Posts Tagged ‘inner guidance’

A journal entry from 10-30-09

The little boy I picked up in the labyrinth (http://liciaberry.com/blog/2009/11/10/the-boy-in-the-labyrinth/) is beginning to stir now…he has more life in him, whereas he did not seem to inhabit his body very much before.  I feel he is a personification of my power.  I am healing my power as well as exploring what authentic power looks like for myself.  As I do this, I predict I will see this little boy grow into an actualized man.  And that I will feel comfortable and confident in the world, a genuine soul expressing their authentic power, informed by the Sacred Feminine in her power.

In recent weeks, I have felt such outrage and despair about the plight of women and children who are preyed upon by those who would use their power to dominate them.  So many stories of rape and murder; it is so heinous to me.  I was worried about myself because some modern “spiritual” folk say that anger is a bad thing to feel and it “takes your vibe down”.  I find myself wanting to fight them, which of course means I am fighting a part of myself that wants to gloss over the feelings and pretend everything is okay.  I also don’t want to be one dimensional, the angry feminist who drives folks away by her intensity and ire.

But I chose to trust my body and emotions as a message to me that there was something wrong, and I let it take me down a path.  Trusting, trusting.  As I allowed my anger and expressed it in my writing and conversations, it took me to a new place. 

I saw a purple matrix on a field of black, or a Great Web, and heard “Mending the Web”, over and over, for days and now weeks.  I saw that it would be fairly simple to continue down the angry path, let it fuel itself continuously, and break the web by posting and publishing angry thoughts. 

But then I saw that it is “women’s work” to heal, to mend the breaks in the web that out-of-balance folks cut.  I understood that my original desire in the world was to heal, and that has been the case until I got angrier and harder in my heart, wanting to be acknowledged for being right and for being victimized.  It is such a tricky thing to stay on that tightrope of balanced, righteous anger that needs to be felt and expressed, or falling over into letting it consume you, become who you are.  Letting ourselves be human when we have studied spirituality can be a tricky game to play with ourselves.

As I continued with some trepidation down this path into greater room and understanding, I also saw that women who are empowered (and me) are strong enough to be the big ones, the ones who will take the first step and reach out our hands to do the mending.  Just as many wise and respected feminists have said, it is the women who must lead the coming awareness and shift in consciousness to balance.  Quietly, perhaps in some ways…..but that it is up to us to start the healing of this world. 

Spider Woman, by Susan Seddon Boulet

Then, I saw and heard “healing the masculine”.  Ah, is it not enough to heal ourselves as women, and the damage done to us at the hands of the outrageously immature masculine without (and our internalized fathers and immature masculine within)?  Perhaps we may be called to turn and heal those who have trespassed against us. 

Well, I don’t know how this will work…I sure don’t want to get in a conversation with my father and attempt to “heal” him.  I already know he doesn’t want to do that in ways that I consider healthy for him.  But, maybe by healing my own inner masculine, helping my inner masculine to grow up in a healthy balanced way, with a mature inner feminine to help him, there may be hope.

Family constellation work has shown me that there is no such thing as space and time…that healing can occur for all involved when all the factors are present.  Perhaps if I heal and mature my own inner masculine, my father in some way is released from his own pain, and healing can happen for him (and others).

But first, I must peel back the face I have placed on him, the veneer of goodness, the stories of heroism that I have projected onto him, and believed.  I must see what is underneath.  Better get out the drills, hammers and chisels.  It’s time for the idealized father to die.

So much work I have done to awaken the Sacred Feminine within me.  So much attention have I given to embodying Her, to BEING Her in this world that has been so out of kilter for thousands of years.  And that has all been right because it has brought me home to a large part of myself that is strong, deep, profound in its desire to heal and mother this world.

And in the last few months, another voice has been respectfully poking its head into my consciousness.  It feels pointed, focused, exacting, harder than the quality of energy I experience with Great Mother or the Sacred Feminine.  It is absent entirely unless I give it permission to enter my space, and then it comes in with a full force of presence, taking up room.  To my great surprise, I am told it is the voice of Great Father.

Well, it is true that I have on obsession with balance.  I know that my soul has a sense of humor because that is my maiden name.  Balance is the closest thing to a religion I could say I have.  Balance is the way of the universe, the way of nature, the way of the middle road.  I respect and want to emulate balance very much, because I believe that is the natural way that things are, and I want to be as close to that as I possibly can.

