The unveiling

I have my best thoughts when I'm in the shower. There is a problem with this. Perhaps my problem will be solved with the invention of the water proof computer. Like those watches you can wear in water. We didn't have those when I was growing up. Which, by the way, is the only time in my life I would have wished for one...but I digress. Back to the shower.

Some of my most profound spiritual experiences have occurred in the shower. First time was in 1990. They came to me in the shower at that time. I call them They. The messages I received came at a time when I was struggling with a physical issue. I had a metallic taste in my mouth for many weeks that was confusing and its origin uncertain. My concern was mounting but I've never been quick to go to an MD my entire adult life.  Suddenly, They were there. I was hearing Them in my mind, not seeing a visual manifestation. They told me that I was poisoning myself with the vitamins I was taking. As soon as I heard this I had one of those ah ha, everything comes together and makes sense moments. I KNEW THAT WHAT I WAS HEARING WAS SPOT ON! My vitamins and supplements.

I had been given a vitamin regimen to follow by a friend in college who was concerned about my now several years of taking antibiotics prescribed for acne. She was definitely right to be concerned. That treatment wreaked havoc in my digestive system in a way that I was yet to fully understand. I had faithfully been following this same regimen since 1977. I missed whatever cues might have led me to reevaluate at some point. I hadn't come across the concept of mindfulness yet. With good intention but ultimately mindless action I was doing something that Their intervention helped me remedy. Immediately.

This wasn't actually the beginning................................stay tuned.

The search is on......

"I want to write more."

This is an enduring theme for at least the past twenty years of my life. It is as if this statement is a balloon suspended up and off to the side of my body with no anchor to the ground. Sounds like a caption box for a cartoon. It has not occurred to me until this moment as I'm writing that this is an image I can work with to process what it is that keeps this part of me suspended and not anchored. I used to write daily. Journal type entries, such as this, that did help me hear my own wisdom and direction.

Even if it feels foolish to write with no particular point in mind. Even if I get caught in believing that this is just self-absorbed narcissism. Even if every bit of self-contempt that I can unearth and hurl at myself tries to make me back down........I want to continue being this self-absorbed narcissist. It's time to see if I can find some movement and run.

If you think this is drivel............I couldn't agree with you more. I hope I can find the ground. There is a flow that has been plugged. Time for the Gulf to stop flowing and for me to start.

Sunday is a good day

Sunday. Often my best opportunity to spend time in reflection that also can include writing.

I am continually amazed with the awareness of how my internal experience of the moment so fully defines my mood and my capacity to navigate life and it's various challenges. Really, it pretty much determines what feels like a challenge and what does not. If my insides are in discomfort I tend to lose my flexibility for flowing with the externals that I can't control. I'll be more specific so that what I'm referring to is clear.

When I am physically in pain everything going on around me - -other people, traffic, loud noises in restaurants - - becomes something that feels intrusive and unmanageable. When I am not in pain everything going on around me feels separate from me and just part of the symphony that is accompanying my solo performance. There is a really nice interweave of sounds and feelings and energies. And when something is off balance outside me (like loud music in a restaurant) I am not thrown by it. I may feel dislike or frustration with it but it is a simple experience that doesn't make me feel like I want to pull into my shell or run away or beat someone with a stick.

I have come to understand in a much clearer, deeper way that these times of pain are a trigger for me of unresolved trauma. We all have certain experiences that when we are in them we get triggered into reactions that don't particularly fit the present moment. Physical pain is one of those for me. Some people are much more resilient when they are in physical pain. They don't get triggered into wanting to run away or beat someone with a stick. As I have been working with my nervous system and the stored trauma from earlier experiences in my life I am becoming more resilient. Pain doesn't limit my options to the degree that it used to. I still get triggered but with less severity.

