Archangel Raphael by Nemo

Lovely readers, thank you so much for coming here and indulging me by reading my writing.  It is such a wonderful thing to connect with you through ideas and sharing, and to hear yours, too!

I want to say a bit about the fact that I work with the angelic spectrum of consciousness.  This may come as a surprise to some of you, and others of you have known it for some years. 

I have had direct experiences since I was very small of the “invisible world”.  My knowing of these realms that we cannot see is ingrained, innate, and intrinsic.  I don’t question it (well, not anymore…I did for a short period of time in my early adult life when I was so lost that I almost couldn’t feel them anymore).  For me, the invisible realms and (the consciousness that inhabits them) are a given.

When the spirits of deceased or the spirit of the wind or a tree or the earth spoke to me as a child, I didn’t question its validity or my own sanity.  Now that I have come back into a comfort level with this knowing, my life is so much easier!

I “check in” every day, several times a day with the invisible realm.  When I say “check in”, I mean I sit down for an intentional conversation.  I do this to ask for assistance, for guidance, and sometimes just for reassurance.  I find this to be a very life affirming practice for me.

Here’s how I think of it: we are all part of the Great Web of Life.  We are each aspects of the Great Web of Life.  Each of us aspects are connected to the others.  I consider a molecule, a cell, a person, a plant, a petal on a flower, a bug, and animal, a particle of dust…you name it, it is All Part of Creation in my understanding.  The aspects of consciousness that happen to be invisible are just aspects that are not in a spectrum of our capability of physical seeing.  I have seen “invisibles” many times in my life, but only when I was in the internal space to be able to see them.

I choose only to work with the aspects of creation that are kind, respectful, unconditionally loving and honoring of free will.  That’s a tall order in some cases, because just because you’re invisible doesn’t mean you necessarily fit into these categories!  (Just ‘cause you’re dead doesn’t mean you’re wise or kind!)  I used to entertain invisible folks who did NOT fit into these categories, and they were not particularly nice or helpful.  Just like us physical folks; some are with the program of love, and others just aren’t.     

I feel that we all tap into what’s called in quantum physics the “morphic field”, or in psychology the “collective unconscious”, or what I call All Creation to some degree or another. Some of us do it more consciously than others, too.  The aspects of Creation that I call Angelic are the ones who meet the description I gave above, and they are some of my most reliable helpers.  Those aspects of Creation are my “go-to guys”.

I am uncomfortable being associated with “new age” spirituality, however.  This thing I do is not a new or pop culture bandwagon for me.  It is my way of life, and has been since I was 2 years old (that I can remember, maybe earlier?)  I don’t have ease with multiple worlds because it is fashionable or “spiritual”…I interact with multiple worlds because they are part of All Creation, and I choose to honor and work in partnership with All Creation as much as I am able to do it.  I consciously partner with the invisible worlds because those invisible worlds share life with me, because that’s the way it IS.  To not acknowledge them feels disrespectful.

So, when you hear me talk about angels and what they told me, please know I am not going round the bend.  I am merely exercising my inter-connectivity muscles and reporting what I am being given from aspects of Creation that want to help, and dearly love me (and all of us).

I’m not talking about harp-playing, winged creatures in robes flying about (although when I have seen them, they ARE quite large!)  I am speaking of a very high-level consciousness that has a large perspective of things.  We humans give them names because we feel the quality of energy they portray; it is a way of helping our little human minds make sense of their vastness to fit them into a box with a name on it.  But in reality, I don’t think they have “names” per se…more, they exhibit a certain quality (such as healing, or communication, protection, etc.) and we decide to call that energy by a name. 

I feel this way about what I call the “earth people”, what some refer to as fairies and elves and gnomes.  When I refer to Great Mother and Great Father, I am talking about aspects of creation that embody those varied qualities of feminine and masculine.  What I call Archangels are an aspect of creation very close to our Source (whatever that may be), and each inhabit and are “in charge” of particular qualities of energy.  What I call Angels are the “step-down” from Archangelic realm; they are an energy interface between our human selves and the Archangel realm.  How did I come by this information?  Oh, goodness, that’s a whole other post!

