6 - Initiation begins

(A note written a couple months after I first published this: a lot of things happened in my 20's and 30's, which came after the story of the ring of stone, and the story of the man overboard, but before the story of the face in the sky...so when I say "I'm approaching the part of my story when multiple seeds started sprouting", what I should have said is that "I'm skipping over a large portion of my experience to get to the part I want to talk about right now." More of the 20's and 30's will, I hope, be told later ..as well as more about my childhood, which also had a huge impact on my present paradigm.)

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I'm approaching the part of my story when multiple seeds that had been planted earlier in my life all seemed to begin sprouting at once, in unexpected ways, and so many changes started happening in my conscious awareness, and intersecting and spiraling around each other, that it's hard to know where to start describing them.

This phase of my life began in earnest in 2006, when I was 42, and within about 4 years, all the main elements of the worldview that I described in my first post had arrived into my mind's inbox and were subsequently sorted and put together into the picture I am trying to describe.

This is when I began to understand the intersection of emotions, spiritual dimensions, our subconscious, mental health, trauma, and Love, and how these things are understood in indigenous cultures.

I think of this period now as my initiation into actual adulthood, when I began to feel myself as a sovereign being whose primary relationship was with the divine dimensions, (sometimes referred to as "Source,") which put me here and sustains my life. I felt like I had been catapulted into a video game that I didn't know how to play, that kept bumping me up to more difficult and intense levels just as I thought I was getting the hang of being this newfound "me." Paradoxically, this new video game was pulling me deeper and deeper into feeling at home in my own body here on earth.

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This initiation really began with the parting-of-the-veils to reveal what felt like the face of God, that I describe in my second blog post. But though this glimpse of Divine Love had planted the most potent seed, I didn't begin to feel much of a difference internally in my everyday life until several years later.

As I describe in the post about that experience, after it happened I still felt depressed and anxious and overwhelmed and ashamed of my life. I still felt compelled to "save the world," and imagined that what I should be doing is somehow bringing the unconditional Love that I had felt in that intense glimpse, to the rest of the humans in the world. I didn't yet realize that what I really needed was to bring that unconditional Love into my own body in a visceral way.

My marriage continued to be full of conflict and disagreements, and we still had no idea of how to get along or how to move towards living a fulfilling life. My husband, Ed, was working as a project manager at a very large cheese factory, and was very good at his job, but didn't feel that was really what he was here to do. He was also trying to develop his skills as an artist-blacksmith and metal-worker on the side. I was trying to establish myself as a professional gardener focusing on native plant landscaping, in order to make beautiful outdoor spaces that gave people a sense of something greater than the purely human perspective, and was working as a server and pizza store assistant manager in the off-season.

I was in a more or less constant state of dread, shame, and anxiety. I was a terrible waitress, because my social anxiety made me unable to stay calm or think clearly, and my insides were tied up in knots every second I was working. I was a lousy manager at the pizza store, because I couldn't bring myself to have conversations with fellow employees to tell them I wanted them to do anything differently, aside from the simplest instructions about pizza-making or making deliveries.

I managed to acquire a couple dozen gardening clients, but was constantly suppressing my fear that I would be found out as a fraud because I really didn't know what I was doing. I knew the names of plants, but I knew very little about garden design or how to deal with landscaping issues like drainage or pests or weed suppression. My entire life was a charade of pushing down my fear and shame while putting on a not-very-convincing act of competence and confidence.

We lived in an old farmhouse on a 5-acre farmstead with too many decrepit outbuildings and too little time to take care of it all properly. We were both struggling with being present in a good way for our son, who had to put up with listening to his parents arguing for hours every week. We both wanted to do something more meaningful with our lives, something having to do with helping people live more sustainably, but were at an impasse about what and where and how, both as individuals and as a family, and this impasse was largely due to both of us being terrified that if we let ourselves see the other person's perspective, it would be a threat to our own.

I could go on about the state of my life at that time. But I won't. I hope that gives enough of a feeling of what my internal and external landscape was like to give a context for what was about to happen.

In early 2006, in the midst of this chaos and stress, we found out about an organization in central Minnesota that was developing sustainable living systems, that was looking to hire a machine shop manager. As we talked with them about what they were doing, we learned that they were also looking for someone to oversee permaculture on their campus. They decided to hire both of us, Ed as the machine shop manager, and myself as the permaculture/grounds manager. This seemed like an ideal fit for both of us and at first we were both excited about the planned move to Pine River to take on this new adventure, with a company whose aspirations of sustainable living matched our own.

As the move became imminent, Ed became more and more anxious, and started feeling unusual pains in his body. One evening he had intense pain in his abdomen and thought maybe he was passing gall stones, so he went to the ER. His gall bladder turned out to be fine and they didn't know what was wrong. The next day he visited the natural food store in the town where he worked, and they suggested he get a "colon cleanse" from a woman they knew in St. Paul.

So the next evening after work he drove the hour to St. Paul for a colon cleanse. When he came home from that appointment, he was a remarkably changed person. I had been trying to get him to think positively about so many things for so long, (as though I knew how to do that!) and nothing I said seemed to have any impact on his attitude. Now, after this one session with this woman, he was suddenly calm and positive and bright and peaceful.

I was incensed! Why was it that nothing I said had meant anything to him, but suddenly this stranger sees him for one appointment and he's a changed person?! I expressed my anger to him the next morning, and he explained that in addition to getting the colonic, this woman had been doing reiki on him while he sat there. I was unfamiliar with reiki, and didn't know why that would do anything to his attitude. I was still angry. Surprisingly, instead of getting defensive, he said, calmly and compassionately, "I'm sorry you feel that way.. maybe I can try doing reiki on you?" I was surly and skeptical, but I grudgingly agreed to let him try.

So he had me lay on the couch and close my eyes, and he sat in a chair next to me. I could sense him moving his hands in the air over me for a few minutes. Then he stopped. He asked me how I felt. To my utter astonishment, I felt calm. My anger had completely evaporated!

I was amazed and mystified. Something that I was not aware existed before that moment had suddenly made itself known to me. I could feel that there was a subtle dimension inside me that had the power to alter my mood in ways I hadn't known was possible. This feeling of tranquility lasted for a few hours before dissipating. The change in Ed also disappeared after a couple days. But we both knew that something was possible now that we hadn't known before. We both wanted more.

I went to see the reiki lady in St. Paul myself, and though I didn't feel anything happening during the session, when I left I had the same astonishing feeling of tranquility that I had felt when Ed had done it with me. It was such a relief to feel that grounded calm, even if it was just for a few hours.

This was happening during the time that we were in the process of moving to Pine River, and we were not able to keep seeing the reiki lady in St. Paul. But, as we were getting to know our new employer and fellow employees, we learned that there were people in that area who did reiki and massage. One was the wife of one of the employees, and another was the wife of the owners' son. Not only that, but one of the perks the company provided employees was a monthly session with one of these healers in the area!

I felt like the universe was finally answering my cries for help, and in ways that I had not even known were available just a couple months earlier. I'd finally gotten a life raft for my desperate self who'd been just barely keeping her head above water.

Little did I know that I got a life raft just in time for a bigger storm on the horizon. And little did I know that this life raft would bring me through this storm and out the other side, having grown that life raft into a much bigger connection to that Love that I had forgotten how to be, way back when I was a child.