Heart-Wired Part 1: The Raven

Foreward

I’d like to thank artist Lindy Gruger Hanson for allowing me to use this graphic, entitled “Basking in Moonlight”. Visit Lindy at her site here. Her work is whimsical, multi-dimensional, and I consider her ravens undoubtedly perfect for this piece. I’d also like to acknowledge Avia Venifica’s site, Symbolic Meanings, which I consider an invaluable resource. I’ve referenced and quoted her work more than once in this post.

* * * * *

The phrase “natural magic” crossed my lens a day or so ago striking an enormous chord. “Simply, it’s using the organic rhythms of our environment, our world, our cosmos to our natural advantage. Actively dancing the Universal waltz – in step, in time and ready for the next whirl on the dance floor of our lives … Natural magic is observing, taking cues from, and participating with our environment to bring about desirable shifts in our lives.” (Source: Avia at MicheleKnight) With her thousand arms and hands, the Divine Mother communicates with us frequently through our surroundings, which I consider the truest form of natural magic. After absorbing this, I had a V8 moment. You know, the resounding “SLAP!” to the forehead followed by, “Wow, I KNEW that!” Lately, this happens every morning in the shower, where I tend to receive my most inspired messages from the ethers. The experience I’d like to share with you has been this way. One forehead slap after another. All the animal sign posts were present, guiding me step by step as they arose in my natural environment, and there were numerous real time synchronicities confirming the larger blueprint. I just had to get the hang of understanding them in the proper context before the lesson was revealed.

Please join me as I am “Heart-Wired.”

* * * * *

Several weeks ago, I was on the deck behind our house in a chair that was cold against my back. It was midnight, I was restless, and I’d interrupted a few deer by coming outside. I closed my eyes, and with the inner voice that knows no boundaries, I called to my primal spirit guide, Gregor. This night the dragon was no where in sight. I can’t begin to predict the habits of the ancient beast as he travels blithely between worlds. I know I was heard, though. I felt him stir. So, I urged Gregor to me from where it was that he kept his solitary night’s vigil.

I felt him break away from the rolling hills he was so fond of.

“So, that’s where you are, “ I mused, and of course, he heard me.

I’d often wondered what the attraction was for him there in those vibrant green mountains. After all, he is a creature of spirit. Perhaps there was a gateway or rift of sorts, which eased his transport between times and places. Perhaps it was simply the trees and the mist.

In response to Gregor’s approach, I felt my heart glow of its own volition, in synch with the scarlet red jewel embedded in his massive chest. This happens each time we meet, and it is a confirmation of life, love, and our spiritual connection.

Now in full flight, Gregor broke away completely from the mountains and the emergent fog made spokey tendrils behind him. His serpent’s tail, at once an expression of emotion and a rudder, made illustrious spirals as he gained altitude. His wings beat a decibel splitting CRACK against the midnight chill, and he jettisoned forward on the Northern California wind.

Then quite suddenly, he was before me.

“Yes, little sssister, “ he spoke, and as always, the rumbling of his baritone voice shook me from my reverie. I was caught up in the delicious sights and sounds of his approach, which I could see and hear through him.

Gregor knew I was restless without uttering words telepathic or otherwise. And so he tugged as I released, and I was in astral form, utterly free from the mortal coils that bound me, confined me, and caged me. Together at last, we roamed unfettered.

“I came down from the spires, from the vast ethers which have no form, to answer your call, little sssister. You long for answers; the answersss you believe will free you from your burden. Do not look outside yourself, little ssssister, look within. Sssee the unlimited sssigns and use them to unlock the sssecrets of your heart.”

“But what if I can’t figure it out, Gregor?” I asked, concerned. Recent years gave me greater respect for the progress of my spiritual journey.

“The sssecrets that elude you should rest at the feet of the enlightened ones. The Mothersss will help you find your way.”

I nodded, and he went on.

“You are being heart-wired, little one.”

