Brain Droppings

My brain dropped out.

Right out from the bottom. Or was it the top.

It’s gone. Disconnected. But only for a while.

Can’t think. Words swirl around but I can’t grab them.

Second thing to hit my brain this morning was fear.

Buckets of old fear. Revisiting. Damned that shit. I thought it was gone.

Guess not.

I confess my fears, accompanied by tears. Let them all flow and go.

What a fucked up process this is, rewiring my brain.

It’s terrifying to wake up and not feel like me.

To not be able to connect to my own heart.

Sometimes I’m all logical brain with sprinklings of fear and shit thoughts.

And slowly, slowly, my heart and head begin to connect up again

And speak together in new harmonious ways.

Can I eat yet?

My solar plexus area is shifting and changing.

The chakra (energy center) there isn’t fully functional yet.

It’s still trying to connect back in with my body.

Or is my body still morphing and changing – that’s likely it.

I can eat some, but what? Fruit always seems to go down easy.

Veggies? Not many. Carrot sticks. Green olives chopped into hummus.

Potato, but only as chips, and not too greasy.

Meat? No. Can’t stomach meat right now. Grains? Nope.

Nuts and seeds? Maybe later. Deep dark chocolate? Later.

Trying to eat is a challenge because my body can only handle certain foods sometimes.

Like right now.

In four or five hours it might be completely different. Or not.

There is no regular or normal right now.

Inspiration strikes! An idea moves me into action.

Squirrel!

Birds actually. Trying to steal all my blueberries

Before they even get a chance to ripen.

Run outside and take photos, getting inspired to write.

But my brain isn’t much more than a bunch of brain droppings right now.

Barely able to maintain a train of thought.

The train keeps leaving the station without me.

Feeling like a toddler needing a nap after only three hours of stimulation.

Time to shut down again.

This is a snapshot of what it’s like to be inside my head, looking through my eyes today. With this Kundalini Awakening process going on, it affects my physical energy, my emotions, and my DNA. Because my DNA is shifting and changing, sometimes very significantly, my physiology, is changing. And what’s most difficult to handle is changes in brain wiring. That means my ability to think, come up with words, eat, sleep, maintain constant body temperature, coordinate all of my body’s muscles, maintain a stream of thought for more than thirty seconds, and some days, to even know who I am – to feel like myself- is gone (or off kilter).

We are much more than our physical bodies. We have a template (for lack of a better word) that consists of energy, that informs (creates and maintains connected to) our body.

Think of the space around and throughout your body as pure energy. That energy works with your DNA to decide what your body looks like, and how it functions. That energy is biophotonic (light energy that is alive). That energy carries feelings and emotions. Those are your feelings and emotions. That energy carries information that our brains pick up on all the time, without even trying. These bits of information are ideas. That energy stream that creates each one of us and keeps us alive is what we also call our spirit or soul.

But using the word energy stream isn’t really correct, because it makes it sound like an individual thing, when yes, we do perceive of ourselves as very distinct individuals, and yet beyond our physical perception, we are part of one contiguous energy mass (that really has about zero mass). Yo! We really, truly, are all connected. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t true for someone else.

Beyond our physical perception, we’re all part and parcel of one gigantic energy blog that is not only us (human beings), but this same blob informs (creates) everything. Planet earth, other planets, stars, and other forms of energy that we are aware of. (And some of these can’t be measured with instrumentation yet because our instruments aren’t sensitive enough). I’ve connected in a few different ways to this gigantic energy blog (through my heart’s energy), and what’s really cool is that I can actually converse with it because it has consciousness like we do.

But when the energy isn’t existing as a physical thing, it is completely open to becoming anything. It is quite literally unlimited possibility. (All of that “empty space” and “air” around you isn’t empty). Not only is it able to become anything, it has all of the intelligence and information through all time. We all contribute to this field of intelligence simply by existing. By being. So it’s ever-expanding.