What are the experiences that are your "trigger" places? I invite your awareness to identifying those times when your reaction to something in the present moment might not actually fit what is occurring. They are hard to wrap our brain around sometimes because we can so automatically go to what has become a familiar, characteristic reaction. It so totally feels appropriate and fitting to be reacting in the way that we are in a relationship, or in traffic, or when a sales person is not helpful in a way we wish for them to be, etc. To be able to step back and begin to recognize that our reaction seems bigger than the present situation might call for can be our first place of shifting some stored stress or trauma.

I feel tremendous gratitude for finding my way along this path. Healing not only gives us a richer, more meaningfully experienced life, it also sends us along the path of the evolution of our Soul. The bigger picture of what we are doing here. We are all weavers. The texture of the fabric deepens in color and feel with our consciousness brought to it.

Movement can occur when immobilization begins to resolve

I have been away for a long time. Away from my writing. The blink of an eye and children are grown with children of their own and wrinkles and lines betray the passing of time that is not fully registered by the brain. I'm stunned that my last entry was over three months ago. Sometimes writing calls to me and in my recurring place of immobilization I can't find the voice to respond.

Christopher and Michela, of my last entry, are doing well. Examples of the miracles of our modern technology combined with their Spirit's ability to mount the obstacles that can befall one's path beginning with birth. It also didn't hurt to have a mother and grandmother who persevered with their continuous welcome and care over many, many weeks in a preemie ICU.

I wanted to speak to immobilization today. It is something that so many of us can relate to and tend to experience with frustration and distress. It is something that can be stored or set in our physiology due to a multitude of events, beginning with in utero or birth experiences or from any number of events that may have occurred in the years since. I believe that understanding this can be a tremendous relief. We humans typically tend to find fault with ourselves when something is a struggle for us. To know that feeling stuck, or immobilized, or like we are spinning our wheels and going nowhere is a state of one's physiology and not an example of one's flawed character or motivation can be both relief and the beginning of being able to address the real culprit(s).

The primitive part of our brain and our nervous system sometimes remember things that the more evolved part of our brain dismisses or categorizes as routine or unremarkable. And sometimes we do recognize something as having had a big impact on us but don't really understand that our physiology is storing what has not yet resolved from the event.

there is meaning to our presence here

Healing is a journey. We all come to it in different ways with different perspectives. I think that the particular path we choose to pursue our healing is less important than the intention we bring to our evolution. Healing, for me, is synonymous with growth. I feel that the path of healing is my purpose. My healing. Your healing. It satisfies my Soul's need to achieve my purpose when I navigate the river's current along the path of growth and transformation. It gives me a sense of honoring my calling when I have the opportunity to guide and witness the growth of other's. It so often is not smooth and then there are those moments of sweetness and purity and alignment that are palpable signs of the divine being present.

There are two babies who are about to enter the world this evening. Their journeys will not be one easily begun. It is the kind of time when one hopes for perfection and prays for possibility. I do believe that life is about healing. We choose to incarnate because the lessons afforded us in this physical dimension can facilitate the evolution that is the destiny of our Soul. These two new little beings have chosen a path that will provide much opportunity. They will benefit from the love that will come their way and challenge themselves through the obstacles they encounter. A big one begins tonight. Birth at 31 weeks.

We are all faced with our challenges and obstacles and these each bring tremendous possibility. Sometimes we take up the gauntlet with consciousness and conviction. Sometimes we miss what is before us because we are blinded by what is still waiting to be revealed as the path of our growth. It is all as it should be.

I believe in these things. They are my understanding of the bigger picture of why we are here. I don't know that I am in fact right. I only know that this sense of life as journey is what makes all that I have encountered and witnessed coherent and real and substantially grounding to my heart.

Blessings and love and support for these next places on your paths, Michela and Christopher. As well as to your mom.

is it real, or is it Memorex?

The body memory of experiences that are incomplete or unresolved can become triggered into our mode of operating in the present moment by things that are happening today. Sometimes the current happenings are reminiscent in some way of the previous unresolved events. Sometimes the current happenings are the catalyst in ways that can seem irrelevant and unexplainable. If it's stored in our nervous system and unresolved it can be triggered. That's the bottom line I'm working from here.

