Finding Home in the Body #Yoga #PastLives #Healing

I am finding my way home through the body. Again, perhaps, but the path always changes as we circle into untouched avenues of the labyrinth of self. There has been the lingering question of home as a physical landscape calling me back. I have labeled it Albion, or what once was Albion, but I have been lying to myself. It is not a mere physical place that draws the deep longing out of me, it is the pure, boundless joy of being.

It is true I find home in the stones that hold the memories of long ago. They speak to me of a time when the stars touched Earth without dimension. I have called it magic, because that is what it feels like inside of cells that have learned to forget. Yet, it is simply the true state of the boundless self that knows that the one self is home only when there is no self defined by matter, space, or time.

We can live attached to concepts of structure as we walk a linear path to a false destination that can never be reached, and I have found this path to be lonely. I have struggled to free the desire to gather the lives around me into my arms and dance us all awake before Earth destroys us in her need to heal the wounds we have inflicted upon her.

The ancient stones remember what we have forgotten and that is why they draw me home to where the hearth fire inside is kindled in a landscape that does not judge or reject. There is only the embrace, welcoming the return.

It is not enough to return, temporarily, to sites that hold the memories of truth. These places are not outside my physical doorstep where I find myself tethered to a life that feels artificial in more ways than I can count. There are thousands of footsteps between me and the stones that call me home. I go to them to return, then turn back again to this physical place I must call home as I search to define it in a language long lost to our tongues. Too often I feel the structure of  nailed together wood painted on the outside to keep the self contained behind walls as though the boundless needs protection.

At night I find the freedom I seek in the daylight, flying through the glass that looks inward and outward. I soar easily to the ceiling and will myself back to the knowing that this too is false until the molecules of division give way and rejoin in the opening. Why, I ask, am I allowed to fly boundless only in the dimension of dreams? Why do a live in a time that has chosen to forget?

Days stretch false minutes and I find myself speaking the rote words of the mundane least others think me insane. Sometimes, I ask out loud, “When will this nightmare end?” Because, I must admit, there are days that feel like nightmares. The computer screen pulls me into the vacuum of humanity’s created chaos and I become entrenched in the darkness until I pull myself back to present surrounding me. The living, breathing pulse of the now where chaos becomes a complicated dance of cause and effect; of shadow and light; of the endless cycle of life. Each moment passing into the next, asking only to be let go.

Yet, sometimes we must circle backwards to go forwards. I have found myself once again traveling through lives passed to feel the chain around the black man’s neck before it can release the body’s constricted voice. My womb aches with the rape of the priestess, and so many more that I am surprised that it bore life. I breathe in love to release constriction as I look at the fence of bodies stretching back further than the eyes can see. How long will it take, I wonder, to free them all? Until I remember this pain that becomes a memory for cells constantly renewing themselves need not find a home in my body that wants to remember only joy.

Outside the structured walls of my physical home, I am drawn each day to the weeds beneath the blooms. Digging these hands of mine into the body of Earth to release the tangles of life that suffocate growth. I am not immune to the knowing that life must be taken to feed new life. It is equally cruel and beautiful. This surrender of death to birth.

I find a harmony in the cycle I help to create. Sometimes active participation is required to free the ties that bind, and so I move this body I also call home. I listen to its urgings, feel the lick of its flames as they rise through the belly. Summer allows the shedding of shoes, and I walk barefoot on the body of Earth to feel her heartbeat and the knowing that I am her child too. My cells are made from her elements. Pieces broken to be reformed. I cannot neglect this vital part of me.

Chaos lures the mind to disorder and the body to dance free. Yoga has become a necessity for balance. If a day passes without the body stretching the mind free as it heeds the call of release, I feel the fires inside smolder for lack of air. It is not easy for light to creep through dense layers. Cracks must open. Air must be let in. Prana follows the breath into the labyrinth as the body becomes the dragon raising its wings.  And that is when the soul soars home to itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Left Behind #dreamsymbolism

I woke before the alarm, standing in a room filled with crystals and stones inside a mall. Alone. Left behind by two “friends” and a boyfriend. It is likely they even took my blue Volt with them, driving away in the guiltless pleasure of having deserted me. I had my cell phone with me and took it out while I surveyed the crowded, lifeless space. It was useless to me. I didn’t have any of their numbers. Even if I had, would they have answered?

It had been a strangely vivid dream. So real it felt like life, yet I had not even been thinking of these three people. Remnants from adolescence angst. The two girls who I felt had once betrayed me and left me behind many years ago, I realized were still haunting me with this fear. We dream what we need to heal, and last night I dreamt the fear of being left behind. Again.

