Oh, The Madness!

I bet you think I’m going to write about the recent insane gun violence going on in my country right now. Psych! No. Well, not exactly. Maybe a little. I was prompted by a quote I came across which stated, “A saint was asked, What is anger? He gave a beautiful answer. It is a punishment we give to our-self, for somebody else’s mistake.”

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned through the world of energy healing and developing a spiritual outlook in life is how our emotions work. Both for and against us, and often both at the same time.

Being a sensitive person and at times a deep thinker, when I’d get upset it would hit me hard. And sometimes I loved to wallow in my feelings. Let the sorrow flow through me, going round and round, or hold onto anger as it burned within.

Sometimes the fire in my belly moved me to great heights, and sometimes it brought on heartburn.

Anger is strong. It can motivate us, get us moving, get us up off our butts. Yet it can stop us in our tracks just as quickly. It rages deep within or simmers just beneath the surface waiting to erupt.

When I was in my early twenties, anger toward blatant sexism from my boss and his son motivated me to earn a small boat captain’s license. Their disdain for my being female spurred me on. “I’ll show them!” And I did. To this day I believe I was the only female captain my old, sexist and racist boss ever hired.

Anger toward the status quo has moved people to make change. Big change.

But the flip side of anger helping people move forward is when it scares them. This was what I grew up with. Big, scathing, dark anger. Anger that attacked me. And I grew up afraid of anger. Having anyone around me become angry was dangerous because the number one experience I had with anger was from my mother viciously attacking me.

The irony was because I never learned how to hold personal boundaries and speak my feelings, anger would simmer and boil within me until it pulled a Mount Vesuvius. And it was not pretty. I’d say something scathing to someone and I’d stop talking to them for a few days, thinking that the longer I stayed mad at them, the more they’d be punished. It was not a healthy cycle at all. And worse yet, I’d think about things from years ago, and rage would flare up just from thoughts in my mind.

In reality, when I got mad, it was because something deep inside me was becoming triggered. Activated. And when I began to using hypnosis to explore my unconscious mind, the thing that runs 85% of our day, I discovered these knots in my energy field that were beliefs I’d created when I was very little. When someone or something made me mad it was because a belief I held about myself became activated. Something along the lines of, “I’m defective and broken.” What a revelation!

I discovered that how I feel about everything in my world is a product of my own mind. And my mind is a product of a combination of my own personal biochemistry combined with my upbringing. Expectations of my family and society helped mold me, as they do with everyone. And experiences I had helped me create beliefs about myself that became part of my programming.

The cool thing about learning how to not only access but deactivate unconscious emotional triggers is experiencing far fewer of them. Walking around on a daily basis with more peace in my heart as a permanent state of being.

So for those who read the headlines and are angered yet again by senseless killing and our leaders not acting appropriately, we can either use that anger to propel us to create change in the world or if it’s too overwhelming, recognize that something within us is being triggered. And it can be healed. After all, how we feel about the world around us emanates from within our own minds and bodies.

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Trip To The Northeast

Recently, I had a chance to fly from the Northwest to the Northeast and spend a few weeks by the ocean in Maine. This is one of my oldest happy places, where I spent many summers on the water learning about boating, reading the weather and the water, running around on the rocks, and picking blueberries. I spent hours walking with my gaze downward, looking at all the rocks, seeking treasure.

This trip I didn’t do as much adventuring as I often do, but I took pictures every day. Pictures from our deck and around the island. Sunrise and sunset, sunny days and stormy weather, local water foul, boats, and Fourth of July fireworks. Enjoy!

Leaving the Northwest…

Made it to the Northeast.

Caught some late day light.

Made it to the local harbor Fourth of July fireworks.

Then the weather went from humid, hot, and hazy to a thunder boomer with downpours. When a house on the other side of the island was hit by lightning, we lost power for several hours but was treated to a magnificent sunset.

Lots of birds and boats enjoyed the clear weather.

The variety of sunrises were beautiful. I love the sun sparkling on the water.

A cove on the other side of the island features working lobster boats and a small yacht club where I learned to sail many years ago.

And more of the cove.

