Posts Tagged ‘consciousness’

Mother One-The Sacred Feminine, collage by Licia Berry 2007

Last Thursday, I taught the first class in my inaugural “Faces of Her” teleseries.  With great hopes and expectations, and lots of sweat and labor, I birthed this offering amongst 10 women. 

It touched me in a different way to teach this class; it came from a more vulnerable place.  I’ve taught many teleclasses, classes and workshops in my professional teaching career of 21 years, but this one was different.  It came from the center of my heart, from the core of my being.

The journey to come to acceptance of my own inner Sacred Feminine has not been easy; I faced what all people face when they realize that there is more to our lives than what meets the eye.  I experienced what all folks experience when they open to more feminine ways of being, and allow that to guide them in their lives.  It’s no secret; it’s not the way our culture teaches us to live.  Feminine equals weak or stupid or value-less.  My decision to reject these ridiculous notions was nothing less than anarchy.

Learning to trust myself over all others has absolutely been a feminine journey.  Learning to listen quietly when my impulse is to demand answers has absolutely been a feminine journey.  Allowing myself to feel my feelings of sadness, anger, fear, grief and rage has been a feminine journey, too.  These are all things that are suppressed in our culture.  

But actually offering what I have learned to others…now THAT takes some ovaries (they’ve been making noises at me through out this process, by the way!)  Being pregnant with this information, then going through the labor to birth it, then presenting it Thursday night has been nothing short of a feminine miracle.  

I came into my room yesterday, where I have an altar to Great Mother, and upon entering the scent of jasmine incense wafted into my awareness.  I paused to look at the incense burner; nothing there.  I asked my husband and children if they had burned incense, and they said no, they thought I had been (they smelled it, too!)  This is the second time in several days this has happened to me; a mysterious scent of something that does not exist in the physical reality of the space has asserted itself.  I wonder if, like the scent of roses signifies the presence of the Divine Mother, of the scent of jasmine also portrays Her blessing?  

The choice to offer “Faces of Her” has begun its magic…I am already different, MORE than I was before the class.  In the decision to offer what I’ve learned to other women, I have opened some blessed door within myself, and She is working Her way with me!

A second class has been created due to popular demand!  Starts this Tuesday, Feb, 23 at 7pm eastern.  Join us!

Untitled Female Figure, Licia Berry, 1988, ink wash

It’s really true what they say, that if we are not aware of history we are doomed to repeat it.  We can see it on our world stage, we can see it in our relationships, and we can see it in how we become our parents if we have not done a significant amount of consciousness work.

Having internalized my father as the more positive role model of my two parents (if you know anything about my history with my father that may be jaw dropping to you!), I sought my way in the world with a dominant immature masculine energy as my primary lead.  I worked hard, I forced and pushed, I didn’t let myself feel much, I succeeded when I should have totally failed or died.  It was survival of the fittest; there was no room for getting soft or taking a breath or self care or soul care…none of that pansy stuff. 

That served me well enough to get through 5 years of full-time university and student teaching, all while making good grades and working enough jobs to pay the rent.  I had no help from my family and was living on my own in downtown Atlanta, a young girl with nothing to her name but a hand-me-down station wagon that stalled while driving and a scrappy attitude.

When I met my future husband, my survival was more assured.  He took me out to eat and I tore up a steak, threatening to spear his hand when he reached for something on my plate.  I had not eaten properly in 2 years, making due with one box of macaroni to last me a week, and mooching off of my wealthy roommate when she would let me.  Mostly I got through by just not allowing myself to think about food.  Keep moving, keep moving.  Besides, I was getting calories from the alcohol that folks would buy me at the dance club.     

It took some time to start to calm the wild beast who was fighting to survive within me.  Being in close proximity to Peter’s family (mine had been mostly out of the picture since I left home) induced a deep depression; those feelings I had been too resistant to give air time to finally had some room to come up to the surface.  I became a very uncomfortable FEELING creature.  I started therapy to learn why I was feeling the way I was, and began the long slow climb into consciousness and the light.    