There is a whole host of wonderful aspects of creation that we can’t see, and if we want to step into that world a bit to play, the benefits are boundless.

I will remember this joyous bike ride with my boys for a long time, as it will be my last for several months. 

We returned to the RV to get more school work done, and as the boys worked, Peter said he was going on a ride.  I asked if I could go, too….more rather than less exercise is a good rule for me.  He welcomed me; I threw my shoes on and, a smile on my face, stepped out the door, placing my left foot on the top outer step of the RV.

Apparently, I put my heel down on the edge of what turned out to be a sandy step…before I knew what happened, I was flying.  I felt pain, but more shock of having fallen down the stairs, as I am not one who hurts myself much.  When I got to the bottom, I felt that something was wrong; besides the heart pounding from the surprise, I looked down and saw that my right foot was turned the wrong way, and the end of my tibia, the strong inner leg bone that we see as our shin, poking unnaturally through the left side of my ankle. 

I will spare you the details of my strange calm as I gave orders to my family members, the transfer to the hospital ER, the relocation of the ankle and the immediate surgery, all of which I am in the process of writing in great detail as therapeutic work.  More of note is the inner process that has been accelerated due to the whirlwind destruction of my bodily innocence and the surrender required to allow other people to help you when you are accustomed to surviving on your own. 

I have always been a very strong and healthy person, having very few accidental injuries in my life, relegated to the occasional burn or cut. Even in my rash of car accidents in my barely-present early twenties, I walked away without even a bruise.  Never having broken a bone or been to the hospital except for birthing Jess and a small cut that required stitches when I was 11, this accident ‘broke’ my vision of myself as invulnerable.  The healing at physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels that is unfolding inside me through this event is profound.  To me, that’s the juicy stuff; to me, this is where the magic is.

My rigidity in my life has held me up when there was no one else to do it; my parents were actively abusive alcoholics, and there was no safe place for me to be vulnerable.  I had to get tough to make it through my childhood, and I took that toughness with me into my growing life, perceiving through my filters of experience that the world was not a safe place.  Of course, as a result of that filter being in place, I helped create more of that belief, which reinforced my toughness.  Over time, my heart has closed except to those who have proven that I can trust them.  My tests, although unconscious, are rigorous and thorough…my tests weed out those who might make a passing grade from the die-hards.  Only those who truly and passionately love me unconditionally make it through my inner gauntlet.  I am civil to the others, but they will never know the real me, as I don’t trust them to treat me with respect and safety.

And I put myself on the line in these tests; I share myself and make myself vulnerable, then watch what they do with what I have given to them.  Some show me their trustworthiness right away by not being able to hear what I am sharing, or rejecting it outright.  Others are a little “craftier”…they listen and appear to treat my sharing with tenderness and care, but later use it against me.  I give the gift of myself to those who do not deserve my trust to prove to myself that they aren’t trustworthy.  It is a back-asswards pattern of behavior learned when a child cannot trust the two people she depends on to keep her safe in the world.  This event has brought this pattern into clear light, for which I am grateful. 

I now have a bionic ankle, complete with “golden” plate and six “golden” screws (the golden is in my mental picture so that I can accept and make friends with the foreign objects in my body).  I must remain “no weight bearing” for 8 weeks, at which point I will begin to learn to walk again.  In the mean time, I hobble around on crutches and spend a lot of time with my foot up on the couch.  Well, I was complaining about not finding the time to write…now I am writing more than ever.  The insights are coming so thick and fast I can scarcely write them all down. 

And so, in moments of extreme grace and clarity, I am actually grateful that this has happened.  Oh, I have my moments of feeling like a victim, feeling sorry for myself, feeling angry and sad….but all of those are indications of a deeper healing in myself that can occur, if I am just willing to follow the pointers to the place inside where acceptance and insight abound.   

Thank you, my right ankle, for making this sacrifice in service to the whole of me, my inner and outer community.  Like our indigenous ancestors did in holy ceremony, you offered flesh to show how willing you were to put yourself on the line in order for healing to occur on the larger level.  I humbly choose to make the most of this offering! 

