Open your eyes to Your Divine Self.

Trauma and Light

Talking about trauma isn’t pretty. People tend to turn away, hoping it never happens in their lives. Or deny that it has happened – to them. It can seem inconvenient to take time to feel into these tender places – especially in a culture that prizes staying busy and producing. When we carry the baggage of trauma, we live with a loss of dignity. To be socially acceptable, we pretend we don’t have a hole inside. We distract ourselves by staying busy. We prize Doing – and disconnect from Being.

Here, I share some specifics, to make the universal process of bringing Light into your Shadow more personal. Traumatic experiences, when seen as having value, can be a map to wisdom wholeness.

Once upon a time, a long time ago…. I was a baby, hurt and neglected by my mother. Only years later, as an adult, did I learn that Mom had been diagnosed with postpartum psychosis. Because the diagnosis was kept secret, Mother and child went untended. The hurt was never talked about.

Learning of my mother’s diagnosis was grounding – her erratic behavior and harmful ways with her children had been observed by other people. This helped me have more compassion for all of us.

My mother’s childhood was traumatic. Because she did not have the resources available to her that we have now, she stuffed her feelings and did the best she could. The compassion I felt for her didn’t heal the wound.

When trauma occurs in our first 2-5 years of life, the neural pathways in our brains develop in response to trauma messages. Alarms turn on and stay on – even when they no longer serve us. The state of alarm alters our brain chemistry, our adrenals, kidneys and hormones.

Thanks to what we now know about our capacity to generate NEW neural pathways, even decades later – this effects of trauma can be lessened. Here are steps for healing from Trauma to Light. You don’t have to do them all. Read them and see what pops out at you as alive for you.

First: Uncover the memory. To my surprise, a traumatic memory surfaced while I was taking a medicine bath with essential oils and flower essences. Even more amazing, a wound actually appeared on my body. Along with that came a memory that had been buried – which is exactly what my nervous system needed to do, to survive.

I reached a point in my life where I was ready to move beyond surviving.

I treated the wound as if it was recent, with lavender oil and Rescue Remedy. I watched it heal over a period of days. I was tender and with my body.

Months later, the emotions I had internalized came to the surface. I raged and cried out feelings that had been frozen in my body for decades. As my body released and relaxed, I felt better.

My next challenge was to disconnect the sensations in my body from the trauma story. My emotions and my story were like a ravenous tiger. The tiger let go of me after I fed it. I wrote in my journal. I talked with therapists and a compassionate friend.  I published an essay in Mother-Daughter Memories: Love Revealed about what happened.

I told the story for as long as I needed to – as long as it was alive in me. Many people told me things like “you’re not your story.” Or, “let go of the story.” For anyone with early and pervasive trauma, this is not quite so simple.

Over time, I started to lose interest in the story, not because people told me I should. Once I felt fully seen – with compassion and kindness – I naturally began to move on. I became interested in observing how I responded to the event, what beliefs I developed about myself, about my mother, and about the world–all because of what she did when she was in a psychotic state of mind, disconnected from reality.

For years I thought she hurt me because I was unlovable or unworthy of her love. As I grew up, she often called me cruel names and reinforced my feelings of shame.

I understood she hurt me because she was so badly hurt by her mother. From both the stories she told us and what I intuited through the Akasha, I sensed generations of mother-daughter abandonment, neglect and loss of safety. Victimization was a prominent theme in the maternal lineage.

I believed at one time – that my life purpose was to break the pattern to STOP. I was and am highly motivated not to pass this on to my own children. So I kept plugging away. I kept bringing all the compassion I could muster to myself, to her, to the lineage – and to all mothers and daughters throughout time who have suffered abandonment, neglect, mental illness and abuse. At times it felt like slogging through mud. One foot in front of the other….

I explored past lives with my mother. In one, she was my daughter who I abandoned. I was to be tried as a witch in the Inquisition in Europe in the 1400’s. I gave my 4-year old daughter to another woman to raise as her own. I didn’t even tell her goodbye. Everything was rush-rush. I was terrified. I didn’t want her to know I was going to be tried as a witch. I wanted her hidden safely in the woods. I didn’t want the authorities to know she was my daughter. I believed that was the best way to protect her. Under the circumstances, it was what had to happen.

