Breathing in the Moon

Last night in the middle of my usual sleep-challenged state, I saw SMITHSONIAN in big black letters, all caps, on a white background. I had no idea what this meant, but I knew it wasn’t a fragment of a dream because this wasn’t the first time I’d received a nocturnal message consisting of nothing but a few numbers or letters. But it was the first time information came through directly in response to a request.

Inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the breakaway international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, I’d asked Source for help sorting out my ideas for various creative projects. In her TEDTalk last year on nurturing creativity, Gilbert tells us how she challenged God when she “fell into a pit of despair” in the middle of writing her book.

“Listen you,” she said (and I’m paraphrasing here). “I don’t have any more than this. If you want this book to be better, you’re going to have to show up and do your part of the deal.” Well, I guess he did!

So the first chance I got the next morning, I Googled Smithsonian. Skipping past links to the museums (I just wasn’t ‘feeling’ it), I hit the link to the online magazine and within two minutes I found something I didn’t even know I was looking for: an interview with author Mary Collins about her new book on Amercia’s sedentary culture. This helped me in two ways: #1) it provided me with additional material for a post about the joy of movement that’s been marinating in my head for weeks; and #2) it helped me focus my attention on this particular subject and move it to the top of my list.

I’m not sure what’s at work here. But I don’t think we’re meant to tromp through life alone banging our heads repeatedly against the wall until we ‘get it’. As Gilbert and so many writers, artists, and musicians before her have discovered, help is available from the Divine if we just ask for it. The trick is recognizing the answer when it shows up and then knowing what to do with it.

©2010 Charlene Nevill

A few weeks after I returned from Greece, I found a box of books in front of my house. Now this in itself isn’t unusual; people dump clothes, food (remember the artichokes?), computers, furniture and all manner of unmentionables on the sidewalks in my neighborhood on a daily basis. But this box was directly in front of my house. And inside I found the following: seven of Carlos Castaneda’s twelve books; the Individual Reference File of Extracts From the Edgar Cayce Readings; The Art & Practice of Caballa Magic; The Magic of Incense, Oils & Brews: A Guide to their Preparation and Use; Beyond Hypnosis: A Program for Developing Your Psychic & Healing Powers; and Communion: A True Story (in which award-winning author Whitley Strieber describes his abduction by aliens).

What are the chances? Shaminism . . . Psychic readings . . . Magic . . . Aliens . . . It was as if the Universe had gathered up all the knowledge I was meant to absorb at this moment in time and placed it in my hands. At least that was my first thought. But after reading up on Castaneda and looking over each of the other books, I’m not so sure.

Years ago, I read two or three of Castaneda’s books about his training in traditional shamanism with don Juan Matus, an old Yaqui Indian. At the time, I was vaguely aware that there were questions about the authenticity of his experiences, but I had no idea the extent of the controversy nor that don Juan probably didn’t exist.

In 1973 after the publication of his first three books, Time published an article, Don Juan and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which called attention to inconsistencies in Castaneda’s background. And in an exhaustive article that appeared on salon.com in 2007, The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda, Robert Marshall calls Castaneda ” . . . the 20th century’s most successful literary trickster . . . ” and exposes a lifestyle that can only be described as a cult.

Shortly after the Time article appeared, Castanda disappeared from public view. Inspired by L. Rob Hubbard’s Scientology, he developed a movement he called Tensegrity, a kind of “Kung Fu Sorcery” supposedly based on a group of movements passed down by Toltec shamans. Three main female devotees known as ‘the Witches’ who were required to break off all ties with family and friends, were used to recruit new members – specifically “women with a combination of brains, beauty and vulnerability” -  into the ‘family’. After Castaneda passed into the great unknown ten years later, the remains of one of the Witches was found in the desert and the other two disappeared but were presumed to have committed suicide.

Despite criticism of Castaneda’s writings, he’s been acknowledged by such luminaries as George Lucas and Deepak Chopra for inviting readers to examine the nature of reality and for opening the doors to perception. And even after academia discredited Castaneda, his editor, Michael Korda, insisted on the authenticity of his experiences, and Simon & Schuster still classify his books as nonfiction.

In his article Shamanic Personal Transformation, shamanistic practitioner Hank Wesselman talks about the trap of equating ‘ideas’ about the nature of reality with true, face-to-face encounters with transpersonal forces in the deep psychic and subtle realms. He also points out the importance of intention. ” . . . as you do journey work and start to enter into relationship with transpersonal forces . . . are you seeking connection to ‘get something’ material? Or are you doing work from a place of service for the highest good for yourself, those around you and those you are connecting with?”

I can’t help but question Castaneda’s actual experiences in the realms of nonordinary reality. Were they nothing more than imaginings fueled by psychotropic drugs? According to author Amy Wallace, one of Castaneda’s numerous lovers, “He became more and more hypnotized by his own reveries. I firmly believe Carlos brainwashed himself.”

And what of his intentions? It seems clear that his editor and publisher were intent on one thing only, and that was to keep the money machine going. And if, as Wallace contends, Castaneda had lost touch with reality we can assume he also lost his ability to control it.

So I’m left wondering about the reappearance of Castaneda in my life. As one who has always been a tad too trusting, for the first time in my life I’m looking at things with a more critical eye. You might even say I’m becoming a bit of a skeptic. And it’s with this new perspective that I intend to revisit Edgar Cayce and to examine the other offerings from my mysterious benefactor.

“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.

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.

To prepare for my trip to Delphi I’ve started doing ‘deep soul writing’. Inspired by Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God, I decided a while ago that if Walsch could access Source, so could I. But it wasn’t until I read Janet Conner’s book, Writing Down Your Soul, that I actually started doing it. After following Conner’s four steps (show up; open up; listen up; and follow up) and practicing for a few weeks, I asked Source what to expect from my trip and I got answers! As is common with this process, my pen wrote as if possessed.

C: Dear Spirit, PLEASE: (Conner suggests finding your own name for Source and using it along with some kind of an invocation each time you sit down to write.)

“If it is helpful for me to know what happened to me in Delphi, please let me see it.”

S: “It is not time yet.”

C: “What else should I be looking at now to prepare myself for this trip.”

S: “Make yourself as strong as you possibly can. You will be tested mentally, emotionally and physically. Only by preparing will you survive this test.”

C: “After this experience, will I know what my mission is? Will I have access to Source to guide me?”

S: “You know what it is you are to do, but you need clarity, you need strength and confidence. To prepare, continue to absorb the writings and experiences of others who have been tested. Follow their lead and know you will be protected by everyone around you.”

C: “Is there anything else I need to know or to do at this time?”

S: “Be still and let information come. Record all your thoughts and your dreams. Know that the dreams and the voices that have come are leading you along your path.”

This was pretty amazing – a bit ominous, but encouraging nonetheless. I’ve been writing every day since this conversation with what Conner calls The Voice, but nothing else has come through yet, at least not in writing. But when I asked (implored is more like it) the Source for courage to pull the trigger on this trip and for inspiration to start this blog, I got answers of a different sort. More on that tomorrow!