Breathing in the Moon

“We learn by going where we have to go; we arrive when we find ourselves on the road walking toward us.” – Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage

On my last day in Delphi, I found myself back at the Gymnasium sitting at the foot of the ancient olive tree absorbing every last bit of sun as I gazed at the hills below. Despite the resistance I felt before I left on this journey and all along the way, I knew I would miss this sacred place. My first sight of the steep forboding cliffs rising above the Sanctuary, my visceral interactions with the Omphalos, and my vision of Delphi bathed in golden light will remain with me forever. And I’m feeling boundless gratitude for the luxury of just ‘being’ for that period of time with no distractions or obligations.

Pandora by John William Waterhouse, 1896

This adventure started with a serendipitous discovery of the Pythia and grew into an obsession to experience firsthand the world of ancient Delphi. I realized that my desire to ‘feel’ any kind of connection or to garner information about my past here might require some sort of a transformative experience. And while I found the idea of a flash of insight exciting, I didn’t really think I was ready for a total paradigm shift.

Since my return, I’ve wondered if my beliefs limited what I was able to experience. In my deep soul writing, Source has indicated repeatedly that information would be revealed when I’m ready for it. I left home with one question and came back with dozens more. And like Pandora, having opened the proverbial box (which I have learned was actually a jar), all I’m left with is hope – hope that some day I will come to know if it’s possible to connect with aspects of ourselves from previous lifetimes and whether knowing our past serves us in the present.

View toward Bay of Corinth ©2009 Charlene Nevill

I am off to Delphi at last! Even though I hadn’t studied up for my brief stay in Athens, I had read so much about Delphi and watched so many video clips about the sanctuary, not to mention two History Channel videos on the Oracle, that I felt like I’d been there already. But wait! Maybe I had . . .

During the three-hour bus ride, I stared out the window watching for anything that might be familiar. After an hour, we were in the countryside passing fields of cotton, sorghum and olive trees. So far, nothing. But when we started climbing Mount Parnassus and I saw clumps of flowering herbs and a goat-crossing sign, I felt tears well up – a sure sign that I had bumped into something from another lifetime.

Steps to Filellinon Street ©2009 Charlene Nevill

When we arrived in the tiny village of Delphi, it was apparent that there were no taxis. Having studied a map, I knew that my hotel was on the lowest of the tangle of streets that criss-crossed the mountain; I just didn’t know how to get there. So I set off on foot pulling my suitcase behind me. After asking three shopkeepers, I finally found one who was able to tell me that my hotel was at the opposite end of town and the only way to get there was down a series of stone steps. Another test. At least I was in better shape than when I’d arrived in Athens.

Checking in at my hotel, I was hoping for a room facing the Bay of Corinth. The woman at the desk assured me that because I was staying for five days, there was no question that I could have a room with a view.

©2009 Charlene Nevill

When I entered my little room, sun was streaming in through French doors that led to a tiny patio with a marble-top table and a small chair. Looking down I saw a garden with a flock of chickens on one side and another garden with giant melons on the other. I took a deep breath and thanked the gods for this little piece of heaven.

Speaking of gods, I was anxious to get to the sanctuary. I wanted to walk the Sacred Way through the Agora, and past the ruins of the treasuries that once held offerings made by Greek city states to Apollo. But most of all, I wanted to visit the Temple of Apollo where a succession of Oracles in rapturous union with Apollo advised a steady stream of kings, philosophers, and ordinary citizens on everything from wars and affairs of state to personal matters over a period of 1,200 years.

On my way out, I stopped to chat with the proprietor. “You know, the site is closed,” she said. “WHAT?” I squealed. “I’ve traveled half way around the world to visit the Oracle.” “You and everyone else,” she said.

There was a map of the site on a bulletin board showing that only half the site had been closed. But of course, it was the top half where the Temple of Apollo was located. It seems there had been a rock slide ten days earlier and there were no plans to re-open that part of the site any time soon.

I hadn’t forgotten Angelika’s advice about the possible disruption of plans, and here it was – the ‘unexpected development’. Incredulous yet undaunted, I told myself, like Avis, I would just have to try harder.

Dickens' Dream by R. W. Buss

I first encountered the concept of reincarnation during The Winter of My Discontent in rural Nova Scotia. With snow piled up past the window sills, I sat home alone by the wood stove trying to stay warm while my husband went off to work each day. I read every single one of my little leather-bound Charles Dickens books that winter. And as the days crawled by, I experienced a sort of existential crisis that went something like this: I’m not doing anything; I don’t want to do anything; therefore, I must not exist. Maybe it was the solitude, maybe it was my choice of literature, or maybe it was time for me to look more deeply into the crevices of my life.

Then as if in answer to an unsaid prayer, a friend appeared with a book on reincarnation. All I remember about that book is the blue cover and the author’s first name. But it touched me deeply, and I felt a knowing – a certainty that what I was reading was true. I had been intrigued by the paranormal all my life, but I hadn’t bumped into reincarnation until now. I didn’t know then what it was that made me feel better, but my spirits lifted enough to get me up out of my chair.