A number of months ago, as my spiritual mother’s visit fast approached, I found myself wishing for a friend. A girlfriend. Someone I could share things with, like a sister. I was going about my business, and this wish was budding in the background of my thoughts. I’ve had girlfriends in the past, mostly friends I’d pulled along with me since childhood or high school, but so much has changed since then. I’ve changed, my outlook has changed, my relationships have changed, and in the context of adjusting my focus toward the more positive aspects of my life and spirituality, the divine mother removed a number of platonic influences that went stale long, long ago. The process was time consuming and personally difficult, but it was necessary.

It’s been a year since then the last of these long term attachments was released; and the year has been about immediate family, getting settled in California, and reaffirming our lives here, which is where we want to be. It also took that year to heal and regain my bearing. I was heavily invested in those relationships.

My wish for a girlfriend was granted by the recognition of a spiritual sister on the internet. An actual girlfriend! She is someone I’ve never met personally, but we’ve been in one another’s orbit for a few years, and we really click! I was able to share with her stories that in the telling were spontaneously healing. It is a blessing, not to mention frequently uncanny. The vast expanse of the country and the internet between us doesn’t seem to matter.

It’s just what I need, and more than I'd ever hoped for ... just the way it is.

Earlier this Spring, I anticipated my visits with the Holy Mothers feeling a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I felt excitement because time with Sri Karunamayi, Amma, is always healing and soothing. My spirit tanks were running low, and I was ready for a solid dose of spiritual mothering. I felt trepidation because my visits with Ammachi, also known as The Hugging Saint, are usually followed by some sort of intense and active spiritual shift. These shifts are always for the better, but they can be unexpected, and, well … really hard. Ammachi’s energy, when you open yourself to it, is an active, purging force that takes no prisoners.

I acknowledge that I am a largely cerebral person. I grew up using my wits to survive in a neglectful household, and shutting down my emotional receptivity to keep from getting hurt. Using my wits first and foremost for better or for worse eventually turned into a habit to the detriment of my emotional body. The little girl inside of me was very hurt and confused, but she was guarded by a huge Amazon warrior whose name was Anger. For a long time, Anger did the job well, although she got in the way from time to time, as ticked off Amazons are bound to do. Then, as my spiritual journey began in earnest a little over 10 years ago, the Divine Mother put Anger out to pasture and began the work of better balancing my emotional self with the intellect. Each time She tried to break a wall of my defense, I tried to reinforce it, however unwittingly, with a plethora of intellectual miasma. She destroyed my illusions (which were plenty), cut off negative ties to the past, and forced me to look at myself clearly without relying on my reflection in other people.

When Gregor spoke again, I was perched high atop his scaled back, nestled safely between his working shoulder blades. This wasn’t necessary, of course. It was a perception for my benefit, as astral travel of this type was still new to me.

Gregor spoke telepathically.

“The world ssspeaks through its animals, little sssister. Heed those sssacred messengers around you. “

I nodded having had more than my fill of animal messengers recently.

“The raven sssees all, and ssspeaks loudly when it wishes to. When it ssseeeks to share the secrets behind it’s black, onyx eyes, it behooves us to listen. It does ssspecial ssservice to the Morrigan, the three headed Dark Mother, who is on the battlefield, always engaged in wars be they bloody, economic, or wars of the mind. She is always there, and the raven is her eyesss remaining behind to pick at the war’s carnage. It never stops looking, never stops learning, never stops repeating the prophecies of its Mistress, the Morrigan. Understanding sssecrets few do, it beckons us to review, revise, and re-visit the past.”

Gregor paused, as if for emphasis.

“The raven is an opportunist wielding natural magic, discovering windows in the fabric of reality, and encouraging positive outcomes where there is merely potential.”

This comment resonated to me on so many levels.

Gregor went on.

“The butterfly with transparent wings made it’s way across Grandmother Spider’s Web with the sssame ssspeed it lives out it’s life -- quickly. The butterfly, also a sssacred messenger, reminds us that change can come quickly but is not to be feared. That with transparent wings is a most powerful unnoticed element. It is one of the most significant spiritual markers beckoning us to watch for that which is unnoticed yet most powerful in our lives, embodying the phrase, “as above, so below”. It can bring down the world’s ecosystem, the world’s economy, and your finely balanced emotional health.”