The year that I was pregnant with my first son was when I began to consciously feel female.  I had been tough and together and sharp minded, but now I felt softer, squishier, joyful, less concerned with working hard to survive and more concerned with the baby growing inside of me.  I took wonderful care of my body, learned about organic foods and alternative ways of thinking.  This was when I started to see my inner nurturer come to the surface.  Somehow I knew how to treat myself as more precious.  This was such a great gift; it was truly the first time I can remember feeling feminine in an authentically powerful way.

My second pregnancy drew me ever more into the feminine, but the wild, deep, dark feminine.  I craved tribal music and walked in the woods and the mud.  I talked to the trees and the wind and the earth, feeling the eyes of nature on me as I moved through the world.  I carried sticks and rocks as talismans, weighing down my pockets with precious bits of ground that seemed to want to walk with me.  It was as if I were a child again, but a powerful, pregnant woman-child, innocent and knowing at the same time.  I found myself drawn to women in Asheville who taught me about birth being a natural process that my body knew how to do.  It was the beginning of learning to trust myself and my body as way-showers.

It was during this time I first heard the word Goddess, at least consciously.  I didn’t like it much; “Goddess” evoked images of hippie women in long skirts with wild hair and flowers in their teeth.  It evoked witches and feminists and crazed, alternative thinkers.  Even though I was coming into my feminine self in a powerful way, I was way too practical (read fearful) to embrace the “goddess”.  I experienced the Divine as something more abstract, a combination of feelings and love and creation and evolution.  I wasn’t going to worship anything.  I didn’t believe in a dude in the sky as my god, why would I believe in a woman in a skirt as my goddess? 

But my feet were firmly on the path of embracing Her, whether I saw her as a figurehead or not.  My internal knowing was taking me deep into Her, and what I discovered was that She was inside of me, in my body and heart and belly.  She wasn’t outside, wanting to be worshiped.  She was part of me. 

(to be continued)

Mother Five-Me, collage by Licia Berry, 2008

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.  ~Spanish Proverb

I thought I might open the window into my process a bit today by sharing with you my recognition that I needed a Mother in my life, and how that led me to the Sacred Feminine.

My biological mother was a physically beautiful, petite, perceptive woman with sharp eyes.  My early memories of her indicate a very young person who didn’t really know quite how to be a mother, as she was just a child herself (she was 18 when I was born).  She did what I suppose she thought she should do; her own relationship with her mother was not an easy one, and so mothering did not come so naturally.  When I try to feel her in my early life, I don’t feel much there.  There are shadows, a presence around a corner or in the other room.  It is as if there was an empty space where she should be. 

I do remember some times when she would sit and color with me, which I enjoyed.  It made me feel closer to her, and I felt the presence of her own inner little girl sitting with me at the table as we chose our crayons.  There was some innocence still in her.  We were equals, two young girls at play. 

But I don’t remember feeling the safety of a loving wise elder, a guiding hand.  I don’t remember feeling loved in the sense of being seen and accepted for who I was.  My mother speaks of loving me in the same breath as cherishing me like a doll that she dressed up in special clothes.

As I came into my 5^th year, I think I started to understand how warped things were in my family; my kindergarten picture shows a jaded and angry exterior.  But I still hoped for her to see me, to love me.  I watched her beauty and wanted to be like her, although I never was.  Her thin, dark allure matched the image that was on the tv and in the magazines.  So this was how to be a woman.

Things got crazier in my house when we moved to a rural house in the country outside of Goldsboro.  I think that’s when the drinking started to get out of hand.  Perhaps there wasn’t much else to do there.  My father would go to work each day, and my mother would put her long tresses in pigtails and work on the garden, deepening her already nut brown skin.  As she tended the squash, cucumbers and tomatoes, my sister and I would play outside with the neighbor girls, chasing their chickens or running in the tobacco field behind the house.  Perhaps the drinking was to fill a loneliness, or to assuage her fears that my father might be sleeping with other women (if my information is correct, this is indeed when he started to dally outside of the marriage).  Whatever the reason, this is when I remember having a conscious sense of losing my mother.