As I looked out from a local beach, the fog rolled in.

One of the island’s two lighthouses sits at the end of the beach.

 

A great blue heron, several eider ducks, seagulls, osprey and other waterfowl frequent the waters around the island.

This mischievous little beast was forever being told to get off the sofa. His solution was to lie on a pillow, as if to say, “I swear! I’m not on the sofa.”

It was great to get away for a while, and good to get back home. Until next time.

Who Am I?

Who I am is never a question that’s bothered me. It’s never been something I’ve sat and pondered or worried about because I always had an answer.

If you’d asked me who I was when I was a girl, I’d have said my name. Later on, I might have added that I’m a girl. And as I grew up I would have added more and more qualifiers. I’m a student, a musician, and a friend. And as an adult, I thought of myself as what I did for a living. I’m a merchant mariner. I’m a wife and mother. That’s what we do. Every way we categorize ourselves is who we are.

And then I began to have metaphysical experiences that took me beyond labels. I experienced the incredible strength, power, and unconditional love that is my higher self; my direct connection to Universal Source, a.k.a. God.

During hypnotic regression, I experienced myself in other lifetimes. I’ve been not only female but male as well. And not only white, but black, and other colors in-between. And I even saw a lifetime when I was a reptile, a six-foot-long lizard.

So, even though I’m a woman, I’ve been a man. Even though I’m a human being, I’ve been a reptile.

Years ago, when I first began to get into healing work, when I’d say affirmations like, “I’m beautiful and powerful,” there would be an immediate internal pushback. A voice that quickly replied, “Bullshit.” So, I wasn’t beautiful, or powerful, or close to perfect in any way.

And as I worked on healing a host of emotional triggers in my life, I met the voice. The one who was always so negative and unhappy. I had no idea she was my orphaned inner child, and I had no idea the purpose she served. As we met during healing sessions and I heard her story of woe fueled by beliefs she created, I not only learned to appreciate her brilliance, but I helped her let go of her stories and beliefs. The ones that kept her trapped in misery.

As my inner child became happy, something very unexpected happened: so did I. As she began to know herself as sparkly, beautiful, clever, a survivor, amazing, and perfect, so did I.

And one day, my inner child flipped the tables on me and began to know herself as part of God. She recognized herself in the bigger picture of life. The drop of water in an ocean. The gold thread in the tapestry of life. The expression of life that is so very necessary and valued simply because she’s here. And so do I.

Who am I? I’m the eternal spirit, informed by lifetimes as different expressions of beings, currently playing the part of a middle-aged female who wears a lot of hats, and who loves to learn and write. I’ve got lots of stories to tell, but I’m not my story. I’m so very much more.

Sunsets

It’s been a while, and I’ve tried to write a post several times but they end up as drafts, not fully formed. My Kundalini awakening process is still affecting me profoundly every day, making life feel very difficult much of the time. However, progress is being made, even when it often feels like a snail’s pace.

My writing desk sits next to a large window that faces west, and whenever I catch a colorful sunset, I can’t resist. So here are a few colorful sunsets from the back yard. Enjoy.

These were all taken standing just outside our door. And the last 2 were from the same evening, several minutes apart. The only editing done was cropping. No color alteration has been made. If you want to make your sunset photos a bit more dramatic, take your camera out of automatic and underexpose the pictures a stop or two.

Sunset glory!

 

Karma’s a Bitch

This Mother’s Day, I’ve been thinking about my relationship with Mom. She was a beautiful woman who was also a talented concert violinist. She married a doctor, had three kids and lived a good life. At least, that’s the way it looked from the outside. What most people didn’t see, and many still don’t know, was, she struggled with her mental health.

Mom, the happy bride.

She began to see a psychiatrist in her very late twenties, around the time she and my Dad got together, thinking therapy could fix her and she’d be ok going forward. But that’s not how it went. For over twenty years, she was psychoanalyzed, and even given a diagnosis of Manic Depressive Disorder, these days called Bipolar Disorder. It made her life difficult at times. Very difficult. Finally, when she was about fifty, in a state of hypermania, mom was hospitalized and finally medicated.