I nodded, internally, of course.

“Little sssister, the raven approaches on the hem of Mother’s ssssari. It seeks a reaffirmation of the transparent butterfly. Do you sssee?”

No, I didn’t see. Not right away.

I was confused and getting rather indignant, so Gregor dropped into a face melting plummet that made me want to vomit even though I wasn’t in my corporeal body.

It got my attention.

Just before my visit with Sri Karunamayi in March, crows hollered at me from nearby on two separate occasions. The first time was on the way to see Amma, and the second crow perched itself on the front fence where I could see it through the living room window when the visit was over. On route to see Ammachi in San Ramon several weeks later, we drove right beneath a large black Raven where it was perched on a wire, screeching at us. I thought it was asking for a piece of the toast I was eating. It was yelling, but it wasn’t yelling about toast.

Very shortly thereafter, I met and was doing personal business in real estate with someone whose name is, of all things, Crow. I experienced the otherworldly ping that tells me without a doubt I’ve known this individual in a past life. Right after seeing houses with this Crow one afternoon, Leslie, Elizabeth and I were driving through town, and I spotted a Great Blue Heron by the side of the road. There was no water around, and it was standing out in the middle of a huge green, grassed area. It seemed to tell me specifically, “you are right where you should be”. The Great Blue Heron is a personal spiritual marker, so I felt reassured at the time. My assumption seemed confirmed.

Around the same time, the transparent wing butterfly appeared on my radar, and it’s message was two-fold. First and on a human level, that which is unseen or unnoticed, always happening, easily overlooked, but personally powerful is emotion. We don’t see the feelings themselves. We only see people react to their feelings. I’ll write more on this in Part 2 of this blogpost. Second and in the economic realm, that which is virtually unseen, but perpetually at play (and in this case personally applicable, as well), is in fact the foundation of American economy -- real estate. The constant churnings of real estate are almost taken for granted. However, we see with crystal clarity in the media what happens to the economy when the real estate market is in chaos. The raven and real estate is an important connection in this narrative.

Previously, I wasn’t tuned in to ravens or crows, although I understand their overall symbolism. Yet, there were more symbolic connections carving out a path of understanding to the multi-dimensional overhaul of my emotional body.

My partner, Leslie, is related to Edgar Allen Poe, author of “The Raven”, as proven by the documented family tree her Uncle Peter provided to us years ago (we’ve been together 24 years). In a similar vein, our daughter is one quarter full blood Norwegian (on the donor’s side), and in Norwegian mythology “Odin was known as the Raven God … he had many daughters known as Valkyries who could transform into ravens.” (source) The real estate Crow was initially drawn to our daughter, captivated by her spirit, sense of fun, and then finally her artwork. I’m also convinced her spirit guides play a role, although this is only an inkling. In the context of her work, which she is experienced and very good at, the Crow is an opportunist. She practices her own natural magic unconsciously, discovering windows in the tapestry of her career and willing positive outcomes for her clients where there is merely potential. She was highly intuitive to our needs, extremely patient, and very “in synch”. Within weeks she and I were anticipating one another’s thoughts over the phone and finishing sentences for one another. With all the stipulations we had (the dogs, our stuff, etc.), having actually purchased a piece of real estate in this crazy market serves as testimony. The overall synchronicities are too profound to be meaningless.

I found myself thinking “this is a woman I’d like to be friends with.”

What’s most intense about meeting someone from a past life, for me at any rate, are the out-of-context feelings of closeness or warmth. It’s like seeing your best friend after years apart, but of course the other party in most cases is completely unaware. So, I can’t exactly run up to them, squealing with delight and showering them with hugs and kisses (even though I want to) once I’ve made the connection. I am challenged with carefully trodding between echoes from the past and what transpires in the present. This isn’t easy, and in the past I've failed miserably.