From a 4-year old’s perspective, what could she think but that losing her mother and her home was due to some lack or flaw on her part? She believed she was being punished and abandoned because something was wrong with her. Not knowing the truth made her crazy.

That’s what children do. When a parent hurts them, they believe it happens because something is wrong with them.

Resolving karma isn’t actually about balancing the wrongs and hurts we do to each other throughout time. It is more about seeing beyond the surface to the deeper truth of who we are as Divine Beings in human form.

At some point, the mask came off. I saw my mother’s true nature as Absolute Love.

But I still believed there was something wrong with me.

My next insight was the realization that she couldn’t see me clearly. My mother couldn’t see my true nature. She didn’t know who I was. I had to find that for myself.

Another huge aha came when I realized that my mother injured me – and herself, and others whom she loved – because she didn’t know who SHE was.

All that Knowing released me!

HOW MANY OF US KNOW WHO WE REALLY ARE, ALL THE TIME?

I am able to see my mother now. She is both human and Divine. We all are. Behind the mask of the “wounded human” is Absolute Love.

You may not need to do all these steps. If your healing journey feels endless, have courage. Love who you are–right now, in this very moment.

Here’s the process I’m describing, one step at a time:

• Reconnect with the wound. Come out of denial and let it come forward. Do this as a way of claiming your humanity. The dark parts of you deserve to be heard, seen and loved.
• Cry; express emotions. Write and talk about it. Process it for as long as it holds emotional power. Yes, you will come out of it. The way out is through.
• Take care of your Inner Child. Become the safe, adoring mother/father you never had to your Inner Child.
• Study the archetypes of victim and perpetrator. I especially identified for a long while with Persephone and Hades.
• Identify the traumatic themes in your ancestral lineage.
• Learned from your past lives.
• Notice what themes are being repeated.
• Come to a neutral, curious and compassionate place with the themes, the characters and all that happened.
• Get a better feeling for your Soul’s infinite capacity to heal and to love.
• Dedicate yourself to embracing the Divine in all things, the Inner Jewel at the center of all Beings.

When we feel hurt, threatened or angry, it is hard to see the Divine at work. Even so, the Divine Spark is what ignites the life force. No matter how deeply it gets buried or tarnished, it is still there.

One of my clients recently said to me, “I need a session because I can feel that I still have work to do.”

I had to smile. We all have work to do, places to go. Our Beingness wants to expand and evolve. Walking this path gives me the nitty-gritty insider view to help you walk your path.

Whether or not you’ve experienced trauma – and most of us have had some kind of trauma – the limitless potential of Akasha will help you go to your next level.

“There is a crack, a crack, in everything.
That’s how the Light gets in.
That’s how the Light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen

Many readers know I have a trauma history. Many people experience trauma, or know and love someone who has.

“The wound is the place where Light enters you.” — Rumi 

The legacy of trauma is scary and lonely, bringing feelings of isolation, shame, unworthiness, cynicism, futility and depression. Trauma can create or exacerbate mental illness, physical health issues, social discomfort and failure to thrive. For various reasons related to our nervous systems, beliefs and body memories, trauma can create patterns of re-traumatization, which can take years of conscious effort to change. That’s why receiving support, kindness and awareness is essential. We can’t do it alone.

Ironically, traumatized people often do not feel safe enough to receive support, and may not recognize it when it is genuinely offered. They may be highly defended against receiving.

In my thinking, I understood the teaching that every trauma contains a gift. A Cherokee medicine woman spoke of this in her prayer in a sweat lodge. The truth of her words blessed me, landing in my belly like nourishing food.

For years, I searched for the gifts in my past experiences. I deeply desired Light to pour in through the wounds.

It was easy for me to see the negatives. I would think, “yeah, yeah, yeah…..sure there’s a gift. It’s made me who I am–blah blah blah.” If I could, I would have traded the trauma for something easier, lighter. Who would I have been, without trauma messing up my life?

The positives seemed like a Pollyanna fantasy. When people told me good things about myself, I did not believe them. I suspected they were trying to trick me. Or maybe they couldn’t see me clearly. I did not let good feelings in. There was no place inside me for praise or compliments to land.

