DatingGod

Make Art. Tell the Truth. Be Free.

I quit the public health job. Gave a month's notice. Trained a replacement who still has that rosy save-the-world shine. Got the f*ck out.

A decade of study and work in the public field, only to discover what I knew before I did all that moving and grooving and research and yelling and planning and cajoling and presenting and writing and nutting up for one more recommendation to the Board.

This is a prison world. First the walls were built. Then the process began to lock down every single gate (farmers run out of business, don't drink the water, eat the food, breathe the air).

Most of the gates were closed down years ago, but the gates had been painted with images of children laughing, gorgeous bursts of flowers, fecund fields of fruit and veg, people dancing and laughing and f*cking (but tastefully, have to mind the censors). And because we were all so terribly busy, too caught up to look closely, we believed the images mirrored the truth. Then we began to believe that the images were the truth. (It looks like food, smells like food, tastes like food - how can this not be food? and then we eat it and get sick, yet again.)

I spent two and a half years working to increase the health of a population of 38,000. But what I discovered was that the folks in charge didn't actually want the work done, just the image of it. The most important thing was that it look like what we were doing supported increasing health. Lots of noise and wind and the moving about of furniture. But at the end of each day, it was still about keeping people in boxes all day, breathing moldy air, teaching and forcing a life of the mind.

Slavery has come a long way in the past fifteen thousand years. On one side of the cost-benefit analysis is keeping the slaves ill enough to not rebel, so what little available energy is consumed with baseline survival, time and money spent on the prescription meds and surgeries and treatments and distractions needed to stay in forward motion. On the other side are slaves so ill and demented that they can't work, so sick and crazy that they are impacting the slaves who have learned to like their cell. I've spent the last decade watching how money flows in and out to hold that razor balance. 

They paid me well to organize the slaves, make them appear more happy, less ill. Sick people are less rebellious (although some folks are required to act out their rebellion through violence and mayhem so that there can be a group to blame for the crawling fear and 3 am dread we feel). But in the end, being paid well for that kind of work is misery money. No real joy comes from that kind of cash.  

But underneath the acknowledgement of all of this, is the knowledge that the walls were raised, the gates locked, but that ultimately we all have a key. We've forgotten where we left it, but we do have it. Maybe this too is a belief that will ultimately die, like all of the beliefs before it. But for now, it sits there. The knowledge that there is a way out. 

But as I write this, all I can think about it is: who is reading this and what will they do with any info I post here? Who reads my emails and texts, listens to call, follows browser history? How many people are killed each year for telling the truth? How many hunters are there?   

I've started following a blogger who knows she is being watched, and yet still crafts these defiant, mysterious posts. Layered with symbolism and clues, the tightly packed one or two paragraphs require reading and rereading to begin to see beneath the surface to what she's saying. It is high art in the information age. I'm grateful to read it. 

Likely, I post this because of her. For how far she is out on the limb, sending posts from that edge. 

Maybe it's to tell myself what I told her: Make art. Tell the truth. Be free. 

The Sign Did Say Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Do I remember how to write? Do the stories, anyone's stories matter? Will reading this change a life? Forever? Until the next click through?

Letting go, deepening surrender, yeah fine whatever. Not taking a picture of a moment because I choose not to leave the moment to be the one step outside of it required to take the picture. Not crafting an experience so as to have it be a more exciting, more profound story to write. Not writing a story in order to reorganize it in my brain body heart in a more comfortable arrangement. 

And yet the opting out of using the experience of living as fodder for willful creation has had an opposite effect. The living is much more passive. More tv watched. More books read. More surfing the net, relaxing into rabbit holes and weird fringe trails and banal pop culture pot holes. Even the more bourgeois stuff of day to day falls away - dishes hang out in the sink, laundry doesn't get put away, vacuuming is a special occasion - replaced by nothing but a drift through 2012, then 2013, now 2014. And the supposed highlights - birthdays, holidays, vacations - all become no different from any other moment. All just things that occur, but not really, as the sun and moon chase each other, but not really, across the sky.

If I could again have the experience of living be spiritually magical and full of Yes and heart achingly meaningful, would I choose it? I know that I wouldn't. I understand that I can't. Bar a head trauma, the known can't be unknown. Not really. Lots of people pretending. I get that. The why of it. Because the truth ain't fancy or pretty or fun. 

Why bother, then? Maybe because on some level, the current understanding of truth doesn't add up. The truth is seen, but the interpretation of what to do with it, how to abide in it, is perceived as off somehow. There is no indication of what to do next on any pervasive scale in this living and so the living goes on based on smaller nudges - Bikram yoga many times a week, unraveling out of workplace dramatics, turning towards a deeper submersion into the earth plant sun water microbe etc etc layer. 

When you no longer seek to fix the story, the brokenness appears to take over. Maybe for a while. Maybe for good. Maybe there's something underneath the shards. Maybe not. Maybe there are no shards. 

How weird to know that I know more than I have in my entire life, and that the title for that knowing is I Don't Know. And that as I watch, listen, witness the folks who radiate with the experience of their living that they know something, that one thing they've absolutely figured out, how clear it is that they are more lost than ever. 

Maybe it's cowardice. Maybe it's truly, finally nutting up after a lifetime of la-la-la. I know that it doesn't matter. I know that I don't know.  

And that Baby Wallace is handsome. 

Here

Sitting here on this Friday early morn, I look back at my living of six years ago and think of how much has changed. Or a decade ago, and how I'm barely the same person any more.

The radical shift began in 2004, when I walked away from everything and everyone I knew, to go live in a cabin on a mountain, where I began writing posts for this blog most every day. Then going back to school, getting a BA then an MPH. And how that radically altered me. There was no more holistic healer life. It was replaced with the whole scholastic living thing, sitting for three years and reading and researching and typing papers and taking exams. But it was the thing that happened in 2005, at the tail end of the BA that radically altered the landscape. Or rather began the deep internal explosions that began to tear down the house I'd lived in for so long.

It was a book. You know the one. It was a moment of arriving. Of finally finding someone who identified the process I was in. Who left messages on signposts. Signposts that dotted the path behind me, making sense of the rubble of the past. Lots of signposts up ahead, with only the one closest to me in sharp relief.

It was a signpost that allowed a radical kind of seeing. That the things squished up against the edge of an abyss were meant to go over the cliff. And that all I had to do was let them go, let go of all of it, that it was more painful to try and hold onto them, and utterly pointless to try and process any of it. The signpost showed that something would remain after all of the things were gone, gone, not whistling as they fell away, but simply going over the cliff and then, poof, disappearing.

That letting go was hard work, and it took the better part of three years. In that time, the MPH was finished, I moved back to the Carolina coast to stay with my sister for a few months, got an apartment, got a job, quit it within six weeks, began doing shamanic work full-time. 

And then the big event happened. The event that changed this living forever, in a way that there was no retuning back from. It cored me, ripping out what felt like viscera, but turned out to be just the essence of who Katherine thought she was. While it was going on, it felt like I was dying. So painful that I prayed for death. And so I died.

Not that I had any real choice. Because it was an event that was a test. One of those places where the rubber meets the road. One of those once in a lifetime opportunities to see what you're really made of, who you really are, what you are willing to do.

You say you love? This is your chance to prove it. You say you're willing to sacrifice anything for this being that you love? Prove it. If you don't do it, you show that you never loved them at all, only used them for the comfort and safety that their love gave you. If you do it, you die. 

While I was dying, there were a thousand chances to turn back. And I did. Many times. But each time I'd see the effect it had on the being I loved. He was dying too. And each time I turned back, he descended into a suffering that was truly horrific, much more horrific than dying myself. And so I let go, let the tide of death keep taking me. Because when I let death have me, when I turned my energy away from living and opened instead to the love inside of me, the love for him, the absolute release of anything other than love for him opened some channel for him, and his suffering vanished. In the flow of my love for him, his own dying process became pain free, easy, gentle.

Until the end. The last two days before his physical death, he was disoriented. He became almost unrecognizable. The flow of love between us disappeared. When he was able, he wandered around the apartment as if searching for some place he couldn't find. When he lay down, it was into a quiet place inside of himself that I couldn't go. Nothing I did had any effect on him. Not to comfort him, love him, care for him. And then he died.

The last memory I have of him is of his open eyes, vacant, unseeing. During his death process, the apartment became infested with fleas. And as I lay there with him, his lifeless body, a flea crawled across his open eye, disappearing into his fur. Any belief that this was a death that could be returned from, that he might still yet live, evaporated, replaced by the image of an insect on his unseeing eye.

For a couple of days, there were practicalities to deal with. Cremation. Cleaning the apartment of the things death leaves behind. It was done mechanically, as if I were operating in a vacuum, outside of sensory experience. The only thought was: where has he gone? The only feeling, a kind of mute anguish that he was nowhere to be found.

It was during this time that I began to see that I'd changed. That entire swaths of behaviors, coping mechanisms, scripts for interacting with other people, methods of acquiring money, exchanging them for things, were gone. What it was all replaced with was a clear seeing, an ability to see love from not love. And not love was all around me.

Where the process of the last ten days of his life had been a total opening to loving him, the next ten days was about this clear seeing, with that one thought and one emotion somehow powering me, the ferocity of its sound echoing into all corners of my living. In the wake of his physical death, the only thing left was a flow of love, the love that he'd opened up in me that couldn't be stopped. It poured into the only two things that remained of him: the one thought, the one emotion. The pointed, singular focus of the ten days of loving him turned its beam into my living, beginning to scour it clean of anything not love.

Just as the beam of love had caused me to die when with him those ten days, it began destroying my life, my living. Before those ten days, I would have said that they were two separate things: me, and my life. Who I was, and then the life I was trying to create, always seeking to adjust it into something that was better, more "me". But I began to see that they were the same. There was me, and out of it came the expression of me, me made manifest in the world. They weren't separate things, but a flow between inner and outer. Whatever was in my living was there because of me, and since I had died, the living began to shift to reflect the fact of my death, the fact that there was now no one there to live it.

I'd spent a lifetime, many lifetimes, trying to turn not love into love. In the wake of his physical death, it wasn't that I finally discovered the folly of this, it's that there was nothing left inside of me that even wanted to try. The pointlessness of not love was utterly apparent, like an insect on an eyeball. Horrific to witness, but not a part of the love that flowed in a place out of its reach.

It took two years for the bulk of the scouring that came in the wake of the new seeing. Two years of dealing with lots of very angry people. When you see that the cornerstone of human personality is built on an exchange of resources, and that this exchange is dressed up to make not love appear as love, and you are no longer capable of interacting with not love, your relationships fall away. And not just the big ones - family, friends, clients - but all of the little ones too, the clerk in the store, the other people attending a meeting or party, the people you meet who might become friends.

When people give you things, and you don't give them anything back, even if you didn't ask for it, or want it, they get angry. There's a protocol of energy exchange, in the ways we interact with one another. And if you don't follow it, you're out of the game. And not with a "you have to sit this one out" but with a kick and a shove because they see you as just a loser on the playing field, the asshole who just stands there, refusing to catch the ball, or pass it to another player. It doesn't matter whether the immediate game is called family get together or meditation class or the purchase of an organic onion. It's all the same game and the exact same rules apply.

The tricky part of this, I discovered, is that the playing field is where all of human survival occurs now. Maybe it always has, but in the past, there was the possibility of going off into the woods, the desert, a mountain. All land is now owned by someone else, and if you want to be on their land, you have to pay rent, and to pay rent you have to work, and to work, you must be on the playing field.

I thought for a while about just going out onto the front lawn, laying down, not getting back up. I tried a lot of variations on this. But physical death wasn't appealing, at least not yet, and so I always got back up. Each time I got back up, though, I moved to a further and further corner of the field, away from the main play, into positions less and less essential to the game. People stopped caring that I wasn't doing much, stopped giving me things, and began to leave me alone. It helped that I learned a way to not accept things by pretending I didn't notice they were being offered, or by refusing to accept anything on any level, but complimenting them on their generosity before walking away.