Masculine/feminine balance is also part of that duality that we see played out in physical form.  Notice I did not say men and women, but masculine and feminine, qualities of energy that play at opposite ends of a spectrum, holding the space for physicality to occur through the magnetic polarity of opposites.  This is how all physical matter is able to be in existence.

So it would make some sense that my focus on the Sacred Feminine would be so successful…that I would feel Her, embody Her, teach others how to awaken that pathway within themselves…and that would lead me to Him, the Divine Masculine.  From the strength of Her, I will come to know Him.

More to come about my resistance to the masculine, the work I am doing to remove the veneer of my internalized father from the face of the Great Father, and the success I have had recently in my new relationship with Him.

"Aidan Cathedral", Peter Berry 2004, Digitally Transformed Photograph

The word “rebirthing” has been in my psyche quite a bit of late; perhaps in part due to the immanence of spring (around the corner, I hope!)    Perhaps in part due to the “collective sloughing off” that’s going on for so many people, in our country and beyond.  And perhaps in part due to the changes I have seen in my own life.

It is a hard thing to describe in quantifiable terms when deep internal change is happening.  It’s like trying to put words on a moving, invisible target made of mist.  The way I know change is happening is that I can feel it.  Of course, I see behavior changes, but that is after the changes are integrated.  The first way I know they are happening is that I can feel motion inside.

I’m not alone.  I’ve been talking to some kick-ass women, women who don’t always have words for what they are experiencing, either, but trust themselves enough to know that something is going on, something big and good and life changing.  They sometimes think they are alone, and they experience such relief when they realize that they aren’t. 

These are the women I want to surround myself with in my life.  These are women who are strong, have been through some things, have survived hardship, or pulled themselves up by their bootstraps when no one else would give them a hand.  These women are feeling something inside of them, too, something that is calling them home.  And they are choosing to listen.

Rebirth is a term that seems perfect for what is going on for me right now.  I feel myself returning to a more childlike remembrance of my soul.   I am having body memories of what it felt like to be me before I learned how to cover up my light.  I am remembering certain qualities of myself that I’ve not really touched in some time.  The experience is like, “Oh, yeah, I used to feel that feeling when I was little.”  It brings tears to my eyes sometimes!

When I think about it from a pattern perspective (I’m always seeing patterns), I’d have to say that my core self is re-emerging after trying on a suit for some years.  The suit worked well for awhile, even though it was uncomfortable at times.  But now, I am done with that particular suit, and I want to try on one that is a better fit for me.  A roomy, silky, blue and green, flowing suit.

I feel some fear and anxiety at times because I don’t quite know what is around the corner.  But at the same time, I feel an anticipation, an eagerness…like the joy I felt at special times when I was a younger person.  Like the whole world is my playground.  I can’t wait!

Rebirth.  Re-emerge.  New/Old identity.  Who am I becoming?  I think it’s more ME.

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)

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.

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’m not a scholar on Christian holy days; I observe spiritual traditions that make sense to me, that have personal meaning to me.  Until yesterday, Epiphany flew by unnoticed. 

The 12^th day of Christmas, Epiphany is the oldest of the Christmas festivals and originally the most important.  It is the day traditionally celebrated in Christian culture as the day the Magi arrived to behold the Christ child.

“The word epiphany comes from the Greek noun epiphaneia, which means “shining forth,” “manifestation,” or “revelation.”  In the ancient Greco-Roman world, an epiphany referred to the appearance of one of the gods to mortals.  Since Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors were considered by many to be gods, the word epiphany was also used as a term for divine majesty.”  (source: http://www.stpaulskingsville.org/epiphany.htm)

Yesterday was a day in which it felt like many veils were lifted between my eyes and the larger spiritual container I live in.  I had so many revelations, and indeed, one very important “manifestation”, that I once again feel affirmed in my belief that there is a larger energy that holds us all, and that if we align with it, magic can happen.

I sat in the morning for my inner guidance time, which I typically create several times per day (and always at night before bed so that I can bring my consciousness to anything pertinent while my body sleeps).  This is my time to be still, listen and feel my connection to the Whole and a larger perspective on my life. My usual pathway of access opened up, and I felt the familiar alignment click into place.  As I awaited the presence of higher consciousness in my mind, I felt a new (yet very old and familiar), somewhat different presence move in from the left of center, supplanting my usual interface with the Divine.

