Posts Tagged ‘healing’

Who knows what is going on in the larger collective?  Lots of folks claim to, but I tend to think that we each have a slice of the pie, rather than the whole pie….a peek at the global story through our own filters rather than a completely objective viewpoint.  My subjective experience is valid for me, but not necessarily the truth for everyone!

My subjective experience has been telling me that there has been some extraordinary energy moving through the collective these last few days.  What I’m hearing as I report in from my corner of reality is that many are feeling this larger wave of energy, but some experience it as very difficult and others very lovely.

Thursday is when I started to feel that rise begin…it feels to me like being in the ocean, out beyond where the waves break.  You can feel that a wave is coming because you get lifted off the bottom of the sea, and your body bobs up to the top of the lump that begins a wave, then you are dropped down and toes make contact again with sand.  The wave continues onward towards the shore, where it crests and crashes down, becoming one with the larger body of the ocean again.

Thursday some extraordinary things happened in my life.  My beloved husband confronted an oooolllllddddd habit passed down to him by his ancestry and brought it into consciousness, breaking the pattern and freeing himself (and us, his family).  When it happened, there was a palpable feeling of something having changed.  Our whole family felt it.  A few hours later, a professional opportunity came his way, literally dropped in his lap, which has invited more good feelings in our family. 

Then, Friday some folks looked at our house in Colorado, the one that’s been on the market for 1.5 years, and promptly feel it love with it and made an offer.  We signed the contract yesterday, the day identified by astrologers in the know as a profoundly lucky day of 2010 due to Jupiter and the sun being in alignment.

The current energy wave is intense, don’t get me wrong.  It’s not all sunshine and daisies; the recent earthquakes would indicate that there are folks who are in great distress as a result of the energy movement.  And I have been hearing that some folks are having difficulty navigating the current energy.  They feel anxious, pregnant, full, like they are ready to explode.  Sometimes it feels just plain bad, and we want to hide under a rock until it’s over.

I do believe that what is within is also without, and vice versa, so to me it makes sense that we would see manifestations in the physical as well as emotional worlds of the internal or invisible universal energy waves that wash through us.  I don’t think this is going to change; my sources tell me that these kinds of experiences are going to continue, and that the intensity will lessen a bit as we cycle through, until we get to the next wave. 

Are we being cleansed?  Are we being shown where we are putting energy that doesn’t serve us?  Are we getting the opportunity to trim out the deadwood and let go into a life that we are truly meant to live?  And why is it easy for some and not for others?  Is the difference that sometimes we cooperate with the flow of the energy and other times we cling to the rocks, refusing to let go into that larger life?  What keeps us attached to those habits and beliefs that threaten to take us under, even those that we love? 

My sweet husband has had direct information for 3 years (via myself and my invisible helpers) that his unconsciousness was causing a major energy drain on himself and our family, creating havoc and despair, putting him crossways to his own soul.  But he wasn’t ready to hear it until Thursday, and when he let it go, the energy wave that was building already bobbed him (and our family) up to the top of the wave, instead of holding us down at the bottom.  The relief and feeling of rightness is unmistakable.

So now we are coming through this wave…the full moon today feels like an apex to me, and perhaps things will smooth out a bit for awhile to allow the next wave to build. This will allow us time to integrate the changes that have been made during this last part of the cycle; the deadwood having been trimmed (don’t go trying to pick it up and stick it back on the trees!), we will hopefully find our ground and center in a new way.

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)

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

Jess in SLO 11-2008

Today my first born turns 16. 

 I naturally ruminate on the events that led up to this day, the anniversary of his birth.  It was a hard day that revealed a lot about both of our most basic traits.

 My pregnancy was flawless…I LOVED being pregnant.  I felt powerful and sexy, the embodiment of Great Mother.  I had none of the issues that many pregnant women do, as if my body was doing what it did best.  As if I was built to make babies (if you saw my hips you would agree!)

I fretted about what to name this baby boy that was coming down the pike.  We discussed some names, but I wanted to be sure to pick the “right one”. 

One night I had a dream that I was with a grown boy, maybe about the age Jess is now.  He was sitting at a white kitchen table in a white kitchen, and I was standing and talking with him.  He looked exactly like Jess does now, with the exception of having very blue eyes instead of the green eyes Jess actually does have.  In the dream, I asked him about his names.  Do you like this one, do you like that one?  He would shake his head at each choice.  When I finally asked if he liked the name “Jess”, he shrugged, and I took that to mean it was the best of the choices we’d presented.  I woke up knowing his name.

