Archive for the ‘Shadow Lands’ Category

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April 23rd, 2012 by Michele

Dear Old Friends…and New,

In the past I was willing to compromise myself…now I am not.

Not too awfully long ago, I needed you and that’s why I put myself aside.

Surprise! I don’t need you anymore…and I’m listening to my inner voice, a lot!

Before now, I was ready and almost anxiously waiting to sell my soul, just to have a friend.

I am not desperate, so that’s not happening!

Up until very recently, I was a garbage can waiting for your trash.

The trash collectors ran over and smashed my can yesterday…so I can no longer serve you in this way.

Yes, I know you are feeling lost and confused…I know it took you a long, long time to train me to take out your trash…I’m really sorry you are having these experiences…and I’m not at all sad that you have to find another place to put all those unresolved emotions.

Yet you see, you are not my job, anymore…I will never again make space for you and not me…I am not willing to be present for you at the risk of losing myself.

Right now I’m looking for equality in my relationships…equal give and take…honest expression…personal responsibility.

It may take a while to find this–probably a bit longer than it will take you to find another garbage can–I know, so I’m also learning about patience, self-worth and vertical living.

Anyone out there?

 

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Voices in the Garden

February 26th, 2011 by Michele

Floating midway down the pit cave, my feet dangled into the abyss. There was barely enough space for my sitting bones on the ledge before it broke away into nothingness. A familiar flush of fear crashed over me yet was instantaneously transmuted into the kind of thrill I get while looking over the edge of the great Cliff’s of Mohr, or the railing on the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.

Scary and yet, so compelling. I really do understand how people can be overcome by sensation, to lose their minds enough to jump. There might be a lot of freedom in that feeling.

Excitement softened into pleasure as the tingling sensations moved upward under my skin through my body, into my heart, down my arms and eventually exiting, no pouring, out the palms of my hands.

I might have mistaken it for sweat.

All that curiosity and joy was pushed aside because I couldn’t stop my mind from telling it’s own story. Instead, I recoiled, pressing my back into the stone wall behind me, looking down my own nose into the void suspiciously.

I saw absolutely nothing in that midnight milieu, though a creepy feeling began to move like a dense coastal fog into my legs, from way down there. It was like the cold waking breath of a dragon streaming through my body. Each time he exhaled, I inhaled. And as I sucked his breath in, I turned to a resistant stone; on the exhale I lost my constitution, becoming completely drained of life force.

I allowed that dragon to breathe through me for some time. In between breaths I could hear the woman calling from below, “Micaela, Micaela,” she said it again and again.

——————————————————————

I’d been hearing her voice all day now; it was soft and coaxing, like a zephyr dancing along the beach. At the first sound, I ran through the gate past the great Oak tree into the garden, skipping, like a small girl.

Where I normally stop to wade in the stream of healing iron water from the Red Spring, today I ran past making a beeline to the Yew trees and sat on the bench waiting, for something.

When her voice whispered again, I looked into in the thicket between the trees. A dark oval opened and gently pulled me inward. Once inside, I stood at ground level looking down at the roots of one of the ancient Yews.

That’s when I heard the clarity in her voice, this time it was less wispy, much clearer. I walked down the root system following her call. So preoccupied with the tones, I walked and then fell into a void, landing on the stone precipice where I now sit, a ledge barely big enough to cradle my bottom.

My toes are numb, my heart races, I am cold to bone.

Suddenly there’s a tug on my right foot. Something is pulling me into the unknown and I am still strong enough, at least, to resist, once again. “Stop!” I cannot stand on the ledge, though my knees jerk toward my chest and I balance on my sitting bones, leaning back into that stone wall.

She calls again, this woman. Now I hear her sweetness, her softness, as she cries out from her heart, “Micaela, come in!”

No matter what I hear, I trust not because my mind is busy making more stories. Mostly it reminds me that I do not trust myself to take the right turn, here, and I go no further. In no time, the absence of will bounces me back to the surface where I lay, happily relieved, on the bench between the two Yew trees, safe once again.

As I reflected on my adventure, I realize what I’d just done. I actually had made a decision. I’d chosen safety and knowingness over awareness and expansion.

The Energetic Connection offers online courses in Opening the Body to Spirit, and Self-Mastery: Journeys into the Unknown to Embrace your Brilliance; and podcasts on Sacred Space among other experiential topics.

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Thousands of Invisible Threads: Part Five

July 3rd, 2010 by Michele

We die and are born again, knowing the truth about the power inside each of us. At some point in life along the way our minds develop and we forget, yet it doesn’t mean we no longer have access to the memory of this knowledge and its related abilities. It is truly within our human capability profile to do “these things and greater,” as Jesus prophesied we would.

