The Wheel Keeps Turning

I went through a very difficult journey the past few days.  I was dealing with old energies from my childhood. I made some unhappy realizations like my inner child is so far incapable of believing that being molested didn’t ruin her and that she is absol-freaking-lutely TERRIFIED by masculinity. I had no idea…. I had to work with some very painful emotions and energies and I know I’m not done, just out on another spiral of my journey. It’s hard.

As if to make me feel better after that, I was meditating and was climbing Yggdrasil, the World Tree, when it suddenly turned into a bridge I was walking across… and into Asgard. I met with Odin and Thor and they helped me with my fear and my pain and told me what I needed to hear and then they blessed me. I fell in love with Thor all over again, recognizing how my deep love of thunderstorms is all part of my love for him. That was a surprising and blessed experience.

Now, on a completely different topic, if you don’t mind me self-selling a bit, I have self-published my first book of poetry, called Truth, Love, Blood and Bones. You can read more about it on my other blog, if you’ re interested.

Right Here, Right Now

The Universe keeps sending me little signs and messages, letting me know that I am in the right place, on the right path, doing the right thing.

It is such a gift because I feel so confused and disjointed lately. My ego is having fits while I’m trying to let Spirit take the lead. It’s not excited about the idea of being leashed and obedient, to letting go of the illusion of control.

I don’t want to lead. I want to simply do as Spirit says. Crazy how something so simple is so difficult to do, much less maintain. I’ve started writing a stream of consciousness page or two in the mornings to help me identify the ego’s ridiculous lies and tricks.

I want to let go and let the Universe hold me while I close my ego’s eyes to the world and truly rest.

Tee hee. Being silly is very important to keeping the ego in check. I have learned recently to take being silly seriously… in that I need to honor it and make time in my life for it.

What I’m Learning

I signed up for Ronni’s Fairies 101 class last week because I’ve read her blog for a while now and she’s already taught me a lot through that. She sent me the first lesson and reading through it made me tear up. I was so happy to hear her truth about flowers and fairies and the interactive nature of the Earth spirits around us. It’s so comforting to be reminded of the great web of support we have that we can sometimes forget to ask for help though the spirits are so ready to answer our questions and help us through difficult times.

The first assignment was to write a “Joy List” of things that make us happy. Here’s mine, as well as a few drawings of fairies I made right after making the Joy List. EDIT: For whatever reason, WordPress doesn’t like my PDF. If you’re interested in seeing it, you can request a copy by email: reddvenus AT gmail DOT com.

I’m also reading Brain Respiration by Ilichi Lee, which is a book about using all of the power of your mind to create optimal health, creativity and calm. The book includes a set of exercises designed to keep the energy flowing through your meridians and to make you stronger to hold more energy. (Some of his exercises  can be found at the website I liked to above). I started doing them yesterday, including one where you pound on your belly/solar plexus region to get rid of the stagnation there.

Later that day I felt suddenly emotionally exhausted and weepy. I just wanted to curl up and cry and I couldn’t understand why! I’d been having marvelous day with my partner and I couldn’t understand it. Then today, I did the exercises again and noticed the exact same feelings of sadness, but this time it was linked with an event in my past where I had been emotionally wounded by two women I misplaced my trust in. This makes me certain that the feelings that seem unrelated to my daily life are stagnant problems that I’ve been keeping inside myself. I knew I needed to address the matter before I could release it, so I just asked if there were any lessons I needed to learn from the event still and, no, there weren’t. I asked if there was anything to do about it except to grieve and feel badly and there wasn’t. So I just told myself it was okay to be sad, that I can move on if I want to since it’s not affecting my life now, but that I’d let myself be sad about it as long as I needed to. I continued soothing myself, imagining my higher self stroking my back and crooning over me until I felt like I was ready to give the matter up, and then I went on my day.

It’s a little exhausting but freeing. I’m interested to see where this takes me next.

Accepting and Relearning Old Lessons

Trifecta (featuring my primary relationship's power animals)

With all the crazy energy circulating lately I’ve been ruminating on past lessons, gleaning more from them now that I did at the time.