My play pared down to a minimum of exchanges, a few simple tasks that could be exchanged for the things needed for pure survival. And in this tiny space on the field, way off at the very edge of the field, something shifted. Because there was so little energy being expended in the living, there was now enough quiet for a question to finally be heard.

"What do you want?"

And because there was so much energy freed up from not playing much of the game, there was now enough energy present to muster up a coherent answer.

Knowing that not love was no longer an option, and that for whatever reason, I still had to remain on the field, I answered, "Whatever is needed for this next part of the journey, whatever will show me the truth."

"You have to be a little more specific," it said.

I looked around at what was left of my living and said, "Less people. More quiet. A job that provides some basic service of living - something to do with clean food, air, water, connecting people with nature. A living that is supported by a stable base so that this next leap can be taken and the living flows with it."

I would have been happy with a hut in the woods and a job as a trail guide, but what was provided over the course of a few months was an effortless flow of radical changes that was easy, gentle, relaxed. A two bedroom home on a quarter acre in the outskirts of Durham, 90K, no money down, and at closing an extra free quarter acre valued at 18K added as a gift from the seller. A part time job with full benefits and generous salary as a wellness coordinator with tasks that require 95% of my time to be spent completely alone, producing health widgets for a needy population that provides access to clean food and exercise, education about healthy food and nutrition.

Once that was all in place, the new groove stabilized, a Thai shamanic mage found my outpost here on the net. Not a teacher who swoops in to say do this, do that. But some guy halfway around the world who said, hello, I know who you are. And for some reason, I wrote back, even though I hadn't written back to anyone like this in years. We exchanged a few emails before we realized why we were writing. He had a radical shamanic tool he could teach me how to use. And he did.  

And so now this is my living. The next leap well underway. Everything that is needed is here. Everything not needed is gone. There is only going to a job for three and a half days a week, making widgets, handing them off, then spending the weekends working the new shamanic tool. Then going into the next week working with the new shifts the tool has created. 

This new tool isn't a nice tool. It cuts deep. And because there is so little in the living, the tool saws away at the remnants of not love that are hidden deep inside a human. At the baseline software, sure, and the DNA, but also what lies beyond it.

Baby Wallace and the weaselly twins, Emmaline and Malcolm, roam the fenced in woody, wild half acre. A woolly, free-spirited garden produces herbs and vegetables for vitamixed smoothies. A few other humans, the only ones whose presence survived the culling, interact every few weeks or so via phone and net. A little light back and forth on face*book. Posting the novel I wrote a few years ago chapter by chapter for an online publisher. The occasional client met with in this home's healing room or via skype or phone. 

It's very quiet now. So quiet. 

And the real journey has just begun.

DatingGod Gets Published :)

Yo party peoples - Long time no see :) So much to tell you, so much has happened. A huge shift of stabilizing this living that up until now has never really had any sort of stability. A creation of a landing pad so that big leaps can be taken, and there's a place to land afterward. A long bit of story that will get told soon. But for now, a little celebration is in order, because:

The novel I've been working on for 15 freakin years is finally getting published - as an online serial with JukePop! Chapter 1 is up - did an edit a few weeks ago. Will be posting 3-5 chapters a week as I finalize this final truly final I swear it's final edit.

And yeah, I've got a nom de plume now :)

Happy reading: https://www.jukepopserials.com/home/read/930

 

Dulled Razor's Edge

There comes a time when even the razor's edge becomes pointless. When you understand that the alertness and hyperconnectivity it requires means nothing. 

From one angle, it appears as if I am a middle-aged, overweight, middle class public servant. From another, it's a cow that finally stopped running alongside the herd in that small pack called shamanic and just said okay fine i'll go and let the winds and momentum take her over the cliff. From another it's madness. From another it's just a quiet life in a new home with a new garden with over half an acre for kitty hijinks.

It's so weird to stop creating stories. It's so weird to be in this space of whistling air. So weird to care so little, to have released hope so fully, that going with the flow of what "Life" wants becomes the default.

There's still some struggle. Not sure what to do with it except to let itself play out. It's still often scary to see things as they really are/aren't. Because there is nothing to be done. When the truth is seen, it's so complete, so 360, so 24/7, so 100, that it leaves you gobsmacked. Of course it does. It's why most people turn around and try and head back. 

The process isn't done over here. And so the only thing to do is release into further. 

No clues other than the fact that this body is still alive, the mind still clicks along, the sound of the human heart grows fainter and fainter. 

It's true: why folks who don't have to shouldn't. If you can avoid it, defintely go that way. But if the splinter in your mind is driving you crazy, come on out here. It's so wild, so vast, you can't even imagine. I'm here, and I still don't know what to do with what is seen.

Still glad it comes with kitties, though. Kitties are fun to travel through space with. 

News

are you watching the new hbo show The Newsroom? After every single episode, it has me thinking about what news is, how it affects us, what the point is, what it really is when newsmen/women get it right. til this show i abhorred the news. now i'm actively seeking out who is doing it right. i want to know what's really going on. and i know that there are people out there with the balls and heart to tell the truth. who do you listen to, read, watch that you absolutely know in your gut is telling the truth in news?

Clear Senses

So much of what I'm doing these days is a kind of un-doing. Like removing wrappers of insulation from what i perceive, how i perceive.

The day to day whole-song process of it isn't something I'm conscious of until somewhere well into whatever is being unwrapped. I only know the note to be played and work toward perfecting that note until it rings with Yes. Once a string of notes has been perfected, the song begins to make itself known, and I get a clearer sense of what the song is about.

Not knowing what the song is forces me to be fluid in the moment, to let go of results, because I have no end game in mind, only the current note. And with the only intention of singing the note to a place of Yes, the freedom to go where the notes lead is allowing the old, tired songs from my past to be removed from the replay lineup.

And again, a huge part of it is not writing or speaking about it because someone looking in from the outside is simply going to be shouting from their own old song, insisting that the notes they hear coming from me are this song or that song. The shouting muddies the tone. Slowly, the songs I'm learning are becoming a part of me, ringing so clear and strong that hearing words spoken against the song from outside of me are less and less important. Keeping right company has been invaluable with this. The ability to walk away from anyone at anytime if it feels true is one of the strongest tools available. The courage and trust it takes is a muscle, built up over time. It brings outrageous clarity around what we want from people, what they want from us, what we're willing to offer, what feels true to accept.

And so I can share a bit of the songs I've learned, even as I still don't know their endgame. They show up as mundane, but the effect in my living has been profound. Profound enough so that dedication to perfecting the current notes is the main focus, and this effort, rather than a discipline that I make myself do, is something that gets done because on the other side lies Yes, and more Yes is so very Yes . . .

One of the most fascinating occurrences to me has been the arc of spending so much time outside. It began with the burning of plants and not wanting the smoke inside the house. The urge to burn plants, to begin understanding what the plant world offers humans, what we have to offer them, kicked in about 9 months ago. For 9 months I've been going outside a dozen times a day, in the cold, in the rain, in the hot sun. I've talked to stars and trees, vines and ants, seen fawns and hawks and foxes and cardinals. I've interacted with deer, wasps, fog, high wind, cicadas, clouds, moss. So many songs still in process of being revealed. 

By going outside, a dozen times a day, for months, and then checking the weather app on my phone, I now know what temperature it is, simply by walking outside and feeling it. I can tell by the level of humidity I feel how it's going to impact my thought processes. I can feel rain coming or leaving. I can sense different types of emotional and mental energy that's going to be stimulated by the density of electromagnetic  currents in the air. By knowing the temperature coming during the night, I know how to adjust the windows and heat or ac to provide restful sleep. I never knew how deeply the weather effects mind, body, heart. Now I do. The song of weather . . . 

The body pain - digestive, back, knee, neck, jaw, shoulder - that's been a constant in my living the past six years nearly made me lose my marbles and go home in a huff. I had all sorts of pharmaceuticals I could turn to, which I did when the pain became unbearable. At the height of coping in this way, I was taking muscle relaxers a few times a month, and ibuprofen 1000mgs at a clip, three or four times a day. I was seeing the Korean acupuncturist regularly. Trying detox after detox. Yoga classes, three times a week for months helped in some ways, but made other things worse. The pain would release for a few hours, sometimes even for a day. But would always return.

And then a few months ago, something clicked. It was a process of un-doing, and with it came releasing from all of the things propping me up - painkillers, forced exercise, detoxes, sessions with the acupuncturist. Just let it all go and let the pain rise. 

I began to watch the pain, look at the pain, get very clear exactly what and where was hurting. I stopped pushing to make myself do "good" things, and stopped trying to force myself to quit "bad" things. Instead I followed the trail of what felt true in the moment whatever it was, and then watching the result on the other side. I learned that making decisions, coming up with solutions and plans to do good things and stop bad things came from the logical, male, left part of the brain, but that the impulses came from the asymmetrical, female, ever-flowing and changing right part of the brain. 

What I saw was this: the issue isn't about forcing good in or bad out, it's about raising energy, using the lever at the core. This lever at the core demands that we give up what we think we know, and instead follow its directives. This core knows exactly what will work, and it what order the steps need to come, the notes need to be played. Everything that we hunger for, crave, is simply a primal need for more energy, to be so alive, so vibrant, that our lives, every moment, is filled with Yes, singing in cells and neurons, down all of the pathways that make up a human and its connection to the web of Life.

And so I get stronger. The pain unwinds, the strength needed to live the new awarenesses I've discovered the past three months begins thrumming through my consciousness, and I wake up to the song of strength . . .

Or cutting off all of my hair. It felt so true to do it, to keep cutting closer and closer until arriving at the current buzzcut with the curly mass at the top. As I did it, played the notes that required more and more to be cut off, it was surrender to what can only be described as ugliness. It was a willingness to let go of showing up as beautiful, womanly. But when the moment came, as I applied the electric clippers to my head and shaved the hair down to the scalp, all I felt was: Yes. 

What blew me away was what happened as I left my home over the next week. People began seeing me again. The buzzcut? It changed everything. 

As a heavy-weighted, 46-year old female, I've gotten used to being ignored when out in public. After a couple of decades as an attractive young female, having people stare at me when I walked into rooms or down the street, it was shocking to simply not be seen at all, even when trying to get someone's attention to ask a question or share a conversation. And yet over the years I embraced the invisibility, began to truly enjoy the anonymity. There is great power in the stealth of invisibility :)

And so now, in many ways, it's like being in my twenties again. Except for now, it doesn't matter. There's no need for the energy that people send with their eyes. Only a lighthearted acknowledgment of whatever it is - fear, admiration, confusion, delight, lust - it's all fine. It's not mine. I'm just over here enjoying the song of the hot pink buzzcut whirlwind that lives atop my head . . . It feels so good to sing it . . . 

So many other songs in the process of being sung. Drumming and toning as prayer to the beings and teachers that are available to us just on the other side of this reality, those beings and teachers that don't care about our mind's desires, only what our hearts sing out at full shamanic volume . . . Taking all three of the feline weasels out into the yard every day, training them to the ways of cars and hawks and dogs and people, letting them slowly acclimate to the weather that exists outside of the house, being with them as their true nature in relationship with things winged, wiggly and crawly is explored. . . 

What song are you in process of singing? What song have you just discovered you're singing, after many months, years of playing the notes? What notes are you playing, over and over to perfect their tone of Yes? 

So many songs to sing . . . such a gift to be alive . . . every morning, the day before an open pathway to release the No with a shrug, to cock an ear to the sound of Yes in the nighttime sky . . .

