Your Inner Strength

A few months ago, I entered the darkest time of my life. This was before the pandemic, and had been building for a while but I hadn't realized it was coming. I don't want or need to go into details, for while the finer points are unique to me, the overall situation is universal: we enter the Darkness and face our deepest self. We face our mortality, what we care most about, and who we truly are in the network of our community. 

In the midst of this I encountered a defining moment. I felt and connected to a glowing energy deep in my core that said, "No matter what, this is your Strength. This is part of your True Self, deep, directly connected to God/Spirit. Center in this space and all is well."

Imagine you have a cave system, like a cenote that goes deep into the earth. Now imagine it is seen as the ancestors no doubt regarded these seemingly endless cave systems - a cenote that ties into the Spirit realms. That is how this space feels. Deeper than Spacetime. Accessible through my core. Strong, warm, whole. Unconditional.

I go here to meditate, to sit in the space that says: Be Still, and Know that I am Here. It's a space to inhabit when I'm feeling afraid, or getting triggered. For part of this phase of life is that I am being shown the trauma of my past and helped to release it. I need that deep, unconditional Presence to help me through. It does help, for it shows me the bigger energy of unfolding and lets me know I will be okay, although I don't know really what "okay" means anymore.

Have you found this space in you? If you get quiet, deeply still, and open to your core, what do you find? It is Joy, Light, Strength, Solid Authenticity, Your Soul.  Can you inhabit it? It will get you through anything. What if we were all able to center in this True Self and relate to others through this lens? Can you imagine a world like that? I believe miracles come from there, for it is our conscious connection with Creation, Christ, the Creator, Spirit, the Goddess. It's also how we relate to others' true selves, which many people are unable to do. We're all so wrapped up in our fears, projections, and avoiding vulnerability at all costs.

I invite you to enter the cenote with me.

I hold a vision of a world where we See each other's Strength and Truth in all we do.

So mote it be.

She Thought He was the Gardener

According to John 20, Mary Magdalene didn't recognize Jesus when she first saw him return to his empty tomb. She mistook him for the gardener. Why did he look different? Much of this story is metaphor, but not all. We are left over 2000 years later to figure out what is most likely historical and what is a metaphor. Both interpretations teach us about the nature of reality and also of Christ.

I am sitting with two questions about this story. Why a gardener? In Hebrew it means the same thing it does today. And why do we not hear of Him related to as the Gardener more? Potter, carpenter, bridegroom, shepherd. But not gardener! Yet this is in many ways what He is: One who tends His world. Who follows the seasons of death, Resurrection, and New Life. Of Hope and Faith and Promise. That's what we gardeners do. One can be all those things, but I think the gardener aspect is intriguing and powerful, especially at Easter.

My other question is why did Mary not recognize him? Why -- when He had the power to look like or be literally anything, was he unrecognizable? What had he been up to in the time he cast off his shroud and the napkin on his face? Did he watch the sunrise and take in his own Body of Light? What was he thinking?

So then she "turns around" twice. Is this literal, as anyone would when her best friend has just been brutally murdered and then his tomb is empty? Or is this more like a "turning around" that is happening in her mind, like shifting her thinking, as in, woah, all these things he's been telling me are real, and he has triumphed over death? In some way it helps to prepare her for His speaking to her.

So he calls out her name, "Mary!" and then she knows it is He. What was his tone? Loving? A whisper of hope and wonder? Exasperation because she could not see it was he? But then he apparently didn't look like Himself. Then he says don't touch me. She wanted to hug him, no doubt. Did he say this because his new Light Body was too "hot" to touch? Too incorporeal? Or some other reason? I suppose because she can't touch him. He's between the worlds. And yet he does very physical if miraculous things over the next few days, breaking bread with his frightened disciples and filling their fishing nets with a huge catch.