For instance, one of the most powerful prophetic dreams I’ve ever had was a warning/promise about my eventual marriage and the way it would require an incredible amount out of me. The dream consisted largely of my wandering around in a strange city that looked like Greek ruins being stared at by people in togas as I walked around half searching for something, half running from a pursuer, all the while with blood pouring out of deep gashes in my wrists, elbows, throat, etc… but I’m partly made of marble myself so all that blood loss doesn’t really affect me. The lesson from that I didn’t see before was that even when I thought I was at my weakest, the essential part of me was never changed or damaged by the experience.

I gained acceptance of the flower for my birth month (September/aster) that I always used to dislike as a kid by finding an aster blooming in my belly. Turns out the aster stands for love and patience, two really big ongoing themes in my life.

I’m also re-learning just how perfect for me my darling partner is. I’ve been realizing that what sets him apart from my other lovers (besides being incredibly more awesome and caring) is his ability to dream with me about a shared future and to work towards making that a reality. That was missing in all my other relationships and it made them seem lifeless to me after a while. If you can’t grow together, you’re just dying a little bit each day. This lesson was driven further home for me today by the daily email from DailyOm talking about squirrel energy. My partner is the squirrel to my tree (also my penguin and fellow rabbity-thing – which is what the above triptych is about) and reading this made me so happy, because it just shows me another way in which to rejoice in how he’s so perfect for me:

Affirming an Abundant Future
Squirrel Medicine

Native Americans considered all living beings as brothers and sisters that had much to teach including squirrels. These small creatures taught them to work in harmony with the cycles of nature by conserving for the winter months during times when food was plentiful. In our modern world, squirrels remind us to set aside a portion of our most precious resources as an investment in the future. Though food and money certainly fall into this category, they are only some of the ways our energy is manifested. We can conserve this most valuable asset by being aware of the choices we make and choosing only those that nurture and sustain us. This extends to the natural resources of our planet as well, using what we need wisely with the future in mind.

Saving and conservation are not acts of fear but rather affirmations of abundance yet to come. Squirrels accept life’s cycles, allowing them to face winters with the faith that spring will come again. Knowing that change is part of life, we can create a safe space, both spiritually and physically, that will support us in the present and sustain us in the future. This means not filling our space with things, or thoughts, that don’t serve us. Without hoarding more than we need, we keep ourselves in the cyclical flow of life when we donate our unwanted items to someone who can use them best. This allows for more abundance to enter our lives, because even squirrels know a life of abundance involves more than just survival.

Squirrels use their quick, nervous energy to enjoy life’s adventure. They are great communicators, and by helping each other watch for danger, they do not allow worry to drain them. Instead, they allow their curious nature to lead the way, staying alert to opportunities and learning as they play. Following the example set by our squirrel friends, we are reminded to enjoy the journey of life’s cycles as we plan and prepare for a wonderful future, taking time to learn and play along the way. (Source)

I also re-realized why I can’t have a relationship with my parents, especially my mother. I need to foster emotional health and healing for myself in order to share it with others and being near my mother is like having a raptor shred my heart relentlessly and that’s not something I can heal from and still have energy to do everything else I must do to function in this life. I think this has helped me finally accept that I can’t expect support to come from my parents, as I’d always wistfully hoped would happen in a perfect world where they would accept me for who I am.

I’ve also learned to accept that mine is a path of struggle that will probably be bloodied emotionally over and over again, but I’m big enough to handle it. I’ve been able to see things and respond with “well, here’s a new challenge” instead of the self-pitying and shaking my fist to fate that I used to waste my energy on.

My many issues with child birth (which was linked to my creativity in many ways) that you may remember if you’ve been reading this blog a while have come compltely full-circle and now I’ m waiting with joyous anticipation for the time when the Universe will let me know that we’re ready to bring the little soul, who’s already waiting for her new life to begin, into this material plane. I recently watched Orgasmic Birth, a documentary showing real births where women are beautifully transported into ectasy while delivering children and it was so beautiful and powerful that I cried through most of it. I know the Universe and I will be working on making my childbirth glorious like that and I’m excited to see the changes that this single goal is working in my life and mind.