The Anti-Guru

Half-way into the six-month Integral Shamanics Training Program I've come to realize deeply and fully why I waited so very long to launch it. I have an abhorrence of guruship, of being set up as cosmic teacher, of telling people what to do. It's a visceral reaction, an acknowledgement that the only teacher is an internal one, even as it uses outside sources as a mirror to reflect possibilities of growth, awareness, leaps in consciousness. 

Early in 2011, I became obsessed with the program's vision. I could see its simplicity, its practical application. It was a stripped down, clarified version of the tools I use to do shamanic and psychic sessions for people, tools I'd honed from some 30 years of study and practice with shamans, energyworkers, psychics, yogic masters. The program structure was taken directly from the architecture of my Master's degree in Public Health with its concentration in Social Behavior and Community Health. The philosophic underpinnings were what I'd come to see as human culture circa the new millennium, what the false belief systems were, how entrenched they were in the human mind, body, heart, spirit, and how painful and arduous the process was likely to be as a person set about freeing themselves from them. And how simple, though not easy, the process to freedom was.

I knew the program wasn't about enlightenment, couldn't be about Waking Up. And not only because I myself wasn't enlightened (whatever the frak that is) but also because I understood so very clearly that enlightenment can't be pursued, much less taught. What the program would be was an introduction to a small but comprehensive set of tools, tools for accessing the energetic data stream that runs underneath, behind this thing we call "world".

The tools would be straightforward - shamanic, psychic, energywork. Participants would learn how to shamanic journey, build a medicine bag, connect with guides and power beings. They'd access the psychic flow of data using the psychic channels present inside of themselves. They'd clear and balance the energybody using sound, movement and repatterning techniques, tune chakras. They'd bring all of these skills into practical applications in their everyday living.

A personal development component was also added to help people navigate the ass-kickings the body-mind-heart-spirit go through as they attempt to peel away the beliefs they hold at a deep level. These false beliefs say that the keys to their freedom lie in another's hands, that anything not observed with the five senses is imagination or mental illness, that the only reality is the one that media, friends, technology, family, government, health practitioners and mainstream educators say is real. And they aren't real, only a mass consensus, layered over and over, a hundred thousand layers deep, until the layers appear as a solid ground. But they're not. Yet the trick is to unpeel the layers, allow them to fall away, even while navigating the fear that arises as what was once believed to be a solid floor to stand on is in fact merely wisps of thought, feeling, projection.

The vision of the program hinged on levels of awareness: Access the data stream while lying down with eyes closed to enter shamanic reality (journeying), then access the stream sitting up with eyes open (psychic reading), then bring it all together while standing and moving the body (energywork). The three levels of access each hold a key to the free and easy access that is inherent in the stream.

Shamanic journeying requires surrender and acceptance of the flow of data - a kind of passive release into the universal energyfield, to interact with the healers and guides and beings that can be met with there. This softens the hold the mind has on controlling and shaping what is allowed into consciousness enough so that the prison walls that are our current culture's human mindstate can be dissolved enough to be seen through. 

Psychic reading is acceptance of the fact that we have the ability to know what's going on, and that accessing this knowledge is as easy as pulling a book off the shelf or net, and then reading it. This breaks through the belief that psychic info can only be accessed by people who have "the gift", or that it's something that is mystical or spiritual. It shows that it's simply another way to read, to gather information, like surfing a universal google portal.

Energywork is acknowledgement of the energyfield that flows through body heart and mind, that moves through environments, all of it setting the stage for how human consciousness is experienced. If there is dis-ease in the body, mind or heart, there is also imbalance in the energyfield, and by working with this powerful underpinning of the material world, the body, mind and heart can be healed.

And so it goes.

It's now three months into the inaugural six-month program, and folks are beginning to find their sea legs in the shifting currents of their expanding awareness. There's less fear and more excitement in the exploration. And most of them finally get that I'm not a guru, just a fellow explorer who is passing on identification of the tools, sharing some ways to use them, encouraging them to find their own way, their own method of incorporating them into their own storyline.

Because I'm not a guru. And the past three months have held some very intense moments where some of these nine folks got upset or angry when they came to me for The Recipe To Fix The Unhappy, and I gently or not so gently, handed it back to them. One person quit the program, then a few days later, rejoined, in many ways still wanting to quit, but willing to keep showing up, because the expansions being experienced ultimately surpassed the fear arising. Three people almost quit - I watched them descend into something awful inside of themselves, where they saw that all they wanted was the happy and the joyful and the funk arising was certainly not that. And then each one of them got it: the awful, the funk, was only the barrier, the block, the one they'd been banging their heads against for years. And each one of them faced it straight on, and passed through the wall as if it weren't there, like the collection of layers, of false beliefs that it was.

For over a decade, I set myself up as a spiritual teacher, with the goal to project an image of perfection, of radiant light and sweetness, of Having Arrived At Healed. But I've learned that one of the most valuable things I can show to others is that this swirl of living can be faced and swum in without drowning, no matter how dark or light the waters appear. Transparency is more valuable than the projection of another layer, no matter how shimmery that layer appears. And that until I get my own sea legs with this new way of showing up, I'll be facing my own walls until they dissolve into mist.

We all have walls to walk through. I plan to keep orchestrating this training program reflecting that. Showing my process. Letting them see what goes on behind the curtain, even when someone has mastered all the tools they're just learning to use.

And so I'm not a guru, or even a teacher. Just a guide, a shamanic cartographer. A flicker of their false belief system made manifest, so that they can see through, and then let me go when their hearts, minds, bodies, spirits are clear enough, strong enough to let go of the image projected out of this being called Katherine. 

Why? Why Not?

The dirt nap is coming for us all . . . a conscious dance of shiva is a good way to go . . .

Ze Twofer

Dance Exorcist: Shamanics In Motion

Releasing Into the Interior

The posts here get further and further apart. There are lots of stories occurring over here, but the directive around them is clear: not for the blog.

Some get told to clients, as a way to help them see a bigger picture or to show a concept being explained in motion. Others get shared with loved ones, for whatever reason that arises in the moment. Most don't get expressed into the world, at least not to other people. They stay contained inside this body-mind-heart where they appear to be distilling down into something closer to the truth, which is an impossible statement, but again, as close to the truth as can expressed at this time, in this space, for this reason.

I don't experience the telling of a story as a bad thing, that there's anything inherently wrong with the human desire to tell stories from the unfolding of a life. It's just that it's so clear for me at this time: it's about holding the stories, watching the desire to story tell as a way to somehow capture what's flowing, pin it down, make it stay. Which is impossible. And by its very act kills the germinating seed of Yes.

There's a way to tell stories so they become empowering, for both the speaker and the listener, a way to tell a story that includes the listener in such a deep way that the story being told is actually their own story. This blog used to be that, and maybe still is if someone stumbles here and goes back through the nine years of archives. And maybe it'll be that again, maybe the stories occurring over here will request they be posted, let loose on the internet in this form.

But for now, the writing is pouring into two places: the extensive handouts created for the Integral Shamanics Training Program and a private doc and notebook where the words and concepts and stories don't have to be shaped - just flow out fingers and heart and mind and simply exist without further input, from anyone, anyone, no judgment or editing or backlash. Just flow. 

Because the current underlying awareness is around something I've known about for decades, called different names by different teachers I studied and apprenticed with. Grandfather Albert, a Mi'kmaq shaman, who led a four-day total fast in the forest - not even water - because he said at the end of the fourth day, the bad spirits would see you as dead and release you. Fiona, who showed how to disappear from the entities' sensors by repatterning emotional and mental frequencies. Laura and her many tomes about the aliens. And then the gift from The Vine a month ago, where she showed me for five hours, relentlessly, mercilessly, who we are, why we were built, who built us, why, what it all means, what we have to do to be free. Now Paul writes about it in such a straightforward way, calling it wetiko. And David Carse and Jed, who keep saying: further. 

A few months down the line, I'm going to offer up all of the Integral Shamanics training program handouts for you - some sort of free ebook I want to set loose in the world. For today, here's an exerpt from the handout for the first class in the training program:

Participant introductions: telling our Stories of Yes

Transparency is one of the core principles of Integral Shamanics, along with mastery and tribe.  We live in a culture that celebrates two extremes around this flow of energy: perfecting an opaque image and TMI (too much information). Perfecting an image is about creating a physical, emotional and mental mask that fits with cultural norms and usually allows its wearer access to more resources (money, other people’s time & energy, etc.). TMI is an energetic response some people have to the cultural norm of projecting a perfect image, and is also an attempt to clear the mind-body-heart of the tension that results from the tremendous energy it takes to project and maintain an image. Rigidity and withholding is another attempt to deal with the buildup of tension, as a way to tightly control and hide what lies underneath the mask.

Antidote. One antidote to the extremes of image, withholding and TMI is to simply hold the energy, to not release into talking or showing how either happy (positive charge) or sad (negative charge) you are. To hold energy, simply remain silent, breathe, watch the thoughts but don’t express them, let the world swirl around you, only take action you need to take, either for practicality’s sake or because you feel to move/speak. This is different from  withholding in that it’s conscious holding, so that the barrier of control can be felt, the boundary seen and moved when it feels safe and advantageous on a level behind/beyond world and it’s desire to amass resources.

Holding. In this moment, what energy  (emotional feelings, intense thoughts, physical sensation/pain) can you feel pushing at you, either from outside, or inside? Hold it – whatever it is – without trying to change it – to make it better or less or gone. Be with it. Breathe.  Say Yes and Thank you. Allow the vibration of these words, the feelings and sensations that come with them for you to move through you.

Stories of Yes are also powerful antidotes to the energy drain of keeping an image alive that is not Who You Are. They can be joyful or sad,  from this moment, from your recent or distant past, or echoing to you from the future. They can be spoken, sang, danced, drummed, presented as artwork or crafted object to pass around, as silence, or whatever else you feel tells your story.

Who You Are. Whatever story you feel to tell in the first class, let it be something true, something in its revealing that will illuminate Who You Are, how you got here, what place on the map of Aliveness you can feel yourself being drawn toward. Know that the story you share will shift the vibration of all of the folks who’ll be gathered during the first class. Let the story you tell be from your heart, mind, spirit, the organs and vibration, muscles and light, fluid and charge that is you in that moment. If you’re not sure what you want to say, sit with it between now and the first class. Right now, in this moment, be quiet and ask yourself: Who Am I? How did I get here? And when it’s your time to tell your story in the first class, ask yourself again . . .

 

Energy For Energy

So much happening. So much shift and change. It's the Yes. And it's unleashing itself inside of me.

Just to manage the influx of energy flow, I have to get out and walk, and run, and walk, and run, and do pushups. I have to play my new drum, to channel some of that intense humming going on inside of me out into the world. I have to eat protein and greens, take my multi-vite, drink lots of water. I have to say Yes to things that are scary but are the clearest next step when a next step is clearly indicated.

The energy continually looks for release. When I feel the energy damming up inside of me, the pressure that can turn into anxiety or depression or delusion, I find a way to release the energy out into the world beyond exercising and eating well: make or take a phone call or email with someone who needs help, take an action around an issue I handled poorly, to mend it or fix it or make sure it doesn't happen again when faced once more with the situation. And write, do sessions, teach classes, build a Tribe of Yes on facebook where folks can come and tell their stories of Yes.

This all keeps the cycle of energy going, energy in, energy out. And it builds. Doing this builds energy. 

It's about cutting off all of my hair, even though I intellectually know I look prettier with long hair. But I do it anyway because I can feel that my hair needs to be short right now. And it also needs to be purple and pink. And in a whirlwind on top of my head, all day, every day, which means that when I get up in the morning, I submerse my head in a flow of icy water, then shake it like a dog, like a mad grass-roller, and let the spikey ends find their own expression of direction. It doesn't matter what others think about my new headgear. When I look in the mirror, what I see is: Yes. 

It means refining the art of "energy for energy" with the flow of human connection in my world. For too long I gave myself away, for free, to anyone who would take me, until I was drained and in a miserable heap, full of blame and loathing, for self and others. I believed it was my only worth: what I could do for and give people. So I attracted lots of people who liked to take energy and not give anything back.