My favorite thing about this energy is how it feels. Describing how it feels is a bit like trying to describe an orgasm, but the closest words I have are limitless acceptance, compassionate understanding, absolute nonjudgment. It allows all, accepts all, judges nothing. It feels like the most indescribable love, on steroids, ever. Oh, and when you get the energy of your brain and heart in exquisite alignment with this energy, it actually feels orgasmic. That’s what an orgasm is: not only a physical/emotional sensation, but it’s a moment when your head and heart are lined up with this energy that I’ve been describing.

(I just noticed my ability to write paragraphs instead of short phrases. Eating something probably made the difference. It’s hard to maintain one single stream of thought.)

So yes. We are so much more than our physical bodies. And as I’ve been going through this Kundalini experience, my awareness is changing. When I look out my eyeballs, what I notice and pay attention to is different. And how I process/ perceive/ think about/ feel about my world is changing.

Emotions that have been stuck with me, recycling as they become triggered, are coming up hard and fast. I have little to no ability to suppress them anymore. I have no choice in the matter. Feelings bubble up. My heart connects into the old pain from my past – from when it first became stuck with me – and I cry it out. Again and again. But this time, instead of temporarily tapping into the pain for a visit, I’m able to unravel the knot that was holding the pain in the first place, allowing years of crap go, further changing my DNA. And once again, my physiology and brain wiring changes.

And the song and dance goes on.

Thank God my family is understanding and patient with me and with this process.

One of the newer things I’m noticing over the past few days is words and phrases bubbling up and out of my mouth before I have a prayer of a chance to edit them. The editor in my brain is offline right now. This will make for interesting public interactions. I wonder how long this shit will go on.

[Squirrel!]

I’m going to let this go here because I keep losing my train of thought. And if I let this sit until tomorrow, it will join the few dozen drafts I’ve been trying to compete over the past four months.

Oh yeah. That “energy” I was describing: the one that exists all around us all the time – the one that creates us and contributes to our ability to be alive – it has many, many names. The most common one I use is God. But because most people’s idea of God and my idea of God are so very far apart, it’s a challenge to know what to call it. I like to call it love because that’s what it feels like. And I like to call it light because that’s what it (I) looks like in my mind’s eye.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? I’m just thankful that I’ve decided to put something out there, even if it’s not my old/ usual fair. My old is way gone right now, and I have no idea when my new normal will be in place. It might be in a few weeks, months, or years. There’s no way of knowing right now.

Thanks for following my wonky journey! Life certainly is an adventure, if nothing else!

[Must shut down completely now. Train of thought is leaving the station without me again.]

Why Me?

Why do bad things happen to good people? How can we move on from painful experiences? Here’s my take on the matter.

Remembering My Divinity

How many times have we had something happen to us, and all we can do is stand there wondering, “Why me?” Why did this awful thing happen to me? And why can’t I move on? Why?

I’ve been inspired to write, by a person who’s been struggling to move through some difficult feelings. They asked why something happened to them.

“Why did this happen to me, a good person? What did I ever do to deserve this? And why does it still hurt?” Those are age-old million dollar questions.

The quickest way I’ve found to move through why bad things happen to us, is to reframe how we see and interpret the entire scenario. To change our perspective or our take on things. Easy to say and not easy to do. I know it’s not easy, because it’s taken a lot of therapy and healing work for me to move past my own childhood experiences. And as far…

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You Are A Miracle

Because writing is a challenge lately, here’s a tidbit and one of my photos. I like to create these inspirational graphic photos.

Remembering My Divinity

I want to share the story behind these words, but the words aren’t flowing well lately. One of the effects of my Kundalini awakening experience has very literally been brain rewiring, creating all sorts of challenges in my everyday life. I’ll expand on this when I can.

But for now, enjoy my photo of the Atlantic Ocean.

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Transitions, Changes, and The Unknown

Life loves to throw us crashing into the dark once in a while. Tides come in and then go out. Good times roll up to our front door and then go washing out the back. Their arrival brings joy and happiness, only to eventually fade and pass. Hard times too. We hate to see them come, and breathe sighs of relief when they recede. Life seems to be in constant motion.

And in a way, it is. Constant movement and change happens all around us every day, and we get used to it. We become acclimated and adjust and normalized. I call this being grounded. It’s that feeling of being centered and calm deep inside, when you are firmly anchored. When your vessel isn’t floating free, bobbing helter skelter at the mercy of the wind and sea. Being grounded feels like you are in command and everything is going according to plan. It’s that feeling of calm, deep inside.

