Category Archives: Writing

Great Expectations

“Man cannot discover new oceans until he has courage to lose sight of the shore.” – unknown

In anticipation of my departure, I’ve been experiencing a myriad of emotions, mostly fear and sadness. The fear no doubt is related to that chat I had with Source a while ago about being tested on this journey. And my clairvoyant friend Angelika warned me when this trip was just a fantasy that I could make all the plans all I wanted, but Spirit would have final say in the way things would unfold. And the sadness? Well, I have a premonition that nothing will be the same when I return.

But according to writer, teacher, travel leader, and documentary filmmaker Phil Cousineau who has been on the road all his life, this is exactly what can be expected when one sets out on a soulful journey. In his book, The Art of Pilgrimage, he recounts innumerable stories about pilgrims, sojourners and explorers who have traversed the globe throughout the millennia.

Siting Muriel Rukeyser’s essay, The Life of Poetry, Cousineau compares the fear of soulful travel to resistance to modern poetry. “A poem invites you to feel. More than that: it invites you to respond. And better than that: a poem invites a total response. So too with powerful and soulful travel. It seizes your imagination, but the way through to the sacred moment can also be through deep anxiety about the unknown. The possibility produces fear in many travelers, even at the threshold of their own door before leaving home.”

What am I expecting to find at Delphi? If given the choice, I would wish for a transformative experience analogous to that of Henry Miller, who was so moved by his travels through Greece that the account of his journey, The Colossus of Maroussi, “streamed from the heavens” straight into his soul. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.

So, I am off at last. I leave today unfettered and untethered, so you won’t see anything from me until I return mid-October. In the meantime, don’t forget to look for the Harvest Moon this weekend. God willing, I will be viewing it rising above the Acropolis.

Trauma Revisited

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When I was a child, I knew how to make myself invisible. I didn’t do it consciously, but I was aware that much of the time people couldn’t see me. Since then, I’ve learned that it’s possible to modify the energy fields (auras) around us by practicing a type of shapeshifting. And I’ve also come to realize that I developed this ability to hide from my father.

Twenty-two years ago, I took a one-night class on ‘channel writing’ at the Learning Annex. I was experiencing chronic writer’s block and this class was designed to help people unleash their creativity. After the class, I set up an appointment for a reading with the instructor, Dr. Loretta Ferrier, to get more information about my stuck condition and to get insight about some health issues.

Loretta zeroed in on the blockage right away. “You have accumulated a mass of energy as a result of refusing to follow your intuition. When you were a child, there was no space for you to do this. You held yourself back and you began to deform.” After telling her that I had a terrible fear of my father from early childhood, she went into trance.

“This fear, this hatred you have experienced in this lifetime comes from another lifetime you shared with your father in early England. He was a well-known spiritual leader – strong, powerful and rigid. At home he abused you, your sister and your brother – it was a living nightmare. The damage he did was so enormous that his sensitive qualities were withheld from him in this lifetime and they won’t be returned to him until he can handle them responsibly. Thus, in this lifetime with you, he was not able to feel any emotion. His job was to seek your forgiveness and make your life more pleasant. He learned some of these lessons but not all, so you will meet up with him again.”

None of this came as a big surprise. I had imagined something like this was behind my strong negative feelings and my father’s strange behavior. He never touched me in this lifetime, and now I understood that he’d been afraid to connect with me emotionally in any way. This answered my questions about my health problems, too, and now I understood why I had made myself invisible as a child and why meditating has been such a challenge.

So what does this have to do with my upcoming pilgrimage? Apparently quite a lot. I thought I’d forgiven my father years ago, but from feelings of sadness that have come up in relation to him lately, it seems that I still have work to do. He’s also popped up in every psychic reading I’ve had since I began this quest, and he’s even managed to make his way into my dreams. And I’ve drawn FORGIVENESS over and over from Colette Baron-Reid’s Wisdom Cards:

Drawing this marker says that you must now search your heart for any unresolved resentment, anger, or disagreements between you and another. If you’re still hurt or angry about another’s behavior, or if there are circumstances in your life that you resent, this is a time when it’s crucial to release the negative energy surrounding those situations. Resisting this will only impede your growth and draw more unwanted experiences to you.

