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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…
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.
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.
A few years ago, when I was having a particularly tough time with my son, I wanted to address my worry about his issues. To work on healing the worry. At the time, his mental health was really beginning to deteriorate, and as a parent, it tore me up every time my kid melted down with anxiety and couldn’t function. The wait list to get in to see an adolescent psychiatrist was a year long, and if I couldn’t help him yet, I knew a way to help me.
Like the flight attendants tell you during their safety brief, if the oxygen masks drop during an emergency, put your mask on before helping others. You’re no good if you’re passed out or dead. (I added that last part).
During the hypnotherapy healing session, I was guided to bring in the soul who is my son. I saw him as a bright light, like a starburst, and was overwhelmed as the feeling of love washed over and through me. So amazing! The higher wisdom came to me when I was guided to ask about our mission together, why we were brought together this lifetime.
My son’s soul told me, “I’m here to teach you about being spirit. You’re here to teach me about being human.”
When the message first came through, I could see all the little breadcrumbs I’d followed that led me to having a spiritual awakening in the first place. The searching and seeking, not for spirituality, but for things to help my son. This boy who had so many struggles and challenges. Concurrently finding things that helped me be a better mother; things that made me less stressed, worried, and less fried. Until one day, during the course of a conversation with a beautifully intuitive woman, something inside me woke up and began to roar. I suddenly knew without a shadow of a doubt that life exists beyond the physical world.
Receiving the message, it was obvious that as my son’s parent, my number one job, other than loving him, is to help him grow up with skills necessary to make it in the world. To grow up to be independent and a contributing member of society.
However, I recently realized the universality of this personal message. I can see it apply to every parent/child relationship out there.
When our children first come into the world, their ability to survive on their own is zero. It’s through our relationship with them that they make it in the world. That they find their bearings and walk their way to becoming an adult.
As much as not everyone who has children will experience a spiritual awakening, children often remind us to become childlike again; bringing us closer to our spirit.
One of the joys of being a parent is seeing the world through a child’s eyes of wonder. Being delighted in the most simple things. Having more fun with the box than with the toy in it.
Kids naturally live in the moment. They’re not overly concerned with the past or the future. They just do their thing.
Children bring us into the present moment.
Young children remind us to be unapologetically us. To do what we want to do, without being concerned if we’re doing it right or if someone else approves of it.
You do you. Be your authentic self.
Being a parent, especially the parent of a child with special needs, I had to stop looking at my child with the expectations I had – because so often what I was doing wasn’t working. I had to shift my focus, learning to look at what was behind his behavior instead of merely demanding compliance. To learn to look at the world a different way. To understand that my child, the one who had meltdowns every day because of having Sensory Processing Disorder, the one who didn’t tie his shoes until he was eleven because of dysgraphia, and the one for whom things like language arts and math don’t easily compute because of dyslexia, is doing the best he can. He has to work five times harder to accomplish some of the same things most people pick up easily. And some things will never be easy.
So often we expect things of our children that they’re simply not able to do. They’re too tired or too hungry, their brain is cooked, or they just don’t get it. They may not have the skills yet. And sometimes they forget things easily and need reminders.
We’re all doing the very best we can in any given moment in time.
Ever raise a toddler or a teenager? Those years make us parents tear our hair out like no other because it’s when our kids are taking lightyear jumps into independence. They push back and want to do what they want to do, not what we want them to do. And you can’t tell them how to do something because they know it all. We parents walk the tightrope between wanting to strangle our kids and standing back in amazement, wondering who is that child, and where did mine go? It’s the push-me pull-you of when to exercise control and when to let them fly, crash and burn, and fly again.
One of the greatest lessons kids teach us is about surrender. That we each have our own unique path in life to walk, and ultimately no one can walk our path for us.
Many years ago, I learned in a parenting class that when your little one is not doing what you want and nothing (no amount of bribery or punishment) is getting you what you want, when you’re so at odds that you’re about to go psycho on your kid, give them a random hug. It’s magic.
Sure, you can push and push until you’re blue in the face, you’re beyond exhausted. You can threaten the kid, take away all sense of security, shame and embarrass them, and you might ultimately get them to make their bed or take out the trash. Or not. When something isn’t working, take a different tack. Instead of beating your way upwind, change course, let the sails out, and go with the wind for a while.
Love and connection melts resistance. Every day, in every way.
Being present is a gift we give ourselves.