Generally I’m just happy that I seem to finally have my life in balance, that I’m contributing to my community and creating a beautiful life I love. The recent shifts are really doing amazing things for me. I hope you’re able to enjoy it too.

Growth and Power

Drawing a snake mandala for healing, based on a Navaho sandpainting

My guides are teaching me lessons about strength, healing and power that I need to become a more effective shaman.

Focusing on bringing healing to each relationship I have has dramatically changed how I react to people. I used to get very upset quite easily by people, but now I am able to step back and see their faults for wounds asking for healing and that gives me so much patience and grace and love for them that it effortlessly flows from me. I am incredibly grateful for that.

My new job as well as other things – like taking part in a local public art display (pictured) that was physically grueling – is teaching me that I have all the strength I need… and what I don’t have, I can get by simply doing what is needed and expecting the strength to be there. The Universe is definitely not letting me down!

I find it easier and easier to float above my emotions instead of letting them mire me down in angst. I can touch my higher self so easily I feel as if she and I are gripping hands tightly. She is showing me how to see and observe and react with love and acceptance and it is giving me new, wonderful insights into myself and others.

The most miraculous one happened yesterday when I was making love with my partner in a kind of odd mood. I was aroused but saddened as one more of my attempts at domme behavior fell flat just before we began. I was watching my emotions, my reactions to them, watching him, feeling sensations of my body and my energetic body and all of a sudden as an orgasm started to gather I realized that I’ve been using my orgasms (and sex in general) as a conduit of healing power for myself and my partner.

I saw the orgasm bloom in my belly/womb as if a fire flower or an atom and its cloud of electrons and I could see the energy streaming in from the universe to create this in me. I am tempted to compare it to a nuclear reaction; it’s what popped into my head at the time and it seemed to me to be a source for power that I can now use more deeply and purposefully since being aware of it.

I feel like I’m not expressing this well enough yet so I will keep trying: Sex has always been powerful for me and I knew there was some significance behind it that I was missing. So being able to understand the totality of what is occuring on all levels is absolutely life-changing.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Love Lifting Me

Working two jobs is as emotionally and physically as draining as I knew it would be. I feel exhausted and unsupported, but every day I wake up and ask the Universe for strength and I receive it.

I walk to work in the mornings with the hare rama, hare krishna mantra rolling through my mind like a river and I see the core of untouchable power within me  that I see at simultaneously being a pillar of iron, a pillar of white light, and a flute through which the Universe plays its tune on me.

Never before has such a stressful experience been so spiritually pleasing – and I’m even not putting in the time I would love to with yoga and meditation most days.

I feel very clearly I am being held up by hands I cannot see and I am incredibly grateful that I still have the energy to pour love into my partner and my friends.

I think it helped to realize that my unconscious goal of most days was to promote emotional healt hand healing in others. Once I made that my conscious goal, so much of what would normally have bothered me before fell by the wayside.

Love is lifting me and while it doesn’t lift me OUT of the problems, I am most certainly floating along on them rather than drowning. And that is all I need.

Spiritual Side of BDSM

The new relationship status between me and my baby just keeps making things between us sweeter. I always felt that my spirituality and sexuality were deeply connected and that eventually they would merge to produce some amazing result in my life, but I never would have imagined it would be this: by being “Mz. Daddy” to him, I’m helping to break down his resistence to Source.

Two nights ago, he was all dressed up how he likes with his collar on and all, and we were being intimate, chatting & playing with one another. I told him about – a gift the Universe had revealed to me earlier that day – about my power name (which it turns out is fireflower) and how I’d always felt I had one, but had never known it before. The look that came over his face when I told him this (which would have been extremely difficult for me to share with him before our new intimacies) was amazing and he seemed to suddenly have his eyes opened to my energetic body.