It took a severe crisis for her to get the help she’d needed for most of her life. Medication, in conjunction with continued therapy, made all the difference. Unfortunately, I was only home for two more years before graduating from high school and going out on my own. By the time my formative years were over, I’d only known a mother who zigged and zagged, up and down between depression and mania, with interludes of being stable.

As an adult, I never thought much about my first 10-12 years of life because there was nothing to remember. Not very many specific memories to recall. But when Mom started spinning out, around my junior high school years, I remember her getting drunk late at night in the kitchen, waking me with her sobs. And I remember Dad moving out, believing he was the cause of her pain. I remember being left with a parent I didn’t want to live with. And I remember pleading with my father, for him to stay and for her to move out. “Mothers stay with their children,” was his response. I was devastated.

What my father didn’t clearly see or understand was my mother’s treatment of me when she was manic. She’d attack me with her words. Like a razor cutting me down. When I was disobedient, wanting to do something other than what my mother dictated, she’d attack. When I exerted my will, instead of being able to see I was a child with a child’s maturity or a teen who was growing independence, she sliced and diced me. I got good at reading her moods, doing what I thought she wanted me to do and saying what I thought she wanted me to say, lest I unleash the dragon. The tone of her voice or how she moved, tipped me off. It helped me hone my ear. I can hear people’s moods, intent, and whether they’re being authentic by the tone of their voice.

The thing is, she never went after either of my brothers, just me. Something about their being boys made them different from me. Special.

After Dad passed away in early 2012, my mother’s mental health tanked. She couldn’t even begin to process the grief of the loss, and her brain ramped up into mania faster than I’d ever seen, even on medication. Despite all attempts to get her help, she ended up being hospitalized when she became a danger to herself.

Teaching moment for all social workers in mental hospitals: don’t ever tell a patient’s family that you usually like to get people treated before they get this bad, without asking the family what they’ve been trying to do for the weeks leading up to hospitalization. When an adult refuses medication, the law stipulates that they can’t be forced to take any medication unless they are a danger to themselves or others. Hypermania is a bitch.

About this time, I was listening to a radio program called Ask Sara With (Psychic) Sara Wiseman. Being about a year into a spiritual awakening, my interests leaned toward energy healing and clairvoyance, and I decided to call into the program to glean some higher wisdom around why my mother attacked me when she was manic.

When Sara tuned into my situation, the first thing she saw was that it wasn’t personal. Then she told me she saw that something happened to my mother when she was little, and the next time I meditated, I should focus on this. Coincidentally, I was trying to develop a meditation practice, so I did as she suggested.

About five minutes into a fifteen-minute meditation, I suddenly remembered and focused on my mother when she was a little girl. I pretended I was her as a young girl and asked to see what happened. Before I knew it, I saw a scene of my grandmother going off on my mother, ripping her a new one. Just like my mom did to me.

Holy smokes! She went through the same thing!

In a flash, I saw that my grandmother also went through the same treatment from her mother. I don’t know much about that side of the family, but my mother told me once that her mother wasn’t quite right. I don’t know if she also had mental illness, or a personality disorder, or what.

A second later, I saw that my great grandmother and her mother had the same dynamic, and this was a chain that went back several generations; about seven or so that I was aware of. An energetic pattern of action and reaction passed down from mother to daughter. Mother-daughter wounding. Karma.

That was the beginning of not only understanding what was going on but healing it. As soon as I understood, feeling great empathy for everyone, I sat in my heart and asked every healing Being I could think of to come into my heart and heal the chain. I sat and waited until I was flooded with emotion, crying as the energy that had been trapped in an endless cycle was finally freed. Dissolved. Transmuted back into pure Source Energy.

A few days later, I spoke with my mother, who was still hospitalized higher than a kite and very delusional, and I purposely pushed a few of her buttons just to see what would happen. Instead of getting my head ripped off, as I expected, there was a slight hesitation and no attack. No anger. No venom. Her trigger had been deactivated. It was miraculous!

Not only did she never attack me again for the rest of her life, but a physical problem she’d been dealing with for a decade suddenly and inexplicably healed as well. Healing mental/emotional problems affects our bodies positively as well.

