My awakening has served my path of service to the world. What will your awakening uncover?
I think that I was a fairly normal child. I was a lot more sensitive than others. I suffered from social issues that left me overwhelmed at school as a child. I was shy, kind, wanted to spend most of my time outdoors with my dog, and had an odd draw toward drawing ankhs (an ancient Egyptian symbol), using an ouija board to contact spirits, burying coins in the yard for luck, reading ancient mythology, learning tarot cards, skipping school to go to the cemetery to light candles and I became a vegetarian at age 9 because I felt so strongly the pain of the world and animals in particular.
When I was 15 years old, my grandmother died. It was a traumatic event. An uncle and aunt very loudly blamed me for her death stating that she was upset over my having started the birth control pill. Actually, this was very far from the truth, but I wouldn’t know that for years. My mother, being a psychotherapist, sent me to a therapist to talk things out. I was sad and grieving in a normal way. But, the year was 1991 and better living through chemistry was all the rage. I was prescribed an antidepressant.
I was never advised to go off of this medication. And, in fact, it did seem like I had depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. I would feel weird and not right in my head. And they would prescribe another pill. I started having panic attacks and I was prescribed Xanax, three pills a day in addition to two anti-depressants. I was told that I had inherited a chemical imbalance. My mother had long suffered from depression, and doctors told me that going off of medication would be very bad for me. I was told that I would be risking a serious mental break. The times when I would try to go off of these medications I would have such intense withdrawal symptoms that I would start to take them again right away.
Basically, normal emotions and energies moving through my body were seen as enemies to push down instead of experience and process.
So I lived cerebrally medicated and hormonally regulated via birth control pill for almost 15 years.
Close to the end of my twenties I decided for once and for all to go off of these medications. I thought I might want to have a baby and that seemed like a good reason, although I was told that I could, of course, take antidepressants while pregnant.
I had just before this made a proclamation to the Universe: I want to know who I am, who I really am deeply and I want to know my reason for being on this Earth.
I kept coming back to this request and would reflect on it often. I didn’t yet see the connection to my request to know myself and my internal shift to want to go off of these medications.
Finally, I found a psychiatrist that would work with me on taking down the meds. I went off of the birth control pill, found an amazing acupuncturist, naturopath, chiropractor and set in for a deep healing. I was prescribed mushrooms and Holy Basil, a sacred herb from India.
On the acupuncturist’s table, within about a month I fell into what I would describe as my first glimpse of meditation. I had been going to acupuncture for years for pain but this had never happened. I actually relaxed fully, my mind was alert and yet clear. I felt peace.
I had tried Yoga and meditation before, but it just seemed over my head. I couldn’t grasp the concept and it was discouraging. But, here I was, traveling it seemed.
The come down was hard despite the support I had. I suffered from dizziness, brain-fog, digestive problems, headaches, nausea, anxiety and more. It was hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t. Things seemed overwhelming and I had the sensation that I was feeling things in my life that I had never felt before. I had always loved sex, but I started to have more intense satisfying, full body orgasms. I started to feel joy, ecstasy and bliss for the first time. Pain and dark depth of feeling was there too. Repressed emotions rose to the surface to be felt and processed. It was like I had been living inside of an old black and white TV and all of the sudden I was in technicolor and surround sound.
I started listening and asking questions.
I started receiving messages. ‘Go to the forest. Work with plants. Find the green.’
One day, I was invited to go to a huge field of flowers. This was a large art project near downtown Los Angeles. My boyfriend told me, “Take off your shoes.” I grew up in Texas, where there are stickers and stinging insects everywhere. You did not go without shoes.
I had spent my 20s living in New York and Los Angeles. I could not tell you when the last time I had my shoes off on the Earth was.
All of the sudden, a huge rush of energy came up through my feet. I was literally knocked to the ground. I felt and knew the energy of the Earth. She was powerful and it created a depth of emotion that I had never felt before. I spent the rest of the day curled in a ball in a laundry basket on the floor of my closet. Something important had happened to me and I wasn’t sure what. I knew that I needed to help heal something and to know and love the mother.
We went to a fairy-land place in a deep forest of Oregon. And, it was as if I could see the fairy folk dancing all around me. And I heard, very clear, “You are a Healer.”
What? What does that mean? I was actually quite broken in my body, I had no knowledge of healing, and no context to what this could mean.
So, I started guessing. I knew I was supposed to work with plants. Maybe I was an herbalist. I started studying. I began more gardening projects and learned organic gardening and Permaculture. I started working with plants. I was drawn to Spagyrics (an herbal medicine produced by alchemical procedures. These procedures involve fermentation, distillation and the extraction of mineral components from the ash of the plant.) after experiencing them at a festival and took an Alchemy course which would change my life. In it, I was introduced to invoking trance states through plant meditations and drumming. I learned how to work with the elementals and did deep personal study of Kabbalah and ancient texts of transformation.
Luckily, I had the luxury of having time alone and not needing to work. I am not sure what I would have done or if I could have done this at all without the support of my partner at the time and I will forever be grateful to him.
When I decided that I should meditate, I started to sit. But, within a few minutes of sitting, my body would start to be racked with energy. All of the sudden I would be shaking, making crazy sounds, flailing about and frankly scaring the shit out of myself. It was ugly, horrible stuff. I would scream and yell, contort and cry and all the while this intense energy was thrusting through me. Sometimes I would be breathing heavily, sometimes I would stop altogether until I remembered that I must breathe to live. Sometimes I shook so hard I thought I would knock my teeth out of my head. I burned through with heat that drenched me in sweat for hours.
