Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Medical Intuitive (distance) reading when surgery threatened Womb

Distance Reading "As a clear receiver of information and energy"; comes in pictures & words - shares verbatim...
{Picture from card deck Greenwood Tarot}
*~*~*
Medical Intuitive Reading begins:
Pictures starting at top of head. Seeing energy, sometimes thoughtforms...

Above head at crown chakra - open - a column of light extends upwards.
If you were to follow it up like an elevator - doorway to the planes of light.
Moving down back of neck - a lot of irritation left neck, where head meets neck
Irritation like a far-away headache, in your energy field but not quite pounding your head
It's a gall bladder point; your emotional value for positive regard for life..

And when you kinesthetically feel that someone has disregarded you in some way;
(when you feel that left neck) associate it with the gall bladder;
associate it with your value for positive regard and that will give you (helpful)
association with your emotional reactions to (such) dis-regard...
sublixation (slight misalignment) at the widow's hump center and above your shoulders

Earthy grounded individual - lower half of body is your strong male part and upper is gentle female nature

Well balanced spiritually and earth, male and female.. acupressure points inside soles of feet nerve ganglia just inside center of arch points get clogged; this is where your toxity in body builds. so put foot in lap and gentle thumb pressure in counter-clockwise direction (your stress points

Into uterus: it's almost as if you're blocked, psychically protecting it. Take deep breath; this is first clue: this is a place you feel invaded, you do have an energetic wall of protection;
"Medieval city under siege" (Corrina says) Yup says Caron (she can see)

Seem to have a physicality that precedes your spiritual growth; as if the energy of spirit pushes through you
this creation is an imbalance in the liver/kidney meridian
Light coming into top of head
in process fibroid has formed, fire heals it
the opening of that womb simply opens the chakras back up again
that solar plexus keeps feeling crushed
So assuming your acupuncturist is working along that meridian? (yes)
Corrina: 24 hours after getting diagnosis/prognosis, physician has said
"One thing I know for sure; you must go home and walk the physical land with your mother"
Caron concurs: That's exactly right; great schedule; go back to Scotland for completion/celebration
General fibroids info: may be too much estrogen. Stress produces estrogen. Stress is burden (mental component). The emotional component is your value for positive regard for life and where don't find it you cannot be. It is so precious to you, so tender to you, that even a harsh word would shatter the glass you're made of sometimes.
Looking at fibroid to see if there's anything deeper to understand
Corrina: Debra (physician) said red to green and Corrina has been relating to it as brown;
brown like sepia, queen Victoria's extended mourning
Connection to druidic/earthy has held you but now not enough;
Now long year of transformation by fire, not always easy, but exciting
But what comes will be only the deepest joy. And very happy.
Up to gall bladder: what is your diet?
Mum's visit, wheat allergy, sourced spelt crackers for her and I took a liking, now instead of breakfast. But as soon as we had a shift in consciousness about my womb I shifted heavy into green.
Ever done liver cleanse?

As healthy as your body is, gall bladder is the weakest and need to see what it correlates to…
Your picture is perfect: does have to heat up (use the element of fire to transform it)
If you went in for surgery, they would take out your uterus
Castor oil pack could produce the heat you need

Gall bladder: "I'm just a small organ in the process of how you digest and perceive your life
and this next year of your life has a theme for you and it's called empowered voice
the deepest voice that wields the sword of your inner balance.."
....Gall bladder having difficulty digesting your life at the moment
fibroid is symptomatic

Throat clear, mind clear

Two hot spots are tied into one another and that's pretty much it.
Anything comes to your heart/mind? Yes; the gigantic handwoven basket I first saw the day I was diagnosed with fibroid so big "100 out of 100 surgeons would say you need this removed immediately along with your womb) and then the ceremony on the cross-quarter/Imbolc(Feb 2nd).

Because of ranger (forbidding us to burn it on beach until we stripped it down to firepit size), I got to crawl right in before it was lit....
{Womb remains}

Pan & Psyche, Womb Journey spanning centuries



from the medical plan:
"psychic/spiritual: Pan healing of male-female "abuse" wound. Wide open forgiveness channel."