I was 7.  I remember having a vision of her, the sweet if unskilled mother in her pigtails, being seized by some aliens (I must have seen some sci-fi movie on the telly).  Her face is frightened; she is being taken away against her will.  She is then shrunk to the size of a Barbie doll, and flushed down the toilet in my parent’s bathroom.  In her place, an evil alien with a carefully arranged face of my mother steps in to our family.      

This is where I start to feel my mother is my enemy.  She was judging and critical of my body, my thoughts, my mind.  I remember feeling afraid of her barbs, stepping delicately around her anger (until I was much older and able to argue with her).  My parents would drink to excess, almost every if not every night.  When I had to get ready for school in the morning, she would sometimes still be passed out in the bed.  Sometimes this worked out in my favor; once I wore a slinky dress I’d found that was inappropriate for my age (I was 9), but made me feel like those playboy girls in my father’s magazines.  When the bus dropped me off at home that day, she was livid when she saw what I was wearing.  I don’t believe I ever wore that dress again.

Mother Three-Sheila, collage by Licia Berry 2006

Time went on; it became apparent that I was the reason for all of my mother’s anger because it was always me that got the blame.  Not one to step into her own inner wisdom, as she continued to stay with this man who sexually abused me, her and other women, she lashed out at me in her own frustration and despair.  Alternately pulling the “I’m the mother, I don’t owe you an explanation” with crying desperately and asking me for advice (“Licia, You’re so wise), I was a very confused adult child.  Needless to say, all of the surviving I did until I left home to go to school got in the way of cultivating peace within myself, and recognition of my own inner feminine.    

Years of therapy, inner work and education helped me to see that what happened to me as a child was not my fault, that there were familial patterns my mother played out, and for whatever reasons, she did not have the strength that I had to break those cycles and claim her life as her own.  Years before I had children, I decided that I would choose not to have any rather than pass on the sickness that was passed on to me.  Being awake in the face of folks who don’t want to be is a hard choice; there are consequences, such as being rejected and losing folks you very much want to have in your life.  To this day, she cannot go there with me.     

This forced me to look elsewhere for mothering.  Sometimes in the form of women who wanted my power, sometimes in the form of women who just gravitated towards me, sometimes in the form of women who projected their own mother issues onto me.  And I projected my share of mother issues, too.  Some very messy relationships with women ensued over my years.  I realized I didn’t know how to be in healthy relationships with women; my mother was my model, and she was distant, manipulative, angry and unconscious, all with a pretty face.  I did not want to play that out any longer in my life.  Finally, desperate for a mother, I turned inward.

(to be continued)

"Woman as Stone-She is Awakening" collage 2006 by Licia Berry

Dear Women!

What a year it has been, and it’s only early February! Many of us have felt both the exhilaration of the new year energy and deep intensity as the purging and transformation of our consciousness continues.

It’s only 10 days until my teleclass “Faces of Her: an educational and experiential exploration of the Sacred Feminine Within” begins on Thursday Feb. 18th.

If you are anything like me or the rest of the folks I am hearing from lately, you will understand that the old way of the world is not working any more. Many of us can feel internally that a new era is beginning.

What is happening? Why do so many of us have an inner knowing that the world is changing? What can we do to midwife a smooth rebirth? These questions and more will be explored in my “Faces of Her” teleclass.

If you FEEL and nod your head to the writings of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, if you DIG the art of Frida Kahlo, if Starhawk’s sweet words whisper into your very heart, if Jean Shinoda Bolen makes you want to jump up and create a women’s circle, if you admire and say YES to any strong, wise woman you hear speak her truth…then you will want to register for this 3-part class starting Thursday, Feb. 18th.

These women are shining examples of having integrated the Sacred Feminine qualities with their inner masculine qualities (the qualities in ourselves we are all taught to live from in western culture). Can you imagine if all of us brought the fullness and balance of the Sacred Union of the feminine and masculine to this world?

This teleclass will show you how by exploring:
• What is the “Sacred Feminine”?