He started to share with me how he had always wanted to be a super hero and how he had assumed that he must have the power, but he needed to get more to be “super.” This led to him becoming a type of “energy vampire” and he always imagined locking all that power in an iron box around his heart. (He described it and it was the same box that fell of my heart when I finally forgave myself for being molested!) He said that he’d been storing up this energy for years and he had been trying to give it to me over the years, off and on, when we’d been together.

My memory of the events as they happened is a little fuzzy, but basically we started making love and I had him hold on to my feet (which I’ve always disliked having touched before). Suddenly, we could both see and feel the flow of energy moving in circles through our bodies and as we orgasmed together it seemed to come straight from our sacral and heart chakras.

I urged him to let go of the energy he’d been holding on to and to let the beautiful light that is always with him, behind him and surrounding him to enter into him. I had him visualize it as releasing the energy through his chest and pulling the light in through his back, encouraging him to physically feel it pressing against his back, eager to get in.

Then he stated his intention to give all that energy he’d stolen to me, transforming his transgressions through his love for me. He placed his hands over my heart and I orgasmed as I felt a beautiful cloud of white energy like a nebula full of stars passing into me. I can still feel and see it surrounding my heart.

I am so grateful I am finally with a partner I can fully express myself with! It was very telling that during this, his eyes widened and he gasped, shocked: “I thought I knew you.” I knew then that he’d finally seen me fully and it is so good to be truly known.

Hafiz’s Gift

I’ve been feeling very tired, emotionally drained and unsupported lately. But something that has been bringing me comfort and moments of joy is The Gift, a book of poetry by the Sufi Master Hafiz. I tend to write down inspiring or touching things that I read. The selections below are all handwritten into my journal; all are taken from The Gift, some are full poems and some just fragments:

We Have Not Come to Take Prisoners

We have not come here to take prisoners
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run, my dear
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

…

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom, and LIGHT!

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe
Me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.

Like
A pair
Of mismatched newlyweds
One of whom still feels very insecure,
I keep turning to God
Saying,
“Kiss
Me.”

When all your desires are distilled
You will cast just two votes:

To love more,
And be happy.

I know the ectasy of your heart’s wings
When they make love against the Sky.

Something divine happens to the
Heart

That
Shapes the hand and tongue
And eye into
The world
Love.

I cannot sit still with my countrymen in chains.
I cannot act mute
Hearing the world’s loneliness
Crying near the Beloved’s heart.

Love Is the Funeral Pyre

Love is
The funeral pyre
Where I have laid my living body.

All the false notions of myself
That once caused fear, pain,

Have turned to ash
As I neared God.

What has risen
From the tangled web of thought and sinew

Now shines with jubilation
Through the eyes of angels

And screams from the guts of
Infinite existence
Itself.

Love is the funeral pyre
Where the heart must lay
Its body.

Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,

Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife

Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.

The Vintage Man

The
Difference
Between a good artist
And a great one

Is:

The novice
Will often lay down his tool
Or brush

Then pick up an invisible club
On the mind’s table

And helplessly smash the easels and
Jade.

Whereas the vintage man
No longer hurts himself or anyone

And keeps on
Sculpting
Light.

Indeed God
Has written a thousand promises
All over your heart

That say,
Life, life, life
Is far to sacred to
Ever end.

Release

My guides and I did some serious processing this weekend and in such an effortless way that I am truly amazed.  It’s so hard to believe that something I’ve been carrying around with me for so long is really gone!

Friday night, my boyfriend and I were sniping at each other. Nothing major, we just both happened to be in very sensitive states and kept accidentally hurting one another’s feelings.  We each retired to deal with our feelings and I went into the bedroom, covered myself in a blanket and started crying.

Once there, I thought “I should have closed the door” because, as I’ve mentioned before, I need to feel in safe place to cry. Then I reminded myself that even with the door open, I already was in a safe place. This threw my mind back to the first time I visited a counselor.