When you’re in the present moment, you’re not mired in the past, thinking about what you should have or could have done, or having regrets or anger about this or that. And you’re not throwing all sorts of fears and worry into the future. When you are solidly in the here and now, you are grounded. Feet firmly planted in the dirt. Like the roots of a tree. And the more deep and solid your roots, the more present you’re able to be.
In spiritual circles, we use the term grounded to mean fully present and focused in the moment. And the easiest way to be fully present is when we’re doing something we love. What’s tricky, what takes work, is to be grounded, focused in the present moment, when we’re not doing things. When we have a quiet moment. Which is why for some people, doing nothing, just being with themselves with no external stimulation like TV or radio, can be really hard.
One of the processes of going through my Kundalini Awakening has been having my brain quite literally rewired. The way I see and experience the world is very different from how it was two years ago. However, while the rewiring is going on, there’s an experience of neural synapses dying off and new ones growing that takes time. And it’s not a one time event. As my entire consciousness and energy field changes, it’s happening as a series of shifts. Bit by bit. Shift by shift. New awareness by new awareness. It’s been happening gradually, and continually for the past two years.
While it’s been quite frankly an amazing process, having my brain rewired to this extent has not been fun. In fact, there has been too much time when it’s felt like hell. Trust me, the Bible’s version of hell is dead wrong. It’s not something that happens after death (unless you create it). We experience it here on Earth. But I digress.
While my brain has been changing, in addition to seeing the world through much more compassionate and understanding eyes, no longer automatically judging people, I struggle to be able to focus in the here and now. It’s like my thoughts are a squirrel racing around a tree, jumping from branch to branch. Sometimes jumping out of fear of becoming someone’s dinner. My squirrely mind jumps into the future the moment I start thinking about some things, and dives into the past when I think about others.
When this first happened, it sparked buckets of fear. And I had no control over it. However, because my wiring was changing, the larger part of me knew the fear-based thoughts were lies. It’s weird to suddenly become afraid of something, and a split second later know for a fact that what you just thought is not the absolute truth. I’m talking about irrational thoughts that have no basis in present reality.
But what’s gradually happening is a dissolution of fear, regret, anger, sadness, and judgment associated with the thoughts. Very, very, very gradually. Over several months.
My biggest personal frustration with having a brain that’s really struggling to focus for shit, is losing my former ability to write. To have (temporarily) lost the flow. To have lost the ability to craft words into a beautiful piece that conveys not only information, but feeling and emotion. To feel so robotic in my writing much of the time, and lose my train of thought every few minutes. It’s exhausting trying to hang onto words and to remember what I was trying to say, as words and phrases drop out of my brain. Putting together a post that’s complete feels like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro most days.
So I’ll wrap this one up with a piece of wisdom that’s come to me during my spiritual expansion. Whenever you feel like you’re spinning out of control or life feels overwhelming, or if your find yourself constantly worrying about something, do what you can to change things so you feel better, but not before sitting down with yourself.
Sit down (or go for a walk) and remind yourself that right now, right here, in this discrete moment in time, you are safe and you are ok. (Repeat as needed). Your brain might be telling you otherwise, but your heart knows differently. Because in truth, there is only the present moment.
Sometimes we have to take things one step at a time, and sometimes one breath at a time.
Just about two years ago, when I was working on healing some “stuff,” I experienced an unexpected, massive shift in my consciousness. How I perceived myself and my entire world changed dramatically, pretty much overnight. Since then, life has been more than a little crazy. When Kundalini energy flies open, you have no choice but to change. As my consciousness shifted, this powerful energy of creation (change) roared to life, like an inferno.
Sometimes I sit back and look at my life, look at what I wanted to be when I grew up, what I expected my life to look like, and I have to laugh out loud. When I began this blog almost nine years ago, I was a stay at home mom of one kiddo with a few labels, invisible disabilities, whatever you want to call them, navigating the journey of motherhood. I was not religious, not spiritually awake, and was not a spiritual seeker. I was a very typical mother and homemaker.
What I never anticipated were all the twists and turns this journey would take. And in particular, the metaphysical, spiritual one. It still blows me away when I think about it.
This most unexpected metaphysical journey started off innocently enough when I realized diets were no longer the answer for a longtime issue with weight, and I explored hypnosis for weight loss. I don’t remember where the idea came from, but it probably had something to do with watching the Oprah Show.
Acting on that one fateful decision changed the trajectory of my life.
Before seeking out my first hypnotherapist, the only experience I’d had with a hypnotist was at our high school, as part of a stage show. I was not hypnotized. But here I was in my mid-thirties and desperate.