It’s just a matter of finding the key and opening the door. Once we believe it is open, we will fly out from behind our self-imprisonment.

Meanwhile though, in our current victim reality, we believe in suffering–negatively. Do you know that there is such a state as positive suffering? This side of the suffering coin has a purpose. Like strength conditioning or any other practice that motivates a person to go the distance, positive suffering expands a person beyond their self-imposed limits. Challenging, no doubt, it is a place of initiation, a place from which someone will eventually graduate and slide into the river of ease.

In a causal (not casual) relationship to the soul’s purpose, a person who is positively suffering is sincere, learning to trust something greater, both inside and outside of themselves. Although very vulnerable and soft, this person is also chomping at the bit of transformation. This person begs for forgiveness and demands the same from everyone, constantly sacrificing the ego to communicate in any situation, at any cost. This is the beginning of an honest and humble unraveling of feelings, expressions of true human beingness, as well as pain and sadness from an empathic place. Not entirely clear about where the trail will lead next, this person perceives all others as righteous, no matter where they sit in relationship to their own purposes. Almost contrarily, this person is able to stand-up for themselves intuitively and constructively.

The state of positive suffering is a stepping stone to full responsibility which is the only ticket out of the illusion. Jesus and Neo both experienced it.

So let’s wander back into the scene with the angry friend and the possible reasons I, or any of us, may have taken on that energy, in consciousness or not. If I knew it was coming, I might have reacted in my normal, pre-programmed way, resisting or dodging it. This I have done many times. I’ve made a great practice of first resisting, judging or framing it in my mind somehow, then dodging the bullets of others emotions and negative thinking. I’m really good at it too. This recent angry energetic transference had to arrive obliquely, via one of my blind spots.

It is my time now to be taken down by the machine gun fire of another’s anger. Why anger? Well, because it’s familiar to me, because I’ve often been motivated and empowered by anger, and more important, I have many memories of death by anger and I desperately need to break free from it’s claws and control over me. I have a deeply lodged fearful belief that I will die, metaphorically, at the hand of someone else’s rage, and have used my own rage as a buffer, an equalizer, to fight back, time and time again.

A belief so strong, I have manifested it on the physical plane, many times.

This is my resurrection; well, it’s one of them anyway. I need to find a way to trust that I am simultaneously powerful and vulnerable enough to not only let it pass through me, killing me once again, I also need to remember I can stand up enlivened afterward and say, “no,” this is no longer my reality. And by making the statement that I’m ready to change how I identify myself, I’ve called in this experience.

Watching “The Matrix” over and over, almost obsessively, I know that Neo’s self-discovery is my potentiality. And although I realize this to be my truth, I have never moved beyond the place where I, each and every time, become a victim of my circumstances, collapsing as though dead. At best, I drop into apathy and begin the long and steep climb out of the well of darkness yet again. It’s really quite tiresome and pushing through the same old birth canal multiple times is definitely exhausting.

That is, until today. Today I have taken a step to meet myself. I’ve written five installments of this particular story, and through the telling of it all, I can now see from my seat of inner wisdom, I have a 360 degree view. Of course it’s never really over, not for me and not for Neo. Like it or not, we will all be reborn somehow, at some point. If you watch the other two lesser acclaimed Matrix sequels, you will observe at least one Universal truth: Yin and Yang. The more adept Neo becomes, the more adept becomes his enemy. As his enemy grows, Neo realizes he’s been fighting his own shadow, an integral part of himself, and the essence of oneness and individuation.

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Thousands of Invisible Threads: Part Four

July 2nd, 2010 by Michele

Have you ever noticed how garbage attracts flies and other bugs and how a virus morphs and travels?

Have you ever lived in a neighborhood or city where trash lined the streets as a rule? How does it smell; how does it look and feel to be in this type of environment? Do you take out your household garbage regularly and place it in a container for pick-up? Do you consistently clean your body? Do you regularly clean up your energetic garbage: negative thoughts, emotions from the past and resulting present time attitudes, or do you wander around in public with a cloud of dust surrounding you like Pig Pen did in the Peanuts cartoon?

If you were going into a deadly virus zone, would you wear a containment suit to keep you safe from infection? Have you ever thought to protect yourself in much the same way from foreign, possibly harmful energies? Cleaning and tidying, even protecting at times, both our inner and outer energy fields is crucial in creating a stronger or new resonance with positive morphogenic fields. We must be just as astute with this as we are in brushing and flossing our teeth for physical health, maybe more so.