As I got closer and closer to Jess’ due date, I wondered how I would get this giant child out of my body.  He was a big baby (I seem to grow big babies); at almost 10 pounds, my doctor was concerned that we would have to go the C-section route if he didn’t hurry it along.  I didn’t know any better, not having given birth before, and not having any mothering influences around to remind me to trust my body’s knowing.

As the due date came and went, I puzzled over why this baby wasn’t coming.  Was it up to the baby to decide?  Was it up to my body?  Was it a dance between the baby, my body, and something larger that made the decision as to his arrival? 

 My doctor gave me an ultimatum.  We would wait no longer than two weeks after the due date, or risk having surgery to bring Jess into the world.  We scheduled a date “just in case”.  I asked a woman I worked with about how to choose a date, and she told me that more animals are born before a full moon than after, so I chose to schedule his birth the night before the full moon.  Those two weeks I prayed a lot.  Please come, Jess.  Let him go, body.  But to no avail.

The morning of his scheduled birth, I was so scared and sad.  Scared because I had no idea what to expect and sad because I felt my body had somehow betrayed me.  It hadn’t allowed the birth process to happen as it was supposed to.  My body wasn’t letting this child go…it wasn’t releasing him into the world.  That was a big clue for me much later in my life about my core emotional wound…the world is not safe.

The birth itself was long and hard.  Pitocin to rush things along, and an epidural to keep me from losing my mind during the birth of an almost 10 pound baby.  I have since learned an immense amount about the often unnecessary “medical menu” experience; my second son was born at home in the water with a midwife.  But that’s another story.   After labor pains of 9 hours or so, I pushed for 2 hours, lost a lot of blood, and Peter thought both I and Jess were going to die.  I felt as if there were two of me; the one that wanted this baby out of my body and the one that was hanging on to him as if life depended on it.

Eventually, the me that wanted him out won by a slight margin.  I remember the moment; the doctor said Jess was in distress…this remarkable baby had been moving his head in an effort to help the move down the birth canal, but he was weakening.  He was stuck and losing strength.  I had been bleeding and pushing for 2 hours, exhausted and freaked out because I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.  The room was filling up with varied medical professionals, and a room for surgery had been prepared.  I thought I couldn’t do any more.  But when I heard her making noises that intimated that he may not make it, something bigger than the me that wanted to keep him safely in my body took over, and I pushed with a strength that came from Source itself.  I was no longer in the room; I was the big bang.  Suddenly I exploded and gave birth to the universe.  And Jess was born.   

He was blue and limp, needing oxygen for a couple of minutes.  His poor little head was shaped like a cone from being in between my pelvic bones for so long.  But he lived. Thank god for his determination.

My body was torn to shreds physically; the inner conflict I’d experienced left me exhausted and ripped open emotionally.  My most basic fear had been exposed, the scab of an old, but very alive wound, ripped right off.  The pulsating well of grief and fear within that was subsequently exposed took me down a rabbit hole of two years of post partum depression, and the re-emergence of my spirit back into my life.  And healing.

So, in a very real way, this beautiful boy who turns 16 today saved my life.  He is a teacher to me every day; wise beyond his years and with seeming nerves of steel, he has a tender heart and genuine caring for all humanity.  When he decides to do something, he does it with mastery.  I am amazed sometimes at the ease with which he moves through the world.

But it was his entrance into the world through my body that taught me one of my most precious lessons. No matter what our fears and doubts, no matter what wounds may seize us up and make us try to prevent flow, life wins.

first published on 12-4-06 on www.liciaberry.com

I had an interaction last night that was such a blessing to me; I went to a cookie exchange party here in the valley and got into a conversation with a woman that was simultaneously sad and affirming for me, causing me to get even clearer on what I want for myself and this beautiful world.