Plate: Edward Burne-Jones, Pan & Psyche

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Conceived in the womb of time




Body grows ever more happpily humming contentment, with belly re-shaping to reflect hara health/womb-greening. It's really fun to feel light-footed and clear. I mean clear; in here, no blocked, dense, dumbed-down energy. Light-hearted, sure-footed (everything melts).

Sun source shines and we bask
Woman and man meet;
tender, gentle, high,
in heat...
And All Because...
Womb and prostate
had their say and
listened
kindly, gently
listened, listened, listened
'til they cleared the blocks away
CCRMcF

Saturday, April 15, 2006

It's your body speaking...


Awakening Intuition, Mona Lisa Schulz:
"Our bodies speak to us every day in every way, through their own vocabulary of symptoms tied to emotions and memories from the past and the present...If your body wants to get your attention, it's not going to speak a language you can't understand. It will use symbols and symptoms that are somehow familiar to you."

About the blood



"If we are not gentle with life, the garden within us dies" Song of the Waitaha

excerpts from
Honoring Menstruation: A Time of Self Renewal, by Lara Owen, 1998
This book has been a work-in-progress for the last decade. My first paper on menstruation, The Sabbath of Women, was published in Whole Earth Review in 1991, and two years later a book entitled Her Blood Is Gold was published. Both of these works have been incorporated into the book you are reading now.

...The essential message of this book is this: If you take some time out to center yourself during your period, you will meet the genuine core of your being. From that authenticity you will naturally make choices in life that strengthen your spirit, heal your body, and honor the needs of your soul.

INTRODUCTION
The assumption that lies behind this book is that life is, on balance, a Good Thing, and that the processes of being female are likewise essentially a Good Thing. For the past few thousand years, certainly in Judeo-Christian culture (and in many others), being female has been seen as a Bad Thing. We have had a lineage of descent that honors the male over the female, and a preference for giving birth to sons. Consequently that which is special to the female has tended to be denigrated, whereas that which pertains to the male has been prized and respected...

...Some years ago I began to understand the relationship between my thoughts and my physical health, and I realized that my sense of myself as a woman was warped and distressed by my thoughts, many of which were so automatic as to be unconscious...

...Recognizing the value and pleasure of my periods has been a real opening for me into a deep appreciation of being a woman. The whole process has shifted from being something that I found mildly disgusting and certainly inconvenient, to being an natural time for assessment, clearing, and preparation. It has become a time when I process the last month and prepare for the one coming. I look forward to my period as a time when I am most likely to be able to seek creative solutions to difficulties in my life--provided I make the space for it. This process has been so transformative for me that I am excited by its potential for the healing of other women.
http://www.laraowen.com/menstruex.html
*~*~*~~*~*~~**~*

According to herbalist Susun Weed, the vast majority of women who have simple menstrual cramps and PMS "reduce or eliminate those discomforts when they honor their moontime." Christiane Northrup, a gynecologist in Yarmouth, Maine, confirms this assessment and expands on it, tracing a host of female troubles, from ovarian cysts to uterine fibroids, back to shame at menarche--the time of a young woman's first menses. "The seeds of menstrual distress, which 60 to 70 percent of women suffer, are sown in that whole introduction to the menstrual cycle."
*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~

Tamara Slayton passed away recently. She was based in Sebastopol, California. She was a cherished pioneer who helped to bring menstruation out of the closet in kind and beautiful ways. Several times parts of my menstrual log were published in her Cycles newsletter. I established the ritual "This month as I Bled...." insights and inspiration and quiet new knowings, and I loved it. It healed something very deep for me.

Tamara facilitated rites of passage, made available fine china bowls for soaking menstrual pads and in every way encouraged a new flowering of joy in our menses.

"...Tamara would explain to girls beginning their cycles, during the first half of the cycle estrogen circulates through the system, leading to ovulation around day fourteen. At this point, we may be at her most extroverted and open to others. "I show them how the little fingers on the ends of the fallopian tubes are waving to the ovaries, beckoning the egg to come in," she says. "And then I tell them, that's what we're like when we're in this phase--we're waving to our friends to come play with us."