We need to put systems in place, like our morning cleansing rituals, so we don’t forget or avoid this part of our hygiene. Like any practice, it must be become a habit. Once it is habitual and we have downloaded and stored the new program, we can then call on this practice in a pinch, in any moment or in a crisis. If we don’t put it into regular practice though, we could potentially loose the memory completely or our brains have to work really hard to dig the stored information out from under the attic cobwebs when it’s needed.

If someone punched you over and over in the same place on your arm, at some point it would become sore, bruised and then numb. If it hurt enough in the beginning, you would most likely ask that person to stop or get out of their way after the first punch. If someone nearby hasn’t bathed in a week, their body odors become offensive and you would probably move out of range, or at least upwind of this person. On an emotional level, when someone is constantly in some drama or is overtly abusive, I bet you carefully consider how much time you spend with that person.

Each one of these choices to block or move aside creates a type of boundary; we have no doubt, nor do we hesitate, about making these choices as a matter of course in the moment. It’s a no-brainer, like running way from a big crocodile on the hunt. One day we may even be able to let this energy move through us.

Why then, when a more subtle energy comes our way, especially through someone we “need” to be in relationship with like a boss, a spouse or partner, do we avoid making a boundary? What in us sees this as such a risk? At the very least, we could leave them alone for a while and not return until the person shifts the energy in their field. Do you ever become consumed by a negative vibration, believing the energy is your own, suffering through the experience, wondering how you became so disoriented or uncomfortable in your body?

In the case of a boss, a family member or a special event, you may just have to stay put. If it’s impossible to leave or move, then maybe your containment needs to be a protective suit of energy. While you are trying on different suits, you could be asking yourself some key questions. Is this mine or someone else’s; whose energy is this? Is my energy enmeshed with this person’s energy? If so, why? What do I need from them or what do they need from me? Am I matching their energy for a reason? Can I easily unplug the threads of this energy? Is this person using me as a receptacle for their unwanted energies? If so, why am allowing this?

Another really good question to ask yourself is whether or not you are resistant or in judgment of this person. If you are, chances are you are enmeshed in a different way; judgment and resistance will hold it in place, in fact it will expand the energy. Do you have any unfinished business with this person or could there be a similarity in your emotional and energetic footprint? When it all boils down, humanity is from the same mold and no matter who the person is, we are entangled in some way and have all the potential variances in resonance as the next person, even, dare I say, a criminal. The way you operate in any given moment may be very different, yet the opportunity may come knocking one day and surprise the heck out of you!

Energetic boundaries are not brick walls or castle motes that keep you distanced from people. They are simply subtle differentiations between you and the next person that empower you as the gate keeper to allow energy in or not, to allow it to move through you or around you.

Remember Neo in the Matrix? Even though he was awakened and eventually became fully realized, he wasn’t yet actualized and had a steep learning curve toward embracing his mission. At first he ran when he saw the Agents. He eventually used his physical agility and learned on the spot to dodge bullets. Next he harnessed his mental confidence and strength, rescuing Morpheus from the agents’ clutches. At the end when he was trapped in the Matrix, Neo began fighting Agent Smith in hand to hand combat; he ultimately outran them all and on the brink of complete escape, he was gunned down. He died temporarily only because his mind believed he was dead until he was coached back to life again through the love of his soul mate. Upon his resurrection, he stood a second time against the fury of the wagging and rapid fires of automatic weapons, this time saying “no,” in essence, these bullets do not exist. And they all fell to the floor.

One day, we will be in that place of self empowerment and actualization. We will see the bullets and know they do not exist for us because there is no fear; the only thing that really exists is unconditional compassion. As Neo created a new neural network of possibility, he said over and over again, “there is no spoon.” If you haven’t watched the movies, particularly the first one in the three-part series, add it to your Netflix queue.

As with Neo and Jesus both, the Matrix is only an illusion and we have hidden power over all unclean and distorted energies; including the lie that tells us “we are” that negative morphogenic field of energy.

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Thousands of Invisible Threads: Part Three

July 1st, 2010 by Michele

There’s a lot of hidden anger in the world. Anger itself is a rough emotion, especially when it’s suppressed and leaks out covertly or sits for a long time, wreaking havoc on our bodies. It’s really never been an “okay” emotion to express, unless you are a man, under siege or being brutalized by a violent perpetrator. It wasn’t until a half century ago that women began to take back their power, allowing themselves to yell and scream if they needed. As recently as the 1950′s women were still being imprisoned in mental asylums for hormonal imbalances which outwardly presented as anger or depression (hint: suppressed anger).