It's a powerful few days in the history of the planet. Over 2000 years later, we are still called to Rise and share the Light with others. In my theology this has nothing to do with "saving" someone from sin, but from guiding our souls into the Darkness of transmutation and into the Light of Awakening. We can be pulled from the sludge of our own internal Hells. Perhaps there is a Gardener in you that is as yet unrecognizable. What parts of you are you watering, germinating, and dreaming about?

Fear of the Darkness

Some seeds need light to germinate; others require darkness. At different points of our lives we have our own different needs. Usually we don't ask for or want the times of darkness, for we are afraid to falter. Afraid of getting lost. Afraid of what we cannot see.

When I taught outdoor education, we took the kids on a Night Hike. At one point we turned off the flashlights, stepped off the trail (we were all holding a rope), and sat in the dark forest. At first I felt discomfort. A sense of being unsure, wary. But then a sensation came over me: I felt cradled, held. I felt, in this utter darkness, seen. The forest saw me. The darkness saw me. In the darkness, I had nothing to prove and no one to be. It was just me and the velvety soft Love of Being.

In this time of germination, as our whole world asks who we are called to become, I wonder how the darkness can guide us. I do not relate to darkness as evil, but as a space for transmutation. Are we seeds that need the dark rich soil to transform? Can we trust the rope that keeps us connected to each other?

We sit in the Wisdom of where Christ guides us, not knowing where we are going. Not knowing who we will become. When he transitioned into a Being of Light destined to guide us, did He know? He knows now, but in this time of crucifixion and Easter, I have no sense at all. But then it isn't about me. It is about knowing that we are seen and held in the Darkness and the Light, and opening my heart to what He calls me to, even though I do not know what that is. Am I germinating or entering the cave of closing doors? I will not know until this time of life passes. 

Much love to you.

Engaged Living: Pulling Yourself Out of the Pity Party Hole

"I can't do it."
"Writing is hard for me."
"I didn't have a vacation after grad school and I'm just so tired."

The first was spoken by my daughter, in reference to a gymnastics skill. The coach got mad at her, which bummed her out, and she didn't understand why the coach was so dismissive.

The second, also spoken by my daughter, to explain why she was in a pool of tears in response to having to write something about dolphins.

The third by an adult who shall remain nameless, but the important piece to know here is that the missed vacation referenced was eleven years ago.


What do all these phrases have in common? They are uttered to explain why someone has shut down or given up. They are also phrases that are impossible to work with. They are explanations for why a person is mired in a hole of pity party.

To my daughter, in regards to the first, I acknowledged that it was too bad that the coach was rude to her, but I got why the coach said what she did. And I pointed out: "I think what you really mean here  is, 'I still need spotting on that skill.'" She nodded.

In regards to the second, after about an hour of struggling and whining and crying and my own feeling like screaming and giving up myself, we determined that what she really meant was "I'm feeling overwhelmed by all the information and I don't know how to break it down or where to start."

And in regards to the third, well, that person needs to pull himself out of that particular pity party and identify what he wants now: "I really need a break, and what would give me a break is...."

Can you feel the difference? In the first example, there is nothing to work with. It's just hard, stupid, sad, whatever. When you figure out what you are really trying to say here, then you have something to work with. Break down the information. Get spotted. Take a vacation. What do you need? What is overwhelming? What is standing in your way?

The problem with this is that we are used to complaining. It feels so good to feel so bad. And it requires energy and intention to identify what needs to change, and then guess what? You have to take steps to change it. That is what it means to live an engaged life - you have to put your life in gear and move forward. It's so much safer to just say, "I'm stuck in neutral, poor me."

Where are you short changing yourself by sitting in neutral in a hole of pity? Notice ways in which you put on the breaks and get stuck, and ask yourself what you really mean. Then you will know how to move forward.

It is overwhelming, scary, and sometimes lonely. But you can do it. So much energy is freed up when you stop stalling and take that first tentative step, which is simply to identify what the problem is in the present moment. Only then can you move forward.

Blessings on your path! You can do it.