But then I woke up from that false belief. And in the flow of the bounce back, I stopped giving anything to anyone unless I absolutely had to for survival. Until I saw the false belief of that too. Until I saw that we all depend on each other for survival, that we may enter and leave this life alone, but that while alive, we are truly connected, and that we can choose the web of people that occupy the spaces in the weave closest to us.

In this living of mine, it's now energy for energy. Sometimes it's money, othertimes it's because Grace says to do it. Sometimes it's because they are a loved one and the Yes says: do this now, and then later when it says don't do this now, I listen to that too, with no guilt. When someone gives me something, I find something to give them back, or pass it along to someone who needs it. Keeping the flow going.

I'm learning to get out of the way of the takers, the folks who have refined the survival technique of getting other people to give them things, and not giving anything in return, and not copping to it, and so the cycle goes on and on, as long as they are engaged with. I'm learning the difference between being of service, and of servitude.

It's a hard lesson, and sometimes I feel like a jerk, because the ideal for someone doing the sort of work I do is selfless service. I do as much selfless service as I can, because when I serve, we both benefit.

But when I allow someone to set me up as their spiritual vending machine, we both lose. Using another person as an energy source stunts growth, and servitude isn't any fun at all. A system of taking and no giving will ultimately cave in on itself. And so now I opt out. They often get peeved, I sometimes get squirmy. But within days, hours, minutes, balance makes itself known as they either come back and offer energy, or freed from the negative energy loop, they wander off into the world to find another possible spiritual vending machine to work their pattern with. And again, we both benefit.

Energy for energy. Win plus win. Do what feels true. Watch the results. Identify the energy pattern in motion. Adjust the output and input accordingly. Energy for energy.

Build energy. Plug the holes. Build energy. Find a place, person, situation to flow it into.

This is the flow. This is dancing with the Yes.

John Cleese: A Lecture on Creativity

Well worth the time to watch :)

Outrageous Beauty, One Layer In

Spontaneous Altar For Inner Space Travel

What possessed me to spread out the blanket/rug I crocheted some ten years ago and now use for shamanic sessions with people and then just leave it there? Usually Malcolm chews on it, poking holes in it with his whiskery, fangy love. What then prompted me to go to the bookcase, collect the rocks sitting on the shelves, and begin placing them around the blanket's circumference? Who knows? But it began a process lasting about four hours where I went area to area, room by room, and collected all of the stones, every last stone in the house,and I discovered there were a lot. 

Next came the pieces from the plant world. Pieces of wood, bark, seed pods, dried flowers, fungi large and small. Then came the animals. Feathers, shedded skins, claws, whiskers, bodies of butterfly & bee, squirrel and rabbit tails, discarded nests, the ashes of Jacinta, Hoon and Cass.

Then the human objects. Bells and candles, figurines and painted stones and art created and given to me by friends and barters from clients, boxes containing secret shamanic whatnot, my medicine bag and journeying scarf, a picture of my great grandmother Gigi along with her copy of a 1919 edition of Ibsen's A Doll's House.

When it was done, my home looked pretty sparse and the blanket looked like this:

And for the past several days, I've been hanging out there, right in the center of it. Taking and making phone calls, going on shamanic journeys, drifting, sleeping, breathing.

I had deep insights into what possessions are, why we give meaning to certain things, and the difference between things we love, things we need, and things that are both. It's about connecting the dots inside of us, then making them manifest in the world outside our skin, so that the visual and energetic charge will reflect back inside of us, to remind us (if we choose our stuff wisely) of Who We Are (and as we grow and let go: of who we are not).

Letting go of thinking outside the box, and allowing what's outside the box to engulf me leads to the oddest outcomes, fascinating, healing, surprising flows of living. 

Follow your intuition. It will take you on adventures. 

PS - for the first half hour I was doing all this collecting of stuff, I had no clue what was happening, felt a little dumb and weird. Yet intuition said onward. And who am I to argue with onward?

PPS - I just realized that I created a fort in my bedroom, like I used to do when I was a kid. Hilarious!

Past Life Stories

Since I started consciously diving deeply into things of a spiritual nature some thirty years ago, I began having past life remembrances. Sometimes it was talking with someone and watching as their face changed into another face - a boyfriend, very blond and blue-eyed anglo, morphing for a few moments into a classically korean face, and a flash of the life we lived together in a fishing village. Other times it came out of nowhere, as "downloads" that appeared in a millisecond, fully formed, into my conscious mind as complete remembrances, usually followed by how these lives were impacting my current life - I'm in the middle of the forest and can read the forest as if it were a book, the sounds telling me who was there, what they were doing. The patterns of moss on the bark and light showing me what time of year, what the seasons before had been like. The scent in the air telling me a thousand different things of soil and plant and stone and animal and coming weather. All of it showing me how I've read data streams before, and how in this life I read the psychic and shamanic streams, and that my love and endless fascination with it was born out of mastery in that forest life.

As I've gotten more practical over the past decade, I've filed these memories as a kind of unknown. No way to prove they were real - they could just be imaginings, projections. I was fine with not knowing, because these "memories" always brought some sort of relief, healing. So regardless of "truth", I felt an outpouring of gratefulness for them.

Over the years as I've worked with more and more clients, and so many past lives came up during sessions, I began to see what genuine healing occurred when soul pieces were brought back and integrated into the body. And the stories witnessed while in shamanic reality, when told to the client, often triggered great release and understanding for them, explaining all sorts of things they hadn't grasped the importance of - a love for a specific place or type of work, a hunger for a certain way of being, a fear or illness they hadn't known the basis of.

Witnessing these stories for other people, I felt such connectedness, a sense that these past lives were as real as our current lives, this supposed "reality" we all travel in in the Now. And that by bringing them into the conscious mind, a deeper sense of wholeness came into the living, clearing the way for access to more energy, flow, purpose. Knowledge and wisdom as power. Acceptance that this reality and how its put together is so much more than random.

And so, as I've been doing more soul retrievals on myself, more past life remembrances have been flooding in. Explaining so much. Bringing such healing into this living. Helping me slough off the No that remains. Opening into more Yes. The quiet of Yes. The stillness of the unobstructed flow.

So I thought I'd start telling you lovely Tribe of Yes the stories of some of the past lives I've been remembering. Some are sad, some are weird, some are flashy, some are violent, some are quiet, but they are all entertaining. What's the point of having a life if it can't be a helluva good show? :)

Yes, Go

Zoom and Stillness

It's been a roller coaster couple of weeks inside this brain, body, heart. Nothing going, of course, according to plan.

The plan was to do a deep cleanse for the nine days after leaving the fellowship. Water fast, yoga, walking, lots of sleep. Instead I sort of crash landed into a pile of No, and spent the time mostly resisting the urge to pack up the kitties and flee to some cabin in the middle of nowhere. 

Partial cleanses occurred. Lots of sleep occurred. Days free of burning and fermented and caffeinated plants occurred. Carby snacks found their way into my belly, via a tunnel in my mind. Kitties snuggled the heck out of me, then avoided me when the No got too noisy. Joyful interactions, and less joyful interactions. Stepping up and backing away.

I got a lot of work done. Okay, maybe not a lot, but enough. Over the next couple of months, This is happening, and there's lots to do to build it in a way that's strong, stable.

Part of the last couple of weeks has been questioning whether or not I can pull it off. I've been doing this work for almost three decades. Teaching others how to do it for the past fifteen years. Planning it for over a year. But putting it all together, in three local and global online locations? This is new.

The tagline for the training is: Mastery, Transparency, Tribe. It's technique based - shamanic skills, psychic skills, personal development - a very practical way of learning how to access, translate and utilize the data stream that runs behind, underneath this world. Gold standard methods used worldwide, across all times. Clear, straightforward, easily learnable, like playing the piano, or learning to read.

But a vital aspect of using these skills isn't so head-on and has to do with transparency. It's around how to do healing work without pretending to be sunshine and light, without wearing a mask of "perfect". Because trying to show up in a certain way blocks the flow, actually decreases access, and limits the ability to translate.

And yet sunshine and light is generally what's expected of healers. Being respectful, being kind, is simply about being decent. Whether the healer is a physician or a massage therapist or an energyworker, decency goes a long way in helping clients, patients, relax enough, feel safe enough, to enter into their own space of healing. But the dynamic of healer as perfect, and client as broken, needs to change.

We're all - every single one of us - in various places of aliveness and decay. It's the way of this place, this world. Enlightened people get the flu, die of cancer, go bankrupt. People with abusive tendencies and lots of cash have access to medical treatments that 99% of the world barely knows exists. There is no "fairness", only flow, movement, change.

We take the actions that Life is urging us to take. Or we fight the urge, based on some sort of "should" lodged inside the body-heart-mind of how we believe we're supposed to show up in the world. We find a hole in the wall of resistance, and take action to release the should. Or we sit at the base of the wall, and eat cupcakes and watch tv to pass the time, trying to ignore the drumbeat inside that says: Further.

Facing who we are, and who we're not, takes courage, fortitude, and usually comes packaged with suffering. Grief and mourning are part of it. Anger and depression, too. So is pointless joy, random moments of synchronicitous hilarity and revelations of perfection. And on the other side? Immense gratitude. 

The past couple of weeks have been about asking myself: how dare you step up to take on a tribe of folks, to teach them, be with them as they navigate their own storms? It all just seems too big, so impossible, so foolish to take on. I feel inadequate to the task, afraid that my own patterns and struggles will keep me from being there for folks in the ways that they need, from engaging with them in a way that facilitates Yes for both of us.

But where I keep coming back to is this: it's still about individuals, helping them see the map, teaching them how to read a word, a sentence, a paragraph at a time, showing them how to access their own individual way of translating this for themselves, the people they serve in their living. It's about doing session with them, entering into the landscape inside of them, helping them unweave the No a strand at a time, see the story they surround themselves in. It's about feeling such profound joy whenever Life gives me the opportunity to do this with someone. It's about showing up, over and over, even when fear is present. It's about being still and knowing All Is Well. 

And of course, as usual, Life has shot me through a tube, dumping me out with a thud in a land where only one path is available. I suppose I could listen to the fear that says I'm an idiot for not being in a job with health insurance and 48K a year. But that path disappeared a few months back. I hunted around for it for a while, and still am open to a trail if it happens, if I find it. But for now, there is only this one path, called Tribe of Yes, and the landscape is mostly unknown, and the flow of dark moon and bright sunlight cycle quickly, and the razor's edge between delusion and vision is hard on the feet.

Maybe I'm throwing a party and no one will come. Maybe this is just another emptying out. Or maybe this is when it all comes together - the shamanic, the psychic, the science, the muscles gained from years of mountain climbing - to create something that assists this huge shift in consciousness we're all deep inside.

I want to teach as many folks as possible about the data stream. How it's there for all of us, like an infinite library that contains all times, backwards and forwards, all dimensions. How the library card is our birthright, along with opposable thumbs and highly functioning frontal lobes. How to use that data stream to help connect the global biosphere in a way that sings Yes, that births a global organism that joins in the conscious, universal dance with truth, eyes wide open.

And as it all unfolds, I'll write more about the process. Transparency was taught to me here, in this digital stream that connects humans across vast distances of time and space. And so the word, the vibration, that I'm aligning to match is: courage.

Courage in the face of the No.

Courage in the midst of storms.

Courage in the quiet, the stillness, the Nothing.

Courage.

Failure and Flight

This past Thursday was my first day free of the fellowship I've been in the past year. My friend Kelly sent me this in a series of back and forths:

You have a cubicle hangover. Your body and mind are coming out of autopilot defense mode after almost a year, right? Totally good to just accept it and take some time to integrate the freedom and process the feelings of rejection and relief.