As progesterone is released, building up the uterine lining in the second half of the cycle, a woman's energy turns inward, she continues. At this phase, many women find themselves wearing darker colors or spontaneously cleaning house to prepare a place in which to settle for their menses. The tension builds as menstruation approaches, as does the ability to cut to the heart of things and tell the truth. "I tend to pull apart and question everything in my life during this phase," says Slayton, who cautions that such doubts should not be acted on rashly, but posed as questions, in hopes of "conceiving" answers at ovulation.

Many women find that at this time and once they start bleeding, their intuitive wisdom is strongest and their dreams most revealing. A woman needs privacy during this phase, Slayton says, so she can slough off old ideas and self-concepts and await the birth of new ones.

"We women want to hold it all together all the time, to take care of everything," Slayton says. "But it's a lie. We need to know when it's time to let something go. We need to be open to a sense that 'this is not where I need to be anymore..."

The Inklings (Tolkien et al)








THE OXFORD INKLINGS
J. R. R. TOLKIEN, C. S. LEWIS, CHARLES WILLIAMS, OWEN BARFIELD
From the 1930s to the early 1950s, a group of Oxford friends, several of them University dons, gathered regularly in the rooms of the Magdalen College tutor of English. Referring to themselves as the "Inklings", they came together, not only for the warmth and collegiality of late night fireside chats, but to read aloud to each other the books they were writing, books whose distinctive blend of Christian faith, Platonic philosophy, and Romantic imagination has gained for them a large and ever-growing circle of devoted readers.

The tutor of English, better known as the twentieth century's most celebrated Christian apologist, was C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, and among the friends to share his hearth were Owen Barfield, whose theory of symbolic consciousness informed the work of all the Inklings; J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and creator of "Middle earth"; and Charles Williams, whose novels have been called supernatural thrillers and whose ideas are a remarkable combination of mysticism, alchemy, Neoplatonic cosmology, and theology.

The Baby and the Bird
by Diana L Paxson
Old Rome had many taverns
Devoted to the vine,
Where Ovid pledged each new love
In red Falernian wine;
Catullus, shamed by Lesbia,
Poured out his grief in verse;
Apuleus noted follies,
And pondered which was worse.
Refrain:But the place that draws me ever
When my fancy's running wild,
Is a little pub in Oxford Called
The Eagle and the Child,
The Eagle and the Child, oh,
Or else, as I have heard
Its regulars all called it--
The Baby and the Bird!
The company was lively In Soutwark's Tabard Inn,
When Chaucer and the Pilgrims Were telling tales within,
And on the Canterbury road
They took that April day,
And at the other hostels
Where they stayed upon their way.
(REFRAIN)When Villon, gutter-poet,
Reeled through the Paris night,
Drunk on verse and hypocras
And looking for a fight,
The Pomme de Pin, the Cheval Blanc
All welcomed him, and more,
With wine at every table
And doxies at each door.
(REFRAIN)Of all the City's taverns,
When Bess was England's Queen,
The Mermaid, undisputed, ruled
The literary scene.
Each Global play was played again
And christened in brown ale,
While Shakespeare, or Ben Jonson,
Stood up to tell the tale.
(REFRAIN)Augustan wits made merry
At London's Cheshire Cheese--
The topic was no matter,
So that the manner please--
Be it Love or Politicks,
'Twas scandalous, I've heard,
And Johnson had his Boswell
To write down every word.
(REFRAIN) Asking, They sing of famous taverns,
But considering them all,
The one where I had rather Been
a fly upon the wall,
Would be the Inn where Tolkien,Lewis, Williams too,
Met with the other Inklings Asking,
"Who has something new?"


(copyright, Diana L. Paxson, used by permission; transcribed by David Bratman)

Diana L. Paxson, long-time active in The Mythopoeic Society, and in The Society for Creative Anachronism, is the author of many novels, including The White Raven, The "Fionn MacCumhal trilogy, and a trilogy on the Siegfried legend, the most recent volume of which, The Lord of Horses, is just out. She was a Mythcon XXI guest of honor, chaired Mythcon XII, has played her harp and sang and mounted several stage productions at past Mythcons. --David Lenander http://www.tc.umn.edu/~d-lena/BirdnBab.html

Home to the Highlands


We Are our grandmother's prayers
We Are our grandfather's dreaming
We are the breath of the Ancestor's
We Are the Spirit of God

