pricking the crusty scab over the wound in my heart…letting it bleed

I must…there is no alternative if I want to be an alive, pliable, feeling human being

a moment’s courage to stick the needle of my consciousness in

please, hold my hand, Greater Self

and it’s done.  see, it only hurt for a moment

~

ahhh, the relief of letting it flow

the cleansing tears, the exorcizing of little demons in the dark corners of my psyche

the ones that have held court, whispering lies into my ears,

stringing nets and springing traps

grabbed up by the rush of cleansing waters from the genuine soul

lifted by the torrent of feeling, they are exposed and expunged through the grand golden portal of my heart

poured out onto the stones at my feet where they flip and writhe

I feel awe and compassion as I watch them dissolve in the light of the sun

Mother Five by Licia Berry, 2006

I was reminded this weekend that I am a healer.  I’ve always known this, but haven’t always wanted to own it.  I think there are a lot of us out there.

I don’t have to say a word.  Just my presence, a smile, will sometimes awaken the desire in others to offer up their wounds for me to kiss.  If I offer more, such as a hug, a home cooked meal, a conversation, or god forbid an invitation to stay in my house for some days, the healing can be more wild and wooly.  But opportunity for healing nonetheless.

Healing is not always pretty.  In fact, I frequently find that healing requires that it will hurt more before it gets better.  This is true whether resetting a broken bone (OW), ripping a scab off an infected wound (OW), or re-opening a heart hurt that has been glossed over by a desire not to feel pain.

We went camping to the coast for the thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S.  There we met a lovely family while strolling on the beach.  There was an instant connection, a feeling of wanting to get to know these folks.  Conversation led to enjoyment of each other, and we got together for dinner that night.   

In a very short time over delicious food, our conversation turned to deeper heart matters, such as love, marriage, relationship, commitment, priorities, and family.  Our sharing turned very personal, very quickly.  Old hurts started pouring out as well as the tears.  For some reason, the fact of the four of us sitting together opened up a safety zone within which the swirling energies of love could stir up and cleanse what was unsaid in each of us, and healing could occur. 

I don’t find this unusual; in fact, it seems to be the way it goes most of the time.  I know from personal experience that, when the ideal factors are present, alchemy can occur.  Sometimes the chemistry in a group is not so ideal for transformation, but for another purpose.  Perhaps an example might be a social gathering that is intended for networking or making friends.  But I always hunger for the chemistry that allows true and deep opening and therefore healing to happen. Not adept at the “how about this weather” types of conversations, I seem to need to know the precious soul of a person in five minutes or less.

I hesitated several times in writing this because I don’t want to sound egotistical.  To say that I am a healer could very well incur the wrath of those who don’t understand the subtle energetic nature of healing, or those who say that healing is a dying art or not needed in the world.  To be a healer necessitates that some will not trust you.

But others can say that they are a lawyer or a gardener or doctor or a writer or a chef….so why not say that I am a healer?  I don’t pretend to understand it fully….far from it.  But, at a very basic molecular level, this is what I am.

I notice after 44 years that my good friends are pretty brave people.  Or maybe tenacious.  Or in the case of my husband, very very forgiving.  I’m intense, and not an easy person to be friends with.  There is something about my presence that reveals the wounds, makes those hurts rush to the skin and inflame the face, where the person who possesses them then has the choice to yield them to me and therefore relinquish their smallness to love, or to hang on to their construct and fight.  And interpreting their discomfort as something that I have done, they will sometimes judge me for having innately, unknowingly called the pain to the surface.  Frequently I am projected upon…as a maker of conflict, as stupid, as difficult, as fill in the blank.  It makes me think of the man who called the flounder to the water’s edge…the fish came from deep within the sea to grant the man’s wishes.  But eventually the man asked for too much, and when the wishes were taken away, he projected onto the fish as the cause for all his ills.

I don’t feel understood by many people.  I sometimes feel I am a wild force too big to be contained, and that the only safe course of action for someone who wants to be near me is to surrender.  Of course, the nature of free will beings is to resist this, even in times when their well-being may depend on it.