This woman solicited me to help reform our local Goddess Group (an informal group of local women who  enjoy getting together for ceremony, play, and being with each other) into something more “serious”.  She is a proponent of one of the “new age” spiritual philosophies and she would like to see the group become much more like this philosophy.  I asked her what she meant by “serious”; I am all for intentionally working with the global energies (such as the full moon) and expanding love into the universe from a grateful and intentional heart, but I am not interested in getting “heavy” or dogmatic, if that’s what is meant by “serious”.  I told her that I have found that lightness and play and humor and love are a more effective tool towards feeling our divine connection and therefore shifting the vibration of the planet.  She then seemed to be triggered by what I said, and went into her philosophy that she has learned, which is that if we are not taking things “seriously”, we are allowing our ego to dominate us.  She said, “If we don’t negate our ego, we will never grow“.       

WOW.  Such a clear picture did I get from this comment!  A picture of sadness, self hatred, judgment of self and others, self-flagellation.  It was shocking and so very sad at the same time.  I got a picture of how many of us try to pretend some part of ourselves is not really there, and over time, how we forget our wholeness.  I got a picture of the earth, and millions of people, who in their misguided attempts to “be spiritual” try to kill off parts of themselves that they were born with, that are necessary in order to be alive.  I heard a voice saying “This is how wars start.”  I got images of people of different cultures over time saying “….I negate you…..you do not exist….your beliefs are wrong….I negate you.”  I got a clear understanding that if we are making war on ourselves by negating a part of ourselves, of course we are going to make war on others, whether in physical combat or in arguments over “what is more spiritual”.  To try to negate a part of oneself is like cutting off your own limb.  It was an all encompassing vision that has stayed with me since last night.

I took all of this to the aspects of All Creation that I know as angelic and this is what they had to say this beautiful morning:

“Sweet One, your instinct is correct from our standpoint.  You have children and you have seen with your own experience how if you ignore a needy child they just get louder, they up the ante, they will not be negated.  Over time, if they are repeatedly ignored, they will give up their fight to their birthright of being seen, heard and acknowledged, but they have closed away a part of themselves in the process.  This is what occurs when an individual tries to shut off a part of themselves….that aspect of their divinity gets louder, it wants to be heard, until over time a door shuts inside and the person forgets they have that part.  But the beauty and the challenge is that the part they have tried so hard to negate is now unconsciously “driving the train” of their life. 

It is not possible for you to be in the earth plane, in a physical body, without an ego.  The ego is a necessary part of your Being and the beautiful design of being in physical form.  You can no more negate your ego than you can negate your existence.  It is not possible to be in physical form without an ego.  You see, in the grand design, the ego is the information gatherer; the ego processes the data of life in the physical plane, then gives that information to the rest of your infinitely vast being.  You ego is a valuable part of the multi-leveled and fabulous individuated consciousness of Prime Source that you represent. 

It is human invention that a person must “kill the ego” in order to be spiritual, just as it is human invention to judge something as right or wrong.  There is no angelic presence that will tell a human being to negate the ego, as it is our very essence to be unconditionally loving (Prime Source is unconditionally loving, too).  In addition, it is an illusion to think that you CAN negate the ego.  As you witnessed in the one who brought this to you, her ego ran rampant in her extreme desire to negate it.  What part of herself is making war on herself, her grand Spirit?  We think not.  This situation makes us chuckle a bit. 

It may be worth your time to have compassion for one who would wish a part of themselves dead; only one who is in quite a bit of pain would wish such a thing.  We have a question; how is one who holds themselves to such a rigid standard able to grow?

We advocate an appropriate partnership between the ego and the vastness of who you are.  We of course see that the desire to negate the ego is a backlash to the many on the earth plane who allow their ego to be the ONLY part of themselves making the decisions, regardless of the input of their Soul, Spirit and their Source (and of course their angelic helpers!)  However, one extreme swing of the pendulum in opposition is just as imbalanced as the other.  It is our suggestion that humans choose to come into balance, to choose right relationship between their ego and the largeness that they truly are.  We see that attempting to negate a part of oneself is not life affirming, to you or to the Whole.   

Any aspect of yourself that you attempt to destroy, hide, suppress, or negate will come back to be acknowledged in larger ways, and primarily unconsciously, because you have not been loving enough to yourself to acknowledge that aspect consciously; so it will make itself known in ways you don’t notice.  The analogy of a needy child is appropriate here again; if the child cannot get what it needs from the appropriate source, it will seek what it needs elsewhere, and sometimes in ways that are not life affirming.  It will find a way to be heard, or die.

You are magnificent, multi-faceted Beings; do you truly believe that your Source would have made you the way you are, only to have you reject certain parts as unworthy?  Would your loving Source have intentionally created “flawed” beings?  Do you mistrust the wisdom of Prime Source so much? 