I had to question myself. Why do you want to be friends with the Crow? Is it because you enjoy her in this life? Or because of what you feel from the last?

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

I was completely unprepared for what happened next. The Goddess pulled out her broom to do some emotional house cleaning. Out with the old, and in with the new. As above, so below. A deluge of emotion flooded me and it included a complete reassessment of my shadowed emotional past. This was the spiritual shift my visit with Ammachi precluded.

I was being heart-wired, or emotionally re-connected to the world on numerous levels simultaneously, by the Divine Mother.

The process was just beginning.

Coming soon -- Heart-Wired 2: The Butterfly

BACK TO MY ROOTS

Join me as I wander back to my spiritual roots in a brand new blog entitled, "Every Woman is a Witch."

Amma 2009: Part I

See Part One of my visit with Sri Karunamayi on Sapphokinesis.

Announcing our new Cafepress store ...

After hemming, hawing, and grappling with my confidence, I'm finally willing to put it on the line in a Cafepress store. I'm starting slow and easy with one image to see what happens.

Visit our store at www.cafepress.com/whenisisrises.

Be welcome. Shop. Be happy.

Isis Keeps Rising: Meet Gregor

The ancient ones lie quietly, as old as the mountains, as strong as the rocks, stability and fortitude their mainstay ... that, and waiting, of course. They wait patiently for the world to turn on its spiritual and historical axis. With weathered wings that long to soar, eyes that see absolutely everything, and ruby red hearts of the purest crystal, they wait and wait until the sleepers awaken. They know that some of the sleeping ones can see them from time to time, tentatively aware as they are in their slumber. For the ancient ones, who need no mirror to realize themselves, and for whom existence is whether seen or not, this is only consequential. Soon the sleepers will awaken and ask them to be guides again, and, oh, the glory will return! But until then, with patience of the ages, they remain content to wait ... and listen to the primordial om, the sound of all being.

Meet Gregor, one of the ancient ones. Master of all the elements, this ancient guide prefers the earth to the skies, and wraps himself in a comforting drape of aromatic flora simply because it pleases him.

Om ...

For more information on Amma's visit to the Bay Area, visit here.

BUTO, The Cobra Goddess

Over the last 12 years, as Amma's visit approaches, the urge to create rises like a tide within me. This year, Amma's visit to the Bay Area is over the March 25th weekend, and Isis is stirring with me again. I hope you enjoy this piece entitled "BUTO, The Cobra Goddess". It harkens me back to past life memories of ancient Egypt, but also resonates to Ma Bagala of the Hindu faith. As Bagala's post strikes obedience into the tongue of Her children, so does the intense sting of Buto's venom.

(c) February 16, 2009 by Donna L. Faber, Original is 8.5x11, image done in pen & ink on Strathmore smooth bristol paper, then cut out and mounted on black textured paper. Highlights done in silver metallic ink. Some colored pencil used. While the text below indicates that Buto's venom comes from her bite, in my rendition it is Buto's tail which carries the deadly blow; hence, the eldritch flame and energy pulse from it.

Buto
(Uatchit, Udjat, Wadjit, Edjo)

Buto was a cobra-goddess whose original home and cult center was in the Delta of the Nile at Per-Uatchit. In time she became a prominent protectress of all of Lower Egypt. As such she was routinely connected to the goddess of Upper Egypt, Nekhebet. Together, they appeared in many pieces of art as symbols of the Two Lands, a united Egypt.

Buto did not just protect Egypt, she also was an aggressive defender of the king. She was portrayed as the uraeus cobra first worn on the brow of Re, and later the pharaohs'. Her hood is spread in a threatening position and she is ready to spit poison on all of the pharaoh's enemies or burn them with her fiery glare. It is thought perhaps that her powers could be used against the pharaoh as well. Her bite may have been the deadly device used by Anubis at the appointed time of the pharaoh's death.