Finding someone local, the first hypnotherapist I worked with said she didn’t have experience helping people lose weight, but if I was game, she’d do her best. I don’t remember if she told me that first day what her specialty was, but even if she had, I wouldn’t have known what having a past life regression was. And we never did one. We worked together, and I had some progress.
I enjoyed her process of taking me on a little journey, asking me to imagine this and picture that, and was beyond surprised when what I was “imagining” suddenly changed all on its own, and I became the observer watching a movie play out, always moving in the direction of feeling better. It was my first experience of inner healing, even though I didn’t recognize it as such, way back then.
After we’d had a number of sessions together, one day, as we were near the end of our little inner journey, the hypnotherapist asked me to picture my higher self. My what? What’s that? She began to describe it as the part of me that’s always connected to higher wisdom: the part of me that has all the answers for me and my life. Before she finished describing it, I was suddenly whisked away to another scene. But I wasn’t trying to do anything. I was just there, watching things play out.
Over the next several minutes, I had the first of what would eventually be a handful of metaphysical experiences. It not only blew my mind, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that what I saw and felt was absolutely true and real because it resonated in my bones. I had an experience of my higher self that left me knowing it had so much energy, was incredibly powerful and strong, was fun and humorous, and was ultimately unconditionally loving beyond what my human brain could comprehend.
My work with her ended as I felt like I was in a good place. I’d joined Weight Watchers and almost fifty pounds came off with ease. And then life’s next major stressors hit. Weight crept back and at some point I tried to diet again with Weight Watchers. Before long I had nothing in me that could stick with a diet for even a day.
I got swept up with life: marriage, pregnancy, miscarriage that totally rocked my world, death of an in-law, pregnancy, premature birth, and being blindsided by postpartum depression with no diagnosis or relief for years, while raising a child with special needs.
When my son was seven and was receiving vision therapy, as I sat in the waiting room reading magazines, one day I noticed a bunch of brochures about this thing called Energy Therapy. The first time I read about this magical thing that supposedly helped fix all sorts of issues, from relationships, finance, health, and more, I dismissed it, barely paying attention. At that point, my son had received speech therapy and occupational therapy, but energy therapy was something completely new to me. About four months later, I picked up the same brochure, in the same waiting room and something about the words, “Lose Weight,” and “Free Consultation” caught my eye this time.
I went in for the free consultation and was blown away. It was my first experience with someone who was intuitive, and I was beyond intrigued.
The practitioner worked on me, helping my miserable back feel better, and she worked on my son, who’d needed daily stool softeners for four years. It was like magic! One day he needed the medicine, the next day he didn’t. And she helped heal my food cravings to the point that when I discovered I was allergic to dairy products, I was able to stop eating them altogether, because my life-long intense cravings for dairy was gone. This thing called energy therapy was incredible. I was curious!
Not too long after that, I looked for another hypnotherapist, this time one who worked specifically with clients wanting to lose weight, finding one who was pretty far away. A few sessions in, I had another mind-blowing metaphysical experience. This time having an angel heal me of all shame. Because I was so used to carrying around shame from my childhood, I never knew what it felt like to be free of it. Quite simply, it was life-changing. That relationship lasted about five sessions. I’ll just say that as talented as she was, after a while, it was no longer a good match.
About a year or two later, I finally decided to look for another hypnotherapist, this time finding someone local, whose practice was all about getting to the emotional root of issues. Our sessions together were transformative, healing root causes of food cravings as they came up. And working with this man, I had not one, but three incredible metaphysical experiences.
As my hypnotherapist took me back in time, looking for the root of these various stressors that sent me running for food, his process had me regress in time until the feeling I was tuning into felt new, indicating we’d reached its origin, its roots.
During one of the sessions, much to my complete surprise, I regressed back through my entire childhood, through being born, being in the womb, waiting to enter into my physical body, and back to my existence as spirit, when I was planning my life and life challenges with the help of a guide. I was shown a life challenge that I wanted to take on.
After changing my perspective of things, the food craving dissolved. As that one dissolved, I’d notice other things that brought on cravings and they were also dissolved. In total, I saw some of my pre-birth planning, three times. It was amazing to see and know deep in my bones that we actually plan to have difficult times in life to challenge our soul to grow.
I did great work with this hypnotherapist, and eventually I was doing so well that I stopped seeing him. Once again, weight began to slide off with little effort.
