Breathing in the Moon

The Dance of Youth by Pablo Picasso

A few months ago, I stumbled upon six guys dancing their guts out to wild African music on So You Think You Can Dance. I got so excited that I jumped up and started moving. And I promised myself right then and there that I would find a way to start dancing again.

DANCE had been at the top of my ‘to do’ list for years. But every time I even thought about dancing, my goblin appeared and provided a laundry list of reasons why I couldn’t do it. I was too busy. I didn’t need to dance because I was doing Tai Chi. And besides, I couldn’t possibly find a decent school; after all, I didn’t live in New York any more.

But after my reading with Dr. Steven Farmer last fall when he advised that dancing would help bring about the changes I felt coming, something shifted and I was finally able to give myself permission to do what I wanted to do.

All of a sudden, I had plenty of time. And a quick Google search revealed a dance school affiliated with a world-renowned dance company within walking distance from my house. Best of all, the school’s mission to provide students an opportunity ‘to re-connect heart and mind’ could not have been more perfect for me.

From the very first class, I was hooked. The teacher was so full of joy and passion that even though I hadn’t put my body through such a rigorous workout for a quarter century, I made every effort to jump and leap across the floor with the 20- and 30-somethings.

I’m not saying I succeeded. In fact, I could barely follow the choreography and my lungs were imploding halfway through the class. As I walked home – very slowly – every muscle, every sinew, every tendon – in short, every cell in my body was screaming, “What have you done? What do you think you’re doing?”

It was my goblin again. But this time I wasn’t going to listen. I loved the feeling of pure joy I’d experienced so much that I knew I had but one choice, and that was to put my goblin to rest and step outside my self-imposed prison.

Spiritual intuitive Colette Baron-Reid uses the term goblin to describe the shadow self whose job it is to keep us stuck in our current reality. When our intuition surfaces encouraging us to do something that would disrupt the status quo, the goblin does its best to keep us from paying attention to it. According to Reid, we can free ourselves from this entity by acknowledging it and transforming it into an ally.

This sounds good, but how do we do it? Dr. Bruce H. Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief : Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, and Miracles tells us that we have the power to change our reality with our beliefs. We’ve heard this before, right? But for those who need something a little more substantial, here’s the good news: this information is coming from science.

Cellular biologist and pioneer in the science of epigenetics, Dr. Lipton produced breakthrough studies in the early ’80’s connecting the principles of quantum physics and the information-processing systems of the cell. His research showed that the outer layer of the cell is the cell’s equivalent of the brain. This ‘cellular intelligence’ allows the exterior environment to operate through the cell membrane and to control the cell’s behavior and physiology. These discoveries not only challenged the established scientific belief that life is controlled by the genes, but also pointed to the power of the mind.

How exciting is that? If our cells respond to our thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions, it would seem that we can use our conscious mind to create health, happiness, abundance – anything and everything we desire. But this is possible only if our thoughts are in harmony with our subconscious programming.

Over the past decade, Dr. William A. Tiller, Professor Emeritus of Stanford University’s Department of Materials Science, has expanded the proof that human intention does affect physical reality. When we repeat emotional processes over and over, our brains create neural pathways that direct our behavior. Using brain scans, Dr. Tiller’s research showed that when we imagine something long enough and with enough detail and energy, new neural networks are created.

This would explain why meditation, visualization, and affirmations work. Simply making the choice for a change can work, too. If you’ve been yearning to do/create/try something new and you’re meeting with resistance, look your goblin straight in the eye and JUST DO IT!

*Thanks to celebrity portrait photographer and recording artist Lynn Goldsmith for the title of this post inspired by her self-help comedy album of the same name.

“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.

“Man cannot discover new oceans until he has courage to lose sight of the shore.” – unknown

Delphi ©2007 Leonidtsvetkov

In anticipation of my departure, I’ve been experiencing a myriad of emotions, mostly fear and sadness. The fear no doubt is related to that chat I had with Source a while ago about being tested on this journey. And my clairvoyant friend Angelika warned me when this trip was just a fantasy that I could make all the plans all I wanted, but Spirit would have final say in the way things would unfold. And the sadness? Well, I have a premonition that nothing will be the same when I return.