We are mothers of courage,
fathers of time
Daughters of dust,
sons of great visions
We're sisters of mercy,
brothers of love,
Lovers of life and
builders of Nations
We're seekers of truth
and keepers of faith
Makers of peace,
wisdom of ages

Chorus: For each child that's born,
A morning star rises and sings to the universe,
Who we are We are one....
Sweet Honey in the Rock
*~*~*~~**~*

We are called to pull up to full conscious waking life, this knowledge that is so much a part of who we are but not yet fully integrated and applied in our day-to-day lives. We are on an epic journey. Shortly after learning that my womb is in jeopardy, I encounter Jack.

Jack is not the first young man I have met lately who appears to me to be very 'awake'. I had an experience of him at the dinner table in a crowded restaurant when he asked me, with a palpable softness; "What is the Highlands like? His eyes in that focused question cracked something in me, turned a key.

My visceral response was a tender upwelling of my deep deep love of the Highlands. What I saw in his eyes was what I had seen in my own eyes only days before (for the first time): some vast and profoundly beautiful being looking straight out at me.

When I got my womb diagnosis/prognosis, it was from an MD of sufficient depth. Together we discern that something is going on here, that I am profoundly tuned into it, and that it is connected to my grandmother's grief from giving up her sons because her preacher husband said she was needed at his side for the "Lord's work" (and his babies weren't). We connected with my hard anger towards him and the fact that this story goes back further than these two characters in my lineage.

We first thought I would embark on a course of acupuncture and Chinese herbs (which I did immediately) whilst continuing with the ongoing psychic/spiritual processing personally, with my husband, and with whomever else. The plan was to reduce the mass to a size where I could go home to Scotland and have the rest removed surgically and hopefully at that point, save my womb.

We identified that I was supposed to do this part of the journey with my mum (big tears of confirmation). I already had plans to be in NY in mid-April and we agreed, this was an appropriate period of time for me to do everything I was prompted to do prior to the surgery (give me the best chance to work with it from every other angle I was guided to do). The space opened up for this timing/trip to Scotland without any resistance and felt exactly right to everyone in the picture. Within 24 hours I had received information that clued me into the reality that I (almost certainly) am not going home for surgery but going to the Highlands with my mum for a completion in this deep healing journey. My mum (surely one of my medicine women) was right there in her response (that sounds lovely dear..) - clear passage again.

I have learned over time to really pay attention to my 'inklings', which means attempting to put words to emerging realities while they are still terribly fragile and not fully in form. The Highland journey was certain now, though the details were not.

Monday, April 10, 2006

WHAT IS: fey


The Highland folk are fey
they've always been that way
though we with sheep
may fall asleep
forever and a day.

Forever's gone
A day has passed
And we with wonder wake
The house was raised, the sheep have grazed
(it really takes the cake)
And yet and yet
and yet and yet..
the Land breathed in and out
through sidewalk cracks and concrete slabs
through walls of crumbling grout

we're nationalized and categorized
and formalized to boot
yet nothing ever jeopardized
the Highland's deepest root

In jeopardy we play the game
in jeopardy we dare
and outcomes all depend upon
how deeply we all care

How deeply we can all step in
how brightly we show up
to dance to laugh to dream to drink
this overflowing cup

*~*~~*~*~*~~*~*~~**~

This Highland thread now being en-livened...
________________________________________________________________

Sunday, April 09, 2006

grelf and the mushroom (A Fibroids Fable)

Thank goodness for the cracks in the pavement so we can keep coming through. Coming through is our nature and our supreme joy, like a big breath of ocean air when you take a paper bag off your head.

Speaking of paper... I had almost forgotten about paper tigers. Freddie just learned about them. He reminded me of their particular stripe. They look really fierce but you just go anyway and you find out they're nothing to be afraid of. My grandson, Freddie he's 7 years old and I'm trading in my massage vouchers he made and gave to me.

"What's this?" he asks, encountering the hard, pointy lump in my belly.
"Well", I said, slowly choosing words, "that's in my womb where I grew my babies, only it isn't a baby."
"What is it then?", he asks, with that wonderful unperturbed interest of a young enough child.
"Well", I search again for words, "it's sort of a mushroom."
"What's it for?" he asks.
"I don't exactly know yet...but I will."