About a year later, always on the lookout for things to help my son, I heard about this thing called Reiki that could help my son fall asleep at night. He’d always been a lousy sleeper, and it was wearing me to a nub. Without really knowing what Reiki was, I took a one-day class. The thing about becoming Reiki attuned, is it changes a person. It opens them up to the healing energy of the Universe.
What I never saw coming were a few synchronous events the weeks after my Reiki class that led me to a spiritual awakening. Something in me burst open, and suddenly I had an overwhelming drive to know everything about energy healing. Yesterday. I was a woman on a mission, absorbing information like a dry sponge. I couldn’t learn enough fast enough, spending hours every day reading, watching, and listening. After experiencing proof positive there was something to life beyond what our five senses and instruments can detect, something very deep inside me woke up. And I had to know how people could heal things in their lives in this magical way.
Next came classes at a local spiritual reading and healing center, where I learned about Energy. From there, I received a few healing sessions from the center’s owner, and was beyond fascinated with her clairvoyant ability. So I signed up for Clairvoyance 101. Anyone can learn how to recognize and use their clairvoyant ability. Within a little over a year, I’d taken every class she offered during the day (the only time I could go to classes). Clairvoyance, Energy Healing, Communicating with Spirit, first the entry-level classes and then the more advanced. These were short, six-week classes. Just right.
In the evening, she offered weekly guided meditations, and one night workshops learning about things like chakras, past lives, the Akashic Records, auras and other spiritual topics. And guests came to give talks. After one guest in particular spoke, his wife was briefly introduced as a hypnotherapist. Because of the progress I made using hypnotherapy, and the amazing metaphysical experiences I’d had, I was curious to know more about our speaker’s wife. It had been a few years since I’d done any hypnotherapy work, and I’d been looking for someone new to work with.
As I found out about her background, she sounded just right, especially with my newfound spiritual perspective of life. She’d been a therapist for years, added hypnosis training, and blended in a dash of spirituality. Within only a few sessions, I knew she was a good match for me, and the progress I made with her was profound. After each session, something about the way I saw and experienced the world changed noticeably. We didn’t work solely on food cravings, but on so many things that would benefit anyone. Personal power, boundaries, body image, and more, helping me heal from some difficult relationships in my life.
Before I knew it, the way I saw myself was morphing into someone self-assured, whole, powerful, and divine. As I connected to parts of my inner world, “lost” bits of my awareness, the inner wounded child who resided in my unconscious mind, became known to me again. And not only known, but healed. With each inner change, my inner dialog began to evolve from voices of pain, anger, disgust, and sadness, to those of love and support. I began to value and appreciate myself like never before, and held so much more peace inside than I’d ever known. My human psyche began to mirror my spiritual psyche. It was amazing.
About this time, I began to feel and know my own inner Divinity for the first time in my life, and created my sister blog, Remembering My Divinity, which is all about my healing journey. The good, bad, and the ugly. It’s filled with spiritual perspective and wisdom that’s come to me through spirit. My evolving truth. It’s real and it’s raw.
After about three years of achieving healing in leaps and bounds, early in 2017, the way I saw and thought about life in general began to change (because I’d changed so much). What I chose to address in healing sessions took me deeper than ever, creating healing not only across several moments in my life (as opposed to one or two moments), but began to leapfrog back to past lives. And then the healing began to ripple out beyond just my life and past lives, to the world.
As my perception began to gradually change, there was finally a tipping point, a moment when something seminal inside me shifted. It flipped around 180 degrees. My perception of not only myself, but my entire world changed. I had created so much intentional inner change that one of the major energies of creation, of change: Kundalini energy, became ignited.
It’s like there was someone watching me and said, “Yup! She’s far enough along on this trajectory that it’s time to flip the switch. Time to turn her world upside down and inside out. She can handle it. Sometimes just barely, but she can do this.”
Vibrating in my body, Kundalini energy has been peeling me open, scraping out all of the muck and gunk, blackness and crud – a sometimes excruciating process – leaving behind the energy of my soul. Leaving behind my essence. Love.
I’m still shocked now and then when I remember the sensitive and shy girl I used to be, sitting in church, wanting to be anywhere but there. Who grew up so fascinated with science, having less than no interest in God and the unseen world. Needing proof and evidence before believing something. Who followed a path that wound this way and that, following my curiosity from one thing to the next, ending up having all sorts of crazy metaphysical experiences. No longer believing in so many unseen things, but knowing them deep in my bones because I’ve experienced them.