A Gift from my Father: Connecting Beyond the Veil

By Clea Danaan

Just before my dad died, I attended a metaphysical fair to promote my first book, Sacred Land. The two cases of books the event planner had ordered didn't arrive on time, even though other cases of books from the same publisher had arrived with no delay. I had about three copies to sign and promote.

At the fair I met a psychic healer who really knew her stuff. She really liked my book, and I wondered out loud why my cases of books hadn't arrived. She squinted her eyes in that inner seeing kind of way, and said, "Who stands behind you on the earth plane?" I didn't know what she meant. She said, "Your dad." In the middle of five hundred people milling about, I started crying. I didn't even know why. She told me that my dad was jealous of my publishing a book, and that he had held up the delivery. Obviously this wasn't conscious or literal, but that his energy - and I assume my own unconscious and energetic reaction to it - delayed the book delivery. She did some distance healing work on me and my dad. She said, "Now things will be different with Dad."

A few days later, I spoke with him on the phone (he and I lived in different cities), and we had the most amazing conversation. He asked me about my book, which he had never done before. He was interested and excited. Before, it was like he didn't know it existed. He hadn't known I was in grad school, even though I told him, and he hadn't asked anything about the book. It made sense to me that he was envious. He had never finished his master's degree in ministerial studies, and he had attempted many times to write a book. Also in this phone conversation, he asked for my help with his health. In the past, he had shrugged off any suggestions I offered (I was a massage therapist at the time, with backgrounds in expressive arts therapies and acupuncture) about health, mostly due to his shame about his weight and smoking. I did some online research, and we set up an appointment for him to see a naturopath. His doctor had been no help, telling him he just needed to lose weight. I knew more was going on, but not what it was, and that he needed someone to help him.

My dad and I have always been two peas in a pod. We are deeply into nature, and dedicated to our spirituality. We are writers. He liked to tell stories, like the time we went to look for concretions, rock-like formations of clay found in certain rivers and creeks. He used to go hunt them with his dad, and as we hunted he shared with me stories of concretion hunting and fishing with his own departed father. We found several concretions that day, and kept them in the windowsill at home. I would pick them up and inspect them, thinking of his father and our time at the creek.

The morning of his appointment with the naturopath, he passed away. I had felt it coming, and was stunned but not surprised. The coroner said congestive heart failure.

A few days later I talked with the psychic from the metaphysical fair and told her that Dad had died. She said he would now sleep for a year, as his soul felt defeated and he needed time to just float. That made sense to me.

A year later, I received in the mail a package from my brother-in-law. It was heavy. This brother-in-law and I are not close, though friendly at family get togethers. He's never mailed me anything. We don't exchange emails. I opened the package with great curiosity. Inside was a note that he had read Sacred Land and really enjoyed it. He said he thought I'd appreciate these concretions he'd gathered, which could only be found in certain creeks and rivers. He'd been collecting them for years, and something told him I'd appreciate them.

They were, I knew, a gift not just from my brother-in-law, but also from my dad. It was his way of letting me know he was awake again, and that he supports and is proud of my book and my work. He was letting me know we are connected always, through all sorts of ways, past, present, and future.

Concretions in a basket of crab apple suckers and flicker feathers

Manifestation and Synchronicity

Things keep popping up in pairs and threes. Inconsequential things, mostly. Like Sears and Roebuck, specifically pointing out the now-defunct Roebuck part, appearing in two novels in a row. Little House on the Prairie mentioned in books and by people several times in two days. My dreaming about a person who out of the blue messages my husband (before I dreamed about him and without my knowledge). Three people posting Mary Oliver on Facebook in one day. Oh, and the day three unrelated Facebook friends mentioned drool in their updates. Silly things. Yet things that make you wonder.