My answer is, for the time being, perfectly satisfactory to him and now he refers to my lump as "grelf's mushroom". This new framing is a good thing; it makes us laugh but more than that, it helps me to remember about brown. I thought of the fibroids as brown but in the drama of the moment I forgot; there's something about brown that I love as much as green.

As I warm to this remembering, everything begins to re~form...

I'm dressed in my favorite
all velvety brown
to remember the mushroom
the stem and the crown
springs up overnight
as though from nowhere
Like magic, we happen upon them
just...
There!

Where did they come from
and why are they here
what perfect conditions
made them appear?
Conditions were perfect
we have to agree
for us to find mushrooms
under this tree.

Like magic they grow
and last barely a day
then wrinkle and wither
and compost away
They're here for the picking
one magical morning
passed over their prime
as a new day is dawning

So you harvest them fresh
and plan for a supper
For there's wisdom to sup
when the underworld's upper
There's something to glean
and you mustn't run by
what they called a fibroid
is really a fungi:

This fun guy popped up
to pull your attention
to matters of gravity
and dynamic tension
To matters of levity
and what needs to rise
to where you must turn
to fully realize
the potential you noted
and nurtured along
In the beginning was the Word
but the fruition is the song...

The night of the "quickening" (both suddenly shocked at the size of the lump) I went out to the clifftop after making love. I was not about to sleep. I sat on my most favorite bench, perched on the very very edge of the cliff, sitting with the sound of the surf and the body of the great Pacific Ocean. I began to tone in low tones, building to a rhythm. It sounded to me like the Tibetan monks that we had so loved to sit amongst in Lhasa. I became fully cognizant that the sounds I was making were vibrating in my base energy centers. I knew we should pull out all the Tibetan singing bowls. I knew that low resonance vibration was key.

So I leave it behind
As I metaphor on
As I pull in a new world
the other...
... Be Gone!

The Ice Queen



My far away eyes keep brimming
mercurial tears
like moonstone planets
spilling over vast landscapes

Heart springs
heart springs
heart springs eternal
even as it cracks and breaks

The long-frozen Polar ice cap of my wounding
is melting
This is the journey of the Ice Queen
and the bearing of it
is a human thing.
*~**~*~*~*~*

Relationship on Ice - Fibroid Cyst
"I wondered if she had a frozen-solid cyst in her uterus (she did)... In her uterus she had developed a large, calcified, or frozen, fibroid tumor." from Awakening Intuition, Mona Lisa Schultz

Even a word can shatter you like glass...

Sometimes, even a word can shatter you like glass…
That the meek word like the righteous word can bully..
That words can translate into broken bones…
That the power to hurl words is a weapon
That the body can be a weapon
any child on playground knows…
That word and body are all we have on the line…

from Adrienne Rich
Transparencies (the school among the ruins)

Softening the Belly...(addressing unattended sorrow & grief)


Stephen Levine speaking about “softening the belly.”

"We hold grief in our bellies. Remind yourself to let go. Push your belly out a little, let the breath drop down into the abdomen, and take a few soft breaths. I don't know any simpler method of opening to the moment. What happens is that you start to notice that the hardness in the belly is the same as the armor over the heart."

Unattended sorrow is unresolved grief that has never been given a chance to heal. It disturbs sleep and infects our dreams. Unattended sorrow narrows the path of our lives. In the first book to address the unhealed grief that is the underlying cause of myriad physical, emotional, and spiritual maladies, bestselling author Stephen Levine offers a series of techniques for approaching and healing this pain.

"I never really understood, on a conscious level, how far reaching grief could be. The steps that help to "soften the belly" and finally deal with the lingering pain of grief are incredible."

Your biology is your biography

Your Biography Becomes Your Biology. Emotional energy contributes to the formation of cell tissue, and forms an energy language that carries literal and symbolic information. In this way, your biography--that is, the experiences that make up your life--becomes your biology. Your body contains your history--every chapter, line, and verse of every event and relationship in your life. As your life unfolds your biological health becomes a living, breathing biographical statement that conveys your strengths, weaknesses, hopes, and fears.
Caroline Myss

The Nature of Inklings

Some inklings (wisps of knowing) that have been hanging out on the edge of consciousness for a long time astonish when they manifest. Their emergence into form is experienced as sudden, even if we have long-wished for this condition. Not everything bears telling in its entirety when it is newly born, newly formed, fragile and vulnerable.