Well, I certainly don’t want that – especially not in Delphi. Now I all I have to do is find a way to finally and totally forgive.

A Conversation with Source

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To prepare for my trip to Delphi I’ve started doing ‘deep soul writing’. Inspired by Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God, I decided a while ago that if Walsch could access Source, so could I. But it wasn’t until I read Janet Conner’s book, Writing Down Your Soul, that I actually started doing it. After following Conner’s four steps (show up; open up; listen up; and follow up) and practicing for a few weeks, I asked Source what to expect from my trip and I got answers! As is common with this process, my pen wrote as if possessed.

C: Dear Spirit, PLEASE: (Conner suggests finding your own name for Source and using it along with some kind of an invocation each time you sit down to write.)

“If it is helpful for me to know what happened to me in Delphi, please let me see it.”

S: “It is not time yet.”

C: “What else should I be looking at now to prepare myself for this trip.”

S: “Make yourself as strong as you possibly can. You will be tested mentally, emotionally and physically. Only by preparing will you survive this test.”

C: “After this experience, will I know what my mission is? Will I have access to Source to guide me?”

S: “You know what it is you are to do, but you need clarity, you need strength and confidence. To prepare, continue to absorb the writings and experiences of others who have been tested. Follow their lead and know you will be protected by everyone around you.”

C: “Is there anything else I need to know or to do at this time?”

S: “Be still and let information come. Record all your thoughts and your dreams. Know that the dreams and the voices that have come are leading you along your path.”

This was pretty amazing – a bit ominous, but encouraging nonetheless. I’ve been writing every day since this conversation with what Conner calls The Voice, but nothing else has come through yet, at least not in writing. But when I asked (implored is more like it) the Source for courage to pull the trigger on this trip and for inspiration to start this blog, I got answers of a different sort. More on that tomorrow!

The Journey Begins

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I’ve felt a blog coming on for a very long time. I’ve managed to avoid it until now, but at last I feel I have something I want to share.

Let me start by telling you about the Blessing Moon. In Scott Blum’s book, Waiting for Autumn, a homeless man named Richard introduces him to a ritual that involves breathing in the energy of the moon. Our agrarian ancestors called the full moon in July the Blessing Moon because it’s the time of year when the earth begins to yield her bounty. According to Blum’s homeless friend, the Blessing Moon is the perfect time to begin a spiritual journey.

And so it was that I found this story on the very day of the full moon in July. I was entranced with the idea of breathing in the moon and I wanted to experience this ritual myself, perhaps because my own ancestors farmed land in Minnesota and in Norway. That night when the moon began to show itself, I positioned myself on my back porch and watched as it rose slowly over the treetops. When it was in full view, I raised both hands up on either side of my head, palms open, facing the moon just as Richard described to Scott. Then I lifted my head back and squinting at the moon, I breathed in the cold, crisp air.

I wish I could tell you that I experienced instant enlightenment, but of course, it doesn’t happen that way for most of us. I did feel slightly invigorated, though, and I vowed to revisit this practice each month. Since then, I’ve begun a meditation practice, I started a course in hands-on healing, I’ve begun working with my animal spirit guides, I’ve started writing down my soul, and I’ve booked a pilgrimage to Delphi. I have much to tell you about all of these things and more. And I have to tell you that at times I’m terrified! But that’s a good thing, right? As Duane Garrison Elliott, my former boss at Tiffany & Co. used to say, “Do what terrifies you most––everything else is boring.”

So please join me on my journey. And as we go along, I hope you’ll share your stories with me.

Breathing in the Moon

in search of enlightenment