• What is the “Light/Solar Mother”?

• What is the “Dark/Lunar Mother”?

• How do these universal energies show up in our lives?

• How is the Sacred Feminine already within me? How do I recognize Her?

• How can our lives be richer, more magical, and more alive by consciously experiencing these universal energies?

• How can I cultivate a relationship with the Sacred Feminine in my own life?

• Why is the embodiment of the Sacred Feminine important to our continuation as a species?

This class is designed to be appealing to the heart as well as the head, to be full of interesting information as well as an invitation into personal experience of the Sacred Feminine Within.

Personal experiences of the Sacred Feminine Within will be encouraged, inspired, and supported with images, story, poetry, meditations and exercises as well as educational material. You will leave each session FULL and looking forward to MORE.

This tele-class takes place on the phone in the comfort of your own home-you can wear your pajamas and fuzzy slippers!

Join me in this enlivening new/old experience! Choose now to step into your role in this amazing time of rebirth!
Come Home to Mama!

Register here!
http://www.liciaberry.com/Faces%20of%20Her.htm

Can’t wait to talk with you!
Licia Berry
Faces of Her
Creator of the Circle of WiseWomen (FaceBook women’s group)

Feeling as the New Frontier

First published May 12-2009-

(February 4, 2010-I re-publish this piece I wrote last year now as it comes to my attention again and again that we can do horrible things to each other or buy in to outrageous belief systems because we are not connected to our feelings….it is our feelings that guide us, provide feedback to us about whether we are following a moral compass, let us know if we are off track. 

Case in point: the incredible lack of feeling response demonstrated by James Arthur Ray, wealth advocate and teacher, who said in an interview 2 years ago that the Holocaust “was a good thing”, after people were traumatized (and some even died) at an event he held in Sedona AZ in October 2009 .  He was arrested yesterday, and the outpouring of feeling from the public shows that this is an important thing to look at.   http://abcnews.go.com/gma/video/spiritual-guru-arrested-sweat-lodge-deaths-9744388&tab=9482931&section=1206825

I have long said that the worship of the mind, intellect and thought as king is a very imbalanced masculine quality playing out in our world.   Feeling requires us to be present in our human, fragile, animal bodies, and to find a way to courageously live with that temporary, precious nature that our physical existence has.  Feeling requires honesty, that we feel the hard stuff as well as the easy stuff.  Repression of feeling is denying our physical existence, wanting to run away or escape, wishing it were different than it is.  It could be said that feeling is a feminine quality, if we look at it as a “being still, accepting and receiving” practice.  Perhaps if we were to balance our minds with our feelings, our world would not be in the state that it is in today.)     

Published on liciaberry.com and Face Book under notes

I write this today in response to an email that I received in which a woman friend is processing feelings and looking for some answers.  She is not alone!  I include partial transcript from that email, as well as more thoughts to offer.

I know a whole lot of folks who are feeling emotions right now….and I think this is GOOD.  I am told that the “return” of the feminine looks like folks FEELING their feelings, not just talking about them or conceptualizing them or thinking “positive thoughts”.  Feeling is not logical in any way…it is the right side of the brain, it is the feminine way, it is the antithesis of putting things in a box so we can understand them.  It is soft, animal, messy, uncontrollable, heart, soul, dreams, and water….it is the balance of the way humanity has been living for 5000 years. 

I FEEL and am told that feeling is the next frontier in human consciousness and expansion/evolution.  I think the women will be leading the way to learn how to BE this feeling state that we are entering…at least the women who have not internalized patriarchy so much that they are “men in skirts”!  We will have to allow this feeling to BE us, then we will teach others, and then the world will truly change to that balanced state so many of us feel coming.

We are meant to feel…this is part of our design as human beings.  We have physical, mental, spiritual and EMOTIONAL capacities, all of which serve a purpose and have a very important function towards our being fully human. 

My experience shows me that the problems come in when we judge ourselves for what we are feeling, or that we are feeling at all. 