Buto was a personification of the sun's burning heat and she was called the "Lady of Heaven" and the queen of all of the gods. She was closely associated with Horus the Elder, who was the protector god of Lower Egypt. Also she was associated with Harpokrates (Horus the Younger); she protected him from Seth in the marshes of the Delta while Isis was searching for the body of Osiris.

Source

Fear Made Me An Emotional Beggar

PREFACE: This entry was months in coming. The last entry I did was back in May, and yes, I could say that a lot has happened since then. We moved 3,000 miles across the country (again), and I got a new, time consuming job. In truth, it took that long to get my head around what I had to write. All the details, the bits and pieces, took some time to objectify, be processed, and then be writable. I felt the initial pull a while back, but it wasn't until last night when, aided by the January 2009 full moon, the words came without pause and in good measure.

UPDATE on March 14, 2009: I'm still editing this piece and pondering the past. Doors are opening on the next piece, as well.

You can call it Satan or Lucifer. You can call it whatever you wish. It’s easier for some of us to identify fear outside of ourselves, like a demon, for example. That’s not to say that demons don’t exist. I’m not an expert on that topic at all and have never actually seen one -- not that I’m aware of, at any rate. Others see fear as themselves, as opposed to a reaction or something they do for unknown reasons. I’m asserting that under the right adverse or sustained circumstances, fear is a natural human response that can become a monster. The behaviors we adopt in response to it, the confusing and painful mysteries we perceive or do because of it, are how it makes itself known in our lives. It is insidious, clever and powerful. At the very leats, An individual wholly motivated by this mutated beast is often blind to the needs of others, even those they love the most. Selflessness and compassion are weapons we have against fear, and yet they are the first attributes it steals from us.

That is what it took from me.

When not fulfilling its role as a mechanism of self-preservation, in my opinion, fear is the single most prevalent reason why individuals don’t reach their full potential in this life ... which is a glaringly obvious statememnt.

Frank Herbert, the author of the “Dune” chronicles, one of my personal favorites, wrote that “fear is the mind killer", which, I believe, nails it perfectly. It can lock in our personal destiny by hard wiring our brains when we’re too young to know its happening. This fascinates me, and I’ve written more here. Fear takes its tithe from society this way, and robs us of our individuality in a vast range of personal and consequently societal conflagrations. Children are destroyed by it, agencies are created to battle it, and countless bloggers have written on their personal battles to emerge from its control.

Make no mistake.

Fear is a timeless conquerer, and before we recognize it and stare it down, it controls more of our lives than we thought, know, or care to admit consciously or subconsciously.

I discovered the term “emotional beggar” on Jane Devin’s website. I know fear made me one, but I’m not sure when precisely I became one. It all started when I was very young, nurturing a visceral fear of abandonment. I suppose it was somewhere between the first time my mother left when I was four and running headlong into sweet sixteen, when angst, constant stress, turmoil and desperation had me hopelessly and irrationally in love with every single one of my girlfriends. I was obsessed with children’s theater because I received attention when I was on stage and felt a modicum of control behind the curtain. I was a strange teenager who dressed oddly because it drew people’s eyes. My art teacher in high school called me “weird one”, and I took pride in it. At that young age, I sought attention wherever I could get it. It was part luck and part grace that my desperation didn’t lead to truly dangerous ground, although I had a number of very close calls.

I was in junior high school, the first time fear razed a path across my forehead. What I experienced at four years old was too visceral an experience to be conscious, but I remember this like it happened yesterday. I lived with my mother and my brothers on East Broadway in Milford, Connecticut, and my mother was in the habit of leaving us alone at night to visit local bars. My brothers were 10 and 7.

On this particular night, I was coaxed from sleep by the sound of a cat or a baby screaming. No, it was a cat. It had to be. It sounded too desperate and came from a suspicious part of our apartment. The sound pulled me out of bed, feeling tired, wary and cautious, through my brother’s bedroom (which was adjoined to mine), across the tiny living room, and to my mother’s bedroom door. This is where the sound came from. My mother’s bedroom.

Oh no.

Without thinking, I opened the door.