Our suggestion is that you love all aspects of yourselves unconditionally, as we and Prime Source love you.  You are so very dear and precious to us, and it is our great honor to know you, an extension of ourselves.  Thank you for this opportunity to speak to this.  We love you, dearest.”

Witch Power and Grandmother Nature

Like so many GOOD things that have been twisted, misinterpreted, and manipulated, the conclusion that I am coming to about the word “WITCH” is that it needs to be shed of its nasty connotations (at least in my own mind), and that the word needs to be reclaimed.

In the spirit of reclaiming, I invite you to play with me and create an acronym from the word “witch”…several of you have already offered some:

• Wisdom Intuition Transformation Compassion Healing -Peter
•  Woman’s Intuition Touching Communal Heart –Liza
•  Women Inspiring Truth Change + Harmony –Peter
•  Wisdom Interconnected Terra Caring Hope –Licia
•  Wonderful Intuitive Teacher Called Healer –M.

Let’s hear some more!

My last post has struck a nerve for some of you, and I’m glad to know I’m far from alone in critically examining this word “witch” and trying to understand what it means in an original sense, rather than a pop culture, commercial, colonial, Christian or patriarchal sense (did I leave anybody out?)

 I feel the need to explain why being called a witch is something that stopped me in my tracks.  I have been proud to be a rebel or outsider all of my life, not being willing to be defined by any category or fit into the main stream ideas of what a woman is supposed to be.  I have flaunted my independence, and happily yelled “THANKS!” when someone told me I was weird or different.  However, unlike when a fellow yelled at me from his passing car, “DYKE!” in my buzz cut college phase (I was fine with that mistaken label), being called a “witch” felt too close to home, insidious, and brought up a sinking feeling of terror. 

 I couldn’t understand why I would feel that way in terms of my actual life.  I have never identified myself as a witch, although in my spiritual practice I do some things that might raise the eyebrows of bible thumpers (such as meditation, using homeopathy and herbs to treat illness, and dowsing, a very useful skill I learned from an old woman in the mountains of North Carolina). Of course, my shamanic work could be classified as witchy were it not for its connections to the indigenous populations…or are they “witches”, too?

 While I lived in the village where I was “identified as a public enemy” (before I knew anything about these behind-the-hand remarks about me) I had intuitive flashes in which an angry mob would come drag me out of my office, grab me by my hair and drag me down the street.  The intuitive vision would stop there, not revealing the fate of the woman I seemed to be in the inner vision.  But the feeling of cold stones weighing down the innards of my belly did not easily or soon cease. 

This was not an entirely new sensation for me.  Back in Asheville NC, where we lived for 7 years, I had multiple odd spontaneous awarenesses that involved flashes of me being disemboweled, drowned, or beheaded.  One such instance was preceded by a physical break down of my right shoulder…for weeks it got more and more sore and incapacitated.  After many attempts to have it corrected through chiropractic and massage work (and Advil), in a strange fit of inner knowing, I paused in the living room on my way to take some laundry upstairs and asked silently what my body was telling me. 

Giving in to the motion, my body then took over…I began to move as if somebody much bigger than me was rearranging me like a puppet.  My inner eye saw a lovely young woman with reddish blond curls and a long flowered dress being brought forcibly into a crowd of people.  She must have been 18 or 19 years old.  She was pretty, but had a gleam in her eye and a set to her jaw. My right arm went slammed tight behind my back, fist up behind my heart.  I was forced down to my knees.  My head was pushed down so that I was crouched over.  In my mind’s eye, I saw a bloody stump of a tree, where I was now resting my chest.  As my eyes looked down on red ground, I heard and felt a stalwart, “I will never let this happen to me again.”  Then the “memory” faded, and miraculously, my right shoulder was completely cured.  Never another pain.

I stood there in a bit of a daze.  What the hell had just happened?  Was that girl me?  I wasn’t scared; more I had the feeling of knowing that my body had revealed something to me, and because I gave it permission, something had been released.  It was a pivotal experience affirming my life philosophy, which I have incorporated deeply since, that our bodies are the key to so much wisdom.