Sometimes, things in life change, or we change, and then the dreaded unknown comes visiting. Right up to our door like an uninvited and unwelcome guest. Ugh. I hate that. What to do? I always want to know what to do.

The biggest secret I’ve learned is that the times of transition, when there is so much change going on that I’m sitting in that big black space of WTF, are times to “do” absolutely nothing. When I try to change something and every effort of trying ends up making things worse, it’s time to sit down and wait. And breathe.

Staring straight into the mouth of the unknown can be terrifying; and yet it can also be exhilarating. It’s that wonderfully, terrifyingly, exciting time of not knowing if our next step will be our last, or will be the first step towards wonder and amazement. Will we cross the ocean only to fall off the edge of the earth? Or will we discover new land?

There are times, when visiting the land of unknown becomes a bit too scary, and the best thing we can do for ourselves is stop and breathe. I also advocate having a good cry if it comes up. It helps me wade through the muck all that much faster.

As the voyage of my life presented times of change and transition, I’ve seemed to weather many of them well, knowing that they were stepping-stones in my life. But there were definitely times that I lost faith in the journey and became terrified of monsters below the sea. Expecting them to rise up and capsize my ship at any moment.

Not only was I terrified of monsters, but winds of change picked up and whipped the seas into a frenzy I thought might never calm. Fortunately, time has shown me that eventually, the winds die down, seas calm, and I find port and securely anchor again.

My most terrifying and most rewarding journey has always revolved around raising my son. From the day he very suddenly and unexpectedly entered the world, it’s been a series of ups and downs. When he had difficulty with what felt like every transition in life, as a very little guy, the amount of discomfort he experienced really rang my bell. There was nothing harder for me than seeing my son struggle and suffer every single day,  and often multiple times a day, for years.

Trying to fix things that often couldn’t be fixed, wore me out.

Trying to control him taught me quickly that I really can’t control another person.

And pushing him too hard, ended up with him crashing on the rocks.

There were times that as much as I might have wanted to make progress forward, maintaining bare steerage, navigating each wave as it came, and actually losing ground, was the most prudent course of action to keep the ship upright.

And then there have been the moments when weeks, months, or years of consistent effort paid off. The day I dropped him off to preschool, and he didn’t cry and cling to me, was about seven months into the school year. He finally tied his shoes when he was eleven. And just the other day, he talked himself down from a panic attack. HUGE!!

I was thinking about why it’s harder to see my child struggle than it is for me to deal with my own hardship, and it finally hit me. As much as I know that he has his own journey in life, and he’ll have his own adventures and storms to weather, a big part of me didn’t trust that he’d come out the other side without a severely damaged hull and rigging.

These days, we are going through the teenage years.

It’s my child who is changing and venturing out into a new and different phase of life, and as much as I want to impart all of my life wisdom into him as quickly as I can, I must wait until his ears are open to hearing it.

Because it’s such a huge time of self discovery for Little Man, my job as mom is taking a back seat, morphing into teacher and mentor. It’s time for me to turn the helm of my son’s life gradually over to him, and be ok with watching his journey unfold.

It’s so easy to write those words on paper (or screen, as the case may be), and yet, when it’s 1 am and my son’s brain is bound up with anxiety and panic over something in the future that isn’t even going to come to pass, not allowing his body to sleep, I try to fix him. I try to make it better. Those are the times when it’s beyond hard to let things go. The times when I can’t see how he’s going to make it from what I see in the moment, to the amazing future I know he’s going to have.

Facing the unknown can be as hard as looking at the biggest and baddest sea monster of all, who is circling the boat, and you’re sure it’s ready to move in for the kill. Having faith that by the last possible second, the monster will be taken out by a harpoon you didn’t even see coming, can be a tall order.

Believing that things will always work out for the best can be a stretch. But looking for the silver lining in the clouds is something I’m getting good at. And the more I look for the silver and glean gold from our voyages, the richer we both become.

