There was a short meditation at the end of the yoga asanas. As I sat I noticed spider and crow. Crow was strong, vital, spider was timid and I could feel the feelings of being shy and disappearing in her.
In the shamanic traditions I work in, spider is my totem. She shows up as a Black Spider, a huntsman spider or sometimes a brown house spider. She showed up today as a black spider. It was fascinating to see and feel her. It felt like I was able to know more about myself through being with her and crow in these minutes. It felt like she was showing me specific parts of my broken feminine. With crow strongly with me too.
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Today when I sat I mostly just cried.
My sense is the deep work I have been doing has both given me access to long buried deep feelings and is allowing my to hold the discomfort. I decided to not feel disappointed that not much else happened today besides memories of perceived injustices arising and tears coming. I let them come. I have plenty of time to get journeying right. As context, I lost touch with my sadness many years ago. I don't remember when. Probably when I was a kid, when my pain went unnoticed, ignored for so many years I numbed it out. I stopped struggling and kind of died instead. Through many years of therapy I have waited for tears to come. God knows I deserved my own tears. A deep soul shattering lack of safety unfolding from the sharp neglect of my childhood. The abuse and neglect, so many humiliations I have suffered. My own behaviors become insane and sometimes psychotic. Then being blamed for expressing my experience in difficult ways for others. Victimized, insane and mostly dead. I have waited and waited for my tears to come. My lack of tears felt like further evidence that I was beyond healing, beyond hope. Then over the last years they have started to come. I have highly valued the physical pain (a deep dull ache) in my heart space I have noticed across the last few years. I associated it with being close to spirit, to my authentic self. The coming closer to my felt experience of neglect. Part of building an understanding that the abuse was not my fault, contrary to what my family ask me to believe. That my madness was an understandable response to the madness of my family environment. And I was allowed to not blame myself, and I am allowed to feel sad. The inside work across the last week has bought me in touch with strong, deep feelings, leading to healing. The healing is ongoing, unfolding, emergent. Yesterdays holding my pulsing pain strengthens my understanding that I am capable of holding myself together. When I look inside, this is the work that's there to do now. I am going to privilege trusting the process over trying to get anything right. I was feeling tiered today. A sense of self hatred present in my mind and body. I could barley muster the motivation to do my morning yoga. But I did. I could barley muster the motivation to do a journey today, but I did.
As soon as I closed my eyes, I felt a welcome clarity. Colours felt bright. It felt like an energised and alive space. I went to the part I worked with yesterday. It felt like veins and arteries hooked up between this wounded child part and 'me'. I looked/felt around for others, but I was alone. I felt into all the feeling spaces, all the blocks and crunchy memories of being less then. The reasons why these parts had become separated. The reasons I had become separated from myself. Then, I went from vibrant and clear, to lost. The strong feeling spaces shifted the other parts of the experience away out of focus. Deciding to not pathologise my unfolding experience, I stayed with what was unfolding. I sat holding my self in my uncomfortable feelings. They pulsated through me. I stayed with myself. It felt like a safe and attentive holding. The vibrancy of the first part of the sitting showed up here in the clarity of my holding. My sore felt experience pulsing as I breathed. I wasn't sure what to do, so I decided to start wit myself.
I sat, noticing activity in my inside landscape. I could feel crow close, strong. I decided to navigate to a separated part of me, to see what happened, practicing on my self. I let myself notice the space, to see if anyone else was with me. I located a child part of me, both in my belly and also away from me. This child part was wild, like a wild animal. I could feel my self working this separate part closer to me. I noticed the surface of the bigger part, me, that the separated part might connect back with, or to. I noticed the strong feeling spaces of the two separated parts, the discomfort each contained, which is likely what has kept them separated. I could see the child part, broken, isolated, suffering. The surface of the self was also raw. I worked in the space in between, holding, healing, preparing. I actively looked and relooked to see who might also be helping, working with me. I could feel crow still strong. Fanning the space between. There was some clarity in this and still some fuzzy edged not being sure. Today was the Three Worlds Healing Ceremony dedicated to Akasanawa, followed by a Dingo Clan sweat lodge.