If I take the road back further, driving in my blue car, as I did in the dream, I can retrace the routes I once traveled. Those I had left behind, and those who had left me behind. I am not guiltless, as my dream showed me. There was the girl I’ll call Sally, who tried to get into the car with me. Opened the door blue door to squish her way into the passenger seat with me, while my boyfriend drove and those two former friends sat with glee in the backseat. I told her “no,” that there was “no room for her,” before I shoved her out and closed the door, while thinking about the empty space that could have held her behind me.

It was fall when we traveled the roads in my dream. The season of life before decay. I had gazed in admiration at the hills shrouded in color as we crested the top of one to land in a place covered with carved stones. “There’s a goat!” Or was it a wolf? I thought it was real before I became embarrassed by my mistake. Oh, how I wanted to be accepted. Liked. Loved.

Yet, we are all left behind and we all leave others behind. Intentionally and deliberately. Sometimes with love, sometimes for lack of love. Self-preservation can be a cruel need. It forgets that this leaving behind is never lasting, but a necessary part of the growth of the self before it discovers that there is no self. Division, another cruel trick of the mind searching for acceptance. Forgetting that the self divides only to someday return to the ever-flowing river that is Love.

 

Flying into Fear #dream symbolism

It was an interesting night in the world of dreams. A night filled with a whole lot of flying, but for a very apparent reason. To fly into my fears. It seems my mind had decided to show me every fear I am holding onto at the moment, while my soul decided, you’re ready, let’s go. 

There is that saying that you see all over the place, “Whatever you fear most, do it.” Sometimes, for practical purposes, we simply should not do what we fear most. Say, for example, we harbor an intense fear of fire and being burned. Should we really step into a furnace? Probably not if we don’t want to seriously harm our physical bodies. What, though, of the metaphorical furnace?

If we examine the roots of our fears, we can arrive at a greater awareness of self. Sometimes what we fear can seem irrational until we realize why we are harboring it. An intense fear of being burned alive might lead us to a past life in Pompeii. Whereas an over-whelming aversion to speaking in crowds might point us back to circumstances in this lifetime when we were rejected for speaking our truths. There is always an origin to our fears, and it is worth exploring the roots if we want to heal and release that which is holding us back from living fully.

Fears lead to growth, when we allow them to. When we open the door to our fears and fly into them, examining all their nuances as we face them head-on, we can discover the core of our being. We are not here to live small, wrapped in the cloaks of protection that are so easy to don when life presents us with defining moments.

In each moment, we have a choices. We can live in stasis, or we can allow the true self to spread wide our wings and fly. Recently, I have made two choices that I would have shirked in the past. At the end of the month I will be vending at a local Paracon fair, where I will be promoting my new visionary fantasy series for kids and teens, Warriors of Light, and its companion teachings. This takes me out of my comfort zone, but instead of being afraid, I’m filled with excitement.

Next month, I’ll be flying across the pond. My soul is calling me back again to a place that feels like home, but for different reasons than my previous visits. In what might appear like a whim of fancy, there is wrapped within a nest of fears that I have decided to unweave. I have, over my years of self-investigation, discovered that it is not easy for me to receive. As I work with the truth that “I am worthy,” I have begun to allow myself to accept the hands that extend in offer to me. There doesn’t, I have come to realize, have to be a string attached to it, just an open-hearted gratitude to receive the gifts of love.

I have been so utterly amazed by the out-pouring of love that is offered when the heart is open to receive. It is a huge obstacle to overcome when one is used to conditions. Yet, so wonderful to free the tethered heart and fly into trust. I don’t know what I will meet in the hills of Cumbria standing among its ancient stones, but so many hands have extended their offers of love to help lead me there. My husband and children, who without even batting an eyelash, have accepted that I will be gone for a few days. My mother-in-law, who has offered to clear her schedule to be with the teenagers, should they need her, and the pets. And, once again I am amazed, humbled and filled with gratitude for dear friends who live in the land of Albion, some of whom I have only known for a few years. It is one thing to accept the offers of one’s family, it is quite another to accept those of friends and strangers. Yet, I have come to realize how much love there really is in the world. How much abundance housed within our hearts.

So, I am flying into my fears, literally and metaphorically, and instead of trepidation, I feel joy, excitement, and a wellspring of gratitude for all the hands that are lifting me into flight.