Since that winter, I’ve looked at the world through different eyes. I find it easier to understand relationships and seemingly random occurrences, misfortunes and illnesses. And I’ve come to understand just recently that spending that winter in Dickens’ London brought me back to that very traumatic lifetime with the man who was my father in this one. What I hadn’t been able to fathom though is why I, as Spirit, would choose to experience such pain and suffering. Another chat with Source would give me the answer.

Wallflower ©2001 Lora Shelley

When I was a child, I knew how to make myself invisible. I didn’t do it consciously, but I was aware that much of the time people couldn’t see me. Since then, I’ve learned that it’s possible to modify the energy fields (auras) around us by practicing a type of shapeshifting. And I’ve also come to realize that I developed this ability to hide from my father.

Twenty-two years ago, I took a one-night class on ‘channel writing’ at the Learning Annex. I was experiencing chronic writer’s block and this class was designed to help people unleash their creativity. After the class, I set up an appointment for a reading with the instructor, Dr. Loretta Ferrier, to get more information about my stuck condition and to get insight about some health issues.

Loretta zeroed in on the blockage right away. “You have accumulated a mass of energy as a result of refusing to follow your intuition. When you were a child, there was no space for you to do this. You held yourself back and you began to deform.” After telling her that I had a terrible fear of my father from early childhood, she went into trance.

“This fear, this hatred you have experienced in this lifetime comes from another lifetime you shared with your father in early England. He was a well-known spiritual leader – strong, powerful and rigid. At home he abused you, your sister and your brother – it was a living nightmare. The damage he did was so enormous that his sensitive qualities were withheld from him in this lifetime and they won’t be returned to him until he can handle them responsibly. Thus, in this lifetime with you, he was not able to feel any emotion. His job was to seek your forgiveness and make your life more pleasant. He learned some of these lessons but not all, so you will meet up with him again.”

None of this came as a big surprise. I had imagined something like this was behind my strong negative feelings and my father’s strange behavior. He never touched me in this lifetime, and now I understood that he’d been afraid to connect with me emotionally in any way. This answered my questions about my health problems, too, and now I understood why I had made myself invisible as a child and why meditating has been such a challenge.

So what does this have to do with my upcoming pilgrimage? Apparently quite a lot. I thought I’d forgiven my father years ago, but from feelings of sadness that have come up in relation to him lately, it seems that I still have work to do. He’s also popped up in every psychic reading I’ve had since I began this quest, and he’s even managed to make his way into my dreams. And I’ve drawn FORGIVENESS over and over from Colette Baron-Reid’s Wisdom Cards:

Drawing this marker says that you must now search your heart for any unresolved resentment, anger, or disagreements between you and another. If you’re still hurt or angry about another’s behavior, or if there are circumstances in your life that you resent, this is a time when it’s crucial to release the negative energy surrounding those situations. Resisting this will only impede your growth and draw more unwanted experiences to you.

Well, I certainly don’t want that – especially not in Delphi. Now I all I have to do is find a way to finally and totally forgive.

The chipmunks are driving me crazy. They won’t let me sleep and when I sit down to write, there’s so much chatter I can’t think straight. Each and every one of the furry little beasts is jumping up and down in a fit of frenzy trying to get my attention. These aren’t real chipmunks, mind you, and they’re not spirit guides either. They are, instead, physical manifestations of my overactive mind. Let me explain.

For several weeks, I’ve been going to The Aesclepion Healing Center in San Rafael for a ‘healing hands’ class. Before getting to the chipmunks, though, let me point out that Aesclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing, was the son of Apollo. And it was Apollo that the Oracles at Delphi channeled in their trances. Yet another Greek connection!

In the first healing hands class, we were introduced to the basic principals of meditation. I’ve been avoiding meditation all my life. It’s not that I hadn’t tried, but every time I  sat down and attempted to relax and empty my mind, my body rebelled and I’d be up and moving within five minutes. So I was interested to see if I was ready to quiet my mind and find a way to access a higher state of consciousness.

We learned to set grounding cords to anchor us to the earth, to make our thoughts vanish by putting them in a rose and blowing it up, and to bring in the energy of the sun by imagining golden light coming in through our crown chakras. So far so good. If given a task of imagining something, I could keep my thoughts at bay. Maybe I could do this after all.

Before each class, the students at the Center gather to give and to receive healings and energy checks. After three classes, I had my energy checked by a perky blonde who looks like Julia Duffy in the ’80’s series ‘Newhart’. First she saw the color green around me. Every time I have a reading, I’m surrounded by green and I have yet to find out what this means. Then she said that she saw cow pies on top of my head (I don’t know what this means either), and a bunch of chipmunks scurrying around inside my head. According to ‘Julia’, the chipmunks are uninvited spirit guides, and they’re not happy because I’m not paying as much attention to them as I did in the past.

And she saw my father who’s been dead for over 20 years. He, too, was trying to get my attention, waving his arms saying, “I can help. Let me help.” At the time I understood this to mean that he wanted to help me with my healing hands class. Later I realized that his intention was to inform me that I could call upon him to help heal from the trauma of our past lives together.

So, I have a lot of work to do. I need to get the chipmunks under control, and I have to find a way to forgive my father. I would guess that those past lifetimes with him are the very reason I’ve been avoiding meditation in the first place.