With ongoing help from Akash, which brings me wisdom, compassion and insight in a very personal way, and Flower Essences, which help me change my habitual patterns, along with help from healers and teachers, I began to uncover the treasure that was buried under the rubble of shock, grief, rage, anxiety, self-criticism and fear.

Despite setbacks along the way, and my own stubbornness, I persisted. The way was crooked, full of detours, wrong turns and dead ends. Even so, I felt compelled to keep trying. At times I felt lost in total darkness, isolated, unlovable and alone. Eventually, I would recover my purpose and renew my commitment to healing. It was like riding waves. Another wave of healing potential would rise up from the Akashic field, and it would carry me to a new place.

If I can be graced with the gift of healing, so can you. You don’t have to do something extraordinary, or be a certain way to deserve it.

Grace is given to  you, to me, to all of us. Without exception.

Over time, my heart began to open to the gifts at the core of the trauma. I began to feel compassion for myself and everyone involved. I became less judgmental. I owned my capacity to be All Things, including Victim and Perpetrator. Eventually I did not identify with being either. I am human, with the capacity for goodness and evil, and everything in between.

The Aramaic roots of the word evil mean “unripe fruit.” Aramaic is the language Jesus spoke. Growing up, I cringed whenever I heard the word evil. But once I learned the roots of the word, I relaxed. I grow fruit trees: lemons, oranges and figs. I know fruit will not ripen until conditions are right.

In this life, there is right and wrong. There are victims and perpetrators. Perpetrators do not know that what they do to another, they do to themselves. Their belief in separation rules their behavior. Victims may tend to either become perpetrators, or be re-victimized, thus continuing the wheel of karma.

Once I experienced this knowing in my heart, it spread like clarity through the cells of my body, bringing peace and softness.

First I got it in my consciousness, then my heart, then my body. Perhaps it could happen in any order, but it needs to happen on all 3 levels, to stick.

Every time I experience a breakthrough in my personal healing, my awareness expands. My capacity to help others naturally grows stronger. My work with clients becomes more effective, which makes it more fun and joyful.

I can turn, extend a hand, and help someone else through the Matrix. When you have a breakthrough, so can  you, no matter what you do for your profession.

I share my personal story to illustrate one pathway from trauma to Light. There are many paths. Yours is unique to you. But all share certain qualities: searching, feeling lost, meeting inner demons, persisting against odds, finding inner strength, meeting allies and emerging, new born, with a sense of purpose, passion, presence and power. The Hero’s Journey.

Next: My personal story of trauma.

If you’ve studied with me, had readings or read my website, you know the word Akasha means space. You know Akasha is a Sanskrit word. The Akashic Record has long been known in Hindu and Buddhist teachings as the “womb” from which life originated and to which it will return.

As someone who has given 2000 readings in the Akashic Record over the past 15 years, I know the existence of the Akasha in every cell of my body. It feels vast, always in motion, arising and falling, beginning and ending.

Do you know that scientists are researching and writing about Akasha?  The Union of Science and Spirituality bring us the Akashic Field

Dr. Ervin Laszlo has written several books on the Akashic Field. In his most recent one he writes that the Akashic Age is the logical successor to the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age. The Akashic age is based on principles of connectedness, not separation; sustainability not exploitation, and transformation not inertia.

We see this age of connectivity in farmer’s markets, sustainable living, homesteading, Occupy movements and gender equality and the connective embracing of diversity. We see it in cooperative actions such as crowd sourcing, group meditations, interfaith prayer groups, labyrinth walks, mandalas, food co-ops and peace-making arts projects.

In a recent tele-class on the Akashic Paradigm with Laszlo, he used waves in the ocean as a descriptive metaphor for what Akasha is.

When we see ocean waves lapping the shore, we think individual waves move from the greater depths of the sea to the sand, where we stand gazing. Actually, scientists measuring wave action find that the molecules of water do not move from one place to another. They only move up and down. The waves travel, but the water does not. The wave moves through and across the water, just as waves move through and across space. And time.