What are the fears that are holding you back from flying into joy? Perhaps it’s worth taking a moment of self-reflection and examination to discover what is weighing you down at this moment. Release is often much easier than you might expect.

The Return of the Feathered Seer #setting #writphoto #suevincent

The Feathered Seer hovers above the stones. Photo Credit: Sue Vincent

Note: I started writing this post and then came across the #writephoto prompt post by Sue Vincent and opened it up to this image. Therefore, the blog post has now become my response to her weekly photo prompt. 

In April of 2017 I played the role of “The Feathered Seer” during the Silent Eye School of Consciousness’s annual ritual workshop weekend. Although acting is not my element, this role that I was asked to undertake did not feel like acting. It felt like home. Yesterday, I wrote about the concept of home and how I feel most aligned with that state of being when I am in England, walking the ancient lands. I have no doubt I have walked these lands, perhaps many times, in former lives. It’s a knowing so deep it goes beyond the visceral and straight to the heart of the soul.

The Feathered Seer is a part of me, woven into my being. She is my guide, but she is also me. Through the ancient lands she follows me, and I follow her. She takes my hand and leads me so I will remember. And, I believe, so that others will remember too.

In physical form, she adopts the form of the pileated woodpecker. That other-worldly creature who flies through the woods with her red head, calling the soul home to the roots of being, and drumming the language of the ancients back into the heart.

Last night she came to me during dreamtime as I stood atop a sacred Native American hillside. Flying her feathers of darkness before my face to peer into my eyes. Weeks prior, she had arrived in physical form. Flying before my path before the Silent Eye group gathered at Castlerigg.

Do not be afraid to see… she tells me

 

 

We receive the gift of a bat while watching Victoria & Abdul

Night visitor. Photo Credit Pixabay

It was approximately 9:30pm, my husband and I seated on the sofa downstairs watching Victoria and Abdul, a bowl of popped buttered corn between us. Our son upstairs behind shut doors, our daughter and her friend taking a night dip in the pool after their evening run. The door dividing the screened porch open to the elements but screened from the bugs.  Or so we thought.

“How did it get in here,” my daughter later asked.

“Maybe it was following a moth. They eat moths, don’t they?” someone offered in reply.

We can’t say for sure what drew it in. It had never entered our house before, nor had any of its kind. It seemed to be in a hurry though, it’s beautiful, silent body flying soundlessly through the opened doors of the porch, past the mess screen to dance a circle around our heads in pursuit of an unidentified prey.

“There’s a bat in our house.” I don’t know who said it first. More husband or I. We were both equally startled. We’ve had uninvited visitors before, mostly courtesy of the cats, but no cat had invited the bat in. Nor had the dogs, which remained, somehow, blissfully unaware of our visitor for the 30-45 minutes it was with us.

And so began the pursuit of our graceful guest. How does one catch a bat? I am not sure. I got a net from the pool box used for retrieving frogs and the hapless rodents who have ventured over the edge. My husband, a pair of leather gloves from the basement. Thinking that the net might not be enough, I grabbed a thick cotton blanket from the closet and began to search the rooms with my husband.

Here’s the thing about bats. They are not only silent and swift, most of them, like this nocturnal flyer, rely upon echolocation for their sight. They are much better at navigating space than we are. It was a comical chase, to be sure, but we really didn’t think so at the time, well not all of us. Bats have a way of opening our fears, as well as our sense of wonder. I realized in those 45 minutes, what our unexpected visitors was triggering in each of us.

My daughter and her friend found amusement, laughing when they discovered what we were dealing with. They were also safely outside. My son seemed satisfied enough to stay behind the closed doors to keep the bat out of the room. Those of us tasked with the challenge of leading the bat back out to where it came from, were not as stable with our emotions. I was fine until it flew by, my husband less so. “I’ve been bitten by animals before,” he reminded me when I told him that our panicking would likely only increase the bat’s panicking.

When we stop to observe and watch ourselves in these moments when our fears are triggered, we can learn a lot about ourselves. Having had more practice in this than my husband, because of my studies with the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, and yoga, I was able to step into that role of observer.

What if you get bit? I asked myself. I thought of rabies and decided I didn’t like that option, but I also thought about the bat as a teacher and as a guest who was there for a purpose that might not be entirely obvious at first. Here before me was this magnificent animal, a mammal like me, but with the ability to fly at will. We were, I realized, both night-flyers. While I released the weight of gravity while I dreamt, this night-flyer was showing me the beautiful blind dance of trust in my waking state. And, I realized, when I took the time to be still and let go my fear of being bit, that before me was a gift.