I don’t know what sorts of weather my son will have to handle during his own journey, navigating from port to port, but he’s building skills to navigate whatever comes up. And with an astute lookout on the bow, angels on both beams and winds to push him ever forward, he’ll make it through, one voyage at a time. And so will I.

My Love For The Sea

I feel like I’ve had a love affair with the ocean for lifetimes. And I probably have. The more I learn about life and about my life, the more I understand my love for the sea.

As a child, my family packed our bags and spent every August in a little summer cottage by the sea on the coast of Maine. I spent my younger days there playing by the water, running around on the rocks and seaweed, and having adventures. Life for me there was relaxed.

There was no school stuff to deal with, and my parents let us run around, calling us home for meals by ringing a big, hand-held bell. In fact, the most challenging days were the rainy ones, when we were tired of being soggy wet and came indoors, looking for something to do. Puzzles were my go-to on a rainy day.

When I was by the sea, I could run free, without the threat of my mother attacking me. It was a safe place for me. Because we were on vacation, my father was around full-time, and his constant presence meant a reprieve for me from being the object of my mother’s venom.

Dad would take us out on the sea in boats, and shared his love of boats and the sea with us. He was my first navigation instructor, showing me how to set and follow a compass course, and how to read a nautical chart. He taught me about balancing the load in a boat, telling us to “trim ship!” when the boat was tipping over to one side. And he was the first one to teach me how to fish.

Some of our grand boating adventures included visiting local islands for picnics. And there were the trips into the harbor where we kids would buy penny candy. I can still remember loading all five of us into a skiff that couldn’t have been more than ten feet long, with a two or three horse outboard motor on the back, puttering all the way into the harbor and back.

Left to our own devices, we kids would wade into the water’s edge or explore the tide pools. We’d swim off a nearby dock, or inflate rafts and float around. More fun times were had simply messing around in rowboats. So many adventures. And even a few ending up with a boat being swamped. The nice thing about a wooden rowboat is, even when it’s full of water, it doesn’t sink.

When we were old enough (8) we entered the island’s little sailing program, which remains active today. We learned our eight basic knots, and learned how to sail, memorizing a few key nautical rules of the road. I learned what the wind and current does to a boat, and how to navigate in and out of our little harbor. I also learned race strategy and about being a good sport, even when I didn’t want to be one.

As I grew up, my summer time by the sea changed from being a time of mostly play and freedom, to dipping my toe in the workforce as a teen. I spent one entire summer living there, working in the big local harbor as a motel maid and also scooping ice cream at a parlor that catered to mostly tourists. I loved my motel job making up the rooms, because the rooms were on a pier over the water of the beautiful and bustling harbor, and I got to do my work on my own. No one looking over my shoulder telling me what to do. The ice cream job wasn’t too bad, but after a while, the insincerity and BS of my boss helped make it easy to leave that job, freeing up some time to relax before school started up again.

College took me inland for four years, and after graduating and fumbling around for a while, having a job just to have something to do and earn some money, the sea called to my heart once again.

I listened to that call, first taking a class that brought me back to the sea, this time living on a schooner and learning about humpback whales. And then finding work on boats, back in the harbor where I’d scooped ice cream and made up beds as a teenager. After a few years of exploring working on smaller boats, I went back to school and ended up working on ships around the world.

I got to sail the Mediterranean Sea twice as a maritime cadet, tying up in several ports to pick up supplies. And a few years later, when I was on the job, one of the ships I joined in Norfolk, Virginia, became my home for nine months, taking me to New England and across the Atlantic to the UK and working on cable that lay on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. That tour will forever have a special place in my heart, as it’s where I met and fell in love with my husband, going on our first official dates when we docked in Scotland.

Life on board ship took me to ports across the globe, from Oakland and San Diego, to Djibouti in Africa and the Red Sea. I’ll never forget the day we were steaming down the Red Sea, when I saw a large patch of what I assumed to be trash. Smaller ships from second world countries had no qualms about dumping bags of trash overboard. But as I had the helmsman alter course to miss the dark plastic bags, I soon realized they took on triangular shapes. And the closer we got, the clearer the shapes became, until I realized they were triangular dorsal fins. What we saw was a gigantic school of sharks, slowly milling about near the surface. They were all different sizes, the largest being around forty feet.