Contrary to what may appear true on the outside though, women are still suppressing their anger. Just today, again, I made a call to that same friend. I left a very brief message at her office and almost immediately felt that same intense throat inflammation, albeit a little less dramatically. I have to wonder, is this something new or have I just been unaware of how much anger is really in there? Am I more sensitive, more empathic and less tolerant lately? Do I need to make a choice or create a different boundary? Am I still holding that degree of anger inside me, a perfect homing device for anger in some outer field?

This deserves a bit more self-reflection and even analysis.

Let’s use a premise we all know: there are thousands of invisible threads of connection between ourselves, other people, places, other living beings and even outer spaces. With that said, is there ever really anything one person feels that we all don’t feel? Is there anything one person does that doesn’t send reverberations through the whole planet, even the Universe? I, for one, don’t think so. I believe at some level we feel everything, especially what is happening in the realm our closest friends, family, geography and similarities of emotional and mental states of being.

There is much information and a recent emergence of precepts about the idea of: something is what it is based on the observer. More important are the common thoughts of the observer. In Sheldrake’s research on the “morphogenic field, he concludes that, “individually and collectively we constantly contribute to the development of our Universe with our thoughts and the emotional content behind them. Accessing fields of consciousness, or morphogenic fields, is as simple as resonance. For example, if you carry a high level of resonance for peace, the chances are that you will access peace easier and draw to you peaceful experiences. Likewise, if you have a high level of resonance for fear, the chances are equally good that you will find yourself tapping into more fear from that field and drawing validating and fearful experiences into your life.”

If these ideas are true, then why is it we all have such trouble with different interpretations of God, right and wrong? Why do we judge, resist or avoid people and places? Why is one thing good and another bad? Why is there guilt and shame; expectation and self-abasement? Can’t we see that it’s our thoughts, general state of emotion and attitude that attract these things, for better or worse, directly to us like a magnet?

When my friend was angry with me, I was not angry back. I suffered a physical consequence from her anger, yet I had no animosity, no angst nor judgment of her. I did not blame her for my body’s interpretation of this experience. It was my responsibility to take care of myself and part of caring for me includes conscious awareness of my own resonances and related attractive qualities.

We all have varying and superficial states of resonance each day depending on our circumstances. We also have a “home base” of sorts and that is usually, for most of us anyway, a fairly negative place, often filled with fear. Because we don’t always want to believe we are holding negative space, our shadows or unconscious pieces sometimes surprise us. Contrary to how we self-reflect, these “morphogenic fields” actually rule our outlook in any given time frame. We are blessed to experience the peaceful side of things when we do, and most of us need to “add that value” to our daily schedule.

The step we don’t always take is the one of responsibility to change our field. Instead, we continue to resonate with negative energies all day, come home and take a bath or have a drink to relax, exercise, or do some sort of clearing meditation. While some of these practices are less damaging and less addictive physiologically, they are equal to one another when used as temporary symptom suppressors and compensatory devices. If used as tools to take a step upward, they can be very beneficial in the long run. Even so, we really need to change our thoughts in the moment and build on that to create a higher vibration or resonance on which to stand and ultimately jump.

In a more obvious twist, we all know that it’s unsafe to walk across the freeway during rush hour traffic and if we do venture out in that way, we would expect to be fully responsible for any injuries to our bodies when hit by a speeding SUV! It would be considered negligent, even insane, to step into that “field.” So why do we put ourselves in danger in less tangible circumstances? Why do we blame others when, in a way, we are trespassing in other negative morphogenic fields? That is a question to be answered.

Now, let’s overlay this level of realization, pro-activity and responsibility to the situation when I “absorbed” anger from my friend. Without reiterating, you can see why there was no sense in perpetuating the anger field with blame. Now that it’s clearly a case of responsibility for myself, how do I take that leap, resonating with something other than anger, stress and fear? How do I stay out of the density without judging and pretending to separate, or by matching this?

My first answer is two-fold: 1) ask for guidance; 2) be willing to see ourselves (we’re back to “we” again) clearly, even in the shadows. Once we acknowledge where we are, once we become truly aware of the nuances of our negativity, we can make a new choice, over and over again, until we shift our consciousness fully. If we miss a step by jumping over part of the process, we may never realize where we are, much less climb out.

Next Chapter: How and why does this negative field (whether it’s anger, victim, apathy, arrogance, resentment, blame or whatever) hold us so tightly? How do we stop ourselves from repeated and self-inflicted offenses?

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