I personally felt like the Pacific NW was our final destination point, as I feel a strong draw to the culture there.  The big hitch with living in the Pacific NW is the weather….my boys are all sunshine folks, so that was a major stumbling block to seeing us there.  I could see me there just fine, but what about my sweet Berry peeps?

But in mid-September, as I was sitting in session with the Angelic folk one early morning, I was told to “expect a surprise in November.”  Ooooh, mysterious!  I asked some questions about it, trying to unwrap the package early, but no go….nothing was revealed to me at that time except that it was concerning something good for my whole family.

Well, I think we now know what that good surprise was.  San Luis Obispo.

We arrived here after a gorgeous trip up the coast from Los Angeles (wow, Ventura through Santa Barbara is stunning), and pulled into the El Chorro County Park, just on the north edge of town off of Hwy. 1.  We immediately felt so comfortable…the hills are here, and some trees, but it is not a choking feeling of claustrophobia….we can still see the sky as there is plenty of open space.  We met my dear friend Terry Musch, a soul brother that I reconnected with last year, downtown for a fantastic Thai dinner. We walked around town in the dark, not seeming to mind the drizzling rain that was coming down….we were exhausted from the day of travel, but something was holding us up as we gazed upon the downtown lights and felt the awesome energy of place.

The subsequent days were mostly spent driving around with Terry….you could never want a more fantastic tour guide!  Terry is such a generous soul, and genuinely wants to share the goodness he has found in SLO.  He connected us with a beautiful friend Lori Steed, who among other talents is a professional photographer.  It was Lori who organized and invited us to the election party in Avila Beach on Tuesday, November 4^th, a historic day which we will all remember in this family until we croak!

The more time we spent exploring the area and checking in with our feelings, the more we felt how comfortable we were in SLO.  It was as if there was a magic curtain around SLO, and every time we went out of the area to explore a little further out, we felt a pronounced feeling of being out of that yummy space.  We talked about our feelings a lot, both intentionally asking each other and just spontaneously blurting out how god it felt to be there.  Very telling! 

We remembered that in 1993 Peter and I came through SLO on a west coast tour, again looking for our next location (we were living in Tucson at the time).  I was 5 months pregnant with Jess, and we were taking our last hurrah trip before our lives would be changed forever by having a child.  We had the sense of itchy feet then, and were looking for what was next for us.  On that trip, we drove through SLO and stayed in the area overnight at a B&B, and I remember having the best afternoon nap of my life as the cool breeze blew in the windows.  We walked around downtown way back then and thought this would be a great place to live.  Another contender on that trip was Corvallis, Oregon…..but the west coast was not to be our home at that time.  We wound up moving to Asheville, North Carolina to open the door to some healing work with my family of origin.

Now, 15 years later……it was on Wednesday, waking up in a country I am proud to live in, that the Divine Comedians (another one of my names for the Angelic spectrum of consciousness) told us, “Look no further, you have found it”.

Well, we are very tempted to believe this pronouncement from the Keepers of the Cosmos…. It sure feels right to all four members of my family, and SLO offers everything we hoped for in the next location we would call home.  But we also know that calling something a done deal before it’s a done deal has not been very smart in this last year….as I have been told, 2008 has been a year of so many changeable factors, all the balls thrown into the air at once, and it has taken several months of the majority of them to come down.  Somehow, with the election, I feel the factors settling in, and the future looks a lot more certain.  Maybe when we get guidance now, it will stick.  As a channel, it has been frustrating to hear and feel and see that so much was up for grabs this year, and that when my ego wanted to have The Plan and chart a course, the response from the Larger Picture was frequently “there are too many unknowns at this time”.

I sense a larger cause if we do indeed call San Luis Obispo home….a time of healing and expansion for us and those we love.  I already feel myself changing to fit being the mythic Californian, a creator of dreams, an embodiment of happiness, and knowing that I am worthy of all the goodness the Omniverses have to offer.  The next step in our evolutionay process.  Oh, my….a large future awaits us should we claim this place.  Here’s a prediction: a greater radiance of Who We Are, us four Berrys, as a family and as individuals.  Stay posted!

Next we head north to Monterey to spend some time with Pete’s Mom and Dad and Sister and her family….