During my time on ships, I sailed waters from the Persian Gulf, to the Arabian Sea, out to the Indian Ocean, past Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines across to Guam and the Marianas, and north to Japan, supplying US Navy ships. We picked up supplies in several ports, and as much as I enjoyed getting out and doing some shopping and grabbing a meal, I loved my time out at sea. The night sky crossing the Indian Ocean was so dark, I could see stars all the way down to the horizon. It was amazing! And when we hit patches of bioluminescence, the ship’s wake lit up with the most beautiful glow.

One of my last ship’s tours took me from San Diego, working off the Pacific Coast, dipping down to Mazatlan for an R&R port call, and eventually up to the port of Seattle, WA. Synchronistically, the Puget Sound area has become my home for the past 18 years.

Even after leaving life aboard ship, I worked part-time on deck of a small local ferry until I was so pregnant that I could barely fit between the cars I was parking, and I couldn’t handle the long shifts.

Being out on the water, seeing the horizon, has always been mesmerizing to me. I could stare at it for hours. Where the sea meets the sky. And as a merchant mariner, I actually got paid to stare at the horizon every day.

One of my favorite things about being on the water has always been navigating. Getting from here to there. Learning how to set and follow a course and actually end up where you want to end up. And one of the coolest memories of all was during a voyage from Guam to the Persian Gulf. Getting the navigation plan ready on short notice wasn’t so fun, but putting in lots of overtime over the course of a few weeks got the job done.

I worked my regular eight-hour shift (we were tied up in port) plus an additional four hours every day to get all the charts hand corrected and ready for the trip. There were many charts to go through and make sure all of the information on them was correct and up to date; and there had been some recent major changes in the Straits of Malacca that affected several charts. Basically, I had to plot out and draw new “roads” (traffic separation schemes) where ships could go within the strait. Lots of picky measuring, drawing, and coloring in (thank goodness for grade school skills!).

Once all the charts were accurate and up to date, I had to pick waypoints and draw track lines that would become our course, being mindful of things like rocks, islands, rules of who owned what waters, and where we could legally and safely transit. Based on when we were expected to be at the port of Jebel Ali, UAE, and based on the speed my captain wanted us to travel, I calculated the date and time we needed to leave Guam. Yup. I calculated how many days, hours, and minutes it would take to make the voyage.

Our longest transit without seeing any land had us looking at nothing but horizon for just under a week, as we exited the Strait of Malacca and headed into the Indian Ocean. One of the waypoints I used to navigate was thirty-five miles off the southern tip of India (as specified by the captain), and as we approached the pencil dot I’d written on the paper chart, off India, I switched the range of my radar from twelve miles, out to twenty-four miles, and then to forty-eight. There is was: an echo off land. Just exactly where and when it was supposed to be, thirty-five miles away. As much as I completely trusted our GPS navigation system, there is nothing like the confirmation of having land show up just when and where you expect, especially after days of seeing nothing but water.

If I’d had someone on my ship that didn’t know about celestial navigation or global positioning system (GPS) navigation, they would think it an incredible miracle to be able to sail around the world with such amazing precision and accuracy. And as much as I understand and trust navigation technology, there is still a sense of awe that comes over me every time I see it work.

I’ve been very fortunate to have earned a living doing something I loved, and I will always cherish memories of looking out from the bridge, scanning the horizon, and watching the sea swell and jump with the wind. And to be able to put my passion for navigation into action as a ship’s officer and the ship’s navigator is an experience no one will ever be able to take away from me.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned on the sea is that it’s ever-changing. And if you are prepared for all types of weather, take care of your vessel, and know how to navigate storms, you’ll do just fine. As for navigation, the more I know and trust my navigation tools, the easier it becomes. For me, as much as navigation is about getting from here to there, it’s also very much about the journey between waypoints. Fair winds and following seas.

 

War Torn

On this Memorial Day, here in the US, I am always torn between honoring our veterans and detesting war and all it does to our soldiers. I have this thing of seeing situations from at least two angles at the same time.