Was what happened a playing-out of some kind of cellular or collective memory? Or did I actually live through that?  When I was called “witch” in the tiny town in Colorado where I used to live, was it bringing forth another wave of memories that were asking to be acknowledged and released through me?  If so, what did this mean to me personally?  Why is this such a prominent and repeated feature in my life?

And that’s why I am asking these questions of all of you wise people, and why I feel the need to explore this line of thought.  What is a witch, really?  Where did the word come from, what are its origins?  And when did it become a word for something that was evil, scary, and needing to be put to death?  

And do any of you have these spontaneous memories or experiences?  If so, I would be so honored to hear them.

I saw the movie that is taking the world by storm the other night, and it has taken me several days to have some words to be able to describe my experience.

First let me say that I am not so much a popular movie buff.  I do like some movies that happen to have fallen in the popular range, such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings…those stories carry that mythical quality that appeals to my Hero’s Journey mentality.  But most of the time, I will not see movies that most others see; I usually find them to be hollow.  I certainly don’t attend first run movies in the theater unless there is some very good reason to see it on the big screen.

Avatar was one such occasion.  A bit of a geek for visuals (I am an artist, after all), I wanted to see the new technology every one is talking about.  Similar to when Star Wars first broke into the movie industry, Avatar is carrying a whole new ability to enter the film as if we are part of it, and this is due in no small part to the new computer and filming technologies used to make the movie.

 It satisfied in that respect, totally.  Avatar was eye candy from the beginning, and so the artist geek in me that totally gets off on the visuals was delighted.  Completely.  Very.

And now that I have acknowledged that, I want to deepen the conversation for a moment to the larger philosophical, ecological, and spiritual implications of the film. 

Other innate aspects of me are my love of universal themes, my love of humanity, my love of the earth, and my innate awareness of my connection with All Creation.  This movie appealed to those aspects, as well.

It interested me that the geek side of me was completely revved up…my geekiness seems to live in my head, at least that is where I feel it.  It is a fascination with the pretty things, the distractions, the amazement at what we can create with our brilliant, curious minds.  But the story, and the larger impact, I felt deep in my being.  My experience was of being stretched like taffy from top of my head to the core of the earth, where I choose to ground my energy to the planet.

And perhaps that was intended on the part of the moviemakers.  So much of the time I see humanity hanging out in our heads (what I call “the Penthouse”), a place up high with a fabulous view, where we don’t have to interact with the messy stuff that lay at our feet (the stuff of being human).  We can hide in the penthouse, being fascinated with our mental constructs, believing we have control of our lives, inventing all kinds of brilliant (if flawed) philosophies and get rich quick schemes, and keeping ourselves “safe” from connecting with each other. 

 I see many using their bodies as a kind of walking prop that carries the penthouse around, not really grounding and connecting with the earth in the deep way we were intended to (and our ancestors used to do).  I have done it, too, and feel I am rescuing myself now from the edge of making that way of life a habit for me.  I have made no secret in the years I have been writing publicly that I feel this is a kind of madness, a sickness that has taken humanity away from our feelings of connection with the earth and with each other, resulting in disastrous consequences.

Seeing Avatar left me with a sense of fullness, but not over the top fullness.  It was a fullness that my entire body, my entire Being could hold.  It was a, “Wow, that was an amazing feat of technology, and hmmmmm, yes, that story is so familiar to my heart and belly, and therefore not a big deal”.  I know for some the story will be a new awareness, and perhaps this is even one reason many are so deeply affected by the film.  Perhaps the use of the new technology to appeal to both hemispheres of our brain, coupled with the deep and ancient nature of the story, was a guarantee that the messages would get through, in one way or another.  For this I am glad.  

An utterly visually beautiful film, an eye popping experience of technology….but what really felt important to ME was how old the story is…to me it is the ages-old tale of how we struggle in ourselves to feel as if we are in control of our own destinies, denying our connection to Source and All Creation, the web of life. 

Do we flail about our whole lives, building walls around us, living in a box of our own creation, resisting the attempts of the universe to break though our self-imposed barriers?  Or do we let the Light in; do we take the risk and surrender to love, opening to the inherent goodness of the universe and allowing ourselves to experience our connection with the All That Is?  And what will be the consequences of those choices?  To me, that is the essential message of this film.

The story in Avatar is as old as the hills….perhaps the most ancient story there is.  I pray that each of us find our way back to the awareness and experience that we are all connected in this Web of Life.  Therein lies our salvation.