People usually think about Karma as this painful consequence that’s going to sneak up on a person and cause harm if they’ve caused harm. It’s very loosely true; what I think of as the very simplified, “kindergarten” perspective. When in fact, it’s much deeper and complex.

Painful experiences like these are chosen from our soul’s perspective, to give us opportunities to grow. Instead of blindly reacting, again and again, we can do something different. It’s not always easy to choose something different because it’s human nature to simply react. But doing healing work makes change easy by dissolving pain and all forms of inner resistance in our lives. You can make soul growth easy.

Love

I know, it’s not February. It’s not Valentine’s Day. But I’ve been thinking about love. The love we grow up with, and how love changes as we age. How we see it differently as we mature from kids and teens into adults with committed relationships and families. When I was a kid, I loved animals. We had a few different furry pets and eventually got a dog. Dogs are always happy to see you. It’s easy to love a dog.

I was one of those kids who had a crush on pretty much any boy who was nice to me for more than two seconds, or who was cute. Yup. Full on crush. One of those, “please notice me or I’m going to die,” type things. I thought I struck pay dirt when one boy wanted to give me a knuckle sandwich.

Oh goody! He wants to eat lunch with me!

My older brother had to explain that this wasn’t a good thing. I was five.

I didn’t fare much better in middle school, still crushing from time to time, and in fact, true love didn’t finally come calling until partway through college. It was amazing and lasted over three years.

One of the things about love is, as much as it lifts us up, sending us soaring above the clouds, eventually we come down. It’s nature. What goes up must come down.

Sometimes love hurts. And sometimes when we love someone, we hurt them. Not on purpose, but it happens. Especially with our kids. They always seem to want to do what they want to do, not what we need them to do. And it’s the job of a parent to raise a child so they can survive in the world, make a living, and take care of themselves. Because one day, we won’t be there to do things for them. That’s love.

We have to raise our children so they can survive in a dog eat dog world.

Most of us remember our first heartaches when we broke up with our steady guy or gal, whether it was in middle school, high school, or college. Or when our love was rebuffed in the first place.

I was such a love junkie. Falling for some guy who didn’t know I was alive, and mooning over him. Or the time I found out that the guy I’d been crushing on for most of summer camp, liked me back, two days before camp ended. I cried until I fell asleep during the car ride home. And waited by the mailbox for a letter, flying high when one came, then anxiously awaiting a reply to the one I’d immediately send. Eventually, the letters stopped coming. I was twelve. Oh, the heartache!

Years later during my wedding ceremony, we included readings from Corinthians in the Bible that talk about love being kind, patient, and blind. About it protecting, having hope, trusting, and persevering. This religious sort of love sounded really nice. Something to aspire to. But it’s not always realistic, is it?

We all get jealous and get angry at our spouses. We all get sick and tired of this or that, especially when we’re sick or tired. We end up in fights, lashing out at those closest to us: family. We hurt them and they hurt us the deepest.

We love them the deepest and would walk through fire for them. We’d even die for them.

I never experienced this depth of love until the day my toddler ran full tilt toward the street, and I suddenly saw a big SUV come around a corner, barreling down the country road. Time slowed down, and I not only calculated that I wouldn’t be able to get to my son before he got to the road but because of a row of bushes, the driver wouldn’t see my son until they were feet from him, too close to stop. I calculated getting there in time to push him out of the way and take the brunt of the hit. I might break a few bones, but I had a much better chance than my toddler. I’d even die for him.

Fortunately, the SUV turned into a driveway just before it would have hit my son, and all was well. Other than me being a sobbing mess for a little while.

When I began to work on myself, using hypnotherapy, I began to experience a different sort of love. I had experiences of unconditional love. Of spiritual love. I saw scenes from my past when I wasn’t treated lovingly but thought it was love because it came from a family member. We all believe that love sometimes hurts, but I learned that’s not love. At least it’s not spiritual love. It’s what I now refer to as human love. A real mixed bag of emotions. In spiritual terms, what we call human love is actually attachment. An energetic bond or connection.