The notion of waves moving across space as individual entities is an illusion. Laszlo says that the world is not an illusion, as some traditions teach, but rather that the world is not what it appears to be. Separateness is an illusion. The world itself, and we ourselves, are part of a larger, cosmic matrix. The Akasha.

“Our ideas about the world are at best a likely story.” — Plato

Laszlo posits that the Akasha is the most likely story. I think he’s onto something.

I believe that the universe is a living, intelligent universe, and that Absolute Love is our origin and our destination. Akasha is the consciousness of the Life Force. Researching the Akashic Field as a field with unique properties, like the Quantum Field or the Magnetic Field, brings insights that were traditionally considered spiritual into the scientific arena.

Akasha is a Divine Presence, within which we can communicate and from which we can receive solace and guidance. In my experience, we can also receive transformation through cellular reorganization through the Akasha.

Only 4% of the known energy of the Universe is visible. 73% of the Universe is now thought to be made of Dark Energy, an expanding force. 23% is Dark Matter, a contracting force. How can we wrap our minds around this? According to physicist David Bohm, the answer lies in the “hidden dimension” or implicate order, in which are hidden variables. What we can see, touch, hear, smell and taste through our ordinary senses is the explicate order. 96% of the energy in the Universe is invisible.

Scientific research on Akasha excites me for several reasons. First, it’s time for the artificial separation between science and spirituality to be mended. Second, I have a strong intellectual passion for probing and understanding the Great Mystery. And third, the Akasha, to me, is force of nature that is bigger than the people who read the Record, and bigger than any techniques that can be taught. It is a connection, a listening, a seeing, a relationship. It is a practice that takes dedication and attention. This is what I teach: a relationship. Not a technique.

I first accessed the Akasha spontaneously. It’s been a relief to read in Laszlo’s The Akashic Experience that many other people have, too.

We live in an age, the Akashic Age, when many of us are reawakening to the Living Universe and to our own relationship with it.

I am here to support you in furthering your birthright. I’d love to read your stories and comments, please post them here on this site.

Native Americans teach that there are 3 miracles in your life, every minute of every day.

1. Life exists
2. You are gifted with life.
3. You are evolved enough to KNOW you are gifted with life.

How often do you remember that life is a gift?

It’s easy to take life for granted. We wake up in the morning and jump right into the things we do to keep our lives running. We forget to take time to connect with our deeper selves. To express Gratitude.

We are trained to believe that we need to earn a living. Consensus reality says we don’t deserve life simply because we are alive.

We all need money, a safe, comfortable home and good, nourishing food. We also need satisfying relationships, spiritual connection and creative expression. In today’s world, how can we make friends with our survival needs and live as if the mere fact of our existence means we are worthy of being alive?

Is there a gap between your connection to Spirit and
your relationship with money?

We are called ‘homo sapiens sapiens’ because we have the capacity for self-reflection. We can be conscious of who we are.

Being conscious of who we are increases the choices available to us.

In The Currency of Connection, Nogie King demonstrates that money is means of connecting with each other, nourishing ourselves and each other. She recommends treating money as if it is your dear friend. She says the original purpose of money in the marketplace was to bring people together. Trading goods is a way of connecting and improving quality of life.

Do you fear money? Hate it? Hoard it? Try to pretend it doesn’t exist? I’ve done all the above. Do you see money as power over others, or power that others have over you?

Write out your beliefs about money, without judging what comes out of your pen.

When I first did this exercise, I was disturbed by what came out. When I was young, I saw money used to control others. As a child with little or no money, I had no power, and no say-so over even small choices that weren’t economic. The breadwinner of the family wielded absolute power and seemed to resent having to pay the bills.

In my neighborhood, I saw families with plenty of money, and seemed miserable. Their houses looked grand on the outside, but on the inside was a lot of unhappiness.

I rebelled against the idea that people with money are somehow better than people without. At the top of the money pile seemed to be a cold, cold heart.

Money and love seemed to live in completely unrelated dimensions.

Does earning and spending money HAVE to take place completely outside your heart? Is money separate from the 3 miracles?

Most people will more readily tell me how much they weigh, or how their sex life is going, then tell me how much money they make or spend.

One reason for this is, there is no “Enough” when it comes to money, Even people who are wealthy are always insecure because, what if they lose it? And, other people are even wealthier! What the heck is going on?