I read those words and felt: okay, yes, this is what's occurring, this is the Not-Me that I am very aware is coursing through mental, physical, emotional bodies. It's what's underneath the recurring startle, the cascading knee-jerk responses that say Do Something, do something Now, what are you just sitting there for when there are broken things that need to be fixed?

It's from a year of doing things, not sure if they were being done right, doing my best, and so often receiving only a response of a frown and silence. And then taking that and going back and trying again. More frowns. More silence. More work. More trying. Until I woke up one morning back in October and got: this sh*t feels awful and it isn't Who I Am, and they know it, and I know it.

That is the point where the lawn and the moon and stars and the burning and fermented plants and Florence and the Machine came in. Where this combination of their energies crashed into me, hammering at the wall of No that had been created, a kind of jailbreak that was surprising, not just in its content and methods, but also in how successful it was. Frowns and silence lose their power when the previous night was spent with the universe flowing through body, mind and heart, dancing outrageous gorgeous electrifying Yes until I fell down on the lawn in a heap of wonder.

But there was still work to do. I needed income. The fellowship didn't finish up until December 31st. There was no next job to move into yet. Then they asked to extend my contract until the end of February. With still no next job, I accepted, put my head down and worked. Stopped socializing with the folks I worked with. Stopped taking a break for lunch. Stopped trying to make any of it anything other than the work, and getting as much of it as I could done. Total focus on what I'd agreed to do, committed to seeing it through until Life released me from it.

I stopped writing. Stopped trying to do anything other than work, then come home, watch tv shows and movies, read, sleep, with forays out onto the lawn every couple of days. I ate a lot of healthy food, continuing the healing of gut and back pain through energywork and compassion and acceptance and release. Spent a lot of time outside, on the lawn and on the back porch, day and night, watching as the land around me moved into winter. I spent a lot of time doing this:

 

And I learned that being still and quiet for long periods of time facilitated both the snuggle and the flow. And I also learned that I still have many friends in the world, friends that call and text and visit, friends that skype and do sessions and send long emails describing their own process of setting themselves free. Friends that are planning their own escape from the No. Friends that filled my entire 46th birthday day (February 16) with wine and song and hysterical laughing and music and the magic that is facilitated via smartyphones and skype.

And then I created something that blew my mind, and my heart, wide open. It's been in the works for over a year. Something I took extensive notes on as new aspects popped into my head. That I wrote narrative around when I came in from hanging with the moon and stars, communing with Florence. That seemed more like a dream than anything else. That I kept adding to only because it felt more real than the supposed real life I was living. It was the answer to the obsessive questions blaring through heart and mind the past couple of years: what do i have to offer? is it valid? is it genuinely of use? does it genuinely make things better for people? do they want it? It was this: 

 

 

It's all still in motion. More will be revealed. I just need more time on the couch. More sleep. More time outside walking. More yoga and hot baths and green smoothies. Less thinky thoughts and connection to the stored past inside me that allows fear to deliver its electroshocks. Less contraction. More expansion. More time to process it all. More time to allow the Yes to flow more seamlessly now that the ordeal, the training, the trial, the test, the Whatever is done for this leg of the Waking Up process.

And as she has been for months now, the soundtrack is courtesy of Florence and her Machine:

     

 

Shift and Flow

Obviously not writing much. Except for work. And that is a different kind of writing. Eviden*ce-based incent*ives and benef*its for the research project I work on. How to incentivize folks to take better care of their health. Dozens of documents, reports, briefs, summary reports, literature matrices, graphics depicting full-color attempts made to render pictures out of a sea of eggheady verbiage. For this fellowship whose contract ends at the end of this month.

Where will I go after that? I don't know. 

I do soul retrievals and psychic sessions on the weekend. I spend the week feeling like a flow wedged into a narrow tube, the flow getting all hectic and chaotic from trying to shove itself through such a small aperture. Then the weekends overflowing with cracking through what built up during the week, and submerging down into sessions with folks, feeling like Yes again.

I spend a lot of time out on the small back porch, watching the trees. I spend a lot of time on the front lawn, watching the night sky. I drink a lot of wine. Burn plants. Look for the throughline with it all. What the truth is.

Patience is growing deep roots inside of me, as I surrender to what I can put into motion, what I can't or won't force to happen, what Life has in store for me next but hasn't revealed yet.

I send out resumes when it's true. I submit a proposal to a local, well-established holistic center for an Integral Shamanics Training. I hear nothing from the public health stuff. I get a go on the shamanic training. And so that's what direction I head in. Even as I wait to hear from the state public health job, which I interviewed for over two months ago, but because of the slow creaky machine of the state, I may or may not have gotten. 

The worst scenario is that I get unemployment until I can find a public health job (I have yet to figure out how to make a living doing holistic work). I have no idea how the best scenario plays out. I try not to go there. To ask for a scenario from Life. I take actions when they feel true. I refrain from action when I get a No or I get no action to take.

I don't feel afraid. Not really. Just in a strange sort of suspension.

I don't like how the current job has curbed my willingness to write here on this blog. How there is something hard and intense and unYes about it. I do the work they give me, do it to the best of my ability. In a workplace full of teams and interaction, my project is solo, and it's been like working inside an echo chamber, only coming up for air for an hour or so every week when I get to update my supervisor on the latest things I've researched and written. 

They don't like me there. They want to like me. But they don't. But they can't cop to it. Just radiate their discomfort when I open my mouth. I do my best to keep my mouth closed, to simply do the work. It's helped that I've been "remotely commuting" two or three days a week for the past month. Then I can simply sit at home, with the kitties, and write, do the work, create the widgets, deliver the widgets when I'm back in the cubicle farm. That small, windowless wedge of space in the corner away from everyone else where I can hear them talk, but not to me, and so I refrain from answering, because if I do it's just weird, like dropping into a conversation with the people eating lunch at the next table to you. But mainly sitting in that cube by myself all day, five days a week, just feels like a shriveling kind of death. 

I saw Jin again this morning. Surrendered to the brutal needles and muscle manipulation that is Korean Chinese Medicine. Except it wasn't that brutal this time.

"It doesn't hurt as badly this time, Jin. Are you going easy on me?" I asked.

"No!" he laughed. "I never do easy!"

Which means that my exploration into being with pain that I've been dealing with the past few days is working. I'm not so afraid of pain. It's there. I can feel it. But I don't need to run and take acetaminophen or a scalding hot bath with aromatherapy. I can be with it. The pain. I can let it inform me of its message. 

I talk on the phone with people, more social interaction than I've done in years. My sister, some friends. But I don't know how to do "friendship" anymore so I end up doing a session of some sort with them, in a conversational way, and it feels both true and weird. Especially if I'm drinking wine.

I'm reading about all sorts of things. Downloading enormous sh*tloads of documents onto my kindle, my smart phone. For some reason, I've become obsessed with predators, how they operate, what they take, what deflects them.

I read about the aliens who use this planet as a feeding ground - what my old spiritual teacher used to call "the entities" - who feed off of human emotion, and have come up with ever inventive ways to stimulate emotion, as high and as low as they instigate. An email from a blogger I follow linked to this a while back.

I read about sociopaths, how they operate, how intuition comes into play long before they make their move. I read about guns and haikido and crisis intervention. An old college friend whose become an FB*I agent who is going through a divorce and has been calling me and chatting turned me onto what agents read and use.

I read about chakras and auras. A kind of refresher course. From a new book out by my old spiritual teacher. An excellent book, and I do some of the exercises I use to do (the book doesn't go into new things, just the things we all learned some ten years ago, but which is very good, distilled Yes.)

But mostly I rip tv shows and movies, learn the new pathways put into motion since the S*OPA crackdown, which in spite of its not passing, shut down most established pir*ate sites for a while. And again I ask: please, all of you media outlets: give us a place where we can watch what we want to watch when we want to watch it and we'll pay you our 30 or 40 or 50 bucks a month. But the choices are so silly that ripping is the only option, even as annoying as its gotten.

And I cut off all of my hair last week. All of it. No trauma. Just a feeling of freedom. From tangles and mess and laborious machinations. And a chance to let the grey grow in. Facing the loss of youth and the oncoming time of crone. Took the action. Feel the Yes.

Near-constant physical pain. Mental and emotional and spiritual pain that comes and goes. No clear throughline. And so I just wait. Do what feels true. Release what doesn't. Hold my death in one hand, Life in the other. 

Patience. Just that one word.

Oh yes, and Further.

PS - and new pic posted on site with shorn locks and freaky vibe. Yes, freaky vibe occurring. N'est pas?

2012 and a Happy Colon

My digestive system didn't feel well on Friday morning, so before I left for a session with my Korean Chinese Medicine practitioner, I only had a spinach and strawberry green smoothie. Eating light before Tui Na massage and acupuncture with Jin is always a good idea, but that Friday, it was a very good idea.

Jin put me on a 48 hour water fast, noting in his stern, yet kind way that it might be difficult, what with New Year's Eve and all. No lemon, no herb tea, just water. I'd never done one before. I was nervous. But I trust him. He's very, very good at what he does. 

And so after two days with nothing but mug after mug of steaming hot water, this morning at 7a the fast was broken with a mug of ginger tea, with just the tiniest dash of stevia, about a tablespoon of vanilla almond milk. Delicious. Now I'm drinking a mango, strawberry, blueberry, spinach smoothie, and holy cannoli: it is fantastic. 

The fast itself wasn't that big of a deal. I woke up the morning after the session feeling like usual, that I'd been in a car wreck the day before. Jin's stuff makes swedish deep tissue work or rolfing look like a back tickle. But once the bruising and pain subsides, the range of motion and absence of pain, the sheer feeling of flow in the body is . . . fantastic.

A pretty monstrous headache kicked in yesterday at around 3p yesterday, but aromatherapy oils - tangerine, camomile, peppermint - massaged onto my forehead and neck helped, as did a long aromatherapy bath with eucalyptus and lavendar. A lot of napping occurred, as did hitting the bed early, along with much aimless, random kitty snuggling, both feline and human instigated. And four pounds were missing from the scale this morn, mostly bloat of course, but four pounds of bloat is a beautiful thing to have vamoosed.

I thought about food a lot. I discovered that pretty much everything triggers the desire for food for me. Tired, bored, up, down, happy, sad, confident, confused - all caused the bright idea to pop into my head: let's get something to eat! But I kept coming back to the fact that Jin said my digestive system needed it, and so I trusted him, and trusted my trust in him, and hung in. But what I also noted is that I craved for the largest part, healthy stuff - veg stir fry and green smoothies and such. 

The real parting gift happened last night, at a little after midnight. I went to bed at 8p, covered in toasty kitties. I don't remember anything waking me, just opening my eyes, a phrase from the dream I'd just been in looping round and round. I got out of bed, had a glass of water, took a tee-tee, sometimes whispering the phrase, sometimes just watching it repeat inside my head. Then I crawled back into bed, pulled a kitty up into my arms.

Then I noticed the sound of explosions in the distance. It took a few moments for it to register that it was fireworks, not gunshots. And then I realized: It's 2012. 

Then the significance of the phrase made itself known, how it was a message for the new year for me. I got out of bed, walked to my desk, and wrote it down:

Transformation: it goes in as one thing and comes out as something completely different. . . transformation . . . it goes in as one thing and comes out as something completely different.

So, that was my new year's eve. How was yours?

 

Psychic TV, Tech Support, The Story of I

The process I've been going through the past few years with the Integral Shamanics work has been paralleling the Waking Up/personal dismantling. I'm constantly questioning, asking: is this true? is it genuinely helpful? what does it really do? how can it be done better? clearer and more easily translatable? more usefully? is there bullsh*t involved? how can it be pared away to reveal the Yes?

The IS email list of ~200 people, a list collected over the past decade, has been a gift. It's a mash-up of a few lists started, maintained haphazardly, then set down when I went through transitions where the holistic work was let go of for a while. When I pick it back up again, I start a new list, but then eventually send out an email to the old list, inviting anyone who wants to rejoin the new to let me know. 