Perhaps it is the abundant amount of mothering energy I seem to have embodied since I was a little girl….friends in school would confide in me, seeming to know that I was a present listener.  My body has always been on the rounder side, like the Great Mother archetype…soft arms for hugging, all breasts and hips, large lips and hands for kissing and holding, long feet for holding me up and grounding me to this earth, long wild and wavy hair, and big blue eyes that seem to take you in unconditionally, pain and all.  I was born to be a Mother.

I don’t have many close friends.  I am blessed with a host of devoted readership around the globe.  I am associated with esteemed international colleagues.  I have many, many soul sisters, and a few soul brothers.  Perhaps this distant closeness that is created by the digital age is a way that I can feel my kinship with others without their having to be so close to be as to get burned by my healer’s presence.

My beloved and my two children must have souls of steel, or rather more accurately, the tensile strength of love and many, many lifetimes of soul wisdom, in order to be with me every single day.  Of course, my sons will leave someday and go into the world, and our relationship will change.  But my Beloved…goodness, the resolve it must take to love me and choose again and again to remain.

I feel best, safest, most sane when I am around others who value honesty and integrity as I do.  Who are honest with themselves about how they feel, who look their own darkness in the eye, name it, and choose to do what it takes to heal it.  It is a courageous path that many do not take.  But those are the people that I want to know in the world.

April 27, 2009

Tsunamis of Love

“Feeling change in the air…the larger energy cycle shifted in mid-April, and I feel it continuing to open up. The balls that have been up in the air will all fall to the ground in May, and June will be the GO month…a month of action. We’ll see!”-  Licia Berry’s status on FaceBook on April 26, 2009, which generated some questions

For many years, I have spoken on this website about the larger energy cycles that our planet and therefore all inhabitants are going through…the increasing intensity that we all feel is no accident.  On this page you will find the archives of years of my paying attention to and recording this phenomenon.

We are riding a series of energy waves, a collective tsunami of love if you will, that has increased exponentially since the year 2000.

I have received questions from folks wanting to know what is going on, but it is already said here.  If you read over the years and years of entries that I have posted about my experience of the larger energy cycles, you will see a build up and you will also see that I have shared my own human growth and awarenesses as I, too, change for the better.

You guys, this is the most remarkable time to be alive and awake.  Things are crashing down around us; in job loss, health crises, relationships ending, geographical relocations, etc…all of the stress factors that can happen to get our attention are happening right now.  All of this is happening in the name of our waking up to a deeper and greater experience of being alive and joyful, more authentically ourselves.  Yes, becoming conscious can be a challenge…but not becoming conscious is just the worst possible scenario I can imagine.

When I was young, I wondered why people seemed like zombies or like robots, and so sad.  I was engaged in life, played with the magic…over time, though, I became sad and more asleep, too.  I have compassion for myself and others….I think it is very easy, even if we have the best intentions, to be indoctrinated into the Great Slumber that so many of us partake of as we zoom through our very short life on this planet.  For many, the sleep seems the most comforting alternative…being numb to the pain seems better than feeling the pain.  In my case, though, I found that being asleep was more uncomfortable than being awake; when I was 21, some part of me realized I was missing something (I won’t retell that story here; it is at least partially documented in much of my writing, including my book Love Letter). I have been on a quest to wake up ever since.

Partaking of the Great Slumber has a terrible cost.  I am learning that when we don’t FEEL, we are missing out on the whole point of being here, in physical form on earth.  I have it on good authority that we came to experience and report back the data to our Source….and if we aren’t FEELING and processing what we are experiencing, we are cheating Source of that which we promised to provide.  Well, we can always come back another time.  But will we be awake next time?  Wouldn’t it be more amazing if we were awake NOW?