As I drove there, I 'tuned in'. I noticed the horizon, the warm colours, and the feeling of his hat framing the horizon. I could see the hawk, his totem, and see the sun sitting above the horizon, setting, but still with a way to go. Arriving at the site, I made the effigy for the ceremony. I has drawn to bringing and including Rosemary in the effigy. I included some gum leaves, fruit and new fresh growth leaves. I picked up a piece of red vark and shaped them into arms. Later I noticed they were like wings, reflecting hawk wings. The ceremony felt vital. We each enacted the parts. Since teh ceremony I as I often do can feel a rainbow from my heart space reaching out across time and space to his, offering vitality. The sweatlodge was peaceful. We each spoke of our gratitude for medicine ways and our teachers. I could still feel the hat and the horizon. My view of the sunset makes me think it will be at least a year till his death. Today I am traveling with some suffering. Old dissatisfaction that changes shape and intensity over time. It picks up different themes and contexts depending on what else is unfolding in my life.
I am sitting with my forever yearning to be close to what I call "spirit". I don't even know what that means. I just know all my life I have explored the unknown non physical. I have sort guidance from mediums and psychics. I have sort "spiritual healing" (whatever that is) which is what led me to shamanism. I am so envious of people who have a clearly defined relationship with the unknown non physical. They have spirit guides, or spirit speaks to them in seemingly consistent ways. They seem to have a sense of certainty. I have no such luck. My experiences of clear spiritual contact I could count on one hand and are spread out across my whole life. I am old. I have done psychic development at the Spiritualist Church, and many years of shamanic training. At best my communication with non physical reality is vague. Sometimes it feels non existent. I am not 100% convinced of what if anything is in non physical reality. My approach to life is to not make myself wrong. To hold my whole experience, even the contradictions, with curiosity, trusting my feelings, impulses and preferences will unfold over time. Its been important to believe myself as my stories of my lived experience where never believed when I was a kid. Trust. After (years ago) discovering I held anger for life itself I have actively cultivated trust in my life, in the path beneath my feet. A forever deepening practice of trust and gratitude, navigating my doubt. self hatred and wounds. So, I sit to journey. Eyes closed. I am holding a space for sitting in this non physical space waiting for whats there to show itself to me. Today the sensations were mild. I could feel an old disappointment and a lack of faith in myself arising. But I sit and wait. A gentle inner gaze holding my intentions, and even the concept of seeing whats actually there rather then imposing my imaginal energy on the space, lightly. I feel sensation, a canyon, I am mostly alone. Space is what I see and feel. Its a practice. I could feel my enthusiasm was diminished before I started. I am most curious about what happens when I just watch, and don't direct my inner experience.
I noticed the crow/raven again. It flew, but the experience was lack luster compared to the previous couple of days. I could feel the three, but the crow was the strongest. It felt like none of us knew what to do. We all are waiting for something. Although they all danced, again, as well. Today when I sat I sat with no expectation but I could feel the crow/raven and the orca from yesterday. At first they were far away.
Spider I had worked with previously was there too. The three of them. Each felt strong, in their own way. The black spider was bejeweled. The three danced. I could feel that the crow/raven was connected to my right hand and the orca was connected to my left hand. I felt the energy of each creature pulse down my arms. Spider was in the center. I was aware that these creatures were waiting, at first far away then at times close, and sometimes in my body. I came to see the waiting as a not yet readyness to independently work in the inside landscape space. I noticed myself thinking its not up to me to get them to act, more observe and be with them in this landscape. I journeyed into the beginning. I was not sure what to expect, I sat in the darkness created by my closed eyes. I encountered two Totemic Beings: firstly a Crow/Raven and after a while an Orca. These encounters made "sense": I had met both before, but a long time ago. The crow showed up strongly, I could feel it's pulsing life force, its strong beak and deep curious eyes. We flew. The Orca was at first strong, but later it felt like this entity had some weaknesses. It turned again and again to its left. It took me into deep water, alone, in the cool blue quiet. Crow and orca. Swimming and flying. What did I come to know? Navigating with a strong clear eye. I have been flying all day, in my belly. Swimming, fathomless depth, solitude. I am curious about my experience of the weaknesses in the orca. I sit with what this has to tell me. What is unbroken, water colour on paper, Lily Fraser, 2018. |
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