At my heart, I define war as what happens when people give up on peaceful communication. It’s what we do when we’ve tried to resolve things using diplomacy and economic sanctions, and nothing is working. The larger part of my heart defines war as a failure in some way. It needlessly kills people; both civilian and military. People die.

The cynical part of me sees war as a big machine that keeps rolling along because people get rich off of it. If there were no profit in war, it wouldn’t happen. We go to war in the Middle East because there is oil there. Despite atrocious human rights violations and genocide in other areas of the planet, because there is no economic profit, we leave those areas alone.

When I think back to our more recent World Wars, I realize that we had to go to war to prevent a massive imbalance of power on the planet. An entire planet ruled by one giant dictatorship wouldn’t work. Past experience has shown that as much as the idea of a benevolent leader who takes care of their followers sounds nice on paper, the reality hasn’t matched up. And even though our political system of Democracy in action is far from perfect, the principles upon which it was founded are good ones.

I also like the principles of Communism, although the reality of it is a bit too far from its principles.

As a mother, I see the huge power all mothers have in shaping the future of our country. Raising the consciousness of our children has always been parent’s job first because children’s world views are shaped by what happens at home. The more we raise our children to understand people’s feelings and emotions, teach them how to work with people, how to communicate, and how to negotiate, the less our children will need to resort to using war to solve world problems.

And when we learn as a community, as a country, as a planet, that war begins in our hearts far before it rolls out on any battlefield, we will become more mindful of how we raise our children and how to heal broken hearts and minds.

On today, this Memorial Day, I honor those warriors whose death was purposeful, and my prayers are that we learn to heal our hearts so war won’t need to happen in the first place.

 

Coming Out The Other Side

How do I write about something I barely understand?

How can I describe an experience I’ve been going through that my culture neither understands, nor accepts as real and valid? And when faced with it, often confuses it for mental illness?

If you have ever had a near death experience, you might begin to understand what my last few months have been like; but then again, probably not.

Our culture is so completely unaware of ourselves as spiritual beings that having an extreme spiritual experience can be very isolating. How do I talk about having a complete Kundalini Awakening when our society doesn’t understand what Kundalini energy is and what it does in a body and mind? The closest understanding Christians have to it is the crucifixion and resurrection process. But Christians aren’t taught that it’s a process that people still experience today – we are taught it was a single event that happened to one person in history.

How do I talk about what people call a dark night of the soul, when the closest language we have for it is hell?

How do I relate to the world and to myself when I’ve changed so much in a few short months that I barely know who I am anymore?

People on a path of spiritual perfection or of healing are always people who feel lost or not whole in some way. They are always people who feel like they are missing something in their lives, or who are in a lot of pain. It is a helpful path for many. And the irony is, for me, I’ve only ever wanted to feel better. I have never sought out the “spiritual” path, and yet, here I sit, coming out the other side of an experience that many purposely seek out and dream of having. They seek it because they believe that if they do this thing or do that thing, it will make all of their dreams come true, bring them salvation, stop their pain, make them feel whole, whatever.

So much of my human created pain has been healed that the extreme unfamiliarity of myself is challenging on some days.

I guess the extreme change I’m dealing with is not unlike when someone has a major change happen in their life that they didn’t expect: being handed a cancer diagnosis, having your child or spouse die, losing your job, your home, or your relationship. When these things happen, life as you have known it is over. Done. Ended. Gone forever. You have to become used to a new normal. Sink or swim.

There is a grief process, a time of letting go of the old and allowing the new. A time of welcoming everything and anything that comes along with as open arms as possible. In spiritual terms, letting go of what no longer serves me, what no longer works for me, and embracing every moment as it is, without judging it, without worry about the future or regretting the past.

The more I can remind myself that the only moment in time that is real is right now, that the only moment I have to deal with is right now, the easier life is to handle.

Very long story short, because my life has taken an extreme turn, this blog will include bits and pieces of the gold as I glean it.

But in the meanwhile, I’m still a wife and mother, dealing with the very real life of managing a household, raising a child, and being a loving and devoted wife. Many people who go through extreme life changes, leave marriages, move into new homes, and have to adjust to life without a loved one being in it.