But according to writer, teacher, travel leader, and documentary filmmaker Phil Cousineau who has been on the road all his life, this is exactly what can be expected when one sets out on a soulful journey. In his book, The Art of Pilgrimage, he recounts innumerable stories about pilgrims, sojourners and explorers who have traversed the globe throughout the millennia.

Siting Muriel Rukeyser’s essay, The Life of Poetry, Cousineau compares the fear of soulful travel to resistance to modern poetry. “A poem invites you to feel. More than that: it invites you to respond. And better than that: a poem invites a total response. So too with powerful and soulful travel. It seizes your imagination, but the way through to the sacred moment can also be through deep anxiety about the unknown. The possibility produces fear in many travelers, even at the threshold of their own door before leaving home.”

What am I expecting to find at Delphi? If given the choice, I would wish for a transformative experience analogous to that of Henry Miller, who was so moved by his travels through Greece that the account of his journey, The Colossus of Maroussi, “streamed from the heavens” straight into his soul. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.

So, I am off at last. I leave today unfettered and untethered, so you won’t see anything from me until I return mid-October. In the meantime, don’t forget to look for the Harvest Moon this weekend. God willing, I will be viewing it rising above the Acropolis.

Before I encountered The Pythia, I had been feeling that something was coming, but I didn’t know what it was nor how to find it. In the past, changes in my life had just ’shown up’. But this felt different and it was taking a very long time. So I began looking for new sources of inspiration. When I found shamanistic practitioner Dr. Steven Farmer on Hay House’s website and learned that he was scheduled to speak in nearby Mountain View, I decided to go.

I’ve been passionate about animals all my life, but I’d never focused on them as spirit guides. If pressed, I would have said that my totem animal was either BUFFALO or RAVEN because of experiences I’ve had with these animals.

And then there was the raven. On a trip to the Marin Headlands at the beginning of the year, a raven landed on a post very near me and started gobbling like a turkey. I wanted to photograph him, so I inched closer and closer. Instead of flying off, he just kept gobbling. I didn’t think too much about his vocalizations at the time – I knew there were poultry farms not far off, and having once had a pet crow, I knew these birds have the ability to mimic a wide range of sounds. But it was unusual.

It all started with the oracle cookies. I was Googling around and stumbled upon a chapter from Colette Baron-Reid’s book, Messages From Spirit: The Extraordinary Power of Oracles, Omens, and Signs, in which she describes Aleuromancy, or divination by flour. Intrigued, I read on and learned that the ancient Greeks wrote symbols on pieces of cloth or papyrus and rolled them into dough balls and baked them. The balls were then passed around and questions were asked of the Divine.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the cookies. Colette includes instructions for making a modern version of these confections using a big white bowl, a wooden spoon and a few very specific ingredients. I went back to look over the recipe and a sentence about Apollo and the Delphic Oracle caught my eye. I felt compelled to look up the Oracle immediately, and when I saw the image of the Pythia, I saw myself. I was transfixed.

Priestess of Delphi (1891) John Collier

I immediately did a screen grab of John Collier’s painting and sent it around to five of my closest friends asking them to tell me if they ‘got’ anything from looking at the image. That’s all I said; nothing more. Todd wrote back within five minutes with this: “It’s you, isn’t it?” And a week later when my trusted friend and mentor Angelika finally looked at the image, she started shrieking, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”, and she told me I must go to Delphi, I must go soon, and I must go alone. And as if that wasn’t enough, Dr. Stephanie, a natural clairvoyant and healer, wrote: “Wow! This is a powerful image. I can see you in there––aspects of your strength that were still intact before there was a distortion. Reconnecting with this aspect of yourself will begin to heal the distortion that occurred between then and now.”

I never made the cookies. But I did book my trip to Greece.