“Who is here?” I asked.  A vast, deep silence, a feeling of gravity, immense power in my belly and sweetness in my heart was the response.  I sat quietly straining to hear with my inner ears, but I couldn’t quite make out the name.  I asked, “Are you here to aid me in my highest good?”  Yes, I was told, and I felt a rush of goodwill pouring through me.  “Are you accountable to the light?”  I asked.  I heard, No, I am accountable to the dark. 

This is when I started squirming; my early Christian preschool indoctrination formed my young, developing mind into a good versus evil bent, and I struggle to this day with unconsciously perceiving light as good and dark as bad, even though I know consciously that this is not true. 

My resonance lies with the yin/yang symbol, in which the darkness and the light are simply two halves of existence that balance one another, and are therefore necessary for the Whole.  It is our small, human minds that place judgments on qualities of energy such as light and dark, calling them names and putting them in little boxes so that we can feel more in control. 

I have also studied the Goddess traditions extensively, and know that darkness, a symbol for the womb, for the void, for the night, for the face of the new moon, has been vilified ever since patriarchy reared its adolescent grab for power on the planet.  I know from hard won experience that anything we demonize warrants a closer look to see what we are projecting onto it.

I heard this Being that had entered my holy space speak that it was accountable to the dark, and took a breath.  “Who are you?” I asked again.

I am the Dark Mother, She answered.

I sat quietly, stunned at the simplicity and precision of this revelation.  I then proceeded to ask several clarifying questions, the first of which were asked to make sure I was safe to be interacting with this powerful yet benevolent energy, and the latter of which resulted from my increasing feelings of bliss and excitement.  Many moments later, I was in tears as accepted Her, and felt myself in the arms of my truest Mother.

Over the course of the day as I opened further to this awareness, my epiphanies ranged from seeing how the Dark Mother had been in my life, (very clearly had I eyes to see Her) for several years, to feelings of being Home.  The work I had begun in 2005 to embody the Divine Feminine was inspired by Her.  Images of the Black Madonna, which I’d written an extensive article about in 2007, flashed through my mind.  The many essays and radio shows and personal experiences of the Sacred Feminine that I’d processed and offered to the world as a road map fell into place. 

As a woman who resonates deeply (as well as recognizes within myself) the Sacred Feminine energies, I have spent time getting to know the several faces of the Goddess.  I remember in 1999 that Mary the Mother was the first face of the feminine I began to interact with as an adult.  She was safe, a clean symbol of goodness and light, and a good start for a woman fearful of her own feminine energy.

As a child, Isis was a frequent companion, but over the years I lost my sense of her.  She came roaring back into my life in 2001, when I got the tap on my shoulder to come out of hiding as a healer, and opened my energy work practice in downtown Asheville NC. 

Then other faces of the Goddess began to emerge in my consciousness.  Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Innana, Brigid, Tara, Cerridwen, Persephone, Sedna, Lilith, Mary Magdalene, Amaterasu, GrandMother Moon, Spider Woman and more.  As each of these treasured and varied Faces of Her visited me, I interacted with their archetype and integrated them into my own awareness, making those aspects within me conscious.  It has been a remarkable journey of awakening. 

However, my names for Her never included the Dark Mother, perhaps because of my subconscious association of dark with evil. 

I had heard of the Dark Mother as a name for the fierce Goddess Kali, She who oversees death and rebirth, and so I had approached the Kali archetype with a large perimeter and a considerable dose of respect. 

I knew the acknowledgement and appreciation of the darkness that comes with shamanic practice, in which the journeying through the various inner worlds must be discerningly and powerfully navigated. 

I had experienced the darkness of entering initiations, and coming through into the light, being reborn. 

And I had experienced the darkness that came with fully exploring the archetypes of some of the previously mentioned faces of the Divine Feminine….darkness in the sense of exploring in unfathomable places in my psyche, such as deep, winding caves and caverns, traversed along with my sister Innana, and at the bottom of the sea, along with my underwater kin, Sedna.  Darkness in the sense of moving through what cannot be seen with the eyes, but must be felt and experienced through the inner worlds, where great treasure is yielded for those who have the courage to undertake the journey.

How magical that on this day of January 6^th, 2010, which I have just now learned is called Epiphany in the Christian tradition, that I would be visited by my own “magi”, or sage, in the manifestation of the Dark Mother, bestowing gifts upon Her child.  Thank you, All That Is.