Now that so much of my life journey has morphed into a metaphysical adventure, I’m not sure where it’s taking me. But I feel like I’m being changed significantly for a special purpose. On the surface, I’m a wife and mother, and those things won’t change. But there’s something else coming in. It’s still out there, out of arm’s reach, still in the misty haze, not yet formed.
And I’m looking forward to it coming into focus.
Here it is, the end of 2018, a year of uprising, of changing awareness. So many things were brought to light, both in the world, and in my own inner world. For many, it was an uncomfortable year, with politics and news being a constant source of voices of discontent. People acting out, speaking out, marching, and participating in discourse of all sorts.
When enough people reach a state of discontent, scales tip and the masses eventually rise up. Instead of using pitchforks and shovels, it’s marching with signs of protest and making change through voting. Word spreads like wildfire through the internet, the web of information that connects us (and can divide us), allowing change in mass awareness to happen so much faster than twenty years ago.
Sometimes in history, a person comes along who ups the ante, who causes immense disruption and discontent. And our current president is one of these men. His perception of the world is warped, and he exhibits classic traits of a narcissist. He lies at the drop of a hat, is extremely short-sighted, demands blind obedience and acts like a child when he’s under stress (which as President, is pretty much every day).
Because of this, he’s a master change agent.
Think about it, when everything is nice and comfy, we go on and live our lives much the same all the time. And why not? We only create change in our lives when something isn’t working. And pain is our #1 motivator. Both physical and emotional pain.
A quick look at the year’s headlines gives us a glimpse into things that reached new tipping points; where the line of what is acceptable and what isn’t, shifted. Awareness shifted. I think a lot of people, and probably men in particular, were shocked to see how many women they knew exclaimed #metoo. Shocked at how prevalent sexual harassment and assault has been and still is. And yes, #metoo.
We saw racism, sexism, and other isms come out for all to see. Brought out from behind the shadows.
And we saw rich and powerful people tumble.
Much like our outer world this past year has included a lot of upheaval, going through a Kundalini Awakening experience has brought up my own inner discontent.
This energy of change has been working on me, bringing up all sorts of unconscious beliefs that have been running my programming, healing at the deepest levels of my being. And in the process, facilitating my awareness to grow. Expanding my consciousness. Allowing me to see the world through different, more compassionate eyes. I no longer see life as only black or white, good or bad. It’s black and white, good and bad, and everything in between.
The tough part is usually transformation. The change itself. As a society, change takes a combination of action and time. Sometimes decades or generations. With a Kundalini Awakening, and especially a significant and somewhat spontaneous one, the first few years create the most drastic change, and as such, can be without doubt the most challenging to live through.
For some people, their Kundalini awakening is met with a complete overhaul of their exterior life. Relationships, jobs, health and homes often change. Things in their lives that weren’t really working, suddenly become intolerable and have to go.
For me, the awakening has occurred through inner, healing shifts. Parts of my inner world are changing significantly. Dissolving and reforming. Out with the old, that no longer serves me, and in with the new spiritual awareness.
Imagine being a caterpillar and you have to go through a complete metamorphosis into a butterfly, but without a cocoon. Imagine if we all sat back and watched a caterpillar’s structure dissolve and reform, while still expecting them to do things on a daily basis. That’s what life has been like in some ways for the past year and then some.
Being expected to do all the things I’ve done for years, while undergoing massive metamorphosis. And not only do things I’ve done for years, but adding to my plate the job of educating my teenage son and dealing with his mental health issues.
This process of change is physical, emotional, and mental. And sometimes it’s absolutely brutal. There have been many days when I do only what I absolutely have to do; only what’s critical. Because that’s the best I can do at the time.
That said, looking back to a year ago, the process is moving forward. I believe I’m past the most challenging and difficult part. On an upswing. Finally.
The overarching desire for this past year has been the deep desire to feel “normal” again. To feel like myself. To have energy to do what I used to do without batting an eye, and to engage fully with life, instead of existing in a self-created cocoon: just trying to survive. To survive something that can’t be seen or measured by any scientific instrument or test. And as such, really isn’t know in my country, or understood. This country of science and reason. Sometimes I wish I had been born in India. But I digress.
A few months ago, a forty-year old piece of plastic that had been holding a shelf of heavy dishes in my kitchen cabinet, suddenly gave way. A few minutes after hearing a mysterious thump, coming from my kitchen, I heard a loud crash. Turning from my computer, I saw a waterfall of dishes cascading out of the cupboard, hitting the granite countertop and then the oak floor. The noise of breaking stoneware seemed to go on forever as every dinner plate, lunch plate, and a stack of soup bowls poured out of the cupboard, landing on the kitchen floor. Very few made it without breaking. And I’d only recently emptied the dish washer, so most of what I had was there. It was crazy!