Sometimes themes in my life offer a message, like the day a picture of my father, who passed away three years ago, appeared on Facebook (hmm, another theme!) (and, I should add that I bet there is a total of two pictures of him on Facebook, hard as that is to believe) and then half an hour later I get in the car and his favorite classical piece is playing on the radio. He's saying hello. But these little themes, like drool, really don't matter. Rather than making significance out of inconsequential things, I started to look at what energy lies beneath the pairs, rather than the pairs themselves. (Oh, I'm having a hard time making sense.) So, for instance, it's not the drool or Little House on the Prairie that matters, it's the energetic and emotional response that these images pull up for me that matters. An author mentions Little House on the Prairie, and while it's not central to the story, it's important to the main character. I remember being nine years old, sitting in our ratty burnt-orange recliner in the corner of the living room, reading for hours on end about Laura. A little energy burst goes off in my heart, tiny enough that I don't pay the burst any attention, but emotional enough that it creates a form in spacetime. Then that form pulls on the strings of causal reality, and a friend I'm hanging out with the next day casually mentions Little House on the Prairie.

A few years ago I entered to win a basket of natural and organic sundae fixin's from a natural food store. Chocolate sauce, natural sprinkles, an ice cream scoop, that sort of thing. As I filled out the form, I thought lightly and happily of my boyfriend's response should I win. He loves ice cream. Then, because it was such a silly inconsequential thing, I thought nothing more of it. I won the basket. Again - I felt an emotional response to this thing, but let it go. I think that is the key to synchronicities and to manifestation. There has to be an emotional response in order to create the thought form, as it is sometimes called, but it can't be clung to. And of course that is the challenge. If we really want something, it's hard to let go. As they say in Buddhist teaching, release all hope of fruition. Yet keep striving. Such a powerful dialectic.

So that has become one of my my meditations of late. There are a few things I want, and I am picturing them, feeling the emotional charge, and working to release any attachment or heaviness (another form of attachment) to them. We shall see how successful I am....... but then, clinging to "success" shoots apart the whole non-attachment bit. Oh, easy it is not. so I guess I'll just continue to observe, and see what blooms. I'd love to hear your stories of manifestation and synchronicity. Won't you post your stories for me? What is silly, hard, and fascinating about these energies in your life?

Prayer and Intention for Japan

 I read that Denver Botanic Gardens has created a wish tree for prayer, wishes, and reflection for the Japanese struggling with the massive earthquake, tsunami, and other related disasters. At first I thought - wow, they need so much more than prayers! They need food, financial resources, blankets.... everything! I caught myself. Of course they need those things. But caught up as I was in the here and now, I forgot for a moment the power of intention and prayer. We exists within and of the quantum sea. We are all connected. Thoughts have power. Heart fields have immense power. One way to tap into this power is to sit in nature - wilderness, a garden, a city park - and breathe. Ground yourself. Focus on Japan. Vibrate with love, healing, and wholeness. It will raise the vibrations in Japan and throughout the quantum sea.

When you send financial support (through a verified source like the Red Cross or Save the Children) send your intentions through the energy of money as well. Money and intention are both essentially energy. Energy - vibrations - bring other energies into attunement with themselves. Your intentions do make a positive difference.

Fractal Intelligence

We recently watched the NOVA Science Now episode "How Smart Are Animals?" A discussion followed  as to why and how we are asking this question. We know animals are "smarter" than our species has historically given them credit, but we're having a hard time quantifying that intelligence. It occurred to me that underlying this question is actually a more foundational question: What is intelligence? What is it to be human?

It bothers us humans that there is a difference between us and non-human animals, but that the more we dig into the question of what that difference really is, the harder it is to articulate what that difference is. We tend to say things about emotions, intelligence, tools, and language. But non-human animals definitely feel emotions. From an embarrassed cat to a grieving elephant, animals feel. Many animals use tools, from crows to chimps. Many others have of course evolved their own built-in tools, including beaks, claws, long tongues, and the like. We say this isn't a tool - yet it's no different, really, than our evolved thumb. It works, and we use it to achieve our goals.

Scientists are fascinated with the measurement of intelligence and language. But so often the measurement of these qualities is to compare them against human intelligence and language. We are only seeing other species intelligence through the lens of our own. Same with language.

If you slow down cricket song, it sounds like angels singing. If you slow down bird song, it sounds like jazz. Maybe scientists need to be using not spoken language, but music to study animal intelligence. Music and fractals.