I have been in the process of deep transformation, AGAIN (gosh, it just keeps getting deeper and better!)  I have been on a kind of sabbatical since June of last year, a process of entering the chrysalis for deep transformation.  The most recent accelerator and assistant to my process has been that I broke my ankle in February, an injury which has catapulted me into a healing and re-balancing of my inner feminine and inner masculine.  Of course I had the option of seeing myself as a victim and, as I saw in my research, drinking beer and watching TV for 8 weeks (!!!) to pass the time while I could not walk.  But I didn’t want to do that.  When it happened, one of the first things I chose was that I was going to milk this occurrence for all it was worth.  And I have, and as a result, the insights have come so fast and furious that at times I could not write them down fast enough.  But this has been about more than writing it down, although I was encouraged to record this experience day after day.  This was a true body/mind/spirit metamorphosis, an experiential rebirth, one that can scarcely be talked about in words.  Again, this attention getter was no accident…it was a divine tool of assistance to help me wake up in a deeper and more meaningful, authentic way.

This is akin to what we are all being given the opportunity to do right now.  Of course, all of our situations are different…the details and the themes in our lives are individual to each of us.  But the larger tsunami of love is the same….we are all being given the opportunity to wake up to a deeper and more authentic life, if we will just cooperate with it, surrender in it.

The larger energy waves will increase….as with all cycles, there is an ebb and flow.  I felt an energy shift in mid-April, a sort of coming out of hibernation feeling, or a coming out of the chrysalis…what that looked like for me was a series of little energy releases, and then a huge energy release on my birthday April 23^rd, and increasing clarity and balance since then.  What I feel coming over the near horizon is that May is a month when we will be getting some answers to our questions we have been asking since January, and then June will be a GO month, and month where right action will be greatly supported.

Right action?  What do I mean by that?  I mean action that is carefully considered, a feminine trait in my language.  I am learning in my own life that action should not be taken unless it is discerned, weighed and measured.  FELT (there is that FEELING thing again) in all of my deepest places- body, mind and soul. 

In my own process and learning of allowing the feminine to lead, softness and wisdom are the way to approach first, then to ask the inner masculine to step in to take action based on the input of the feminine.  In the past, I have tried to force things, to make something happen, without asking the quiet sage of my inner feminine for her input.  I have learned a great lesson from this….the awareness of divine timing is something that lives in each of us if we will but listen.

So, like the rest of the human club, I am changing, and all areas of my life will reflect these changes.  I choose to surrender.  I choose to become an adept surfer, rather than to cover my ears and eyes and pretend the waves aren’t coming, thus resulting in my getting clobbered by them.  I choose to dance with this ecstatic universe, I choose to play and be who I truly am…I choose to fulfill my promise to Source by being as awake as possible, as much as my heart and soul can bear.  Hurrah, Hoka Hey, and Holy of Holies, this is the time.

first published on www.liciaberry.com 4-27-09 

 “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”   Friedrich Nietzsche  

Like most babies, I learned how to walk the first time by the age of 11 months.  I crawled successfully at 8 months (seems a little late, but I’ve always been on my own timing), pulled up to standing at 8 ½ months, then the world was my oyster before one year old.

I say that I learned to walk the first time by 11 months because I am learning to walk a second time at the age of 44 years.  Yep, you read right; after 44 years on this earth, this girl is learning how to walk again.

Due to a violent and (pretty gross) compound fracture and severe dislocation of my right ankle in February, I experienced surgery, metal plates and screws, and 8 weeks of weightlessness; for me, a new meaning to the word “stillness”, and the sudden and complete absence of forward motion in my life.

Well, not entirely; the movement that I have been experiencing since my injury has been on the inside, and lots of it.  What I’m noticing is that the movement on the outer world can sometimes be a distraction from the movement in the inner world.  I discovered that I sometimes used physical movement to help me run from feelings that I didn’t want to feel.  Feeling powerless or afraid?  Go for a run or a bike ride.  Feeling angry?  Go clean something.  Feeling anything uncomfortable?  Go MOVE, do anything, but don’t sit still or else it might catch up with me.