How remarkably beautiful you are I thought as the bat flew a millimeter in front of me in search of an exit. There were moments, many of them, when I had no idea where our visitor was until it soared past on its silent wings. There was even one moment when I was hunched in the hallway as it flew around me when I thought it had landed on me. It wasn’t, I discovered, an unwelcome thought. I had this crazy notion that if I remained calm and still, it would land on me if it chose to, and we would both be okay.

Or was it so crazy? When we choose to dance beyond our fears into that state of stillness and peace, the world has a way of responding in kind. Those zen-like moments you read or hear about, and maybe even have experienced for yourself, are just that. The letting go of what binds us to our bodies and minds and allowing our cells to dance in unity with all that is around us. It is, in essence, like flying without effort. This bat, I realized while it was with us, had been a welcome visitor after all. I was almost sorry when my husband declared after our second attempt at releasing it (we had at one point thought it had exited an open door only to discover after we had settled back onto the couch and our movie that it had not), that he had, in fact, watched it exit the same porch door from which it came from. It’s job here, it seems, was done.

 

Breaking free density: I dream of flying my dogs over an ancient landscape

It was a strange series of dreams, on the surface, but then again dreams are often strange…on the surface. I was in school, a large brick building that seemed nearly endless. My classroom on the upper floor and down labyrinthian corridors filled with turns and shadows. One could easily get lost there.

The labyrinthian school in my dream reminded me of this labyrinth from my new book.

I was studying art. The assignment I was given was to fashion a multilayered piece that appeared one-dimensional until you turned it, allowing the light to reveal the inner layers that appear shadowed by the surface. The finished piece had been created, somehow, by my hands, hands that I did not believe could create a painting, much less a rather magical one that. A painting that when turned to the light at just the right angle revealed beautiful, hidden layers beneath. Like a hologram, but there were so many layers to this painting I had somehow created, I could not count.

We were to take our paintings outside, to catch the sunlight so that their depths could be revealed. That is when I started to fly, with my two dogs. Normally, in my dreams, I fly alone…

The two dogs in my dream, pictured here on one of our walks together.

During the day, I had been thinking about density. How we create our own density in our bodies and in our physical environment. We fashion energy into dense forms, like the car I was riding in while I was thinking these thoughts. Cars to drive in, homes to house our bodies, furniture to rest upon, toys to play with…the list is endless. I had also been thinking about how the density inside of me lifts when I visit ancient landscapes where my inner child burst forth into a state of pure joy and sometimes it is as though my feet are so light they hover above the ground…

My feet “hover” above the rocks at Merrivale in Dartmoor as I walk in the pure joy of being. Photo Credit: Lara Wilson

I had also been thinking about rocks, nature’s way of creating density to store the memories of Time. These rocks that draw people like me to listen to their stories, and have the ability to somehow make us feel less dense and confined to the worlds we create.

This bird drew my eye to the heart in stone on top of a New Hampshire mountain years ago.

The day had not been particularly “light.” I had allowed myself to be bothered by others behavior and the nuances of life we can attach so much importance to but are in reality merely passing moments that we can either grasp or let go of. I was, you could say, feeling weighed down by the time I laid my head upon my pillow to go to sleep.

This image popped up on my screen this morning when I opened my computer. Sometimes there are no accidents in life.

I am not, therefore, surprised my dreams brought me into a school, where I was given the opportunity to learn and grow. It was a gift. An opportunity and I had a choice to hold onto the density within me or to examine the art of my creation and allow the layers of light to reveal themselves.

In The Labyrinth, the character Sula, and her five fellow teen protagonists must face their trapped fears and release their density in order to open the gifts of their light bodies. It is essential not only to their individual journeys but also to their collective, as they realize they are each a strand of light in the network of light that connects all life. As warriors of this light, they come to understand they must embrace their true selves and learn to fly above their fears to carry out their mission of repairing the broken lines of light within Earth.

And they are not alone…None of us are. Sometimes we forget we are all connected. That the same fears and light reside within all of us, and we can either create more density together or reveal the light of our creation.

When I left the confines of the brick school building and walked out into the classroom of Nature in my dream, I found myself walking with my two dogs. As my feet lifted off the ground, so did theirs. I lifted first, but they followed my lead. Their leashes weightless ribbons joining us together in a trinity as though we were one-self. I felt rather felt like Santa Claus (yes, I actually had this thought while I was flying with the dogs in my dream), with my companions Rosy and Zelda flying ahead of me over the landscape below. A landscape filled not with mortored walls, but with the classrooms of the ancients. It was glorious to be flying over these places that draw my soul, and allowing myself to notice, but not stop and linger, where I felt the density of fear. I was there to discover and learn. I will remember this, I told myself, so that I can share it with others.