In my case, the extreme changes are allowing me to interact more fully within my own existing life. Because I have been cracked open wide and can more fully allow love to flow through me, I not only feel tons more love for myself, but for everyone and everything in my life. It is an amazing and very good thing.

And as with all extreme change, the process to get to where I’m getting has been a real mix of pure unmitigated hell, and amazing grace and love. If you’re familiar with the Beaufort scale of sea states during different wind forces, I’ve been riding about a 12 on a scale of 10, 12 being hurricane force winds. And more recently, life has calmed down to about a sea state of five to six, with an occasional calm day or two thrown in.

(FYI, I’ve ridden out force 11 storm in the North Atlantic and it more than sucked: the ship suffered damage and we were lucky we didn’t go down. But that’s a story for another day.)

Stay tuned for more of my love of snapping photos, and some practical and inspirational words of life wisdom, while I continue to chop wood and carry water. Life is real, y’all.

 

To Witness

When a person acts as a witness for another, the act itself can help create change that the witness might never even be aware of. They can provide that momentary opening that might change the entire course of a person’s life for the better. Providing that safe place for a person to feel seen, known, and appreciated, with no judgment, is one of the biggest powers we have.

Remembering My Divinity

I’m finally wrapping my brain around an amazing concept called “to witness”. It’s a verb that unlike many verbs, is an action word and is a word of no physical action at the same time. And yet it holds the most powerful action that exists. The ultimate act of witnessing a person involves completely and wholly accepting them, unconditionally. No judgment. No strings attached. And the person who is witnessed feels completely seen and known, completely understood and recognized. They feel they are known at the very deepest level of their core being, and completely accepted for who they are, exactly as they are.

In the moment of being witnessed, a person only knows themselves as perfect. Anything and everything that is not perfect, has instant permission to leave. And the one doing the witnessing only feels, knows, and projects complete love. Love as absolute acceptance.

In our very human world, it can be a challenge to…

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Life, Perspective, and Healing

Just to let you all know, about six weeks ago, I had a healing session that ended up shifting my entire perspective of life. Everything. And the weird thing is, because I can see things from a higher perspective now, I can see common threads between things more easily, and am healing pains from my life at a higher level, which then trickles down. Essentially, I’m creating change for myself exponentially faster than I’ve been doing for the past four years.

At times, it feels like I’m on a bit of a carnival ride. But because my work in this area has been very purposeful and has progressed very organically, I’m hanging in there. The interesting thing is, because I now have the capability to heal things for myself, without needing to use hypnosis, all sorts of things are bubbling up, asking to be healed. It feels like this process is increasing with speed and efficiency, spiraling up and up, faster and faster.

I feel like the process that’s happening is trying to reach a crescendo, opening up to yet another level. But right now I can’t write much about it because I’m smack dab in the middle of it. After it’s rolled out a bit more and life settles down in that arena, I’ll write more.

Something I’ve wanted to speak about in a language that everyone can understand is just what healing means. What it is. With a new perspective on life, it occurred to me that speaking about life and healing in terms of perspective is something everyone can wrap their mind around.

First of all, most people don’t realize, but everyone sees the world just a bit differently from the next. Yes, the same physical objects might be in front of a bunch of people, but which object a person looks at, and what about that object a person pays attention to, is highly individual. And what colors how we see everything in life? Our life experiences, interests, and the subconscious beliefs we create about ourselves and our lives.

Every single person on this planet has their own perspective of life. And how we see ourselves and our life, often differs widely from someone else. Siblings can grow up in the same household and have completely different perceptions of life growing up together.

Healing something is merely making a change in how we see things in life. It’s a shift of perspective. That’s it. Other shifts of perspective happen when we have an aha moment, or when you’ve been struggling to make sense of something, and it finally becomes clear.

The difference with healing, is that changes in perspective are purposefully sought out. They are purposefully created. With healing, people strive to find a different perspective of things that help them feel better in life; to let go of pains and allow more love into their hearts.

And healers have a way of looking at life that gives them powerful tools to help people create change in their lives. Here’s an example of how healing works compared with something like counseling (which is very helpful as well).