I had a reminder today of the importance of listening to the language we are using when talking about our internal experiences. When something that happened at an earlier time in our history is triggered, or opens up, into the present moment and we are filled with the feelings of that time, sometimes, we revert to talking about our self from that earlier age - -as if we still are that age. A simple example is the use of the phrase, "________ is going to kill me!" We might be referring to a friend, or partner/spouse, or employer. It is a very "young" phrase. Spoken as if one is still a child - -a time when parents' wield a feeling of authority and power and their rage can feel as enormous and threatening as a killing force to us. In using this phrase when adult there is a sense of less empowered, childhood reality (my mother's going to kill me) still operating within us and being expressed with our adult mouth. If we aren't listening to the language and noticing that we are feeling that small and vulnerable and unempowered, we might actually believe that we are that small and vulnerable. Right now. This can limit our actual current day options and leave us relating to other adults as if we are not one among them.

Sometimes it takes more processing of the unresolved experiences to find our footing again and feel our self to be the adult that we now are. The nervous system doesn't necessarily relinquish what it has been holding onto by only listening to our language. But listening can be a significant piece of the whole of what will help us finish what our body is still remembering and storing.

I might want to work on this one some more. Later.............

we do it over and over again because we are trying to finish it

I learned something from one of my teachers in recent years that has been one of the most profoundly significant pieces of information that has ever crossed my path. It has moved me both personally and professionally into a perspective on healing that is perhaps deeper than any single piece of information I had previously discovered. I know that I have been to many deep wells of understanding of Life and The Bigger Picture of our presence here as humans. My quest has taken me to a vast breadth of wise people, creative thinkers, scholars of great intellect, guides who have acquired profound spiritual acumen - - teachers, all, whose gifts have shaped my vision and the bits of knowledge I can claim at this point on my journey. I feel tremendous gratitude for all the lessons that have graced my path in the many configurations that they have presented to me. And there is this moment in time, now, of feeling so moved by one particular understanding of what directs the "stories" we find our selves in over and over again.

That was a really long intro to this one thing that I realized that I wanted to write about today. I guess there were some things I wanted to share that weren't there in my awareness when I started that first sentence. Writing is a mystery that unfolds sometimes and surprises me when I see what my fingers have to say. Back on point.........

My (above mentioned) teacher's name is Yiri. Yiri has taught me some fantastically exciting things about pre and peri-natal psychology and trauma. What I wanted to talk about today is how we recapitulate, throughout our life, the unresolved shock trauma that is carried (remembered) in our nervous system from events that occur in utero and during our birth experience. The memory gets set in our nervous system because of our inability to complete, or process, the distressing events or circumstances that occur during these times. Developmentally we just don't have the equipment fully in place to deal with distressing or threatening experiences. It becomes embedded in our physiology. Something distressing produces an impact and we can't respond in a way that will resolve this. There are many things, some we typically consider routine and uneventful, that occur during this time in our development that are actually profoundly significant.

What I now understand and keep recognizing on deeper and deeper levels is how these places that are so deep in our physiology are the underpinnings of so many issues that appear to be relevant to much later events in our lives. To be able to slow down enough to touch into the sensations that indicate our earliest places of distress brings a power to the possibilities for transformation that is profound.

Every step I have taken in my life to heal what has needed healing within me has brought me more into my body and ultimately connected me to my Spirit. I believe that there is a time in utero when our Spirit enters our body and we begin this next place on our journey through learning on the physical plane. It is a time when Soul and body unite in alliance for this miraculous trip that we call our life. We will learn from what feels good and easy and we will learn from what feels painful and challenging. For me, the path of healing is an incredibly exciting part of the schooling along the way.

As Rumi once wrote, "Be grateful for whoever comes, for each has been sent as a guide from beyond."