I suspect that animal - and plant and rock and air and water - intelligence is not linear like ours (currently) is, but is fractal in nature. (I mean to say that human intelligence is currently linear as we understand it.)

We're fond of saying that humans use only 10% of our brains. We think we will be "smarter" when we access more parts of the brain. Interesting that music activates many different parts of the brain at once, as well as these parts' interactions with each other. I suspect becoming smarter is not about simply using more linear brain space, but about delving up and inward fractally.  I don't know what this means neurologically, but as an artist and a dreamer I get a certain Yes when I visualize the idea. Nature's intelligence and language is musical and fractal and we will understand it - and ourselves - better when we delve more deeply into these ways of understanding.

The Energy of the Gulf Oil Spill

As massive amounts of oil glug into the Gulf of Mexico, poisoning the water, beaches, and wildlife refuges, we all float on a sea of questions: Can it be fixed? What is going to happen? How can we help? At my house we don't have a television, so I'm having to search for my news about the spill. I'm caught between wanting to put my head in the sand and know as little as possible, and wanting to devote several hours teasing out "the truth." What I have heard tells me that BP and Halliburton are pretty much at fault and are pretending nothing has happened, and that nobody really knows what to do. I have also heard speculation that when this 100 million barrels of oil gets picked up by the Gulf Stream, life as we know it along the US eastern seaboard and western Europe will be irrevocably altered. In some very awful ways. And then there is the hurricane season approaching us, wherein sea water from the gulf is picked up, churned, and dumped inland. Scary.

I try very hard to be an optimist, at least in my musings (I'm a total cynic in many ways, and maybe that's why I write inspirational spiritual stuff - it is said that we write what we most need to read). So I want very much not to get sucked into the End Time discussion of the oil spill. Or the island of garbage in the sea, overwhelming oil issues in Nigeria, civil war in east Africa, etc etc. The only thing I know to do, given that I am not a scientist or a lawmaker or a billionaire, is to try to understand on an energetic level what is going on. It helps me to have an idea of the bigger picture. Then I can choose to ride my bike, send money to a cause, or take other "small" actions and know how they fit into the big picture. I can't read enough articles to really know the big picture in manifest reality, but I can get a feel for the big energetic picture.

So here it is, at least as I sense it. When I feel into the Gulf of Mexico, I get a choked feeling, a poisonous, hot, thick feeling. Like I can't breathe. I see the constant motion of the water, of the oceans all connected, wrapping the planet. I see the life forms in the sea that live near volcanic vents that live in conditions totally poisonous to us, and I know that we may cause mass extinctions but that life will go on.

But also I see an opportunity. I feel that the energy of the oil spill, like many other disasters, is an invitation for us to work together and rise to the cause. To use together the technologies we have developed to stop the spill, to change our lives, to heal. I see an image like a large group of people and animals and non-corporeal energies gathered together, working as one, raising all to a higher level of consciousness and interrelatedness. To do this, we must be positive. We must think integrally, stepping outside of old boundaries. We have to let go of attachment to the bottom line and to usual ways of being. We can do this. We must.

So what can you and I do? Here are some concrete ideas on National Wildlife Federation's website. And the International Bird Rescue Research Center. Here are some more organizations to check out, too.

You can pray. Do ritual sending Reiki or other healing energy to the planet and the ocean and the beaches. Hold circles to raise the energy on the planet. Learn to transmute poisons by reading Sandra Ingerman's Medicine for the Earth.

You can do your part to shift the global paradigm by living as green as you can. Garden. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Ride your bike or walk. Help others to do the same - not by preaching, but just by supporting and teaching. Every bit matters.

The Earth is hemorrhaging oil. We need a tourniquet and some very big bandages. We need to stop stabbing her. We need to help her heal.

Shifting the Energy of the House

"You know," I said to my husband while he played Bejeweled on the office computer, "if we put the bed on that wall and the dresser here we could put our room in here."

