[Previous entry]
The diminutive Scottish woman who met with us at Hearth Place calls Kevin to say they have two spots open for Healing Touch sessions–whatever those are. We decide it’s a good idea to go. I look forward to it, although I have no idea what to expect. I don’t do a lot of things spiritually with other people, and I’m hoping it will be what I need.
It turns out it is.
Through a mix-up with whether or not we’re supposed to confirm, when we get there, the spots have been filled. An older man is kind enough to give up his spot for me, but alas, Kevin doesn’t get to experience it. There’s always the future, of course, but I feel bad. Then again, I’m the one with… the illness…
Even after all this time, it’s hard to type sometimes.
Mary-Cathrine is the facilitator. I don’t know exactly what to call it in a word. Person who does the session, but that’s not one word. She takes me to the basement of the Heart Place, which we didn’t get to see last time. I’m so weird–I love seeing nooks and crannies of buildings. Sometimes I have dreams about the two old farm buildings my relatives own. In the dreams, the houses go on for floors and rooms and floors. When I was a kid, I wanted to move to a house with a secret passageway.
I love buildings.
The basement isn’t anything special, but it’s still fun to feel like I’m going somewhere new. The room is located at the end of a short hallway. It looks like every other massage room I’ve been in, with a massage table in the middle and a side table with a CD player. Two chairs sit to left, and Mary-Cathrine has me sit to talk for a few minutes.
We discuss my diagnosis, and I tell her where the tumors are so she can focus on them. “I had chemo yesterday,” I say.
“That’s good. This will work along with it.” Then she asks, “What are your spiritual beliefs?”
I flounder. I’m not sure how to summarize. I stammer out something about reincarnation and being here to learn lessons. I almost feel like I need to apologize because of what I’m going through. It’s a question I’m facing suddenly and without warning: do I really think this is a lesson I chose for myself? On the other side, did I really say, “Yep, I’ll sign up for stage 4 breast cancer”?
Thankfully, she says nothing about that (nor did I expect her to, of course, but my brain is a minefield of all sort of interesting anxieties). She explains that she’s going to have me lie down fully clothed, and she’ll manipulate my “aura”–the energy field that extends to three feet out of our bodies, scientifically proven to exist.
I probably knew that at one point, but I’d forgotten that. I especially didn’t realize it was three feet from our bodies. “No wonder I feel so uncomfortable in crowds.” I’m so sensitive to everything. It feels more than an introvert thing. When I’m in crowds, it feels like a hundred people are screaming silently in my head. I know no other way to describe it, and it makes no sense. But if you’re like me, you know exactly what I mean.
“Are you okay if I touch you?” she asks. “I can do it without touching.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Do you believe in angels?”
I’m not sure what I say out loud. I believe “Yes” is all that came out, but I think about spirit guides and angels and how I’m not sure they’re different, something I blogged about earlier.
I lie down, and she gives me a blanket, explaining it can get cold in the room. Given that I’m cold during chemo with a warm blanket and two afghans, it’s a good call. Next week, I think I might bring my heating pad and put it against my back, even.
The music starts, and I close my eyes. I start meditative breathing. I’ve decided on a six count in, a seven count to hold it, and an eight count out. I focus on imagining the air coming in as healing green dots. Into my lungs, spread through my body, especially to the tumors. The air rushing out is deep red dots, pulling the cancer with it, and expelling it into the universe to be dispersed.
A few years ago, I emailed with a woman I met on Twitter who was learning to do past life readings. She told me several things about myself that resonated, one of which was that I died in or near the ocean in two previous lives. It certainly explains why I developed a fear of water deeper than a few feet. (And, to be clear, this phobia came on suddenly and before I spoke with her.) It’s a feature of past life trauma; when you reach the age you died, you develop that phobia. Strange, but supposedly true. At this point in my life, I get anxiety thinking about going in the deep end of a swimming pool, whereas as a kid, I loved it. And watching Moana, where she was sailing all over the ocean–I shudder thinking about it. (On the other hand, I love the beach.)
Another thing the psychic-in-training told me is that I have three spirit guides. Herman we’ve met. Another one, my muse, I haven’t talked about. Perhaps a week ago, she appeared to me. Her name is Gold Filigree, and her job is not to put ideas inside me, but to pull them out. Her aspect is ever-changing: skin, hair color and length, outfit. The third guide/angel I haven’t met yet.
How painful it is to write that. I wonder if I’ll ever reach the point where I don’t get anxious talking about spiritual things. I wonder how many people are disbelieving of me. I wonder if I care–no, I know I care. But… It still feels true, so I’m including it.
As Mary-Cathrine completes her Healing Touch therapy, I sense five angels or guides in the room with us. Three are mine, and two are hers. They’re standing around my body while she, touching my legs and arms and torso, moves silently. They, too, are touching me, praying, meditating, infusing me with healing light as they stand around me.
I breathe in–the green, healing particles–and breathe out–the red, damaged particles.
This continues for perhaps half an hour or forty minutes. Time doesn’t exist, though. I relax and let myself float, focusing on my breathing, sensing the presences. I allow myself to be grateful for the gift that is life and this journey–yes, journey, because it is a journey.
When she finishes, she speaks soft words, murmuring that she’s done and to take as long as I need.
Joy wells up inside me–peace and love and gentleness. My heart feels full, and it comes out. Tears slide from my eyes. Should I be embarrassed? But I can’t muster up embarrassment. It is why she does this. We’re not speaking–we’re not really communicating–but I know she understands.