King encourages us to think about money from a Sacred Feminine perspective. For  centuries, our economic policies have been based on outmoded patriarchal values of competition and a belief in separation. Money has separated us from each other, from Spirit, and from our own deeper, inner needs.

This way of thinking has encouraged entrepreneurs to walk into beautiful, old-growth forests and calculate board-feet of lumber, seeing magnificent, ancient trees as profit rather than miracles of life. Many people believe that the Universe is a dead, purposeless place. From this mindset, it makes sense to take what you can get, to  amass material possessions to compensate for feeling alone, in a lifeless universe.

What if, instead, you open your heart to beauty? What if you choose to do less, to prioritize caring, loving relationships over competing and hoarding? What if you and I have the power to make a difference in the larger economy through aligning ourselves with the Sacred even in our spending and earning?

King calls us to prioritize connection, relationship and nurturing the life force with money.

Even during the years when I was very poor, I prioritized healing and art in my budget. I wanted to create a world where spiritual healers could make a decent living. This was YEARS before I knew I would be called to do the work I do now.

I see many people doing this, in small and big ways. Composting, growing gardens, sharing the bounty with neighbors. Creating bi-lingual schools. Volunteering, help others. Cleaning up the environment. Taking a lower paying, lower stress job, to have more time, and quality time with friends and family.

Men and women are doing this together. The Divine Feminine calls the Divine Masculine to the Dance. Together we can use brains and brawn, hearts and minds to live the Miracles of Life, even in our money lives. We can look at the big picture.

I invite you to trust your intuition. Tell the truth about how you feel about money.

What steps are you taking to live from your heart? Where do you need support? We are all unhooking from a dysfunctional money culture.

Chakras, Auras and Energetic Boundaries

We’ve talked about what happens when our boundaries are too porous. Did you know our boundaries can also be too rigid? Rigid boundaries limit our well-being just as much as boundaries that are too porous.

In an effort to defend ourselves, we make our boundaries rigid. We want to keep negative energies out. But rigid boundaries keep everything out, including the good stuff. We build walls around our hearts, allowing only a very few people to get in, if any.

What happens when our boundaries are too rigid?

We feel isolated. We avoid even positive people and experiences. We reject true expressions of affection and regard, because we fear it will cost us something.

Our boundaries are formed in childhood. As children, we figure out what to do as best we can, by OURSELVES, without the support and guidance of a wise teacher who places our needs front and center. At some point in our adult lives, we realize our boundaries need to be softer, to let the good in. At the same time, they need to keep us safe.

Rigid boundaries are a way to cope with unsafe environments. Environments rife with criticism or bullying are also characterized by denial or minimizing what is happening in plain view. Even if the harm done was “only emotional,” it impacts our physical bodies.

Remember E=MC squared? Energy = matter times the speed of light squared.

Psychic information moves much faster than physical matter. Someone yelling at you, glaring angrily, or holding their hand up in a threatening way is initiating movement in the energetic field through focused intention. They may be relieving themselves of their own difficult feelings by sending those feelings your way. How do we keep ourselves safe? Oftentimes, we become defended.

There is a better way!

You can learn to program your boundaries to honor your spiritual and emotional harmony. Your boundaries can be fluid and flexible. They can breathe, just as you breathe, taking in prana, life force energy, expanding and contracting from one place or person to another.

Here’s how:

• Ground yourself in the strength and support of the Earth element.
• Shift your focus away from protecting yourself from “them” or “out there.”
• Focus on safety, peace and security as your baseline state of being.
• Connect energetically with your heart center, reinforcing safety, peace and security
• Think about what you have planned for the day
• Set your chakras as if tuning a radio dial, to a bandwidth that meets your needs

In my class series, “Chakras, Auras and Energetic Boundaries,” you learn how to do this, regardless of what is going on in the world around you.

Learn what special qualities to address in each chakra. Learn to open your chakras and set boundaries in your aura. Learn to program your energetic field to attract what benefits you and filter out what doesn’t.

You can consciously create boundaries that truly serve you and take care of you. You can adapt your energetic boundaries to your daily needs. Once you get comfortable with this process, you can do it easily and quickly.