There is an in between world (yes, a twilight zone) from thought to form where things can feel very unreal, still etheric. More especially if we have held a cherished dream for a long time, there is a pinch-me quality to the emergence. It's okay to hold such emergences close to the chest for a while but it behooves us to acknowledge to ourselves that something important is transpiring. It is for me to chronicle my story, identifying and weaving together what matters most to me. Thus I learned at the very least to record "that was the day…" even if there was nothing more to be articulated as yet.

We are always on the leading edge of thought with the capacity to be thinking a heretofore unthinkable thought. Note that 'unthinkable' has negative connotations. Sometimes we call forth a new reality from an intrepid or radical trust place and then we cannot quite dare to hold the possibility. I have yet to figure out why the Universe delivers under such conditions, but all I can say is that it does.

WHAT IS: Confinement

  • When a woman gives birth to a baby, lying-in, travail, childbed
  • The act of restraining of a person's liberty by confining them, usually against their will
As I sat up in bed one Sunday Sabbath, Me
I shook the rag doll cobwebs from my hair
While rusty bed knobs toppled noisy glee
Burst I from a confinement
I could no longer bear…


This the room I made for my elf self
And this my elf self gave to me
Wake up Wake up We said and claim your wealth
And up I came like as a gnome from 'neath a tree

There are inklings in the morning that will flit away
if you don first your clunky earthling shoes
you'll miss the melody they're wont to play
you'll lose the plot, you'll miss the boat, silence the muse

There is no time quite like the present Now
and you've been told the present is the gift
then prithy please engage the Now moment
when you show up then levity will lift

I'm here to tell you; you are everything
a wished unduplicated piece you bring
someone wished upon a distant star,
That very wish come true is who you are

That's all you need to know to lift the roof
Even the Mayor of Santa Cruz has told
the citizens of that fair town the truth
You are enough! Go forth; be bold!

Now when you enter this cross-platform world
where our creative scribings can't be see'd
though we send word in black and sans serif
just color curl the letters as you read!

Returning oft' to wonderment and awe
to whimsy and to magic in the air
no more deplete resources you must draw
from wonderment ~ for everything is there

No deep-shaft mining for this diamond in the rough
just lift it from the dirt where it doth lie
to rub it with your sleeve is quite enough
to return the sparkle twinkle to your eye

Queen of the forest Queen of Hearts and Queen of everything
spake: don't be fooled that feet are made of clay
That senses number five? 'tis but a myth!
There are countless realms we draw from in a day

Trust Who You Are trust what you bring trust where it goes
Turn door knobs that you grasp: mirth is the key
Deserting dirth deserting doldrums dire and woes

Grow younger toward death with eyes that See.

                                                                                                                                CCR McF

WHAT IS: NEMESIS

(NEM-ih-sis)
1. A potential source of ruin or damage.
2. An (seemingly) unconquerable opponent or challenge.The voices that call and cry: this need over here is paramount. Pulling my focus away, always away.

"Don't you think it's interesting, little wolf pup, that you assume responsibility for how (..everyone and anyone else but you) might be feeling?" , Ruby Plenty Chiefs in Crystal Woman, Lynn V. Andrews

The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Between a rock and a hard place


What is: Pressing?

The fibroid tumor is pressing. It is pressing against other organs in my body. It is pressing for resolution, pressing for action. It isn't possible for me to coast. It apparently isn't possible for me to take the time to weigh options. As Carla Dionne describes in Sex, Lies & the Truth About Uterine Fibroids, I went from a diagnosis of a benign tumor that needed no further action to qualifying as a hot candidate for hysterectomy. That is pressing.

Between a rock and a hard place; that is how I now hear myself describe how I am feeling. That continues to be the only honest description, as yet another person kindly inquires after my condition. Now I am challenged to address this feeling state. It definitely is familiar to me, but never defined so starkly as now. In direct response to hard energy exchanges and contracted fear states, the mass in my womb is definitive, literally poking out in a hard shape, like a little conical mountain.