He glanced at me nervously. I get this feeling every now and then where I must rearrange things. Usually it's just the couch or a table. This time I was talking about flipping two rooms. The internet cable. A huge heavy desk. Book shelves. He's less than thrilled when I move around the contents of a room, something I've done since childhood; when I start moving whole rooms he gets downright freaked out.

"Why?" he said cautiously.

"Because the office would fit better in our room. It would be nice to have our room closer to the bathroom and the office off the kitchen. It would be cozy in here, but... it would work."

I started to get excited. I began to picture the soft white curtains in our "new" room. The kids' art table under the window in our "new" office. I spent the day convincing him. I bribed him with a shoulder rub if he'd go down in the (gross dusty spider-infested) crawl space to figure out the internet cable situation. Finally he agreed, saying he actually liked the idea. If not of moving stuff, of having it all moved.

Long, boring, dusty story short, we did it. We've slept two nights in our new room and the new office is mostly set up. There are odds and ends we need like closet organizing and that darn cable moved (we went wireless on both computers), but the big pieces are in place. It feels really good - but also very unsettled. The baby napped poorly yesterday. I yelled at my daughter twice yesterday (I'm not proud to say). Things feel like they are floating off the floor a half inch. But it feels like the rooms are finally in the right place (we've lived in this house over four years), as if we'd swapped two puzzle pieces that finally clicked into place. When the dust settles (the invisible energy dust, I mean), the Feng Shui of our house will feel so much better.

Does your house feel unsettled? Bedrooms should be in yin parts of the house; in our case we moved a room from the front of the house to the back. They should be near bathrooms and away from public areas like the kitchen. Public spaces should flow from one to another, including living room, dining room, kitchen, and playroom or family rooms. Walls and doorways slow energy. Large windows let in energy from outside, which was one problem in our "old" bedroom, since we had a large window facing the street. I often felt unsettled and on alert while I slept. If you're having trouble sleeping, try moving a bed or even your whole room. The adjustment period can be unsettling, but you'll know it when the pieces click into place and it will change the energy in your entire house. And since our house is an extension of our selves, it can affect your health and happiness as well.


For more on Feng Shui and the energy of place, check out these books.

The Law of Attraction Comes from the Heart

My husband and I were discussing our three-year-old daughter's stress level that she is clearly picking up from us. It got me thinking about how I broadcast my stress to my daughter, and how she is not only picking up verbal and nonverbal cues from me, but also swims in my electromagnetic field. The heart is the strongest producer of this field. "[T]he magnetic field produced by the heart is more than 5,000 times greater in strength than the field generated by the brain, and can be detected a number of feet away from the body, in all directions." (1) Via entrainment (2), anyone inside my heart field (as my daughter is most of the time), would pick up on my vibrations (I'm speaking literally here, not just esoterically) of frustration, fear, anger, and stress. She would vibrate with me. As would everything else in my field, to an extent.

This, I realized, is the key to the Law of Attraction. How I vibrate attracts like vibrations. If I am clenched and stressed, I draw constriction and fear. If I vibrate peace, abundance, and gratitude, I draw these energies to me. This includes wealth and success.

We can use our strongest field creator, the heart, much more effectively than just the brain (mind) to create a world we want to live in. Literally. The Law of Attraction requires the heart, not just affirmations said by the brain (though it is all connected, I realized how vastly powerful working with the heart directly can be).

This became my meditation, to feel these powerfully pleasant energies in my heart, creating a powerful field of attraction. What I discovered about myself was stunning.