I didn’t tell people.
I spent a lot of time in the tub. I would just make sound and cry for hours.
Then the visions started. I would have remembrances of times that were not now and places that were not here. And they were real. And they sometimes opened up huge areas of grief, rage and shame. I started to navigate these waters with movement and sound.
I began to have a very hard time going out in public. Crowds were intense, music seemed louder and more jarring and the trees, animals, and elements were speaking to me.
I remember going out to eat once and it started to rain (odd in LA). I couldn’t help but start this activation which was from the information that was coming into my hands from the water. I had to make certain tones and movements; I had to go to the water.
I started to channel. This process was uncomfortable and intense. At first, it was a rush of energy running through me pushing at all of my blockages. The words were broken and jarring. I sputtered, stuttered and hit up against my own doubts and fears. Words flowed through that were not of this world. They were of another time and place and they were also of me and the pure essence of my being.
I had never even seen such a thing in real life. I thought that to channel you had to pass out and then something took you over. I had really only known a small amount about it from reading Edgar Cayce. That wasn’t what was happening to me. It was like I was in there, same as always, only there was another energy in there too. My consciousness felt shifted to the back of my brain. I still feel it mostly like this as though I am moving to the back right hand corner of my mind space. I was a channel to a group of star people. I was told information about the impending rising waters of the earth and what it would be like.
I was told that I was key in bringing in and being a container for a raising of vibratory frequency. That the people of the light would gather together and form a beacon to the others that seek to help us.
I was told that I was supposed to be channeling in front of groups of people. Which basically scared the shit out of me.
I didn’t know what to think except that maybe I really was crazy. I started reading more about channelings that others have brought through and thought those sounded a bit crazy as well. But, I could not help but feel like this was something that I was supposed to be doing and kept coming back to it.
There were times when a being would enter my body and its vibration was so foreign, so large that I could hardly contain it and it was like being plugged into a light socket and not being able to let go.
At times, it seemed that they likened it to a novelty. To be inside a human form in that way was unique and fun.
They started to pop in at different and uncalled for times, like when I was driving on a freeway in Los Angeles.
At that time I started to say no. I had no idea that saying no was my right before this.
I learned to state that I was a sovereign being. I had to be clear and precise with what I would allow to happen inside of my body and what I wouldn’t allow.
I was overwhelmed and felt at the whim of this energetic work that was happening through me.
I went to see a doctor. Yes, an MD, but one that I thought could understand me and what I was going through. She was raised as the granddaughter of the healer woman from a village in India. She read palms and taught at a center for esoteric studies.
I went into trance state. She spoke with the primary being I was channeling. And, I am sure a few other things that I can’t remember.
Afterward, she told me, “You are a Shaman. The problem is that you live in normal society. In a tribal culture, you would have been picked out early on as a child, sent to live with the Shaman, nurtured and trained and then you would have lived outside of the village. Your time would be spent working with plants and the spirits. You would have no other job. People would bring you food and things that they made in return for the healing that you would do. But, now you have to be in this society, have a job, fight traffic, navigate reality which is not what you were brought here to do.”
Throughout this time I kept asking for help. I was fortunate to come across the path of a master teacher, Mayaya who took me under her wing and taught me the vital processes of grounding, releasing, balancing, and activating. These practices became the cornerstone of my process through this time and beyond. Without these tools I would have risked damaging my energetic system perhaps permanently.
I reached out and started studying with other teachers and guides of meditation, Yoga and other healing modalities both structural and energetic. Because I had injured my back in my early 20s I deeply studied anatomy and physiology and body work. Through this I started to discover the energetic and emotional correspondences that were being expressed in people’s bodies.
The awakenings kept happening. The blockages were cleared over time. My voice opened and I found one of my most sacred healing tools.
This awakening, in the eyes of most people would seem like madness. There would seem to be no cure for such a disorder that would cause extreme shaking and trembling, speaking in tongues, inability to control the body, heavy sweats, screaming and crying.
This could only be madness of the most profound state that would have to require hospitalization, medication, exorcism, hysterectomy or lobotomy.
But, this was my path to full and total liberation of my being becoming fully actualized as a master healer and mystic.
As a healer, I believe that we must fight our way through blocks that keep us from being actualized. This creates a powerful portal that propels us to our destiny.
People go through this in different ways. Often a near death experience or serious illness are the initiatory experiences that bring us in contact with the spiritual forces at work in our lives. Others receive their initiation through drugs, sex or spiritual practices.
We are offered a way to wake up and join the forces of light and to do the work we are brought here to do.
In this process, there is a need to clear and heal all aspects of our being. We must address the past lives in which we were tortured and burned in order to pull through the information for that life.
We must heal the blocks from our upbringing that says we should remain small, not tell people what we see, hear or know. We begin to integrate all parts of ourselves. Then we can form relationships with other beings of light and the natural world to support us on our journey.
And, so my path so clearly laid out before me is one of being the bridge for the others. People come to me when they start to awaken to their energy and potential. They bring their fears and shame. They wonder at their sanity and their place in the world.
And, because I have had such a strong experience. Because it was so intense and powerful for me to go through this time, I am able to relate and offer support.
I am constantly pushing myself to learn more, experience more, open more and confront the shadows that keep me held back as I do for all of my people who come to me for help.
I believe that simple practices and awareness can make this process much easier and that the healing that works through my body and field is my service to this world.
It has not been an easy path. It is not one that I chose but one that chose me.
And, I would not have it any other way.
Excerpt from Awaken, Heal, Evolve: The Modern Mystics Guide to the Awakening