Once a woman called in to my radio show…she was a “Law of Attraction”-inspired coach in her day job, but she was calling in seeking some answers for a traumatic event in her life; her son committed suicide.  She was driving her self crazy trying to cope with this incredible, unnamable loss by “thinking positive thoughts” and looking for “spiritual” answers about it.  What I offered to her was swift and clear: “Honey, you need to allow yourself to grieve.”  She broke down on the air, and wrote to me several months later that the permission to FEEL that I had given her changed her life. 

If you are finding yourselves in tears more frequently lately or feeling a little chaotic on your insides, maybe even angry or depressed, I would offer to you not to think you are going crazy or that there is something wrong with you. 

I say all this to reflect to you that I FEEL you are right on track….and that I echo your experience of feelings being a very important expression of my humanity right now.  I am finding healing, understanding, self acceptance and incredible love as a result of my allowing myself to feel without judgment or conception…just FEELING.  And when I allow the feelings, no matter how uncomfortable or painful to move through me, I come out the other side wiser, cleansed, and feeling whole.  I’m so grateful!!!

First published on http://www.liciaberry.com   in May 2009

Copyright Licia Berry 2009

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.

…cause I’ve been called one!  Seriously!

The town we used to live in, small as it was, had several churches.  There is a meeting of the spiritual leaders of those churches called the Pastoral Alliance.  And, as it goes in small towns, there is not a lot to talk about except for gossip. 

One of the more enlightened pastors of this group (who has since been fired from his position at his church and moved elsewhere) spoke to me quietly at a party about something that made me sit up and take notice.  Here was the conversation:

Licia: “I would really like to meet with other spiritual leaders in the community to exchange ideas and support one another.  It gets lonely sometimes to be one that folks come to for spiritual guidance.”

Cool Pastor: (squirming uncomfortably)

L:  “Is there any kind of support group or meeting of spiritual leaders here?”

CP: (falteringly) “Yessssss…”

L: (excited) “Oh, do you think I could come?!”

CP:  (sheepishly) “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

L:  (genuinely puzzled) “Why not?”

CP:  “Because the Pastoral Alliance is afraid of you.”

L:  “HUH?!  …Am I not the nicest person that you know?”

CP:  “Yes, you are a very nice person.  But they have had a meeting recently in which you were identified as a public enemy.”

L:  (kind of laughing, thinking it is a joke) “WHAT?!”

CP:  (looking very sad) “They have read some of your writing, and your beliefs are very threatening to their beliefs.  They feel that you are dangerous to their congregations.” 

L: (stunned) “Wow.”

CP:  “I’m sorry.”

L:  “What century is this again?”

I learned later that my children were taunted at school.  “Your mom is a witch.”  And not just by other children!  Not one person in that little town had the balls (or ovaries) to come say this to my face, but they sure were talking about it.

It’s made me think a lot since then.  What is a witch anyway?  I learned from my early Christian preschool conditioning and the Wizard of Oz that witches are bad, Bad, BAD. When I hear the word and me in the same sentence, my blood runs cold.  But why?

I am writing a long piece about this that will continue, but I needed to get this out there for some feedback.  In my quest for truth, consciousness and challenging the status quo, I want to know:

What is your definition of the word “Witch?”  Here’s what dictionary.com had to say:

Witch –noun

I’m not buying it. 

Let me hear from you…I really want to know!

I have a few precious moments of serenity as the boys have run down to the neighborhood park for a football game, and my sweet husband has retired to the haven of our bed for a much needed nap.  It is Christmas, again, and we were up late last night wrapping presents and making magic for our loved ones.  I am tired, too, but got more sleep than Peter, and truly, I have to enjoy these quiet moments when they are given to me.

 I enjoy Christmas for some of the feelings it brings…The decorating of the house for the pure purpose of enjoyment and sparkle and light…….The anticipation of seeing my children’s faces when they wake up Christmas morning….the fun of making gift baskets, imagining the healing I put into the cookies settling into the tummies of those that enjoy them… and the hunt for gifts I actually buy, looking for the perfect thing.  I like the feeling that comes when people smile at me and say “merry Christmas”, and I smile back and wish them a happy Christmas, too.  There is a feeling of something larger connecting us all, a feeling of something brotherly or sisterly, of goodwill.  It is the feeling of love that I am riding this time of year. 