My mother was on the bed, flat on her back, pinned by a man named Mark. He had his hands, both his hands, wrapped firmly around her neck, pinning her savagely against the mattress, and it was her voice I heard from two rooms away. “Alright! Alright!” she screamed, and he was yelling back at her, defiantly, to prove the ability to take her life was his ultimate show of power.

Surprising them both, I ran into the room, grabbed Mark by the back of his shirt and hauled him off my mother. Coughing and sputtering, clutching her neck as she tried to sit up, she croaked at me to call the police. No sooner did the words come out of her mouth, and he was in my face threatening to kill me if I called anyone.

He had vomit on his mustache.

I’ll never forget the way he looked; inebriated completely, enraged, deranged, no longer human. He was a creature ready to take it to the final, irrevocable act, to prove his strength.

Then, suddenly, my mother pushed me out of the bedroom, and closed the door behind me, shutting me out completely.

The entire thing happened in less than 60 seconds.

My mother and I never discussed it again.

By some miracle, my brothers didn't wake up, and I rushed back to my bedroom, stunned, and crawled into bed clutching the heavy end of a pool stick. Maybe I’d have to defend myself before the night was through. My mother in close proximity to Mark's malice forced enormous anxiety from me. After about an hour, he left the house, with the usual yelling, swearing and tire screeching racket. The police showed up shortly thereafter, and I overheard her telling them it was a mistake to call.

What?

He moved in with us three weeks later, and I couldn’t speak to my mother for weeks. She married the man in my grandmother’s living room a month or so after that.

Thereafter, a battle raged on in my mother’s house. It was me against them. My little brothers were wide eyed witnesses, and my grandmother remained on the periphery, cautious, but paralyzed by guilt. Occasionally, I wonder what my brothers suffered after I left, but they are stoically closed mouth. I’ve heard stories about them bathing in dirty bath water, after the adults used it (which would’ve been anathema to the meticulous engineer), and being slammed against walls like rag dolls. When I left, they became the primarily focus of Mark’s insanity. Several months later, when Mark and our mother disappeared together (she for the third and final time in our childhood history), and my brothers moved in with my grandparents and I (again), my mother became the primary focus of his insanity. He beat her, which should be no big surprise.

Now, one brother, the engineer, seems entrapped by his past, but is unwilling to be connected to it. Despising change, he strives to maintain a controlled environment. As a child he was wounded and quite beautiful, but industrious. He always had a paper route. Now an adult, he’s got a master’s degree, but can’t leave his job because change freaks him out. Emotionally, he’s become like a blind recluse or a homeless wanderer, doomed to tackle physical challenges again and again, but isolated by his unwillingness to take emotional risks. He’ll scale a cliff with nothing but a rope to tether him but hasn’t had a serious relationship. As I was once, he understands nothing but reacts to everything. His rational mind has begun to twist reality to support it’s justifications. I love him dearly, but can’t stand to be around him.

My youngest brother, the rebel, ran the neighborhood like a hooligan at four years old. No one ever told him what to do or gave him guidance. He fell into substance abuse at a tender age, but managed to bounce back. He has since emerged from a horrible car accident with a hefty legal settlement and the possibility of having his own family. Taking on that which is most difficult is part of his defiant nature. This brother holds me responsible for parts of his past, however, as though he were my responsibility as a child. Each time he tosses the gauntlet of blame, he manages to avoid hitting our parents. Instead, the blade cuts either me or our grandmother, who’s never done anything but take him in when he needed it and attempt to enforce obedience when it was far too late.

Neither of my brothers are emotional beggars. The engineer doesn’t want to be around others enough to consider it, and the rebel is far too arrogant to be a beggar to anyone. One fears intimacy and the other fears vulnerability. Being a beggar was my lot, and despite my New England arrogance, I was needful. Experiences like the one on East Broadway stretched poisonous roots down into my psyche, anchoring that irrational fear of being left behind.

Growing up, I held on to my friends desperately, and with little discrimination as to whether or not they were good for me. This attachment led me on some wild rides. As the new millennium rang in great change over the year 2000, I tried to do the same. In fact, I worked very hard to avoid any kind of change in my world.