The love I began to not only feel but to embody, session by session, doesn’t judge, isn’t jealous, doesn’t lose hope, has all the patience and faith in the world, and accepts me exactly as I am, warts and all.

The love I experienced was unconditional beyond words. Accepting me, everything I do and everything I am, without any conditions. It was overwhelming at times, leaving me in tears. And it didn’t take too many experiences for me to know it’s what we are at our core.

As I dove into healing work, uncovering and dissolving root causes of all sorts of discontent in my life, session after session reunited me with bits and pieces of my inner child. The one who was hurt by love when she was little. The one who was clever enough to figure out how to survive. The one who waited for me to go back in time and save her.

I witnessed these parts of myself, kept separate for decades, come back into my heart. Come back to love. And I saw them morph from scared and sad little girls into joyful children. Who morphed again as they aged right before my eyes. Eventually rejoining me at my present age. Bringing that joy back into my heart. Bringing unconditional love back to me.

What I never knew when I grew up, was real love doesn’t hurt. And if I’m feeling hurt and not feeling loved, it’s because there’s something deep within me blocking the flow of love. Doing healing work changes us from the inside out, letting go of things that no longer serve us, so we can walk in the world with more inner peace, flow, patience, understanding, grace, wisdom, and most importantly, love.

 

Big Plans

They stood, in their long robes, looking at the display, a glass dome arcing over what seemed like a round coffee table. Running scenario after scenario, playing with all sorts of possible outcomes.

“The last time I worked on that, it was too hard, and I ended up taking my life before I was twenty.”

“Perhaps if instead of being kidnapped by a stranger, if the perpetrator were a family member, you’d have a better shot at a longer life this time. The dynamics would be different, and you’d have more support.”

“That looks good, let’s do it. I want to work on these things, too, partnering up with these other people, to see how these other scenarios go down.”

“Wow! That’s an awful lot to work on in one lifetime. Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Absolutely! It’s gonna be fun! Like dress-up. I’ll wear a female human body this time, and I’ve got my peeps helping me, giving me hints and clues along the way. Leaving breadcrumbs for me to find. And just in case things don’t go as planned, let’s create some exits along the highway. Emergency exits. Just in case things get really off track.”

“Yes, of course. There are always emergency exits available. And you won’t remember once you get there, but you’re never alone, even when you feel like it. You’ve got agreements in place with all these people to help watch over you, after they come back here, like your classmate who will leave when he’s only 13. If trouble is headed your way that you didn’t sign up for this time around, they’ll intervene. They’ve got your back.”

“Boy oh boy! This is going to be a big one! It’ll be so cool to see how it goes. To see how I end up handling things. I can’t wait to be in a human body again, to experience life through the lens of a brain and physical body. To limit my perspective and forget who I really am. To have to eat food, and walk around, and get to experience physical sensations like ice cream and sex. It’s gonna be great to experience all sorts of emotions we don’t feel here, at least not at all in the same way. What a ride it’s going to be! Riding the emotional roller coaster, feeling love and hate, joy and terror, tension and relief, anxiety and peace. All sorts of opposites. And what a blast it’s going to be to forget everything and spend a lifetime remembering. I can’t wait! What’s next?”

“Well, we’ve got an ambitious plan, and you’ve picked your sex and your parents. So next up is waiting for a body, and there’s one getting ready that looks perfect. The genes you picked will help you this time around. You can test it out if you want, or go right in.”

Looking around, I saw several other souls getting ready to jump into their bodies, all patiently waiting. The next thing I knew, I forgot. I forgot who I really was. I forgot about all the support I had. I remembered I planned an awful lot and was suddenly terrified I’d bitten off more than I could chew.

I was in my mother’s womb. Terrified to be born.

Several years ago, when I was working on healing root causes of emotional eating, I used hypnotic regression to get to the bottom of things. During this session, I regressed so far back that I experienced some of my pre-birth planning. I didn’t even know my soul chose to go through some really difficult experiences, giving me opportunities to grow. Yes, we actually plan some of the really hard and bad stuff that comes into our lives. Not every little thing, but usually the big stuff. Discovering things like healing work, has made all the difference. Helping me through tough times, creating crazy amazing healing in my life.