I have the not so nice feelings, too….the trance state that I feel attempting to overtake me Christmas Eve like a dark undertow, a tide threatening to take me out to sea where I lose all sense of bearing and the way back to shore.  The not so nice memories of the drunken holiday wildness I experienced as a child, when there was no adult who was totally safe and responsible.  The feeling on Christmas that there is something I am supposed to be doing, something I am supposed to be, and yet I am not, so there is a vague sense of missing the mark.  Worrying about the people who do not have a family or loved one to be with on this day when the expectations can be so crushing to our fragile hearts.  And the grim dissatisfaction I get when I am reminded of the “reason for the season”, a story about a Divine Child, a story that has been bastardized and manipulated in order to wield power over the minds of those weaker than me.

Cynical, oh yes, absolutely.  You see, I was having direct experiences of God when I was 2 and 3 years old, and so when I was sent to a Christian preschool at age 4 and my teacher preached hellfire and brimstone and judgment, painting a picture of God as a mean and nasty all-seeing fellow in the sky, I was in a serious quandary.  “What she is saying does not match my experience.  Do I believe the adult who is supposed to be taking care of me, and upon whose sense of responsibility my safety depends, or do I stick to my inner experience of the All That Is as an unconditionally loving force that has nothing but good to offer to me?”  I chose to believe myself and my own experience, but to be somewhat quiet about it.

I would have liked to know Jesus.  My belief about him was that he was an enlightened man, much like the Buddha.  I believe when he said to love your brother he meant to love everyone, no matter what their beliefs were, no matter what religion they ascribed to, what sexual orientation they had, how they behaved in the world.  I believe he got it that one does not have to be “worthy” to receive the unconditional love that this universe provides.  That whole worthiness thing is something I think humans made up.  How can we be “worthy of unconditional love”, it’s unconditional!   I believe Jesus really understood at a visceral level that we are all One, just like my indigenous ancestors also knew in their walking life.  With every breath, we are affecting the One, with every thought and every action, we are pulling the strings of the web, and all will be touched in some way by what we choose.  I think I would have liked Jesus very much.

So when I hear the Christian ethic that feels so far removed from what I feel to be true about the man called Jesus, and I feel judged because I do not ascribe to those beliefs, it is hard for me to reconcile the anger I feel within towards those people that made Christianity what it is today, and my deep and earnest longing to feel my connection with ALL people, with ALL parts of creation because I feel my Oneness with All That Is.  Sometimes I will be quiet, turn my eyes away and smile, and other times I will change the subject, all because I am a good Indian and too polite to argue.  But then I get to discourse uninterrupted when I write about my feelings.  It’s tough for a southern girl who wants to be a good, loyal Daughter of the Divine to find her own way to Jesus, through all the obstacles placed before me since I was little…the judgment and rhetoric invented by people, not by Love.  But find my way to him I will….like everything else in my life, I will define and cultivate my own relationship with Jesus in the way that feels right to me. 

I honor the Solstice because it is a celestial event, not manmade like Christmas is.  It is well documented that Santa was a commercial invention, so I need not discuss it here.  Even the birth of Jesus has been determined to be in the spring rather than December 25^th, another convenient feathering into a pagan holiday in order to bring more pagans to the fold when Christianity was young and needing to convert followers.  For me, Solstice is the “reason for the season”, in that it is a turning of the season and a shift in our orbit, changing our relationship to the light of the sun, a symbol itself of Life. Yes, we do some of the Christmas rituals, and I think that it is largely in part due to the collective trance that I was raised in and now choose to continue to participate in to some degree.  But Solstice is the Holy Night for me, and the beginning of this truly magical season of remembering my connection to others, and showing them that I love them with generosity and open arms. 