After a few minutes of shock and awe, my focus became one of looking forward to new dishes. I found a stack of dinner plates I’d bought years ago and tucked away in a different cabinet. And I got to go shop for new lunch plates, in a pretty pattern I love, picking up more soup bowls, too. After the clean up, my kitchen floor was cleaner than it had been in a few weeks.
In the cycle of life, you can either focus on destruction or construction. It’s up to you.
It will be interesting to see where 2019 takes me, and takes us as a country. I intend to see more coherence and connection, and while there will still be battles and skirmishes, don’t be mislead by headlines created to sell newspapers. Overall, things are moving in the direction of compassion and unity.
We are all threads in one massive tapestry of life, each contributing and all valid. Some green, while others are gold. Some tied up in knots, throwing tantrums every other day, while others flowing smoothly. Every thread is important to the makeup of the tapestry, whether we know it or not.
As we roll out of 2018 and into 2019, my wish for all of you is peace and happiness. And to help with this, if you’re having a tough time, know that if you’re here, you matter and are very necessary.
Cheers.
Here it is, early December, and the salmon are returning upstream to lay their eggs and die, providing food for our local eagles and nutrients for all sorts of creatures in our little river. With a plentiful food supply, the eagles have returned, gracing our skies with their aerodynamic forms and occasional acrobatics. As I sit at my makeshift desk, looking out a picture window, I see two bald eagles perched high in a favorite cottonwood tree that overlooks a bend in the river. I’ll never forget the day my son had been outside with his buddies playing and came inside excitedly proclaiming he’d found an amazing tree with incredible energy. No wonder the eagles love it.
Earlier this morning, I saw an eagle fly low over the river, between the trees, missing the branches, looking for a bite to eat. It was followed by a second one, its white head flashing as it popped out from behind trunk after trunk. Another eagle, gliding high, suddenly appeared as it flew right over the house, heading away toward a large field and a number of favored perches.
As I got up to fill my cup with water, movement caught my eye. And when I turned to look, a deer was walking out of the woods and up the back yard, followed by another and another. In total, six deer sauntered up the yard, stopping for a nibble on the apple tree and blackberry plants. Just because someone decided to clear trees and build a house here forty years ago, doesn’t mean the land isn’t the deer’s. They still wander around their territory, foraging for food, getting drinks from the river and streams, and bearing their young.
Other than usual daily life and gearing up for Christmas, I’m still dealing with the effects of a very significant Kundalini Awakening. Feeling tired and fragmented presents challenges I’m getting used to dealing with. It’s not “normal” for me, yet it’s a temporary, daily normal… until it’s not.
I’m slowly returning to doing healing work and seeking out intuitive counsel. It’s been about a year and a half of very challenging times. And I’m finally on the upswing.
My beautiful teenage son is now taking a medication to help quell anxiety and panic attacks, and as much as it’s helping some, a higher dose doesn’t seem to be helping more, so here we stay. For now. Re-addressing medications for ADHD has left us knowing they don’t help. After trying several different medications and classifications of meds, we’re done with them.
His education is happening at home, and will likely continue at home through high school, as much as just about every other week I wish I could put him back in public school and lift the burden from my shoulders. Working with a student who has learning disabilities, has trouble maintaining focus, and who is triggered into anxiety at the drop of a hat, where school is involved, is hard enough. Now imagine it’s your own kid – and he’s a teenager. Yup. Not easy. But we’re doing it. Week by week, day by day, and sometimes minute by minute.
There’s this thing called Matrix Energetics, that’s a consciousness technology; sort of like a healing modality, but different. When a person works with a practitioner, the practitioner uses a combination of steps they’ve learned, with intuition and intention, to allow change in a person’s consciousness. To help shift the way a person experiences the world, immediately.
Often times, the immediate shift is significant enough that a person will temporarily lose consciousness while their brain reboots. It looks a bit odd to see a bunch of people slowly passing out, being caught by “catchers” in a seminar room full of students, but I assure you, it’s quite fun. And there’s nothing quite like feeling anxious about something one minute, and feeling parts of your body dissolve as the anxiety disappears in quite literally a few minutes. Magic!
My son has consented to having a Matrix Energetics session when he’s on Christmas break. It will be over the phone, working with someone I know is talented in this area, and I’m very excited to see what changes. With this type of work, we’ll set an intention for his anxiety to become reduced, but you never know how much it will be affected.