Being frightened about the fibroid itself makes it go hard. Besides having the very existence of my womb threatened, the most likely scenarios to turn it hard are financial pressures and so-called deadlines for making stuff happen in general. I have to sit with this and acknowledge that I am doing something to myself that isn't constructive or solution-oriented, and is seriously detrimental to my health.

It's an energy thing


"In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy."
—Albert Szent-Gyogyi, 1960,
Nobel Laureate in Medicine

Image: Gaia - by New Zealand visionary artist, Pamela Matthews http://www.grail.co.nz

She's A deva, she's an elf...

"In the end, the shadow is but a passing thing..." (from Tolkien)

She's a deva
she's an elf
shape shifter
shadow
of her brilliant self
rainbow spirit
shooting star
that's how far
she came
to find you

From the deep and wild green places
from dimensions many faces
this world now her spirit graces
to remind you...

Had I the money and had I the house, all those years ago when I saw this bronze sculpture in a storefront window in North London, she would be mine now. Instead I stepped into the gallery and purchased this extraordinary photocard of the bronze, which turned out to be one of my most abiding profound images through almost two decades.

Sculpture in bronze by Tom Merrifield, UK
Photo by Richard Levin, O.B.E., R.D.I.

William Irwin Thompson & Womb Politics


What's WIT got to do with tumors in the womb?

Here is a character deeply rooted in the feminine principle. A noble precious penis person with a tenderness of being that is so palpable I can summon it now, as easily from the memory of being in a large chattering group with him at a San Francisco pizza joint, as listening to him wax lyrical beyond my waking ability to understand the words.

"He spends his time contemplating such nuances of thought as the relationship of birdsong to light changes in a sunset, the mythic levels of meaning in the fairy tale of Rapunzel, the relationship of oral sex to the development of consciousness, and the rain dances of chimpanzees. He is a cultural historian, poet, and mystic, weaving his imagination deep into the fabric of scientific theory." David Jay Brown of William Irwin Thompson, Mavericks of the Mind and Voices from the Edge www.mavericksofthemind.com

William Irwin Thompson was Ryan's most revered professor from his college days in Syracuse some 30 years ago. Thompson crafts so much beyond my ken, his writings were for a long time largely over my head. Yet I always experienced him deeply as kin. One night Ryan and I were both reading in bed, legs entwined. I was reading Clysta Kinstler's The Moon Under Her Feet Ryan was reading William Irwin Thompson's The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light. As I went to put my book down, my eye caught the dedication…to William Irwin Thompson, inspired by The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light.

On another occasion, we all trooped along to the dean's house following Thompson's SF CIIS lecture. The dean and Thompson, plus Michael Murphy of Esalen Institute, quickly launched into a conversing convergence so rich that it felt to me like supping nectar ~ I was the hummingbird. A rare occasion, where I had nothing to add but my scintillating attentiveness.

Another time, we were gathered for a special weekend, in Fritz Perl's (father of Gestalt) old house at Esalen with Thompson and Carl Abraham, in part celebrating Abraham's newly published book, Chaos, Gaia, Eros. And we did feel, as Thompson articulated, in the lively presence of the luminaries of the human potential movement... which included Maslow of course, another of my 'heroes'.


"...listening to the "voice of the earth" singing underneath the din of industrial materialism.":

The hope for such rapid and thoroughgoing cultural transformations is now more possible than ever because we presently live in a "noetic polity" based on the continuous exchange of ideas and instantaneous flow of information crisscrossing virtually the entire planet.

We must finally bring the freedom of our imagination to bear on what the shape of things to come may yet turn out to be because only the imagination is really big enough and wild enough to entertain the unthinkable possibilities beyond the ideas and information that currently rule and define our world.

The Gaian Politics of Lindisfarne’s, William Irwin Thompson, A Lifetime Achievement Review by Ralph Peters, EarthLight Magazine #47, Fall/Winter 2002/03 URL: www.earthlight.org/2002/essay47_peters.html

Noetic: derived from the Greek word nous, meaning something close to "intuitive ways of knowing."