A few years ago, when my son was in elementary school, he struggled to do homework after school most days. By the time he got home, he was fried. His brain was cooked. But he had reading requirements every day, and worksheets to finish. We’d sit at the dining room table and I’d try to get him to do his work. Inevitably, most days he’d freeze up and couldn’t do anything.

Because I knew he knew how to do the work, and I didn’t understand what was going on with him, I’d get frustrated. The more frustrated I got, the more locked up tight he got. I’d try so hard to not get all worked up, but my thoughts always ran to all sorts of ugly scenarios of him growing up and not being able to do work or get a job. More than once, I got so wound up that I had to give myself a time-out. That’s the point when many people blow up at their kid’s inability to perform.

Looking at a scene like this from a counselor’s point of view, they would work with a person to help them learn coping skills, like taking a time out before going rogue on your kid. They might have asked me to look further into my feelings to see what feelings beneath the overt and obvious ones, were acting up. Recognizing that when we are triggered into anger is because of feelings we hold deep down, if we can uncover them, we can shift our perspective from: my kid is stressing me out, to: my kid’s difficulty is reminding me of difficulty I have doing work under pressure at my job. It’s not really about my kid. It’s about me. When you change how you see things, it can ease your burden, and help you recognize that your child is merely a trigger for your feelings.

The difference with using a healer is, they usually use intuitive skills in some way. They can help a person see further into an issue, to look deeper into what’s going on. My modality of choice has been hypnosis, because it allows me to be able to do the seeing, giving me all the power in creating change for myself. It very directly affects my own heart, allowing me to open it up. My hypnotherapist guides me along, but I do all of the looking.

In the relaxed and focused hypnotic state, when I looked into what was going on between my son and I during those really stressful moments at the dining room table, I was able to notice feelings going on that I couldn’t even feel when my mind was fully conscious. I had blocked out half of my feelings. What bubbled up were a few statements: “What’s wrong with you? Are you defective or something?” I was directing that statement towards my kid in my mind. And as I was guided to go back in time to the very first time that thought came to me, I was able to see a scene between my mother and I when I was very young. She was saying those same words to me. And a moment later, intuitive knowledge hit me that I actually picked up these thought from my mother. She was actually thinking them about herself. She thought there was something wrong with her, and that she was defective.

In that moment, my perception of my feelings went from thinking my son was defective, to thinking I was defective, to knowing that my mother had felt that she was defective and I picked up her thoughts, owning them as my own (kids do this). Because I’d uncovered a deeply held subconscious belief about myself, and was able to find a new perspective that was different and worked for me, that little girl in me was instantly able to let go of the belief that she was defective. Instantly, a shift in perception was created that would ripple out into my life, affecting more than just homework time at the table.

When we grow up, we form beliefs about ourselves all the time. Most of this belief creation is done by the time we are about six years old. It correlates to brain development. When life activates a belief, it becomes further entrenched into our psyches, becoming deeply buried in our subconscious mind.

Anytime something in my life would activate this old belief, a part of me would act up and I would feel “stressed”. This is what stress is. Old shitty beliefs we carry about ourselves that aren’t true. But because we’re not aware of them, they mess with us six ways to Sunday. Creating a shift in perspective that addressed a subconscious belief I held about myself, created powerful change throughout my life.

The next time the exact same scenario came up with my son and his homework, as he melted down and his brain froze up, instead of frustration and anger rising up in me, I literally felt a hole of nothingness. Empty. It was so odd that I burst out laughing; which caused my son to look questioningly at me and then join me in laughter.

Creating a change in how we see things can help us feel better every day. And if you want to get down to the root of things, finding ways to look intuitively can take you quite literally to the root of how an issue first began. Put a change of perspective on it and it can change your life in wonderful ways.

 

Love and Acceptance

An offering of perspectives.

Remembering My Divinity

How much easier is it to accept or love another person
when you remember they are part of the human race?

How much easier is it to accept or love someone
once you get to know them and like them?

How much easier is it to love and accept someone
that you feel a special spark and kindred spirit relationship toward?

How much easier is it to love and accept someone
when they are your child?

What’s holding you back from loving yourself in the very same way?

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