At the age of 19, my parents decided I and my sisters should go to a counselor to deal with the molestation that had happened to us (a doctor told my mom that my little sister’s overly ticklish nature was caused by unresolved problems with it so they finally did something about it). I was very nervous and wasn’t happy to have to talk about stuff to a complete stranger, considering how hard it was and is for me to trust people. But once I was shut in that little room with her, something in me just release and I spent the entire first hour with her sobbing my guts out. (I don’t think I had cried since I was 12 when I decided that since my family didn’t care about my “negative” feelings, I would stop expressing them.)

As I lay in bed thinking about that and how the crying felt, I felt in some ways the same as I had then. My guides spoke through my memory of the counselor (the first person I’d met who simply accepted me as I was) and asked the question that I’ve been asking myself for years: Why do you hate yourself, little girl?

Immediately, I understood: I hated myself because when I had been molested, I had enjoyed the attention and the affection if nothing else. So I felt responsible for what happened and I had been blaming myself. My guides showed me that my thinking that way was as stupid as blaming a plant starving for sunlight for growing towards a heat lamp and burning its leaves.

As I continued crying, I felt an incredible release. It was as if there was a lead box around my heart that suddenly dissolved. I physically felt a heavy load lift off of my body. My body felt effervescent, as if there was carbonation in my cells and I finally recaptured the feeling of being a light, little bird that I used to feel when I was a kid. I felt my vibrational level LEAP higher.

I’m still almost in shock that 1) I was under the burden of that for so long and that 2) it was so easy to get rid of!

I feel overwhelmingly blessed.

The image below is something I drew to express how this change has made me feel.

Angel Wings & Self-Acceptance

The hardest lessons for me to learn are the ones that involve self-acceptance.  I have a hard time accepting myself when I see so clearly how so many aspects of myself are not accepted or even welcome to be mentioned around others.  I recently discovered that part of the reason I feel this way is because I have Asperger’s syndrome – a high-functioning autism that makes it extremely difficult for a person to relate to other people. It has led me to feel as though I’ve just been pretending to be a human most of my life.  Having to re-examine my life with this in mind, so much makes sense that I never understood before, but I spent the last several days grappling with this fact simply because I DO NOT want to accept that part of myself because I see it as my fatal flaw that keeps me from success and I want so badly to rip it out of my self and be normal.

I can’t even begin to elaborate how this affects my life, my thoughts, my relationships and my interactions all day every day, but please believe me when I say that it is major and it’s the dirty little secret that I used to not tell anyone about, of course that was partly because I had no idea how to speak about it, that’s the whole thing about Asperger’s.

Every time I have to accept a hard reality about myself, I have to change the way I act, because I like to go through life and pretend like I don’t have any problems – or at least not problems that I cannot change.  So having to accept this huge part of myself that I have hated for so long was incredibly difficult.  But I finally came to a place of acceptance, which is encouraging me to be a quieter, calmer version of myself than I have ever been and is going to rely on my continued awareness of myself and the world around me.

The minute I came to this feeling of acceptance, my angel wings sprouted.

I kept reading Karen Bishop’s spiritual updates describing how many of us are becoming Earth Angels, and I have felt a kind of merged resonance with angels where I saw their wings expressed in my aura, but I had never seen real honest-to-goodness huge feathered wings sprout from my shoulder blades (all on one level of reality that’s different from seeing the surface layer of things), felt their weight and power or imagined I’d really have wings one day (though I admit it’s been a fantasy of mine all my life).  But now here they are and all I had to do was accept the part of myself I’ve been hating my whole life.

No wonder it took so long.

I have used them to hold myself and my lover and though I haven’t said anything I can tell from the way he responds that he is sensing this new energy and he can feel the comfort I want to hold him in.

I’m still reeling from the mental and energetic changes.  But I do feel calmer, quieter and in many ways more sure of myself with a heightened sensitivity I’m not sure is permanent or a result of the recent events and my regular monthly womanhood cycle.

I’m just watching, waiting and continuing to develop trust and open communications with my higher self and guides in my new habit of daily meditation.