The Goddess had other plans.

I juggled enormous, soul sucking projects at work, which, of course, I approached obsessively (out of fear). I attempted reconciliation with my father, which failed. Changes in my grandmother’s life, controlled by my mother, were too ironic to process. I neglected to pause long enough on either of these to address my emotions, and so began a period of emotional constipation, which is never a good thing. I went to see the Holy Mothers when they were in town. I lived for those visits and the way they made me feel. Naturally, I asked them for specific blessings, things I thought I wanted, which were promptly ignored. That should have been my first clue. Their grace kept me aloft, but the inevitable change in my life, in me, or what might better be referred to as a reshuffling of priorities, was imminent, and subconsciously I did everything to prevent it. That reshuffling of priorities included the bleak realization that those I considered dear friends were immersed in illusion, just as I was, and I’d held on to them far longer than I should have. What I couldn't understand is that the letting go pushes people to grow.

In 2000, my friend Dave was in his mid-forties. He’d been working with me as a contractor since 1990 and was in the office almost daily for various reasons. He was one of the few people who survived Jim Jones and The People’s Temple when it hit the fan in the late 1970’s. Beginning in 1990, we spent hours talking about his experiences. It was difficult for him to make sense of it all, I thought, particularly because the brain washing he suffered was so efficient it skewed his perception of reality. He left the People’s Temple a young man before Jones moved his flock to Guyana, and he always felt that getting out early made his experience less valid somehow, particularly in the face of those who died, and the crippling survivor’s guilt he carried. He suffered, though. He lost a brother in Guyana, and paid dues immersed in what was referred to as “the church” when he was a boy.

The time he spent in the People’s Temple, after his mother abandoned he and his siblings there, were his most impressionable years, the time when a boy creates a sense of who he will become. Dave spent those years very, very close to Jones himself , hanging out and getting in trouble with the Reverend’s children. He suffered the abuse, humiliation, and sustained brain-washing which was “Father’s” greatest gift to the tender children in his flock. Dave got the paddle behind the podium. He suffered the sleep deprivation. He drove up and down the California Corridor tucked into the overhead baggage carrier in the church’s bus caravan. He maintained, even into his late forties, that Jones was a magic man, somehow superhuman, capable of preaching all night on his pulpit, pushing everyone into debilitating catharses, without needing to take as much as a piss break. When he left the church, Dave went into hiding, convinced that Jones would send his henchman to kill him. After all, so many of those who left did reach an untimely and mysterious death in the San Francisco, Bay Area. The media made sure that message was loud and clear. When the media announced years later that Jones was addicted to amphetamines, Dave simply didn’t believe it. It didn’t matter that Jones was dead. The threat was there embedded forever in his mind, and he carried it with him, raw and unrefined, every single day of his life.

Regardless of this, and regardless of what I or anyone else thought, Dave felt himself somehow separate from the pain he knew other People’s Temple and Jonestown survivor’s felt. Perhaps it was his pride, and perhaps he didn’t feel worthy. I’m convinced he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which might explain the on-going problems he had with drugs and alcohol. He self-medicated, even at work, because the Church left him thoroughly untrusting of medical professionals and society in general. When 2002 rolled around, 12 years into our friendship, in the office, he was noticeably inebriated by noon every day.

I tried to ignore the obvious for a long time, but eventually I had to release him which ended our friendship, as well.

He wouldn’t speak to me after that.

I met Harmony in my freshman year of high school. I knew her for years, and we shared a tumultuous and complicated friendship. At this particular time, as pressure in my life mounted, concurrently so did pressure in hers. At one point we shared a phone conversation. In fact, she was 3,000 miles away from me and had been for years, so most of our friendship was conducted over the phone. Perhaps she was assessing all the relationships in her life (for she had suffered herself in childhood). Harmony asked what she was to me, and I responded that she was like a sister. For reasons known only to her, that began the unraveling of our friendship as it was. Through a series of miscommunications and irrationalities, Harmony's age rose up like a dark phoenix, pulling her further and further away. I had a mental picture of her floating in the stormy sea of her own change, the Holy Mothers her only life raft. Her personality changed, almost overnight, revealing a completely different side; a vicious, controlling, angry, and bitter side. It felt like she used that anger, disapproval and rage in an attempt to control me. She told me we were through, absolutely through, more than once, as though it would bring me to heel. All it did was scare the hell out of me.