I’m exaggerating a bit here; for the last 10 years, I have been working consciously on myself to wake up, and much of that has been about getting more still and paying attention to my feelings.  In my house, I am the one who is most vocal about her feelings, and the one who is most actively reflecting on what I am feeling.  But I live with three guys (one husband and two sons) and a cat.  Well, okay….maybe the cat wins the most vocal about how she feels award…

But all the work I’ve done had taken me only so far; then my ankle met with a series of metal stairs on a rainy day in California, and my knowing of being still so I could feel my feelings got a whole lot deeper.  That’s how it works in process, doesn’t it?  We go so far with something, then find stasis and equilibrium, then a new expansion experience is introduced and we get to grow again (oh goody!)

I am happy to say that I chose to go for it with this experience; I know that when things happen, there is the opportunity to relate to it as a victim or as a choice maker.  I wanted to harvest all of the AHAs and lessons and insights that I could from this experience.  I sure never want it to happen again!  And I haven’t been disappointed; the amazing healing and awarenesses have been profound and bountiful during my weeks of convalescence.  I can look back on it with just a little perspective now, and it feels like a precious gift to be allowed to be so vulnerable. 

I was given the okay to bear weight on April 27, “letting pain be my guide”.  I took off my “Darth Boot” (my affectionate name for my big, black, kick-ass removable cast) and started learning to walk with the aid of my crutches.  Within a couple of days, I noticed that I started to forget where I left them; that’s a good sign!  By the end of that week, I was hobbling around without any help from my rickety metal friends.

But the hobbling is a little troublesome; I look like Frankenstein, arms flailing out in my attempt to keep balance.  All that’s missing is the metal bolts in my neck and the mantra, “FIRE BAD!”  The scars are not pretty, my ankle gets swollen quickly when I am up on it, and it does hurt a bit when I come down on it.  But it’s a good pain, or so I think.  It is the pain of learning to use something in a new way.

Amongst my reflections and ruminations during this time of forced stillness, I have wondered if I was walking in a way that was not good for me.  Maybe not the physical way I walked, but from a symbolic standpoint, where was I leading myself?  How was I getting there?  Was I being forceful or was I being discerning?  Was I afraid of moving forward, or was I walking in balance and ease? 

And now that I have the opportunity to walk again, I also have the opportunity to learn to walk in a different way, perhaps a way that serves me and the world community better.  How do I want to walk in this world?  Confidently, in balance, knowing that I am supported…at ease in my own power, looking forward to my future, knowing I am part of this world and that I have something to offer…with grace, strength, discernment, wisdom, and love. 

I can’t help but reflect on what it must have been like to learn to walk the first time; I can’t remember, although I wish I could.  What would it feel like to feel the inner impulse to move, to get up on one’s feet and take a first step forward?  What kind of innate trust is there in all children as they fly through their developmental stages?  What kind of crazy motor drives the impulse to get off your knees and start walking?!  How amazing is it that we go from being born helpless to moving around at light speed in under a year’s time?  I seriously doubt that we could handle that kind of rapid growth as adults…if I picture me trying to assimilate so many changes in one year as a new baby does, I think I would explode!

I say this because I am a grown woman, in her mid forties, and I have learned to be afraid.  Life has taught me about people and things and events that hurt, and that I must be protective and watchful and wary, lest something bad happen to me.  Even when I am all of those things, sometimes bad things still happen.  That innate trust we are born with can slowly erode over time, to the point that it seems quite unbelievable we ever possessed this gift.

However, I am hopeful.  When I put my injured foot to the floor, I am in essence saying, “I trust that this leg will hold me up”.  When I choose to engage my body with the earth by walking, I am saying I WANT to trust again.  I WANT to be part of the earth walk again, I WANT to move and run and dance and play.   

As I learn to put my foot down and do the careful dance of rolling my heel and pushing off with my toes, I wonder what kind of a little girl I was when I took that first step.  Was it a joyful and exciting adventure?  Was it a feeling of complete trust and knowing that I was supported?  Can I harness that level of trust again as I learn to walk this time?  I pray that I can.