When I took my first M.E. workshop in 2012, the founder/teacher shared a session he did with a child who had Sensory Processing Disorder. The child was so severely hypersensitive to touch that he couldn’t tolerate his mother holding or hugging him. At the end of the session, she was able to hug her son comfortably. This was all done without the practitioner physically touching the boy. The boy’s consciousness had been permanently changed. It was miraculous!
Modern medicine’s current treatment for this same condition is brushing. An occupational therapist works with the child, using a soft bristle brush, physically brushing the skin on the arms, legs, and back, to desensitize it. It’s a temporary fix. As much as my son tolerated this therapy, his skin is still hypersensitive to certain fabrics, wearing long pants, and light touch. Fortunately, I can give my son a bear hug.
So, in less than a month, my son will play around with a Matrix Energetics practitioner. (Using the verbiage of playing keeps the vibe of the session higher and keeps people open to the possibility of the highest level of change). One of the things about this sort of session is, effects might be immediate, but like the ripples of water emanating from a pond after a rock’s been thrown in, more change can happen in the days following. We’ll see how it goes.
In the meanwhile, I await my own inner shifts and changes while life goes on.
I hope my Jewish readers are having a warm and happy Hanukkah. And for those gearing up for Christmas and other holidays, may you find moments to connect with happiness and joy. I particularly love Christmas music, so here’s some Little Drummer Boy for you to enjoy.
Most people think of hypnosis as something used as a party trick, to make people cluck like a chicken or make a fool of themselves. And some people use hypnosis as a way to quit smoking, lose weight, or enhance sports performance; implanting suggestions into the subconscious mind to help change behaviors. While these are all done, I’ve found hypnosis to be a very powerful healing tool. A way into the unconscious mind to help make change from the inside out.
As with all forms of healing, not all hypnosis is created equal, and not all hypnotherapists are skilled at doing the work I’ve been doing. There are different techniques and schools of thought, and every practitioner comes to the modality with their own skill set.
So what is hypnosis? It’s a state of relaxing the body, while the mind is aware and focused. One of the first things I learned about hypnosis is you can’t do something against your will, while in a hypnotic state. And you can open your eyes and come out of it any time you want.
Hypnosis is a wonderful way of connecting with our unconscious mind, bringing things up to full consciousness or full awareness. Once we’ve become aware of something, we can create change if that’s what’s wanted. Or we can simply be aware of something that had been buried in our mind.
As a healing tool, I’ve been using hypnosis to look into things that trigger emotional discomfort and pain, but are things I can’t just leave or stay away from; like situations that come up between me and family members. And I’ve used it to look into and create healing around chronic physical illness, like GERD (acid reflux disease).
Not only has it been a comfortable and effective tool for healing emotional and physical woes, but it connects me with higher wisdom. Intuition. The part of me that’s always connected with God, Source, Guides, Guardians, Ancestors, Angels, and every part of the unseen world that supports me in life. The part that has a 30,000 ft. view of life.
Sure I’ve had readings from clairvoyants to help me see the bigger picture of something going on in my life, and their advice resonated with and enlightened me. But there’s nothing like tuning into greater wisdom yourself. Not only becoming aware of the bigger picture, but embodying it. Knowing it not only in your brain, but feeling it in every cell of your body.
The difference between watching and experiencing, between reading about something and knowing it. The difference between seeing someone eat a juicy, ripe apple, and doing it yourself.
Using hypnosis, I’ve been able to create all sorts of inner change, which in turn rippled out, affecting my outlook on life and my health. It’s created a lot of inner peace.
Healing work often connects me to parts of myself that exist in a state of discomfort, pain or upset. Parts that have been stuck; stuck in time. I’ve seen these parts as younger versions of myself, as a toddler, a child, or a teen, or saw myself from other lifetimes because something wasn’t healed after death.
Some of the past lifetimes that came up during healing sessions had a common theme of something that wasn’t healed after death, a fear that stuck with me into this present lifetime. The fear of being killed because I had clairvoyant abilities, was one such theme. I could see that people around me didn’t understand what clairvoyance was and were afraid of it. I knew too much, and that in and of itself was threatening. I was killed again and again.
Going through a Kundalini Awakening, part of the process has been a repeated opening of my awareness in life. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t done any healing work. But an example of a shift in consciousness or awareness, is when a person has been raised as a racist, meets their mixed race grandchild for the first time and can’t help falling in love with it, despite their beliefs. They have an epiphany they’ve been racist and what it means, their heart melts, and they experience a shift in consciousness, letting racism go.