I’ve had plenty of time to consider why this separation was so difficult. Harmony was a big part of my spiritual growth then, and introduced me to Amma indirectly. Before I was able to identify with the Goddess in myself, I looked to the Goddess in her. This was a role she played willingly, has played with others, and seemed to enjoy. It's also a role I've had projected on me, as well, although after all this I was aware of the responsibility it implied to the one doing the projecting. Yes, this seems codependent, but as my connection to the living goddess, Harmony was a lamp light in what was otherwise a murky, confusing, and frightening spiritual awakening. In a fit of frustration and anger, and when it was far too late to reconcile, when too many harsh words had been used as projectiles, she railed on how the pressure and responsibility this put on her was too much to bear.

I couldn’t let go, however, and it was because I didn't understand why she'd changed so much so quickly. We got into arguments over the internet, nothing ever face to face. Attempts to communicate with her, to be acknowledged by her, were met with vicious retorts. She started threatening me, pulling fantastic accusations out of mid-air and railing at me for things she said I did when we were in highschool. She threatened to hurt my family, saying disgusting and bigotted things about my lifestyle. I suspected she was going through something much more than just spiritually awakening, but she wasn't offering any explanations. Still, I couldn’t put her behind me completely, so strong was my attachment. I couldn’t for a long time, but I knew in my heart of hearts we could never be friends again.

There is one good that came from all this.

These exchanges forced me to seek my inner strength, and forever stop looking for my reflection in the eyes of another. This was a gradual process, an on-going process of personal inventory taking and affirmation, and because it is multi-dimensional, it continues still. But every time I went to the raging fount that was Harmony, I had to look at myself very closely to assess my motivation, my intent. It led me to an even greater understanding of my karmic wound and concurrently my inherent goodness, that goodness in everyone.

There was a pattern at play, one I didn’t see until I wrote this piece. The Divine Mother, always present, always teaching, pushed the panic button again and again on my fear of abandonment, removing those unproductive and unhealthy relationships from my life, even if only temporarily (as in the case of my grandmother, where my feelings were snarled up with those for my mother). My grandmother, my father, Dave and Harmony, who was the hardest of them all, mattered greatly to me no matter what illusion my relationships were immersed in, yet they were removed from my life with surgical precision. By taking Harmony and Dave, she left me no one to reflect back who I was. Thus, I was left to define myself for myself. I am thankful each and every day I didn’t have to loose Leslie or my daughter to learn this important lesson.

This changed the dynamic of my personal relationship with Leslie, and of the relationships I had work. I’ll get more into that in the next post. But at home, I became focused fully on home and hearth. Leslie deals only in honesty, and the honest truth was that our life was hard during this time period. No matter what amazing grace the Mothers showered on us (written about previously), the biggest part of the work remaining on my spiritual awakening was entirely up to me. And Mother ensured our daily life was challenging, thus never letting up for a moment on the pressure cooker of change I was in, and the lessons I had yet to learn.

These changes in my life, no matter how difficult or far reaching, created the dawning of a critical realization. The tiniest blossoms of my self-worth began to bloom beneath the shining sun of Mother’s love. And the thorny weed that was fear, which made me an emotional beggar, while once an entire forest, found it increasingly difficult to thrive in the shadow of that love.

That fear grew smaller and smaller … until it had no place left to grow at all.

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NOTE: I've lost track of where my art lies in the chronology of these postings. Therefore, I'm focusing on the story and adding pictures of myself from various time periods. The picture at the top of this post was taken on the beach across from where we lived at East Broadway. I was 13, just around the time my mother married Mark.