I do take Christmas to be an opportunity to remember the Divine Child Within, and spend some time honoring that innocent, sparkling, all knowing One that resides within each of us.  This is a beautiful way to connect with the story of Jesus, at any time of year. 

I am continuing to define what this time of year is for me…to choose more and more consciously each year what I will participate in, what I will pass on to my children, how I will assist to create an unconditionally loving world.  Perhaps there will come a time that I do no “Christmas” at all, but only Solstice.   I don’t know.  All of these intellectual constructs and words aside, the guiding star for me is how I feel….what feels in integrity, and what feels like being out to lunch, a mere moving through the trance?  What I LOVE about this time of year is the feeling of magic and connection and internal-ness that comes with the onset of winter.  I treasure this turn of the wheel of life, and honor its coming, just as I will honor its going.  Perhaps if I focus on those feelings, my walk in the world will get clearer more light-filled at this time of year.

The completion of the last moon cycle on the 15th saw me on my knees, raking through the deep sand and mud in the subterranean waters I have been visiting of late.  I swam with the dark fishes through underwater caverns, navigating dark, narrow passages as I searched for missing pieces of my life.

It has been a challenging few weeks for me; Thanksgiving kicked off some wild feelings of powerlessness, a waft of a former age, when I used to be a child.  Catching the scent of those crazy holidays with my family of origin and all of its ghosts was enough to trigger my inner child into being very present. 

She (my inner child) is alternately delighted with the holiday time, and so, so, so fearful and anxious and sad.  The old days were scary.  The evidence of that is her terror.  My job is to hold her hand and be as loving and capable a parent as I can to her.  Sometimes, it is hard to remember that I am both the parent and the inner child, though….when the little me has feelings, they can seem so big as to blot out the rest of the world.  It then becomes apparent it is time to don the trusty diving suit, plug into the oxygen machine at the surface, and go down into the depths with her, because she IS trying to show me something.  It is always the trick to remember not to dive alone.

In shamanic work, we know that retrieval of disenchanted parts of ourselves is a healthy and necessary expression of our wholeness.  This is seen in psychology, too, where the desire and intent of therapeutic work is to integrate the compartmentalized aspects of self. 

This is exactly what I have been doing when I elect to follow my inner child’s call down into the dark waters.  A kind of waking shamanic journey, we enter the earth through openings in the mountains, holes in the earth, and travel quickly through the rocks and soil, passing moles and earthworms, until we emerge into the caves and caverns deep underground.  There, we then must swim the great black seas that exist where the sun doesn’t shine, for at the bottom lies treasure.

There are dangers, though, to this work.  Sometimes, the immense pressure of this deep inner environment is enough to make my eyes want to pop out of my head.  I can feel the pressure of the vast waters and the miles of earth on top of me in my body, as I walk here on the topside through my day, shopping for groceries or driving my children to orthodontist appointments.  How interesting, I think, as I merge safely into traffic, while underneath I am reaching through dark crevices to see if a gem, or part of myself, is inside.  How odd, I notice, as I kiss my husband while I am digging through the primordial slime and hitting something of note with my fingertips.  I live in many worlds simultaneously.

In shamanism, it is important to have your lifeline attached when you go into the other worlds to retrieve those parts, or you can get lost.  I have fortunately chosen some very able and supportive helpers in my life who hold me and love me as I writhe around and wrestle with those dark creatures under the water that threaten to hold me down until I give up.  Just when I feel I am going to lose my life or my mind because something powerful and I have gotten ahold of each other, either my own soul and spirit give me the strength suddenly to bring the great beast to the surface, where I can look at it in the eye and see it is not going to kill me…..or some grace-filled creature or person in my life senses I am floundering and reaches a hand down through the layers of reality and pulls me up.  Thank Godde for love.

Now that the new moon cycle has begun on the 16^th, I experience a release of pressure.  I am back topside.  I retrieved some great bounty from the depths these last few weeks, and have now emerged with the spoils, breathless but alive and jubilant, at the surface.  Navigating the multiple worlds that I do, they all collapse into one world, the here and now, and I am more powerful because more of me is here, playing happily in the sun.