Tulip-A-Palooza!

This gallery contains 11 photos.

Originally posted on Life Is A Journey… Not A Guided Tour:
It’s that time of year folks! Tulip time. In the county where I live, we have a tulip festival that runs the entire month of April. That said, the…

Mondays

Here we are again. Monday. These days I homeschool my teen (technically he’s enrolled with a private, independent learning high school) and Monday mornings are particularly tough. We have breakfast, do some academics and drive to our weekly check in with his teacher in a neighboring county. After the meeting we grab lunch, run some errands and get home somewhere between 3pm and 4 pm. Sounds pretty easy doesn’t it? No getting up before the crack of dawn to catch a school bus. No dealing with teachers who don’t get him. No dealing with bullies.

It’s far from easy. Despite being on medications to help quell my son’s anxiety, Sunday night’s sleep is usually beyond fitful, and he gets up tired. Because of all of his various issues, on top of being a teenager, when he’s tired or doesn’t feel well, school becomes a nightmare. Something deep inside of him resists it with the force of an atom bomb that he swallows. His brain melts and it’s all hands on deck just trying to survive.

Sometimes he can get through a few subjects of school work, but today it took everything he had to sit and watch fifteen minutes of a recitation of The Rime of The Ancient Mariner. He didn’t even have to read it (he has dyslexia), just sit and listen to the actor Ian McKellen, watching the text scroll. Within a few minutes, I saw him begin to physically shake with anxiety.

Even on a good day, reading, writing, and math are the bane of my son’s existence. But when his anxiety amps up, he’s done. There’s nothing I could do but send him back to bed and call his teacher. I’ll check in with her over the phone today. She’s very ok with it. Many of her students have issues that preclude them from attending public or regular private schools.

He’s had a few more hours of sleep and some lunch, and he’s still not up for academia today, but he’s wandered outside to check out his progress on a yard project. Just before Christmas we had a massive (about 100 ft. tall) fir tree go over in our back yard, and he’s working on getting it cut up and split for firewood.

When there are things to do on his own that he wants to do, with no supervision or oversight, done at his convenience, and in this case with a tangible reward ($), there is no issue. That’s his ADHD. He’s interested in it, no one is bugging him about how to do it, and he can do it on his timetable. One day he’s outside working like a dog for four hours, while another time he’s done after one.

Every day, when academics don’t happen (or barely happen), it gets to me at first. I go through all sorts of mental gyrations in my head about if he can’t do this here and now, how will he ever get any sort of education beyond this homeschool environment? And then I eventually remember we’re both doing the best we can. He’s sixteen, and some of the challenges he has now hopefully will change as he matures, (and he won’t be fully mature as an adult until around age 28 or so). And he has two loving and supportive parents who will never give up on him.

Plus, I have to remember that how I see everything these days is colored by the process my own head is going through because of my Kundalini awakening, and unfortunately, much of my outlook is filled with worry and negativity simply because of it.

It’s tiring. And I keep reminding myself it won’t be forever. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And we do.

 

Spring Is Springing

A little over two weeks ago, it was snowing. Again. Having waited the entire winter for even a flurry, February brought us several days of snow, gifting us with a winter wonderland after all. In fact, we got so much snow that much of the yard stayed white into the beginning of March.

Nearly overnight, we went from winter wonderland and temps in the thirties, to summer-like weather for a few days before settling into our usual cool springtime.

Our local bulb farms and display gardens are gearing up for the annual Tulip Festival, held for the month of April. And I went over to check out the flowers’ progress.

This year, because of the late snow and cold weather, the bulbs in general are a bit late. Daffodils are just opening, when in warmer winters they were dying off by this time. Along with daffodils, hyacinths are also just blooming, which I love so dearly because of their sweet fragrance. If I could snap my fingers and have an amazing garden, it would be filled with fragrant flowers that would bloom one after the other.

The tulips, which come in varieties that bloom early, mid, and late, are just barely getting started. Lots of leaves are up, but not much to speak of yet in the way of blossoms.

Enjoy these photos taken at one of the two largest family owned tulip growers in the US, Roozengaarde.