Healing work opens our heart to the world and to ourselves. Kundalini energy has been cranking my heart open wider than is sometimes comfortable, and is allowing unconscious beliefs to bubble up to be shifted and healed. This process has also helped my innate connection to inner wisdom and my higher self grow.
And all sorts unconscious beliefs brought about through conditioning and societal values are coming up for review. They’ve been rocketing up or bubbling up, and as they reach full consciousness, they are healed. Changed.
After taking a break from hypnosis work for about a year and a half, it was time for assistance again. This time, working with someone new. As much as I loved working with the hypnotherapist I saw for four years, she’s moved on and is now very busy teaching hypnosis. Because I’ve been going through a Kundalini Awakening, it felt right to find someone who has experience with working with people going through very challenging spiritual awakening issues. And the Universe delivered.
Distance is no object in the world of spirit. And thanks to the internet, distance is no longer an obstacle to having a hypnosis session, enabling me to connect with a beautiful soul on the other side of the world.
During our session, I wanted to address challenges lately with being exhausted, feeling fragmented, and having great difficulty connecting with my inner guidance. (The level of exhaustion feels a lot like depression, yet I know I’m not depressed). Many people meditate to connect with their inner guidance, yet I’m not one who can sit quietly with my eyes closed without falling asleep. I often need a guiding voice. Hence, hypnosis.
Because this was the first time having a session over Skype, I was nervous. Nervous I wouldn’t be able to relax and reach the state of mind where magic happens. However it quickly dissipated once we connected. After our brief hello and get-to-know-you part of the session, because we’d previous emailed, my hypnotherapist was aware of what I wanted to address, and she’d formulated a few questions to be asked.
Once the induction was complete and I was relaxed, we dove into connecting to higher wisdom, something I’ve been struggling with. Right off the bat something came up. I could see a crowd of wise beings in spirit who were all there for me, waiting to connect with me, but there was a huge wall of glass between us. At the same time, I noticed my heart was beating faster and fear started to come up. (Experiencing fear while in hypnosis is very different from experiencing it during full consciousness. You can either connect into it and feel it, or move away from it and merely observe it).
Initially, I was connected into the fear and began to cry. After being directed to float above the fear, I knew it was coming from a young part of myself. When asked why she was upset, she answered, “My heart hurts.” She said it was all too much. She said, “I can’t do this.” This, meaning life. It’s too hard, too much pain. Life hurts too much. She was two.
The little one went on saying, “They’re being mean to me.” They being a few family members. “Why can’t they just love me?”
My hypnotherapist worked with me to help this little one become happy again, to help shift her energy and let go of her pain. All it took was for me to tell her I loved her, and she melted into my arms. Reconnecting with my adult self. Without too much effort, the little one was once again happy and eager to get on with things.
Looking back to the crowd of beings in spirit who had been behind glass, I now saw the wall of “glass” melting like ice. With access to wisdom, the questions began.
When we asked why I’d been feeling so fragmented, ungrounded and unfocused, there was an unconscious fear that came up, that kept me stuck in those feelings. Suddenly, I heard, “Oh Baby, you’re not crazy.” It was my mother. The one who struggled with bipolar disorder, and who did indeed go crazy a few times. And when she was first hospitalized when I was a teen, I struggled a bit to keep my two feet on the ground. As much as I knew I wasn’t mentally ill back then, and know I’m not mentally ill, the process of inner change I’ve been going through has been extremely mentally challenging at times. Extremely.
Having that unconscious fear brought to light has helped it shift. The teenager in me who fought so hard to maintain her sanity while the world around her went mad, is letting it go, allowing me to move through significant changes more easily.
We asked more questions, came up against other forms of inner resistance, worked our way past them to create more healing and connected with more wisdom. Before I knew it, our session wound to a close and when asked if there was something else that needed to be addressed, the answer was no. What we’d done felt complete.
What I’ve learned from using hypnosis, is everyone has access to information/wisdom tailored specifically for them. We actually get it all the time, and call it intuition or listening to our gut. Using techniques like meditation or hypnosis allows us to access this information more easily and at a deeper level.
And if there’s something in life that needs to change and it’s become an issue, hypnosis might be the tool to use. It’s a wonderful one to create magic and transformation. Letting go of chronic fear, frustrations, anger, regret, jealousy, sadness, and other pain can change a life. Hypnosis is far more than a mere party trick, it’s a powerful healing tool.