When I woke, I felt much lighter than I did the day before. That is the gift of these sorts of “dreams.”

Turning Back Time: I visit the Hurlers

I am climbing the walls of an old church. There is only the outer fortification of stone, smoothed into mortared slabs. Each slab is chiseled with symbols, hieroglyphics of an ancient language my cells remember, but my mind has forgotten how to read. My hands grasp the hollowed frames of windows, climbing through the inside through levels until I know I have reached the 3rd floor. Here my hands let go of their grasp and I find I am hovering weightlessly. My body prone, I look down to the depths below. And then I begin to turn, like a clock. My body the hands of the hours going backward.

I had this dream about a week ago, and it has lingered with me since then. It has been more than a month since my return from England. My third trip there in as many years. I go to this land to turn back time.

After we descended from Brentor, and I paid my respects to the guardian stone, Sue graciously offered to take us along in her car to the next site, and Larissa and I accepted without negotiation. I was more than happy to take a break from driving on the wrong  left side of the road down the winding narrow lanes of rural England, and I knew Larissa shared my fear that there was a good chance we would get lost following Sue who drives with the skill and ease of a professional racecar driver.

I drove down this lane and many like it.

So to The Hurlers we went, with Stuart navigating using a traditional paper map as Sue manipulated the stickshift gears on her race compact car. Larissa and I were impressed, to say the least, and kept breathing large sighs of relief that we were not in the front seats and could enjoy the views that flew passed by. And, we never got lost. Well, that is until we got there and I started to wander…

A ewe leads the way to The Hurlers

To be honest, I rather wanted to get lost, but at that critical moment the brain won over the longings of the heart, and I turned around. But, I am getting ahead of myself…

It’s difficult to describe just how vast and complex the landscape of Dartmoor is, which covers 368 square miles of moorland filled with the evidence of ancient civilizations. Pure heaven for someone like me.

The Hurlers is the remains of three large stone circles in the wild moorland landscape of Dartmoor, which just happens to be aligned with the star cluster Orion and sits on the Michael ley line. To say it is a place of magic is an understatement. I knew I was home before I stepped out of the car.

The Hurlers are larger than they appear, and are perfectly aligned with the stars…

As tends to happen in these ancient lands, my feet began to move as though driven by some deep cellular memory, responding to the forces of the land. Find the seer’s stone, the command kept entering my conscious mind as it whirled with the energies of the land.

The seer’s stone sits in the center of the Hurlers

The land was damp from rain, and a puddle had formed within the well around the central stone. I could not comfortably sit here, as I had at Bratha’s stone in the Peak last April, so my visit within the circle was brief. After paying my respects, I walked the perimeter stones in two of the circle, while my eye caught upon the portal stones, briefly. I will return after, I promised myself.

Portal through time.

I could not ignore the intense pull to the land beyond. The hill with the balanced stones of giants felt like a magnet drawing me ever-closer to its energy. The land, as I have learned, beyond stone circles is filled with secrets of the past. Stones litter these ancient landscapes and each has a story to tell. There were too many to linger beside here, and my feet did not want to go slowly.

One can imagine a gathering place here, where the stones do the talking.

The vegetation of the landscape of these sites is always worth noting. How it grows along the ancient tracts…when it is interrupted, swirled or corse…

An uneven landscape that seems to have been modeled by deliberate hands.

There are many ditches around the Hurlers, as well as deep circular depressions. As Sue noted, it could be from mining the lands for ore, or for some other, perhaps ritualistic reason.  There is the sensation of falling inward to another realm near some of them, and the grass often swirls in imposing tufts which speak of disruption.

Several depressions threaten to tumble the unsteady.

My feet, though, kept racing toward the hill beyond, where the Cheesewring sits like a giant stone bird. Was I following the Michael line to some sort of apex of energy? It felt like a force beyond logical reason. Yet, I stopped at the edge of the stone settlement, just where the land starts to dip before it climbs. I looked at the imposing hill just beyond with longing, before I turned around. I was far, quite far, from the other three I had come with and logic told me it would not be fair to follow my heart into the mist. And so the climb would have to wait for some other day, perhaps in the future.

I got tantalizingly close before I turned away.

Something told me, though, that if I had stood long enough between those to standing stones, I would have gotten there sooner.