I live a great life. I have an amazing, beautiful, healthy little girl. I'm pregnant with a strong, healthy little boy. My husband is a music therapist at a major children's hospital. I have published two books, one ebook, and dozens of articles in magazines I believe in. I have a truly amazing group of friends and family. We live in a more-or-less affordable house we've made into a sweet suburban homestead with an organic garden and chickens. In many many ways I am living the dream. But financially we are always strapped; the stress my husband and I have struggled with recently has been due to increased credit card debt to pay for a necessary and rather huge plumbing job, followed by a car accident that thankfully resulted in no human injury but meant replacing our old car. With another old car. We have money set aside for the birth of our baby, but that money has dwindled due to a tooth crown, new glasses, and other health necessities. Though we live fairly frugally, we are always scrambling financially. We have no savings (beyond meager retirement savings) and a big chunk of debt. We keep asking ourselves, what is it that we need to learn here? Why is money always uber-tight? In what ways, for instance, am I holding myself back as a financially successful writer? If money is an energy, an exchange of time, love, and human energy, then why are we chronically strapped?

Well, in tuning into the energy of my heart, I discovered some very interesting things that probably have something to do with our challenges. And are very interesting, too, in light of my family's medical history of heart disease and defects.

What I realized is that my heart is always clenched. Low-level anxiety always simmers, which I can feel as a tightness around my heart. I breathe into my belly, but almost direct my breath around my heart, rather than through or with my heart, as if avoiding the fear held chronically in my chest. When I pay attention to my heart, a panicky or sad feeling rises up my throat and into my eyes. I notice the clench of my jaw. I feel these things when sitting, doing chores, driving, and otherwise going about my day.

Then there is the added frustration I feel when doing something with my daughter. Like trying to get shoes on her feet or bake cookies. She is three. She does things in her time, and messes happen. While I am usually outwardly patient, on the inside, my heart waves are moving more and more towards frustration, impatience, and even rage.

I do not want my daughter to soak in this miasma of energy. Nor my unborn son, nor my husband, nor myself, nor anyone else.

So I breathe into my heart. I focus on the beauty of my daughter and my love for her. But sometimes, this is not enough to "turn off" the chronically clenched feeling. Baby steps, but not the huge shift I was going for.

Anyone who has dealt with anxiety (most of us to some degree), knows you cannot just dissolve the anxiety with deep breaths. Yes, it gets better, livable, but doesn't go away. To really heal the pain, to really find tools for a new relationship with anxiety, fear, and anger (3), we have to go into it. Not an easy task.

I won't tire you with all the details of my own "going into it." I highly recommend for your own journey tools like a journal, an art therapist, a shaman, or other support to help you do your own going into it. But I will share with you a deep insight I had in the process.

I was lying awake in bed one night, thinking. I was contemplating my family history of heart problems. As is easy to do when one is near sleep (and one is either morbid or prone to anxiety or both), I was imagining being in the hospital for heart surgery, which is how my paternal grandmother died when I was an infant. In my fantasy, I am telling the doctor I don't want to die - not because I am afraid of death, but because I didn't want to leave my children. I said I wasn't ready (am not ready) to leave this life yet because it's such a wonderful gift that I am not yet done enjoying.

My heart flooded with peace, abundance, gratitude, and joy. The anxiety stepped aside. The stress over money became moot. Life is bigger. Love is bigger. These are the energies I want to broadcast, to stew my children in. These are the energies that can attract to me the life I want, above and beyond the beautiful blessings I already enjoy. I found the tool I needed to change my relationship with my anxiety: focusing on the gift of life when wrapped in the loving arms of death. Forgive me for sounding morbid, but I can't think of any other way to say it.

What do you carry in your heart, dear reader? What tools do you need to create powerful fields of ultimate potential? I invite you to join me as a heart mediator. Let us see how our bodies and lives change as we go into the "darkness" (via negativa) and embrace the "light" (via positiva) (4). Truly anything is possible, and I'm excited to see where this path leads.

Namaste.



(1) Institute of HeartMath. "Science of The Heart: Exploring the Role of the Heart in Human Performance." 2009.
(2) See Entrainment at Institute of HeartMath.
(3) I don't mean eliminate it. Anxiety can be normal and valuable when directed well. See One Less Thing to Worry About: Uncommon Wisdom for Coping with Common Anxieties by Jerilyn Ross.
(4) The four fold path of Creation Spirituality: Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa and Via Transformativa. See Matthew Fox's Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.