I sit up.
“You might feel light-headed,” she cautions.
I do. I feel tingly. The tingles started early on and grew. My head is swimming, but it’s not an “I’m going to faint” or “I sat up too fast.” It’s something altogether different, like I’m going to float away from my body if I don’t hold on tight, or– I don’t know what it is. It’s just different.
“Your chakras were quiet when I started, but now they’re moving again,” she says.
I’ve not studied much about the chakras, so I’m interested in everything she has to say. I feel like I should have learned about them, but that’s the part of me that is never satisfied with what I’ve done. Long ago, I promised myself I would stop “would have, should have” with spiritual things. “You should meditate every day” doesn’t work for me because the spiritual world isn’t there to should. That’s one of the Christian philosophies I walked away from. Spirituality is there when we need it, a never-ceasing wellspring of good things that we can drink from or not, as we choose, as we need. It doesn’t judge.
“I feel compelled to tell you this, too,” she continues. “Your heart chakra is a brilliant emerald, and your throat chakra is a beautiful sapphire.”
“Thank you,” I say, not having the slightest idea what it means. I know, of course, that it is good, instinctively and from the tone of her voice, but I have to google it when I get home.
Several different sources have different ideas of what these mean, but here is a good one I found:
Heart chakra –
It’s at this chakra that we start to see the possibilities of the internal and external world…the world of spirit and of form. The heart chakra is the integration point for the seven chakras of the body, because it holds the sacred spark of the divine and the intuition of the Mother.
When the heart chakra symbol is open, we are able to forgive, our lungs are clear and our immune systems are healthy. The higher chakras cannot be assessed till we pass through the heart. A heavy heart is one that carries resentment and anger from denied feeling and emotions, as well as guilt.
To have a healthy heart, you must allow these suppressed emotions to surface, heal, and fall in love with yourselves. Or, suffer from bitterness and lack of forgiveness. An unhealthy heart chakra causes alone feelings and despair. How you love yourselves, you love others. The heart lessons are self-love and forgiveness of yourself.
When I first started looking up the heart chakra, the emerald chakra, the first page talked about one’s relationships with oneself and others. One of the things that I have discovered going through this difficult time is the number of people who care–truly care–about me. It is beyond astounding to see how many people’s lives I’ve touched. I have had a seemingly endless line of people contacting me, letting me know they’re praying for me, telling me how heartsick they are for me.
Even though this thing is horrendous, it has brought out the most beautiful web of relationships I could have ever imagined. From my childhood all the way up to people I’ve met in the last year, I’ve had emails and phone calls and Facebook messages. I searched for a long time for the proper metaphor. Is it a tapestry? Close, but no. Web is the right one. A scintillating, sparkling web of connections to people the world over. I never knew how many lives I had touched for people to want to give back to me. And I’ve gotten to see it in action, and it is… amazing.
I don’t know how to express, beyond that, the emotions I feel toward what this has brought to light. I do believe that my being open by writing this blog, posting pictures on Instagram, and reaching out through Facebook (and other places), has allowed a light to shine on this web. Being this open might look effortless to you, but it’s not an easy thing for me.
I could have closed down. I could have holed up in my room. But instead, when I’m feeling low, I reach out–and I’ve found so many hands to grab onto. A safety net of people who care. Maybe most can only give me a word of encouragement, a gif of a cute puppy, a note that they’re thinking of me. But weaving it all together does uncover a gorgeous web of relationships.
And I am so incredibly grateful.
Throat chakra –
This chakra symbol is all about choice, willpower and the right to speak and be heard. Speaking our peace is our God given right of choice. Having said this, not all we say gives us peace. Some of what we say dis-empowers us…some empowers. What we say is caused by unloving or loving imprints from our past again.
It is through this chakra that we manifest what we want in life. A healthy throat chakra makes your voice clear and it resonates with truth. The words are a creative expression of the honestly and trust we feel within.
Blocks in this chakra make it difficult to communicate because we feel suppressed by swallowed emotions and feelings. The voice is weak and your feelings unclear or garbled. Integrity plays a huge part in the proper functioning of the throat chakra. Since it’s between the head and the heart it works to maintain integrity between what we think and what we feel. Self-empowerment is the main lesson of this chakra symbol.
And so we see the two are tied together.
I work very hard to bring out my true voice when I’m writing fiction. My Fallen Redemption series was not easy to write. Sometimes it was difficult to say what I wanted to say because I was afraid of saying it. And the same thing is with this blog; however, I feel like it’s important to myself to be true to my own truth.
Not only that, but years ago, when I was in college, I consciously worked on “integrity between what [I] think and what [I] feel.” Having worked hard on it, I can tell you that it’s not easy. It’s much easier to tell yourself a lie because what you’re feeling is ugly. It’s much easier to pretend to other people that what you’re feeling is not true. It’s much easier to deny your true wants and needs and emotions because they’re too much work to deal with.
Don’t do that.
Don’t.
Work on it.
Work hard on it.
Be true to who you are.
Remember: you can’t change what you’re feeling if you don’t acknowledge it. Half the battle is seeing things for what they truly are. And whatever it is that you don’t like about yourself, forgive yourself for it first. Jealousy. Lust. Anger. Pick your deadly sin; it doesn’t matter what it is.
You can’t change what you’re feeling if you don’t acknowledge it.
It is the first step.
[Next entry]