200 doesn't seem like a lot of people, but these are core folks - they open the email newsletters, reach out for sessions or to give updates or just say howdy. They are a lot like this blog, which has honed itself down to about 50-75 readers - again, not a lot of folks comparatively, but core people, many of whom have been following DG for years, some since the beginning back in 2003. About 20 of those keep in fairly regular contact, either through comments or email, but most show up once or twice a year, when a post triggers something for them, and they feel to de-lurk.

I'm happy with both circles of connectivity because despite the changes of the past decade, and the comings and goings, both provide a sense of love, of respect and acceptance, and also a safe place. Inside that safety I get the deep blessing of growing in the presence of family, of tribe who knows I'm a bit of a problem child, but that there are also waves of adulthood that come with gifts for the folks who feel to tune in.

They are also a kind of laboratory, a place to send out invitations when I'm trying something new, when another deep transformation is under way. I bring the underpinnings and basic architecture of these first to this blog, and then when some of the kinks are ironed out, and the flow is a little clearer, to the IS email list.

With the blog, it's more of my own personal action. With the list, the action beyond the personal takes place, where whatever gets triggered via the blog or the newsletter moves. The folks who want to engage in sessions, who want to take the conversation started digitally and move it to analogue, who are engaged in their own conscious process of transformation, feel to reach out for some assistance. In the land of minimal connection that has become my living, this is where the deep fun begins.

Once or twice a year, I contact a psychic or shamanic practitioner when I feel to reach out for help. It happens when I'm good and jammed up around some issue and the suffering has gotten red line and I need a little perspective outside of my own brainbox. Usually there's a fair amount of fear going on inside me, but even with that, it's always a dang good time. 

It's fun to get info around a thorny issue scratching up my living, but it's also great fun to watch another deepwork practitioner do their thing, to see what sort of tools they use, what sort of story they wrap their data in for presentation to both their psyche and mine. Most access some sort of guide or guides who tell them what the deal is, which they relay to me. Some just see an entangled path in the living and get to clearing it.

Most have a truly wonderful sense of humor - a delightful mix of la-la-la lightness and pitch black dark humor around the horror, man, the horror. Some are all business - they go in, do whatever it is they do, come out, give the facts, ma'am, just the facts, like they're working a conveyor belt, if that conveyor belt were worked by someone very, very skilled at watching and tweaking and assembling the shamanic widgets gliding past. 

And with every passing day, I watch more and more closely what it is that I do in session with my own clients. There is the part of me that is doing the work, fully engaged in the healing process being done for the person. Then there's the aspect of my consciousness that is receiving personal healing and messages, a sort of parting gift from The Almighty Yes for the work being done. And then there's the overarching witness, who watches and notes everything occurring. 

This witness is sort of like a recorder - for everything, all aspects - probably some sort of personal awareness of the Akashic Records in motion. This same recording that's utilized to analyze layers and details post-session can also be used if a client asks a specific question weeks or months down the line about something that occurred during a particular session. Or even years later, such as the email I received yesterday about how I'd said during a psychic session 8 years ago that her business would franchise in 8 years, and how as I read the email of how she was now franchising, the energy of that session, her response, rehydrated back into my conscious mind with clarity.

For the past year I've been working on a proposal for an Integral Shamanics Healer training program. It's grown to around twenty pages of outline on all aspects of it - content and flow, and also how to structure it so it can be web-based. And as I've worked on the proposal, sorting out what it is I actually do and how to teach it to others, going through all of the syllabi and materials for classes and workshops I've done over the past 15 years, it's fed the session work, and vice versa. 

And then there are the sessions themselves. For the past few weeks I've been hyper-conscious of exactly what happens in sessions - how the information comes in, how I translate it and relay the info to clients, how it's received. 

With the shamanic sessions, the soul retrievals, it's like watching tv, but without sound. There's often a cartoon kind of feel to it, as if I'm watching an animated version of real life. It comes across visually as real, but with slightly blurred edges, like watching a streaming net video of less than stellar quality, which causes the moments and images that broadcast in hyper-High-Def to come through with an almost psychedelic quality, so multi-dimensional it takes my breath away, jolts the mind a little, like a few seconds of a Mystical State.

There's usually a mythic feel to the sessions, grand and sweeping, like a high-budget movie with A-list celebrities, with the client as star, and me as the character that walks around for a bit, sometimes interacting, but mostly watching, collecting. But rather than a movie's straightforward dialogue and visuals, the scenes that unfold in the sessions are what I've come to call "emotional gestures", a kind of highly dramatic heuristic of a person's issues, beliefs, their personal wounds - emotional, physical, mental, spiritual - as well as their ancestral wounds, passed down from their family, tribe, the planet.

It's common that scenes from past lives come up, a sort of how-to of how the wound began, how it was carried into and is being expressed in the current life. And the "missing soul pieces" are also pointed out, by the lens of whatever it is that points the camera of my witness, that brings the mystical states in and out, sometimes to stop motion, rewind, play it again, sometimes several times, often at different angles or levels of close-up or wide shot.

The incoming flow of information and scenes seems to have nothing really to do with me. I don't create it or shape it, just witness. I'm not striving to make anything happen, just releasing into the unknown, staying relaxed so as not to squeeze, think or flex away from the flow of energy, information, data.

The real work comes toward the end of the session, when the journey into shamanic reality downshifts into four-wheel drive, when the actual real-time healing part begins, where the soul pieces are integrated back into the bodies, resistance and blocks to healing played with, toxins/No/imbalances healed. After this flows into conclusion, I come out and speak with the client, telling them what I saw, what happened.

This final fifteen or twenty minutes of an hour session is the most challenging part because it's often not what a person would prefer to hear, and it's usually around things they'd rather not talk about or want seen. More and more though, the sorts of folks who've been doing session seem more ready, more willing, are stronger, their hearts and minds more flexible, able to take in more info.

The psychic readings follow a similar path, but because I'm not going into "shamanic reality", it's more of a conversation, a back and forth, the client stating what they'd like to look at, a sentence or two around what they feel the issue is, like going in to a physician's office and saying: it hurts here. And then I go in and look around, watch the flow of information that arises. 

There's very little mythic feel to psychic readings. They come across as more practical. It's still like watching tv, but they often have sound to them, and the visual/audio stays in the background because the two layers are occurring at the same time: watching the scenes and interpreting them to clients as the scenes unfold in the moment. During a psychic session, I'll sometimes stop and go silent for a few moments so to better tune in, go deeper, before I come back to the surface to relay the info. How I picture it is that there is this world, and then there is the psychic/shamanic/dream layer beneath it, and to do this kind of work means to move between the worlds. Shamanic sessions are immersing in the world beneath this one, then coming back and speaking about the what was seen and done. The psychic sessions are a quick moving back and forth, surfacing and immersing depending on what needs to be done and where.

In a psychic session there's more time to go back and forth with the interpretation. As the info is being relayed I can watch how the client receives each chunk, and energy levels can be readjusted- tools like kindness, firmness, languaging, metaphor, backstory, pauses for their commentary and insights flowing in to tweak the reception.

I use to say that the psychic readings were more informational, and the shamanic sessions were more experiential, but I've come to see that the only real difference is how the client feels to receive the information. Not everyone can or even wants to wrap their brain around a shamanic session's contents, but most folks can engage in a psychic reading as it appears much like a deep conversation between two people.

But the psychic readings usually only take a person so far. They're like pointing out tools to a person, and whether they choose to use them post-session is up to them. During the shamanic sessions, actual healing takes place, sometimes fully, often as a jump-start, a clearing away of enough debris on the path so that they can gather up some speed. I'm much more conscious of the fact that this is their gig, and my presence is as tech support, cartographer, editor for film quality and selection of content. 

Realizing that's it's story, relating to it like story doesn't diminish what it is. Because it's all story. Western med, Korean applied Chinese medicine, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy - all story. We're all on an adventure called Being Alive, and knowing the story is half the fun.

And I'm so grateful to have one of the best seats in the house. To tune in and watch shows on the billions of channels that is Life in motion. To witness the flow of Yes, and the seeming No that blocks it. To have the vantage point of seeing that it all fits together, an infinite mosaic of Beingness living out each sliver in full-on prism.

You do, too, sweet Tribe of Yes. You do, too. All that has to be done is Open Your Eyes . . .

Wasteland

 . . . brother chuck on waiting: wasteland.

Winds, Smoke, Freedom

I understand that the time of grainery and greenery is coming to a close.

It's been a medicinal two months, using fire in the form of alcohol and burning plants to break through the stone walls of No my living became encased in. Listening to music and dancing on the lawn under the moon. Sitting out on the back porch in fuzzy hat, fuzzy gloves, fuzzy coat, and fuzzy pajamas, watching the changes to trees and sky and wind as winter slowly strips everything down to its essence.

My contract at work has been extended for another couple of months. And I had a good job interview a couple of weeks ago for a truly interesting position working for a government agency. Sending out my CV every couple of weeks for other new and interesting jobs. Surrendered to whatever comes through with a resounding Do This Now. Even as I'm fine if something comes through and I get Not Now, or No F*cking Way.

The years of harsh Waking Up, after the first step, were about backing up and watching as my life tumbled to the ground, crushed down to rubble, only a few structures still standing. After that, it was about sweeping away all the little tendrils that tried to grow back. 

Now, I let the tendrils grow - if it feels true - then watch as they fall away on their own. I'm still not making friends or hanging out with folks, but interactions are occurring and it's fascinating to watch on the back side what purpose they served - for me, for them.

New subtle rules of the game - don't push away, don't pull toward. Just show up as long as it feels true. And when it stops feeling true, just exhale. It takes so much less energy.

The kitties have gotten even more insanely snuggly. The Hoon and Grandma Booty and Jacinta and I had something special going down in our tribe, and we snuggled, and it was good. But these new kitties? Snuggling is a freaking Extreme Sport meets Feline Performance Art, and they dedicate themselves to its perfection on an hourly basis.

I've figured out my role is mostly as human chaise lounge, an organic, bendy, toasty blanket, a mostly furless massage tool. When one of them approaches, I've learned to just be still, let them find the perfect feline contortion, then drape my arm or leg around them so to better facilitate their toasty. I wake up in the mornings covered in kitties. It's awesome.

Back pain is down to merely annoying. Digestive pain is down to intermittently somewhat uncomfortable. Emotional pain is down to gusts of small crazy followed by short bursts of random Doing. 

I see a few clients via telephone every weekend, and begin to get a clearer picture of what I offer, what I can genuinely do to assist. It'll take a while to flesh the process out, but the shift is happening, and in a very easy going, gentle way.

I house hunt via the internet, looking for a place within 30-45 minutes of where my job will most likely be. 2 acres or more, away from highways and busy roads. Older, smaller house with fireplace or woodstove, big back deck or porch or sunroom, big garage or barn or workshop. Less than 100K. There's quite a bit out there that fits. I've been pre-approved through my credit union. Once I know where I'm working, I'll take the next step. 

So that's it. Not really. But it's all I got in me to write about for now party peoples. The writing thing is still problematic, but the pain around that, too, has gotten merely twingey.

All is Well.

All is F*cked, actually, of course. Which is the point. I'm much more comfortable with it.

And for that, any many, many other perfections, I am grateful . . .

Pods

Last night, while I was sitting out amongst the stars and sky and trees, letting the grainery and greenery have their way with body mind spirit, in a flash of awareness, I noticed what was going on around me, and it was so loud I wondered how I could have not heard it before. And what I saw was that it had been going on all day, ALL DAY, and I'd edited it out, as unnecessary, as unimportant, as lacking meaning. 

Ha.

