud blossoming and growing in my tummy.  In that safe spot, the one I keep bundled up and hidden, a light came in, and warmth, and now there is a flower growing.   Yes, we were sober!

At the very end, he said, "Many blessings.  I'm proud of you.  You are kicking ass."

and he added, "feelings of suffering and separation are not real.  Just love what is."

I leave reiki,  I am, hopeful, giddy even, that I will learn to feel ok.  But what do I do when I go home?  What do I do with all these feelings that come up later?  I don't know yet how to comfort myself.    And night comes, and I am to my knees, hollow, lonesome.  I have just hours ago barely learned to be calm with his help, and now I'm by myself with all this sadness.  

I text him, he responds immediately.

"Nothing is wrong. You are perfect, whole, and complete.  Everybody is.  There is nothing to fix. There is nothing to do except just be."  What a beautiful soul he is.  I am grateful.

torn wide open

I have begun the official path of my spiritual journey of healing.  I am off chemicals (anti-depressants, ambien, ativan).  All natural, eating well, gardening, learning to meditate, learning reiki, raw as hell.  Part of me just wants to get it over with, part of me wants something to numb it all.  I feel it all so intensely- everything beautiful, sad, alive, lonely, I'm torn wide open, shredded, raw... partially aware, not enough to protect me.  

I am afraid I will fall in, get lost in myself.  or worse, fall out, little bits of me evaporating into the universe and never coming back, floating away until I disappeared.

From the book "Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle

The "sane" are not really sane, and the psychotics are not as mad as they appear to be... such people feel unreal and disconnected... their fear of losing themselves is so consuming and over-whelming that it results in self preservation, rather than self satisfaction...   The person is plunged into a void of nonbeing in which he flounders.  There are no supports, nothing to cling to, except perhaps, some fragments of the wreck.  Madness need not be a breakdown.  It is also a breakthrough... intellectually, emotionally, interpersonally, organizationally, intuitively, theoretically, we have to blast our way through the solid wall, even if at the risk of chaos, madness, and death.

That's the part I'm afraid of!

exquisitely perfect

so.  In my last life I must have been a mermaid... I could communicate with my heart.  Now I have clumsy legs and I struggle to use words.  I miss the water and communicating with my heart.

I am learning.  We are not good or bad; we are perfect.  Just like flowers and butterflies, seeds and strawberries, sunlight and the moon.  We have everything perfect inside us.  The only thing that can be labeled bad is when we judge and punish ourselves.

Don't analyze, don't judge, don't punish.  Just be.  We are absolutely magnificently, exquisitely perfect, right here, right now, exactly as we are.  Flawed, confused, curious, silly, inquisitive, baffling, messed up... exactly as we are supposed to be, on this journey called life.

Beautiful imperfect humans (in 3D heavy clumsy earth bodies).  And the best part- it just gets more beautiful along the way!

The world needs to bow down before love.

thoughts before my first reiki session...

I want to feel loved, content, in my place, that I belong both in my body and on this planet.  I want to feel safe, grounded, connected, oneness with all that is good and divine in the universe.

I want to feel strong, healthy, fit, limber, radiant, fluid.  I want to eat foods that nourish me, and surround myself with people who nourish me too.

I am afraid...  Afraid I am not strong enough to survive the process of healing.  Afraid there isn't enough time or money to learn what I need to learn to grow and heal.  I am afraid there is so much damage that I will never be ok.  What if I can't turn it into something beautiful?  What if I always feel raw, vulnerable, unworthy?  What if I never fill up this empty space within myself, no matter how much I give and love?  How can I inspire and help heal women when I myself feel small and vulnerable?  How can I be a good mom if I never had a mom?  How can I ever feel loved when I wasn't wanted?  How can I find balance between feeling so much love for the world, and feeling so sad at the same time?  I feel raw and in wonder and blessed... also lonesome, weird, and so sad.  I am frustrated with what is, and so hopeful for what could be.  I feel so connected and alone....?

I want to make a difference.  I want everything to matter.  I want there to be more than just... this?

Can I learn to comfort myself?  Can I hold me in my arms, gently tell me it will be ok?  Will it be ok? Would I believe me?

grief and reiki and hope

The other day I went to my old house to get some plants and the clawfoot tub in the yard.  I hoped to be there before the renters but they showed up early, caught me standing in the front yard with a shovel, sobbing.  The house I lived in and loved for ten years...  is no longer my home.  Strangers are moving in.  My marriage is done.  

Why does it make me so sad to dig up plants?  I get to take them with me and replant them.  The new tenants were so kind and understanding, as I wept big tears and could not voice the words behind them.  

Also on my mind that day... my friend had major surgery and I was to go take her lunch and be with her that same day.  I hated to take my sad sorry-ass energy to her, so soon after surgery.  When I called, she said, "No worries!  I am on narcotics, I won't even remember.  Come anyway and be with me."

While I was there, her friend came by to give her reiki love.  Oh my, words cannot encompass this beautiful, surreal, sacred experience.  His energy was so loving!  He was absolutely tender and gentle with her, his hands on her hands, then on her face, her heart, her belly.  He could feel her sadness, as she welled up with tears and asked if she was still a woman.  He honored her, listened, and reassured her that yes, she was definitely still a woman, all the while holding her hands and caressing her hair.  

He asked her, "beautiful, how long has it been since anybody just held you and let you cry?"  She mumbled sleepily, "Oh, I think since the last time you held me".  I burst into tears, and wept, overcome with my own grief in the world, for my pain, and for her pain, and for his gentleness.  I wanted to curl up on his lap and let him hold me too.  Everybody needs a lap and arms, a safe place to grieve.

He asked if I'm an empath, and yes I am.  He suggested that I lay down with her, and hold her, snuggle her, comfort her, help ground her, as he did reiki on her.  I laid and put my head on her shoulder, my dear friend of almost 20 years, she and I held hands while he did his magical energy work.  I could feel the energy move all the way through, calming and connecting and nurturing.  Protective even.  

I was not held as a child.  I have no memories ever of being held.  When my gramma was dying, I wanted so much to climb in bed with her and hold her.  I still have recurring dreams of doing this.  She would never have allowed it though, so I mourned her loss from the other side of the room, my only real parent and I couldn't even hold her as she was leaving me.

In a way, I am touched, because THIS is what I have needed my whole life, not counseling or meds. Part of me knows I need this.  I don't even know what reiki is, but I need this.  In a way, I am relieved to know this exists.  And I am sad that we have to pay someone to re-teach us something that should be so instinctual and innate.  I'm broken hearted because I am still filled with grief of my own, I am empty, lonesome, unfulfilled, have no family, and don't know how to recover.  

I yearn for this peace and grounding.  I don't want to have to ask someone else to teach me.  I don't want to rely on someone else to give me a safe place to learn this, a stranger (who feels strangely safe?) to ground me and guide me to heal.  But I don't know how to do it myself.  I feel vulnerable and small sometimes, knowing both how much I have survived, and how much growing, learning, healing that I still need to do.  

Part of me just wants to be held.  Most of me actually.  I don't know how to allow it, being vulnerable and safe with someone.  And part of me is hungry to learn all this.  In the meantime, I went home, in awe and touched by this new human experience, where good people can hold you safe and help you heal.  I cried all day.  I cried so hard I couldn't even brush my teeth for bed, my eyes swollen shut.  I can't even comprehend that this really is possible for humans to be so loving.