It was the trees. Spawning. Pods bursting open, the large, dark brown seeds exploding outward, pinging through the leaves, landing on cars, crackling against bark and stone and branch. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Pa-pow-pa-pow pow pow papapapapow. Pow. POW. For hours. Raining life down to the earth from the safety of the womb.

What a courageous act. What a frenzy of possibility. What a massive, hopeful flinging of more hope in all directions with as much force as could be mustered. Natural selection at its finest. 

Most would probably land somewhere and die sooner than later. On the road to get squished. Or on the lawn to get mowed. Or amongst too many of their brethren and only a few survive past initial sprouting.

As midnight closed in, they began to quiet, all spent. By morning, silence. I'll be looking for them again tonight . . .

***

And a shout out to all of you folks who did sessions with me the past couple of weeks. It has been transformative . . . showing how willing folks are, how open to love and truth and Yes . . . showing me where my own wounds are, and how to heal them . . . showing me that I don't have to push so hard with people, that they find their way in on their own time, and that's it's perfect and perfect and just so Yes . . . showing me that this is the sort of work I want to be doing for a long time . . . 

Fuzzy, Toasty, Thankful

I kind of dread the end of the year holiday season, though probably not why you might.

Sure, there's the horrible xmas music, blaring from all directions, starting sometime in early November. And the stress folks go through, trying to pull off a big family feast with the least amount of family fireworks. Or the crazy spending of wads of cash on stuff, stuff that isn't usually either needed or wanted, usually slapped on a credit card with an interest rate that is not dissimilar to a kind of date rape with no hope of prosecution. 

Yeah. But the core source of my dread? Other folks who well-meaningly want to pull me into the middle of the fray, to give me gifts and then feel hurt when I don't give them one in return, or invite me to thanksgiving to witness the fireworks of their family. They don't understand that I simply opt out. Truly out. Just say no.

Because what I feel to opt into during this flow of season is hanging with my tribe, my fuzzy band of tricksters, my pod of snugglers, my weaselly brethren. Because we really, truly, just want to hang out in bed, explore the rich possibilities of impossible snuggling positions only found in an apartment heated to 63 degrees, by three cats, one human, and a pile of blankets and pillows, maybe get up and have a little protein, then hit the snuggle caves again, and laugh and purr and maybe bite a couple heads.

To me, the holiday season means time and space and freedom to chill. I'm not lonely. I don't get lonely. I don't need for any of the humans in my living to prove their love to me through stuff on a certain day of the year. I don't need to be part of a group of humans and share a specific meal to feel connected to my tribe. And I know that the folks who love me have gotten used to me opting out in this way, and hopefully feel some relief that I'm one less loved one they have to stress out over and pour energy to. 

And as for gifts and shared meals, when they occur, it is so very sweet. I received an email the other day from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and I ordered a couple of bottles for myself of the limited edition scents they concocted for their birthday. And then saw an image in my mind's eye of the lovely Kelly and so ordered a bottle for her. Or when she gets the urge, she sends me jars of her fantastic homemade pickles, or hilarious stuff off etsy that is so me, like a cell phone case made of felt with a crow embossed on it.

Or my sister, and how we get together and share a meal and have a few laughs, usually around rednecks or poop or how crazy we all are. Or she does as she's done for several years now, and gives me enormous bags and bags and bags of designer clothing, passed on by the wealthy women-who-hobby-shop whose homes she cleans. Or I give her the gift of a half dozen hours over a week of talking with her on phone, when I seriously, seriously hate talking on the phone if it isn't work related, but she's going through something, and I listen to her, huge smart phone mashed all up in my ear. Or herbs she's been thinking of trying but hasn't made the jump with, or some weird granolahead food she's tried at my house and actually liked and so I get her the special vinegar, or vanilla almond milk, or dandelion leaves so she can make green smoothies.

But the truth of the holidays for me is being with my fuzzy guys, having the space and time and freedom to just hang out together for long stretches of days. Of looking deep and long into the magic that is Baby Malcolm's chocolate lips. Of inhaling the hay and sun scent of Baby Wallace's fiery fur and have him sniff me back while purring the sonic rumble of heavy breathing that shows his weaselly ecstasy. Of spending an hour in the dawn light, drifting in and out of sleep, Emmaline doing as she's done since she was a four-month old kitten, laying directly on top of my face like a balaklava, paws wrapped around my neck, leaving me a single nostril to myself with which to happily take in air. Of jumping back into bed after turning the heat up a bit and having Baby Wallace settle onto the top of my head like a toasty toque, complete with paw-shaped earmuffs. Of dancing in my living room, having Malcolm squeeeek so that I pick his 19lbs. of love up and he crawls up out of my arms and onto my right shoulder, riding it like a carousel pony as I dip and twirl and shake my bootay. Of laying on the living room floor with a big plate of thanksgiving takeout, joyfully joining in the slurps, prrps, and arwarwarw that is the fang-toothy consumption of ham and turkey and sugary dessert cream topping. 

So the real reveal is that I love the holidays, so look forward to the love and joy and giving that is life with my core tribe, so enjoy the sharing of food and love and Yes. I give the gift of toasty and foodies and Yes. They give the gift toasty and their Themness and Yes. And Life is good . . .

I just want folks to go off and do their holiday thing and leave me and the fuzzballs to do ours. Not to give me pity eyes when they hear that I'm spending the holidays with the kitties, or to do their best to try and talk me into thanksgiving at their house with their family and the in-laws or with a group of single people who have nowhere else to go. Maybe this year I can answer that yes, it was a lovely holiday spent with my loved ones, and they'll leave it at that and just smile.

I'm good: I'm with my family. I have someplace to be: in the center of a kitty purr-rumbly pile-on snack-fest.

So happy thanksgiving, ya'll, from the center of the Yes that is my living, to the center of Yes that is yours . . .

 

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Shamanic Calibration

With the new openings occurring, I feel drawn even more strongly to do sessions with folks. And yet the way they play out, the techniques I've used are realigning, opening in new ways.

Whenever I've gone through shifts in the past with the healing work, rather than just play new things out with regular sessions, I've created a new format for them, charged a minimal session fee. For a while I did "half-hour shamanic power sessions" for $35 which honed specific skills so they could be done in a super-condensed way, which I liked to refer to as punching a hole through space-time and flinging us through. Woohoo!

Folks usually were disoriented afterwards, with no real integration time at the end of the session, but they were effective, often dramatically so. And they changed the flow of shamanic sessions when I finally let go of the half-hour format and moved into 1-1.5 hour sessions again. The level of intensity stayed up, and also less time was taken afterwards staying connected with folks. In letting go, it helped them find their own way, building their own muscles of integration, their own choice of how to take action based on what they felt ready for.

So, new shamanic sessions are forming, done telephonically, and I'm sending out invitations and details via the Integral Shamanics email list. Some of you are already on it, so if you already receive the emails (with the banner logo of the blog, and a blue email body) no need to resign up. If you're not on the list and would like to be, just send me an email at integralshamanics(at)gmail.com. (replace the (at) with an @ - it's to fool the blog trolling spam bots :)

 

 

 

Shamanic Yes, Always Available, Let Go, Dive In

When the request is heartfelt, and true, Life always says Yes. 

In one moment Friday night, a moment that came out of seeming nowhere, after a cascade of moments that showed me where the hole was inside of me, I realized that it had been years since a musician created songs that I felt myself deeply inside of.

And the realization came as I listened to Florence and the amazing tribe she leads. Greenery and grainery singing down my neural pathways. Out in the midst of wind and dark night sky, dancing for stars and the small, brilliantly white slice of moon, I found myself inside a groove that showed me my place in the web that is this world and the worlds underneath and behind and above it.

Shamanic soul retrieval. Florence and her fantastic Machine drilling down deep through layers of No. Calling me to dance the surface of skin and the musculature underneath and the current of prana as it unleashed the Yes inside.

 

Florence And The Machine - Breaking Down - Ceremonials Vidéo MrMusic sélectionnée dans Musique

Florence and the Machine "DOG DAYS ARE OVER" Music Video from LEGS MEDIA on Vimeo.

Voice

Write. Don't write. Write. Don't write. Over and over. Several times a day. For weeks on end.

For me, writing isn't just plunking down words, or venting, or even journaling. It's catharsis. It's a spiritual practice to remind me who I am, and who I am not. 

The urge that says write is the movement toward facing confusion, demons, walls. It's about finding the prism of Yes inside all of the seeming No. It's about lubricating some sort of energetic machinery inside of me, a machinery that is deeply connected with my will to live, my willingness to be alive.

But I can't write about what I want to write about. In the split-second wake of a flood of Write Now, when the juicy current is fiery and full of hyper swirls of color, the reasons for not writing hit me full force. And I stop the motion. And nothing gets written.

The wall seems impenetrable. And even when I do write, when I scale the wall a sentence, a paragraph at a time, and press publish, once the rush of ascension passes, all that remains is a kind of vertigo, as if the few stationary objects in my living are revealed for the wobbles inherent in each one of them. 

I suppose it's never been a safe choice to publish on the net. But it's felt true, powerful, transformative. For almost nine years now. 

Something different is happening now. And as I try and ride it out, what's happening is that I'm not writing. And in not writing, I'm losing connection to some vital force inside of me.

I'm aging rapidly, looking and feeling old for the first time in my life. Picking bad habits back up again for the fleeting feeling of balance they provide, all the while knowing it's a dead end. 

I've been mostly alone for most of my life. But now, I really am alone. Connections are impossible to make. The biggest concern being: how will I continue to make a living when my ability to connect to other people dwindles even further?

The destiny I was born into, both the nature and the nurture, was pretty harsh. I've spent a lifetime working to turn it all around, to create something fun, useful, creative, interesting. But the sense of hopelessness that's been slowly engulfing me shows me in ever greater detail how it's not mythic or spiritual or special. Just a life that's been difficult, much like most other folks.

And as I write these words, trying, trying to get to the heart of it all, that sense of panic begins to kick in, and the words begin to dry out. 

Sad excuse for a post. Even a year ago I'd never have pressed publish on this. But I'm more afraid of losing my voice. Because without my voice it's just dust and smoke and bad feelings and habits. 

Maybe that's the point. Strip it all down to the crusty skeletal remains. Strip away the sound til there's nothing left but silence. 

Crazy-ass life. 

Time Bozo

The whole day stretches out ahead. Work begins again tomorrow at 8:30 or 9a, and then there will be a cascade of deliverables with due dates. But today: nothing to do.

Nothing to do. Nothing. 

I figured out that I can do a rudimentary cleaning of the house every couple of weeks. And can do laundry a load at a time here and there. And that my hair can go for three days without needing a wash. And going to the grocery store is an event that I put on makeup and some sort of phreaky costume for, so that's pretty amusing.

There's no push to blog or read or write or hike or cook or catch up with people. No need to shop or improve or decorate or create or inspire or lead the muthafrakkin way.

There's very little to do anymore. 

If I have a spiritual discipline anymore it's to Go Slow. Or rather Let Go Of Pushing. Of course, it could just be a sign of growing older and/or my fat a*ss slowing me down, but maybe not. Mostly what it feels like is some sort of pulling the plug on having the mind generate something that it decides must be done and done now, and done quickly, because the next thing to be done needs to get going, and would I please move a little faster muthaf*cker?

Yes, there is anger in the doing. In the push to get things done, enough things done, so many things done that I'm ahead of other people in the doing department.

Anger that the doing must be done. Anger in the people that slow down or thwart the doing. Damn those interferers! Damn those that get in the way of the doing! Anger at the Life situations that move in to harsh the mellow that could be the doing but instead turn the doing into a pushing which sucks and is really really unfair. Lead, follow, or get the f*ck out of the way! F*ck that! F*ck you! No, f*ck you! 

Have you noticed that there is always a bozo on the bus? That there is always a doing thwarter, a groove harsher, a human barrier to a nice, smooth, effortless doing, and that usually they are wearing bad pants?

I've noticed that the less I interact with people, the more things flow in a lovely flow of flowing Yes. What does this mean? 

I've also noticed that the less I do, the less push, the less anger, the less funkola is present as I roll through my days.

Less people equals more Yes? Less doing means more Yes?

If you no longer believe that you are special, no longer believe that there are important things for you to get done - either for survival of you or your immediate circle of those you've deemed worthy of keeping around or your larger circle of community, your tribe - what do you think happens to your motivation?

And as your motivation falls away, and less things get done, you find fewer people like you (of course this happens, it's not cruel but simply survival of the fittest kicking in) and even fewer people want to give you things (because if you're not doing and amassing emotional/physical/mental stuff you really don't have anything they want anymore, sorry, could you please get out of the way now?) what happens to your self-esteem?

And as low self-esteem gets boring, and you let it go (not just the low self-esteem but the high-self esteem too because you discover that they are a package deal) and instead turn your sense of inner joy toward something else, what happens? And this something else, is it just replacement doing? Is this sort of doing better doing because it's pointless doing? Like getting so good at kitty snuggling that it's way beyond a vulcan mind meld and deep in the heart of kitty shape-shifting, or sitting on the front stoop in the dark and listening to the sound of wind in the trees and birds getting ready for bed? 

And if you have no motivation, and aren't spurred onward and upward by low self-esteem, what happens?

Because here's the thing. When you begin to wander away from the herd enough to see what sorts of things you've always believed were true, really basic things like willpower or love, aren't true at all, there's a moment that stops you in your tracks when you get: I have no idea what is true anymore, and therefore everything is suspect.

Things get really really interesting after that.

You ask yourself: am I a good person? And the reflex answer is yes. Maybe there's some qualifying, some humbleness of how you're working on being a better person, but the answer is yes. When it gets right down to it, everyone thinks they are a good person, maybe just misunderstood, or just having a bad day. But when you question everything, one of the hideyholes you discover is this supposed truth of what you're really like.

I've discovered I'm an as*shole, which was kind of shocking to realize at first, but it sure does explain a lot. Maybe I won't always be an as*shole, but admitting it is the first step, no? Or maybe we're all as*sholes and that's okay. Maybe it's okay to be an a*shole. Or maybe if we all admitted we're as*holes the whole human race would die out from as*sholery. 

How about you? Are you a good person?

Go ahead, ask yourself. We'll wait.

So now that admitting you're not a good person is okay and on the table as kind of funny, are you chiming in? How about you run with it, take it out for a spin in your living and then come back and tell me how it went. Notice what happens to your feelings and your resources, then let's talk.

Moving away from the herd means you stop doing things simply because other people say you should. But the cost is that when you stop doing things that other people are doing, these other people get very angry at you - not just because you're not doing the things, but also because if they have to, so do you, and who do you think you are just Not Doing?

But when you stop doing things, and stop getting things in return, you begin to see what you need to live. Do you need the latest cut of shirt - the one with the slightly puffy sleeves? Do you need an iPhone? Do you need organic produce? Do you need a soulmate? Do you need world peace? Do you need to brush your teeth? Do you need to spawn? Do you need a boxspring to go with your mattress? Do you need just one more kitty? Do you need to be pain free? Do you need a trip to India to visit a world class guru who may or may not slip you the tongue if he can get you alone? Do you need gluten-free snacks? Do you need regular cardiovascular exercise? Do you need the audio version of Perfect Brilliant Stillness narrated by Terence Stamp? Do you need a hug?   

So maybe all I'm saying is that I've discovered that when you stop doing, you really tick people off. Maybe what I'm saying is that I've discovered that I'm the bozo on the bus. My pants are certainly bad enough - all saggy in the seat and made of velour and so old they look kind of patina-ed.

But really. Whatever.

I'm going to go have a half glass of wine. Maybe visit the greenery. Maybe go for a walk. Maybe unpack a box with winter clothes instead of pawing through them like I did all last week because I discover I'm cold and need a long-sleeve shirt. Maybe sit on the stoop and smoke an american spirit rette because it's amusing to spend all week working on tobacco cessation projects and then flare one up.

There's doing. And then there's doing. The trick is to know the difference.

It helps if you're an as*shole.

Forests and End Times

Death of forests are death of climate protectors: NY Times article this past Saturday

Shamanic Psychic Obsession

I get rather obsessed about things. All sorts of things. I discover spaghetti squash and a perfect-results way to cook it and then proceed to eat it a dozen times a week, for weeks on end. Or happen upon a new tv program - like the Stargate shows - and watch 25, 30, 35 episodes a week for weeks, months on end, until all 300+ shows are watched. Or yoga, 2, 3, 4 times a week for months. Or books on anarchy, or homesteading, or greenery growing and grainery brewing, dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of them.

These obsessions come and go, and my elegant theory around it all is that because of my psychic shamanic sensitivities, whatever is happening in my body/mind/spirit gets amplified, and if it detects something is needed, things like motivation and will go pedal to to the metal until whatever need is occurring gets satiated. And then it's done. Finito. 

For a couple of decades I was obsessed with performing and the fame that goes with it, with that transformation to bright, sizzling, vast energy that fills a person with brilliant light when they plug into it. Sometimes it was just as a model with the presence of a photographer. Other times it was on stage in front of 1000 people, bright lights shining heat, the rustle of the crowd like the sound of a lover's breathing, the small movements of their body telling you how to open them, how to receive them.

And then it shifted to the holistic work. Releasing into that space of vast, charged, deeply humming energy in such a way that all the people in the room could be taken with me, class space as space ship into the infinite Yes. Or adjusting the environment on all sense levels so the person on the table receiving energywork was invited, carried, linked into the energy space that lives just behind this ordinary one, supported as they found their own way to meet and inhabit the Yes. 

And now that is falling away - that need for either myself or the people I'm with to be in a state of heightened awareness, to submerge into the mystical experience of the layers underneath the layer called World. It's been falling away for a few years now. Not because those heart expanding, mind blowing, body luscious states aren't YES. They are. But with each passing day, I get that it is genuinely the Yes that's calling to me, and that where I'm heading now is toward the yes. Which is very quiet. And inside. This human body. And the body of kitties. The body of plants. The body of stones and soil and rain and dwelling and apple and bowl and shoe and bed. 

Who knows where this human called Katherine will end up? The movement is away from other humans. I wish it weren't. I so wanted to be a part of the tribe - loved, respected, a member who contributed in a deep and meaningful way. I guess that's the desire to be a hero that lives in all of us, yes? To bring back fire for our tribe. To save us from the coming storm. 

But all that is falling away too. And is almost gone.

What's left is a new obsession, a simple one - to make a living in a useful, bullsh*t-free way. It's been building for a few years, rotating on a single question: what do I have to offer folks that is genuinely helpful to them? And for most people, asking themselves this question is pretty straightforward- learn carpentry and get a job, get credentialled and go teach (although in today's job market, this path isn't as clear as it used to be). 

For three Mach-10 years that culminated with the right to attach several letters after my name, I was obsessed with higher learning, with science, with psychology and public health and social behavior and chronic disease. I still am. But it's rapidly becoming clear that I don't fit into the culture of that world. 

Maybe it's the job I'm in. It's too visible. My freakness is too obvious to the folks around me. We leave an important meeting with high-level folks, and two minutes out the door, the CEO asks me: so what are your thoughts? And because I haven't had time to process, what comes out is something way beyond a recap of How The Meeting Went.

I've got it together enough to not speak about how all sorts of different health issues each meeting attendee was dealing with was lifted into the light, and how their different emotional patterns fit into each physical expression, and how that impacted the way in which they heard what my team and I were trying to explain to them. But the clinical, professional assessment of presentation and reception? Not currently something I can give on the fly. I need some time to shape it, to figure out what needs to be edited out. Otherwise the psychic shamanic cat is out of the bag, and it won't be read as psychic shamanic. It'll simply look childish or emotional or irrelevant or just freakin bizarre.   

And it's a small office. I watch the discomfort of the folks around me - they know something is off about me but they can't put their finger on it. Am I immature? Am I arrogant? Is it lack of confidence that has me pulling back? Is it social ineptness that has me missing basic social cues? They don't understand that I've spent a lifetime discovering the hundred thousand other things occurring just behind the ordinary reality. That I'm watching things they can't see yet, hearing things they can't identify yet, putting things together in a way they haven't gotten strong enough to deal with yet.

This doesn't make me better or smarter or anything like that. By far, I am surrounded by folks smarter, savvyier than me. You seriously do not want someone like me building your bridge or developing your biologic cancer treatment. Me? I'm like the folks on Alphas or even X-men or even the cancelled tv show Lie To Me. It's just mutation that's been practiced and honed to a skill.

Did I just compare myself to a superhero? What the f*ck else can you compare this shamanic psychic thing to? Van Gogh and his mad visual acuity around color? Perfumers and their hyper-sensitivity to scents? These are all still about the known, accepted five senses, and the shamanic psychic thing is the spidey sense that lives inside of a human, with conduits through the nervous and digestive systems, receptors in the pineal gland and solar plexus, a kind of hijacking of different areas of the brain so that the inflow of data can be interpreted as visuals or smells or sounds or emotions.    

So why aren't I a superhero? Why aren't people flocking to me in droves for this fantastic shamanic psychic whammy that I can lay on them? 

There are dozens of possible answers to this. Some that blame me for being a crazy, deluded, incompetent wackjob. Others that blame clients for wanting the psychic feel-good, as in don't tell me the truth, tell me what I want to hear, tell me good things about flowing cash and loving soulmates and meaningful careers and effortless vibrant health. 

But the truth of it is that these skills and abilities live inside me. I've honed them for years. It's a normal part of every day. And it doesn't work like other people think it should work. It's more like being a physician, a healer, than most folks realize.

It's not:

I Know Everything About Everything, And Can Make Very Very Good Things Happen To The People Who Give Me Cash to Sit In The Scary Eyes Metaphysics of My Divinely Appointed Tarot Card Reading and Connection With Angels and Dead People

But rather:

This is what is occurring, this is what set it into motion, and these are different options and these are the most likely outcome for each of them. 

Not very sexy, is it?

And really, how successful is a doc who just says: lay off the cake and get your fat a*ss to the gym? And the ones that tell you the cancer is coming if you don't quit smoking or a heart attack is on its way if you don't lay off the Bo*jangles? Probably the least popular of all.

People want pills and treatments, they want genuine healing. They go in sick and want to come out well. That's what I go to my Korean acupuncturist for. But I'm not really that kind of healer. (I do healing work - the shamanic psychic thing has that piece to it, too, but the freakin scope of that is best saved for another post)

And so what am I? I'm more of an MRI. An organic MRI that sees physical, mental, emotional patterns. But how can I use this skill? What do I have to offer folks that is genuinely helpful to them? 

I have to make a living. Don't we all? My obsession with getting the BA and master's was around plugging into a career in a field I found fascinating and spot on with usefulness. 

And yet I don't fit. In a way that I understand may get me fired. My current contract is a temp one that ends January 1. I most likely have a job until then :) because I'm not failing at the job they hired me for - I'm just more weird and less fantastic than they thought I'd be. But who knows? And who knows after that? 

I'm applying for different jobs in the area, all public health chronic disease sort of gigs, but in larger companies, where I stand a better chance of blending in to the scenery, having my freakness be less visible (it's how I thrived in Cubicleland and Hiveworld).

The desire and need to be plugged into the Bright Mystical YES is gone. The obsession now is a life spent communing with plants, animals, weather, stones, of pulling even further back from World and into earth. 

And yet the question still comes around, over and over: What do I have to offer folks that is genuinely helpful to them? And how do I make a living doing it? 

Corporate intuitionist? Garden shop worker? Animal shelter attendant? Jury selection consultant? Some form of IntegralShamanics healer I don't know of yet?